Victorine Texts in Translation (6 vols.)

All of the introductions are a great help to those who approach the Victorine texts. Just as importantly, the translations are excellent... Even though serious study of the Victorines and their methods demands facility with biblical and medieval Latin, nonetheless, these very good translations will get the reader as close to Victorine practice as is possible in English

—Andrew Thornton, OSB, Saint Anselm Abbey, Manchester, NH, The American Benedictine Review

This work is the third volume of a series that offers translations and introductions of texts by authors who resided or were formed at the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris in the twelfth century. This volume deals with methods of reading and Scriptural interpretation by including texts that introduce readers to basic concerns such as the names, numbers, and authors of biblical books....While one could always criticize a book such as this for including or not including such-and-such a text, every text is well translated and introduced, although few introductions go beyond summarizing contents and manuscripts. Once volume six of this series is published (to be titled, Interpretation of Scripture: Practice) this volume will become more useful. The work effectively demonstrates how the Victorines were interested in both historical and spiritual exegesis, and it will be of interest to graduate students and specialists involved in hermeneutics or twelfth century theology.

—Devlin McGuire, Princeton Theological Seminary, NJ, USA

Writings on love from the abbey of St Victor by Hugh, Richard, Adam, Achard and Godfrey are included, each one with a helpful and clear introduction, all preceded by a general introduction that is substantial and informative. Notes and bibliographies are detailed and offer further lines of enquiry for scholars of medieval spirituality, for whom this volume (the second in a series of Victorine texts in English translation) will be invaluable. Each writer provides a blend of experience, faith in Scripture and the church, and reason, all in service of promoting attention to the inner life and facilitating progression in faith. Each is indebted to and in turn contributes to the Augustinian stream in Christianity and, unsurprisingly, very often the Song of Songs is the focus of meditation. Contemplation and compassion are interwoven in these examples of the exploration of love, its nature, dynamism, direction and transformative possibilities, as well as its risks of misdirection, deformation and disorder. The more we advance in love, the more we approach God’s likeness and simultaneously grow in awareness of God’s presence in our life.

—John Sullivan, Liverpool Hope University

The enormous productivity of the twelfth century canons of Paris’s Abbey of Saint Victor had a tremendous influence on the great scholastic masters of the thirteenth century like Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure. Their contemplative spirituality, transmitted via the Low Countries, would also shape the Devotio Moderna and beyond. How fortunate, then, that New City Press will provide an English language series of translations of Victorine biblical exegesis, speculative theology, liturgical works, and mystical texts. Like the householder of the Gospel, the Victorines brought forth old things and new. We are the beneficiaries of those present day scholars who make these nova et vetera available to a wide audience in fresh reliable translation.

—Lawrence S. Cunningham, John A. O’Brien Professor of Theology, The University of Notre Dame

Like the householder of the Gospel, the Victorines brought forth old things and new. We are the beneficiaries of those present-day scholars who make these nova et vetera available to a wide audience in fresh reliable translations.

—Lawrence S. Cunningham, John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology The University of Notre Dame

In the collection of volumes that form Victorine Texts in Translation, the editors have made the happy choice of including the entire field of scholarship of the School of St. Victor in Paris, knowing that its production extended in many directions; and this new volume, Writings on the Spiritual Life, shows us its breadth. This is because the School of St. Victor, a school of thought, is also a school of the cloister. The teachings, spiritual thoughts, and sermons contained here go to the very center of the preoccupations of the School. We must note especially the remarkable Sequence of Adam and a hymn of Godfrey of St. Victor; these verses are not so much a lyric translation of doctrinal themes as a unique manner of penetration into its aspects. The panoply of this volume reflects as well the spiritual life of this Parisian Abbey, not only in the various literary genres that it brings to us, but also in its formal structure and forms of prayer (by week, by degree, by style, and by type), and its themes, (both ecclesiastic and anthropological).

— Fr. Patrice Sicard, Extraordinary Professor at the Faculty of Notre Dame College of Bernardine, France