Greco-Christian stream·Rhineland Mystics·Heinrich Suso·Chapters V–VII: Christic Conformity, the Wild Man Dialogue, and the Comportment of the Detached

Chapters V–VII: Christic Conformity, the Wild Man Dialogue, and the Comportment of the Detached

Suso's Büchlein der Wahrheit, second half. Chapter V completes the dialogue with the Eternal Truth on the way of true blessedness: a vision of Christ on the cross, the conformity to the divine image as a being-formed-into-the-Son, and the rigorous distinction between contemplative gaze and active operation. Chapter VI is the most famous single passage of the work: Suso's dialogue with the Nameless Wild One — a personified figure of the Free-Spirit antinomianism that had appropriated Meister Eckhart's language to license disordered freedom. Suso, the youngest of the Dominican Eckhart-circle, refutes the Wild One by drawing — with the precision of a scholastic — the distinction the Free Spirits had collapsed: between the unity of essence in which God's Persons are unseparated, and the discernment of the relations in which they are distinct; between Eckhart's "noble man" who works what righteousness works, and the Wild One's mensch-without-otherness who acknowledges no rule. Chapter VII gives the practical answer: how a truly detached person stands in time, in prayer, in confession, with neighbor, with food and sleep, with the orderly judgment of all things — the apophatic life as discipline, not dispensation.

V. The dialogue on conformity to Christ and the way of true blessedness

Editorial note. Chapter V is presented in abridged form in this translation. The Bihlmeyer 1907 critical edition (pp. 337–352, the longest single chapter of the work) contains several scholastic quaestiones that the present rendering passes over — among them the Augustinian distinction of cognitio matutina and cognitio vespertina (the soul's morning- and evening-cognition, from De Genesi ad litteram IV); the Boethian definition of aeternitas as interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio; the contrast between the natürlichen meister (the natural masters — Aristotle and the natural philosophers) and the gütlich kristen meister (the Christian masters of God) on how they take created things; the two-works / one-work passage on Christ, where Suso applies Eckhart's Gottesgeburt doctrine to Christ's human action; the technical will-zerging discussion of whether the will is annihilated in the niht or only relinquishes its Eigenschaft (Suso's answer is the latter, a key structural defense against the Free-Spirit reading); and the sin-impossibility-during-union passage, in which Suso distinguishes the soul that remains in itself (which can still sin) from the soul that has lost itself (which cannot) — addressing precisely the question the Beghards collapsed. A fuller translation of these passages is deferred. The material that follows preserves the chapter's doctrinal spine: the vision of the only-begotten Son, the conformity to the divine image, the discipline of being-formed-into-the-Son, and the contraria of eternal nothing and temporal becoming. Chapters VI (the Wild Man dialogue) and VII (the comportment of the detached) are rendered in full.

The disciple raised his eyes and spoke with deep sighs of the heart: "Ah, Eternal Truth, what is this, or what does this wonderful vision mean?"

So it was answered, and the word spoke in him thus:

This likeness which you have seen signifies the only-begotten Son of God in the manner in which he has taken human nature to himself. And that it was a single image, and yet was uncountably manifold — that signifies all those persons who are his members, who have also become sons or his Son through him and in him, as the many bodily members number themselves into one body. But that the head shone over-transcendently means that he is the first and only-begotten Son after the over-transcendent assumption¹ into the personal self-hood of the divine Person; while the others are after the in-taking of over-formed¹ oneness with that same image. The cross signifies that a truly detached person, in the outer and the inner man, must at all times stand in self-surrender to all that God wills to have suffered from him, however that comes about — that he is inclined, in a dying way, to receive it in praise of the heavenly Father. And such persons stand noble from within and outwardly conformed in their conduct.² That the figure was so godly at the cross signifies: however much suffering they have, they hold it in contempt out of their own Gelassenheit. Where the head turned, there the body also turned: that signifies the singleness of mind of faithful following of a pure mirror-like life and good teaching, to which they turn themselves powerfully and hold themselves the like.

The one kind of persons, who gazed at him from within but not from without, signify those who behold Christ's life only in the intellect, in a contemplative manner, and not in an outworking manner — they do not break through into nature in following exercise of that same image. They see it all according to this gaze for the sake of nature's pleasure and barren freedom, in self-help, and it seems coarse and inscrutable to them when they are not given the same.

