Reading the past as God's narrative : history as salvific process in the writings of Hugh of St. Victor
Date
2001
Authors
Furstenau, Sonia
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Abstract
The narrative of its past is an essential element of Christianity, a religion in which history and faith are thoroughly intertwined. At the beginning of the fifth century St Augustine developed a Christian historiography, a theology of history, which shaped the ways in which the past, the present, and the future were understood during the Middle Ages. Seven centuries later, at the height of the twelfth-century renaissance, Hugh of St Victor passionately defended the role of history in the process of salvation as developed by St Augustine, arguing that it was "the foundation and principle of sacred learning."