with Rationalist mockers, and a superstitious awe would readily persuade him that it was better to believe than to doubt. When emperors and popes corresponded on familiar terms with the seeress; when haughty nobles and learned ecclesiastics sought counsel at her oracle concerning future events, and even for the decision of learned questions; when all she said in answer was delivered as subject to and in the interest of the Church Catholic-was often the very echo of Bernard's own warnings and exhortations-who was he, that he should presume to limit the operations of the Spirit of God? Many of Hildegard's prophecies, denouncing the ecclesiastical abuses of the day, were decidedly reformatory in their tendency. In this respect she is the forerunner of the Abbot Joachim of Calabria, and of St. Brigitta, whose prophetic utterances startled the corrupt Church in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In her supernatural gift of language, her attendant divine radiance, and her fantastic revelations, she, like her friend Elizabeth of Schonau (who had an angel to wait upon her, and saw the eleven thousand virgins), prepares the way for Catharine of Siena, Angela of Foligai, and St. Theresa.

CHAPTER II.

Licht und Farbe.

Wohne, du ewiglich Eines, dort bei dem ewiglich Einen!

Farbe, du wechselnde, komm' freundlich zum Menschen herab !!

ΟΝ

SCHILLER.

N the next evening of meeting, Gower commenced as follows his promised paper on Hugo and Richard of St. Victor.

Hugo of St. Victor.

The celebrated School of St. Victor (so called from an ancient chapel in the suburbs of Paris) was founded by William of Champeaux at the commencement of the twelfth century. This veteran dialectician assumed there the habit of the regular canons of Augustine, and after an interval, began to lecture once more to the students who flocked to his retirement. In 1114, king and pope combined to elevate the priory to an abbacy. Bishops and nobles enriched it with their gifts. The canons enjoyed the highest repute for sanctity and learning in that golden age of the canonical institute. St. Victor colonized Italy, England, Scotland, and Lower Saxony, with establishments which regarded as their parent the mighty pile of building on the outskirts of Paris. Within a hundred years from its foundation it numbered as its offspring thirty abbeys and more than eighty priories.

Hugo of St. Victor was born in 1097, of a noble Saxon family. His boyhood was passed at the convent of Hamers

1 Light and Colour.-Light, thou eternally one, dwell above by the great

One Eternal; Colour, thou changeful, in love come to Humanity down!

leben. There he gave promise of his future eminence. His thirst after information of every kind was insatiable. The youth might often have been seen walking alone in the convent garden, speaking and gesticulating, imagining himself advocate, preacher, or disputant. Every evening he kept rigid account of his gains in knowledge during the day. The floor of his room was covered with geometrical figures traced in charcoal. Many a winter's night, he says, he was waking between vigils in anxious study of a horoscope. Many a rude experiment in musical science did he try with strings stretched across a board. Even while a novice, he began to write. Attracted by the reputation of the abbey of St. Victor, he enrolled his name among the regular canons there. Not long after his arrival, the emissaries of an archdeacon, worsted in a suit with the chapter, murdered the prior, Thomas. Hugo was elected to succeed him in the office of instructor. He taught philo

sophy, rhetoric, and theology. He seldom quitted the precincts of the convent, and never aspired to farther preferment. He closed a peaceful and honoured life at the age of fortyfour, leaving behind him those ponderous tomes of divinity to which Aquinas and Vincent of Beauvais acknowledge their obligations, and which gained for their author the name of a second Augustine."

Hitherto mysticism, in the person of Bernard, has repudiated scholasticism. In Hugo, and his successor Richard, the foes are reconciled. Bonaventura in the thirteenth, and Gerson in the fifteenth century, are great names in the same province. Indeed, throughout the middle ages, almost everything that merits the title of mystical theology is characterized by some such endeavour to unite the contemplation of the mystic with the dialectics of the schoolman. There was good in the

2 Liebner's Hugo of St. Victor, p. is given by Hugo in his Didascalion. 21.-This account of his early studies

c. 2.]

Mysticism and Scholasticism Combined.

155

attempt.

Mysticism lost much of its vagueness, and scholasticism much of its frigidity.

Hugo was well fitted by temperament to mediate between. the extreme tendencies of his time. Utterly destitute of that daring originality which placed Erigena at least two centuries in advance of his age, his very gentleness and caution would alone have rendered him more moderate in his views and more catholic in sympathy than the intense and vehement Bernard. Hugo, far from proscribing science and denouncing speculation, called in the aid of the logical gymnastics of his day to discipline the mind for the adventurous enterprise of the mystic. If he regarded with dislike the idle word-warfare of scholastic ingenuity, he was quite as little disposed to bid common sense a perpetual farewell among the cloudiest realms of mysticism. His style is clear, his spirit kindly, his judgment generally impartial. It is refreshing in those days of ecclesiastical domination to meet with at least a single mind to whom that Romanist ideal-an absolute uniformity in religious opinionappeared both impossible and undesirable."

A few words may present the characteristic outlines of his mysticism. It avails itself of the aid of speculation to acquire a scientific form-in due subjection, of course, to the authority of the Church. It will ground its claim on a surer tenure than mere religious emotion or visionary reverie. Hugo, with all his contemporaries, reverenced the Pseudo-Dionysius. His more devout and practical spirit laboured at a huge commentary on the Heavenly Hierarchy, like a good angel, condemned for some sin to servitude under a paynim giant. In the hands of his commentator, Dionysius becomes more scriptural and human-for the cloister, even edifying, but remains as uninteresting as ever. Hugo makes a threefold division of our faculties. First, and lowest, Cogitatio. A stage higher stands Meditatio: by this

3 Schmid, Der Mysticismus des M. A., p. 303,

he means reflection, investigation. Third, and highest, ranges Contemplatio in this state the mind possesses in light the truth which, in the preceding, it desired and groped after in twilight.

He compares this spiritual process to the application of fire to green wood. It kindles with difficulty; clouds of smoke arise; a flame is seen at intervals, flashing out here and there; as the fire gains strength, it surrounds, it pierces the fuel; presently it leaps and roars in triumph-the nature of the wood is being transformed into the nature of fire. Then, the struggle over, the crackling ceases, the smoke is gone, there is left a tranquil, friendly brightness, for the master-element has subdued all into itself. So, says Hugo, do sin and grace contend; and the smoke of trouble and anguish hangs over the strife. But when grace grows stronger, and the soul's eye clearer, and truth pervades and swallows up the kindling, aspiring nature, then comes holy calm, and love is all in all. Save God in the heart, nothing of self is left."

Looking through this and other metaphors as best we may, we discover that Contemplation has two provinces-a lower and a higher. The lower degree of contemplation, which ranks next above Meditation, is termed Speculation. It is distinct from Contemplation proper, in its strictest signification. The attribute of Meditation is Care. The brow is heavy with inquiring thought, for the darkness is mingled with the light. The attribute of Speculation is Admiration-Wonder. In it the soul ascends, as it were, a watch-tower (specula), and surveys everything earthly. On this stage stood the Preacher when he beheld the sorrow and the glory of the world, and pronounced all things human Vanity. To this elevation, whence he philosophizes concerning all finite things, man is raised by the faith,

4 Comp. De Sacramentis, lib. v. p.

x. c. 4 (tom. iii. p. 411. Garzon's edition

of his works, Cologne, 1617.)

5 See Liebņer, p. 315.