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On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith
Hugh of Saint Victor on the Sacraments of the Christian De Sacramentis...
532 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1976
About the author
Hugh of Saint-Victor
32 books23 followersHugh of Saint-Victor, also called Hugo of Saint-Victor was an eminent scholastic theologian who began the tradition of mysticism that made the school of Saint-Victor, Paris, famous throughout the 12th century.
Of noble birth, Hugh joined the Augustinian canons at the monastery of Hamersleben, near Halberstadt (now in Germany). He went to Paris (c. 1115) with his uncle, Archdeacon Reinhard of Halberstadt, and settled at Saint-Victor Abbey. From 1133 until his death, the school of Saint-Victor flourished under Hugh’s guidance.
His mystical treatises were strongly influenced by Bishop St. Augustine of Hippo, whose practical teachings on contemplative life Hugh blended with the theoretical writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Hugh’s somewhat innovative style of exegesis made an important contribution to the development of natural theology: he based his arguments for God’s existence on external and internal experience and added a teleological proof originating from the facts of experience.
Of noble birth, Hugh joined the Augustinian canons at the monastery of Hamersleben, near Halberstadt (now in Germany). He went to Paris (c. 1115) with his uncle, Archdeacon Reinhard of Halberstadt, and settled at Saint-Victor Abbey. From 1133 until his death, the school of Saint-Victor flourished under Hugh’s guidance.
His mystical treatises were strongly influenced by Bishop St. Augustine of Hippo, whose practical teachings on contemplative life Hugh blended with the theoretical writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Hugh’s somewhat innovative style of exegesis made an important contribution to the development of natural theology: he based his arguments for God’s existence on external and internal experience and added a teleological proof originating from the facts of experience.
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February 2, 2021
The twelfth-century Renaissance differs from the better-known fifteenth-century Renaissance in being saturated with a medieval religiosity as opposed to a humanistic one that hearkens back to classical antiquity for its model of ideal human flourishing. Hugh of Saint-Victor’s sacramentalist mode of experiencing divinely graced reality is of a piece with the spiritual deportment we have just called out. As anyone who takes the trouble patiently to read through the present major and original treatise, De sacramentis, will note, Hugh’s contemplative prose style is to be likened to that of his revered predecessor Augustine or his contemporary Anselm, and contrasted with the rigorous format of a formal disputation by Aquinas or Bonaventure from a century later. Yet we can discern already in Hugh the inauguration of a transition from a discursive to an analytical mindset and the first cropping-up of the ambition to systematicity that would characterize the high scholasticism of the thirteenth century.
First, let us attend to definitional matters, as regrettably has become needful in view of the obscuration, indeed dereliction of the memory of sacred things that has set in so markedly in modernity. What is a sacrament? Hugh of Saint-Victor was among the first to have arrived at complete theological clarity on this question. The early Christians, of course, inherited from the Jews a pervasive sense of the sacramentality of the created order the evisceration of which by the Protestant Reformers they would, naturally, have abhorred, but, all the same, during the patristic era it was taken so thoroughly for granted that no one felt the need to spell out an elaborate conceptual formulation of the church’s tacit doctrine. In the following remarkable passage, we can witness Hugh’s resolve that the suitable time had matured to do just this:
The doctors have designated with a brief description what a sacrament is: “A sacrament is a sign of a sacred thing”. For just as in man there are two things, body and soul, and in one Scripture likewise two things, letter and sense, so also in every sacrament there is one thing which is treated visibly without and is seen, and there is another which is believed invisibly within and is received. What is visible without and material is a sacrament, what is invisible within and spiritual is the thing or virtue of the sacrament; the sacrament, however, which is treated and sanctified without is a sign of spiritual grace and this is the thing of the sacrament and is received invisibly. But since not every sign of a sacred thing can properly be called a sacrament of the same, (because the letters of sacred expressions and statues or pictures are signs of sacred things, of which, however, they can not reasonably be called the sacraments), on this account the description mentioned above should be referred, it seems, to the interpretation or expression of the word rather than to a definition. Now if anyone wishes to define more fully and perfectly what a sacrament is, he can say: “A sacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senses without, representing by similitude and signifying by institution and containing by sanctification some invisible and spiritual grace”. This definition is recognized as so fitting and perfect that it can be found to befit every sacrament and a sacrament alone. (pp. 154-155)
Hugh’s meaning can most aptly and non-controversially be illustrated with the sacrament of baptism:
