Reviews
Kienzle's work on the critical edition, her authorship of a monographic study of the text, Hildegard of Bingen and her Gospel Homilies: Speaking New Mysteries (Brepols, 2009), and her extensive expertise on medieval sermons and preaching, position her to be the ideal translator of Hildegard's biblical homilies. Drawing on her expertise on medieval sermons, Kienzle provides a concise picture of monastic exegesis to fill out the picture of Hildegard's education and to provide the intellectual context for her exegetical work.
Anne L. Clark, University of Vermont
Like much of what Hildegard wrote, these sermons are unique, both in their adherence to a word-by-word analysis of the Gospel readings, as well as in their ingenuity in revealing the salvation-historical and moral meaning of the text. Hildegard was an original interpreter, as Beverly Mayne Kienzle's volume of accurate and readable translations shows.
Bernard McGinn, Divinity School, University of Chicago
Hildegard was a remarkable preacher on the Gospels, able to select and identify core themes that resonated with her visionary imagination. Through her Homilies on the Gospels, translated with freshness and sensitivity by Beverley Mayne Kienzle, we gain a sense of what it would have been like to hear this astonishing woman shed new light on familiar stories. She is fascinated by what the Gospels have to say about human nature, the moral choices confronting humanity and the gift of the five senses-all the time putting forward her message that through the Scriptures, God brings human beings to rationality, so that through rationality as through the Scriptures they may know God.'
Constant J Mews, PhD, Director, Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology, Monash University, Victoria, Australia
The last of Hildegard's major works to be translated, these Homilies on the Gospels open a startling window onto the world of twelfth-century exegesis. Preached to her nuns in chapter, they reveal the dramatic triumph of allegory over the literal sense: the wedding at Cana becomes the creation of humankind, while the holy women asking who will roll the stone from Christ's tomb stand for the Old and New Testaments exhorting each other. The in-house preaching of abbesses is almost entirely lost, but Hildegard's fame enabled this rare survival of a forgotten genre. Beverly Kienzle's magisterial translation is essential reading for all students of high medieval preaching, exegesis, and monastic life.
Barbara Newman, Professor of English, Religion, and Classics, Northwestern University
This is a precise, readable, and profitable translation of Hildegard of Bingen's Homilies on the Gospels. Beverly Kienzle is aware of all the problems and technicalities of any translation and solves them with talent and elegance. A book to be read by anyone interested in the Middle Ages, the New Testament, and spirituality.
François Bovon, Frothingham Research Professor, The Divinity School, Harvard University
"This carefully prepared translation of Hildegard's 58 homilies on the Gospels is the work of a scholar who has for many years labored closely both with Hildegard's Latin text and with the broader context of mediaeval exegesis and preaching. . . . . . . The present translation shows attentiveness to the need to make Hildegard accessible to a modern audience, who lack monastic familiarity with biblical texts and with the Cluniac liturgical calendar, and to whom the mediaeval style of allegorical exegesis may be obscure."
Jane Heath, Journal for the Study of The New Testament