Hugh of St. Victor

Dqs Mittelalter l0 (2005) 2: Produktive Kulturkonflikte frtihe vollplastische Skulptur vorhanden ist, zum anderen auch nicht klar ist, wie das Golgothakreuz wirklich aussah, d. h. ob es überhaupt mit einem Corpus Christi versehen war. Ob die schon früher in der Forschungsliteratur herangezogenen georgischen Großkreuze, auf die sich auch Schüppel beruft, den Brückenschlag herstellen können, ist zumindest fraglich. Interessant und aufschlussreich ist der Abschnitt über die liturgischen Funktionen dieser wegen ihrer Größe nicht leicht handhabbaren Kreuze. Schon aufgrund ihres hohen Materialwertes waren die Kreuze wohl nicht permanent ausgestellt. Wie das Mainzer Beispiel zeigt, konnten die Kruzifixe zerlegt werden, um dann vor allem während der Passions-und Osterzeit liturgisch gebraucht zu werden. Erstaunlicherweise wurden die recht sperrigen Objekte während der Festzeiten auf Prozessionen mitgeführt, verhüllt und enthüllt, niedergelegt, verehrt, um schließlich, mit beträchtlichem Kraftaufwand emporgehievt, zumeist über Lettner oder Kreuzaltar ihren Standort zu finden. Aufgrund der schlechten Quellenlage bleibt die Frage nach dem Verbleib der Kreuze außerhalb besonderer Feste und Anlässe weitgehend unbeantwortet.

Paper presented at “ Models and Drawings:  The Invisible Nature of Architecture” conference, Nottingham, 2005. Original title: Drawing and Pilgrimage, Circumlocutory and Picaresque. See this title for the submitted abstract, which is a little different. This paper concerns a temporary intervention and architectural installation by Peter Eisenman in the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona by architect Carlo Scarpa.

Conrad Rudolph
"'In Its Extraordinary Arrangement': Hugh of Saint Victor, the History of Salvation, and the World Map of The Mystic Ark," Victorine Restoration: Essays on Hugh of St Victor, Richard of St Victor, and Thomas Gallus, ed. Robert J. Porwoll and David Allison Orsbon (Brepols, Turnhout, 2021; completed and in press since 2014) 123-146.

Hugh of Saint Victor's Mystic Ark is a Latin manuscript that gives general instructions on how to make an image of all time, all space, all matter, all human history, and all spiritual striving.  This image was meant to be repeated again and again in order to serve as the subject of a months-long course that presented a middle-ground worldview in the face of perceived threats from the new, neo-platonically based critical learning of School (University) culture at an important time in the history of Western intellectual development (original image and course 1125-1130, Paris).  In this study, I expand upon the discussion from my book, The Mystic Ark, of one of the most prominent and crucial components of The Mystic Ark: the world or world map.
This map is perhaps the earliest significant example of a map with Jerusalem at its center, it has the earliest executed oval earth of which I'm aware, and it incorporates the earliest Last Judgment that is part of a map.  But its real interest lies in the way in which the actual specifics of the map are engaged with the Ark of the Flood that forms the core of this image, in a way, even activated by the Ark, resulting in a cartographical image of previously unrivalled conception.
Among other things, The Mystic Ark presents an elaborate visual summary of the entire history of salvation from the beginning until the end of time, an image that is nothing less than a visual capsulization of Hugh's most original theological theory as expressed in his great written systematic theology, De sacramentis: the works of creation and the works of restoration.  The works of creation consist of the world with all its "elements" as manifested during the six days of creation that culminated in the Fall of Adam and Eve--that is, the alienation of humankind from its creator.  The works of restoration comprise the Incarnation of the Word (that is, Christ) with all its "sacraments" as manifested during the six ages of the history of salvation (the six ages that constitute human history from Adam to the end of time)--works that will restore humankind to its creator.  Central to this world-view as put forth in the image of The Mystic Ark is the depiction of the earth as the stage for the history of salvation, with the Ark proper acting as an image of both the Church throughout time and of the progression of time itself (as specifically stated in the text of The Mystic Ark), and with the focal point of all this being Christ as the Lamb of God in the central cubit of the Ark proper.  It is the fundamental pervasion of this dynamic of the history of salvation throughout the image of The Mystic Ark--the map, the Ark, the cosmos, the figure of Christ--that makes its map so different from other contemporary maps, which may, in a less concerted way, also refer to the history of salvation.
Other themes that are taken up are the "extraordinary arrangement" of the Ark--to quote a contemporary witness--as manifested in Hugh's theory of an east-west spatial-temporal progression of events throughout history (translatio spiritualitatis and, to a lesser extent, translatio imperii);  the manner in which the actual specifics of the map of The Mystic Ark are engaged with the Ark proper--in a way, even activated by the Ark proper; and Hugh's desire "to show not things and not the images of things, but rather their significations--not those that the things themselves signify, but those that are signified," or, put another way, his desire to show not Egypt or the geographical depiction of Egypt, but rather "ignorance," which is what the word "Egypt" was thought to mean etymologically and so exegetically.  That is, he wanted to show not the geographical reality, but the spiritual reality.
In the end, the map of The Mystic Ark is nothing less than the centerpiece of a fully articulated world-view directly aimed at (and appropriating) the more prestigious (and secular) neoplatonic thought of the time, a newly perceived threat that was arising out of the same School culture in which and for which The Mystic Ark was created, and from whose standard academic imagery it borrows.

