The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts

Composed in the late 1130s, the Didascalicon selects and defines all of the important areas of knowledge, demonstrating that not only are these areas essentially integrated, but that in their integrity they are necessary for the attainment of human perfection and divine destiny. Here, in Hugh of Saint Victor, we find philosophy comprises four parts: The theoretical, whose study is the divine, the practical, whose study is human ethics and morality, the mechanical, whose study is the relieving of human misery, and last the logical, whose study is the operation of Mind. Included in this writing is an exposition of medieval cosmology; where the empyrean and the infernum are discussed, the superlunary and sublunary are highlighted, and the anima mundi is but hinted at. There is a difference between the intelligible and the intellectible and between study and discipline. There is a method and an order to studying the liberal arts, whose apprehension is to insure nothing less than perfection, if not strength. Read more