Hugh of St Victor is not someone about whom much detail is known, other than that he was raised at the Augustinian abbey of Hamersleben in Saxony, but moved to the even more recently founded abbey of St Victor, Paris, in around 1115, staying there until his death in 1141. How old he was when he came to Paris, and indeed whether he was born in Saxony or moved there from the region of Ypres (identified as his place of birth in certain twelfth-century sources) is unknown. All that is known is that Hugh produced over the next twenty-five years a remarkable series of doctrinal and mystical works, culminating in his De sacramentis fidei Christianae, that provided novices at his abbey, and many generations of readers throughout the medieval period, with a synthetic vision of both secular and sacred learning. Paul Rorem offers a succinct overview of Hugh's main writings, prefaced by an introductory chapter presenting the context of the foundation of St Victor by William of Champeaux. While Rorem follows tradition in assigning its foundation to 1108, a letter by a German student of William, describing how he had moved there ‘last Easter’ and taught both secular and sacred learning there, suggests that William was there only between 1111 and 1113. In any case, it is clear that Hugh, who may never have personally studied under William, but rather joined the community in the time of its first abbot, Gilduin, created his own distinct pedagogical synthesis. Rorem uses the sequence of writings adopted by Gilduin in compiling an edition of Hugh's works. Rorem thus steers away from the many difficult issues associated with the evolution of Hugh's literary output. We thus are deprived of grasping the evolution of Hugh's intellectual interests, and the way Gilduin himself sought to present the teacher who did so much for the abbey. Similarly absent is any sense in which Hugh's intellectual interests developed though interaction with other teachers in Paris, most famously Peter Abelard. Rorem sees his task more as one of straight exposition of the major doctrinal themes in Hugh's writing, with particular emphasis on his overriding interest in the work of creation and redemption, as expounded in the De sacramentis. In a final third section, we are introduced to Hugh's various treatises about the ark of the covenant and his writings about love, although these were not all written after his great doctrinal synthesis. Quite separate from the book is an essay on Hugh's commentary on Pseudo-Denis, a text that is difficult to relate to his broader output. Opinions vary as to when it was written. The lack of reference to specific works of Hugh in the index limits the usefulness of the volume. None the less, it provides a valuable introduction to a twelfth-century author who deserves to be better known.