In Artistic Change at St-Denis: Abbot Suger's Program and the Early Twelfth-Century Controversy over Art (Princeton University Press, 1990), I apply the conclusions of my earlier study of the social theory of medieval art as presented in The "Things of Greater Importance": Bernard of Clairvaux's Apologia and the Medieval Attitude Toward Art (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1990) to a complex and previously only partially understood case--that is, I test the practicality of my earlier study.  The art program of the monastery of Saint-Denis, just outside Paris, under Abbot Suger (1122-1151) is of enormous importance in the history of art, being considered to be the origin of Gothic architecture, sculpture, and stained glass.  Suger's writings, upon which I base my study, are among the most famous in the history of art.  In applying the issues of the early twelfth-century controversy over art to this program, it becomes clear that the situation at Saint-Denis was more complex than previously thought.  For example, rather than being the artistic expression of centuries-old Pseudo-Dionysian light mysticism, as has been believed, it can be shown that the artistic change initiated at Saint-Denis was a middle-ground reaction to the current controversy over art, especially to the criticism that art acted as a spiritual distraction to the monk.  And far from being the product of the personal idiosyncrasies of Suger, as has often said, the well known obscurity of the art of Saint-Denis was an intentional obscurity whose purpose was to provide an art so complex that it could be used as a justification of monastic art in its claim to function on the same level as scriptural study, which was unquestioned as a legitimate monastic pursuit.  It was in this sense that Suger wrote that his art was "accessible only to the litterati"--and not to the visiting illiterate pilgrim--previous scholarship not realizing that, in the vocabulary of early twelfth-century monasticism, litteratus is a technical term referring to the literate choir monk.  At the same time, however, I also show that Suger's claim can be fully understood only with recognition of the inherent contradiction that these same artworks were in fact fully accessible visually, if not intellectually, to the visiting illiterate lay pilgrim as well--a contradiction of which Suger was fully aware.  My conclusions, which have become broadly accepted, have fundamentally changed our view of the best-known moment of artistic change in medieval art history.

Strutturiamo il nostro intervento in tre passaggi principali. Una prima indagine di natura esplorativa per comprendere l’uso del tema e del vocabolario delle virtù nel De sacramentis Christiane fidei di Ugo di San Vittore e l’eventuale rilevanza della triade di fede, speranza e
carità, all’interno della dottrina ugoniana delle virtù. In un secondo passaggio ci concentriamo sulla teologia della fede nel De sacramentis,
in particolare sulla virtus della fede, ossia la sua capacità di attivare
alcune dinamiche fondamentali nella vita dell’uomo. In un terzo passaggio svolgiamo alcune conclusioni di sintesi evidenziando la
possibile fecondità – teologica e antropologica – per il nostro tempo di alcune intuizioni del maestro di San Vittore sul tema della fede e della sua virtus.

Al centro della nostra riflessione è la rilettura di un’opera della prima parte del XII secolo: il Didascalicon di Ugo di San Vittore, maestro della omonima scuola. Il nostro intervento si struttura in base ad alcune domande elementari: dove e quando nasce il Didascalicon, perché interrogarlo oggi, cosa è e cosa si propone e come si esercita il legere e la lectio biblica. A queste domande orientative aggiungiamo alcune
ipotesi conclusive legate ad una rilettura di quest’opera nel contesto odierno.

In "The Architectural Metaphor in Western Medieval Artistic Culture: From the Cornerstone to The Mystic Ark," I identify and analyze the source texts for the use of architectural metaphor in medieval culture, and trace their use up through the twelfth century to most ambitious use of architectural metaphor anywhere in the West up until that time: Hugh of Saint Victor's Mystic Ark. Despite the widespread use of architectural metaphor, no one has ever written on the subject before, to the best of my knowledge.
The earliest appearance of architectural metaphor in the Bible is a strictly literary one. That is, it is highly unlikely that it was part of any broader contemporary artistic culture, that it affected the conception, creation, use, or understanding of works of visual art and architecture of its time. It was only the Christian tendency toward sermonizing that brought about the ever-increasing elaboration of the architectural metaphor from the simple to the complex, from the cornerstone to The Mystic Ark; and that allowed the architectural metaphor to permeate the boundaries of Scripture and scriptural writing to become a visual image itself; as, for example, in The Mystic Ark. This visual state of the architectural metaphor is, perhaps, more effective than the verbal state in exercising the intrinsic dynamic of the metaphor in that it goes beyond the literal reference or exegetical reading to engage the reader/listener/viewer and compel him or her to actively participate in the intellectual exchange of the artistic experience. This is because the mind of the participant must commit itself to a further level of engagement in the dynamic of the metaphor by the very necessity of identifying the metaphor as such in the first place.
The paper concludes by asking if architectural metaphors were operative in such medieval works of art as the image of Francis holding up the church in The Dream of Innocent III in the church of San Francesco in Assisi, the piers of the cloister of the monastery of Moissac, the eighth canon table of the Ebbo Gospels, the House of Heaven and in the House of Hell of the tympanum of Sainte-Foi at Conques, certain scenes of the Tower of Babel, the façade of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, and the main east-west axis of the abbey church of Saint-Denis, from the Infancy Window to west central portal.
    Hugh of Saint Victor's Mystic Ark: Illustrations: http://mysticark.ucr.edu.  This site presents a collection of images of The Mystic Ark that repeat in greater visual detail the same illustrations published in my study The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth Century for those who would like to study the image of The Mystic Ark more closely than is possible with the printed illustrations.

