CHAPTER XXVIII

THE RATIONALE OF THE VISIBLE WORLD: HUGO OF ST. VICTOR

Just as the Middle Ages followed the allegorical interpretation of Scripture elaborated by the Church Fathers, so they also accepted, and even made more precise, the patristic inculcation of the efficacy of such most potent symbols as the water of baptism and the bread and wine transubstantiated in the Eucharist.[60] Passing onward from these mighty bases of conviction, the mediaeval genius made fertile use of allegory in the polemics of Church and State, and exalted the symbolical principle into an ultimate explanation of the visible universe.

Notable was the career of allegory in politics. Throughout the long struggle of the Papacy with the Empire and other secular monarchies, arguments drawn from allegory never ceased to carry weight. A very shibboleth was the witness of the “two swords” (Luke xxii. 38), both of which, the temporal as well as spiritual, the Church held to have been entrusted to her keeping for the ordering of earthly affairs, to the end that men’s souls should be saved. Still more fluid was the argumentative nostrum of mankind conceived as an Organism, or animate body (_unum corpus, corpus mysticum_). This metaphor was found in more than one of the Latin classics; but patristic and mediaeval writers took it from the works of Paul.[61] The likeness of the human body to the body politic or ecclesiastic was carried out in every imaginable detail, and used acutely or absurdly by politicians and schoolmen from the eleventh century onward.[62]

We turn to the symbolical explanation of the universe. In the first half of the twelfth century, a profoundly meditative soul, Hugo of St. Victor by name, attempted a systematic exposition of the symbolical or sacramental plan inhering in God’s scheme of creation. Of the man, as with so many monks and schoolmen whose names and works survive, little is known beyond the presentation of his personality afforded by his writings. He taught in the monastic school of St. Victor, a community that had a story, with which may be connected the scanty facts of the short and happy pilgrimage to God, which made Hugo’s life on earth.[63]

When William of Champeaux, according to Abaelard’s account, was routed from his logical positions in the cathedral school of Paris,[64] he withdrew from the school and from the city to the quiet of a secluded spot on the left bank of the Seine, not far distant from Notre-Dame. Here was an ancient chapel dedicated to Saint-Victor, and here William, with some companions, organized themselves into a monastic community according to the rule of the canons of St. Augustine. This was in 1108. If for a time William laid aside his studies and lecturing, he soon resumed them at the solicitations of his scholars, joined to those of his friend Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans.[65] And so the famous school of Saint-Victor began. William remained there only four years, being made Bishop of Chalons in 1112, and thereafter figuring prominently in Church councils, frequent in France at this epoch.

Under William’s disciple and successor, Gilduin, the community flourished and increased. King Louis VI., whose confessor was Gilduin himself, endowed it liberally, and other donors were not lacking. Saint-Victor became rich, and its fame for learning and holiness spread far and wide.[66] Abbot Gilduin lived to see more than forty houses of monks or regular canons[67] flourishing as dependencies of Saint-Victor. He died in 1155, some years after the death of the young man whose scholarship and genius was the pride of the Victorine community.

Notwithstanding a statement in an old manuscript, that Hugo was born near Ypres in Flanders, the ancient tradition of Saint-Victor, confirmed by the records of the cathedral of Halberstadt, shows him to have been a son of the Count of Blankemberg, and born at Hartingam in Saxony.[68] His uncle Reinhard was Bishop of Halberstadt, where his great-uncle, named Hugo like himself, was archdeacon. Reinhard had been a pupil of William of Champeaux at Saint-Victor, and after becoming bishop continued to cherish a profound esteem for him. The young Hugo renounced his inheritance and entered a monastery not far from Halberstadt; but soon, in view of the disturbed affairs of Saxony, his uncle Reinhard urged him to go and pursue his studies at Saint-Victor. The young man persuaded his great-uncle Hugo to accompany him. By circuitous routes, visiting various places of pious interest on the way, the two reached Saint-Victor, where they were received with all honour by the abbot Gilduin. This was not far from the year 1115, and Hugo was about twenty at the time. He was already an accomplished scholar, and doubtless it is to his previous studies that he refers when he speaks as follows in his book of elementary instruction, called the _Didascalicon_:

