Hugh of Saint Victor

Hugh of Saint Victor (c. 1096 – 11 February 1141) was a German canon regular and a leading theologian and writer on mystical theology.

As with many medieval figures, little is known about Hugh's early life. He was probably born in the 1090s. His homeland may have been the Duchy of Saxony.^[1] Some sources say that his birth occurred in the Harz district, being the eldest son of Baron Conrad of Blankenburg. Over the protests of his family, he entered the Priory of St. Pancras, a community of canons regular, where he had studied, located at Hamerleve or Hamersleben, near Halberstadt.^[2]

Due to civil unrest shortly after his entry to the priory, Hugh's uncle, Reinhard of Blankenburg, who was the local bishop, advised him to transfer to the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris, where he himself had studied theology. He accepted his uncle's advice and made the move at a date which is unclear, possibly 1115–18 or around 1120.^[3] He spent the rest of his life there, advancing to head the school.^[2]

Hugh wrote many works from the 1120s until his death (Migne, Patrologia Latina contains 46 works by Hugh, and this is not a full collection), including works of theology (both treatises and sententiae), commentaries (mostly on the Bible but also including one of pseudo-Dionysius' Celestial Hierarchies), mysticism, philosophy and the arts, and a number of letters and sermons.^[4]

Hugh was influenced by many people, but chiefly by Saint Augustine, especially in holding that the arts and philosophy can serve theology.

Hugh's most significant works include:

• De sacramentis christianae fidei (On the Mysteries of the Christian Faith/On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith)^[5] It is Hugh's most celebrated masterpiece and presents the bulk of Hugh's thoughts on theological and mystical ideas, ranging from God and angels to natural laws.
• Didascalicon de studio legendi (Didascalicon, or, On the Study of Reading).^[6] The subtitle to the Didascalicon, De Studio Legendi, makes the purpose of Hugh's tract clear. Written for the students at the school of Saint Victor, the work is a preliminary introduction to the theological and exegetical studies taught at the Parisian schools, the most advanced centers of learning in Europe in the 12th century. Citing a wide range classical and medieval sources, and with Augustine as his principal authority, Hugh sets forth a comprehensive synthesis of rhetoric, philosophy, and exegesis, designed to serve as a foundation for advanced theological study. The Didascalicon is primarily pedagogical, and not speculative, in nature. It provides the modern reader with a clear sense of the intellectual equipment expected of, if not always fully possessed by, high medieval theologians.
• In 1125–30, Hugh wrote three treatises structured around Noah's ark:De arca Noe morali (Noah's Moral Ark/On the Moral Interpretation of the Ark of Noah), De arca Noe mystica (Noah's Mystical Ark/On the Mystic Interpretation of the Ark of Noah), and De vanitate mundi (The World's Vanity).^[7]De arca Noe morali and De arca Noe mystica reflect Hugh's fascination with both mysticism and the book of Genesis. The description he conjectured of the ark, a ship's hull with a sloped roof and a side door, became the "standard description" of the ark, whose shape is not clearly described in Genesis.^[8]
• In Hierarchiam celestem commentaria (Commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy), a commentary on the work by pseudo-Dionysius, perhaps begun around 1125.^[9] After Eriugena's translation of Dionysius in the ninth century, there is almost no interest shown in Dionysius until Hugh's commentary.^[10] It is possible that Hugh may have decided to produce the commentary (which perhaps originated in lectures to students) because of the continuing (incorrect) belief that the patron saint of the Abbey of Saint Denis, Saint Denis, was to be identified with pseudo-Dionysius. Dionysian thought did not form an important influence on the rest of Hugh's work. Hugh's commentary, however, became a major part of the twelfth and thirteenth-century surge in interest in Dionysius; his and Eriugena's commentaries were often attached to the Dionysian corpus in manuscripts, such that his thought had great influence on later interpretation of Dionysius by Richard of St Victor, Thomas Gallus, Hugh of Balma, Bonaventure and others.^[11]

Other works by Hugh of St Victor include:

