Hugh of St. Victor (c. 1096 - 1141), one of the formative scholars of 12th century western Europe and sometimes coupled with Pierre Abélard as one of the "two lights of the Latins in France". Hugh was a member of the community of the Canons Regular of Saint Victor (or the Victorines) in Paris from c. 1115, and from 1120, its leading master.
Any attempted synthesis of Hugh's teaching should be preceded by a critical examination of the authenticity of the treatises which have been included in the collected edition of his works, and some of the most authoritative historians of philosophy and theology have gone astray through non-observance of this elementary precaution.
Hugh has left us sufficient material, philosophical and theological, in which rational explanations stand side by side with revealed teaching, to enable us to form a sound opinion of his position as a philosopher, a theologian, and a mystic.
Hugh of St. Victor was the leader of the great mystical movement of which the School of St. Victor became the centre, and he formulated, as it were, a code of the laws governing the soul's progress to union with God.
With some of his followers, William had become a canon regular, but, at the request of St. Bernard he was made Bishop of Chalons in 1113, and was succeeded at St. Victor's by Gildwin, a man, as the "Necrologium" records, of piety and learning, and zealous in promoting the canonical order.
No less than forty abbeys of the order of St. Victor are mentioned in his last will by King Louis VIII, who left all his jewels for the erection of the abbey church and 4000 pounds to be equally divided among them.
The "Scotichronicon" records that in 1221 a canon of St. Victor's, in his capacity of papal legate, visited Ireland and Scotland, where at Perth he convoked all the ecclesiastical dignitaries to a general convention which lasted four days.
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