Middle high german poetry, which begins in the last decades of the eleventh century, was in the hands of clerics for nearly a century. Clerics treat religious material in the sense of their priestly office. Some of those who identify themselves add to their name the word “priest.” As they indicate in the prayers with which they begin and end their poems, they stand before God as authors of their poems, together with their audience, in order to honor Him and to instruct their hearers. For who can praise God without knowing Him? “Sed quis te invocat nesciens te?” says Saint Augustine, the great model of medieval piety, at the beginning of his Confessions.