Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologic a and Hugh of Saint Victor’s
Didascalicon:
Multiple Senses in Words of Holy Scripture
By: Francesca Conte
Thomas Aquinas and Hugh of Saint Victor, in the Summa Theologica and Didascalicon
respectively, assert in their texts the ability of a word in Holy Scripture to have several
senses. In part one, question one, article ten of Thomas Aquinas’ incomplete but profound
Summa Theologica (1273), Aquinas, in his respondeo or responses, argues that words in Holy
Scripture are able to have several senses and that “the multiplicity of these senses does not
[emphasis added] produce equivocation” as the Objections suggest.1 Instead, Aquinas asserts
that a word’s ability to have several senses derives both from its foundation in the literal
sense as well as “the author of Holy Writ [being] God, in whose power it is to signify His
meaning, not by words only (as man also can do), but by things themselves”.2 Hugh of Saint
Victor, in Books Five and Six of his Didascalicon (12th c.), follows similarly Aquinas’ opinion
of the multiple senses of scriptural words, suggesting again that the intentions of the divine
author—essentially, God who speaks in things—is what gives the letters of Holy Writ sense
both in the literal thing they signify (the foundational literal sense) and that which the
signified also signifies (the spiritual sense).3 In this, Aquinas and Hugh of Saint Victor affirm
that through methods of reading intelligently, a student of Holy Scripture sees plainly
Scripture’s ability to have multiplicity of sense in words.
Both Aquinas and Hugh of Saint Victor, similarly, define the senses of Holy
Scripture as comprising the foundational literal sense and the supporting spiritual senses.
1
W.A Wallace, and J.A. Weisheipl, "Thomas Aquinas, St.," in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 14
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1967, Print) 102. 2
Aquinas 1,q. 1,a. 100. 3
D Van Den Eynde, "Hugh of Saint Victor," in The New Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 7 (Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America, 1967, Print.) 194. Aquinas states that the “spiritual sense has a three-fold division” composed of allegory,
tropology (the moral sense), and anagogy.4 Aquinas describes each of these as occurring in
Holy Scripture, respectively, when “things of the Old Law signify things of the New Law”,
when “things which signify Christ, are types of what we ought to do,” and when “[things]
signify what relates to eternal glory”.5 Hugh of Saint Victor follows this same framework of
the senses, including, however, anagogy as a type of allegory. He states that “[The student of
Holy Scripture gains] in history the means through which to admire God’s deeds, in allegory
the means through which to believe his mysteries, in morality the means through which to
imitate his perfection”.6
Aquinas and Hugh explain the literal sense’s importance in that, as Aquinas states, it
is the sense in which “all the senses are founded”.7 This is seen most clearly in Hugh’s
description of the relationship between history, allegory, and tropology through the analogy
of the building of a house, in which history is the laying of a “foundation”, allegory is the
“build up of a structure”, and tropology is the painting of the finished work.8 Henri de
Lubac comments on how in “the Middle Ages the ‘historical sense is solid’ and the ‘solidity
of the history is not violated’ by the expression of the spiritual sense” but is instead
supported by it.9 The spiritual sense is meant to give the literal foundation a structural
framework. It illuminates both senses, as opposed to just illuminating itself while darkening
the other. Lubac, too, uses an analogy—like Hugh’s house—where “if Scripture was a tower,
4
Aquinas 1, q. 1, a. 10. Aquinas 1, q. 1, a. 10. 6
Hugh of Saint Victor, “Books Five-Six,” in The Didascalicon of Hugh of Saint Victor: A Medieval Guide
to the Arts (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991, Print.) 6:138. 7
Aquinas 1,q. 1,a. 10. 8
Hugh of Saint Victor, 6:138. 9
Henri De Lubac. Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture Vol. 2, Trans. E. M. Macierowski.
(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000, Print.) 56. 5
its foundation was history, but its summit or head was the spiritual sense”.10 In this, Aquinas
and Hugh begin to build not only their analogical structures of the senses of exegesis, but
also their argument that words in Holy Scripture can signify multiple senses.
The foundational literal sense is meant to encompass solely that which the word in
Holy Scripture represents in its first signification. Aquinas and Hugh are of agreement that
“the first signification” of a word is its literal sense, while its second signification is when
“the things signified by the words have themselves also a signification… the spiritual sense,
which is based on the literal, and presupposes it”.11 It becomes important to make the
distinction as to what the literal sense truly signifies. Hugh of Saint Victor is said to have a
very “literal treatment of Scripture” that follows with his assertion that all words in Holy
Scripture are founded on a literal sense.12 In his Didascalicon, however, Hugh states that
“there are certain places in the divine page that cannot be read according to the letter”, but
Henri de Lubac clarifies this statement by suggesting that what Hugh means to say is that
not all words should be taken “‘literally’, but rather ‘figuratively’”.13 De Lubac goes on to
explain that “old terminology was at least incoherent, because it confused the figurative
sense of a text, which is still [emphasis added] a literal sense, with the spiritual sense”.14 Thus,
even when Hugh suggests that some words not be taken literally, but instead figuratively, he
is still remarking on the literal sense.
