Richard Of St. Victor
Richard of St. Victor
Theologian, native of Scotland, but the date and place of his birth are unknown; d. 1173 and was commemorated on 10 March in the necrology of the abbey. He was professed at the monastery of St. Victor under the first Abbot Gilduin (d. 1155) and was a disciple of the great mystic Hugo whose principles and methods he adopted and elaborated. His career was strictly monastic, and his relations with the outer world were few and slight. He was sub-prior of the monastery in 1159, and subsequently became prior. During his tenure of the latter office, serious trouble arose in the community of St. Victor from the misconduct of the English Abbot Ervisius, whose irregular life brought upon him a personal admonition from Alexander III, and was subsequently referred by the pope to a commission of inquiry under the royal authority; after some delay and resistance on the part of the abbot his resignation was obtained and he retired from the monastery. A letter of exhortation was addressed by the pope to “Richard, the prior” and the community in 1170. Richard does not appear to have taken any active part in these proceedings, but the disturbed condition of his surroundings may well have accentuated his desire for the interior solace of mystical contemplation. Ervisius’s resignation took place in 1172. In 1165, St. Victor had been visited by St. Thomas of Canterbury, after his flight from Northampton; and Richard was doubtless one of the auditors of the discourse delivered by the archbishop on that occasion. A letter to Alexander III, dealing with the affairs of the archbishop, and signed by Richard is extant and published by Migne. Like his master, Hugo, Richard may probably have had some acquaintance and intercourse with St. Bernard, who is thought to have been the Bernard to whom the treatise “De tribus appropriatis personis in Trinitate” is addressed. His reputation as a theologian extended far beyond the precincts of his monastery, and copies of his writings were eagerly sought by other religious houses. Exclusively a theologian, unlike Hugo, he appears to have had no interest in philosophy, and took no part in the acute philosophieal controversies of his time; but, like all the School of St. Victor, he was willing to avail himself of the didactic and constructive methods in theology which had been introduced by Abelard. Nevertheless, he regarded merely secular learning with much suspicion, holding it to be worthless as an end in itself, and only an occasion of worldly pride and self-seeking when divorced from the knowledge of Divine things. Such learning he calls, in the antithetical style which characterizes all his writing, “Sapientia insipida et doctrina indocta”; and the professor of such learning is “Captator famae, neglector conscientiae”. Such worldly-minded persons should stimulate the student of sacred things to greater efforts in his own higher sphere—”When we consider how much the philosophers of this world have laboured, we should be ashamed to be inferior to them”; “We should seek always to comprehend by reason what we hold by faith.”
His works fall into the three classes of dogmatic, mystical, and exegetical. In the first, the most important is the treatise in six books on the Trinity, with the supplement on the attributes of the Three Persons, and the treatise on the Incarnate Word. But greater interest now belongs to his mystical theology, which is mainly contained in the two books on mystical contemplation, entitled respectively “Benjamin Minor” and “Benjamin Major”, and the allegorical treatise on the Tabernacle. He carries on the mystical doctrine of Hugo, in a somewhat more detailed scheme, in which the successive stages of contemplation are described. These are six im number, divided equally among the three powers of the soul—the imagination, the reason, and the intelligence, and ascending from the contemplation of the visible things of creation to the rapture in which the soul is carried “beyond itself” into the Divine Presence, by the three final stages of “Dilatio, sublevatio, alienatio”. This schematic arrangement of contemplative soul-states is substantially adopted by Gerson in his more systematic treatise on mystical theology, who, however, makes the important reservation that the distinction between reason and intelligence is to be understood as functional and not real. Much use is made in the mystical treatises of the allegorical interpretation of Scripture for which the Victorine school had a special affection. Thus the titles “Benjamin Major” and “Minor” refer to Ps. lxvii, “Benjamin in mentis excessu”. Rachel represents the reason, Lia represents charity; the tabernacle is the type of the state of perfection, in which the soul is the dwelling-place of God. In like manner, the mystical or devotional point of view predominates in the exegetical treatises; though the critical and doctrinal exposition of the text also receives attention. The four books entitled “Tractatus exceptionum”, and attributed to Richard, deal with matters of secular learning. Eight titles of works attributed to him by Trithemius (De Script. Eccl.) refer probably to MS. fragments of his known works. A “Liber Penitentialis” is mentioned by Montfauçon as attributed to a “Ricardus Secundus a Sancto Victore”, and may probably be identical with the treatise “De potestate solvendi et ligandi” above mentioned. Nothing is otherwise known of a second Richard of St. Victor. Fifteen other MSS. are said to exist of works attributed to Richard which have appeared in none of the published editions, and are probably spurious. Eight editions of his works have been published: Venice, 1506 (incomplete) and 1592; Paris, 1518 and 1550; Lyons, 1534; Cologne, 1621; Rouen, 1650, by the Canons of St. Victor; and by Migne.
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HUGONIN, Notice sur R. de St. Victor in P.L., CXCVI; ENGELHARDT, R. von St. Victor u. J. Ruysbroek (Erlangen, 1838); VAUGHAN, Hours uith the Mystics V (London, 1893); INGE, Christian Mysticism (London, 1898); DE WULF, Histoire de la philosophie medievale (Louvain, 1905); BUONAMICI, R. di San Vittore saggi di studio sulla filosofia mistica del secolo XII (Alatri, 1898); VON HUGEL, The Mystical Element in Religion (London, 1909); UNDERHILL, Mysticism (London, 1911).
