Hugh of Saint Victor

Hugh of Saint Victor was a probably Saxon-born theologian and teacher at the Abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris, one of the leading schools of the twelfth century. His Didascalicon is a guide to reading and study that maps every branch of knowledge, from the liberal and mechanical arts to scripture, and explains how each serves the restoration of the human being. In On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith he wrote an early systematic theology. He joined careful learning to contemplation, and influenced later Victorines, Bonaventure and scholastic thinking about the order of knowledge.

Key ideas

• Learning is a remedy for the Fall: wisdom counters ignorance, virtue counters vice, and the mechanical arts meet bodily needs.
• Knowledge divides into theoretical, practical, mechanical and logical arts, each with its place in a single order.
• 'Learn everything; you will see afterwards that nothing is superfluous.'
• Scripture is read on several levels, and the literal, historical sense is the foundation for the others.

Major works

• Didascalicon (late 1120s)
• On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith (1130s)
• On the Moral Ark of Noah (1125–1130)
• Commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy (begun c. 1125)

In the Book corner

• Didascalicon c. late 1120s · Intermediate
  A guide to reading and study, written in the late 1120s at the abbey of St Victor in Paris. Its full title…

In the conversation

No topics yet. Start one about this thinker.