De la division victorine aux distinctions bibliques

Abstract

Although the School of Saint Victor did not distinguish itself in the composition of biblical distinctions, it was responsible for a double innovation that paved the way for this type of writing. 1) The ‘Victorine divisio’, a literary and intellectual process of the Tria sunt... type, which consists of analysing a word, concept or reality into several elements, following a fairly consistent pattern: enumeration, description, correlation, reintegration, as in opusculum 160 of the Miscellanea by Hugh of Saint Victor. Not only does Hugh make extensive use of this process, but he also theorises it in the Didascalicon, in the service of an encyclopaedic programme based on a tree-like conception of knowledge. 2) Hugh is also the author of a theory of the double meaning of Scripture, based on Augustine and Dionysius: just as in the historical sense words signify realities, so in the spiritual sense these realities signify many others, by virtue of a discourse inscribed by God in the book of creation. While these two innovations subsequently enjoyed great success in many fields, at Saint Victor they can be observed especially in the preaching of masters such as Absalon and James, who, when commenting on a verse of Scripture, detail the physical properties of a reality taken in the historical sense, before making the hermeneutical “leap” to its spiritual understanding. Each creature then becomes, as Hugh said, a word of God addressed to man, whose meaning is never exhausted. Thus, the two Hugonian innovations find in the preaching at Saint Victor a deployment that prepares the advent of the sermo modernus.