The Augustinian house of canons at St. Victor in Paris was founded in 1108 by William of Champeaux, the celebrated logician and theologian who retired there from the schools of Paris after undergoing a religious conversion and after Peter Abelard's attacks on his realism. The abbey survived until the French Revolution, but in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries it was especially famous for its public school and for the distinction of the masters and canons who resided and taught there. From William, St. Victor derived high religious ideals, a leaning toward the conservative theological tradition of the school of Anselm of Laon, and an active interest in the work of other Parisian schools. Its masters mediated between the theological orthodoxy and strictness of the Cistercians—Bernard of Clairvaux was a friend to St. Victor—and the intellectual adventurousness of such secular masters...