Hugh of St Victor

Hugh of St Victor (c. 1078 – February 11, 1141), mystic philosopher, was probably born at Hartingam, in Saxony.

After spending some time in a house of canons regular at Hamersleben, in Saxony, where he completed his studies, he removed to the abbey of St Victor at Marseille, and thence to the abbey of St Victor in Paris. Of this last house he rose to be canon, in 1125, scholasticus, and perhaps even prior, and it was there that he died.

His eloquence and his writings earned him fame and influence that far exceeded St Bernard's, and which held its ground until the advent of the Thomist philosophy. Hugh was more especially the initiator of the mysticism of the school of St Victor, which dominated the whole of the second part of the 12th century. The mysticism which he inaugurated, says Charles-Victor Langlois, is learned, unctuous, ornate, florid, a mysticism which never indulges in dangerous temerities; it is the orthodox mysticism of a subtle and prudent rhetorician. This tendency undoubtedly shows a marked reaction from the contentious theology of Roscellinus and Abélard.

For Hugh of St Victor dialectic was both insufficient and perilous. Yet he did not profess the haughty contempt for science and philosophy which his followers the Victorines expressed; he regarded knowledge, not as an end in itself, but as the vestibule of the mystic life. Reason was but an aid to the understanding of the truths which faith reveals. The ascent towards God and the functions of the three-fold eye of the soul cogitatio, meditatio and contemplatio were minutely taught by him in language which is at once precise and symbolical.

Manuscript copies of his works abound, and are to be found in almost every library which possesses a collection of ancient writings. The works themselves are very numerous and very diverse. The middle ages attributed to him sixty works, and the edition in Migne's Patr. Lat. vols. clxxv.-clxxvii. (Paris, 1854) contains no fewer than forty-seven treatises, commentaries and collections of sermons. Of that number, however, Barthélemy Hauréau (Hugues de Saint-Victor (1st ed., Paris, 1859; 2nd ed., Paris, 1886) contests the authenticity of several, which he ascribes with some show of probability to Hugh of Fouilloy, Robert Paululus or others.)

Among those works with which Hugh of St Victor may almost certainly be credited may be mentioned:

the celebrated De sacramentis christianae fidei (On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith)
the Didascalicon de studio legendi (Treatise on the Arts)
the treatises on mysticism entitled De contemplatio et ejus operibus (On Contempoation and its Operations), Aareum de meditando opusculum, De arca Noe morali (On the Moral Interpretation of the Ark of Noah), De arca Noe mystica (On the Mystic Interpretation of the Ark of Noah), De vanitate mundi (On the Vanity of the World), De arrha animae (On the Betrothal Gift of the Soul), De amore sponsi ad sponsam (On the Love of the Husband for his Wife), etc.
the introduction (Praenotatiunculae) to the study of the Scriptures
homilies on the book of Ecclesiastes
commentaries on other books of the Bible, e.g. the Pentateuch, Judges, Kings, Jeremiah, etc.