Writer, born near Konstanz (Lake Constance), Swabia. Of noble birth, he entered the Dominican order at the age of 13, and in the mid-1320s was a pupil of Meister Eckhart in Cologne, going on to undertake academic and pastoral duties in Switzerland and the upper Rhine. A mystic writer in the tradition of Eckhart, his works, couched in delicate but vivid lyricism, include Das Büchlein der Wahrheit (c.1326) and the popular Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit (132734). The latter portrays a dialogue between man as Minnediener of the spirit (Seuse spoke of geistlicher Ritterschaft - spiritual chivalry) and eternal wisdom as his beloved. He is also credited with the first German-language autobiography, Der Seuse (c.1362), concerned particularly with advice for the convents under his care.
Henry Suso (Also called Amandus, a name adopted in his writings, and Heinrich Seuse in German) was a German mystic, born at Überlingen on Lake Constance on March 21, circa 1300;
Overview
Suso and his friend Johannes Tauler were students of Meister Eckhart. As a lyric poet and troubadour of divine wisdom, Suso explored with psychological intensity the spiritual truths of Eckhart’s mystical philosophy.
He assumed the name of his mother, his father being a Herr von Berg. In Das Büchleln der ewigen Weisheit (The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom), written about 1327-34 in Constance, he discusses the practical aspects of mysticism. The latter work, which Suso also translated into Latin under the title of Horologium sapientiae (Clock of Wisdom), has been called the finest fruit of German mysticism.
Suso is the poet of the early mystic movement, "the Minnesinger of Gottesminne." the individualism, the philosophic insight and the anti-Catholic tendencies which made the mystic movement in its later manifestations so important a forerunner of the Reformation are absent in Suso.
Life
His father belonged to the noble family of Berg;
From 1324 to 1327 he took a supplementary course in theology in the Dominican studium generale at Cologne, where he sat at the feet of Eckhart von Hochheim, "the Master", and probably at the side of Tauler, both celebrated mystics.
Suso's life as a mystic began in his eighteenth year, when giving up his careless habits of the five preceding years, he made himself "the Servant of the Eternal Wisdom", which he identified with the Divine essence and, in a concrete form, with the personal Eternal Wisdom made man.
He became foremost among the Friends of God in the work of restoring religious observance in the cloisters. His influence was especially strong in many convents of women, particularly in the Dominican convent of Katherinenthal, a famous nursery of mysticism in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and in that of Toss, where lived the mystic Elsbeth Stagel, who turned some of his Latin into German, collected and preserved most of his extant letters, and drew from him the history of his life which he himself afterwards developed and published.
In the world he was esteemed as a preacher, and was heard in the cities and towns of Swabia, Switzerland, Alsace, and the Netherlands.
It has often been incorrectly said that he established among the Friends of God a society which he called the Brotherhood of the Eternal Wisdom.
Writings
The first writing from the pen of Suso was the Büchlein der Wahrheit (Little Book of Truth), which he issued while a student at Cologne.
As in this, so in his other writings Suso, while betraying Eckhart's influence, always avoided the “errors” of his master. Henry Denifle considers it the most difficult "little book" among the writings of the German mystics.
Whereas in this book Suso speaks as a contemplative and to the intellect, in his next, Das Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit, published early in 1328, he is eminently practical and speaks out of the fullness of his heart to "simple men who still have imperfections to be put off".
In 1334 Suso translated this work into Latin, but in doing so added considerably to its contents, and made of it an almost entirely new book, to which he gave the name Horologium Sapientiae.
After retiring to Ulm, Suso wrote the story of his inner life (Vita or Leben Seuses), revised the Büchlein der Wahrheit, and the Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit, all of which, together with eleven of his letters (the Briefbüchlein), and a prologue, he formed into one book known as the Exemplar Seuses.
Besides the above-mentioned writings we have also five sermons by Suso and a collection of twenty-eight of his letters (Grosses Briefbuch), which may be found in Bihlmeyer's edition.
Suso is called by Wolfgang Wackernagel and others a "Minnesinger in prose and in the spiritual order."
For centuries he exercised an influence upon spiritual writers.
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