This book is a study of the programmatic oral performance of the written word and its impact on art and text. Communal singing and reading of the Latin texts that formed the core of Christian ritual and belief consumed many hours of the Benedictine monk's day. These texts-read and sung out loud, memorized, and copied into manuscripts-were often illustrated by the very same monks who participated in the choir liturgy. The meaning of these illustrations sometimes only becomes clear when they are read in the context of the texts these monks heard read. The earliest manuscripts of Cîteaux, copied and illuminated at the same time that the new monastery's liturgy was being reformed, demonstrate the transformation of aural experience to visual and textual legacy.

Diane Reilly is Associate Professor of Art History at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her first book, The Art of Reform in Eleventh-Century Flanders: Gerard of Cambrai, Richard of Saint-Vanne and the Saint-Vaast Bible (Brill, 2006) explored connections between art, politics and monastic reform.

List of IllustrationsList of AbbreviationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction The Love of Learning and the Desire for God Early Cîteaux Voice and Memory at Cîteaux Meditations on the Song of Songs The Plan of Action After Early CîteauxChapter 1. The Joy of Psalmody The Night Office Reconstructing Advent at Cîteaux The Advent Cursus at the New MonasteryChapter 2. Jerome's Legacy at Twelfth-Century Cîteaux Cîteaux and Jerome Stephen as a New Jerome Jerome in the Liturgy Picturing Jerome at Cîteaux Jerome's LettersChapter 3. The Virgin and the Abbot And There Shall Come Forth a Rod Out of Jesse The Jesse Tree Christ as Priest Jesus's Prefigurations The Virgo Lactans Bernard of Clairvaux, The Virgin, and the Legacy of Cîteaux's Art and LiturgyChapter 4. Fruitful Words in the Stephen Harding Bible Biting, Chewing, and Swallowing: Eating the Word Were All Twelfth-Century Animals Hungry for Scripture? The Meaning of Ornament in the Cîteaux Scriptorium Lips, Tongues, and Ears: Picturing the Spoken Word Fruitful Words in the Refectory Herod's Downfall and the Sin of Gluttony Heresy, Orthodoxy, and Sung ScriptureConclusionAppendicesBibliographyList of Manuscripts Cited