Abbey of Saint-Victor, Paris

William was made Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne in 1113, and was succeeded in his hermitage at St. Victor's by Gilduin [fr], who promoted the canonical order and its new abbey vigorously.

The traditions of William of Champeaux were handed on, and the abbey became a center of piety and learning, attracting famous students, scholars and intellectuals including Hugh of St. Victor, Peter Lombard and Thomas Becket.

It was around 1108 that William of Champeaux retired from teaching with a few disciples in a hermitage (or cella) abandoned near a chapel dedicated to St. Victor, at the foot of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève (the abbey remained outside the walls of the enclosure built by Philip Augustus at the end of the twelfth century).

It is most probably during his abbacy, that the customs of St. Victor were composed in the Liber Ordinis Sancti Victoris, following a rigorous asceticism, where silence and manual labor prevailed.

Thanks to Hugh and his comprehensive teachings, the school took on a universalist dimension that Victorines defended against those who wanted to "rip and shred the whole body and who, by a perverse judgment, arbitrarily choose whatever pleases them."

The cloister became a public school of theology and liberal arts, a kind of monastery-university attended by the philosopher Abelard and Peter Lombard, author of the famous Sentences (Libri Quattuor Sententiarum).

But there were other properties: liturgical manuscripts were kept for the choir, some others near the refectory, for reading aloud in the infirmary to the sick and dying, and others consisting of double reserves by the librarian (armarius).

The first being recognized as the true founder of the school, abbot of 1125-1140, the complete scholar, philosopher, mystic and teacher, whose book De sacramentis christianae fidei (1136-1141) is the most important theological synthesis before scholastic Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Philosophies developed by these Victorines were to give a rational support for the mystical, aided by divine grace, enlightenment or innate principles of truth to the soul.