HUGH OF ST. VICTOR.

Opera].

      Paris, Badius Ascensius, 1526. 1526 - 3 vols., folio, ff. [26], 409; [24], 401; [16] 447, roman letter in double columns; titles with Badius' four-part title border, with crowned dolphins and a medallion of a scholar in the upper piece, two Amazons on horseback in the lower piece, military trophies in the side-pieces, Badius' "Prelum Ascensianum" device in the centre; woodcut criblé initials, two full-page diagrams in volume II; an excellent copy in late 16th century vellum lettered in manuscript. First collected edition of the works of Hugh of St. Victor (1096-1141), including many pieces printed for the first time. It includes his masterwork, the De sacramentis Christianae fidei, "the first attempt on the grand scale - for Abelard's almost contemporary Theologia is a scantier outline - to give a really comprehensive view of theology in all its branches" (David Knowles), his scriptural commentaries and mystical works, including the De arca Noe morali and De arca Noe mystica, and his philosophical and scientific works, the Didascalicon in particular, in which Hugh sets forth a new division of knowledge."According to Hugh, philosophy encompasses four parts: theorica, practica (that is, moral philosophy), mechanica, and logica. Theorica in turn is divided into theologia, mathematica, and physica, or physiologia. The Didascalicon says little about physica, limiting itself to indicating that it is the science of nature and that it examines the causes of things in their effects and their effects in their causes. Hugh lingers a great deal longer on mathematics, to which he gives a preponderant place; it is indispensable to the knowledge of physics and ought to be studied before the latter . The classification of the sciences in the Didascalicon gives a place not only to theorica, but to mechanica as well, that is, to the mechanical arts (the arts of clothing, armament, navigation, agriculture, hunting, medicine, and the theatre). Hugh was thus the first to raise technology to the dignity of science. In this regard he was the first of a great number of the authors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries" (DSB).Renouard II pp. 520-23.