Step Two – Meditatio

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Once the monk has read a section of text, he then comes to the second step of lectio divina (and the second rung on the ladder) known as meditatio – a notion that is inextricably linked to the practice of divine reading. While lectio often refers to the primary activity of reading, meditatio refers to the repeated reading of each passage, the recitation of the words, and ultimately the ‘total memorization’ of the text and its meaning.⁶³ In the words of Jean Leclercq:

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Schmitt, 6 vols. [Edinburgh: Nelson & Sons, 1946-1961], Vol. 3:1). Cf. Anselm of Canterbury, The Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm with the Proslogion, trans. with an introduction by Sister Benedicta Ward, S. L. G., forward by R. W. Southern (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), 89; Paul Saenger, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 204. On the problem of rapid reading, see Émile Faguet, L’árt de lire (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1912), 1-2.

61 Studzinski, Reading to Live, 168.

62 Sandor, ‘Lectio Divina and the Monastic Spirituality of Reading’, 98-99.

63 As Parkes, notes, ‘reading aloud’ was used to instill an ‘aural’ and ‘muscular’ memory of the words to prepare the way for meditatio (‘Reading, Copying and Interpreting a Text in the Early Middle Ages’, in Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, eds., A History of Reading in the West [Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999], 90-102, at 92). For further discussions of meditatio and its relationship to lectio, see Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 72; Roberston, Lectio Divina, xiv; McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, 135. Sandor also

!To meditate is to read a text and to learn it ‘by heart’ in the fullest sense of this expression, that is, with one’s whole being:

with the body, since the mouth pronounced it, with the memory which fixes it, with the intelligence which understands its meaning, and with the will which desires to put it into practice.⁶⁴

This method of repeatedly reading short sections of text allowed the reader to memorize the material for continuous contemplation: as the individual read, he would murmur the words quietly, turning them over in his mind, memorizing their sound and meaning.⁶⁵ Writing in the late sixth and early seventh century, Isidore of Seville further explains the relationship between reading and the memorization of texts through meditatio:

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Reading requires the help of memory. Even if [memory] is naturally slower, nevertheless [it] is sharpened by frequent meditation, and is obtained through assiduous reading. Often extended reading will overwhelm the memory because of its length. Although if it is short, and, with the book removed, if one retains the sense in the mind, then it can be read without labour, and that which has been read, cultivated by memory, will not disappear.⁶⁶

In a way, the activity of repeated reading helped to form a sort of personal textual reservoir, from which the reader could freely conjure up specific passages desired for

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notes that the term meditari ‘is not to be confused with the later sense of “meditation” as a reflective or contemplative mental exercise’, but instead as a practice that followed the initial reading of a text, where the reader would repeat the words and ultimately commit them to memory (Sandor, ‘Lectio Divina and the Monastic Spirituality of Reading’, 90).

64 Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 17.

65 For the exercise of lectio and memorization, see Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 2^nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), esp. at 205;

Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 72.

66 ‘Lectio memoriae auxilio eget. Quod si fuerit naturaliter tardior, frequenti tamen meditatione acuitur, ac legendi assiduitate colligitur. Saepe prolixa lectio longitudinis causa memoriam legentis obtergit. Quod si brevis sit, submotoque libro sententia retractetur in animo, tunc sine labore legitur, et ea quae lecta sunt recolendo a memoria minime excidunt’ (Isidore, Sententiae, Book 3, Caput XIV, De collatione, PL, Vol. 83, col. 689B).

contemplation. In the words of Jerome, the mind becomes a ‘library of Christ’.⁶⁷ By memorizing the texts, the monk is able to contemplate the Word of God freely, even when he is without a book at hand, such as when working in the fields or even sleeping. In some cases, this delayed contemplation is beneficial, as the reader might come to a deeper understanding when he ponders the text later on. Cassian describes this theory below:

!Hence the successive books of Holy Scripture must be diligently committed to memory and ceaselessly reviewed. This continual meditation will bestow on us double fruit. First, inasmuch as the mind’s attention is occupied with reading and with preparing to read, it cannot be taken captive in the entrapments of harmful thoughts. Then, the things that we have not been able to understand because our mind was busy at the time, things that we have gone through repeatedly and are laboring to memorize, we shall see more clearly afterward when we are free from every seductive deed and sight, and especially when we are silently meditating at night. Thus, while we are at rest and as it were immersed in the stupor of sleep, there will be revealed an understanding of hidden meanings that we did not grasp even slightly when we were awake.⁶⁸

This particular understanding of meditatio and its connection to lectio was also discussed by the eleventh-century Benedictine monk and abbot of Fécamp, Jean of Ravenna (1028 – 1078). In a letter written to the widowed wife (turned nun) of Henry III of Burgundy, Agnes of Poitiers, Jean asks that his words should be read reverently (reverenter legenda sunt) and then also meditated upon (meditanda).⁶⁹ He also asks that she should read his work frequently, so that with her mind ‘inspired by heavenly desire’

she might ‘assume the wings of contemplation’ and fly into the air to ‘drink from the fountain of supernal sweetness’.⁷⁰ Instead of just reading the work once through, John

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67 The concept of a resevoir is elaborated in Studzinski, Reading to Live, 99. For references to the

‘Library of Christ’ [bibliotheca Christi], see Jerome, Select Letters, trans. Wright, Letter 60.10, 286.