The others gazed at him only after the outward manner and not after the inward, and these are hard and severe; and out of this they discipline themselves strictly and live in caution, and bear before others an honest holy demeanor, but they overlook Christ from within. For his life was mild and gentle, but these persons have much striking, and they judge other people, and to them everything seems wrong that their own way does not produce. These persons hold themselves unlike to him whom they yet intend, and one marks this thus: where they fail, they do not stand in a letting-go of themselves, nor in a sinking-out of their nature, nor in a loss of the things that shield the will — like-and-dislike and the like. And by this the will is preserved and screened, so that the person does not come to the godly virtues of obedience, patience, the not-clinging,³ and their like; whereas such virtues bear the person into the image of Christ.

The disciple began to question further, and spoke thus: Tell me, by what manner is a person brought to his blessedness?

The answer: One may name it a generative manner, as it stands written in the Gospel of John, that he has given power and might to become sons of God to all those who are born of nothing other than God.⁴ And that happens in a manner similar to ordinary in-flowing begetting. Now what one thing in such a way begets the other, it forms it after itself and into itself, and gives it likeness of its essence and operation. And therefore in a detached person — where God alone is Father, in whom nothing temporal is begotten by self-claim — there are new eyes opened, that he understands himself there, and takes there his blessed being and life, and is one with him; for all things are here one in him.

The disciple spoke: I see, however, that mountain and valley are, and water and air and many a creature. What say you then, that only the one is?

The pure word answered and spoke thus: I tell you yet more — unless a person grasps two contraria, two opposed things, as one with one another — truly without any doubt, then it is good and easy to speak with him of godly things; for when he grasps this, then he has for the first time half-stepped onto the way of the life that I mean.

A question: Which are the contraria?

The answer: An eternal nothing, and its temporal having-become.⁵

A counter-objection: Two contraria taken as one in every way contradict every science.

The answer: I and you do not meet one another upon one branch or in one place; you go one way and I another. Your questions go out of human senses, and I answer out of those senses which are above the mark of all human persons. You must become senseless,⁶ if you would come hither; for it is by un-knowing that the truth is known.⁷

There came upon him, in those same times, a great over-pressing. He came at times to the point that he was — sometimes for ten weeks, less or more — so powerfully un-worked that, in open senses, both in the dwelling of people and apart from people, his senses departed from him after a particular working manner, that in everything in all things only one answered him, and all things in one without any manyness of this and that.

The word began and spoke in him: Well, well, how is it now? Have I spoken rightly?

He said: Yes, what before I could not believe is now become for me a knowing — but I wonder why it passes away.

The word said: It has perhaps not yet sunk into your essence-bearing gemüt.

The disciple began again and asked thus: Where does the detached person's understanding rest?

The answer: A person cannot come to it that he understands himself one with what is the nothing of all the things one can name or apprehend. And that nothing one calls, after veiled manner, God; and it is in itself an all-essential Icht — an all-essential is. And here the person knows himself one with this nothing, and this nothing knows itself without the work of knowing. But here is hidden something still deeper within.

A question: Does the scripture speak then of what you have called nothing, not of its not-being, but of an over-transcending un-comprehendibility?

The answer: Dionysius writes of one that is nameless, and that may be the nothing that I mean. For whoever names it Godhead or essence — or whatever name one gives it — these names are not proper to it according to the manner in which names form themselves in the creature.

A question: But what is the hidden inner-thing of this aforementioned nothing, which in your meaning excludes from its signification all having-become ihtikeit — all is-ness? It is plainly a simplicity. How can the most-simple have within or without?

The answer: As long as a person grasps a oneness that is not all things in one — so long is what he has grasped not the most-simple. The most-simple is one and all in one, without any breaking-up of the parts. The intellect grasps it according to its own manner; the manner is not the thing.

But hither there are few persons whom the call comes — only certain persons living in praiseworthy holiness, to whom none the less the call here is given. Yet the nearer, the better. If however the sure point⁸ has come to him, let him hold to it, and he is upon the right way; for the point holds itself with holy scripture. Otherwise it seems perilous to me to do, for he who delays himself here either passes himself away in restlessness, or often falls into disordered freedom.

