Henry Suso (Heinrich Seuse) was born about 1295 at Constance or at Überlingen, on Lake Constance, and later took the name of his devout mother. At thirteen he entered the Dominican priory at Constance, and at eighteen he gave himself wholly to God as the “Servant of Eternal Wisdom”. For years he practised severe bodily penances, which he later gave up, believing that God asked him instead to bear the sufferings that came to him.
In the 1320s he studied at Cologne under Meister Eckhart, and when Eckhart's teaching came under suspicion he defended his master in The Little Book of Truth, for which he lost his post as a lecturer. About 1328 he wrote The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom in German, and later a longer Latin work, the Horologium Sapientiae (The Clock of Wisdom), which spread throughout Europe.
Henry Suso in the library (1 work)
- Henry Suso: The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom — c. 1328; translation 1910
The German Dominican's dialogue with Eternal Wisdom on the Passion of Christ, one of the most loved books of the later Middle Ages.