Beverly Kienzle focuses on a surprisingly under-studied component of the twelfth-century polymath's written corpus: her works of biblical exegesis. In the book Kienzle offers a careful analysis of Hildegard's Expositiones euangeliorum – fifty-eight homilies that expound twenty-seven short passages (pericopes) from the Gospels. Perhaps even more exciting, however, is Kienzle's skilful extraction of the exegetical material embedded, and often overlooked, in Hildegard's more famous visionary treatises. As Kienzle ably shows, a characteristic form of monastic biblical exegesis permeates all Hildegard's works.

Kienzle leads her readers into Hildegard's exegetical world with two opening chapters that place her within both the broader context of her political and cultural milieu and the more specific intellectual and spiritual context of a twelfth-century Benedictine monastery. Citing recent research on the education and intellectual activities of other, more ordinary, religious women in German-speaking areas, Kienzle shows that while Hildegard was clearly extraordinary, she emerged from a culture in which she stood alone neither as an educated woman nor as a female biblical exegete.

In chapter ii Kienzle turns to the proximate sources of Hildegard's exegetical voice: the monastic liturgy (experienced through the ‘ear of the heart’) and written patristic texts (experienced through the ‘eye of the mind’). Kienzle places Hildegard within a landscape suffused with biblical exegesis, communicated to her, and to her monastic sisters and brothers, through the liturgy – a ‘lived exegesis’ (p. 64) experienced through hearing sermons and communal readings of patristic works, both in the context of the liturgy of the hours, and at daily chapter meetings and meals. Kienzle also points to the clear influence of Origen and his concept of spiritual exegesis, either imprinted directly on Hildegard through Origen's own writings or through her reading of later authors who incorporated his ideas, as well to the influence of Gregory the Great and Rupert of Deutz.

Chapter iii, which focuses on the form of Hildegard's exegesis, opens with a discussion of Hildegard's basic education centred on the study of the Psalms under Jutta of Sponheim. Kienzle then shows, using examples drawn from the Expositiones, how Hildegard constructed and performed a ‘Vox Hildegardis’ (p. 151) using glossing techniques ranging from providing a synonym for a single word to taking on a ‘vox dramatis personae’ (p. 132), extending the voices of biblical figures – including, most boldly, God and Jesus – creating what Kienzle sees as a continuous narrative exegesis that is akin to drama. Kienzle also offers a rather extensive textual comparison between Hildegard's work and a nearly contemporary corpus of homilies from the monastery of Admont in Austria. Kienzle asserts, without explaining the reasons for her judgement, that this complex set of texts, once falsely attributed to Abbot Godfrey of Admont, should be considered the work of his more famous brother, Abbot Irimbert. Such a ready attribution to Irimbert obscures the interplay that likely took place between Admont's female and male exegetes in the production of those pseudonymous texts, and misses what might be an interesting comparison with what we know of Hildegard's collaborative work at Disibodenberg and Rupertsberg.

Chapters iv, v and vi treat the content of this exegetical narrative – what Kienzle calls the ‘Glossa Hildegardiana’ (p. 151) – in more depth. In chapter iv Kienzle argues that Hildegard's theology of history, shaped by the writings of Augustine and of Rupert of Deutz, not only dominates the Expositiones, but also provides a ‘nexus for thematic consistency in the magistra's entire opus’ (p. 197). Chapter v explores the parallels between Hildegard's Expositiones and the Ordo virtutum, her liturgical drama set to music. Kienzle argues that the Ordo virtutum and the Expositiones both represent the soul's struggle toward God as a moral drama, and that the aspect of performance that she reads in the ‘Glossa Hildegardiana’ suggests that the boundaries between exegesis and drama remained somewhat fluid. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the way in which Kienzle traces the outlines of Hildegard's use of exegetical narrative to provide moral instruction to her nuns at the Rupertsberg. Exegesis, she argues, functioned in this ‘textual community’ not only as a spiritual and intellectual dialogue between Hildegard and the scriptural text or patristic commentary, but also as a means of providing the women in her care with multi-media instruction in the obedience necessary to follow the Rule of St Benedict, for example, or in the moral conduct that she saw as essential to their salvation.

Chapter vi is the only section of the book that addresses the issue of Hildegard's influence beyond her own immediate community. Here Kienzle considers the degree to which Hildegard addressed the problems of heresy and schism in the Expositiones. This material, which is an extension of Kienzle's earlier work on Hildegard's preaching against the Cathars, fits rather awkwardly into the book's central focus on learning, writing and teaching at Rupertsberg. This is, nevertheless, an interesting discussion of the ways in which Hildegard used her exegetical voice to point up scriptural themes (God's creation of all things, for example) that refuted central tenets of Cathar belief.

One of the most compelling aspects of the book under review is the way in which Kienzle sets the exceptional aspects of the ‘Glossa Hildegardiana’ against the spiritual and intellectual backdrop that she shared with less extraordinary contemporary religious women. Kienzle's insights into the role of the study of the Psalms, the continuous experience of ‘lived exegesis’ through liturgy, and the didactic function of Hildegard's performance of exegesis for the women under her spiritual care at Rupertsberg contribute significantly to our developing understanding of the form and function of women's education in twelfth-century monastic communities.