VI. On what points the persons fail who lead a false freedom (the Wild Man dialogue)

On a bright sunny day, he sat once in restraint and contemplation, and in the stillness of his gemüt there came to meet him an intellectual figure⁹ that was subtle in its words and unanchored in its works, and was out-breaking in flickering richness. He began and spoke to it thus: "Whence are you?" It said: "I come not from any-whence." He said: "Tell me, what are you?" It said: "I am nothing." He said: "What do you want?" It answered and said: "I want nothing." He said again: "This is a wonder. Tell me, what is your name?" It said: "I am called the Nameless Wild One."¹⁰

The disciple said: You may well be called the Wild One, for your words and answers are altogether wild. Now tell me one thing about which I ask you: where does your discernment rest?

It said: In bare freedom.

The disciple said: Tell me, what do you call a bare freedom?

It said: Where a person lives after all his self-will without otherness — without any gaze before or after.¹¹

The disciple said: You are not on the right way of truth, for such freedom mis-guides the person away from all blessedness, and dis-frees him from his true freedom. For whoever lacks discernment, lacks order; and what is without right order is evil and corrupt — as Christ said: "He that doeth sin is a servant of sin."¹² But whoever, with a pure conscience and a guarded life, enters into Christ with right detachment of himself, comes to the true freedom, as he himself said: "If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed."¹³

The Wild One said: What do you call ordered and not-ordered?

The disciple said: I call that ordered, when all that belongs to the matter from within or from without is not left aside, un-considered, in the outworking; and that not-ordered which, against the foresaid, is left aside.

The Wild One said: A bare freedom shall pass under all of this and despise it all.

The disciple said: That despising would be against all truth, and is the same as the false bare freedom, for it is against the order which the eternal nothing has given, in a fertile manner, to all things.

The Wild One said: The person who in his eternal nothing has become a nothing, that one knows nothing of discernment.

The disciple: The eternal nothing that here and in all right intellects is meant — that it is nothing, not by its non-being, but by its over-transcending ihtikeit — that nothing is in itself the least of any discernment, and from it, as it is here mentioned, comes all orderly discernment of all things. The person is never quite annihilated in this nothing; his senses keep nevertheless the discernment of their own essential origin, and the intellect of the same, their own act of selection — however all this in its first ground remains un-regarded.

The Wild One: If one takes it then altogether, no-where else than in the same and out of the same ground?

The disciple: There you take it not rightly; for it is not in the ground alone — it is also in itself a creaturely Icht out here, and remains what it is, and accordingly one must call it that. Were it that its discernment of the essencing as of the naming were taken from it, then it could not stand. And that is not so, as has been said before. Hereof one must always hold good discernment.

The Wild One: I have heard that there was a high master,¹⁴ and that he did away with all discernment.

The disciple: That you mean he did away with all discernment — if you take this in the Godhead, one can understand that he meant of each of the Persons in the ground in which they are un-distinguished, but not as they hold themselves relationally against one another; and there there is to be held, surely, personal discernment.

If you take it also from the un-becoming of a passed-over person — of that enough has been said above, how it is to be understood according to the naming, not according to the essencing. And mark here that un-separation and un-distinctness are different things, as is plain: that body and soul have no un-separation, for one is in the other, and no member can live which is cut away; but the soul is distinct from the body, for the soul is not the body, nor is the body the soul. So I understand that, in truth, there is nothing that can have un-separation from the one essence, since it gives essence to all essences — but in respect of distinctness, the divine essence is not the essence of the stone, nor the essence of the stone the divine essence, nor any creature the essence of another. And so the teachers mean that this distinctness, properly speaking, is not in God, but is from God. And the Book of Wisdom says: as nothing is more inward than God, so nothing is more distinct.¹⁵ And therefore your inference is false, and this meaning is right.

The Wild One: That same master said much that is beautiful concerning a Christ-formed person.

The disciple: The master speaks in one place thus: Christ is the only-begotten Son and we are not; he is the natural Son, for his birth attains to nature, but we are not the natural Son, and our begetting is called a re-birth, for it attains to conformity with his nature. He is an image of the Father, we are formed after the image of the holy Trinity. And he says that no one can be measured equal to him in this.¹⁶

The Wild One: I have heard that he says, such a person works all that Christ wrought.

The disciple answered: The same master speaks in one place thus: The righteous works all that righteousness works; and that is true, says he, where the righteous is only-begotten of righteousness, as is written: "What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the spirit is spirit."¹⁷ And that is alone true, says he, in Christ, and in no other person — for he has no essence except the essence of the Father, nor a begetter except the heavenly Father; and therefore he wrought all that the Father wrought. But in all other persons, says he, this falls short, that we work less and more with him after the measure that we are less and more begotten of him. And this discourse leads you certainly to the truth.¹⁸

The Wild One: His speech sounds as if all that was given to Christ was also given to me.

