Peter Abelard

Peter Abelard - Petrus Abaelardus to his friends - was, among other things, the first and only Chancellor of Aldergate University.

Although his nun-related shenanigans have largely coloured the modern world’s opinion of old Pete, he was the preeminent scholar, philosopher and logician of his day. Nobody in the academic community batted an eye when Empress Matilda offered him the Chancellorship in perpetuity, on the understanding that he could confer it at his sole discretion to whomever he liked.

Things turned sticky when Pete died later that same year while en route to Rome to fight charges of heresy. He never got around to naming a successor, and the University of Aldergate has been run by Vice-Chancellors ever since.

There's another bit of controversy surrounding the death of Abelard. Supposedly the old monk was asked on his deathbed whether he had any last words to impart, to which his alleged response was: "I don't know." Now, some ignorant persons have claimed that this was just Pete flubbing his line, rather than actually delivering his actus est fabula. Aldergatians, however, have always celbrated this final pronouncement of the great scholar as a rallying cry - in fact, as the essential motto of academia. Until we know everything we have no business claiming to know anything at all, that sort of thing. Anyhow, the Latin "Nescio" is the University of Aldergate's unofficial motto, and it appears on the University's coat of arms.