Christus und die minnende Seele

The late medieval verse dialogue ‘Christus und die minnende Seele,’ originally conceived as an illustrated broadsheet, portrays the journey of the soul as the bride of Christ towards mystical union in a series of 20 to 24 individual scenes. Each scene is accompanied by a dialogue text in the form of two rhymed couplets that has been expanded in later versions. The work survives in eight manuscripts, four single-leaf prints and one early printed book dating from the late fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century and representing four different versions.
This study is based on the überlieferungsgeschichtliche Methode, which for ‘Christus und die minnende Seele’ requires an interdisciplinary approach drawing from the areas of paleography, social history, art history, literary studies, and theology.
This study provides for the first time a comprehensive examination of all manuscripts and prints containing the work. In addition, an ‘iconographic catalogue’ includes complete descriptions of the illustrations as well as transcriptions of the headings and the first four lines of dialogue along with documentation of other illustrations and ornamentation in the manuscript.
This paleographic investigation not only makes it possible to determine the geographic, chronological, and social distribution of the work, but also helps to complete the picture of both the intended and actual reception of ‘Christus und die minnende Seele’ and its illustrations.
A thorough treatment of the context in which the text is embedded in manuscripts (the Mitüberlieferung) reveals not only how the work itself was received, but also the late medieval approach to broader and often controversial themes such as mysticism and the role of visual images in religious life and practice.
Finally, an analysis of the structure and content of the illustrated broadsheet provides fundamentally new interpretations. First of all, the broadsheet has a strong vertical structure, requiring an increasingly sophisticated understanding of images on the part of the reader. In addition, comparison of the earlier broadsheets with a later version shows clearly how attitudes toward bridal mysticism were transformed during the fifteenth century to reflect the skepticism of the reform clergy.
This study of the complete manuscripts and prints from the varying perspectives of paleography, social history, art history, and literary studies shows how ‘Christus und die minnende Seele’ reflects the debates and tensions of the late medieval literary landscape. Read by lay and religious audiences, by men and women, comprised of word and image, present in manuscript and printed form, in the vernacular and Latin, ‘Christus und die minnende Seele’ remained a vital work of literature for two centuries.