Collected Works of Richard of St. Victor

His works fall into the three classes of dogmatic, mystical, and exegetical. In the first, the most important is the treatise in six books on the Trinity, with the supplement on the attributes of the Three Persons, and the treatise on the Incarnate Word. But greater interest now belongs to his mystical theology, which is mainly contained in the two books on mystical contemplation, entitled respectively "Benjamin Minor" and "Benjamin Major", and the allegorical treatise on the Tabernacle. He carries on the mystical doctrine of Hugh, in a somewhat more detailed scheme, in which the successive stages of contemplation are described. These are six in number, divided equally among the three powers of the soul — the imagination, the reason, and the intelligence, and ascending from the contemplation of the visible things of creation to the rapture in which the soul is carried "beyond itself" into the Divine Presence.