HUGH OF ST. VICTOR (1096-1141), mystic philosopher and theologian, was born at Hartingam, Saxony. After spending some time in a house of canons regular at Hamersleben, in Saxony, where he took the habit, he went to the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris. There he rose to be canon, in 1125 scholasticus, and perhaps even prior, and it was there that he died on March I I, 1141. Hugh initiated that mysticism of the school of St. Victor which filled the whole of the second part of the 12th century; but in reaction to the theories of Roscelin and Abelard, his mysticism was the orthodox system of a subtle and prudent rhetorician. In theology, he paved the way for the great Summae of the 13th century by his excellent dogmatic synthesis, entitled De sacra mentis: Creation and restoration are the critical events in the history of the world. By the former the world was constituted, by the latter it regains its lost glory. The work of creation can be known by a study of the profane sciences; that of restoration is revealed in Holy Scriptures. His sacramental teaching clarified many points later adopted by his successors. Hugh did not profess the contempt for the profane sciences which his followers the Victorines expressed. His division of these sciences into theo retical, practical, mechanical and logical, and his moderate realism occupy a subordinate position to his interest in psychology. Like Augustine, he starts from consciousness of the self, which he believes bears witness to the existence, the substantiality, and the spirituality of the soul. Knowledge of the self is the fruit of introspection, knowledge of the external world is the fruit of the zealous exercising of natural talent, and knowledge of God the fruit of contemplation. For Hugh the existence of God is provable both from internal and from external experience, especially that of the changeability of creatures.
Besides the De Sacramentis, Hugh's chief works are the ency clopaedic Didascalion, the De Unione corporis et spiritus, the mystical treatises De arca Noe morali, De arca Noe mystica, De vanitate mundi, De arrha animae, De amore sponsi ad sponsam, etc., the commentaries on Scriptural books and on the Celestial Hierarchy of the Pseudo-Dionysius.
The 1648 Rouen edition of his opera was reprinted in Migne's Patrol. Lat,, vols. See B. Haureau, Les Oeuvres de Hugues de St. Victor (1859; 2nd ed., 1886) ; article by H. Deniffe in Archiv fur Literatur and Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, iii. (1887) ; A. Mignon, Les Origines de la Scholastique et Hugues de St. Victor (1895) ; J. Kilgenstein, Die Gotteslehre des Hugo von St. Victor (1898) ; Ostler, Die Psychologie des Hugo von St. Viktor (1906) ; Pourrat, La Theologie sacrammentaire (1907) ; M. Grabmann, Die Gesch. der Scholast. Methods (1909—I 1), and complete bibliography in tYberweg, Gesch. der Philosophie (Bd. ii. 1928).