Andrew of Saint Victor’s Isaiah Commentary and the Bible at Saint Victor

Abstract

The transmission of the Vulgate in the twelfth century is a story full of lacunae. Since the Abbey of Saint Victor was so central to the development of medieval exegesis in this period, it would seem that it also provides insight into the establishment of the Vulgate textus receptus in this period. This article examines the Bible text as it appears in Andrew of Saint Victor’s commentary on Isaiah. The evidence suggests that Andrew worked with a variety of biblical codices, and also reported on variants that he knew through commentaries, such as Jerome and the Glossa ordinaria. Some of these variants were influenced by his (probably indirect) access to the Hebrew Bible. The conclusion shows that his commentaries should be used with great caution as evidence for the development of the twelfth-century textus receptus. They are a great resource for insight into the methods of biblical criticism in the twelfth century, but the exact Bible version Andrew used still remains elusive to a certain degree.