“I dare say that I never despised anything pertaining to learning, and learned much that might strike others as light and vain. I practised memorizing the names of everything I saw or heard of, thinking that I could not properly study the nature of things unless I knew their names. Daily I examined my notes of topics, that I might hold in my memory every proposition, with the questions, objections, and solutions. I would inform myself as to controversies and consider the proper order of the argument on either side, carefully distinguishing what pertained to the office of rhetoric, oratory, and sophistry. I set problems of numbers; I drew figures on the pavement with charcoal, and with the figure before me I demonstrated the different qualities of the obtuse, the acute and the right angle, and also of the square. Often I watched out the nocturnal horoscope through winter nights. Often I strung my harp (_Saepe ad numerum protensum in ligno magadam ducere solebam_) that I might perceive the different sounds and likewise delight my mind with the sweet notes. All these were boyish occupations (_puerilia_) but not useless. Nor does it burden my stomach to know them now.”[69]

Not long after Hugo’s arrival at Saint-Victor he began to teach at the monastery school, and upon the death of its director, in 1133, succeeded to the office, which he held until his death in 1141.[70] Colourless and grey are the outer facts of a monk’s life, counting but little. The soul of a Hugo of Saint-Victor did not soil itself with any interest in the pleasures of the world: “He is not solitary with whom is God, nor is the power of joy extinguished because his appetite is kept from things abject and vile. He rather does himself an injustice who admits to the society of his joy what is disgraceful or unworthy of his love.”[71]

Hugo belonged to the aristocracy of contemplative piety, with its scorn of whatever lies without the pale of the soul’s companionship with God. In his independent way he followed Augustine, and Augustine’s Platonism, which was so largely the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus and Porphyry. He also followed the real Plato speaking in the _Timaeus_, with which he was acquainted. Plato would have nothing to do with allegorical interpretation as a defence of Homer’s gods; but he could himself make very pretty allegories, and his theory of ideas as at once types and creative intelligences lent itself to Christian systems of symbolism. In this way he was a spiritual ancestor of Hugo, who found in God the type-ideas of all things that He created. Moreover, if not Plato, at least his spiritual children--Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Plotinus--recognized that the highest truths must be known in modes transcending reason and its syllogisms, although these were the necessary avenues of approach. Hugo likewise regarded rational knowledge as but the path by which the soul ascends to the plateau of contemplation. The general aspects of his philosophy will be considered in a later chapter. Here he is to be viewed as a mediaeval symbolist, upon whom pressed a sense of the symbolism of all visible things. An examination of his great _De sacramentis Christianae fidei_ will disclose that with Hugo the material creation in its deepest verity is a symbol; that Scripture, besides its literal meaning, is allegory from Genesis to Revelation; that the means of salvation provided by the Church are sacramental, and thus essentially symbolical, consisting of perfected and potent symbols which have been shadowed forth in the unperfected sacramental character of all God’s works from the beginning.[72]

Hugo’s little Preface (_praefatiuncula_) mentions certain requests made to him to write a book on the Sacraments. In undertaking it, he proposes to present in better form many things dictated from time to time rather negligently. Whatever he has taken from his previous writings he has revised as seemed best. Should there appear any inconsistency between what he may have said elsewhere and the language of the present work, he begs the reader to regard the present as the better form of statement. His method will be to treat his matter in the order of time; and to this end his work is divided into two Books. The first discusses the subject from the Beginning of the World until the Incarnation of the Word; the second continues it from the Incarnation to the final Consummation of all things. He explains that as he has elsewhere spoken at length upon the primary or historical meaning of Holy Writ,[73] he will devote himself here rather to its secondary or allegorical significance.

