Heinrich Suso
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Heinrich Suso (March 21, 1300 - 1366), German mystic, was born of good family at Überlingen on Lake Constance, in all probability in the year 1300
He assumed the name of his mother, his father being a Herr von Berg. In Das Büchleln der ewigen Weisheit, written some years later in Constance, he discusses the practical aspects of mysticism. The latter work, which Suso also translated into Latin under the title of Horologium sapientiae, has been called the finest fruit of German mysticism.
Suso is the poet of the early mystic movement, "the Minnesinger of Gottesminne." But his faith is purely medieval in tone, inspired by the romanticism of the age of chivalry; 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.
Suso's works were collected as early as 1482 and again in 1512; recent editions: Heinrich Susos Leben and Schriften, ed. by M Diepenbrock (1829; 4th ed., 1884); Susos Deutsche Schriften, by FHS Denifle (1878-1880, not completed), and Deutsche Schriften, by K Bihlmeyer (2 vols, 1907). See also W Preger, Die Briefe Heinrich Suusos (1867); W Preger, Geschichte der deutschen Mystik (1882), vol. ii.; J Jager, Heinrich Seuse aus Schwaben (1894).
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.
