UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA LIBRARIES COLLEGE LIBRARY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/didascaliconmediOOhugh THE Didascalicon OF HUGH OF ST. VICTOR NUMBER LXIV RECORDS OF CIVILIZATION SOURCES AND STUDIES THE Didascalicon OF HUGH OF ST. VICTOR A MEDIEVAL GUIDE TO THE ARTS TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY JEROME TAYLOR COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK AND LONDON 1961 Frontispiece : CONVENTIONALIZED REPRESENTATION OF HUGH OF SAINT VICTOR (Leiden, University Library, ms Vulcanianus 46, f. 130) Produced at Fulda in 1176-77, it accompanies the text of Hugh's Didascalicon. On the open book appears the first sentence of the Didascalicon : Omnium expetendoritm prima est sapientia in qua (perfecti boni) forma consistit (Of all things to be sought, the first is that Wisdom in which the Form of the Perfect Good stands fixed). Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 61-10982 Printed in The Netherlands RECORDS OF CIVILIZATION SOURCES AND STUDIES EDITED UNDER THE AUS PICES OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GENERAL EDITOR JACQUES BARZUN Seth Low Professor of History EDITORS EMERITI ( JAMES T. SHOTWELL Bryce Professor Emeritus of the History of International Relations AUSTIN P. EVANS Professor Emeritus of History EDITOR: EUROPEAN RECORDS | JOHN H. MUNDY Associate Professor of History I editors: oriental records C. MARTIN WILBUR Professor of Chinese History WM. THEODORE DE BARY Professor of Chinese and Japanese consulting editors SALO W. BARON Professor ofJewish History, Literature, and Institutions on the Miller Foundation GILBERT HIGHET Anthon Professor of the Latin Language and Literature DONALD KEENE Professor ofJapanese PAUL O. KRISTELLER Professor of Philosophy GARRETT MATTINGLY William R. Shepherd Professor of European History special editor for this volume AUSTIN P. EVANS TO THEODORE SILVERSTEIN « FOREWORD The present translation, the first complete one in English, is based upon Brother Charles Henry Buttimer's critical edition of Hugh of Saint Victor's Didascalicon : De studio legendi. An effort has been made to meet the demands of technical accuracy by consistently adhering to a single rendering for philosophical and theological terms, despite the varying contexts in which these recur. It is hoped that readability has not been sacrificed there- by. Buttimer's text, excellent in the main, has not been above correction, and upwards of forty emendations of his text have been made. These vary from the correction of apparent mis- prints to recasting the punctuation of several passages in which unawareness of Hugh's source or of his meaning had produced confusion. Significant alterations of Buttimer's text are in- dicated in the footnotes. The purpose of the notes is primarily to indicate new sources and to set Hugh's text in illustrative relief against the contrasting work of predecessors and contemporaries. Authors and works from classical, patristic, and Carolingian times, as well as from the twelfth century, are cited. At one extreme, the discoveries made involve minor curiosities like Hugh's inexplicable trans- ference to geometry of a portion of the traditional definition of "topica" (n. xv. n. 55), or his use of a Hermetic prayer to conclude the Didascalicon (vi. xiii. n. 54); or they involve the identification of incidental phrases from Boethius, Chalcidius, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great—phrases which, precisely by their incidental character, suggest the extent to which Hugh's thought was penetrated by the very expressions of these authors. At the other extreme, the notes report the sources of whole chapters, e.g., the Isagoge Johanitii ad Tegni Galiegni, which provides the substance of the chapter on medicine (11. xxvi); or they elucidate complex relationships like those which chapters i, vi, vii, ix, and x of Book I bear to texts in the commentary traditions on Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae, Plato's Timaeus, and Macrobius's commentary on the Somnium x JEROME TAYLOR Scipionis of Cicero—relationships which reveal not merely Hugh's indebtedness to the traditions but, more significantly, his reser- vations in the use of heterodox cosmological texts and themes. The recent publication by Professor Theodore Silverstein of the "Liber Hermetis Mercurii Triplicis de VI rerum principiis" made it possible to identify a contemporary analogue of Book i, chapter vii, and perhaps to identify the source, in a pseudo- Pythagorean Matentetraden, of certain cosmological distinctions occurring in the same chapter. Professor A. van de Vyver's report of the existence of Hugh's personal copy of Remigius of Auxerre's commentary on Martianus Capella in the Bibliotheque Nationale led to the discovery of the source, in Remigius's commentary, of numerous details on the authors of the arts reported by Hugh in Book in, chapter ii. But the notes do more than indicate sources