Bedridden and marked with the stigmata, a German nun described the last hours of Christ in extraordinary detail. A Romantic poet sat at her bedside and wrote it all down.

Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824) was an Augustinian sister at Dülmen in Westphalia. When her convent was dissolved she was left an invalid in a rented room, and from 1818 the poet Clemens Brentano sat with her and took down what she dictated. After her death he shaped those notes into the continuous narrative published in German in 1833 as The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It follows the Passion almost hour by hour: the Last Supper and the washing of feet, the agony in Gethsemane, the arrest, the questioning before Annas, Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod, the scourging and the crown of thorns, the road to Calvary, the crucifixion, the burial and the resurrection.

Emmerich was beatified in 2004, the same year Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ drew on this book for much of its imagery. For close to two centuries Catholic readers have kept it for Lent and Holy Week, less as history than as a way of slowing the story down until every stage of it is felt.

This edition features:

• The full narrative of the Passion, from the supper room to the empty tomb on Easter morning
• Meditations that follow events almost hour by hour, suited to Lent, Holy Week and Good Friday
• A principal source behind Mel Gibson's 2004 film, and behind many of its most argued-over scenes
• Sustained attention to the part played by the Blessed Virgin through every stage of the story
• The account as Clemens Brentano set it down across six years at Anne Catherine Emmerich's bedside