Consequently, the literal sense is now able to expand beyond the letter into the
figure, and also beyond the figure into the parabolic sense. Aquinas details this in his “Reply
to Objection 3” that clarifies if the parabolical sense is a sense beyond the literal and the
10
De Lubac 77. Aquinas 1,q. 1,a, 10. 12
Van Den Eynde 194. 13
De Lubac 56. 14
De Lubac 56. 11
spiritual. Aquinas states that “The parabolical sense is contained in the literal, for by words
things are signified properly and [emphasis added] figuratively”.15 Reverend Reginald
Garrigou-Legrange sees, in Aquinas’ example of God’s arm, “that the literal sense is either
proper or parabolical [emphasis added], that is, metaphorical. Thus when God’s arm is
mentioned, the literal sense is to be taken metaphorically as expressing God’s power”.16 The
parabolical sense is literal in that the words are meant to be understood according to their
proper meaning, creating a metaphorical figure of speech that is still literal despite potentially
being unhistorical.
The word’s proper meaning—what it literally signifies—becomes critical to the literal
sense in that it carries with it, also, a pseudo-historical sense. Hugh of Saint Victor states that
“it is not unfitting…[to]…call by the name ‘history’ not only the recounting of actual deeds
but also the first meaning of any narrative which uses words according to their proper
nature”.17 Hugh’s historical sense, therefore, includes not only the actual history of Scripture
and deeds recounted in Scripture, but the history that actually comes with a word in its proper
usage. When Hugh of Saint Victor quotes from the First Epistle of Peter the passage
“Watch, because your adversary the Devil goeth about as a roaring lion” he centers on the
senses of the word “lion” in which lion firstly signifies the animal itself, which then leads to
the second signification of the lion as designating the Devil.18 The word lion encompasses a
history of the lion as an animal—a ferocious prowler that is looking to devour its prey. From
this history of the word’s literal sense the word derives, also, an allegorical sense that means to
equate the lion’s characteristics as a prowler to the Devil.
15
Aquinas 1,q. 1,a., 10. Rev. Reginald Garrigou-Legrange, “Sacred Doctrine” in The One God, Trans. Dom. Bede Rose (St.
Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1943, Print.) 89. 17
Hugh of Saint Victor, 6:137. 18
Hugh of Saint Victor, 5:122. 16
Aquinas states that it is not unfitting for a word to encompass not only multiple
different senses, but also multiples of the same sense, “even according to the [foundational]
literal sense”.19 Garrigou-Legrange further investigates this statement suggesting that this is
quite possible so long as the two literal senses are analogous in meaning. He argues that “if
the names [words] are analogous” such as the word ‘bread’ being “understood in the
ordinary sense of the term and… also mean[ing] the Holy Eucharist,” then “no false sense
arises from this” and “there is no equivocation”.20 If the secondary sense can actually be
considered secondarily literal (as opposed to secondarily spiritual or allegorical), is debatable,
but despite the secondary sense’s actual classification, the more important aspect is that it
exists. The word ‘bread’ contains, with certainty, two senses, regardless of them both being
literal or not and thus, asserts Aquinas’ original assertion that a word of Holy Scripture may
have several senses.