Hugo further explains the subject of his treatise in a Prologue:

“The work of man’s restoration is the subject-matter (_materia_) of all the Scriptures. There are two works, the work of foundation and the work of restoration, which include everything whatsoever. The former is the creation of the world with all its elements; the latter is the incarnation of the Word with all its sacraments, those which went before from the beginning and those which follow even to the end of the world. For the incarnate Word is our King, who came into this world to fight the devil. And all the saints who were before His coming, were as soldiers going before His face; and those who have come and will come after, until the end of the world, are as soldiers who follow their king. He is the King in the centre of His army, advancing girt by His troops. And although in such a multitude divers shapes of arms appear in the sacraments and observances of those who precede and come after, yet all are soldiers under one king and follow one banner; they pursue one enemy and with one victory are crowned. In all of this may be observed the work of restoration.

“Scripture gives first a brief account of the work of creation. For it could not aptly show how man was restored unless it had previously explained how he had fallen; nor could it show how he had fallen, without first showing how God had made him, for which in turn it was necessary to set forth the creation of the whole world, because the world was made for man. The spirit was created for God’s sake; the body for the spirit’s sake, and the world for the body’s sake, so that the spirit might be subject to God, the body to the spirit, and the world to the body. In this order, therefore, Holy Scripture describes first the creation of the world which was made for man; then it tells how man was made and set in the way of righteousness and discipline; after that, how man fell; and finally how he was restored (_reparatus_).”

In these first little chapters of his Prologue, Hugo has grouped his topics suggestively. The world was made for man, and therefore the account of its creation is needed in order to understand man. Moreover, that man’s body exists for his spirit’s sake, at once suggests that a significance beyond the literal meaning is likely to dwell in that account of the material creation which enables us to understand man. The soul needs instruction and guidance; and God in creating the world for man surely had in view his most important interests, which were not those of his mortal body, but those of his soul. So the creation of the world subserves man’s spiritual interests, and the divine account of it carries spiritual instruction. The allegorical significance of the world’s creation, which answers to man’s spiritual needs, is as veritable and real as the facts of the world’s material foundation, which answers to the needs of his body. Thus symbolism is rooted in the character and purpose of the material creation; it lies in the God-implanted nature of things; therefore the allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures corresponds to their deepest meaning and the revealed plan of God.

These principles underlie Hugo’s exposition of the Christian sacraments, whose unperfected prototypes existed in the work of the Creation. No fact of sacred history, no single righteous pre-Christian observance, was unaffiliated with them. An adequate understanding of their nature involves a full knowledge not only of Christian doctrine, but of all other knowledge profitable to men--as Hugo clearly indicates in the remaining portion of his Prologue:

“Whence it appears how much divine Scripture in subtle profundity surpasses all other writings, not only in its matter but in the way of treating it. In other writings the words alone carry meaning: in Scripture not only the words, but the things may mean something. Wherefore just as a knowledge of the words is needed in order to know what things are signified, so a knowledge of the things is needed in order to determine _their_ mystical signification of other things which have been or ought to be done. The knowledge of words falls under two heads: expression, and the substance of their meaning. Grammar relates only to expression, dialectic only to meaning, while rhetoric relates to both. A knowledge of things requires a knowledge of their form and of their nature. Form consists in external configuration, nature in internal quality. Form is treated as number, to which arithmetic applies; or as proportion, to which music applies; or as dimension, to which geometry applies; or as motion, to which pertains astronomy. But physics (_physica_) looks to the inner nature of things.

“It follows that all the natural arts serve divine science, and the lower knowledge rightly ordered leads to the higher. History, _i.e._ the historical meaning, is that in which words signify things, and its servants, as already said, are the three sciences, grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. When, however, things signify facts mystically, we have allegory; and when things mystically signify what ought to be done, we have tropology. These two are served by arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy, and physics. Above and beyond all is that divine something to which divine Scripture leads, either in allegory or tropology. Of this the one part (which is in allegory) is right faith, and the other (which is in tropology) is good conduct: in these consist knowledge of truth and love of virtue, and this is the true restoration of man.”[74]

Hugo has now stated his position. The rationale of the world’s creation lies in the nature of man. The Seven Liberal Arts, and incidentally all human knowledge, in handmaidenly manner, promote an understanding of man as well as of the saving teaching contained in Scripture. This was the common mediaeval view; but Hugo proves it through application of the principles of symbolism and allegorical interpretation. By these instruments he orders the arts and sciences according to their value in his Christian system, and makes all human knowledge subserve the intellectual economy of the soul’s progress to God.

