Hugh of Saint-Victor

(1096 - 1141)

The scholastic theologian Hugh of Saint-Victor, who spent much of his life in Paris, was known for writing mystical treatises and the Didascalicon, his seventy-folio-page index of biblical history. Hugh wrote the work for students in the Abbey of Saint-Victor, a school of Augustinian canons, where he taught until his death in 1142. “Learn everything,” he wrote, “and you will see afterward that nothing is useless.”