HUGH OF FOUILLOY

Prior, spiritual writer, canon regular of st. au gustine; b. Fouilloy, near Corbie and Amiens, between 1100 and 1110; d. Saint-Laurent-au-Bois, 1172–73. Probably a student at the Benedictine Abbey of corbie, he joined the nearby priory of Saint-Laurent-au-Bois in the period when it was not under Corbie but was held by Austin canons. In 1153 he became prior, four years after declining the more important priorship of Saint-Denis, Reims. Before the research of J. mabillon his works were usually attributed to his famous contemporary, hugh of saint-victor (d. 1141). Each of his four major spiritual treatises is built upon a sustained analogy; the religious cloister and the detached, recollected soul; medicines for physical illnesses and remedies for analogous sins; carnal marriage and spiritual marriage with Christ; and the hub, rim, and spokes of a wheel as the figure of the religious superior, community, and the various virtues or vices that may govern their relationship. These four are the De claustro animae (Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne 176:1017–1182), the De medicina animae (Patrologia Latina 176:1183–1202), the De Nuptiis (Patrologia Latina 176:1201–18), and the unpublished De rota praelationis et de rota simulationis. He wrote also the De avibus ad Raynerum, which is included as bk. 1, ch. 1 to 56 of the treatise De bestiis (Patrologia Latina 177:15–55). His De pastoribus et ovibus and his chartulary of Saint-Laurent are both unpublished.

Bibliography: j. mabillon, Annales Ordinis S. Benedicti, 6v. (Lucca 1739–45) 6:421–425, with his letter of refusal to Reims, repr. in Patrologia Latina, ed. j. p. migne, 217 v., indexes 4 v. (Paris 1878–90) 196:1553–58. Histoire littéraire de la France (Paris 1814–1941) 13:492–507. m. manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 3 v. (Munich 1911–31) 3:226–228 h. peltier, "Hugues de Fouilloy, chanoine régulier de Saint-Laurent-au-Bois," Revue du moyen-âge latin 2 (1946) 25–44. j. c. didier, Catholicisme 5:1033–34.

[w. e. wilkie]