Customer Reviews

Henry Suso: The Exemplar, with Two German Sermons (Classics of Western Spirituality)

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Henry Suso was a Dominican Friar and a follower of Meister Eckhart, the famous German mystic. While being a disciple of Eckhart, Suso is a great mystic and writer in his own right, and is also a very interesting individual.

Like many mystics of the Medieval Period, Suso received a good education, mostly in theology and philosophy, and was influenced by St Augustine, Dionysius the Aeropagite, Aquinas, and of course, Eckhart. Early in his career Suso engaged in fanatical and dangerous acts of penance (which included bleeding himself in a strange imitation of Christ's passion) and like Luther, lived in terror of damnation, until calmed by mystical visions and also by Eckhart. Suso later wrote several works detailing his life and experiences, which cover themes from Eckhart's notion of 'breakthrough' into the divine 'nothing' to his misfortunes at the hands of miscreants and liars to his mystical visions of hell, purgatory, and heaven.

Suso is more of a writer than a theologian or philosopher, and he has an excellent talent for making the spiritual life concrete. His also a good storeyteller, and whether his stories of being run out of town after being falsely accused of fornication and his close encounter with a murderous bandit in the forest who spares his life in return for confessing his sins are real experiences, they all make interesting if not amusing reading. Nevertheless Suso also engages at many points in very deep mystical thought, including his experiences of the Godhead as the formless One past God.

This version includes Suso's Exempelar, Book of Divine Wisdom, and Book of Truth, and contains good notes and an scholarly introduction.

... in part thanks to this book! Seriously, Suso is one of the most fascinating figures in the mystical tradition, and wildly popular in the late Middle Ages to boot! Would that the Bihlmeyer critical text were affordably available!

Very good book overall. I will probably keep this copy and not resell it. Intro very helpful, and ties to Meister Eckhardt evident.