For the early monks of Cîteaux, or New Monastery as it was called, the senses were an important component of their worship as well as of their daily life, and they incorporated into their liturgical manuscripts many aspects of what they saw, felt, and heard in the church and of what they smelled and tasted in the refectory. The illuminations in these manuscripts, most of which are in the municipal library at Dijon, are well known and have been studied by many scholars. Their analysis has been piecemeal, however, according to the author of this book, who relates the images to contemporary trends in theology, spirituality, and liturgy and identifies “tangible links between the monks” ideas about communal reading and singing and what they heard and saw. She seeks in particular to explain “Cîteaux's artistic passion for oral and aural themes” (34, 37), which were associated with its care, especially under Abbot Stephen Harding, for “correcting the text of the Bible and perfecting the form and the words of the liturgy” (16). The text of the book, following the introduction, is divided into four chapters, of which the first, entitled “The Joy of Psalmody,” is devoted primarily to the liturgy and has three sections on the night office, reconstructing Advent, and the Advent Cursus. It analyzes in particular the innovations at Cîteaux in the lections, responsories, and verses in the second nocturns and the differences from those sung at Chartres.

The second chapter is on “Jerome's Legacy at Twelfth-Century Cîteaux” and studies the influence of Jerome as an editor, translator, and spiritual teacher. He was both a source and a model, and more than any other single writer, he “forged the path that the Cistercian monks, and particularly their abbots, would follow” (93). Like other new monasteries, Cîteaux needed new service books, including a new edition of the Bible, a new breviary, and a new hymnbook. The words sung in the choir and heard in the refectory were as important for the founders as the reform of monastic life, and the influence of Jerome was central in these respects. Almost all his prologues were read aloud at Cîteaux, and the monks heard “at regular intervals, discussions of the original languages of Scripture, the quality of the written versions, and reminders that these preserved, at least in the case of the prophetic books, spoken words” (71–72). No less than the editors and liturgists, the artists in the monastic scriptorium “drew on the passages most familiar to them, those they heard and sang in the liturgy” (95), including the works of Jerome, whom they regarded as divinely inspired and as “a conduit for God's word” and whose works were “akin to Scripture” (82).

Stephen Harding is the principal subject of the third chapter, entitled “The Virgin and the Abbot.” He played a parallel role as “text editor, liturgical reformer and spiritual teacher” and believed, like Jerome, that these vocations were connected (94). The artists at Cîteaux were inspired by their chantings and readings during the seasons of Advent, Christmas, and the Nativity of the Virgin to apply images of the Trinity, the sacraments, and the Virgin “to texts associated with, but not read, during those feasts” (96). There are interesting sections in this chapter on the Jesse tree, from which Christ sprung and of which the iconography showed Byzantine influence, on Christ as priest and king, and on the virgo lactans who provided physical nourishment to Jesus. The final section of this chapter, on “Bernard of Clairvaux, the Virgin, and the Legacy of Cîteaux's Art and Liturgy,” concentrates on the development in the eleventh and twelfth centuries of “allegorical interpretations of Mary's role in the history of salvation,” including the Conception and Assumption, and the expression of their interpretations in the liturgy (130). Christ and Mary were seen in new relations, with Mary as the bride of Christ and co-ruler of heaven. There was a new and more emotional tone, especially in Bernard's works, and a stress on Mary's tenderness, humility, piety, nurturing, and sacrifice, and on her role as an advocate for humanity before her son.

These themes are studied in chapter four, which is titled “Fruitful Words in the Stephen Harding Bible.” The singing and speaking of biblical texts inspired many of the images of which “the artists certainly intended to draw a connection between words that refer to acts of speaking, listening, and hearing” (143). Particular attention was paid to “biting, chewing, and swallowing: eating the word,” to which a section of this chapter is devoted (143–154). The eagle, for instance, is shown piercing the ears, eyes, and mouth of a monk, nourishing him with the heavenly food of scripture, and the lion, who stands for John the Baptist, eats and digests the book of God before proclaiming it. In this way the artists at Cîteaux brought out the symbolic nature of eating and drinking and the parallel of Scripture and food and of the altar and the refectory table. They introduced scenes of conflict, which reflected the spiritual struggles of the monks, into initials and blank spaces. These themes were not new, but they were taken up and developed by the artists in the scriptorium at Cîteaux and were used as interpretive as well as decorative features.

In view of the interest of these images and their importance to this book, it is regrettable that the quality of the reproductions (of which there are sixteen color plates and twenty black and white figures) is not better. Some of them are almost illegible, even with the help of the transcriptions and comments in the text, which is itself not entirely easy to read in view of the number of technical liturgical terms. Manuscripts are said to be “outfitted” with illuminations and responsories to have been “tweaked” (95, 97). There are a few inconsistencies and obscurities, such as the reference to note xx on 129. On the whole, however, the text is clear and accurate, and readers will come away with a heightened sense of the spirituality that inspired the life and art of the early Cistercians.