Wednesday, February 11, 2026

It is the 11th of February 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

I would be fascinated to know what percentage of the audience would know who Wally Pipp was. 40%? It might depend on your age.

 

Wally Pipp was, for a time, the person for explaining a “kind of person”- let me explain. Wally Pipp was the best player on the 1922 Yankees, not named Babe Ruth. He was the 1st baseman who famously got a headache, sat out a game, and was replaced by Lou Gehrig, who went on, famously, to play 2130 consecutive games. If you look up “Wally Pipp” in the history of the Yankees, he’s either been overlooked completely or he’s a footnote to Gehrig.

 

Today, I present to you the Wally Pipp of Medieval Scholastic Theology. Attentive listeners to recent shows might say “aha! Like Thomas Aquinas!” To which I say- exactly- but before there was Aquinas, there was Hugh of St. Victor. I was saddened in my perusal of general books on Christian history to find his name almost always absent from indices and, if referenced, only as “someone who was kind of doing what Aquinas did later”.

 

We don’t know a lot about Hugh’s early life- he was likely from Saxony or Flanders- he was born around 1096 and attended an Augustinian monastery in Halberstadt. From here, with an Uncle- also in religious orders and also called Hugh- he went to Paris and settled in at the Abbey of St. Victor. The Abbey had been set up as a hermitage by William of Champeaux and used by Peter Abelard in the early 1100s. Hugh and the others who studied there would be called the “Victorines”- Hugh being among the preeminent Victorines who took up a new charge, or reanimated an ancient one: how does one maneuver amongst ideas about God and the knowledge of the natural world? Is there a place for “pagan” philosophy?

 

Here we hear echoes of Augustine and Plato (Hugh of St. Victor was called the “second Augustine”), and we certainly see where Aquinas and his love of Aristotle come into play.

 

This is at the heart of the 12th century Renaissance and the development of the University system. Hugh of St. Victor, echoing the Christian philosopher Boethius and the ancients, called for a system of education based on the “Trivium” and the “Quadrivium”- the “lower” 3 or “trivium” are grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Once you’ve studied those tools, you move on to the “upper 4” or “Quadrivium” of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy.

 

Hugh famously wrote: “Learn everything…and you will see afterward that nothing is useless.” He believed that the Christian should learn about the natural world- in his schema for a complete education, he also included practical arts of sewing, hunting, and theatre… Hugh and the other Victorines are going to declare the whole world as God’s.

 

He wrote biblical commentary as well as the “Didaskalion,” a kind of early encyclopedia that solidified his encouragement of “secular” learning. He wrote a commentary on the “Celestial Hierarchy” of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite- in it he delineated Angels, and this would be picked up by Thomas Aquinas, who used Dionysius by way of Hugh. Hugh would also write something like a systematic theology based on the Medieval understanding of the Sacraments- this, too, would be foundational for the theology of Aquinas.

 

Hugh of St. Victor- and the Abbey and eventually the University of Paris will become the link from the ancient world- and the world of Augustine with the coming age of Scholasticism and the Renaissance. Hugh’s genius is his blending of Christian mysticism and an ability for keen analysis. He develops on Augustine and the Platonic tradition of “looking up” to the forms and “spiritual things” as well as presages the coming Aquinas and his love of Aristotle and the tradition of “looking down” to the substances that make up the world.

 

The idea of a Christian university- so often laid at the feet of Thomas and the later Renaissance does well to remember its “Wally Pipp”- the oft forgotten Hugh of St. Victor on the day he died in 1141.

 

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and John chapter 8:

12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

13 The Pharisees challenged him, “Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid.”

14 Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going. 15 You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one. 16 But if I do judge, my decisions are true, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me. 17 In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. 18 I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me.”

19 Then they asked him, “Where is your father?”

“You do not know me or my Father,” Jesus replied. “If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” 20 He spoke these words while teaching in the temple courts near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him, because his hour had not yet come.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 11th of February 2026, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who wonders where all the Hugh’s have gone…a solid name with endless pun options, he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who reminds you that the 1922 Yankees also had Bullet Joe Bush and Sad Sam Jones. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.