'Is Christ Head of the Church as Man?' This Licentiate Thesis addresses this apparently obscure question, a commonplace of high scholastic tracts 'De gratia capitis', first tracing its genesis in Augustine's commentaries, later biblical commentaries, and the twelfth-century schools, then considering its treatment by early-thirteenth-century scholastics, before turning to Aquinas' own treatment of the problem. Attention is paid to the development in Thomas' thought on this topic, a development which moves clearly and decisively away from what had been the majority opinion of his peers.

This paper  builds on my previous published thesis that  whereas the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius entailed the complete unknowability of God as One beyond language, concept and being, Thomas developed a distinctly ‘positive apophaticism’ which transformed ‘Denys’ in the light of Augustine, Aristotle and especially Scripture itself.  In this present dissertation I examine how Thomas’ approach to Scripture, particularly in the value he assigns to the ‘literal sense’ of Scripture, begins to reconfigure the hierarchical vision of the cosmos found in Pseudo-Dionysius. I argue that Thomas’ approach to the different senses of Scripture is both more comprehensive and rigorous than that of Pseudo-Dionysius and that it still offers a guiding light through the hermeneutical fog of contemporary theology with its dual challenges both from  historical/critical methods  and from deconstructive neo-kabbalistic approaches,  culminating in the God without Being of Jean-Luc Marion whose silence, ‘precisely because it does not explain itself, exposes itself to an infinite equivocation of meaning.’

Scholars have always recognized the central importance of the Gothic portal, perhaps the most imposing form of public, visual media in the Middle Ages.  Yet any reasons for its sudden appearance at Saint-Denis in the mid-twelfth century have been almost entirely overlooked.  This study argues that the impetus to this essentially new art form was a desire to address the public in increasingly complex and articulate ways, and that the vehicle that provided the basis for this new ability--that bridged the gap between literature's potential for complex expression and such expression in large-scale public art--is a work of art also almost entirely ignored by art historians, Hugh of Saint Victor's pedagogical image, The Mystic Ark.
This study also postulates a conceptual basis for the system of statue-columns of the triple portal at Saint-Denis in Hugh's important theoretical construct of the three periods of the history of salvation, further seeing this conceptual system in relation to the central tympanum above.  In this, the paper also suggests (only) identifications for most of the statue-columns with the understanding that such specific identifications are conjectural, insisting only that, within the context of Hugh's understanding of the three periods of the history of salvation, the identities of the statue-columns would probably have operated in this or a similar way.  Finally, it integrates this reading into an overall understanding of the entire west portal sculptural program.

The Mystic Ark is a forty-two page description of the most complex work of art from the entire Middle Ages: a painting also known as The Mystic Ark.  The purpose of the painting was to serve as the basis of a series of brilliant lectures undertaken by Hugh--who was considered to be the leading theologian of Europe during his life--from around 1125 to 1130 at Saint Victor, a Parisian abbey of Augustinian canons, whose school, along with those of Notre-Dame and Ste-Geneviève, acted as the predecessor of the University of Paris.  The purpose of the text (which I have translated from the Latin) was to enable others outside of Saint Victor--teachers, advanced students, scholars, monks, canons--to undertake similar discussions themselves by providing the information necessary to produce the image.  Containing all time, all space, all matter, all human history, and all spiritual striving, this highly political image dealt with a series of crucial cultural issues in the education of society's elite during one of the great periods of intellectual change in Western history.  Essentially a visualization of Hugh's summa-like systematic theology, De sacramentis, the multiplication and systematization of imagery in The Mystic Ark bridged the gap between literature's potential for complex expression and such expression in large-scale public art, an achievement that led to the creation of the Gothic portal: the major means of public communication apart from the spoken word, and the most significant, fully indigenous expression of Northern European, public figural art of the Middle Ages.
    Hugh of Saint Victor's Mystic Ark: Illustrations: http://mysticark.ucr.edu.  This site presents a collection of images of The Mystic Ark that repeat in greater visual detail the same illustrations published in my study The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth Century for those who would like to study the image of The Mystic Ark more closely than is possible with the printed illustrations.

This paper will trace the contours of the theology of history that emerges in Hugh of St. Victor’s (c. 1096–1141) writings and relate it to his sacramental conception of reality. Hugh’s sacramental theology is mystical in the sense that the believer’s ability to comprehend God in contemplation is restored through sacramental symbolism. Hugh called this form of contemplation “speculatio.” Created reality as a symbolic representation of the Creator, and thus amenable to speculative contemplation, is the sacramental ground on which Hugh was able to build his theology of history. Allegorical and tropological interpretation controlled by the literal-historical reading of the text is how Hugh’s speculative interpretation of reality is structured when applied to Scripture. From this method, Hugh determined the history was the ordering principle of God's creative and restorative acts, the primordial condition of human existence, and the foundation of doctrinal exposition. Hugh’s theology of history begins with God’s ordering our existence historically so that we might seek Him, takes the fall as a disordering of our time through a disruption of our ability to see God represented in reality, moves through a historical succession of sacraments, formal and speculative, that put humanity on the track of reformation, and culminates in the union with God that was humanity’s original telos.

