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Abstract
This dissertation examines the relationship between mystical theology and speculative theology in the works of Richard of Saint Victor, a canon of the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris who died in the year 1173. It's chief sources are Richard's treatises The Twelve Patriarchs, The Mystical Ark, The Four Degrees of Violent Charity, and the De Trinitate.
These works of Richard of Saint Victor find their correct interpretive context in the concrete life style of the Victorine Canons Regular, which conceived of the path to God as a communal Path traveled in edification of neighbor. This life context impacted on Richard's interpretation of scripture where he read examples, models and patterns, the contemplation of which would restore the image and likeness of God. In turn, Richard's understanding of the human person as image and likeness of God was focused contemplatively on the inner reality of the Trinity as a trinity of persons defined by their mutual relationships of the giving and receiving of love.
Richard's works outline a pattern of contemplative experience which define the perfection of the human person as image and likeness of God in social relationship. The central paradigm which operates throughout is that of the Transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor, which Richard develops in terms of the Trinitarian relations which it embodies. Climbing the mountain through the practice of the virtues, the contemplative reaches the peak in knowledge of self, that is, the experience of being a son in the Son, as true image and likeness of God. In this mystical experience of ecstasy, the Father speaks the Word, the Son, and he is heard by the Spirit. This revelation of the Trinity to the contemplative becomes the pattern for communal life into which one must be inserted in order to live as image and likeness of God.