 Even though Abelard (1079–1142) sometimes made use of the Boethian modal concepts (as Anselm also did), he was interested in the philosophical significance of the idea of modality as alternativeness. Assuming that what is actual is temporally necessary at a certain point of time as no longer avoidable, he adds that unrealized counterfactual alternatives are possible at the same time in the sense that they could have happened at that time. There are also merely imaginable alternatives, such as Socrates’s being a bishop, which never had a real basis in things. (See Martin 2001, 2003; Marenbon 2007, 156–158, is sceptical about this interpretation; see also Binini 2019.) Gilbert of Poitiers (d. 1154) stressed the idea that natural regularities which are called natural necessities are not absolute, since they are freely chosen by God and can be overridden by divine power. This basically Augustinian conception was a widespread theological view in the twelfth century. In explaining Plato’s ‘Platonitas’ Gilbert innovatively argues that this includes all that Plato was, is and will be as well as what he could be but never is (The Commentaries on Boethius 144.77–78, 274.75–76; Knuuttila 1993, 75–82).