Time, History, and Mutability in Hugh of St. Victor's Homilies on Ecclesiastes and De vanitate mundi

Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141), theologian at the Parisian abbey of St. Victor, has long been recognized as an important contributor to the growth of historical awareness during the twelfth century. In particular, for Hugh historia was the organizing principle of theology and thus central to the reformation of fallen humanity; as a result, Hugh‘s emphasis on discerning the eternal through the temporal meant he had to confront the dangers of reliance on mutable things. His acknowledgement of this problem and his attempts to overcome it are documented forcefully in two works often neglected by scholars of Victorine thought: De vanitate mundi and the Homilies on Ecclesiastes. By offering a close reading of these two texts, this article argues that Hugh‘s meditation on the ambivalence of mutability is crucial to an understanding of his conceptions of time and history.