Walter of St. Victor
Walter of St-Victor
Mystic philosopher and theologian of the twelth century. Nothing is known about Walter except that (about the year 1175) he was prior of the monastery of St-Victor that about the time of the Third Lateran Council (1179) he wrote the celebrated polemic, “Contra quatuor labyrinthos Franciae”, and that he died about the year 1180. Du Boulay in his “Hist. Univ. Paris.” (1665) first called attention to Walter’s treatise and published excerpts from it (republished in P.L., CXCIX). More recently Denifle has described the manuscript And Geyer has published a critical text of the second book. The “four labyrinths” against whom the work is directed are Abelard, Gilbert de la Porrée, Peter Lombard, and Peter of Poitiers. It is a bitter attack on the dialectical method in theology, and condemns in no measured terms the use of logic in the elucidation of the mysteries of faith. Walter is indignant at the thought of treating the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation “with scholastic levity”. Discarding the best traditions of the School of St-Victor, he pours abuse on the philosophers, the theologians, and even the grammarians. “Thy grammar be with thee until perdition”, he cries. This violence, however, defeated his purpose, which was to discredit the dialecticians. Not only did he fail to convince his contemporaries, but he very probably hastened the triumph of the method which he attacked. Four years after his polemic was published, Peter of Poitiers, one of the “labyrinths”, was raise by the pope to the dignity of chancellor of the Diocese of Paris, and before the end of the decade Peter Lombard, another of the “Labyrinths”, was recognized as an authority in theology, his method adopted in the schools, and his famous “Books of Sentences” used as a text and commented on by all the great teachers — a distinction which it retained all through the thirteenth century.
———————————–
DU BOULAY, Hist. Univ. Paris., II (Paris, 1665), 402 sqq.; DENIFLE, Archiv f. Literatur-und Kirchengesch. des M.A., I, 404; GEYER, Die Sententiae Divinitatis (Munster, 1909); GRABMANN, Gesch. der schol. Methode, II (Freiburg, 1911), 124.
WILLIAM TURNER Transcribed by Thomas M. Barrett Dedicated to the memory of Walter of St-Victor
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XVCopyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, October 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Walter of St. Victor
was a pupil of Hugo of St. Victor, subprior of that monastery to the death of Richard, in 1173, and thenceforward prior. He died in 1180. He is known to posterity through a yet unpublished work, lengthy extracts from which are found in Bulaeus, Hist. Universit. Paris. 2, 200 sq., 402 sq., 562 sq., 629 sq. It bears the title Libri IV contra Manifestas et Damafas etiarm in Conciliis Hcereses, quas Sophistae Abelardus, Lombardus, Petrus Pictavinus et Gilbertus Porretanus Libris Sententiarumn suarusu Acuunt, Limant, Roborant, and is usually known by the title Contra quatuor Labyrinthos. Walter was a stranger to the profound mysticism of Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, but he shared their aversion to the trifling subtleties of scholasticism. To scholasticism he opposes the principle that dialectics can bring into view only formal, but not material, truth. The truthfulness of premises assumed lies altogether beyond its field of research. He was nevertheless so much the slave of authority that he violently opposed every attempt at a philosophical investigation of doctrine as a dangerous heresy. His work is filled with abusive epithets and denunciations. He accused Peter Lombard of Nihilism, and Abelard of errors with respect to the Trinity.
Various historians, among them Neander, have erroneously identified Walter of St. Victor with Walter of Mauritania (i.e. of Mortagne in Flanders). The latter taught rhetoric at Paris, was the tutor of John of Salisbury (q.v.), became bishop of Laon in 1155, and died in 1174. He left few writings, among which is a polemical letter on the subject of the Trinity addressed to Abelard. See Herzog, Real-Encyklop. s.v.