St Victor

St Victor, HUGO OF, a mediæval theologian, a Fleming, born near Ypres in 1097, died in 1141 as prior of the Augustinian monastery of St Victor at Paris, was a man of the school of Bernard of Clairvaux, and a mystic, his favourite teaching being that the intellect or its exercise, reasoning, will never enable man to discover the 'uncorrupted truth of things.' His writings were very popular in the monastic schools and in pietistic circles during the middle ages. His pupil, RICHARD OF ST VICTOR, prior of his monastery from 1162 to 1173, and a Scot by birth, went even further than Hugo in that he proclaimed mystic contemplation to be above reason.