For in it [baptism] is the visible element of water which is a sacrament, and these three things are found in one: representation from similitude, signification from institution, virtue from sanctification. Similitude itself is from creation, institution itself from dispensation, and sanctification itself from benediction….Now all water has from its natural quality a certain similitude with the grace of the Holy Ghost, since, just as the one washes away the stains of the bodies, so the other cleanses the iniquities of souls. And, indeed, from this inborn quality all water had the power to represent spiritual grace, before it also signified the latter by super-added institution. (p. 155)
Now the Savior came and instituted visible water through the ablution of bodies to signify the invisible cleansing of souls through spiritual grace. And hence water now does not represent from natural similitude alone but also signifies spiritual grace from superadded institution. But since these two things, as we have said, do not yet suffice for the perfect sacrament, the word of sanctification is added to the element and a sacrament is made; thus that visible water is a sacrament representing from similitude, signifying from institution, containing spiritual grace from sanctification. (ibid.)
Hugh’s explication of why the sacramental order inherent in the very creation of the world should have been supplemented with express institution bears repeating here:
For the spiritual gifts of grace are, as it were, certain invisible antidotes, and, since they are offered to man in visible sacraments in certain vessels, what else is shown by the visible species than hidden virtue? For the sick man can not see the medicine but he can see the vessel in which the medicine is given. And on this account in the species itself of the vessel the virtue of medicine is expressed that he may recognize what he receives and through this knowledge proceed to love. Thus must what we have said be understood, that the sacraments were instituted for the sake of instruction. (p. 157)
Hugh’s doctrine expounded here is foundational to the Catholic sacramental imagination that, in large measure, persists to this day, whereas Protestant anti-sacramentalism, on the other hand, leads ineluctably to a loss of the hiddenness alluded to in the passage above and must be deemed covertly anti-incarnational (not by accident does history relate the recrudesence of a heterodox iconoclasm among many Protestant mobs of the early sixteenth century who went around smashing other people’s property with disabandon, as if the iconodule seventh ecumenical council at Nicea in 787 reaffirming not only the unimpeachable orthodoxy of icons, but also the incarnational theology behind them, never took place). It would, therefore, be most to our profit if we could recover Hugh’s medieval piety against the modern reductive rationalistic travesty of the faith, to which end it will be conducive to take a closer and more protracted look at Hugh’s expansive understanding of the sacramentals, i.e., those elements of the created world that, by their very nature, are expressive of spiritual realities yet which have not been elevated to the formal status of the seven canonical sacraments. We illustrate with two examples:
1) First, Hugh inquires into what the Priestly source in Genesis could mean when it teaches that light was made before the sun and illumined the first three days:
Therefore, let no one say: How could there have been day before the sun was made?, because, before the sun was made there was light: ‘And God saw the light that it was good, and he called the light Day, and the darkness Night’ (Genesis 1:4-5). And the light itself made those first three days before the sun was made, and illumined the world. But what does it signify that the sun was not made immediately from the time that light must have been made, but that there was light, so to speak, before there was clear light? Very possibly the confusion was not worthy of full light; yet it received some light, that it might proceed to order and disposition. (p. 16)
So far, any exegete could potentially go. But then Hugh imbues his commentary with a consciously intended sacramental interpretation, in an admirable display of his characteristic genius:
I think that here a great sacrament is commended, because every soul, as long as it is in sin, is in a kind of darkness and confusion. But it cannot emerge from its confusion and be disposed to the order and form of justice, unless it be first illumined to see its evils, and to distinguish light from darkness, that is, virtues from vices, so that it may dispose itself to order and conform to truth. Thus, therefore, a soul lying in confusion cannot do without light, and on this account it is necessary first that light be made, that the soul may see itself and recognize the horror and shamefulness of its confusion, and extricate itself, and fit itself to that rational disposition and order of truth. Now, after all relating to it has been put in order and has been disposed according to the exemplar of reason and the form of wisdom, then straightaway will the sun of justice begin to shine for it, because thus it has been said in promise: ‘Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God’ (Matthew 5:8). First, therefore, light is created in that rational world of the human heart, and its confusion is illumined that it may be reduced to order. After this, when the interior of this confusion has been purified, the clear light of the sun comes and illuminates it. For it is not worthy to contemplate the light of eternity, until is has become clean and purified, having, as it were, beauty through matter and disposition through justice….
