[See also: ENAMELING; JEWELRY AND METALWORKING]
Collon-Gevaert, Suzanne. Histoire des arts du métal en Belgique. Brussels: Palais des Académies,
1951, p. 149. [With bibliography.]
——, Jean Lejeune, and Jacques Stiennon. A Treasury of Romanesque Art: Metalwork,
Illuminations and Sculpture from the Valley of the Meuse. New York: Phaidon, 1972, pp. 83–
84.
Davis-Weyer, Caecilia. Early Medieval Art 300–1150: Sources and Documents in the History of
Art. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1971, pp. 170–72.
von Falke, Otto, and Heinrich Frauberger. Deutsche Schmelzarbeiten des Mittelalters und andere
Kunstwerke der Kunst-Historischen Ausstellung zu Dusseldorf 1902. Frankfurt am Main: Baer,
1904, pp. 61–87.
GODEFROI OF SAINT-VICTOR
(ca. 1125-after 1194). Godefroi of Saint-Victor (not to be confused with another
Augustinian canon of the late 12th century, Geoffroy of Breteuil) seems to have studied
the Trivium in Paris for some years between 1140 and 1155, when Adam du Petit-Pont
was active. By 1160, he had entered the abbey of Saint-Victor, where he received his
theological and monastic training. Imbued with the intellectually robust spirit of Hugh
and Richard of Saint-Victor, Godefroi found himself forced to leave the abbey under the
priorship of Walter, ca. 1180. After Walter’s death, Godefroi (ca. 1190) returned and
remained at the abbey until his own death.
His liturgical poetry includes verses dedicated to St. Augustine and to the Virgin
Mary. Over thirty sermons for feast days survive. Godefroi’s major theological works are
Fons philosophiae and Microcosmus. The former, written in 1178, is an elaborate
description in verse of a course of study in the liberal arts, Scripture, and theology in
Paris, and is much indebted to the program of Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Didascalicon. The
Microcosmus contains a moral interpretation of the biblical story of Creation and a
consideration of divine grace and will vis-à-vis human desires and emotions. Godefroi
develops numerous parallels between human beings (the microcosmus) and the created
world (megacosmus). He strove to give a positive value to nature (as created and as
“fallen”), to the human body, to the so-called “mechanical arts,” and to classical Roman
authors and especially their ethical teaching. This evoked opposition from Walter of
Saint-Victor, who brought about Godefroi’s tenyear exile to a rural priory. He also wrote
on the eucharist and on the symbolic meaning of the parts of Christ’s body.
Godefroi’s was one of the last voices in the Victorine chorus that sang the praises of
what might be styled 12th-century humanism: a protest against the regnant opinion of
body-soul dualism and an affirmation of the harmony of nature and grace in Christian
life.
Mark Zier
[See also: HUGH OF SAINT-VICTOR; SAINT-VICTOR, ABBEY AND SCHOOL
OF; WALTER OF SAINT-VICTOR]
Godefroi of Saint-Victor. Fons philosophiae, ed. Pierre Michaud-Quantin. Namur: Godenne, 1956
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