A.B. SHARPE Transcribed by Joseph E. O’Connor
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIIICopyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, February 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, D.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Richard Of St. Victor
a celebrated mystic and writer of the 12th century, concerning whose life but little is known. He was of Scottish extraction, and at an early age entered the Augustinian convent of St. Victor at Paris, where he became the pupil of the learned and pious Hugo (q.v.). He was made sub-prior of the abbey in 1159 and prior in 1162, and in the latter capacity contended persistently against the bad administration and the unedifying life of the abbot Ervisius, until he effected the removal of the latter from his office. Nothing further has been handed down with reference to the circumstances of his life, save that he was a friend of St. Bernard, and died in 1173. A number of writings from his hand have been preserved, divided, as respects character, into exegetical, ethical, dogmatical, and mystical, or contemplative, works.
As the exegesis is little more than mystical allegory, the works in which it is contained possess simply historical value; but those which deal with other subjects have much higher merit, though the mystical element is everywhere apparent. Of his ethical works, mention is made of his tracts, De Statu Interioris Hominis: De Eruditione Interioris Hominis: De Esterminatione Mali et Promotione Boni: De Differentia Peccati Mortalis et Venialis. Of his dogmatic writings the following are prominent, De Verbo Incarnato, where, in imitation of Augustine, sin is praised as felix culpa, because it necessitated the incarnation of Christ: two books, De Emmanuele, against the Jews: and, very particularly, six books, De Trinitate, with which compare De Tribus Appropriatis Personis in Trinitate. In these works the author appears as one of the most skilful dialecticians and experienced psychologists of his time. Like his master Hugo, he aims to unite knowledge and faith, scholasticism and mysticism. He acknowledges the right of philosophical inquiry, but insists that for the Christian thinker faith is the necessary prerequisite of knowledge. This principle governs him in the work on the Trinity, which is perhaps the most remarkable product of his mind. He first shows that reason proves the existence of but one supreme substance, which is God. An examination of the divine attributes follows, particularly of power and knowledge, and it is argued that in their perfection they can belong only to the one Absolute Being. The idea of love is then introduced, in order to effect the transition to the subject of the Trinity.
As love, like all the attributes of the Deity, must be perfect, it implies necessarily a plurality of Persons. Abstract love (amor) cannot become concrete (caritas) without an object upon which it may fasten. The Supreme Love can only be expended on a Supreme Object; and as it is eternal, its object must be so likewise. But as it is a proof of weakness not to allow society in love, these two Persons, who love each other, desire a third Person whom they may love with equal fervor. As there can be no inequality in the divine nature, these Persons differ simply in their origin one being self-originated, and the others deriving their origin from him, though in an eternal sense. In his mystical writings Richard appears as the first to undertake a scientific theory of contemplation, on which account he bore the name of Magnus Contemplator. He begins with a sober psychological analysis, by which he shows that reason (ratio) and inclination or will (affectio) are the fundamental powers, and that they are aided, the former by the imagination, the latter by the senses. Reason needs to perceive the forms of visible things before it can ascend to the contemplation of the invisible, and the will needs sensual objects in order to the exercise of its powers. The human spirit is the reflection of the divine, and the recognition of self and the purification of the heart are necessary to an apprehension of God, though even then supernatural help and revelation are needed. The highest aim of contemplation can only be realized per mentis excessum, caused by the direct operation of grace, or brought about by practice, and consisting in a widening (dilatatio) of the spirit to greater keenness and comprehension, in an elevation (sublevatio) by which it is exalted above itself, but retains its consciousness of external things, or in an alienation or transport (alienatio) in which such consciousness is lost, and a trance-like state ensues, in which present and future are seen in visions. This entire process of contemplation rests on the idea of love to God, and has for its object the recognition of God. There is no hint of an absorption into the Divine Being. The influence of this theory is seen in the tendency of the more distinguished of the scholastics to rate the objects of contemplation above those of dialectics from this time, and in the more or less complete reproduction of the theory itself in the writings of Bonaventura and in the mysticism of Gerson. With Richard of St. Victor the glory of that school came to an end. The first edition of his works appeared in Paris in 1528; reprinted at Lyons in 1534; at Cologne in 1621. The best edition is that of Rouen (1650, fol.). Concerning the MSS. of unprinted works, see the Hist. Lit. de la France, 13, 486. See Schmid, Mysticismus d. Mittelalters (Jena, 1824), p. 308 sq.; Engelhard, R. von St. Victor u. Joh. Ruysbrock (Erlangen, 1838); Liebner, R. a Sto. V. de Contempl. Doctrina (Gott. 1837 and 1839, 4to), pt. 1, 2; Helfferich, Christl. Mystik (Gotha, 1842), 2, 373 sq.; Noack, Christl. Mystik (Knigsb. 1853), 1, 91 sq.; Baur, Christl. Lehre v. d. Dreieinigkeit, 2, 521 sq.