Now all these things represent spiritual examples. Light is first created in the heart of the sinner, when he begins to recognize himself, so that he distinguishes between light and darkness, and begins to call light day, and darkness night, and is no longer of those of whom it is said: ‘Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness’ (Isaiah 5:20). After this, however, when he has begun to distinguish between light and darkness, and also to call light day, darkness night, that is, when he has begun truly to condemn his evils by the judgment of reason, and to choose the works of light, which are good and praiseworthy, there remains for the firmament to be made in him. This means that he must be strengthened in his good resolution to distinguish between the upper and lower waters, namely, the desires of the flesh and of the spirit, so that as an interposer and mediator he may not suffer two mutually hostile elements to be mingled or to be transposed, nor suffer what should be divided to be brought together nor what should be placed below to be above, nor what should be placed above to be below. Finally there follows in the order of disposition the work of the third day: the waters which are under the heavens are to be gathered into one place, lest the desires of the flesh should be floods, and expand beyond the bound of necessity, so that the whole man, being recalled to the status of his nature and disposed according to the order of reason, may collect into one place every desire to the end that the flesh may be subject to the spirit and the spirit to the Creator. Whoever is so ordered is worthy of the light of the sun, so that, when the mind is directed upward and the desires fixed upon heavenly things, the light of the highest truth may beam forth upon the beholder, and no longer ‘through a glass in a dark manner’ (1 Corinthians 13:12), but in itself as it is, he may recognize and know truth.
But this also, which is said, must not be passed over neglectfully: ‘And God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light from the darkness. And he called the light Day and the darkness Night’ (Genesis 1:4-5)….Therefore, God first saw the light, whether it was good, so that we may not at once ‘believe every spirit; but may try the spirits to see if they may be of God’ (1 John 4:1); and when we have seen the light, that it is good, then let us divide the light from the darkness, and let us call the light day, and the darkness night. Therefore, we should not only desire ardently that light precede in our works, and that our works be done in the light; but the light itself also must first be seen and considered diligently; and thus at last when we have seen the light, that it is good, let us divide light from darkness, and let us call light day, and darkness night. (pp. 16-18)
We have quoted at length because it serves as a perfect exemplification of how Hugh conflates natural and supernatural realities; the physical architecture of the cosmos with the exigency of the soul’s itinerary, and draws a spiritual lesson for the latter from the former, all of which is most reminiscent of the pagan late-antique Neoplatonist Proclus (cf. our review of the latter’s commentary on Euclid’s Elements here).
2) Another excellent instance of the just-named tendency can be found where Hugh takes up the question of what matter the firmament was made of, which interests him not so much from a strictly scientific point of view as it would today’s cosmologist, but from the spiritual point of view as to what sacramental significance for us is to be educed therefrom:
But why it came to pass that the firmament divided the waters from one another, and that the nature of these waters consisted in part above and in part below, let him not seek outside himself, who believes that these things were made for his sake. For there is in that world which has been fashioned interiorly a certain something possessing the form and exemplar of this work, where a kind of earth placed below is the sensual nature of man, but heaven placed above, the purity of intelligence and reason animated by a kind of movement of immortal life. Now these two natures, so dissimilar in a man, are confronted by a great mass of desires, fluctuating hither and thither, and often striving alternately in opposite directions, because the flesh, pressed down by infirmity, desires one thing and the spirit, raised up by the contemplation of truth, aspires to another. But it sometimes happens that the contrary impulses beget confusion, unless reason, intervening as a mediatrix, divides them from one another, and separates inclinations and appetites, and judges between desires: for example, something, whatever it may be, coming from the flesh drags downward; something coming from the spirit yearns for heaven, seeking the highest and immortal good. For when very reason in stern judgment resolutely places itself as a kind of firmament in the midst, and on the one side sets apart the waters above the heavens, but on the other those which are under the heavens, lower corruption cannot infect the higher purity of the soul, nor does that integrity which is above suffer itself to incline toward those base and worthless things which are below. (pp. 22-23)
Let us, in conclusion, therefore warmly recommend Hugh of Saint-Victor to the dear reader and leave him to ponder the deep question of what prompted the eventful rise of a self-conscious sacramental theology in the twelfth century?
