Hugh of Saint-Victor

Hugo a Sancto Victore

Biography

Born around 1096, Hugh of Saint-Victor is one of the most endearing representatives of the Renaissance of the 12th century. Originally from Saxony, trained in Hamersleben, he settled among the regular canons of Saint-Victor, near Paris around 1120 and remained there until his death in 1141. A humanist, exegete, theologian and mystic, he attempted, in the Didascalicon, to make a harmonious synthesis of knowledge, secular and sacred, which is both universal and centered on Christian wisdom. Between his contemporaries Abelard the dialectician and Saint Bernard the Cistercian, Master Hugh managed to find a balance between the human and the divine, which harmonizes the dynamism of reason and the solidity of faith and marries the demands of the intellectual quest with the fervor of love. His abundant work, with its confident and serene tone, profoundly inspired authors as diverse as Richard of Saint-Victor, Peter Lombard, Saint Bonaventure, Jean Gerson, as well as the masters of the devotio moderna.