“In the second half of the fourteenth and in the fifteenth century there was no more widely read meditation book in the German Language.” (CE https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07238c.htm)

573J  Henricus Suso. (1295-1366)

 Horologium aeternae sapientiae.

Cologne: Johann Landen, December 1500/1501. Price $15,000

Octavo, 13.4 x 10cm. Signatures A-Q8. In this copy there are lombard initials in red and blue, one with dog-head decoration, red capital strokes, paragraph marks, and underlining.

A Woodcut appears three times, on title, title verso, and verso of final leaf (margin of f. 2 slightly extended, occasional damp stains at gutter and edges, a few leaves in gathering O stained and one with short closed tear). Bound in modern vellum with manuscript antiphonal leaf reused as pastedowns. 

No copies of this edition are recorded at auction by ABPC or RBH.

ISTC is00876500; GfT 424; Voull(K) 1113; GW M44600;  VD16 S 6103; Goldschmidt p. 135. See Ford BPH 177 (first edition) and 178 (fourth edition). [APA citation. McMahon, A. (1910). Blessed Henry Suso. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved April 27, 2022 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07238c.htm%5D

https://data.cerl.org/istc/is00876500

Germany. Augsburg, Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Koblenz, Stiftung Staatliches Görres-Gymnasium Koblenz, Historische Bibliothek Köln, Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (3)
Wuppertal, Stadtbibliothek Wuppertal, Zentralbibliothek Elberfeld

Russia. Moscow, Russian State Library (Berlin copy)

Number of holding institutions 6

Last Edit2025-02-19 12:01:11

The German Mystics of the fourteenth century, Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler and Heinrich Suso, seemed to be constantly Willing the ability of Unwillingness. Perhaps Eckhart is the most profoundly speculatively blunt so much so that he was accused of heresy and brought up before the local Franciscan-led Inquisition, and tried as a heretic but died before a verdict. Tauler intern provides neo-platonic richness and logic to this position. Suso’s is to explore the territory through emotion. Suso’s first books , Büchlein der Wahrheit (Little Book of Truth) and Das Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit (The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom) were written in German and structured as instructions and explanations for Beginners as well as a defense and adaptation of Eckharts spiritual views.

Eckhart tells us : “Be willing to be a beginner every single morning”

Likewise Suso writes of himself in his Autobiography “The inward impulse, which he had received from God, urged him to turn away entirely from every thing which might be a hindrance to him. The tempter met this with the suggestion:—Bethink thee better. ”

Suso proceeds to expose the interior to the elements and deals with in good spirit. The Clock of Eternal Wisdom, (edited by Elsbeth Stagel) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsbeth_Stagel ] exhibits not only faith but trust in the unknown, Like Walter Hilton before him, and Thomas à Kempis after him, Suso dwells poetically and thoughtfully on the frustrations and disappointments as well as spiritualising ways of dealing with them by servitude to that which is beyond perception.

Suso Belongs in the higherarchy of Great books of internal spiritual quest along with

Boethius, Dante and à Kempis

Horologium sapientiae is an intense work of religious fiction. It is written by a man of unique literary talent and religious fervor. The Horologium is the product of a religious culture that that was under pressure, a culture pervaded by eschatological anticipation and religious anxiety. However, the work is also an example of how this culture produced new and innovative forms of popular theology that provided relief to pious minds. This study will argue that Suso’s approaches may be seen as a pioneering effort of late medieval ‘theology of piety.’ This concept, developed by German scholars, enables appreciative and accurate analysis of certain types of theological literature from the later medieval period that does not easily answer to categories such as ‘scholastic’ or ‘mystical’ or ‘monastic’ theology.