First, let us attend to definitional matters, as regrettably has become needful in view of the obscuration, indeed dereliction of the memory of sacred things that has set in so markedly in modernity. What is a sacrament? Hugh of Saint-Victor was among the first to have arrived at complete theological clarity on this question. The early Christians, of course, inherited from the Jews a pervasive sense of the sacramentality of the created order the evisceration of which by the Protestant Reformers they would, naturally, have abhorred, but, all the same, during the patristic era it was taken so thoroughly for granted that no one felt the need to spell out an elaborate conceptual formulation of the church’s tacit doctrine. In the following remarkable passage, we can witness Hugh’s resolve that the suitable time had matured to do just this:
The doctors have designated with a brief description what a sacrament is: “A sacrament is a sign of a sacred thing”. For just as in man there are two things, body and soul, and in one Scripture likewise two things, letter and sense, so also in every sacrament there is one thing which is treated visibly without and is seen, and there is another which is believed invisibly within and is received. What is visible without and material is a sacrament, what is invisible within and spiritual is the thing or virtue of the sacrament; the sacrament, however, which is treated and sanctified without is a sign of spiritual grace and this is the thing of the sacrament and is received invisibly. But since not every sign of a sacred thing can properly be called a sacrament of the same, (because the letters of sacred expressions and statues or pictures are signs of sacred things, of which, however, they can not reasonably be called the sacraments), on this account the description mentioned above should be referred, it seems, to the interpretation or expression of the word rather than to a definition. Now if anyone wishes to define more fully and perfectly what a sacrament is, he can say: “A sacrament is a corporeal or material element set before the senses without, representing by similitude and signifying by institution and containing by sanctification some invisible and spiritual grace”. This definition is recognized as so fitting and perfect that it can be found to befit every sacrament and a sacrament alone. (pp. 154-155)
Hugh’s meaning can most aptly and non-controversially be illustrated with the sacrament of baptism:
For in it [baptism] is the visible element of water which is a sacrament, and these three things are found in one: representation from similitude, signification from institution, virtue from sanctification. Similitude itself is from creation, institution itself from dispensation, and sanctification itself from benediction….Now all water has from its natural quality a certain similitude with the grace of the Holy Ghost, since, just as the one washes away the stains of the bodies, so the other cleanses the iniquities of souls. And, indeed, from this inborn quality all water had the power to represent spiritual grace, before it also signified the latter by super-added institution. (p. 155)
Now the Savior came and instituted visible water through the ablution of bodies to signify the invisible cleansing of souls through spiritual grace. And hence water now does not represent from natural similitude alone but also signifies spiritual grace from superadded institution. But since these two things, as we have said, do not yet suffice for the perfect sacrament, the word of sanctification is added to the element and a sacrament is made; thus that visible water is a sacrament representing from similitude, signifying from institution, containing spiritual grace from sanctification. (ibid.)
