Ricardo de São Vítor

Richard of St Victor (d. 1173)

Richard is most famous for his contemplative doctrine, which is based on a biblical anthropology that involves a philosophical psychology and noetic theory. Richard’s writings should be understood in the context of Hugh of St Victor’s programme for a complete theological pedagogy, organized according to the threefold sense of Scripture (literal, allegorical, tropological). Richard’s specifically exegetical works include an encyclopedic introduction to the methods of interpreting Scripture, the Liber exceptionum, and important commentaries on the Apocalypse and Ezekiel. Like Hugh, he stresses that the literal sense of Scripture is the foundation of its spiritual senses.

Richard of St Victor was a native of Scotland or Ireland. He became an Augustinian Canon Regular at the Abbey of St Victor in Paris, where he was a student of Hugh of St Victor. He later served as sub-prior and prior of the monastery and was the master of its famous school. He died in 1173.

Richard’s most important speculative work is De trinitate (On the Trinity). In the manner of Anselm of Canterbury, through a ‘faith seeking understanding’ he discovers ‘necessary reasons’ for God’s existence, the divine attributes and the Trinity. Richard does not ‘demonstrate’ the Trinity, but through a conceptual logic of perfection considers the divine being as it is revealed in Scriptures. The reasons for the Trinity are intrinsic to God’s ‘necessary’ being and attributes. God is love or Goodness itself, which by nature is wholly self-giving. God is also Glory itself and Felicity itself, which likewise communicate themselves wholly. This threefold communicative fullness requires that there be one who gives himself exhaustively, one who receives and gives back himself exhaustively and one who from both receives exhaustively. A further existential category of ‘one who gives nothing and receives nothing’ is inconceivable. Therefore the circle of self-giving and receiving is consummated in three ‘persons’, each of whom possesses divine existence incommunicably and independently. Richard’s account of the Trinity had considerable influence on Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure and John Duns Scotus (see Trinity).

According to Richard’s contemplative teaching, union with God is possible because the soul’s rational ‘force’ is created in the ‘image’ of God, and its affective ‘force’ is made in the ‘likeness’ of God. Originally the human body also reflected the divine nature. By the Fall, human reason was corrupted by ignorance, the affections by concupiscence and the body by infirmity and death. The light of divine wisdom heals the soul’s ignorance, divine charity heals its concupiscence and the virtues alleviate the body’s infirmity, although they cannot prevent its death. Within this dynamic of sin and grace, Richard develops a philosophical psychology of contemplation and spiritual perfection (see Grace).

In De duodecim patriarchis (The Twelve Patriarchs), or Benjamin minor, Richard interprets the affiliations among the wives and sons of Jacob tropologically (that is, morally and mystically), as signifying relations among powers and virtues of the soul. In De arca mystica (The Mystical Ark), or Benjamin major, he tropologically interprets the features of the Ark revealed to Moses, as signifying cognitive powers of the soul. The soul’s imaginative, reasonable and ‘intelligent’ powers apprehend, respectively, sensible, intelligible and transcendent ‘intellectible’ realities. These modes of apprehension diversify into six genera of contemplation. The first four are ‘in the imagination according to imagination’, or wonder at the order and form of sensible realities; ‘in the imagination but according to reason’, whereby the spirit discerns the principles underlying sensible realities; ‘in reason according to imagination’, whereby one discovers the similitudes of invisible realities in visible symbols; and ‘in reason according to reason’, whereby one contemplates purely spiritual created beings (for example, the human soul and its operations, angelic beings). These kinds of contemplation are attainable by human ‘industry’ aided by God, but the last two depend solely on the light of grace shining in the ‘fine point of the intelligence’. The fifth kind, which contemplates the divine unity and attributes, is ‘above reason but not without it’. The sixth ‘is above and beyond reason’ and seemingly against it, inasmuch as it regards mysteries (the Trinity, the Eucharist) that elude the priniciples of human thought.

Richard’s philosophical psychology derives ultimately from Neoplatonic sources. The human soul is able to know itself immediately. Its rational and affective ‘forces’ are reciprocal and not really distinct, but are simply different modes of its operation. Hence love and desire motivate the search for wisdom, and understanding elicits love and desire. The soul’s highest cognitive power, the ‘intelligence’, transcends discursive reasoning and penetrates spiritual realities intuitively (see Platonism, medieval).

Richard of St Victor’s contemplative writings profoundly influenced Bonaventure’s Journey of the Mind into God and Dante’s Comedy (see Alighieri, Dante). Bonaventure designates Richard (with Pseudo-Dionysius) as the exemplar of ‘anagogic’ or mystical theology. Accordingly, in the later Middle Ages Richard was a standard authority among mystical writers.