With this selection of texts (approximately 5000 out of 14700 verses), the first major didactic poem of the Middle Ages about a life pleasing to God in this world is made accessible to a wider audience for the first time. The author, a young cleric from Friuli, wrote it in German "for virtuous knights, good women, and wise priests." His precise observations of his environment, the extensively documented knowledge of the political and social conditions of his time, as well as his encyclopedic reach into many fields of knowledge, make the work an extraordinarily interesting document both psychologically and culturally, uniquely suited to introduce the thought and ways of life of the early 13th century.