Chapter 24 of Book II of Hugh of St Victor’s Didascalicon comes in his list of the seven mechanical arts, where he takes up the third, “navigation”. The work is a twelfth-century guide to the arts and to reading, and this chapter is his own definition of the art, set beside his chapters on the others.
Read in contextNavigation includes all commerce in buying, selling and exchanging goods, domestic or foreign. This is rightly a kind of rhetoric of its own sort, because eloquence is most necessary to this profession. Hence he who is said to preside over eloquence, Mercury, is called as it were _merkaton kyrios_, lord of merchants. It penetrates the secrets of the world, visits unseen shores, traverses horrid deserts, and exercises the commerce of humanity with barbarous nations and unknown tongues. Its study unites peoples, quiets wars, confirms peace, and turns private goods to the common use of all.