Saint Victor is a particular case in the landscape of twelfth-century schools. It is a new school, related to a city, constituted on the basis of converging intellectual interests, whose members share the spirit of a school. However, it is different from other institutions that were created in the twelfth century by its limited interest in logic and the arts of language (with the obvious exception of its founder, William of Champeaux, who was an important dialectician) and by its monastic status.
Following a virulent controversy with his disciple Abelard on the topic of universals, William of Champeaux, who had until then been a master in Paris, decided to renounce his chair at Notre-Dame and, in 1108 (or 1111, as convincingly argued recently by Constant Mews) retired, with some students, outside of town, at the Saint Victor hermitage. Following the explicit demand of Hildebert of Lavardin, he pursued his teaching there. In 1113, William became the bishop of Chalons and obtained that “his” school of Saint Victor become an abbey of regular canons and that it adopt the so-called rule of Saint Augustine.
Hugh of Saint Victor gave great intellectual vivacity to the school, but changed its focus from what had been William's, being less interested in speculation about language and logic. Hugh (Hugo de Sancto Victore) is the first theologian of the school; this German thinker was a master at Saint Victor from 1125 and directed the school from 1133; he died in 1141. As a theologian, he was interested in a variety of topics, both speculative and moral; his two main works are the Didascalicon de studio legendi, which provides a method of reading and a systemic presentation of Greek and late ancient science and the treatise De sacramentis fidei christianae which is, both in content and form, one ofthe first theological sums of the Middle Ages. To these two writings we may add his Expositio on the Celestial Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius. This work, strongly influenced by Eriugena’s commentary, was to be added to the Dionysian corpus of the University of Paris and thus influenced scholastic thinkers.
The Didascalicon is an ars legendi, which aims at providing students with advice on what must be read (quid legendum), in which order (quo ordine) and how (quo modo); it is also a great widening of intellectual perspectives, an attempt to organize knowledge as a coherent whole, and a treatise of exegesis. Central to this text is an attempt to organize all profane knowledge around holy knowledge: ‘‘All the arts of nature serve divine science; inferior wisdom, correctly ordered, leads to superior wisdom.’’ One must master profane knowledge before holy knowledge. Like William of Conches, he believed that all fields of knowledge are related. Knowledge of the liberal arts is necessary: ‘‘Learn everything, and then you will see that nothing is superfluous’’ (Didascalicon, VI, 3). All forms of knowledge serve wisdom because they help to understand the Holy Scriptures. Hugh believed that the knowledge of the liberal arts should be oriented toward the meditation of Scriptures and is accomplished through contemplation. The second part of the Didascalicon (books V and VI) is dedicated to Holy Scripture and constitutes a short exegetical treatise. Hugh gives a theory of the three senses of the Scriptures: historical, allegorical, and tropological. The historical sense or history is the literal meaning. This meaning must be sought as the basis of any reading. The allegorical sense is the dogmatic or theological sense par excellence. It consists in the discovery of the organization of creation and of the meaning of human history. Tropology gives the moral meaning of the Scriptures.
In his treatise dedicated to ‘‘the holy signs of natural and written law,’’ the De sacramentis fidei christianae, Hugh presents himself in many ways as renewing Latin theology. On the basis of the architectonical structure of John Scottus Eriugena’s Periphyseon, and the movements of exitus and reditus, he tells the story of the destiny and creation of men. The general framework of this sum is provided by time: the time of nature, the time of written law, and the time of grace. He speaks of the creation (opus conditionis) and of the fall, then of the “restoration” (opus restaurationis) - Christ, the Church, and the sacraments. Beyond the traditional notion of sign inherited from Augustine, Hugh offers a new use of the notion of symbol, until then unknown to Latin theology, in which the efficacious symbolism of sacraments is justified by an analogy or resemblance (similitudo) founded in the nature of things themselves that supposes a natural ontological relation between that which signifies and that which is signified.
Several other thinkers contributed to the development of a School of Saint Victor, in which doctrinal research and spiritual life were intrinsically related. Achardus (Achardus de Sancto Victore or A. Abricensis or A. of Bridlington), theologian, preacher, and philosopher, was the abbot of Saint Victor from 1155 to 1160 before becoming the bishop of Avranches, where he died in 1171. He is the author of a treatise On the Unity of God and the Plurality of Creatures (De unitate Dei et pluritate creaturarum), in which he gives a metaphysical reflection on the one and the many. Achardus develops an original doctrine on the relation between the plurality of creatures and the true unity of God. The plurality of creatures reflects an intelligible plurality ‘‘which immediately adheres to the supreme unity.’’ The second plurality - that of things, created or possible, as they are thought by God - is founded in a distinction, which is internal to the unity of God himself.
Richard (Richardus de Sancto Victore or R. Parisiensis) was master and then prior of Saint Victor until his death in 1173. He was interested in many things and was a philosopher, a theologian, a historian, an exegete, and a mystic. We cannot be certain that Richard was a direct student ofHugh, however, his work was strongly influenced by the author of the De sacramentis, whose thought he continues. His Liber exceptionum is a propaedeutical work characterized by his interest for the liberal arts and philosophy, written in the spirit of the Didascalicon; like Hugh, Richard preached a lot and composed several commentaries on the Bible. The Middle Ages retained more of his spirituality than his exegesis. In the Divine Comedy, Dante places him in the Heaven of the Sun, in a group of 12 blessed doctors of holy science. In Dante’s text, Thomas Aquinas presents him in the following way: ‘‘Richard who, in contemplation, was more than a man’’ (Paradise, X, 131-132). His main work, the De trinitate, proposes to understand the mystery of the Trinity according to a method inspired by Anselm of Canterbury’s contemplative dialectic. Richard seeks to ‘‘present, in support of what we believe, reasons that are not only plausible, but necessary, and to elucidate and explain truth.’’ Richard insists on the necessary character of his method: the existence of eternal realities is absolutely necessary, they have always existed, and will certainly never cease to exist; they are always what they are, they cannot be different from what they are.
Godfrey (Godefridus) joined the School of Saint Victor around 1155 to become the student of Richard. He wrote an allegorical and moral exegesis of the story of creation (Microcosmus) and a Source of Philosophy
(Fons philosophiae), a collection of verses that gives, among other things, a reflection on the body of Christ (Anathomia corporis Christi) and a division of philosophy that continues Hugh’s research.
Walter (Gualterus) came to Saint Victor under Gilduin and became prior in 1173, after Richard. Toward 1177, he wrote a text in which he reacts against the theological and philosophical innovations of his day - a manifest of fundamentalist theology - the Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae. This violent pamphlet is aimed at several innovative theologians of his time, the ‘‘band of four’’: Abelard, Peter Lombard (who compiled the Sentences), Peter of Poitiers, and Gilbert Porreta. Abelard, who had been a violent adversary of William of Champeaux, the founder of Saint Victor, is taken to represent the excesses of dialectic. Peter Lombard, despite having spent time at Saint Victor, is reproached for the influence his Sentences had on Abelard’s dialectics. Peter of Poitiers, who had disseminated the work of Peter Lombard his master, is accused of the same crime. Gilbert of Poitiers, who had already been condemned in Reims in 1148 by Bernard of Clairvaux, symbolizes the inappropriate use of metaphysics in theology.
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