To appreciate this work, it is helpful to place it in two contexts: modern studies of the canons regular of Abbey and Congregation of Saint-Victor (ca. 1110-1798), and the seventeenth century when John of Toulouse was a member of the abbey.
One can mark the beginning of a new era of Victorine studies with the publication on Richard of Saint-Victor’s De contemplatione (Benjamin major) by Jean Châtillon in 1939 and Beryl Smalley’s studies of Andrew of Saint-Victor’s literal commentaries on the historical and prophetic books of the Old Testament, which became widely known through herThe Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1941). Châtillon followed with some preliminary studies that led to the publication of critical editions of Richard of Saint-Victor’s Liber exceptionum (J. Vrin, 1958), a monograph on Achard of Saint-Victor and the first edition of his sermons (J. Vrin, 1969). Jean Ribaillier edited Richard’s De trinitate (1958) and some of his Opuscules théologiques (J. Vrin, 1967). In 1991, the first volume of Brepols’s series of Victorine-related studies, Bibliotheca Victorina, appeared; the thirtieth volume was published in 2023. In 1984, Brepols published in its Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis Luc Jocqué’s edition of the customary of Saint-Victor, the Liber ordinis. Since then, under his direction, Patrice Sicard, Dominique Poirel, and others have been publishing critical editions of the writings of Hugh, Andrew, and Thomas (Gallus) of Saint-Victor in that series. In 2005 there appeared the first volume of the series Corpus Victorinum, edited by Rainer Berndt and published by Aschendorff. The volume here under review is the sixteenth in this series, which includes both studies and critical editions.
Almost all these works were devoted to noteworthy Victorine theologians who flourished between the abbey’s founding and 1220. However, Saint-Victor continued for more than half a millennium as an abbey where canons devoted themselves to prayer, study and ministry. Shortly after its founding, other monasteries adopted its constitutions or received abbots and canons from Saint-Victor, so that within a century, Saint-Victor was head of a congregation of about 40 abbeys located in France, England, Ireland, Germany, Italy, and Scandinavia. Some of them, like Saint-Victor, had dependent priories, from which Victorine canons managed the abbeys’ estates and provided local pastoral ministry. The bonds that held the Victorine congregation together frayed over time, but the Abbey of Saint-Victor always had many dependent priories. Saint-Victor was where canons were professed and educated, but most of them seem to have been assigned at various times to priories.
Over the course of its history, Saint-Victor experienced several periods of religious reform. notably in 1334 under Pope Benedict XII, and around 1500 under Jon Mombaer. In 1622, Pope Gregory XV appointed Cardinal François de la Rouchefoucauld to reform the Augustinian canons of France. He decided to amalgamate all of them into a single entity, the Congregation of France. His effort to do that is the setting of John of Toulouse’s Congregatio Victorina.
John of Toulouse was born to middle-class parents in Paris in 1590, entered the Abbey of Saint Victor when he was 15, and was ordained a priest in 1614. He served the abbey as sacristan, cellarer, and chamberlain. In 1627 he was named prior of the abbey’s dependency at Athis-Orge. In 1635 he returned to Saint-Victor to serve as subprior. He was appointed prior-vicar in 1636, an office he held until he was deposed in 1641. He was exonerated in 1645 when Saint-Victor was allowed to leave the Congregation of France. He died in 1659. [1]
The Congregatio Victorina was part of the energetic literary, political, and legal campaign that John of Toulouse waged to maintain the independence of Saint-Victor from the Congregation of France, and is one of the first of his copious writings about the founding and history of Saint-Victor. His two major works are the Annales abbatialis ecclesiae Sancti Victoris Parisiensis, and the Antiquitates regalis abbatiae Sancti Victoris; neither has ever been published. He began the Annales in 1625. He had completed five volumes when his work was destroyed in a fire in his room in 1637. He then began a second redaction. TheAntiquitates recount the spread of the Victorine order, its reform and distinguished members.
The Congregatio Victorina is in two parts, the first of which was completed by 1634. The first part devotes fifty-two chapters to the founding of Saint-Victor and the monasteries that joined it in the first century of its existence. The remaining twelve deal with general chapters, canonesses, and the three situations in which canons of the Abbey might find themselves: claustrales resident at Saint-Victor; scholars there; and canons serving in priories or obediences. John of Toulouse writes of the decree of Pope Benedict XII for the reform of the Canons Regular in 1334 and of the introduction of the Windesheim customs around 1500. The final chapter preserves several official decrees from the fifteenth century, one of which lists places that used the Victorine liturgy. The second part opens with a chapter on the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Paris. Chapters 2-14 concern the introduction of the Windesheim customs into Saint-Victor under Jon Mombaer, which resulted in the establishment of the second Victorine Congregation. Many of the subsequent chapters tell of general chapters of the congregation. Then John of Toulouse reaches the decree of 1622, which empowered Cardinal François de la Rouchefoucauld to unite all canons regular in France into a new congregation. It details the successful struggle that John of Toulouse led to prevent that from happening to Saint-Victor.
This edition has a twofold apparatus, one of sources and parallels, the other of corrections and other aspects of the source manuscript. The introduction briefly treats the biography and works of John of Toulouse, and the sources he used in compiling this work, one of which was a no-longer extant version of the abbey’s necrology. There is an index of biblical citations, which are not numerous, and of which the largest number are from the Psalms and the Song of Songs. This is followed by an index of sources; most cited are the letters of Stephen of Tournai. There is a lengthy index of persons, an index to citations from the recently edited version of the necrology (Aschendorff, 2012), and an index of manuscripts. The work is very carefully produced.
The utility of this work is that it is the first printed version of an important source for the history of Congregation of Saint-Victor. As such, it invites a wider than usual perspective on the abbey’s network with other abbeys which belonged to its congregation or were influenced by its customs and liturgy. It is a reminder that the canons regular were groups of dedicated men, mostly priests, whose primary task was to live in community, praise God, grow in holiness, and minister to people, not just in Paris but in many smaller places, where the abbey had priories. John of Toulouse’s pride in his abbey’s achievement was shared by other Victorine historians of his era wrote chronicles about its history. Readers interested in the Victorines will welcome publication of their writings. The only comprehensive history of the abbey is Fourier Bonnard’s two-volume,Histoire de l’abbaye royal et de la chanoines réguliers de St-Victor de Paris (1904, 1907). It may soon be time for a team of scholars to write a replacement.
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Note:
1. These dates are taken from the volume here reviewed. The dates in Maxwell Crossnoe’s excellent chapter on the history and historians of Saint-Victor in the Brill Companion to the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris (2018) are slightly different. That article has been very helpful in writing this review.