This chapter on later Platonic traditions focuses on Denys, otherwise known as Ps-Dionysius the Areopagite. A late fifth- to early sixth-century theologian dependent on Plotinus, Damascius, and, above all, Proclus, assumed to have been converted by St Paul and possessing his spiritual wisdom, Denys was influential throughout  Catholic theology. The chapter places Denys’s innovations against the background of Christian engagement with Neoplatonism after Augustine. After tracing Denys’ influence from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, his role in modernity via Pierre de Bérulle and neo-scholasticism is considered. We conclude with his importance for some postmodern Catholic thinkers.

This paper gives a brief over-view of the Trinity in Hugh of St. Victor (particularly the triad of power, wisdom and goodness). The aim is to show that a ressourcement of this medieval theologian has much to offer the contemporary discussion on the Trinity, particularly through Hugh's integration of Trinitarian theology, moral theology, and a theology of creation.

This paper is a study of The Four Senses of Scripture in the middle ages and its application in medieval sermons from the 13. and 14. century. It contains two parts that are woven together during the paper. The first part is an explanation of what The Four Senses of Scripture was, with special attention to each of the four senses: Littera, allegoria, tropologia and anagogia. This is done by using Hugh of St. Victors Didascalicon as primary literature and Henry de Lubac as secondary literature. The second part is a demonstration of how each of those four senses might be attested in select sermons from the chosen preachers: Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Eckhart, Jacques de Vitry, Humbert of Romans, Bertrand de la Tour, Eudes de Châteauroux and Gilbert de Tournai.

The art program of Abbot Suger at the monastery of Saint-Denis in the mid-twelfth century has long been credited with the reintroduction of “allegory” into Western European visual art after centuries of disuse.  While such sweeping claims can no longer be considered to be the case in regard to the exegetical level of allegory per se, Suger’s program does very much seem to be the principal initial source of a new elite art–at first in the very public claims of an exegetically based monumental art “accessible only to the litterati,” that is, understandable only to the spiritually literate choir monk, and then, later, in the widespread use of a more or less similar art by a segment of the newly emerging urban class on the basis of a certain participation in religious literary culture.

In this study, I show how Suger invented a new exegetical art that, in its complexity, claimed to function on the same level as scriptural study and so claimed to be acceptable in the context of the current controversy over monastic art spearheaded by Bernard of Clairvaux, in which art was seen by some as a spiritual distraction to the monk.  I show how Suger’s claims were based on the traditional dichotomy of the uninitiate (the layperson) and the initiate (the monk), but how this two-level spiritual hierarchy was contradicted by new thought on the use of art and the senses in the form of a three-level spiritual hierarchy that excluded the users of such art from the highest level.  I consider what this can tell us not only about the works of art at Saint-Denis but also about the nature of visual art in this crucible of intellectual and artistic activity–monasticism–during a remarkable period of artistic change by relating differing understandings of this three-level hierarchy to a representative spectrum of contemporary monastic images.  I demonstrate the presence of Hugh of Saint Victor or his thought in the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit panel of the so-called Allegorical Window and so, to whatever degree, in the window program in general.  And I argue that this new systematized and fully exegetical art appeared first not at Saint-Denis around fifteen to twenty years before the consecration of the east end of Suger’s new church in the highly successful large-scale image of The Mystic Ark, painted at Saint Victor in Paris around 1125 to 1130, although Saint-Denis remains the principal source for its eventual widespread employment in Western European artistic culture.

Unintended by Suger, however, the special potential of his particular conception of a fully exegetical, monumental, publicly accessible, and systematically deployed work of art in the medium of the stained glass window gradually became apparent beyond the highly circumscribed confines of monastic culture in the emergence of a new elite art for the literate lay user–as seen, for example, in the Good Samaritan Window of Chartres Cathedral.  These new exegetical stained glass windows acted as both vehicles and even sites of “textual communities,” that is, a voluntary association based not upon the ability to read, although some members were literate, but upon the ability to interpret a text recognized as authoritative that forms the basis of a shared belief.  The social dynamics of twelfth-century France were changing dramatically and the increasingly better educated public, no longer content to remain at the lowest level of the spiritual hierarchy, wanted to participate more actively in the acquisition of elite spiritual knowledge.  In borrowing this strongly literarily and exegetically based art for religious exercises, this aspect of lay spirituality grew out of monastic spirituality, and both Suger and Hugh took part–however indirectly–in the construction of a new elite art for the properly literate and the spiritually literate lay person, an essentially new form of visual art that would become a fundamental part of artistic culture in the West for centuries to come.

I investigate what the consequences of this particular reintroduction of exegesis were at this time of great demographic transformation.  I suggest that, in the early and mid twelfth century, the relatively restricted elite images such as the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit panel were beyond the intellectual understanding of the uninitiate in the two-level hierarchy of the initiate and the uninitiate and so tended to affirm the social distinction between the two groups and thus reinforce the social structure because the uninitiate would have recognized that the monks knew the meaning of these images even if they did not. However, with the increasing lay literacy of the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the case with the new elite public art of the same time–even if it were seen as operating in the three-level spiritual hierarchy–seems to be quite different.  For the relatively public, new elite images such as the Good Samaritan Window of Chartres with their textual communities would seem to have contributed to the social transformation of medieval society in that, at least in the beginning, they would have challenged the centuries-old monopoly on literacy of the various wings of the Church and so played a part, however small, in the visible emergence of the literate new urban elite, broadly understood. At the same time, they would have intensified the distinction between this literate new urban elite and what might be called the illiterate lower class–both of them formerly conceived of as forming the same social group.  In this way, far from reinforcing the current social structure, works of art like these would seem to have contributed to the dynamic of change that pervaded contemporary society.

