Overview
Suso and his friend Johannes Tauler were students of Meister Eckhart. The three form the nucleus of the Rhineland school of mysticism. As a lyric poet and troubadour of divine wisdom, Suso explored with psychological intensity the spiritual truths of Eckhart’s mystical philosophy. His devotional works were extremely popular in the later Middle Ages.
He assumed the name of his mother, his father being a Herr von Berg. In Das Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit (The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom), written between 1327 and 1334 in Constance, he discusses the practical aspects of mysticism. The latter work, which Suso also translated into Latin under the title of Horologium sapientiae (Clock of Wisdom), has been called the finest fruit of German mysticism.
Suso is the poet of the early mystic movement, "the Minnesinger of Gottesminne." But his faith is purely medieval in tone, inspired by the romanticism of the age of chivalry; the individualism, the philosophic insight and the anti-clerical tendencies which made the mystic movement in its later manifestations so important a forerunner of the Reformation are absent in Suso.
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