Lectio Divina: The Medieval Experience of Reading by Duncan Robertson (review)

Lectio Divina, a meditative, ruminative form of reading that linked study, prayer, and textual interpretation, was a hallmark of medieval monastic culture, taught and practiced by all of the greatest authors of the Christian Middle Ages. In this insightful book, Duncan Robertson argues that Lectio Divina was even more than a monastic practice—namely, a standard of medieval literary culture in general before the rise of Scholasticism. He makes a plea for modern readers to rediscover the energy and sense of community inherent in this way of reading, so as to bring back something lost to modern readers: “a fullness of active, affective, intellectual, and creative literary participation” (p. 233).

Robertson structures his study as a largely chronological investigation of the development of Lectio Divina between the early monastic movement of the fourth century and about 1200, when he sees the rise of Scholasticism eclipsing monastic literary practices. He touches on the usual suspects: Origen of Alexandria, St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Jerome, John Cassian, St. Benedict of Nursia, St. Gregory the Great, the Venerable Bede, St. Anselm of Canterbury, John of Fécamp, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux but also gives excellent snapshots of lesser known authors such as the Carolingian author Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel (pp. 113–18). His readings of Gregory (pp. 57–71) and Bernard (pp. 175–202) are particularly sensitive. One might question Robertson’s decision that the tradition of Lecto Divina ends after the twelfth century, since he makes passing reference to later vernacular instances in authors such as Richard Rolle (p. 202), and since, as Alastair Minnis has shown, the boundaries between forms of “monastic” and “scholastic” literary activity were actually rather fluid in the later Middle Ages, especially in relation to biblical exegesis.

But what makes Robertson’s study especially original is his linking of Lectio Divina to two movements of modern scholarship. First, to set a context for modern study of medieval monastic authors, Robertson discusses the twentieth-century francophone ressourcement medievalists such as Jean Lerclecq and Henri de Lubac (pp. 1–26), ending this discussion with a link to twentieth-century literary critics of the reader-response movement (pp. 27–37). Robertson feels strongly that twentieth-century New Critical/Formalist thinkers left us an “imprisoned” literary text, an inert object; but that a reader-response approach has the ability to bring a literary text, even the most hermetic and complicated text, to life again. This is the ultimate value of understanding Lectio Divina, Robertson argues, that it can actually help modern readers to love literature again.

Not many studies of medieval literature have the goal of holding up a medieval practice for the benefit of modern readers, but Robertson makes an earnest and plausible argument for understanding Lectio Divina as a literary method every bit as insightful as that of the latest literary critics. It is a fascinating thesis, especially as we are entering an age in which the very meaning of reading and writing are being questioned by new technologies and formats. This book, therefore, will be of interest to modern literary critics and those interested in technologies of literacy as well as historians of Christian spirituality and monastic practice.