• In Salomonis Ecclesiasten (Commentary on Ecclesiastes).^[12]
• De tribus diebus (On the Three Days).^[13]
• De sapientia animae Christi.^[14]
• De unione corporis et spiritus (The Union of the Body and the Spirit).^[15]
• Epitome Dindimi in philosophiam (Epitome of Dindimus on Philosophy).^[16]
• Practica Geometriae (The Practice of Geometry).^[16]
• De Grammatica (On Grammar).^[16]
• Soliloquium de Arrha Animae (The Soliloquy on the Earnest Money of the Soul).^[17]
• De contemplatione et ejus speciebus (On Contemplation and its Forms). This is one of the earliest systematic works devoted to contemplation. It appears not to have been written by Hugh himself, but composed by one of his students, possibly from classnotes from his lectures.^[18]
• On Sacred Scripture and its Authors.^[19]
• Various other treatises exist whose authorship by Hugh is uncertain. Six of these are reprinted, in Latin in Roger Baron, ed, Hugues de Saint-Victor: Six Opuscules Spirituels, Sources chrétiennes 155, (Paris, 1969). They are: De meditatione,^[20]De verbo Dei, De substantia dilectionis, Quid vere diligendus est, De quinque septenis ,^[21] and De septem donis Spiritus sancti^[22]
• De anima is a treatise of the soul: the text will be found in the edition of Hugh's works in the Patrologia Latina of J. P. Migne. Part of it was paraphrased in the West Mercian dialect of Middle English by the author of the Katherine Group.^[23]
• Descriptio mappae mundi (Description of a World Map).^[24]

Various other works were wrongly attributed to Hugh in later thought. One such particularly influential work was the Exposition of the Rule of St Augustine, now accepted to be from the Victorine school but not by Hugh of St Victor.^[25]

A new edition of Hugh's works has been started. The first publication is: Hugonis de Sancto Victore De sacramentis Christiane fidei, ed. Rainer Berndt, Münster: Aschendorff, 2008.

The early Didascalicon was an elementary, encyclopedic approach to God and Christ, in which Hugh avoided controversial subjects and focused on what he took to be commonplaces of Catholic Christianity. In it he outlined three types of philosophy or "science" [scientia] that can help mortals improve themselves and advance toward God: theoretical philosophy (theology, mathematics, physics) provides them with truth, practical philosophy (ethics, economics, politics) aids them in becoming virtuous and prudent, and "mechanical" or "illiberal" philosophy (e.g., carpentry, agriculture, medicine) yields physical benefits. A fourth philosophy, logic, is preparatory to the others and exists to ensure clear and proper conclusions in them. Hugh's deeply mystical bent did not prevent him from seeing philosophy as a useful tool for understanding the divine, or from using it to argue on behalf of faith.

Hugh was heavily influenced by Augustine's exegesis of Genesis. Divine Wisdom was the archetypal form of creation. The creation of the world in six days was a mystery for man to contemplate, perhaps even a sacrament. God's forming order from chaos to make the world was a message to humans to rise up from their own chaos of ignorance and become creatures of Wisdom and therefore beauty. This kind of mystical-ethical interpretation was typical for Hugh, who tended to find Genesis interesting for its moral lessons rather than as a literal account of events.

Along with Jesus, the sacraments were divine gifts that God gave man to redeem himself, though God could have used other means. Hugh separated everything along the lines of opus creationis and opus restaurationis. Opus Creationis was the works of the creation, referring to God's creative activity, the true good natures of things, and the original state and destiny of humanity. The opus restaurationis was that which dealt with the reasons for God sending Jesus and the consequences of that. Hugh believed that God did not have to send Jesus and that He had other options open to Him. Why he chose to send Jesus is a mystery we are to meditate on and is to be learned through revelation, with the aid of philosophy to facilitate understanding.

Within the Abbey of St Victor, many scholars who followed him are often known as the 'School of St Victor'. Andrew of St Victor studied under Hugh.^[26] Others, who probably entered the community too late to be directly educated by Hugh, include Richard of Saint Victor and Godfrey.^[27] One of Hugh's ideals that did not take root in St Victor, however, was his embracing of science and philosophy as tools for approaching God.

His works are in hundreds of libraries all across Europe. He is quoted in many other publications after his death, and Bonaventure praises him in De reductione artium ad theologiam.

He was also an influence on the critic Erich Auerbach, who cited this passage from Hugh of St Victor in his essay "Philology and World Literature":^[28]

It is therefore, a source of great virtue for the practiced mind to learn, bit by bit, first to change about in visible and transitory things, so that afterwards it may be able to leave them behind altogether. The person who finds his homeland sweet is a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign place. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong person has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his.

• Art of memory § Principles, where Hugh's Didascalicon and Chronica are referred to.
• Hendrik Mande
• The Mystic Ark, painting by Hugh

• Lewis E 213 Rule of Saint Augustine; Sermon on Matthew 25:6 at OPenn
• "Hugh of St. Victor" in: New Advent
• Alphandéry, Paul Daniel (1911). "Hugh of St Victor" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 859.