Reading in the Middle Ages

There are some of a dozen rules of a general character that Hugh [of St. Victor] gives for the shaping of those habits which the reader must acquire so that his striving lead him to wisdom, rather than to the accumulation of knowledge pursued for the purpose of showing off. The reader is one who has made himself into an exile in order to concentrate his entire attention and desire on wisdom, which thus becomes the hoped-for home.


Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text, 1996