Hugonas Senviktorietis: Nuo Septynių Menų Kontempliacijos Link
Hugo of Saint Victor: from the Seven Arts towards Contemplation

Summary/Abstract: My article considers the treatises by Hugo of Saint Victor: The Seven Books of Erudition or Didascalion (Eruditionis didascalicae libri septem) and About Meditation (De meditatione). The first of these treatises explicates the model of scholastic teaching and learning prevalent at those ancient times and systematizes the arts and theological sciences. In step by step manner it introduces a reader into the trivium and quadrivium and explains their philosophical grounds and places in the harmonious structure of the world. Hugo of Saint Victor associated the seven liberal arts with theology and mysticism. He believed that this association helps his disciples to understand the Sacred Doctrine. The seven nonliberal arts, including mechanics, were treated by him as practical knowledge indispensable for the productive human activity. He based the cognition of reality on psychological mechanisms such as internal experience, freedom of the choice and contemplation. In the second treatise he defined the concept of meditation, enumerated its species and explained the peculiarities of their functioning.

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