This project examines scholastic interpretations of the Song of Songs from roughly 1100 to 1340, a period during which theology and biblical studies gradually moved from scattered cathedral schools to centralization at Paris. I argue that during the first two centuries of this period, those composing commentaries on the Song of Songs within a school and later a university milieu put forth a radically different interpretation of this biblical book. The Song of Songs was especially cherished by monastic authors, who saw the book as the quintessential allegory through which to express their profound longing for God. Beginning with Anselm of Laon around 1100, an original interpretation of the Song of Songs developed which argued that not only was an active life of teaching and preaching important, but it was superior to a life spent in contemplation and isolation from the world, a way of life championed by the aforementioned monastic authors.

In the first two chapters, I investigate the Glossed Song of Songs, part of a standard biblical textbook, as well as Anselm's own continuous commentary, which may have been a source for the Gloss. These chapters illustrate the new species of Song of Songs commentary focused on the active life and show the influence this interpretation would have on later authors. Chapters 3 and 4 examine Song of Songs commentaries composed by two secular masters who taught at Paris in the closing decades of the twelfth century, Peter the Chanter and Stephen Langton. As I show, these two masters are even more fervent in their support for preaching and teaching, and their writings influenced early thirteenth-century popes trained at Paris. Chapter 5 investigates the work of Hugh of St. Cher and a team of his fellow Dominicans, and shows that these mendicants continued to champion the active life. By the late thirteenth century, however, as the conclusion relates, this interpretation of the Son of Songs fades away and is replaced with new ideas. Nevertheless, this species of commentary had a prodigious impact on the schools and the Church and how these groups interacted with the laity.