The Song of Songs of the Old Testament is a love poetry that knows nothing of good and evil, even of God. Christian theology has accomplished the appropriation of this book full of passionate desire in a process lasting more than a thousand years: in a tour de force of radical overcoming of its originally secular character. The 12th century is a time of new piety of creative freshness. The inexhaustibility of the love of God becomes the central religious theme of this time. The author of the St. Trudperter Hohenlied, the earliest purely vernacular, complete interpretation of the Song of Songs from the Middle Ages, also devoted himself to this theme. In the form-critical reading edition by Friedrich Ohly, this linguistic masterpiece becomes transparent in its structures; here, for the first time, it is translated and comprehensively annotated.