An exposition of the Work of the Six Days opens the body of Hugo’s treatise. God created all things from nothing, and at once. His creation was at first unformed; not absolutely formless, but in the form of confusion, out of which in the six days He wrought the form of ordered disposition. The first creation included the matter of corporeal things and (in the angelic nature) the essence of things invisible; for the rational creature may be said to be unformed until it take form through turning unto its Creator, whereby it gains beauty and blessedness from Him through the conversion which is of love. Thus the matter of every corporeal thing which God afterwards made, existed from the time of His first creation, and likewise the image of everything invisible. For although new souls are still created every day, their image existed previously in the angelic spirits.

Then God made light, the unformed material of which He had created in the beginning.

“And at the very moment when light was visibly and corporeally separated from darkness, the good angels were invisibly set apart from the wicked angels who were falling in the darkness of sin. The good were illumined and converted to the light of righteousness, that they might be light and not darkness. Thus we ought to perceive a consonance in the works of God, the visible work conforming to the issue of the invisible in such wise that the Wisdom which worked in both may in the former instruct by an example and in the latter execute judgment.”

The severance of light from darkness is the material example of how God executes judgment in dividing the good from the evil. In this visible work of God a “sacrament” is discernible, since every soul, so long as it is in sin, is in darkness and confusion. All the visible works of God offer spiritual lessons (_spiritualia praeferunt documenta_). They have sacramental qualities, and yet are not perfected and completed sacraments, as will hereafter appear from Hugo’s definition.

Following the order of creation, Hugo now speaks of the firmament which God set in the midst of the waters to divide them:

“He who believes that this was made for his sake will not look for the reason of it outside of himself. For it all was made in the image of the world within him; the earth which is below, is the sensual nature of man, and the heaven above is the purity of his intelligence quickening to immortal life.”

The rational and unseen are a world as well as the material and visible. The sacramental quality of the material world lies in its correspondence to the unseen world. When Hugo speaks of the “sacramenta” in the creation of light and the waters divided by the firmament, he means that in addition to their material nature as light and water, they are essentially symbols. Their symbolism is as veritably part of their nature as the symbolical character of the Eucharist is part of the nature of the consecrated bread and wine. The sacraments are among the deepest verities of the Christian Faith. And the same representative verity that exists in them, exists, in less perfected mode, throughout God’s entire creation. So the argument carries out the principles of the sacraments and the principles of symbolism to a full explanation of the world; and Hugo’s work upon the Sacraments presents his theory of the universe.

“Many other mysteries,” says Hugo, closing the first “Part” of his first Book, “could be pointed out in the work of the creation. But we briefly speak of these matters as a suitable approach to the subject set before us. For our purpose is to treat of the sacrament of man’s redemption. The work of creation was completed in six days, the work of restoration in six ages. The latter work we define as the Incarnation of the Word and what in and through the flesh the Word performed, with all His sacraments, both those which from the beginning prefigured the Incarnation and those which follow to declare and preach it till the end.”

It is unnecessary to follow Hugo through the discussion, upon which he now enters, of the will, knowledge, and power of the Trinity, or through his consideration of the knowledge which man may have of God. In Part V. of the first Book, he considers the creation of angels, their qualities and nature, and the reasons why a part of them fell. With Part VI. the creation of man is reached, which Hugo shows to have been causally prior, though later in time, to the creation of the world which God made for man. From love God created rational creatures, the angels purely spiritual, and man a spirit clothed with earth.[75] Hugo considers the corporeal as well as the spiritual nature and qualities of man, and his condition before the Fall. The seventh Part is devoted to the Fall itself, and discusses its character and sinfulness.

At length, in the eighth Part, Hugo reaches the true subject of his treatise, the restoration of man. Man’s first sin of pride was followed by a triple punishment, consisting in a penalty, and two entailed defects, the penalty being bodily mortality, the defects carnal concupiscence and mental ignorance.

