Hugh of Saint-Victor (review)

In the foreword to the latest volume in the series Great Medieval Thinkers Brian Davies, the series editor, feels obliged to explain that the author presented does in fact deserve the title of a great medieval thinker even though he may be little known to a broader public due to the fact that only very few of his works have received a critical edition and even fewer a translation into a modern language. Paul Rorem's introduction into Hugh's œuvre is the first study in English that endeavors to give the general view of this author, which is the necessary prerequisite for any specialized study. Hugh's works have been most influential. More than 3000 manuscripts containing his works have been counted. His De sacramentis is a commentary on Scripture organized not along the biblical text but according to systematic principles: the works of creation and redemption before and after the Incarnation. Rorem justly identifies "salvation history" as the theological key to Hugh's work (p. 21). The organization of theological thought according to dogmatic principles provided a new quality compared to the preceding collections of sentences. As such it influenced two students at the Abbey of St. Victor: Peter Lombard and his Sententiae as well as Gratian and his Decretum. Unfortunately, Rorem only briefly mentions Hugh's predecessors such as Manegold, Anselm of Laon, Roscelin, and William of Champeaux, and his contemporaries such as St. Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Abelard, and provides little information on their mutual relations. The much-debated subject of Jewish influence on Hugh is completely ignored. He abstains from placing Hugh's works in a chronological order (p. 12), and he does not mention the further complication that the manuscript evidence frequently points to two, three, or more editions of a single work all going back to Hugh's lifetime—with the exception of the Notulae, where he claims that Hugh "never prepared the whole for publication" (p. 53)—an interesting thesis for which evidence should have been supplied at least in the notes. Rorem chooses to organize the first chapters of his study ("Foundations") according to the succession of Hugh's works as we find them in the edition prepared by Abbot Gilduin of St. Victor after Hugh's death (p.14). Unfortunately, he abandons this order in parts 2 ("The Framework of Doctrine") and 3 ("The Spiritual Finale"). In the first part, the chapter On the Scriptures is included, even though Rorem is aware that this work exists only in Abbé Migne's edition and neither in the Gilduin edition nor in the manuscripts (p. 53). It might have been interesting to rely on Gilduin's edition as a guide throughout. It certainly would have saved the Commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy from being treated only in the appendix—a placement that appears unfair for this most influential text.

The second part sketches Hugh's understanding of Christian doctrine by summarizing his teachings in De sacramentis. Twice (pp. 60 and 114) Rorem deplores the lack of a critical edition of the text, even though his bibliography (p. 217) mentions the edition by Rainer Berndt, S.J. (Münster in Westfalen, 2008), which obviously came too late to be used by the author. The third part groups together those texts that Rorem characterizes as "spiritual writings" (p. 50), with De arrha anime as the culminating point. Given that Rorem has to leave aside Gilduin's ordering of Hugh's writings to draw a line between doctrine and spirituality, the question arises whether the distinction is not a modern one alien to the twelfth century.

Perhaps some of the above remarks mirror more the specialist's concerns than those of the reader who looks for and certainly will find a general introduction and first insight into the vast field of writings by Hugh of Saint Victor. Rorem's book is praiseworthy precisely because it gives a helpful condensation of...