Lesley-Anne Dyer - The Twelfth-Century Influence of Hilary of Poitiers on Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate

In recent years, books by Mark Weedman and Carl Beckwith on Hilary of Poitiers’ De Trinitate have encouraged patristics scholars to think anew about the nature and importance of Hilary’s contribution to Pro-Nicene Christianity. The struggle to know how to approach this text was shared by medieval scholars. While John Cavadini has discussed the use of Hilary by orthodox Carolingian scholars like Alcuin, Madigan has shown that high medieval scholars wrestled to reconcile the testimony of Augustine that Hilary was important with the questionable theology that they found in his text. The twelfth-century author, Peter Lombard compiles many quotations from Hilary, but these quotations are the source of multiple questions in the commentaries of Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure. There are also reports that Gilbert of Poitiers, who was condemned in the twelfth century for his Trinitarian theology, studied “with” Hilary of Poitiers. It has been surmised that such language is figurative and refers to Gilbert’s reading of Hilary.

My paper examines a unique use of Hilary’s Trinitarian thought by the twelfth-century theologian, Richard of St. Victor, whose De Trinitate was revered and used for its orthodoxy throughout the scholastic period. Mark Weedman has argued that one of the key contributions that Hilary of Poitiers made to Pro-Nicene theology in the patristic period was his shift of discussion away from the eternity of generation towards the eternity of the divine substance. He also clearly connects divine eternity with divine infinity in a way that is unusual. My research has shown a remarkably similarity between this aspect of Hilary of Poitiers’ theology and one of Richard’s major Trinitarian improvements upon Anselm’s Perfect Being Theology, which was the explicit connection of the co-eternity of the Trinitarian persons with the aseity of the divine substance. This paper, therefore, explores one of the major positive influences of Hilary’s thought upon the medieval development of orthodox Trinitarian theology.