“Regarding his reparation three matters are to be considered, the time, the place, the remedy. The time is the present life, from the beginning to the end of the world. The place is this world.[76] The remedy is threefold, and consists in faith, the sacraments, and good works. Long is the time, that man may not be taken unprepared. Hard is the place, that the transgressor may be castigated. Efficacious is the remedy, that the sick one may be healed.”

Hugo then sets forth the situation, the case in court as it were, to which God, the devil, and man, are the three parties. In this trial

“... the devil is convicted of an injury to God in that he seduced God’s servant by fraud and holds him by violence. Man also is convicted of an injury to God in that he despised His command and wickedly gave himself to evil servitude. Likewise the devil is convicted of an injury toward man, in first deceiving him and then bringing evil upon him. The devil holds man unjustly, though man is justly held.”

Since the devil’s case against man was unjust, man might defeat his lordship; but he needed an advocate (_patronus_), which could be only God. God, angry at man’s sin, did not wish to undertake man’s cause. He must be placated; and man had no equivalent to offer for the injury he had done Him; for he had deserted God when rational and innocent, and could deliver himself back to God only as an irrational and sinful creature. Therefore, in order that man might have wherewithal to placate God, God through mercy gave man a man whom man might give in place of him who had sinned. God became man for man and as man gave himself for man. Thus He who had been man’s Creator became also his Redeemer. God might have redeemed man in some other way, but took the way of human nature as best suited to man’s weakness.

After our first parent had been exiled from Paradise for his sin, the devil possessed him violently. But God’s providence tempered justice with mercy, and from the penalty itself prepared a remedy.

“He set for man as a sign the sacraments of his salvation, in order that whoever would apprehend them with right faith and firm hope, might, though under the yoke, have some fellowship with freedom. He set His edict informing and instructing man, so that whoever should elect to expect a saviour, should prove his vow of election in observance of the sacraments. The devil also set his sacraments, that he might know and possess his own more surely. The human race was at once divided into opposite parties, some accepting the devil’s sacraments and some the sacraments of Christ.... Hence it is clear, that from the beginning there were Christians in fact, if not in name.”

Hugo proceeds to show that the time of the institution of the sacraments began when our first parent, expelled from Paradise, was subjected to the exile of this mortal life, with all his posterity until the end.

“As soon as man had fallen from his first state of incorruption, he began to be sick, in body through his mortality, in mind through his iniquity. Forthwith God prepared the medicine of his reparation through His sacraments. In divers times and places God presented these for man’s healing, as reason and the cause demanded, some of them before the Law, some under the Law and some under grace. Though different in form they had the one effect and accomplished the one health. If any one inquires the period of their appointment he may know that as long as there is disease so long is the time of the medicine. The present life, from the beginning to the end of the world, is the time of sickness and the time of the remedy. When a sacrament has fulfilled its time it ceases, and others take its place, to bring about that same health. These in turn have been succeeded at last by others, which are not to be superseded.”

Having followed Hugo’s plan thus far, one sees why it is only at the commencement of the ninth Part of his first Book that he reaches the definition and discussion of those final and enduring sacraments which followed the Incarnation. He has hitherto been developing his theme, and now takes up its very essence. Laying out the matter scholastically, he says “there are four things to consider: first, what is a sacrament; second, why they were instituted; third, what may be the material of each sacrament, in which it is made and sanctified; and fourth, how many sacraments there are. This is the definition, cause, material, and classification.”

Proceeding to the definition, he says that the doctors have briefly described a sacrament as the token of the sacred substance (_sacrae rei signum_).

“For as there is body and soul in man, and in Scripture the letter and the sense, so in every sacrament there is the visible external which may be handled and the invisible within, which is believed and taught. The material external is the sacrament, and the invisible and spiritual is the sacrament’s substance (_res_) or _virtus_. The external is handled and sanctified; that is the _signum_ of the spiritual grace, which is the sacrament’s _res_ and is invisibly apprehended.”

