Henry Suso Quotes on Love
Henry Suso (Heinrich Seuse, c.1295–1366) — the German Dominican mystic who along with Eckhart and Tauler forms the trio of fourteenth-century Rhineland spirituality — gave late medieval mystical theology one of its most affective treatments of divine love. The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom (Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit) and the autobiographical Life of the Servant develop the love between the soul and Eternal Wisdom (the personified Christ) through a sequence of devotional dialogues, ascetic practices, and mystical visions in which the soul is drawn upward through suffering toward union with the divine beloved. The framework, more emotionally extravagant than Eckhart’s speculative apophaticism but in continuity with its theology of the divine ground, shaped late-medieval German devotional literature and the modern Catholic recovery of Rhineland mysticism.
Quotes
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Attributed to Henry Suso:
“Eternal Wisdom is the bride of every faithful soul.”
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Attributed to Henry Suso:
“He who has lost himself for God has found everything.”
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Attributed to Henry Suso:
“Love is its own theology.”
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“Suffering is the ancient law of love; there is no quest without pain; there is no lover who is not also a martyr.”
Quoted in Evelyn Underhill , Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness (1912), p. 152 -
“An unloving heart can no more understand a love-filled speaker than a German an Italian.”
Quoted in Karl An unloving heart can no more understand a love-filled speaker than a German an Italian Bihlmeyer, Heinrich Seuse. Deutsche Schriften , Stuttgart 1907, p. 199