Finally, I ask what the invention of the exegetical stained glass window at Saint-Denis, one of the most original art programs of Western culture, reveals about the nature of originality in the twelfth century. And I reconsider the roles of Suger and, now, Hugh in the invention of the exegetical stained glass window and in the construction of a new elite art more broadly speaking.

The notion of natural religion has become somewhat of a hot topic among Aquinas scholars recently.  Yet most recent studies on the subject have focused mainly on generalities concerning the virtue of religion and its relation to revelation, to grace, to the natural law, to the state, to other virtues, etc.  This paper ventures to discuss specifically religious topics such as sacraments, the offering of sacrifices, and the priesthood—notions that have not yet become common currency within Thomistic philosophical studies on natural religion—in order to elucidate specifically what Aquinas’ idea of natural religion would actually look like in reality.  Using Aquinas’ scattered texts on the Old Law, religion, sacrifice, the sacraments, and the priesthood, the paper aims to show that Aquinas’ natural religion would include a sacramental economy, and concretely the offering of some sort of sacrifice (the literal offering of a physical thing to God), and therefore, the existence of a natural priesthood whose principal function is the offering of sacrifices.  The study will also analyze the relation that natural religion has to both divinely and humanly instituted religious practices.

In his summa-like systematic theology De sacramentis (c. 1130-1137), Hugh of Saint Victor presents the Christian theological conception of the history of salvation on an epic scale.  It is also an account that conceives of its subject almost completely in terms of time.  However, in his image of The Mystic Ark (first painted at the abbey of Saint Victor, in Paris, 1125-1130), an image that is virtually the visual equivalent of the main themes of De sacramentis, the visual setting for the history of salvation–a world map–introduces the dimension of space into this comprehensive world view.  While Jerusalem plays no role whatsoever in Hugh’s written conception of the history of salvation, “the city of the great king” plays a strikingly active role in its visual counterpart.  At the same time, Hugh chose to follow one medieval tradition that placed Jerusalem in the center of the world in world maps, the same place primarily occupied by Christ in his image, the result being one of the earliest examples–perhaps the earliest significant example–of Jerusalem, in however veiled a form, at the centre of a medieval world map.  In this lecture, I will investigate the role that Jerusalem, the city of the great king, plays in The Mystic Ark in regard to Hugh’s own formal methodological categories of place, time, and person–a unique role that is not articulated, to the best of my knowledge, in Hugh’s other writings or in the work of other Christian writers or images, but which is found only in The Mystic Ark, the most complex individual work of figural art of the Middle Ages.
Hugh of Saint Victor's Mystic Ark: Illustrations: http://mysticark.ucr.edu.  This site presents a collection of images of The Mystic Ark that repeat in greater visual detail the same illustrations published in my study The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth Century for those who would like to study the image of The Mystic Ark more closely than is possible with the printed illustrations.

This paper examines the significance of natura within the intellectual history of 12th and 13th century medieval theology; it inquires into the ways that the idea is developed polemically by Hugh of St. Victor and Bonaventure relative to concerns with trinitarian theology, Christology, and cosmology. In brief, my claim is that the function of natura in Hugh and Bonaventure occupies an interstitial space in the contested relationship of Neoplatonic cosmology and Augustinian trinitarian creationism in 12th and 13th century theology, the resolution of which involves developing clarity on a constellation of concepts essential to both theologies of creation and Trinity, especially the relationship of the divine exemplars and the vestiges of God in creation. For Hugh and Bonaventure, building upon the thought of Anselm, this resolution is developed christologically; in specific, Hugh’s location of the divine ideas in the eternal Wisdom, understood christologically, vis-à-vis the so-called school of Chartres, enables him to avoid problems of mediation but leaves him holding together competing Augustinian traditions of divine simplicity and Dionysian traditions of emanationism. Bonaventure, in turn, connects this development with a distinctively Franciscan concern with the incarnation and suffering of Christ. The paper will suggest, then, that this christological concern with the problem of natura is a distinctive theological tradition developing from the Augustinian psychological analogy.

This dissertation offers a new systematic interpretation and retrieval of the theology and spirituality of the 12 th century master Hugh of St. Victor, an interpretation centered on the Triune LORD's unifying and reforming work in history in the three days of Jesus Christ's dying, burial, and rising. Seen from the vantage of Hugh's treatise On the Three Days, these 'three days' of

online: https://digi.hadw-bw.de/view/kai4

Der moderne Begriff des Gewissens wurde wesentlich im Mittelalter geprägt. In dieser Zeit entstanden neue Vorstellungen vom Menschen und von Gemeinschaft, neue Ideen des Rechts, neue Sichtweisen auf Gott. Im Gewissen aber fiel das Wissen des Menschen von der Welt mit jenem zusammen, das er von sich selbst hatte. Im Zentrum des Buches steht ein Modell, demzufolge das Gewissen in vier Arten begegnet: Es sei entweder gut und ruhig, gut und unruhig, schlecht und ruhig oder schlecht und unruhig. Diese Einteilung hatte rasch Erfolg, wie eine Fülle von Texten bezeugt. Sie werden diskutiert und in den meisten Fällen ediert. Eine umfassende Rezeptionsgeschichte beleuchtet die Präsenz des Modells seit seiner Entstehung im 12. Jh. bis in die Gegenwart. Es wurde zu einem Instrument, das half, eine neue Gewissenskultur zu etablieren, mit der Verhalten konditioniert und Affekte kontrolliert werden konnten.
Die Studie präsentiert den Traktat »Von den vier Gewissensarten« erstmals in kritischer Edition und deutscher Übersetzung.

