19 Facts About Henry Suso

Henry Suso, OP was a German Dominican friar and the most popular vernacular writer of the fourteenth century.

Henry Suso died in Ulm on 25 January 1366, and was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1831.

Henry Suso was born Heinrich von Berg, a member of the ruling family of Berg.

Henry Suso made himself "the Servant of Eternal Wisdom", which he identified with the divine essence and, in more specific terms, with divine Eternal Wisdom made man in Christ.

Henry Suso was then sent on for further studies in philosophy and theology, probably first at the Dominican monastery in Strasbourg, perhaps between 1319 and 1321, and then from 1324 to 1327 he took a supplementary course in theology in the Dominican Studium Generale in Cologne, where he would have come into contact with Meister Eckhart, and probably Johannes Tauler, both celebrated mystics.

Henry Suso traveled to the Dominican General Chapter held at Maastricht in 1330 to defend himself.

Henry Suso's influence was especially strong in many religious communities of women, particularly in the Dominican Monastery of St Katharinental in the Thurgau, a famous nursery of mysticism in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Henry Suso translated some of his Latin writings into German, collected and preserved most of his extant letters, and at some point began gathering the materials that Suso eventually put together into his Life of the Servant.

Henry Suso shared in the exile of the Dominican community from Constance between 1339 and 1346, during the most heated years of the quarrel originally between Pope John XXII and the Holy Roman Emperor, continued by Pope Benedict XII.

Henry Suso was transferred to the monastery at Ulm in about 1348.

Henry Suso seems to have remained there for the rest of his life.

Early in his life, Henry Suso subjected himself to extreme forms of mortifications; later on he reported that God told him they were unnecessary.

At some point between 1334 and 1337 Henry Suso translated this work into Latin, but in doing so added considerably to its contents, and made of it an almost entirely new book, which he called the Horologium Sapientiae.

Henry Suso wrote a long text purporting to tell the story of his spiritual life and ascetic practices, and revised the Buchlein der Wahrheit and the Buchlein der ewigen Weisheit.

Henry Suso was very widely read in the later Middle Ages.

Henry Suso used the full and flexible Alemannic idiom with rare skill, and contributed much to the formation of good German prose, especially by giving new shades of meaning to words employed to describe inner sensations.

Henry Suso's apostolate was not with the masses, but rather with individuals of all classes who were drawn to him by his singularly attractive personality, and to whom he became a personal director in the spiritual life.

Henry Suso was reported to have established among the Friends of God a society which he called the Brotherhood of the Eternal Wisdom.

Henry Suso was beatified in 1831 by Pope Gregory XVI, who assigned 2 March as his feast day, celebrated within the Dominican Order.