From Knowledge to Beatitude: St. Victor, Twelfth-Century Scholars, and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Grover A. Zinn Jr . Edited by E. Ann Matter and Lesley Smith. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. xxiii + 471 pp. $67.50 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)From Knowledge to Beatitude: St. Victor, Twelfth-Century Scholars, and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Grover A. Zinn Jr . Edited by E. Ann Matter and Lesley Smith . Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press , 2013. xxiii + 471 pp. $67.50 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesThe remarkable essays collected in From Knowledge to Beatitude: St. Victor, Twelfth-Century Scholars, and Beyond reflect the equally remarkable contributions of Grover A. Zinn Jr. to the field of Medieval Studies. For more than forty years, Zinn has broadened understanding of the study of the Bible in the Middle Ages in general, and illuminated the thought of the Augustinian canons at the Abbey of St. Victor in particular. This festschrift published in Zinn's honor builds upon that scholarship.The volume follows the outline suggested in the subtitle, beginning with a focus on St. Victor and the Victorines. It starts with four interesting studies on material culture. Catherine Delano-Smith graphically illustrates the way in which Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173) used diagrams to duplicate his exegesis of the biblical book of Ezekiel. She convincingly argues that Richard's model for his map of Canaan came from contemporary Jewish exegetes. William A. Clark's reconstruction of the church at St. Victor suggests that it was "second only to the cathedral of Notre Dame as the longest and widest church of twelfth-century Paris" (69).The next four essays discuss the influential pedagogy of the canons, which included the discipline of reading, the necessity of scriptural studies, and the importance of preaching. Hugh Feiss, OSB's detailed examination of sermons given by the canons demonstrates that "the Victorines were reformers with a mission to promote clerical reform by word and example" (157). Richard, for instance, integrates a variety of sources in his sermons addressed to priests in order to persuade them to preach by both word and example. Feiss also reviews the sermons of lesser-known Victorines--Achard (d. 1170), Walter (d. 1131), Godfrey (d. after 1194) and Maurice of Sully (d. 1196)--and convincingly contends that they were deeply committed to pastoral development and other ecclesiological concerns.The essays which follow look at subsequent developments in theology (the "Twelfth-Century Scholars" of the subtitle, although thirteenth-century thinkers also make appearances). Dale Coulter indicates how Hugh (d. 1141) and Richard used Boethius's concept of speculatio in order to conform the human mind to the divine mind. By reflecting the created world, "which itself mirrors the divine Artist . . . the world is sacramental through and through" (206). The inclusion of female theologians in this section is welcome. Barbara Newman's study of women's mystical literature--especially that of Mechthild of Hackeborn (1241-1298) and her protegee Gertrude of Helfta (1256-1301/2)--delves into the medieval trope of exchanging hearts as a metaphor for mystical union, communal solidarity, and deep friendship. Rachel Fulton Brown makes the case that Hildegard of Bingen's (1098-1179) Scivias is a well-developed and coherent summa of theology that takes the Trinity, rather than the Incarnation, as its point of departure. Brown reads Hildegard through the lenses of contemporary English Dominican Aidan Nichols and relies on his definition of theology, namely, "the disciplined exploration of what is contained in revelation" (305). …