An introduction to the history and ideals of Liberal Arts education, with an explanation of Benedictine College's core requirements deliver that education. Written for incoming students in Benedictine's "First Year Experience" course. (August, 2018)

This brief contribution presents an unknown fragment of Hugh of Saint-Victor’s work De
tribus diebus, the opening folium from perhaps the oldest extant copy of this early tract
written and illuminated ca. 1130 in the famous abbey of Siegburg (Rhineland). The
verification of the variants of the text shows that this manuscript not only belongs to the
earliest transmission of this work, but is obviously the missing link between Paris and a group of early copies from Bavaria, Austria and Franconia, and thus has the potential to challenge the most recent reconstruction of the early history of the work for which it was not used at that time.

Keywords: Hugo of Saint-Victor; theology; manuscript transmission; Siegburg

Early and medieval Christianity always had a world-view of salvation. Yet, aside from Augustine’s City of God, it was only in the early twelfth century, with Hugh of Saint Victor’s great image, The Mystic Ark (1125-1131), that a statement on the history of salvation was put forth on a level of what might be called a truly comprehensive theory. This paper asks such questions as, why was it that this fundamental if only erratically articulated concept should be so fully worked out now? What was the relation of secular history to the history of salvation? How were they both conceptualized in the twelfth-century? And how was this all visualized–indeed, how was it that this came to receive its fullest expression not in writing but in a work of art?
    The paper concludes that, in The Mystic Ark, history is conceptualized and visualized exegetically, with great concern for methodology, theory, polemics, comprehensiveness, inclusiveness, the diagrammatic, and both historical narrative and the sacramental (and visually iconic) aspect of history. Combining universal history, “historical demographics,” rudimentary forms of ethnohistory and geohistory, a kind of intellectual history, biographical history (or history as a succession of individuals), and what could even be called diachronic and synchronic histories, no one else came close to Hugh in his conceptualization and visualization of history at the time. In the immediate sense, this happened at this specific moment because of a request from the brethren of Saint Victor regarding the source of “the restless heart.” But, in the strategic sense, it happened because Hugh seized upon this request as an opportunity to articulate and project an aggressive, polemical world view in the face of the particular challenges of the “new theology,” using systematic theology as a formative device. In the end, we see that The Mystic Ark was not just a pedagogical image intended for the spiritual edification of only a few students. Rather, it was, in part, an epic conceptualization and visualization of history phrased in a very specific way–history, that essential shaper of self-conception–one whose discourse was meant to be (and was) repeated again and again throughout the culture wars of the twelfth century. As such, it was an active agent both in the formation of the new intellectual elite and in the polemical discourses of one of the great transitional periods of Western history.
Hugh of Saint Victor's Mystic Ark: Illustrations: http://mysticark.ucr.edu.  This site presents a collection of images of The Mystic Ark that repeat in greater visual detail the same illustrations published in my study The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth Century for those who would like to study the image of The Mystic Ark more closely than is possible with the printed illustrations.

p. 153] [Questa tra parentesi quadre è la paginazione del volume a stampa] ERNESTO SERGIO MAINOLDI « Immediate viam facimus ». La teologia dionisiana al bivio dell'interpretazione di Ugo di S. Vittore Lo ps.-Dionigi Areopagita può vantare l'indiscusso primato di essere l'autore di lingua non latina i cui opera omnia hanno conosciuto il maggior numero di traduzioni in latino durante il medioevo. Cinque se ne contano da Ilduino di Saint-Denis, che tradusse il Corpus dionysiacum nell'832, ad Ambrogio Traversari, che diede alla luce la sua versione nel 1436. In età rinascimentale si aggiunsero le traduzioni di Marsilio Ficino (1492) e Joachim Périon , tra le quali si inserisce l'editio princeps del testo greco prodotta da Angelo Colozio (Firenze, 1516) 1 . A questa edizione fece seguito quella, sempre del testo greco, di Guillaume Morel (1562), sulla quale si cimentarono ben quattro traduttori tra il 1615 e il 1634. Impressionante poi il numero di edizioni, ben centoquarantasei, comparse tra la fine del XV e il XIX secolo. Nel Cinquecento, se ne contano novantuno, quasi una all'anno.

