Christian commentaries on the Song of Songs in the Early Church and early Middle Ages tended to interpret that Hebrew text of the Old Testament as a loving dialogue between Christ and the Church or between the Word and soul or both. Monastic writers viewed the love between bridegroom and bride as an invitation to contemplation. Suzanne LaVere's book contends that, in the wake of the Gregorian reform and of the rise of various forms of ‘apostolic life’, the scholastic exegesis of the Song of Songs adopted a new, ‘apostolic interpretation’ of that book as opposed to or in addition to the former ‘ecclesiological interpretation’. The new exegesis is said to have privileged preaching and the active life over the contemplative life practised in monastic contexts. LaVere traces this strand of medieval exegesis from the cathedral school of Laon in the twelfth century to the Dominican studium of St Jacques at Paris in the early thirteenth century. Particularly valuable in this research is her examination of the unedited texts ascribed to Anselm of Laon, Peter the Chanter and Stephen Langton.

The first two chapters explore the exegesis of the Song of Songs at Laon, beginning with Anselm of Laon's commentary on the Song of Songs and continuing with the gloss on the Song of Songs in the Glossa Ordinaria. LaVere demonstrates with numerous passages cited from the former commentary that Anselm believed that the Song of Songs contained urgent injunctions to preach and that preaching was imperative not only for converting Jews and heretics but also for instilling faith in ‘lukewarm’ Christians. The commentary on the Song of Songs in the Glossa Ordinaria, despite containing material from Anselm's continuous commentary, receives attention on account of the fact that many glosses (around two hundred) have not been traced, either by the editor of that text, Mary Dove, or by LaVere, to earlier sources. The ‘new’ glosses, as LaVere calls them, tend to emphasise the preaching programne outlined in Anselm's continuous commentary, but in less detail.

Chapters iii and iv cover the Song of Songs commentaries by Peter the Chanter and Stephen Langton. Explaining the Bible in the last third of the twelfth century, Peter was a succinct commentator who relied extensively on the Glossa Ordinaria and followed its emphasis on preaching and the active life. Langton's commentary, however, is much more expansive than Peter's. LaVere argues that Langton's commentary, composed probably in the 1180s, is in fact a prolix ‘gloss on the Gloss’ and that Langton went further than any of his exegetical predecessors in championing preaching and the active life over contemplation.

The fifth chapter examines the postilla on the Song of Songs by the Dominican Hugh of St Cher and his circle. This commentary also praises the role of preaching, but it criticises hypocritical monks and clerics who are lazy and guilty of spiritual neglect. This wide-ranging commentary also includes Marian interpretations of the Song of Songs as well as moral or tropological interpretations, and there are clear indications that not only is preaching to be commended, but so is voluntary poverty. All of these elements are entirely consistent for someone who was a member of the Order of Preachers.

In a brief epilogue, LaVere notes that later Franciscans, in their commentaries on the Song of Songs, did not share the exegetical priorities of the earlier school masters who attempted to inculcate in their students a deep love of preaching. The commentary of Peter of John Olivi displays little interest in preaching or even voluntary poverty, at least when compared to the commentary of Hugh of St Cher. Nicholas of Lyra's preoccupation with the literal sense of the text prevents him from making any kind of attempt to find hints of exhortations to either preaching or poverty, and thus there is almost no connection between his commentary and the earlier ones that LaVere has expounded.

While LaVere acknowledges the Marian and mystical interpretations of the Song of Songs in twelfth-century monasteries, she demonstrates clearly that roughly contemporaneous scholastic theologians were much more interested in preaching and the active life than were monastic authors such as Rupert of Deutz and Bernard of Clairvaux.