Having thus explained the old definition, Hugo objects to it on the ground that not every _signum rei sacrae_ is a sacrament; the letters of the sacred text and the pictures of holy things are _signa rei sacrae_, and yet are not sacraments. He therefore offers the following definition as adequate:

“The sacrament is the corporeal or material element set out sensibly, representing from its similitude, signifying from its institution, and containing from its sanctification, some invisible and spiritual grace.”[77]

This, he maintains, is a perfect definition, since all sacraments possess these three qualities, and whatever lacks them cannot properly be called a sacrament. As an example he instances the baptismal water:

“There is the visible element of water, which is the sacrament; and these three are found in one: representation from similitude, significance from appointment, virtue from sanctification. The similitude is from creation, the appointment from dispensation, the sanctification from benediction. The first is imparted to it through the Creator, the second is added through the Saviour, the third is given through the administrator.”[78]

Passing to the second consideration, Hugo finds that the sacraments were instituted with threefold purpose, for man’s humiliation, instruction, and discipline or exercise. The man contemning them cannot be saved. Yet God has saved many without them, as Jeremiah was sanctified in the womb, and John the Baptist, and those who were righteous under the natural law. “For those who under the natural law possessed the substance (_res_) of the sacrament in right faith and charity, did not to their damnation lack the sacrament.” And Hugo warns whoever might take a narrower view, to beware lest in honouring God’s sacraments, His power and goodness be made of no avail. “Dost thou tell me that he who has not the sacraments of God cannot be saved? I tell thee that he who has the virtue of the sacraments of God cannot perish. Which is greater, the sacrament or the virtue of the sacrament--water or faith? If thou wouldst speak truly, answer, ‘faith.’” One notes that the twelfth century had its broad-mindedness, as well as the twentieth.

While passing on discursively to consider the classification of the sacraments, Hugo considers many matters,[79] and then opens his treatment of the sacraments of the natural law with a recapitulation:

“The sacraments from the beginning were instituted for the restoration and healing of man, some under the natural law, some under the written law, and others under grace. Those which are later in time will be found more worthy means of spiritual grace. For all those sacraments of the former time, under the natural or the written law, were signs and figures of those now appointed under grace. The spiritual effect of the former in their time was wrought through the virtue and sanctification drawn from the latter. If any one therefore would deny that those prior sacraments were effectual for sanctification, he does not seem to me to judge aright.”[80]

The sacraments of the natural law were as the _umbra veritatis_; those of the written law as the _imago vel figura veritatis_; but those under grace are the _corpus veritatis_.[81] The written law, though given fully only through Moses, began with Abraham, upon whom circumcision was enjoined as a sacrament and sign of separation from the heathen peoples. In obedience to its precepts lies the merit, in its promises lies the reward, while its sacraments aid men to fulfil its precepts and obtain its reward. Hugo discusses the sacraments of circumcision and burnt-offerings which were necessary for the remission of sins; then those which exercised the faithful people in devotion--the peace-offering is an example; and again those which aided the people to cultivate piety, as the tabernacle and its utensils.

Hugo’s second Book, which makes the second half of his work, is devoted to the “time of grace” inaugurated by the Incarnation. It treats in detail the Christian sacraments and other topics of the Faith, down to the Last Judgment, when the wicked are cast into hell, and the blessed enter upon eternal life, where God will be seen eternally, praised without weariness, and loved without satiety. This blessed lot flows from the grace of the salvation brought by Christ, and is dependent on the sacraments, the enduring means of grace. On their part, the sacraments, whatever more they are, are symbols, in essence and function connected with the symbolical nature of God’s creation, with the prefigurative significance of the fortunes of God’s chosen people until the coming of Christ, with the import and symbolism of Christ’s life and teachings, and with the symbolism inherent in the organization and building up of Christ’s holy Church. Symbolism and allegory are made part of the constitution of the world and man; they connect man’s body and environment with his spirit, and link the life of this world with the life to come. Hugo has thus grounded and established symbolism in the purposes of God, in the universal scheme of things, and in the nature and destinies of man.[82]

##