It might be surprising to find in a journal of contemporary philosophy a text that is mostly about Hugh of St. Victor (1096-1141). The hermeneutic question, however, did not begin only yesterday. While this question has its actual sources in Origen (concerning the meaning of Scripture) and Saint Augustine (the firmament of Scripture), it is in the Didascalicon or The Art of Reading by Hugh of St. Victor that it first finds its clearest formulation and its most methodical development. This “hidden source of hermeneutics” allows for a questioning of the foundations of the hermeneutics of the text from its outset (in weighing the short route versus the long route), and also for a return of hermeneutics, or better to turn it, to its primordial origin: a hermeneutics of the “world” or of “creation” [liber mundi], rather than of the “text” and of “Scripture” [liber Scripturae]. A “Catholic” hermeneutics of “the body and the voice” should, in my opinion, take the place of the “Protestant” ...

The Vercelli map has never been accorded its due place in the mappaemundi canon. Faced with problems of illegibility, few scholars have dared to research it. The availability of multispectral imaging (MSI), however, has provoked closer investigation. In this short note, attention is limited to the question of its date. Attempting to discover the genesis of a medieval map remains largely a matter of reasoned guesswork in stages. In this article, based on new assessments, a process of evolution is suggested that may enable us to reconcile the dating proposed more than hundred years ago by Carlo Errerà (1270-1285), half a century ago by Carlo Felice Capello (1191-1218) and, more recently, by Dan Terkla (1217). It is hoped that further MSI will challenge scholars to detect additional layers in the map.

Коллекция иллюстраций-диаграмм «Зерцало теологии» (Speculum theologiae) — уникальный вид книжной миниатюры латинского Средневековья, представляющий собой предельно концентрированное визуальное воплощение католической дидактики XIII–XV вв. Статья посвящена одной из миниатюр иллюстративного ряда «Зерцало теологии» со схематичным рисунком херувима, который является не только изображением, но и одновременно таблицей, в которую вписаны основные положения трактата Алана Лилльского «О шестикрылом херувиме».

На примере нескольких памятников подробно рассматривается становление и развитие иконографии. Детальный анализ каждой миниатюры позволяет понять и проследить, каким именно образом в этих специфических изображениях выражено сосуществование и взаимное влияние слова и образа.

Для осуществления выполненной автором работы им были прочитаны и переведены на русский язык таблицы-иллюстрации с изображениями херувимов.

This is the First Edition of our Annuario Academico for 2016-17, which we are sharing on Academia.edu to solicit interest from prospective students to study with us. Note that the edition is Polyglot, but the canonical version is the English.

The ScholastIcum is an institute for the study of Scholastic Theology and Philosophy, headquartered at Rome, dedicated to the promotion of the greater appreciation and understanding of Medieval Theology and Philosophy as it was taught at the University of Paris in the mid 13th century.

For that purpose, the Scholasticum focuses its attention on three fields of study, Medieval Philosophy, Medieval Biblical Studies and Scholastic Theology, offering graduate courses of Specialization in Medieval Studies, at Rome and via video-conferencing to students throughout the world, of the following kinds:

a) Preparatory courses in Latin, Philosophy, History and Medieval Studies, aimed at orientating the students for the three principle course-work.

b) Baccalaureatus Philosophicus: 2 year Course on medieval
Philosophy focusing on the Scholastics and pre-Scholastics
authorities and texts in Philosophy.

c) Baccalaureatus Biblicus: 2 year Course on medieval scriptural studies, based on the Glossae and Commentaries of that age.

d) Baccalaureatus Sententiarius: 2 year course on the Four Books of sentences of master Peter, taking as its text books, the Commentaria of Saints Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio on the same.

e) Magister Sacrae Doctrinae: 1-2 year specialization program for Doctoral students, seeking to fully grasp the Scholastic method of theological instruction.

In the study of which, the Institute has the following academic objectives:

a) To impart to the student an authentic historical understanding of the authors, language and methods used at the University of Paris, in the mid 13th century.

b) To educate students with profound and complete knowledge of Peter Lombard’s Four Book of Sentences, in Latin and in translation.

c) To give the student a profound and practical experience in the understanding, formulation, crafting and argumentation of the Scholastic Method, as employed by Sts. Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio.

d) To form students and instructors capable of Scholastic argumentation, analysis and research.

The faculty is to comprise full and part-time positions, with a frequency of visiting professorships, to provide a wide and broad exposure to the current research on the topics
treated of in this general description of the Institute.

Innovatives Wissen im Kloster? Orientierungen auf einem problematischen Forschungsfeld Wo es um die Geschichte gelehrter Wissenskulturen geht, gelten Klöster, oberflächlich betrachtet, zunächst als Horte der Tradition. Ihnen wird zwar gern und bereitwillig die Bewahrung wichtiger antiker Wissensgüter über die Wirren der "dunklen" Übergangszeit zwischen Antike und Frühmittelalter zugeschrieben. Doch können wir sie auch als Experimentierfelder für Neuerungen in Wissensdingen verstehen, und gar im Hochmittelalter? Die Frage wird in der Fachwissenschaft zwar üblicherweise bejaht. Doch auffallend häufig werden zu ihrer Beantwortung Beispiele bemüht, die Probleme bergen. Zum locus classicus ist etwa der Hortus deliciarum geworden, die umfängliche enzyklopädische Wissenssammlung, die Äbtissin Herrad von Hohenburg ( † c. 1196) wohl in den 1170er Jahren in einem illustrierten Prachtcodex für die Kanonissinnen ihres Stifts zusammenstellte. Wir kennen diesen intellektuellen Lustgarten zwar heute nur noch aus Rekonstruktionen, da das Original 1870 verbrannte. Doch wird er oft und 1 gern zum Schlagwort "Wissen im Kloster" angeführt, und zwar zumeist in einer Haltung des besonderen Erstaunens. Das klösterliche Wissensbuch des Hortus deliciarum zielt in seiner geschichtstheologischen Anordnung -von Gott und Schöpfung über den Menschen und die Natur zu den letzten Dingen -vor allem auf die weltabgeschiedene Kontemplation und die Verinnerlichung heilsrelevanten Wissens ab. Es enthält aber gleichzeitig die neueste Theologie der Zeit -vor allem eine Wissensform, die man gemeinhin Scholastik nennt und typischerweise mit Innovationen der nordfranzösischen Schulen assoziiert. Äbtissin Herrad stellte für ihre Kanonissinnen nicht nur Väterautoritäten zusammen, sondern verarbeitete unter anderem Petrus Lombardus ( † 1160), also den Schultheologen schlechthin, sowie die brandaktuelle Historia scholastica des Peter ! 1 Vgl. Herrad of Hohenbourg, Hortus Deliciarum, hg.

