Heinrich Suso
Heinrich Suso's autobiographical Life of the Servant and his treatise Büchlein der Wahrheit (Book of Truth). Suso (c. 1295–1366) was the most affectively mystical of the three Dominicans, and his Life is the first spiritual autobiography in German. The Book of Truth (Prologue + Chs I–IV) is a project translation from the Middle High German; see /about/translations/.
Source context· Greco-Christian stream · Greco-Latin cultural age
- Stream
- Greco-Christian
- Cultural age
- Greco-Latin (4th post-Atlantean cultural age)
- Composed
- c. 1330 CE
- 1The Life of Blessed Henry Suso, By Himself — The Life of Blessed Henry Suso — autobiography
Suso's spiritual autobiography — the first sustained spiritual autobiography in German literature. Composed in the third person as the Servitor of Eternal Wisdom. Records his austerities, his visions, his persecutions, his maturing as a disciple of Eckhart, and his transition from young ascetic to mature spiritual father.
92,455 words - 2Prologue and Chapters I–IV (philosophical core) — Little Book of Eternal Wisdom — Prologue + chapters I-IV (philosophical core)
Opens Suso's most-circulated work — Das Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit. The philosophical-doctrinal core: the dialogue between the Servitor and Eternal Wisdom (Christ-Sophia). The classical Eckhartian themes received in the Suso register: tender, affective, more accommodating to ordinary spirituality.
6,569 words - 3Chapters V–VII: Christic Conformity, the Wild Man Dialogue, and the Comportment of the Detached — Eternal Wisdom chapters V-VII — the wild-man dialogue; Christic conformity
Continuation of Eternal Wisdom. The famous Wild Man dialogue (the figure of the Wild Man as the soul that has cast off ordinary social-religious convention); the chapter on Christic conformity (the soul made like Christ in His passion); the comportment of the disciple of Eternal Wisdom.
5,351 words
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