Aquinas defines the literal sense as “that which the author intends” and GarrigouLegrange states that “if men can utter words that have a twofold literal sense… much more
so can God do this, who is the author of Holy Scripture.”21 Aquinas states that it “is not
unfitting, as Augustine says” for words in Holy Scripture to contain more than one sense
since God, the author, has an intellect that stems far beyond the realm of intellect that
humanity can understand.22 Hugh, similarly, borrows from Augustine of Hippo’s De Genesi ad
Litteram when he speaks of looking first at the author’s intentions and “prefer[ring] above all
what it seems certain that the man we are reading thought.”23 Hugh refers here, however,
directly to the human author and indirectly to God as the divine author. Following with this
19
Aquinas 1,q. 1,a, 10. Garrigou-Legrange, 91. 21
Aquinas 1,q. 1,a, 10. 22
Aquinas 1,q. 1,a, 10. 23
Hugh of Saint Victor, 6:150. 20
idea of the thoughts and circumstances of the human author, Beryl Smalley states that “God
speaks ‘not in the ears of the prophet, but in his heart’; though God supplies the content, the
language and the choice of metaphor depend on the writer’s environment and education”.24
This statement is, of course, fair in assumption. It is also fair to presume, like Aquinas, that
God—who surpasses human intellect and “comprehends all things by His [emphasis added]
intellect”—has the power to divinely inspire not only the heart of the human author, but his
word choice as well.25 To say that a human author is restricted in word choice by
circumstance can somewhat degrade Scriptural writing to the limits of humanity. Aquinas
states that “Holy Writ ought to be able to state the truth without any fallacy”, and
welcoming human limitation is to welcome potential human fallacy and foibles.26
Fallacy in the words of Scripture is surely not the case since the words, according to
Aquinas and Hugh, are the words of God, their author, and speak not just as words, but as
‘things’. Hugh of Saint Victor differentiates words (the literal) and things (the spiritual) in
that “the latter is the voice of men, the former the voice of God speaking to [emphasis
added] men. The latter, once uttered, perishes; the former, once created, subsists”.27 Hugh
encourages students of Holy Scripture to see its words going “beyond the bare surface of the
letter” and into a realm that, because of the intellect of its author, has the capacity to signify
not just the foundational literal sense of the letter, but the multiple senses superimposed
upon it.28 The truth that Aquinas details that Holy Writ ought to be able to speak of is found
in the pathway that Hugh of Saint Victor outlines, where the student is lead from the “word
to a concept, through the concept to a thing, through the thing to its idea, and through its
24
Beryl Smalley, “The Fathers,” in The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, (Oxford: 1983, Print) 22. Aquinas 1 q. 1,a, 10. 26
Aquinas 1,q. 1,a, 10. 27
Hugh of Saint Victor, 5:121. 28
Hugh of Saint Victor, 5:122. 25
idea arrive at Truth”.29 This pathway could very well be paralleled to ‘word’ and ‘concept’ as
being the literal sense, ‘thing’ as the allegorical sense, and ‘idea’ as the tropological sense that
finally leads to Truth in the Word of God. This, again, asserts the possibility of a word’s
multiplicity of a sense and its ability to, potentially, include even all four senses.
The ability of a word to have several senses is seen most prominently in the
examples of the word ‘Jerusalem’ and in Aquinas’ dissection of ‘Fiat Lux’ or ‘Let there be
light’ in Genesis 1:3. Smalley outlines the interpretation of ‘Jerusalem’ in Scripture as first
introduced by John Cassian, a fourth century theologian and one of the desert Fathers. His
‘Jerusalem’ example “caught the fancy of the middle ages and became classical”.30 Cassian
outlines that “Jersualem, according to history, is a city of the Jews; according to allegory it is
the Church of Christ; according to anagoge it is that heavenly city of God which is the mother of
us all…; according to tropology it is the soul of man”.31 Cassian presented the four senses in
‘Jersualem’ in a way that showed that the word’s literal sense and basis is not overshadowed
by the multiple spiritual senses superimposed upon it, but instead is bonded together with it
in one single word. Henri de Lubac sees this interpretation of ‘Jerusalem’ as “more than an
example” because of its ability to intertwine each of the four scriptural senses “so much so
that the explication of Jerusalem condenses… [‘in a nutshell’] …the total explication of
Scripture”.32 De Lubac shows how Aquinas, also, attempts such a feat in his explanation of
‘Fiat Lux’ in which Aquinas states that literally, the two words pertain to “corporeal light”,
allegorically they pertain to “Christ… born in the Church”, anagogically they reflect “glory
through Christ”, and morally (or tropologically) they mean to “be illumined in understanding
29
Hugh of Saint Victor, 5:122. Smalley, 28. 31
Smalley, 28. 32
De Lubac, 199. 30
and enkindled in emotion” of Christ.33 These interpretations by Cassian and Aquinas are not
to state that all words in Holy Scripture have all four senses, but to firmly assert that it is,
indeed, possible that a word in Holy Scripture “may [emphasis added] have several senses”
or, potentially, even all four.34 ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Fiat Lux’ become embodiments of not only all
four senses but of the potential of all words in Holy Scripture to not only have a literal basis
in their letter but also a spiritual basis in their idea that leads the student to truth in the Word
of God.
