After Beryl Smalley: Thirty years of medieval exegesis, 1984-2013

This essay surveys a generation of scholarship since the death of Beryl Smalley, pioneer in the study of the medieval reception of the bible, in 1984. We try to give a fair representation of work produced in English, French, German, and Italian over the last thirty years. We report on: 1) editions, tools, and translations, 2) surveys and synthetic treatments, 3) work on medieval biblical hermeneutics, 4) studies of periods and individuals, 5) thematic studies and studies of biblical books and pericopes across broad periods, and 6) comparative work on Muslim, Jewish, and Christian exegesis. We describe a rapidly growing quantity of knowledge and expanding perspectives on biblical interpretation in medieval culture. We conclude with suggestions for future research.