Specialists of medieval literature have pointed out that many of the texts they study appear to be unstable: they are transmitted in numerous witnesses, whose texts can largely differ. Traditional editorial methods, however, shaped for classical philology but transferred to medieval studies, aim to approach the authorial text as closely as possible and have little attention for variance within individual documents. It is clear that new methods and editions are needed to reflect the essential variance of that type of medieval literature. Thus, it is my goal to create an editorial model that lives up to this expectation. This will be achieved by investigating a particular corpus (the Byzantine book epigrams), but is aimed at other unstable literary texts as well. In a first phase, I will create such a model, starting from the study of the Greek texts. Furthermore, I will evaluate other theoretical studies, thus coming to a position in methodological debates. The outcome of this part will be a methodological and theoretical reflection, accompanied by a practical model for an edition workflow. After this goal is achieved, I plan to elaborate a case study to test the model, for which I have selected a corpus of book epigrams on the texts of Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite (5th – 6th c.).