Hugh of St. Victor (c.1096–1141) left a large and influential corpus of works on all aspects of theology, as well as the liberal arts broadly defined. This book introduces Hugh within his community in twelfth-century Paris and summarizes his major works according to his own threefold conception. First comes the pedagogical foundation (Didascalicon), including the historical sense of sacred scripture, then the (allegorical) framework of scriptural doctrine (especially creation and restoration in De sacramentis), and finally the tropological or spiritual finale of personal appropriation of the b ... More

Hugh of St. Victor (c.1096–1141) left a large and influential corpus of works on all aspects of theology, as well as the liberal arts broadly defined. This book introduces Hugh within his community in twelfth-century Paris and summarizes his major works according to his own threefold conception. First comes the pedagogical foundation (Didascalicon), including the historical sense of sacred scripture, then the (allegorical) framework of scriptural doctrine (especially creation and restoration in De sacramentis), and finally the tropological or spiritual finale of personal appropriation of the biblical message (the ark treatises and the Soliloquy). Hugh’s encyclopedic interests include grammar and geometry, philosophy and all of theology, history and eschatology, Job and Mary, the sacraments broadly and narrowly defined, spirituality, and the Dionysian Celestial Hierarchy. How he held all this together in his thought and corpus is a challenge to modern (and postmodern) readers.