68 Cassian, The Conferences, trans. Ramsey, Conf. XIV, IX.3, 514-515.

69 Jean Leclercq and Jean-Paul Bonnes, Un Maître de la vie spirituelle au XI^e siècle: Jean de Fécamp (Paris:

Vrin, 1946), 214.

70 Leclercq and Bonnes, Un Maître de la vie spirituelle au XI^e, X, 211-217.

directs Agnes to carefully re-read the words to engage in spiritual meditation and ultimately find a deeper understanding of the text – a practice of lectio divina.

Another Benedictine named John of Fruttuaria (not to be confused with Jean of Ravenna), also describes the process of meditatio in his mid-eleventh-century treatise to young novice monks.⁷¹ He argues that the tenets of faith are first instructed by the careful meditation of Holy Scriptures, which begins a chain reaction leading to Christian perfection:

!Faith is instructed by assiduous meditation on the Holy Scriptures, and illuminated by instruction, and augmented by illumination, and perfected by augmentation, and made firm by perfection.⁷²

For John of Fruttuaria, the repeated reading, memorization, and contemplation of the Scriptures are gateway activities that lead to an ideal Christian life.

The related concepts of lectio and meditatio are also commonly explained through the metaphor of ‘ingesting’ and ‘chewing’ food. In Ambrose’s popular book, De officiis, he writes, ‘Scriptura divina convivium sapientiae est; singuli libri singula sunt fercula’ [Divine Scripture is the feast of wisdom; individual books are individual courses].⁷³ John Moorhead explains that to Ambrose, ‘the words of the Bible were pastures on which its readers fed each day’ and by chewing these words over they

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71 The distinction between John of Fruttuaria and Jean of Ravenna is complicated by the fact that Jean of Ravenna also lived for a time at the Abbey of Fruttuaria. The authorship of the treatise for young monks ‘Tractatus de ordine vitae et morum institutione’ is also debated. Caroline Walker Bynum argues that it was written by John of Fruttuaria, while Paul Saenger, suggest that it was the work of Jean of Ravenna (given that the only surviving copy of the work was located at the Norman monastery of Mont-St-Michel in close proximity to Jean of Ravenna’s monastery at Fécamp). In this study I will follow Bynum’s argument that John of Fruttuaria composed the treatise, but suggest that the text is nonetheless reflective of Norman Benedictine views given its presence at Mont-St-Michel. For references to this debate see Bynum, Docere verbo et exemplo: An Aspect of Twelfth-Century Spirituality (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1979), at 119-123, and Paul Saenger, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 202-203.

72‘Assidua meditatione Scriptuarum sanctarum fides eruditur, et erudiendo illuminatur, et illuminando augetur, et augendo perficitur, et perficiendo stabilitur’ (John of Fruttuaria, Tractatus de ordine vitae et morum institutione, Caput VII, ‘Quatuor virtutes cardinales, et earum munia describuntur. Item de virtutibus theologicis’, PL, Vol. 184, Col. 575D).

73 Ambrose, De officiis, ed. and trans. Davidson, Vol. 1, Book I, 212-13. For further commentary on this metaphor of ‘eating the book’, see Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 53-54, 208-209.

were ‘renewed’ and ‘restored’.⁷⁴ In a letter to the brethren of Mont Dieu, William of St Thierry makes a similar statement:

!Some part of your daily reading should also each day be committed to memory, taken as it were into the stomach, to be more carefully digested and brought up again for frequent rumination; something in keeping with your vocation and helpful to concentration, something that will take hold of the mind and save it from distraction.⁷⁵

This metaphor of ‘ingesting’ the word of God may stem from an earlier literary tradition, based on the Prophecy of Ezechiel from the Old Testament (2:9-3:3), which describes Ezechiel eating a scroll:

And I looked, and a hand was stretched out to me, and a written scroll was in it. He spread it before me; it had writing on the front and back, and written on it were words of lamentation and mourning and woe. He said to me, O mortal, eat what is offered to you; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. He said to me, mortal, eat this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it. Then I ate it; and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey.⁷⁶

The metaphor of eating, chewing, and being nourished by the Word of God is a suitable description of the medieval connection between lectio and meditatio: first one ingests the words by reading, and then through the assiduous practice of repeated readings and deep contemplation (chewing over the words), the individual is sustained. Just as food strengthens the physical body, reading and meditation on the Word of God strengthens the spiritual body.

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74 John Moorhead, Ambrose: Church and Society in the Late Roman World (London and New York: Longman, 1999), 76.

75 William of St Thierry, The Golden Epistle, trans. Berkeley, I.120-124, 52; Edsall, Reading Like a Monk, 52.

76 Ezekiel, 2:9-3:3 (NRSV); cf. Smaragdus’ comments on this passage of Ezechiel in Smaragdus of Saint-Michiel, Diadema monachorum, trans. Barry, 9.

The practice of meditatio – the repeated reading of the text – also directly relates to the primary goals of lectio divina; in particular the goal of seeking divine knowledge through the deep mining of scriptural texts. The process of searching out different layers of meaning within each passage required the individual to read and then re-read short sections of text repeatedly, each time considering a different layer of meaning and interpretation. Not only, then, does meditatio facilitate the goal of memorization (for continuous contemplation of the text), but it also enables the practice of contemplative exegesis and the quest for spiritual knowledge.

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