RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Hugo of St. Victor
Throughout the theoretical is subordinated to the practical, the mystical subjective to the ecclesiastical objective. The pantheizing element of the older mystical tradition is kept out as far as possible; even when he follows the speculations of the pseudo-Dionysius most closely, he still teaches an Areopagitism which is converted into ecclesiastical orthodoxy. Even when he depicts the contemplative union with God under the aspect of complete annihilation of the human self, of the passing of the ego into God, and the like, there is no question of a pantheistic conception.
Hugo's mystical theories take their broadest sweep in the encyclopedic work in which, following Isidore of Seville, the De universo of 4. The Rabanus Maurus, and the Imago mundi Eruditio of Honorius of Autun, he attempts to Didascalica. give a comprehensive view of the whole of secular and spiritual knowledge. The first half of the Eruditio didascalica offers in three books a survey of the secular or empirical sciences, while the second half, also in three books, forms an introduction to the study of Scripture and church history. What in some editions is appended as a seventh book under the title of De opere triurn dierum or De creatione primi horninis is really a separate mystical treatise on the rise of human intelligence from the consideration of creatures to the Trinity. The first part of the large work divides knowledge into intelligence, or the higher; science, or the lower; and logic, or the formal. The last-named, as a necessary tool, comes first in treatment, divided into the trivium — grammar, rhetoric, dialectic. The department of intelligence is divided into theoretical and practical or ethical; of these the former again falls into three divisions, theology, mathematics, and physics, while mathematics is once more subdivided into the branches of the quadrivium — arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy; the latter has ethics, economics, and politics for its branches. The domain of science in this sense, also called mechanics, includes the knowledge necessary for trades, professions, and arts. The theological section of the work follows in the main, as to its methodological counsels, the works of Cassiodorus and Isidore, and Jerome for its introduction to Scriptural study, on the importance of which Hugo lays great stress. He seems to include with the Scriptures the Church Fathers, canons, and decretals — at least he applies a great part of what he says about the system and value of Scriptural study to them, although elsewhere (e.g., De sacramentis, I., i. 17) he properly subordinates them to the canonical writings.
Hugo's fundamental religious views and doctrinal peculiarities may be seen most clearly in the De sacramentis Christiana; fidei or in the 5. The shorter compendium Summa sententi- Summa arum, works based principally on Auand De gustine and Gregory the Great, but Sacramentis.influenced by Erigena and Abelard. To the dialectic and skeptical tendency of the last-named, however, Hugo's own ecclesiastical and dogmatic habit of mind is fundamentally opposed. None the less, he has evidently exercised a stimulating influence, and the treatment in the Summa of the Trinity and the Incarnation has
decided reminiscences of him. The traditional ecclesiastical teaching is more closely followed in the sections on the creation and fall of the angels and of man, on the sacraments of the old covenant and on the law as the basis of all ethical doctrine, and on the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, communion, and unction.
But the ripest fruit of Hugo's intellectual labors is found in the great work " On the Mysteries of the Christian Faith," the Sacramenta, composed about 1140. He lays down at the very beginning his objection to the more skeptical standpoint of Abelard, but agrees with him that the task of theology is to promote understanding of the faith. Its main objects are " not according to reason, but above reason," while all that is either a product of reason alone or contrary to reason is excluded from its province. It consists of two parts, cognitio, or the matter of faith, and affectus, or the act of faith. It is in this latter or subjective element that the real value of faith lies — the direction of the heart, the apprehension of God by the will. The objects of faith are divided into two classes, works of creation and works of restoration. Starting from the existence of creation, he first considers the Creator in his various attributes, including the triune nature, as to which he is indebted not only to Abelard, but to Anselm. Next he treats the creation and fall of the angels, soberly and without the superfluity of idle questions in which later scholasticism indulged. In the doctrine of the nature and sin of man he shows himself a moderate Augustinian, and defines original sin (as did Melanchthon) as consisting in ignorance and concupiscence. In his doctrine of grace and the law he offers a number of weighty suggestions which were worked out by later scholastics. Thus he divides grace into gratia creatrix, the grace of the original condition, to which for the performance of actually good works by unfallen man must be added gratia apposita (the gratia superaddita of later scholasticism) ; and gratia salvatrix, which is subdivided into operans and cooperans. Similarly fruitful were his teachings as to the natural and the written law, and the means of grace corresponding to these two stages in human history. Like Anselm in Cur Deus homo, he teaches not an absolute necessity for the incarnation, but that it was the method of redemption most suitable and worthy of God. The consideration of the Church as the mystical body of Christ, of the constitution of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, of sacred vestments and the consecration of churches brings him to the doctrine of the sacraments in the narrower sense. He enumerates more than the four of the Summa, but without teaching the number seven as definitely as Peter Lombard was to do. After treating as of primary importance baptism with confirmation and the Lord's Supper, he discusses a number of subordinate ceremonies (the use of holy water, blessing of palms and candles, the sign of the cross, the insufflation in exorcism, etc.), and reckons ordination and the blessing of sacred vessels among these minor " sacraments of administration and preparation," which he distinguishes from the necessary " sacraments of salvation "; but then he returns to more important sacraments, relatively if not absolutely necessary,
Hugo of St. Victor Huguenots