I’ve written before about the pleasures of knowledge according to a Roman academy and Kircher’s adoption of a Platonic motto on the beauty of knowing everything. Last night, a little before falling asleep, I stumbled upon Hugh of Saint Victor’s praise of meditatio, a practice closely related to the lectio divina. It is, without doubt, the most beautiful praise of intellectual work I’ve read, an activity that according to Hugh gives us, in Jerome Taylor’s elegant translation, a “foretaste of the sweetness of eternal quiet”. In meditatio, the rumination characteristic of the lectio divina is carried forth beyond the confines of the book and into the world.