“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.”