The Didascalicon
Hugh of Saint Victor (ca. 1096-1141)
“Meditation is sustained thought along planned lines…Meditation takes its start from reading but is bound by none of reading’s rules or precepts. For it delights to range along open ground, where it fixes its free gaze upon the contemplation of truth, drawing together now these, now those causes of things, or now penetrating into profundities, leaving nothing doubtful, nothing obscure. The start of learning, thus, lies in reading, but its consummation lies in meditation.”
Hugh of Saint Victor (ca. 1096-1141)
“Meditation is sustained thought along planned lines…Meditation takes its start from reading but is bound by none of reading’s rules or precepts. For it delights to range along open ground, where it fixes its free gaze upon the contemplation of truth, drawing together now these, now those causes of things, or now penetrating into profundities, leaving nothing doubtful, nothing obscure. The start of learning, thus, lies in reading, but its consummation lies in meditation.”
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Spring 2014
On... Didascalicon: Man, God and Greatness
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Augustine, Boethius, Cassiodorus, Isidore of Seville, Bede, Alcuin, Rhabanus Maurus and John the Scot. Have you heard of them? These are some of the great makers of Western history. Even before these were you might visit the writings of Cicero or Quintilian on the mechanics of the orator; maybe M. Terentius Varro on the arts; Vitruvius on architecture or Galen on medicine. You will at any rate, be stimulated, challenged and simply awed at the greatness of man and his achievements... so goes Hugh of St. Victor writing at the dawn of the Renaissance in the 1120's. Does such thinking hold any value for us in the twenty-first century? It does, and here's why...
If there is one thread that unites these writers down throughout the annals of history it's this... the idea that man's collective mind was immortal and could contain lofty mental heights, both visible and invisible. Such thinking emanated from this idea... "the dignity of his nature was given by the light of the divine Wisdom" (Hugh, p. 9). In a word, man was created in the image of God and this image is what has allowed him or her to have such incredible creative expression and lead exceptional lifestyle. Have you recently thought on how grand, how majestic is man and woman in light of all that is created? The Psalmist wrote,
O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8)
Take a moment of pause to contemplate such lofty certainty... a God who creates man and woman in such fashion. Hugh of St. Victor invites us to such a journey.
If there is one thread that unites these writers down throughout the annals of history it's this... the idea that man's collective mind was immortal and could contain lofty mental heights, both visible and invisible. Such thinking emanated from this idea... "the dignity of his nature was given by the light of the divine Wisdom" (Hugh, p. 9). In a word, man was created in the image of God and this image is what has allowed him or her to have such incredible creative expression and lead exceptional lifestyle. Have you recently thought on how grand, how majestic is man and woman in light of all that is created? The Psalmist wrote,
O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8)
Take a moment of pause to contemplate such lofty certainty... a God who creates man and woman in such fashion. Hugh of St. Victor invites us to such a journey.
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