Retired Harvard Professor, Medievalist, Women’s Historian

Born in Washington, D.C., Beverly Mayne Kienzle graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Maryland, located a short commute from her home. She and Edward Kienzle married shortly after graduation and moved to Boston a year later for graduate study. Under an NDEA fellowship, she earned a doctorate in Medieval Comparative literature (French, Spanish, Medieval Latin) at Boston College in 1978. Daughter Kathleen, just over one year old, attended Commencement.  Beverly has taught courses in those three languages. She reads other Romance languages, German, and Greek of the New Testament. At the invitation of Teresa Mendez Faith, Beverly co-authored the Spanish textbooks: ¿Habla español? and Panoramas literarios: España. In 1982, Beverly began researching medieval Latin monastic sermons, focusing on the Cistercian Hélinand of Froidmont and translating Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons for the Summer Season. Monastic spirituality and theology were not unfamiliar to her after four years of residence at Margaret Hall School, under the direction of the Order of Saint Helena, and more than 20 years later, a faculty appointment at St. Anselm College in Manchester, NH.

Beverly first taught Theological Spanish at Harvard Divinity School during the summer of 1986. That summer, she was chosen to participate in a six-week course on Medieval Latin Paleography, sponsored by the Medieval Academy and taught by Paul Meyvaert. Her study of medieval Latin sermons and manuscript studies opened the way to a long-term appointment at Harvard Divinity School, where she taught intensive introductory Latin and pursued theological and historical research, writing, and teaching, using Christian Latin sources to explore a broad range of topics—Cistercian monks in France, Hildegard of Bingen and German Benedictines, Italian lay penitent women, and women sanctified after abuse or even murder by their spouses. The anti-heretical content in many sermons led Beverly to explore medieval heresy—notably the dualist movement known as Catharism and the evangelically-minded Waldensians, who believed that all their followers should preach the gospel. Searching historical sources for medieval women’s preaching, Kienzle explored the religious speech of Italian women saints and embarked on the barely studied Expositiones evangeliorum (Homilies on the Gospels) by Hildegard of Bingen—a journey that involved six books exploring all aspects of the homilies and their place in Hildegard’s oeuvre.

Teaching and research on medieval preaching and associated fields, including Latin paleography involved travel, work in manuscript libraries, and speaking at international conferences in North America, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. Beverly participated in Harvard faculty-led study tours examining monastic women’s art in Germany (2005) and Early Christian Art and Architecture in Italy (1996). She studied manuscripts at world-renowned libraries such as Trinity College, Dublin; the Chester Beatty near Dublin; The Vatican Library, The British Library; the Bibliothèque Nationale (France), the Biblioteca Nazionale (Naples), Bibliothèque Municipale of Dijon, and the Archives nationales at Foix. The Biennial Symposium of the International Medieval Sermon Studies Society, which Beverly first attended in Assisi in 1990, unfailingly offers a manuscript workshop and introduction to the manuscript holdings of the local library, such as the oldest manuscripts pertaining to Saint Francis in Assisi, or early medieval writing at the monastic library of Saint-Maurice in Valais, Switzerland, where Beverly delivered the key note address for the 2008 Symposium, “Preaching on the Cross: From Liturgy to Crusade Propaganda.”

Beverly’s interest in heresy led her in 1996 to Cathar country in southern France (west of the Rhône). There she met the leading historian of Catharism, Anne Brenon, who invited her to speak at multiple venues about the anti-heretical preaching of the Cistercians.  Beverly and her family became acquainted with the Brenon-Gasc family, other local scholars and the history and culture of the region, visiting many ruined and restored villages where the Cathars lived and sites where they were massacred. A knowledge of the landscape and architecture is crucial to the evaluation of historiographic debates on heresy. Beverly expanded her research on the religious opposition to heresy into the Rhineland and the writings of Hildegard of Bingen, Elisabeth of Schönau, and her brother, Eckbert.

Beverly pondered where to focus her efforts after retiring. Ultimately, she has returned to her roots to tell the story her mother started but could not finish: the biography of Beverly’s grandmother, Virginia Cary Hudson, a “girl who grew up preaching.” Beverly’s childhood home was piled with papers and manuscripts containing the remarkable writings of her grandmother, unpublished at her death in 1954. Beverly’s mother, Virginia Cleveland Mayne, devoted herself to publishing those works. The first volume, O Ye Jigs and Juleps! (1962), a collection of charming and hilarious essays, reached the New York Times Best Seller list for 66 weeks, and three other books followed: Credos & Quips (1964), Flapdoodle, Trust & Obey (1966) and Close Your Eyes When Praying (1968). Virginia Mayne spoke at countless events around the country and Barbara Walters interviewed her on the Today Show on February 15, 1966. Beverly recounts her mother’s amazing accomplishments in Virginia Cary Hudson, The Jigs & Juleps Girl: Her Life and Writings (2016). She followed that with short books of Virginia Cary Hudson’s unpublished writings and is working with local historians in Cloverport, KY, and Versailles, KY, the two towns where her grandmother grew up.

In 2021, Beverly published Lessons from Lucy and Her Friends and a private edition, A Summer with Lucy. A volume of Virginia’s letters from Chicago in 1933 and 1940 was published on April 1, 2022, co-edited and researched with Darlene-Marie Slagle, a Chicago native. In 2022, The Pine Tree Bunny appeared, a children’s story written about 35 years ago by Beverly and her daughter Kathleen, and recently illustrated with lovely, charming drawings by Becky Reid Gray, an artist from Cloverport, KY.

Beverly lives in Waltham, Massachusetts with her beloved family―Edward, her husband for over 50 years, Kathleen Cary, her daughter, and several much-loved animal companions. Beverly pursues photography as a hobby, focusing on the cottontail rabbits she meets in the backyard.