chapter 6 Exegesis in Quest of Progress: A Study of ’s Cronica and Notule Super Pentateucum et Librum Regum*

Rainer Berndt

1 Introduction

We can thank the Second Vatican Council, particularly its two dogmatic consti- tutions, Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium, for the turn toward salvation history in recent theology. If with this turning point, which was hard won at the Coun- cil, new ways of thinking, new questions, and new methods were admitted into theology, one must also be grateful to the decades long, more or less conflict- ridden efforts that preceded the opening of the Council and prepared for it. As examples it is only necessary to think of , Alois Grillmeier, and , who championed an opening up beyond the narrow confines of more recent times to the breadth of the Church Fathers and early and high medieval authors. In this regard one should also mention 19th-century schol- ars like Matthias Joseph Scheeben and Martin Grabmann. In fact, the turn was not to unheard of novelties introduced by Vatican Council ii, but rather toward liberation—viewed against the background of the earlier history of theology— from a relatively recent, lop-sidedness that emerged around the 17th century and was a dead end. In the process, it seemed that every theology that wished to be modern would reclaim for itself the label “salvation history.” Thus the ques- tion emerges all the more: how and in what way is a salvation-history theology distinguished from other similar theologies? In this contribution I start from the basic conviction that in the context of his time Hugh of Saint Victor must indisputably be considered the most renowned and outstanding representative of salvation-history thought.1 Thus, in the 12th

* Translated by Hugh Feiss, osb. 1 For the most recent introduction to his person and work see the volume, Ugo di San Vittore. Atti del xlvii Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 10–12 ottobre 2010 (Spoleto: 2011). Theologically important is Fabrizio Mandreoli, La teologia della fede nel De sacramentis Christiane fidei di Ugo di San Vittore (Corpus Victorinum. Instrumenta) 4 (Münster: 2011); idem, “La virtus della fede nel De sacramentis Christianae fidei,” in “Fides virtus:” The Virtue of Faith from the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century, (eds.) Marco Forlivesi, Riccardo Quinto,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004351691_007 188 berndt century he represents a modern theology that, though dependent on Augustine and , takes the Sacred Scriptures as its benchmark.2 On the occasion of a new edition of his early exegetical work, the Exposicio super Prologum Ieronimi in Pentateucum, which since its publication in Migne’s Patrologia latina has been known under the title De scripturis et scriptoribus sacris, and the Notule super Pentateucum et librum Regum, in connection with the later Cronica, which appeared around 1130, I lay out how Hugh developed his salvation-history dynamic.3 Next, I sketch in a general way the early work of biblical chronology just mentioned and describe the Bible of Hugh of Saint Victor. I conclude with a section on the exegetical method Hugh used in these works and his hermeneutics.

2 Hugh’s Early Biblical-Chronological Work

There is now agreement among scholars today regarding the chronology of the early works of Hugh of Saint Victor. His Commentary on the Pentateuch and the Books of Kings was one of his earliest writings, if not the earliest;4 it dates from the beginning of the 1120s. Next come the Didascalicon and the other works

Silvana Vecchio in association with Gionata Liboni, Caterina Tarlazzi (Archa Verbi. Subsidia) 12 (Münster: 2014), 151–182. 2 Compare Dominique Poirel, “‘Alter Augustinus—Der zweite Augustinus.’ Hugo von SanktVik- tor und die Väter der Kirche,” in Johannes Arnold, Rainer Berndt, Ralf M.W. Stammberger, Christine Feld (eds.), Väter der Kirche. Ekklesiales Denken von den Anfängen bis in die Neuzeit (Paderborn: 2004), 643–668; Rainer Berndt, “Hugo von St. Victor. Theologie als Schriftausle- gung,” in Ulrich Köpf (ed.), Theologen des Mittelalters. Eine Einführung (Darmstadt: 2002), 96–112. 3 See Gilduini editionis volumen i, (eds.) Rainer Berndt, José Luis Narvaja (Corpus Victorinum. Textus historici) 3 (Münster: 2017) (= Gilduin i). Earlier Paul Rorem, Hugh of Saint Victor (Oxford: 2009), gave extensive attention to the importance of Gilduin’s edition for the inter- pretation of the work. Hereafter references to Gilduini editionis 1, will take the form of Gilduin 1, followed by page and lines. 4 See Rainer Berndt, “The Writings of Hugh of St Victor: An Author and His Contexts,” in Ugo di San Vittore, 1–20; Ralf M.W. Stammberger, “Die Exegese des Octateuch bei Hugo von Saint- Victor,” in Bibel und Exegese in Saint-Victor zu Paris. Form und Funktion eines Grundtextes im europäischen Rahmen (ed.) Rainer Berndt (Corpus Victorinum. Instrumenta) 3 (Münster: 2009), 235–257; Dominique Poirel, Le livre de la nature, bv 14 (Turnhout: 2002), 97–98; the still useful work of Damien Van den Eynde, Essai sur la succession et la date des écrits de Hugues de Saint Victor (Rome: 1960), as well as Rudolf Goy, Die handschriftliche Überlieferung der Werke Hugos von St. Viktor (Stuttgart: 1976); and most recently, Patrice Sicard, Iter Victorinum. La tradition manuscrite des oeuvres de Hugues et de Richard de Saint-Victor. Répertoire complé-