Most scholars think that the Horologium sapientiae was completed in 1333 or 1334.16 As mentioned, it is a considerably ‘expanded version’ of Suso’s Middle High German work, the “Little Book of Eternal Wisdom,” Buchlein der ewigen weisheit (Bdew).17 The Bdew was in its own right a popular and widely transmit- ted work, however not on the same scale as the Horologium. The two books have most parts in common: with the Horologium, Suso adopted (and expanded) most of the German version. They are based on the same fundamental idea and structuring principle: the spiritual beginner, the Servant (diener) in the Bdew or the Disciple (discipulus) in the Horologium, in dialogue with Eternal Wisdom, a female character that is presented as the “sum of everything that is good.” Suso draws on an ancient tradition of philosophical dialogues with Sapientia, the female ‘principle of wisdom’ as seen above all in the work of Boethius.18 For the protagonist, who is a figure of identification for the reader,19 the dialogue is a process of spiritual edification and also a lover/beloved relationship in the fashion of bridal mysticism that was so popular since the time of Bernard of Clairvaux.

” Suso studied in Cologne under Johannes Futerer and the more famous Meister Eckhart, who made a strong impact. Besides this stay in Cologne, and perhaps studies in Strassbourg, Suso seems to have spent most of his life in or around
Constance and, from about 1348, in the city of Ulm. As a Dominican friar, he spent much of his professional life in the service of the cura monialium, the pastoral care for nuns. This meant some travelling to female Dominican convents in
this area. Suso developed a close friendship with Elsbeth Stagel, a nun at the convent of Töss, for whom he was also confessor. Stagel is also known as one of the primary authors of the Töss Sister-Book, and was relatively well educated (for a woman in this period) and, like Suso, she appears to have been of a fervent religious personality; the relationship between Suso and Stagel was also a literary collaboration. Stagel was responsible for collecting the letters that would become Suso’s Briefbuchlein (Bfb), and she may also have contributed to parts of Suso’s Vita, where she also appears in person, as the “spiritual daughter” of the Servant (Suso). The pastoral care for nuns provided Suso with both the material and purpose for much of his literary production. For a period during the 1340’s Suso was prior at the female convent of St. Katherinenthal / Diessenhofen. A main reason for this stay was that the Dominicans of the Inselkloster in Constance were forced into exile from the city as a result of a papal interdict. This interdict was the culmination of a conflict between John XXII and the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria. It is widely agreed upon that it is this conflict that gave Suso the material for the dramatic vision of “the ram,” the tyrant leader who persecutes a small flock of devout friends of God, in chapter five of Book II of the Horologium“

As we understand, the Horologium is an intense work. The reader follows the spiritual beginner through an experiential process of learning as the text moves through sequences of intensely shifting moods, depending on the topics discussed.
From passages of a high-flown language that praises the sweetness of divine influence, the text gives way to explorations of the painful absence of God and the agonizing longing for signs of divine acceptance; notions or visions of an angry
judge\God, outbursts of fear and anxiety related to sin, tribulation, and spiritual insufficiency, are never far away.

( From New Readings of Heinrich Suso’s Horologium sapientiae Jon Øygarden Flæten)

17 For a comprehensive comparison of the Bdew and the Horologium in Künzle (1977), pp. 28-54. It was earlier believed by some that the Bdew was an abbreviated version that built on the Horologium. Künzle refuted this once and for all.

18 Suso’s borrowings Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy is seen in the passage where Eternal Wisdom appear to the disciple in the first chapter of the Horologium, see Watch 71; Hor.379.15-17. See Künzle (1977), p. 379 with further reference. Although the use of the figure ofWisdom as dialogue partner can be traced back to ancient philosophy (Plato, Boethius), Suso’s
dialogues, as has been noticed by scholars, are not philosophical dialogues in a strict sense. Suso’s dialogue partner also bares similarities with Francis’ Lady Poverty. Stirnimann has pointed to the dialogues between the soul and Love in Mechthild of Magdeburg and Gertrud der Grosse as a type of dialogue that is more closely related to that of Suso. But even in this context, Suso’s works stand out with their uncommonly individualized dialogue partner. See Stirnimann (1980), p. 222-23.
19 Fenten (2007b), p. 7.
20 Cf. Haas (1979), pp. 297-8.

https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/49179/PhD-Flaeten.pdf?sequence=1

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