In "Theology, Rhetoric, Manuduction", Peter Candler re-reads a number of medieval texts and demonstrates that they were intended as vehicles not for the transmission of data, but for the leading of readers to contemplation of God.

In "Theology, Rhetoric, Manuduction", Candler is recovering this understanding of reading and doing theology and illustrates how it can enrich our present understanding of great works of medieval scholarship.

He begins with the invention of printing in the 16th Century and the change of the bible from liturgy in worship and community to a physical object, he then turns to Augustine's understanding of rhetoric. Then two texts, "Glossa Ordinaria" (a 12th-century glossed bible) and "Aquinas' Summa Theologiae" are read in terms of the concepts of memory and itinerary.