Both Hugh of Saint Victor and Aquinas expect students to approach Holy Scripture
with the idea that there is a ruled and intelligent way of reading the words and understanding
their senses. Hugh teaches that “divine utterance must not be wrenched” to an interpretation
that contains all senses, but instead the student of Holy Scripture must search for all four
senses “as reason demands”.35 When concerning the study of Holy Scripture, it is just as
wrong to force the meaning of a word as it is to overlook the meaning of a word. In Book
Five of Hugh’s Didascalicon, Hugh details a set of seven rules that help the student of
Scripture to read words intelligently. These seven rules were borrowed from “Tyconius’s
Liber regularum [Book of Rules], which was known mainly through Augustine”.36 In these seven
rules, Hugh focuses on making the student aware of the way certain words and phrases in
Scripture work to produce multiple meanings. In the first and seventh rules, Hugh centers
on expressions concerning the Lord and his Body (his Church) and the Devil and his body,
respectively, the second rule concerns the true and mixed body of the Church, the third
concerns the presence of both the letter and the spirit in Scripture, the fourth rule concerns
33
De Lubac, 197. Aquinas 1,q. 1,a, 10. 35
Hugh of Saint Victor, 5:120. 36
Gilbert Dahan, “Exegesis of the Bible,” in Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, Vol. 2. (Cambridge,
England: James Clark & Co, 2000, Print.) 516. 34
the rhetorical device of synecdoche, and the fifth and sixth rules concern how Scripture
speaks of time—past, present, and future.37 Garrigou-Legrange, when discussing a word in
Holy Scripture’s ability to have a two-fold literal sense, is indirectly explicating Hugh’s fourth
rule of the rhetorical device of synecdoche, which Hugh explains as “concern[ing] ‘species’
and ‘genus’ in cases when the part is taken for the whole and the whole for the part”.38
Garrigou-Legrange uses the example of the word ‘heaven’ “When it is said, for instance,
‘God created heaven and earth’, the word ‘heaven’ would mean, so says St. Augustine, both
the material heaven and the angels”.39 ‘Heaven’, in this passage in Genesis, takes on two
senses as it describes heaven as the material place, but also that which God created within
heaven when he created heaven itself, such as the angels. Consequently, the whole of heaven
reflects also its part that is the angels. It is the “more intelligent readers” who “perceive this
second sense” for it is in reading according to the fourth of the seven rules that the student
is able to note, not only the true meaning that is meant to be divulged from the passage ‘God
created heaven and earth’, but also the multiple senses contained within the single word
‘heaven’ itself.40 Karl Barth states this most profoundly when he explains that the religion
and culture of the Bible is offered to everybody, but the true faith and comprehension of the
Bible is not.41 It takes a ruled and intelligent reader to properly read into the words of Holy
Scripture in order to truly divulge the meaning and scriptural senses, singular or multiple,
that they contain.
37
Hugh of Saint Victor, 5:122-25. Hugh of Saint Victor, 5:123. 39
Garrigou-Legrange, 89. 40
Garrigou-Legrange, 91. 41
Karl Barth, “Biblical Questions, Insights, and Vistas,” in The Word of God and the Word of Man, Trans.
Douglas Horton (New York: Harper & Row, 1957, Print.) 58. 38
Thomas Aquinas and Hugh of Saint Victor, in their theological works, assert that
words in Holy Scripture have the ability to contain multiple senses. By explicating the literal
sense, Aquinas and Hugh show that what the word in Holy Scripture firstly signifies
becomes its first signification—foundational and ever-present in Scripture—in that the first
signification is necessary in order to divulge any secondary signification. This secondary
signification comes from the fact that God, the divine author of Holy Scripture, speaks not
just in words, but in things. It is through reading intelligently and critically that the student of
Holy Scripture, in understanding that God’s intellect surpasses human intellect, is able to see
the multiplicity of sense in words in Scripture. Henri de Lubac states that the four senses of
Scripture “are interlinked like the rings of a priceless chain”. 42 It is through this linkage that
not only Scripture itself, but also words in Scripture, are able to contain multiple senses
simultaneously in order to lead the student to truth in the Word of God.
42
De Lubac, 201. Works Cited
Aquinas, Thomas. “Question on the Senses of Scripture.” Summa Theologica. Westminster,
MD: Christian Classics, 1981. 1, q. 1, a. 10. Print.
Dahan, Gilbert. “Exegesis of the Bible.” Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. Vol. 2. Cambridge,
England: James Clark & Co, 2000. 514-517. Print.
De Lubac, Henri. Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture. Vol. 2. Trans. E. M.
Macierowski. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000. Print.
Garrigou-Legrange, Rev. Reginald. “Sacred Doctrine.” The One God. Trans. Dom. Bede Rose.
St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1943. 88-92. Print.
Hugh of Saint Victor. “Books Five-Six.” The Didascalicon of Hugh of Saint Victor: A Medieval
Guide to the Arts. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. 120-151. Print.
Smalley, Beryl. “The Fathers.” The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. Oxford: 1983. 1-36.
Print.
Van Den Eynde, D. "Hugh of Saint Victor." The New Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 7.
Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1967. 194. Print.
Wallace, W.A. and J.A. Weisheipl. "Thomas Aquinas, St." The New Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol.
14. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1967. 102. Print.