and analogues. They attempt, at times, to offer sketches in the history of an idea, a phrase, a definition, together with a selection of primary sources and recent secondary studies. Such, for example, are the notes on "nature" as the archetypal Exemplar of creation and as a cosmic fire (i. x. n. 69, 71), on the Boethian phrase "Form of the Good" (1. i. n. 1), on Hugh's definition of philo- sophy as "the discipline which investigates comprehensively the ideas of all things, human and divine" (1. iv. n. 27), on Hugh's curious use of the term "entelechy" (1. i. n. 7), on the literary practice of concealing inner meaning beneath a fabulous surface {involucrum or integnmenturn) (1. iv. n. 26), on the doctrine of the "three works" (1. ix. n. 59) and that of the "three manners of things" (1. vi. n. 34, 3 5, 38, 42), and on the "number 'four' of the soul" (n. iv. n. 25-29). The notes also call attention to not yet recognized citations or reminiscences of the Didascalicon in twelfth-century authors, as in John of Salisbury and Alanus de Insulis. Moreover, Hugh's dependence on John the Scot's translation of the pseudo- Dionysian Celestial Hierarchy in preparing his own commentary on that work, plus the appearance in the Didascalicon of certain terms frequently a sign of Scotist influence, raised the whole question of Hugh's relationship to John the Scot and made it desirable to call particular attention to differences or likenesses between Hugh and the Carolingian author as these were found FOREWORD xi at various points (e.g. in i. i. n. 16; i. ii. n. 21; 1. vi. n. 42). Finally, the singular consistency and unity of Hugh's thought, often remarked upon by scholars, invited frequent citations from his other works to illustrate or expand his meaning in the Didascalicon. The introductory essay attempts to go beyond what is current- ly said of the Didascalicon and to offer new suggestions regarding its date, its argument for a fourfold "philosophy," its peculiar use of cosmological lore, and its distinctiveness vis-a-vis the De doctrina Christiana of Augustine and the Institutiones divinarum et saecularium lectionum of Cassiodorus. The aim has been to make some beginning, however slight, toward setting the originality and achievement of the Didascalicon in clearer light. Several matters of editorial nature deserve notice. Biblical quotations are given in the Douay translation of the Latin Vulgate as revised by Bishop Challoner, and the names and numeration of the books of the Bible follow this version, as does the spelling of all proper names. Occasionally, however, as in Book v, chapter iv, the original Latin quotations are so dis- posed as to make it impossible to use the corresponding Douay- Challoner translation without alteration. Where terms such as "Truth," "Wisdom," "Nature," "Idea," "Pattern," and "Exem- plar" are capitalized, the capital indicates that Hugh, in the trans- lator's understanding, is referring to God, or, more specifically, to the Second Person of the Trinity. The terms "catholic," "catholic church," and "catholic faith" are not capitalized because to have capitalized these would have been to suggest the modern sense of "Catholic" as contrasted to "Protestant,"a distinction which could hardly have been in Hugh's thought. For him, it was still possible to refer simply to the universal belief of Christians and to the universal church. Latin sources quoted in the footnotes have generally been translated, except when the original is a new source or analogue found in a manuscript or in a book hard to come by; in such cases, the Latin text has been reproduced for readers who may wish to compare it with Hugh's Latin in Buttimer's text. Names of twelfth-century authors have been modernized, except when identification of the place name has been disputed, as in the case of Honorius Augustodunensis and Alanus de Insulis, or when 9 xii JEROME TAYLOR the Latin form of the name has come into general usage, as in the case of Bernardus Silvestris and Clarenbaldus ofArras. How- ever, the form "Abaelard" has been adopted in preference to the more common "Abelard" in order to indicate the proper pronunciation of the name, which seems to have been accented on the second syllable. I am grateful to Professor Theodore Silverstein of the Uni- versity of Chicago for first interesting me in Hugh of Saint Victor, and to Professors Blanche Boyer and Richard Peter McKeon of the same University, as well as to Professor Nicholas Haring of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, for reading the translation, notes, and introduction and offering helpful criticisms and suggestions. I am indebted to the American Council of Learned Societies and to the Danforth Foundation for year-long fellowships which enabled me to work on the project, and to Dartmouth College and the University of Notre Dame for leaves of absence which made possible the acceptance of the fellowships ; in the case of Notre Dame, I am indebted for a subsidy as well.