Mystagogisierung und Implementierung des Nonnenwerks im exemplar des Nürnberger Kartäusers Erhart Groß

Abstract
The ‘Nonnenwerk’, written by the German Carthusian Erhart Groß in 1432, is an early translation of Book I of Thomas à Kempis’ ‘Imitation of Christ’. Groß includes it within his autograph dating from 1436 (Wrocław, University Library, Cod. I Q 77) which also includes, along with his translation of Gerard van Vliederhoven’s ‘Cordiale’, the so-called ‚Geographischer Traktat‘, Groß’ very own treatise on cosmology and the Holy Land, and his ‘Grisardis’, an adaptation of the final novella of Giovanni Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’. This autograph is a kind of one-volume library which provides its readers with the knowledge necessary for one’s spiritual well-being. Groß increases the mystagogical tendencies of his ‘Nonnenwerk’, already noticeable in ‘The Imitation of Christ’, by basing it on the mystical triple way. Christian mysticism in the 15th century is to a large extent reduced to man’s uniformity with God’s will. In the ‘Nonnenwerk’ Groß basically attempts to teach the reader how to arrive at a wilful union with God by imitating Christ’s actions and manners. This doctrine is then exemplified by the ‘Grisardis’, an exemplum virtutis on the uniformity with God’s will in the married life of a nameless margrave and his wife Grisardis. She is an exorbitantly obedient, almost inimitable quasi-saint who humbly overcomes any kind of adversities with which she is confronted. The paranetic concept of imitation thus complementarily relates the ‘Nonnenwerk’ (imitatio Christi) to the ‘Grisardis’ (imitatio Grisardis).