Hugh of Saint-Cher

His Eminence, the Most Reverend Lord Hugh of Saint-Cher, O.P.
Cardinal Priest of Santa Sabina (1244-1261), Cardinal Bishop of Ostia (1261-1262), Cardinal Priest of Santa Sabina (1262-1263)
Province	Rome
See	Bishop of Ostia
Installed	1261
Term ended	1262
Predecessor	Rinaldo di Jenne
Successor	Henry of Segusio
Orders
Ordination	ca. 1227
Consecration	1261
Created Cardinal	1244
Personal details
Born	ca. 1200 Saint-Cher, Dauphiné
Died	19 March 1263 Orvieto, Papal States
Nationality	Dauphinois
Denomination	Roman Catholic

Hugh of Saint-Cher, O.P., (ca. 1200 – 19 March 1263) was a French Dominican friar who became a cardinal and noted biblical commentator.

Life

Hugh was born at Saint-Cher, a suburb of Vienne, Dauphiné, around the beginning of the 13th century and, while a student at the University of Paris, he studied philosophy, theology, and jurisprudence, which latter subject he later taught at that same university.

In 1225, he entered the Dominican priory there and took the religious habit of the recently founded Order. Soon after his admission, he was appointed as Prior Provincial of the Order for France. He was made the prior of the Paris monastery in 1230. During those years, he contributed largely to the Order's success, and won the confidence of Pope Gregory IX, who sent him as a papal legate to Constantinople in 1233.

Cardinalate

Hugh was created a Cardinal Priest by Pope Innocent IV in 1244, with his titular church being Santa Sabina, the mother church of the Dominican Order. He then played an important part in the First Council of Lyons, which was held the following year. He contributed to the institution of the Feast of Corpus Christi on the General Roman Calendar. In 1247, upon instructions of Pope Innocent, Hugh revised the Carmelite Rule of St. Albert, which the Saint Albert Avogadro, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, had given the first Carmelite friars on Mount Carmel. The Holy See felt that it was necessary to mitigate some of its more demanding elements to make it more compatible with life in Europe. These changes were approved by the same pope, and this revision remains the Rule for the Carmelite Order. After the death of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, Pope Innocent sent Hugh to Germany as his legate for the election of a successor.

Under the authority of Pope Alexander IV, in 1255 Hugh supervised the condemnations of the Introductorius in Evangelium aeternum of Gherardino da Borgo San Donnino, promoting the teachings of Abbot Joachim of Fiore. These teachings worried the bishops as it had become widespread among the "Spiritual" wing of the Franciscan friars, to which Gherardino belonged. He also supervised the condemnation of William of St Amour's De periculis novissimorum temporum. This work was an expression of the attack on the mendicant Orders, which were becoming so successful in the lives of the universities, by the secular clergy who had previously had unchallenged authority there. He served as Major Penitentiary of the Catholic Church 1256–1262. He was named Cardinal Bishop of Ostia in December 1261, but resigned a few months later and returned to his title of Santa Sabina.

He was in residence in Orvieto, Italy, with Pope Urban IV, who had established a long term residence there, when he died on 19 March 1263.

Works

In universum Vetus et Novum Testamentum, 1732

Hugh of St-Cher (or, possibly, a team of scholars under his direction) was the first to compile a so-called "correctorium", a collection of variant readings of the Bible. His work, entitled "Correctio Biblie", survives in more than a dozen manuscripts.^[1]

In the preface to the "Correctio Biblie", Hugh writes that he has collated various Latin versions, biblical commentaries and as well as the Hebrew manuscripts.^[2] For his approach to the text of the Bible, he was criciticsed by William de la Mare, author of another correctorium.^[3]

With the aid of many of his Order, he edited the first concordance of the Bible (Concordantiae Sacrorum Bibliorum or Concordantiae S. Jacobi), but the assertion that we owe the present division of the chapters of the Vulgate to him is false.

Besides a commentary on the Book of Sentences, he wrote the Postillae in sacram scripturam juxta quadruplicem sensum, litteralem, allegoricum, anagogicum et moralem, published frequently in the 15th and 16th centuries. His Sermones de tempore et sanctis are apparently only extracts. His exegetical works were published at Venice in 1754 in eight volumes.

References

• Quétif-Échard, Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum
• Heinrich Seuse Denifle, in Archiv für Literatur und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, i.49, ii.171, iv.263 and 471
• L'Année dominicaine, (1886) iii.509 and 883
• Chartularium universitatis Parisiensis, i.158.
•  "Hugh of St-Cher". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

Footnotes