In the 12th century, the abbey school attracted students from all of Europe and was for
several decades open to students from outside the abbey. The intellectual traditions of the
abbey school took shape under the leadership of Hugh of Saint-Victor, one of the major
exegetes, theologians, and mystics of the 12th century. Andrew of Saint-Victor pursued
Hugh’s emphasis on the literal sense of Scripture, and Richard of Saint-Victor developed
the Victorine mystical tradition. Adam of Saint-Victor was the greatest of the 12th-
century sequence writers, and the Victorine sequence repertory became in the late 12th
century a magnificent theological and liturgical construction. Godefroi and Achard of
Saint-Victor continued the earlier combination of theological, philosophical, and
contemplative emphases; Walter of Saint-Victor represented a different spirit with his
attack on Peter Lombard and other scholastic theologians. In the 13th century, the
Victorine school showed little of the vigor and creativeness that marked it in the 12th, but
the abbey continued to be a center for dedicated religious life, while the canons
functioned especially as confessors for the students of the schools, later the University, of
Paris. The medieval library of the abbey survives fairly intact today in the Bibliothèque
Nationale, Paris.
Grover A.Zinn
[See also: ACHARD OF SAINT-VICTOR; ADAM OF SAINT-VICTOR; GILDUIN
OF SAINT-VICTOR; GODEFROI OF SAINT-VICTOR; HUGH OF SAINT-VICTOR;
MYSTICISM; REGULAR CANONS; RICHARD OF SAINT-VICTOR; SCHOOLS,
MONASTIC; THEOLOGY; WALTER OF SAINT-VICTOR; WILLIAM OF
CHAMPEAUX]
Bonnard, Fourier. Histoire de l’abbaye royale et de l’ordre des chanoines réguliers de Saint-Victor
de Paris. 2 vols. Paris: Savaete, 1905–07.
Jocqué, Luc, and Ludo Millis, eds. Liber ordinis Sancti Victoris Parisiensis. CCCM 61. Turnhout:
Brepols, 1984.
Longère, Jean, ed. L’abbaye parisienne de Saint-Victor au moyen âge. Turnhout: Brepols, 1991.
Ouy, Gilbert, et al. Le catalogue de la bibliothèque de l’abbaye de Saint-Victor de Paris de Claude
de Grandrue 1514. Paris: CNRS, 1983.
SAINT-WANDRILLE.
One of a number of medieval foundations located on the right bank of the Seine,
theBenedictine abbey of Saint-Wandrille remains distinct fromthe group as an active,
surviving monastery. Founded bySt. Wandrille (d. 688) in 649, and sacked by the
Vikingsin the mid-9th century, Saint-Wandrille, also known asFontenelle, was rebuilt and
restored after 966 by AbbotMaynard. A prosperous monastery in the Middle Ages,Saint-
Wandrille was suppressed at the Revolution and fellinto disrepair, only to be revived after
1931.
Ruins of the medieval abbey church reveal several building campaigns. Most of the
building, including the two-bay transepts aligned with the side aisles of the nave, and
radiating chapels (alternating with polygonal and rectangular chapels), was built between
1255 and 1288. The seven-bay nave with side aisles and regular compound piers was not
completed until the 14th century.
Unlike the church, many of the conventual buildings survive. The 11th- and 12th-
century refectory has large round-headed windows and blind arcading, and the 14th-
century cloister has intriguing bits of architectural sculpture: the eastern wall holds a
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