In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh's Didascalicon. - book reviews

Christian Century, July 5, 1995 by Richard Luecke

BY PLACING before us a manual produced for the Augustine-oriented Canons Regular of St. Victor in Paris during the early 12th century, Ivan Illich offers a striking vantage from which to view our own reading habits. The kind of reading espoused by The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts (Illich commends the translation by Jerome Taylor) differs from any reading that searches the scriptures by means of a concordance, or which spends a lot of time distinguishing and accounting for the various strands from which the biblical documents were composed, or which heists choice bits for a book of virtues. In light of Hugh's manual, all such approaches appear to "raid" rather than to read the good book.

The Didascalicon made use of the Greek tradition of paideia--the formation of youth as citizens--and of the Greek-described, Roman-designated liberal arts, but radically redirected these traditions to the Christian "good" or wisdom, which Augustine named as the second person of the Trinity, Christ himself. (Augustine allowed that Christians could make use of the pagan arts since they were productive of truth and therefore came from God.)

In a world darkened by sin, such reading and hearing of the scriptures provided a remedy. It enabled readers and hearers to "know themselves." It brought them to internal enlightenment. (Translucent parchments and miniatures suggested such internal illumination, as did cathedral windows which remained dark if light was merely shined upon them rather than through them.) Illich describes the motor activities of those who mumbled, munched and ruminated what they heard and copied. (The 12th century had more words for fragrances, odors and tastes than does our own--don't skip Illich's footnotes.)

Such monastic reading became a journey out beyond one's native habitat, but one which proceeds like the leisurely movement through a vineyard, tasting and ingesting words and bunches of words as these appeared on the vine. Illich finds in the word pagina a reference to leafy rows on a trellis (he finds this in Pliny--it's lost from my dictionary). This was a friendly pilgrimage reminiscent of yet distinct from Plato's vine-supplied Symposium.

Not least among the classical arts was training in memory. Preliterary Greeks used a lyre and mnemonic formulas to remember narratives; rhetoricians later taught the use of a mentally constructed house where one placed "things-sequential" and "things-related" for rapid recovery (especially useful for the oratory of lawyers and politicians). Hugh called this structure an "ark" (written out, its contents would have covered many walls), a clear reference to the ark of the church, moving toward its goal, within which one dwelt and reflected along with others.

For Hugh, exegesis proceeded in three steps. The first is imbedding the "literal" or "historical" sense of the text in the soul's ark (these terms have more restricted meanings in modern controversies over biblical interpretation). To get at the historical meaning and relevance of obscure passages in the Hebrew scriptures, Hugh consulted with Jewish leaders (just as Talmudists are supplying today the profound historical meaning of texts we customarily skip over). Hugh spoke of this material meaning of the text as the humble "clay" of the scriptures; yet it was by means of clay that God created humans and Christ opened the eyes of the blind man. Hugh chided those who pressed scripture for pious meanings (or choice sermons?) before placing the entire body in their memories. Only then could one proceed safely to find analogies within the scriptures (an Augustinian emphasis). And only then could one take the third step of placing oneself in the historia and discerning what was next to be said or done. (Ruminant camels, Illich neglects to mention, move their food through three stomach chambers.)

But cultural changes were already in the air in Hugh's era. In dealing with these, Illich presents a cloak-and-dagger fantasy as fascinating as anything by Umberto Ecco. It remains a puzzle why some early manuscripts of the Didascalicon include an introduction and some do not. This foreword, said to be Hugh-like in style, urges its method of reading and hearing on all people, and is harsh on the lazy townspeople who do not choose to make the effort. It counsels monks in their work with citizens not to assert special teaching prerogatives but rather to show by example how people deport themselves who rightly hear and reflect on the word and therefore glow with the word. Monastic disciplines were for the streets. Illich imagines Hugh adding these introductory counsels after he became aware of a reading-based clerisy beginning to emerge, and Illich suspects the introduction was removed by those clergy ("fathers" rather than "brothers" or "sisters") who could not wait to join its ranks.

It is important to grasp the import of the change that was under way. Through most of their history from the Greeks and Romans to the 12th century, the liberal (or "liberating") arts had been conceived as practices belonging to all humans as such ("humanities") and as applicable to all topics. In the shift from monastic reading to scholastic reading, the arts became subjects to be presided over by specialists.