64C) THE MIDDLE AGK.S. A.D. 1040-1204.
flame, the smoke still ascending, represents tneditatio. The bright glowing flame, unmixed with smoke, represents contemplatio. The carnal heart is the green wood from which the passion of concupiscence has not yet been dried out.1
In another place Hugo compares the spirit, inflamed with desire and ascending to God, to a column of smoke losing its denseness as it rises. Ascending above the vapors of con cupiscence, it is transfused with light from the face of the Lord and comes to behold Him.2 When the heart is fully changed into the fire of love, we know that God is all in all. Love possesses God and knows God. Love and vision are simultaneous.
The five parts of the religious life, according to Hugo, are reading, reflection, prayer, conduct, and contemplation.3 The word "love" was not so frequently on Hugo's pen as it was on St. Bernard's. The words he most often uses to carry his thought are contemplation and vision, and he has much to say of the soul's rapture, excessus or raptus. The beati tude, " The pure in heart shall see God," is his favorite pas sage, which he quotes again and again to indicate the future beatific vision and the vision to which even now the soul may arise. The first man in the state of innocence lived in unbroken vision of God.
They who have the spirit of God, have God. They see God. Because the eye has been illuminated, they see God as He is, separate from all else and by Himself. It is the intellectual man that partakes of God's bliss, and the more God is understood the more do we possess Him. God made man a rational creature that he might understand and that by understanding he might love, by loving possess, and by possessing enjoy.*
More given to the dialectical method and more allegorical
1 Carnale cor quasi lignum viride necdum al> humore carnalis concupiscentice exsiccatum, etc. See Liebner, p. 315. '2 De area morali, III. 7 ; Migne, 176. 054.
3 cle erud. didasc., Migne, 176. 797.
4 Quia non potest dei beatitude particlpari nisi per intellectum, etc. Summa, II. 1 ; Migne, 176. 79.
§ 105. HUGO AND E1CHARD OF ST. VICTOK. 647
in his treatment of Scripture than Hugo, was Richard of St. Victor. Richard is fanciful where Hugo is judicious, ex travagant where Hugo is self-restrained, turgid where Hugo is calm.1 But he is always stimulating. Of his writings many are extant, but of his life little is known. He was a Scotchman, became subprior of St. Victor, 1162, and then prior. While he was at St. Victor, the convent was visited by Alexander III. and Thomas a Becket. In his exegetical works on the Canticles, the Apocalypse, and Ezekiel, Richard's exuberant fancy revels in allegorical interpretations. As for the Canticles, they set forth the contemplative life as Ecclesiastes sets forth the natural and Proverbs the moral life. Jacob corresponds to the Canticles, for he saw the angels ascending and descending. Abraham corresponds to the Proverbs and Isaac to Ecclesiastes.2 The Canticles set forth the contemplative life, because in that book the advent and sight of the Lord are desired.
In the department of dogmatics Richard wrote Emmanuel, a treatise directed to the Jews,3 and a work on the Incarna tion, addressed to St. Bernard,4 in which, following Augus tine, he praised sin as a happy misdemeanor, — felix culpa, — inasmuch as it brought about the incarnation of the Re deemer.5 His chief theological work was on the Trinity. Here he starts out by deriving all knowledge from experi ence, ratiocination, and faith. Dialectics are allowed full sweep in the attempt to join knowledge and faith. Richard condemned the pseudo-philosophers who leaned more on Aristotle than on Christ, and thought more of being regarded discoverers of new things than of asserting established truths.6 Faith is set forth as the essential prerequisite of Christian knowledge. It is its starting-point and founda-
1 See Liebner, Hugo von St. Victor, pp. 81 sq.
2 Migne, 196. 409. 3 De Emmanuele, Migne, 196. 601-665.
4 Migne, 196. 995-1011. Richard calls Bernard, divus Bernardus, and "my Bernard,'1 V; Migne, 195. 999. He also addressed other works to St. Bernard.
6 O feUx culpa quce talem ac tantum meruit habere redemptorem, Migne, 196. 1003. e See Engelhardt, pp. 14 sqq.