his highest administrative post with his selection as the first Dominican cardinal on May
28, 1244.
Hugues played a central role in the study of the Bible and theology in the 13th century.
At Saint-Jacques, he assembled a team that produced three works that served as essential
starting points for the theologians and preachers of his day: an expanded commentary on
the Bible; a version of the Latin Vulgate incorporating a vast series of linguistic notes
“correcting” the contemporary version of the text; and the first alphabetical concordance
to the Bible. His set of commentaries, known as Postillae, use as their starting point the
Glossa ordinaria, itself a digest of patristic and Carolingian exegesis, and add to it the
fruits of the study of the Bible produced from the middle of the 12th century to his own
time. His “corrected” Vulgate, the Correctoria, gives as full a sense of the literal meaning
of the text as was possible for the 13th century, and his Concordantia greatly facilitated
the task of preaching, allowing a relative novice to find his way around in the Bible
without having to commit the entire text to memory.
Hugues began his work on the Correctoria as early as 1227, although the latest
versions of this work date from his years as cardinal (1244–63). The Postillae date from
his years as master (1230–36), and his Concordantia from 1238–40—a work to which
some 500 friars contributed. Although the Bible had been given standard chapter
divisions by Stephen Langton at the end of the 12th century, Hugues was the first to
introduce subdivisions (a, b, c, d, e, f, g), an essential element for his correctoria and
concordance.
His Commentary on the Sententiae of Peter Lombard, dating from his early years as
master of theology, was among the first to employ the form of the quaestio in preference
to a running commentary. In effect, this form signaled a shift away from simply
commenting on Lombard’s text to rewriting it, a process that was to reach its perfected
form a generation later in the Summa theologica of Thomas Aquinas.
Among Hugues’s more original contributions to theology was his teaching of the
“treasury of merits” that held that the superabundance of the merits and good works of
Christ, the Virgin, and the saints are at the disposal of the church, in the office of the
pope, to distribute to the faithful. With the articulation of the treasury of merits, the
theology of indulgences became integral to the practice of private penance.
As cardinal, Hugues worked closely with three popes and served on papal
commissions that heard the controversies over Joachim of Fiore, the posthumous
champion of the Spiritual Franciscans, in 1255 and William of Saint-Amour, the most
vocal critic of the mendicant orders, in 1256. Hugues’s eucharistic devotion is epitomized
in the feast of Corpus Christi, which he authorized in Liège while legate there between
1251 and 1253 and which was placed in the calendar of the universal church in 1264 by
Pope Urban IV, whom Hugues had served.
Mark Zier
[See also: AQUINAS, THOMAS; BIBLE, CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION OF;
BIBLE, LATIN VERSION OF; DOMINICAN ORDER; GLOSSA ORDINARIA; PETER
LOMBARD; THEOLOGY; URBAN IV; WILLIAM OF SAINT-AMOUR]
Kaeppeli, Thomas. Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum medii aevi. 3 vols. Rome: Ad S.Sabinae,
1975–80, Vol. 2, pp. 269–81.
Lerner, Robert E. “Poverty, Preaching, and Eschatology in the Revelation Commentaries of Hugh
of Saint-Cher.” In The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley, ed.
Catharine Walsh and Diana Wood. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985.
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