The school of St. Victor, in Paris, was founded by William of Champeaux, the teacher and rival of Abelard, at the commencement of the twelfth century. It is known to history as having been the abode of three distinguished scholars, Hugo, Richard, and Adam. Hugo and Richard of St. Victor were mystics, and Vaughan, in Hours with the Mystics, has set them before us. From this and other sources, we grow more and more amazed to find the immense influence of such a school. A century from its foundation showed St. Victor to be the parent of thirty abbeys and of more than eighty priories. Here in these cells, like bees in a hive, the busy monks were laying up the only honey of the Dark Ages—multiplying manuscripts, delving into remote philosophies, muddling their brains over abstruse questions, but now and then leaving behind them something to benefit mankind. Theology and dialectics were their great and indeed their only pursuits. Like the swirls of a sluggish stream beneath its banks, they occasionally caught and kept fresh some broken flower from the shore. Thus, one may, for example’s sake, put a certain pretty idea of Hugo of St. Victor into modern verse:
“Hugo, St. Victor’s prior—a man
Gentle and sweet, contemplative and wise,
Makes mention in his fine and mystic plan
Of three great steps by which our spirits rise:
First, Cogitation—when we turned our eyes;
Then, Meditation—when our minds began
With hovering wing the kindled thought to scan;
Last, Contemplation—which all doubt defies.
Yea, and he saith that, in the greenest wood