Hugh’s explication of why the sacramental order inherent in the very creation of the world should have been supplemented with express institution bears repeating here:
For the spiritual gifts of grace are, as it were, certain invisible antidotes, and, since they are offered to man in visible sacraments in certain vessels, what else is shown by the visible species than hidden virtue? For the sick man can not see the medicine but he can see the vessel in which the medicine is given. And on this account in the species itself of the vessel the virtue of medicine is expressed that he may recognize what he receives and through this knowledge proceed to love. Thus must what we have said be understood, that the sacraments were instituted for the sake of instruction. (p. 157)
Hugh’s doctrine expounded here is foundational to the Catholic sacramental imagination that, in large measure, persists to this day, whereas Protestant anti-sacramentalism, on the other hand, leads ineluctably to a loss of the hiddenness alluded to in the passage above and must be deemed covertly anti-incarnational (not by accident does history relate the recrudesence of a heterodox iconoclasm among many Protestant mobs of the early sixteenth century who went around smashing other people’s property with disabandon, as if the iconodule seventh ecumenical council at Nicea in 787 reaffirming not only the unimpeachable orthodoxy of icons, but also the incarnational theology behind them, never took place). It would, therefore, be most to our profit if we could recover Hugh’s medieval piety against the modern reductive rationalistic travesty of the faith, to which end it will be conducive to take a closer and more protracted look at Hugh’s expansive understanding of the sacramentals, i.e., those elements of the created world that, by their very nature, are expressive of spiritual realities yet which have not been elevated to the formal status of the seven canonical sacraments. We illustrate with two examples:
1) First, Hugh inquires into what the Priestly source in Genesis could mean when it teaches that light was made before the sun and illumined the first three days:
Therefore, let no one say: How could there have been day before the sun was made?, because, before the sun was made there was light: ‘And God saw the light that it was good, and he called the light Day, and the darkness Night’ (Genesis 1:4-5). And the light itself made those first three days before the sun was made, and illumined the world. But what does it signify that the sun was not made immediately from the time that light must have been made, but that there was light, so to speak, before there was clear light? Very possibly the confusion was not worthy of full light; yet it received some light, that it might proceed to order and disposition. (p. 16)
So far, any exegete could potentially go. But then Hugh imbues his commentary with a consciously intended sacramental interpretation, in an admirable display of his characteristic genius:
I think that here a great sacrament is commended, because every soul, as long as it is in sin, is in a kind of darkness and confusion. But it cannot emerge from its confusion and be disposed to the order and form of justice, unless it be first illumined to see its evils, and to distinguish light from darkness, that is, virtues from vices, so that it may dispose itself to order and conform to truth. Thus, therefore, a soul lying in confusion cannot do without light, and on this account it is necessary first that light be made, that the soul may see itself and recognize the horror and shamefulness of its confusion, and extricate itself, and fit itself to that rational disposition and order of truth. Now, after all relating to it has been put in order and has been disposed according to the exemplar of reason and the form of wisdom, then straightaway will the sun of justice begin to shine for it, because thus it has been said in promise: ‘Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God’ (Matthew 5:8). First, therefore, light is created in that rational world of the human heart, and its confusion is illumined that it may be reduced to order. After this, when the interior of this confusion has been purified, the clear light of the sun comes and illuminates it. For it is not worthy to contemplate the light of eternity, until is has become clean and purified, having, as it were, beauty through matter and disposition through justice….
Now all these things represent spiritual examples. Light is first created in the heart of the sinner, when he begins to recognize himself, so that he distinguishes between light and darkness, and begins to call light day, and darkness night, and is no longer of those of whom it is said: ‘Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness’ (Isaiah 5:20). After this, however, when he has begun to distinguish between light and darkness, and also to call light day, darkness night, that is, when he has begun truly to condemn his evils by the judgment of reason, and to choose the works of light, which are good and praiseworthy, there remains for the firmament to be made in him. This means that he must be strengthened in his good resolution to distinguish between the upper and lower waters, namely, the desires of the flesh and of the spirit, so that as an interposer and mediator he may not suffer two mutually hostile elements to be mingled or to be transposed, nor suffer what should be divided to be brought together nor what should be placed below to be above, nor what should be placed above to be below. Finally there follows in the order of disposition the work of the third day: the waters which are under the heavens are to be gathered into one place, lest the desires of the flesh should be floods, and expand beyond the bound of necessity, so that the whole man, being recalled to the status of his nature and disposed according to the order of reason, may collect into one place every desire to the end that the flesh may be subject to the spirit and the spirit to the Creator. Whoever is so ordered is worthy of the light of the sun, so that, when the mind is directed upward and the desires fixed upon heavenly things, the light of the highest truth may beam forth upon the beholder, and no longer ‘through a glass in a dark manner’ (1 Corinthians 13:12), but in itself as it is, he may recognize and know truth.
