Biographical background and context

Our knowledge of Hugh’s life is fairly limited. We do not know where Hugh was born – he may have been of Saxon descent, or, less likely, of Flemish origin. He was born at the end of the eleventh century, and died on February 11, 1141. Hugh was the main theologian of the Augustinian school of St. Victor, near Paris, founded by William of Champeaux, the teacher and adversary of Peter Abelard. While Peter Abelard claimed in his Historia that William withdrew into St. Victor after his views on universals had been exposed as untenable, a more charitable reading would suggest that the withdrawal by William was not so much in response to the challenge of Abelard, as perhaps an expression of the desire to recapture the ideals of monasticism in the world of new learning. The canons regularly attempted to combine the new world of scholarship with a traditional communal life of prayer. This ideal also found expression in their spirituality. Hugh, too, will attempt to harmonize the rationalism of Abelard with the monastic devotion of Bernard. Thanks to Hugh, the abbey of St. Victor became an important center of learning. A letter of recommendation, written in 1136 by St. Bernard on behalf of Peter Lombard, suggests that the future author of The Sentences visited St. Victor; he probably studied with Hugh. Other students include Petrus Comestor (who proved an immediate source for Ruusbroec’s The Spiritual Tabernacle) and, of course, Richard of St. Victor, whose original theology of the Trinity we will discuss later.

Hugh is credited with having produced the first major summary of medieval theology, his so-called De Sacramentis Christiane Fidei [The Sacraments of the Christian Faith], and an influential “pedagogical” work, Didascalicon de Studio Legendi. Hugh also wrote a number of texts associated with spirituality, such as the so-called Ark-treatises (De Archa Noe; Libellus de Formatione Arche; and De Vanitate Mundi), as well as an extended Commentary on The Celestial Hierarchy by Pseudo-Dionysius, thereby contributing to the renewed interest in the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus during the second half of the twelfth century and beyond. A final work, a brief Soliloquy, a dialogue between a person and his soul, brings the mystical bent of Hugh’s oeuvre into prominence.