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Two thinkers, side by side

Life

Portrait of Hugh of Saint Victor
Hugh of Saint Victor

c. 1096 CE – 1141 CE

ScholasticMedievalMystic

He mapped all human knowledge before universities existed and argued the whole map leads, in the end, to God.

Portrait of Bonaventure
Bonaventure

c. 1221 CE – 1274 CE

ScholasticMysticMedieval

Born Bagnoregio

For him, all knowledge was a ladder, and every rung led the mind a step closer to God.

Connection

Hugh of Saint Victor the Victorine ascent Bonaventure — Bonaventure drew on the Victorine account of the mind's stages of ascent and names Hugh among the authorities standing behind his own map of the soul's journey into God.

Shared Ideas

Grace & Free Will

Shared Places

Paris

Ideas

The IntellectGrace & Free Will
Faith & ReasonGrace & Free Will

Words

“Learn everything; you will see afterwards that nothing is superfluous.”

— Hugh of Saint Victor

“The whole visible world is like a book written by the finger of God.”

— Hugh of Saint Victor

“Ask grace, not instruction; desire, not understanding; the groaning of prayer, not diligence in reading.”

— Bonaventure

Key Moments

c. 1115 CE

Arrives at Saint-Victor

c. 1125 CE

Master of the school

1141 CE

Dies at the abbey

c. 1221 CE

Born in Bagnoregio

c. 1253 CE

Teaching at Paris

1257 CE

Minister General of the Franciscans

c. 1259 CE

The Journey of the Mind to God

Works

Didascalicon

The Journey of the Mind to God

Atlas of Thinkers

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Volume I · Ancient Greece · 624-262 BCE