In Restoring Creation, Britton Brooks broadly seeks to contribute to a burgeoning field of scholarship that explores how the medieval English understood their relationship to the natural world by examining, in greatly focused detail, the early hagiographic dossiers of two hermit saints: Cuthbert and Guthlac. Though interested in the early medieval connections with the natural world, Brooks's approach is, by his own admission, less theoretical (or ecocritical) than other recent monographs. He instead draws on the natural world to frame the various historical, theological, and exegetical contexts with which these saints’ lives are in conversation. In particular, Brooks traces how a specific exegetical interpretation of the effects of the Fall on humanity and creation—stemming from Augustine—is drawn on, modified, and adapted by the various authors of the lives of Cuthbert and Guthlac. The central interpretation is that the saints’ miracles restore creation: “the indifferent Creation of the Fall can be restored to prelapsarian harmony with humanity by way of sanctity” (4). By examining how the saints restore creation in these various lives, Brooks is able to analyze the motivations of each hagiographer and offer perceptive commentary on the proper relationship between saint and created world.

The first three chapters of the book treat the early eighth-century vitae of Cuthbert (an anonymous prose life, a metrical life by Bede, and a revised prose life by Bede). In the anonymous Vita Sancti Cuthberti, Cuthbert performs a number of miracles that restore a prelapsarian Creation (for example, the instance where his feet are dried by two sea animals). Focusing on the author's use of the word praecipio (to instruct, order, command), Brooks argues that the restoration of creation in the anonymous Vita Sancti Cuthberti operates through a relational hierarchy of monastic obedience. By imitating the order of the monastery, Cuthbert becomes a conduit for ordering the world (both in his obedience to God and, through God, nature's obedience to him). As this process is firmly grounded in a named and delineated landscape, the text then also offers the potential for lay pilgrimage. Brooks begins his second chapter, on Bede's metrical Vita Sancti Cuthberti, by exploring its function as an opus geminatum (twinned work), which traditionally combines a prose work with a more ruminative metrical counterpart. Yet, in the construction of this text, Brooks argues that Bede anticipates many of the features that distinguish his later prose life from the anonymous one: Cuthbert is re-fashioned for universal relevance as an idealized, Gregorian monk-pastor who combines the active and the contemplative. Brooks explains how Cuthbert's sanctity is first given (Augustinian) exegetical framing in this work, transforming the “highly eremitic sanctity” of the anonymous Vita Sancti Cuthberti to one that focuses on monastic obedience to the Divine Office (121). Further, as an abstruse verse life, Bede's metrical Vita Sancti Cuthberti was also meant to be a reflective exercise for Bede and his potential reader. In the next chapter, Brooks explores how Bede drew on work begun in the first and later drafts of the metrical Vita to rewrite the anonymous Vita Sancti Cuthberti. Much of Bede's work here is meant to carefully cultivate the way Cuthbert restores creation: showing how the saint progressed and matured from active to contemplative. Drawing on how the various miracles connect to Cuthbert's development, Brooks explains how Bede gives greater shape to Cuthbert's perceived union of Antonian and Gregorian sanctity. Concurrently, Bede's exegetical framework has developed itself to the point where he believes the saint can indeed “restore a portion of Creation into its prelapsarian state” (171).

The final two chapters of this book center on Guthlac of Crowland, arguing for exegetical through-lines from the Cuthbertine lives and a similar emphasis on how the saint can restore Creation. The chapter on Felix's mid-eighth-century Vita Sancti Guthlaci traces this work's debt to its sources while also revealing how it moves beyond its predecessors by bringing restored creation to Guthlac on earth. Brooks describes the landscape in the Vita Sancti Guthlaci as enargaeic (appealing to the senses in a vivid and realistic manner)—its physicality ties Guthlac to the land and, in ways similar to the prose Vita Sancti Guthlaci, connects the natural world to Guthlac's progression toward sanctity (he must, after all, resist the demonic tempters who live in this dismal fen). Ultimately, the landscape is transformed by the saint, “restoring creation” further than the Cuthbertine Lives. The final chapter examines the vernacular afterlives of the Vita Sancti Guthlaci: the Old English Prose Life of Guthlac (a “translation” of the Vita Sancti Guthlaci) and Guthlac A (a poetic interpretation of the life of Guthlac that does not clearly draw on the Vita Sancti Guthlaci). Brooks argues that the Old English Prose Life of Guthlac takes Felix's landscape a step further, explaining how the author depicts the natural world through a vocabulary shared with boundary clauses (and how this consequently emphasizes the connection between landscape and spiritual progression). In the section on Guthlac A, Brooks describes how Guthlac returns to an in-bloom locus amoenus (pleasant place) after defeating the demons—a completely “restored creation” that participates in the doctrine of replacement (a joining of the hermitage with paradise).

As a whole, this book is a learned, important contribution to the ways in which early medieval hagiographers were attuned to the natural world and drew on it in connection to sanctity. Brooks is at his best when teasing out overlooked connections to various sources and tracing important textual keywords that unlock new meanings for the works he studies. His focus is, again by his own admission, narrow, but this is an indispensable resource for scholars of Cuthbert and Guthlac (particularly the chapter on the under-studied metrical Vita Sancti Cuthberti). While his basic argument is, I believe, well known (that saintly nature miracles tap into a prelapsarian connection with the world through God), the nuances of his arguments are perceptive and wide-ranging. I would have liked to see Brooks go further with his broader frame (how the natural world was perceived in early England) or, even as he begins the book, the connection to ecological crisis. He uses the conclusion to consider later afterlives rather than offering more cumulative thoughts on the human/nature dynamic. Additionally, while he does consider some Hiberno-Latin works, the underlying framework could have benefited from a broader North Atlantic context (where, for instance, might De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae fit in here?).