Glenn W. Most Volker Schupp 31. BAND· 1999 · Heft 1-2 WILHELM FINK VERLAG MÜNCHEN Meinolf Schumacher (Wuppertal) RUPERT VON DEUTZ ERZÄHLT EINE FABEL Über Inkonsequenzen in der mittelalterlichen Kritik weltlicher Dichtung 1. Der aus der Gegend um Lüttich stammende Benediktiner-Abt Rupert von Deutz (t 1129/30) hat ein literarisches CEuvre von gewaltigem Ausmaß hin terlassen 1 . Seine vielen in lateinischer Sprache verfaßten Schriften gehören verschiedenen Gattungen an, die jedoch allesamt stark exegetisch geprägt sind: Bibelkommentare, dogmatische Werke, geschichtstheologische Be trachtungen usw.; weltliche Literaturwerke befinden sich ebensowenig dar unter wie streng systematisch-scholastische Abhandlungen. Lyrisches ist darin ebenfalls eher schwach vertreten. Rupert berichtet zwar im autobio graphisch gehaltenen 12. Kapitel seines Matthäus-Kommentars (entstanden 1125/27), er habe seine literarische Laufbahn als Dichter begonnen und in den Jahren vor seiner Priesterweihe einen libellus hymnorum zum Lobe des HI. Geistes verfaßt, aus dem er fünf sapphische Strophen mitteilt 2 . Von ihm stammen aus dieser Zeit wahrscheinlich zudem die anonym überlieferten Carmina de sancto Laurentio, ein unvollendeter Gedicht-Zyklus mit einer Klage über Lüttich und die Kirche im Investiturstreit 3 . Auch enthalten einige Prosaschriften poetische Elemente, die Verse etwa, die Rupert in seiner Ju gend in einer Vision zugerufen wurden (,,Femina mente Deum concepit, I Ein Überblick bei Rhaban Haacke/Franz Josef Worstbrock, Art. ,,Rupert von Deutz OSB", in: Kurt Ruh u.a. (Hrsg.), Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasser lexiko11, Berlin/New York 2 1978ff., Bd. 8, Sp. 402-414. 2 Rupert von Deutz, De gloria et ho11ore filii homi11is super Mattheum, hrsg. von Hra banus Haacke (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis. 29), Turnhout 1979, S. 380f. Vgl. S. 377 die Verse aus dem l/ym11us sive oratio Ruperti ad sa11ctum Spi ritum, den der Anhang (S. 422-424) vollständig bietet. Deutsche Übersetzung von Walter Berschin, Os meum aperui. Die Autobiographie Ruperts von Deutz, Köln 1985, S. 34-36 bzw. S. 29f. 3 Mo11achi cuiusdam exulis s. Laurelllii de calamitatibus ecclesiae Leodiensis opuscu lum, in: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Bd. 9: Libelli de lite Imperatorum et Pontificum. 3, S. 622-641. Dazu Maria Lodovica Arduini, Nonfabula sed res. Politi sche Dichtung und dramatische Gestalt in den ,Carmina' R11perts von Deutz (Temi e Testi. 33), Rom 1985.

Bibel und Exegese in der Abtei Saint Victor zu Paris. Form und Funktion eines Grundtextes im europäischen Raum, Corpus Victorinum, Instrumenta, Vol. 3, herausgegeben von Rainer BERNDT SJ, Münster, Aschendorff, 2009, 692 S., mehrere Abbildungen, Euro 94,80, ISBN 978-3-402-10424-8. Der eindrucksvolle Band wendet sich einem Thema zu, dasnach langer Stilleseit kurzem in der

PL 177, 563D-565A) 1. Życiem serca jest miłość, i z tego powodu jest rzeczą całkowicie niemożliwą, by serce pragnęło żyć bez miłości. Należy zastanowić się nad tym, co z tego wynika. Jeśli bowiem ludzki umysł (humana mens) nie może żyć bez miłości, to konieczne jest, aby albo kochał siebie samego albo coś innego. Ponieważ nie znajduje doskonałego dobra w sobie, to gdyby nawet kochał samego siebie, nie miałby szczęśliwej miłości. Konieczne jest więc, aby jeśli pragnie szczęśliwej miłości, poszukiwał innego przedmiotu miłości niż on sam.