Walter of Saint Victor

WALTER OF SAINT VICTOR. - Prior of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine in the abbey of Saint-Victor near Paris, born at the beginning of the 12th century, died after 1180.

He succeeded in the priorship Richard of Saint-Victor (d. 1173), without inheriting his spirit and moderation. An irreconcilable opponent of the use of dialectic in theology, immediately after the Lateran Council of 1179 he wrote the dialogue Contra quatuor Labyrinthos Franciae in 4 books, in which he delivers a harsh indictment against Abelard, Gilbert de la Porrée, Peter Lombard and Peter of Poitiers, to whom he attributes errors on the principal truths of the faith, characterizing their speculations as "putridae ranarum garrulitates". Even St. Augustine and St. John Damascene are treated there as heretics. The work, as superficial and inaccurate in its documentation as it is unjust in its judgments, has remained unpublished, except for book II, printed by B. Geyer, Die Sententiae divinitatis (Beiträge zur Gesch. der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, 7), Münster in W. 1909, pp. 173-99. Many fragments were edited by C. Du Boulay, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis, II, Paris 1665, pp. 629-70, 402, 506 and reproduced in PL 119, 1127-72.

Antonio Piolanti