«Speculator castrorum Dei». Philosophy and Theology in Godfrey of St. Victor’s Sermons

In his sermons Godfrey of St. Victor analyzes the theoretical foundations of the mechanical and liberal arts starting from the teaching of his school. Considering the arts as man’s guaranteed expedient for his survival after original sin, Godfrey clarifies the modalities of a virtuous use of artes in the state of sin, even if he insists on showing the dramatic condition of the human soul linked to a body forced into materiality. By circumscribing the limits of the exercise of human reason, Godfrey distinguishes a philosophy as pagan metaphysics (whose object is grasped by man with the exercise of the sola ratio) and as a process of ascension to true theology (whose subject, otherwise unknown to the man, is granted to him with Revelation): if in the first one there is a risk, a danger of sin, the second is certainly necessary for the man who seeks God