The hitherto unstudied Middle High German treatise ›Forty Bundles of Myrrh of Christ's Passion‹ (VMB) was probably written in the first half of the fifteenth century in the Hospitaller commandery () in Strasbourg. It is intended as a guide for beginners in the spiritual life to undertake appropriate contemplation of the Passion of Christ. To convey the knowledge gained from Christ’s exemplary suffering, different textual strategies are enacted on different levels. Following the Song of Songs 1,12 (()), an internal narrative demonstrates how the sponsa from the Song of Songs, who is interpreted as an allegorical personification of an exemplary imitator of Christ’s suffering, receives visions of the individual sufferings of Christ by means of the forty bundles of myrrh. In her affective compassion, the sponsa suffers Christ's sufferings with Christ and learns from the () the meaning and benefits of the individual instances of suffering. This method of contemplation, in turn, is used in an instructional dialogue staged as a narrative framework in which a fictitious spiritual father teaches his spiritual children, who are eager to learn, and which at the same time guides the ideal attitude towards the reception and adaptation of the content transmitted. The two-volume work is divided into three parts. The analytical Part A traces the function of the () verse within the exegetical tradition, into which the VMB treatise fits seamlessly, and explores its form and content as well as the genesis and history of the text. In Part B, an analysis of the textual transmission determines group affiliations between the eleven known manuscripts and the two copies of an incunable edition of the VMB. Afterwards, the textual witnesses are described and contextualized with precise descriptions of their appearance and content, and both the texts transmitted alongside the VMB within these codices and the historical contexts in which the manuscripts were used are presented and evaluated. Part C offers the first edition of the VMB in an easily readable form, following the text in St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 603. A detailed critical apparatus lists the most important variants of the known textual witnesses. The relatively wide distribution of the ›Forty Bundles of Myrrh of Christ's Passion‹, which was read mainly in the south-west of the German-speaking lands, in both male and female monasteries of different religious orders as well as in lay circles, proves the great popularity of the treatise. While conceptually taking up the well-known combination of the exegesis of the Song of Songs and instruction in the contemplation of the Passion, the treatise innovatively develops that instruction further by means of different textual strategies, and opens it up further to allow individual adaptation of the content by its recipients.weiterlesen