Hugh of St. Victor Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Hugh of St. Victor

Hugh of St. Victor has been called by modern historians the leading and most influential theologian of the twelfth century. In his Divine Comedy (early fourteenth century), the poet Dante situates him in the fourth sphere of Paradise, among the intellectual and spiritual lights associated with the Sun. The thirteenth-century Italian theologian Bonaventura ranked Hugh among his approximate contemporaries by saying that whereas Anselm of Canterbury was great in rational argumentation, Bernard of Clairvaux was great in preaching, and Richard of St. Victor was great in mystic vision, Hugh was great in all three areas at one and the same time. In his own day, Hugh was sometimes called alter Augustinus, a “second Augustine.” He was a teacher, philosopher, theologian, and mystic whose extensive and varied writings do not fit readily into literary genres. They may, nevertheless, be grouped into the following categories: commentaries (chiefly scriptural), educational handbooks, theological works (treatises and brief teaching summaries), spiritual writings, letters, and sermons.

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