But this also, which is said, must not be passed over neglectfully: ‘And God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light from the darkness. And he called the light Day and the darkness Night’ (Genesis 1:4-5)….Therefore, God first saw the light, whether it was good, so that we may not at once ‘believe every spirit; but may try the spirits to see if they may be of God’ (1 John 4:1); and when we have seen the light, that it is good, then let us divide the light from the darkness, and let us call the light day, and the darkness night. Therefore, we should not only desire ardently that light precede in our works, and that our works be done in the light; but the light itself also must first be seen and considered diligently; and thus at last when we have seen the light, that it is good, let us divide light from darkness, and let us call light day, and darkness night. (pp. 16-18)
We have quoted at length because it serves as a perfect exemplification of how Hugh conflates natural and supernatural realities; the physical architecture of the cosmos with the exigency of the soul’s itinerary, and draws a spiritual lesson for the latter from the former, all of which is most reminiscent of the pagan late-antique Neoplatonist Proclus (cf. our review of the latter’s commentary on Euclid’s Elements here).
2) Another excellent instance of the just-named tendency can be found where Hugh takes up the question of what matter the firmament was made of, which interests him not so much from a strictly scientific point of view as it would today’s cosmologist, but from the spiritual point of view as to what sacramental significance for us is to be educed therefrom:
But why it came to pass that the firmament divided the waters from one another, and that the nature of these waters consisted in part above and in part below, let him not seek outside himself, who believes that these things were made for his sake. For there is in that world which has been fashioned interiorly a certain something possessing the form and exemplar of this work, where a kind of earth placed below is the sensual nature of man, but heaven placed above, the purity of intelligence and reason animated by a kind of movement of immortal life. Now these two natures, so dissimilar in a man, are confronted by a great mass of desires, fluctuating hither and thither, and often striving alternately in opposite directions, because the flesh, pressed down by infirmity, desires one thing and the spirit, raised up by the contemplation of truth, aspires to another. But it sometimes happens that the contrary impulses beget confusion, unless reason, intervening as a mediatrix, divides them from one another, and separates inclinations and appetites, and judges between desires: for example, something, whatever it may be, coming from the flesh drags downward; something coming from the spirit yearns for heaven, seeking the highest and immortal good. For when very reason in stern judgment resolutely places itself as a kind of firmament in the midst, and on the one side sets apart the waters above the heavens, but on the other those which are under the heavens, lower corruption cannot infect the higher purity of the soul, nor does that integrity which is above suffer itself to incline toward those base and worthless things which are below. (pp. 22-23)
Let us, in conclusion, therefore warmly recommend Hugh of Saint-Victor to the dear reader and leave him to ponder the deep question of what prompted the eventful rise of a self-conscious sacramental theology in the twelfth century?
January 25, 2024
. Hugh's conceptualizations of doctrine and ideas about it are kind of out there, in a good way. I guess it's something in the Victorine waters. It's a lot of fun to figure out what he's saying when he writes something like this:
“…body having dimension is circumscribed by place, since to it according to place are assigned beginning, middle, and end. But spirit, since it is not capable of dimension , but is limited by definition alone, does not indeed receive the circumscription of place, and yet in a certain manner is enclosed by place, since, although it is present entire here somewhere, it is not found elsewhere. And so body is local, since it is circumscribed by place, but spirit, since it is enclosed in place through the presence of nature and operation, is itself also rightly called local.” (III.16)
“…body having dimension is circumscribed by place, since to it according to place are assigned beginning, middle, and end. But spirit, since it is not capable of dimension , but is limited by definition alone, does not indeed receive the circumscription of place, and yet in a certain manner is enclosed by place, since, although it is present entire here somewhere, it is not found elsewhere. And so body is local, since it is circumscribed by place, but spirit, since it is enclosed in place through the presence of nature and operation, is itself also rightly called local.” (III.16)
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