The disciple: All that is given to Christ is the complete possession of essential blessedness, as he said: omnia — all things has the Father given me into my hands. But our possession of blessedness is a participated communicability, not the substantial sonship — not by essence, but by grace. And he who collapses this distinction has not understood the master at all. He has read the words and not the meaning.

The Wild One was silent and asked him, with submissive lowliness, to touch further on this useful discernment.

He answered and spoke thus: The greatest defect that displaces you and your like lies in this: that you lack good discernment of intellectual truth.^18a And therefore, whoever wishes to attain to the nearest and not fall into these snares — let him be diligent in this useful teaching, and so he comes unhindered to a blessed life.

VII. How nobly a truly detached person conducts himself in all things

After this, the disciple turned again with earnestness to the Eternal Truth, and asked also for some discernment after the mark of the outer image of a person who had truly let himself go, and asked thus: Eternal Truth, how does such a person bear himself in the face of every single thing?

The answer: He sinks out of himself, and with him all things.

A question: How does he bear himself toward the time?

The answer: He stands in a present Now without self-clinging purpose,¹⁹ and takes his nearest in the least as in the greatest.

A question: Paul says that to the righteous no law is given.²⁰

The answer: A righteous person bears himself, according to his having-become, more submissively than other persons, for he understands in the ground from within what from without is given as law to any person, and so takes all things. But that he does not act otherwise, that is because he works the same thing from detachment that the common person works out of constraint.

A question: One in this inner Gelassenheit is over-set — is he not freed from outer exercises?

The answer: One sees few persons coming with unspent powers thither, where you speak of, for the un-working searches out the innermost marrow in those to whom it is given in truth. And therefore, when they then know what is to be done and to be let be, they remain at common exercises, less and more after their power, or after other circumstance.

A question: Whence comes some good-seeming persons' great pressing-down and excessive narrowness of conscience, which they hold in their conscience;^19a and others' un-ordered wideness?

The answer: They both aim at their own self-images, but each falsely — the first spiritually, the second bodily.

A question: Does such a person always go alone, or what is his doing?

The answer: A well-detached person's doing is his letting-go, and his work is his keeping idle; for he stays empty of doing and idle of work.²¹

A question: How does he bear himself toward his neighbor?

The answer: He has community with people without in-imaging,²² loving-kindness without attachment, and compassion without anxiety, in right freedom.

A question: Is such a person required to confess?

The answer: The confession that happens out of love is nobler than the one that goes out of debt.²³

A question: What is the shape of such a person's praying — or has he praying to do?

The answer: His prayer is fruitful, for he takes an in-look into the senses, whether he has somewhere taken a mean,²⁴ or led himself somewhere into any pre-grasping of his self-hood. And there a light is shown in the highest power, with a showing, that God is the being and the life and the working in him, and he of that same alone is a fruition.²⁵

A question: What is the shape of such a noble person's eating and drinking and sleeping?

The answer: According to necessity and according to sensible measure the outer man eats — but he does not eat from an in-yielding; otherwise he would enjoy the food and rest in beastly manner. And so it is also in other matters that belong to the person.

A question: What is the shape of his outward conduct?

The answer: He has not many manners nor words, and these are plain and simple; he has a settled walk, that things flow under him through him; and he is restful in his senses.

A question: Are they all so?

The answer: Less and more, according to the un-likeness of contingency — but the essential point stays alike.

A question: Has such a person come to a complete knowing of the truth, or does there yet remain in him seeming and supposing?

The answer: Where the person remains in himself, there remain in him also the seeming and supposing. But where he has departed from himself into that which is, there is a knowing of all truth — for it is itself, and he stands un-claimed of it.

And herewith let enough be said to you. For not with questioning, but with right Gelassenheit, does one come to this hidden truth. Amen.

Translator's notes

The Middle High German text is taken from Karl Bihlmeyer's 1907 critical edition (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer), pp. 337–359, with cross-check against Diepenbrock's 1854 modern German modernization. The glossary v1 anchors established for Chapters I–IV (see prior chapter and /about/translations/) apply throughout; new footnotes here cover only matters specific to Chs V–VII.

