Abélard
Peter Abélard is brilliant proof of the awakening intellect in Christian Europe in the twelfth century. He was born in 1079, and throughout his life he tried to rationalize Christian theology using (dialectic) logical arguments, writing his most famous book Sic et Non ("Yes and No") in 1121. In it, while repeatedly affirming his orthodoxy, Abélard opens up for debate such problems as Divine Providence vs. free will, of unknowable mysteries vs rational explanation, and in every page reveals contradictions by adding pros and cons to each argument. In Abélard (so early in the Scholastic movement) we already see the chinks in the rigid armor of the faith: he struggled with the idea of the trinity and found inconceivable that so many pre-Christian thinkers could have missed salvation. Through all this reasonable doubt, he made many enemies, St. Bernard among them. The eager watchdog of the faith, scenting the wolf at the flock, led the pack to the hunt by declaring open war with Abélard and eventually forced him to yield. Broken in spirit—as he had been decades earlier when a love affair cost him some of his most valuable body parts—Abélard became a monk at Cluny, and hid himself in the obscurity of its walls and its ritual. He fell ill, and his kindly Abbot sent him to the priory of St. Marcel near Chalons for a change of air. There, on April 21, 1142, he died, aged sixty-three. His body was brought to Héloïse (his once lover before his many tragedies) and was buried, as he had requested, at the Paraclete. She was buried next to him and their supposed remains were eventually transferred to Paris in 1817.
Source: Durant, Will. The Story of Civilization, Vol. 4: The Age of Faith, A History of Medieval Civilization, Christian, Islamic, and Judaic, From Constantine to Dante, A.D. 325-1300. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950.
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Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!