¹ Übertreffende annemung and überformig einikeit — "over-transcendent assumption" and "over-formed oneness." The technical Christological pair: Christ's hypostatic assumption of human nature (assumptio in the Latin tradition; annemung in MHG) is unique and unrepeatable; the believer's union with Christ is by conformity to that hypostatic image, not by repetition of the assumption itself. The prefix über- in Suso's MHG carries the scholastic super- / trans- sense — the believer is "over-formed" in the sense of being formed above the natural human creaturely state, into the divine image, without however becoming hypostatically divine.

² Gewerlich von ussen — "outwardly conformed in their conduct." MHG gewer connotes both "war-readiness" (military preparedness) and "guarantee, surety." Here the sense is of a person whose outward life guarantees the inward state — gives observable warrant of it.

³ Unbehabenlichi — "the not-clinging." Literally "the un-take-able-ness." One of Suso's coinages: the virtue of not being graspable, not having handles by which one can be moved by attachment.

⁴ John 1:12–13.

⁵ Ein ewiges niht und sin zitliches gewordenheit — "an eternal nothing and its temporal having-become." Bihlmeyer's footnote glosses: the soul's temporal Gewordenheit (creaturely having-become-in-time) and the eternal Icht (= God) are, for one on the way to mystical unity, contraria that must be grasped together. Suso's mystical dialectic resolves the contradiction not by suppressing one side but by holding both in a single grasp — the grunt of the soul where the two coincide. This is the structural pivot of Suso's Eckhart-defense: against the Free Spirit reading, the temporal creature is not dissolved into the eternal nothing; the two remain contraria even at the apex of union.

⁶ Sinnelos werden — "become senseless." Not unconscious, but rather: become free of the discursive senses that produce the manyness of this and that. Suso is quoting Augustine: de ordine II.16.44 — de summo hoc unus modus est nesciendo ("of this highest there is one way, by un-knowing").

⁷ Mit unbekennen wirt dü warheit bekant — "by un-knowing is truth known." The classic apophatic formula, descended via Pseudo-Dionysius and Augustine.

⁸ Der sicher punct — "the sure point." MHG punct (Latin punctum) names the indivisible meeting-point where the soul's apex touches the divine ground. Suso's signature image of mystical contact, taken from Bonaventure and adapted into the vernacular.

⁹ Vernünftiges bilde — "an intellectual figure." Not a bodily apparition but a personification of an intellectual disposition. The Wild One in the dialogue is not a person Suso met but a personified type of antinomian thought — the Free Spirit position composed and addressed.

¹⁰ Daz namelos wilde — "the Nameless Wild One." The figure is "wild" in two senses: doctrinally untamed (lacking ordered discernment) and unlocated (refusing to acknowledge ordered place in the cosmos). The capitalization in English follows convention; the MHG simply names the position as a figure of speech personified.

¹¹ Sunder anderheit, ane allen anblik in vor und in nach — "without otherness, without any gaze before or after." This is the precise theological formula of the Free Spirit position as Suso encountered it: the dissolution of all otherness (between God and creature, between sin and merit, between past and future) under the cover of mystical immediacy. Suso's whole reply turns on the distinction that otherness in the naming of intellect is to be preserved, even as otherness in the essencing of mystical union is overcome.

¹² John 8:34.

¹³ John 8:36.

¹⁴ Ein hocher meister — "a high master." Meister Eckhart, named obliquely throughout the Wild One dialogue. Suso, Eckhart's student and defender, will not name him explicitly under the shadow of the papal censure (the bull In agro dominico condemned 28 of Eckhart's propositions in 1329, two years after Eckhart's death). The Wild One's si gewesen ("[he] is gone") in the surrounding dialogue locates Eckhart's death (1327/28) — Bihlmeyer's chronology (pp. 6527 ff.) uses this internal evidence to date the Bdw's composition to within a year or two of Eckhart's death, c. 1326–28. The whole VI Chapter is, formally, Suso's defense of Eckhart against the misreading of Eckhart — Eckhart is not the Wild One's source, only the Wild One's pretext.

¹⁵ Als nüt innigers ist denn got, also ist nüt underscheideners — "as nothing is more inward than God, so nothing is more distinct." A direct paraphrase of Eckhart's Commentarius in Librum Sapientiae: Deus est indistinctissimus ab omni et quolibet creato … omne quod indistinctione distinguitur, quanto fuerit indistinctius, tanto distinctius, distinguitur enim ipsa indistinctione ("God is the most-undistinguished from every and any created thing … and whatever is distinguished by un-distinction, the more undistinguished it is, the more distinguished it is — for it is distinguished by that very un-distinction"). Bihlmeyer footnotes the source (Archiv II, 498). Suso's deployment of this paradox is doctrinally precise: the maximal un-distinction of the divine essence from all things is itself the principle of the most rigorous distinction of God from all things. Free Spirit antinomianism collapses both sides; Suso preserves both.

¹⁶ Ein bilde des vatters — "an image of the Father." A near-quotation of Eckhart's 13th condemned proposition.

¹⁷ John 3:6.

¹⁸ Bihlmeyer's footnote: Suso here lets Eckhart's proposition stand for Christ alone in the full sense, while Eckhart had applied it to every righteous person in the consequence of his doctrine of the divine birth in the soul. The move is delicate — Suso defends Eckhart's words by reading them in a Christological key the Wild One had collapsed. Modern scholarship is divided on whether Suso's interpretation matches Eckhart's actual meaning; Bihlmeyer leans toward Suso's reading as harmonization rather than restoration. This is one of the moments where Suso's role as Eckhart's defender shades into Suso's role as Eckhart's redactor.

¹⁸ᵃ The disciple's diagnostic clause compresses a longer passage in the Bihlmeyer source (cf. lines 30987 ff., Din scharphes gemerke richset mit ganlichi dez liehtes der nature in behender vernünftikeit, daz du vil glich lühtet dem lichte der götlichen warheit), in which the disciple distinguishes the light of nature (creaturely intellect) from the light of divine truth — the Wild One's intellectual sharpness glistens with the keenness of the natural light in such a way that it looks much like the divine light. The collapsed-then-rendered "you lack good discernment of intellectual truth" preserves the doctrinal payload; the source's diagnostic image of natural light mimicking divine light is the standard scholastic explanation of why intellectualist heresies look orthodox at first reading.

¹⁹ Ane behangnen fursaz — "without self-clinging purpose." The MHG verb behangen names hanging-onto / clinging-to (not contingency); Bihlmeyer's apparatus glosses behangnen fursaz as selbsterwählter Vorsatz — "self-chosen / self-clinging purpose," cf. Vita 167. The detached person's Now is the will's freedom from its own self-chosen determinations, not freedom from circumstance.

¹⁹ᵃ Which they hold in their conscience — MHG dü sü hein an der gewineri. Gewineri is glossed in Bihlmeyer's apparatus (cf. line 31133) as the conscience faculty (gewissen); an der gewineri = "at / on the conscience." The narrowness or pressing-down sits in the conscience itself, not on something the person merely carries.

²⁰ 1 Timothy 1:9.

²¹ Eines wolgelazsenen menschen tün ist sin lazsen, und sin werk ist sin müzsig bliben — "a well-detached person's doing is his letting-go, and his work is his keeping idle." Suso's most compressed statement of the detachment-paradox. Echoes Eckhart's müezic stân — "to stand at idle" — as the soul's most active mode.

²² Ane inbildunge — "without in-imaging." Without the particular image of any one person being especially fixed in him to the exclusion of others. The detached person's love is catholic in the precise sense: it does not bind preferentially.

²³ Dü bibte dü da geschihet von minnen, dü ist edeler denne dü von schulden gat — "the confession that happens out of love is nobler than the one that goes out of debt." Bihlmeyer's footnote: where there is no grave sin, confession is not a duty but an act of love — and is therefore more noble than the duty-confession that purges grave fault. A pastoral consequence of Suso's apophatic theology that anticipates a long Catholic devotional tradition.

²⁴ Vermittelt habe — "taken a mean." MHG mittel = "means" / "medium" / "go-between." Whether the person has interposed any creaturely mediator (an image, an attachment, a self-claim) between his soul and the divine ground.

²⁵ Geno z (in the OCR; Bihlmeyer reads genoz) — "a fruition," a fellow-partaker. The detached person partakes of God's own working in himself.

Source citation

Karl Bihlmeyer (ed.), Heinrich Seuse: Deutsche Schriften (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1907), pp. 337–359 (Chapters V–VII of the Büchlein der Wahrheit). Public-domain critical edition; archive.org identifier bub_gb_htUMAAAAIAAJ.

Cross-checked against: Melchior Diepenbrock (ed.), Heinrich Suso's Leben und Schriften (Augsburg: K. Kollmann, 1854), pp. 268–286.

Project English: see /about/translations/ for methodology and license. Dedicated to the public domain (CC0 1.0 Universal).

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