Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:47:43.780Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Mystical Marriage of the Blessed Henry Suso

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This paper is interested first of all in the gender polarities (male-female), as well as the doctrinal ones (heresy-orthodoxy), present in Sicut aquila, that is, the last eight chapters of Suso's Life. However, the theme of heresy had already been touched on in a text from his youth, in particular with regard to Suso's encounter with a ‘nameless wild thing’, whose sex is somewhat uncertain. Various earlier legends evoking similar ‘androgynous encounters’ help us to see that in the Middle Ages the theme of the androgyne also had something to do with the philosopher's stone of the alchemists. In Suso's writing this stone is embodied by Christ, whose iconography contains androgynous characteristics. But the gender polarity of Sicut aquila is expressed above all through a romantic metaphysical flight written in the form of a lovers’ dialogue between Suso - sometimes called Frater Amandus - and his beloved spiritual daughter.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2005

References

d'Alverny, M. (1949) “Un témoin muet des luttes doctrinales du XIIIe siècle”, Archives… XVII.Google Scholar
Ancelet-Hustache, Jeanne (1928) La Vie mystique d'un monastère de dominicaines au Moyen Age d'après la chronique de Tss. Paris.Google Scholar
Baeumker, Clemens (1928) ‘Das pseudo-hermetische “Buch der vierundzwanzig Meister”, Studien und Characteristiken zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters’, in Beiträge zur Geschichte…XXV.Google Scholar
Bihlmeyer, Karl (1907) Heinrich Seuse, Deutsche Schriften. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer.Google Scholar
Dierkens, Alain and Beyer de Ryke, Benoît, eds (2004) Mystique rhénane, mystique flamande: mystique rhénoflamande? Brussels: Éditions de l'Université de Bruxelles (Problèmes d'Histoire des Religions, vol. XIV).Google Scholar
Duvernoy, Jean (1976) Le Catharisme: la religion des cathares. Toulouse: Privat.Google Scholar
Eckhart, Meister (1954) Telle était Soeur Katrei…, trans. Mayrisch Saint-Hubert, A.. Paris: Cahiers du sud; Neuchstel: La Baconnière.Google Scholar
Grimm, Jacob (1895) Deutsche Mythologie, Vol. I. Wiesbaden: Drei Lilien.Google Scholar
Haas, Alois Maria (1995) Kunst rechter Gelassenheit. Themen und Schwerpunkte von Heinrich Seuses Mystik. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Haas, Alois Maria (1996) ‘Introduction à la vie et à l'oeuvre de Henri Suso’, in Vannier, Marie-Anne (ed.) Les Mystiques rhénans (Revue des Sciences Religieuses 70th year, no. 1, Strasbourg, January 1996). Paris: Cerf.Google Scholar
Pfeiffer, Franz, ed. (1991) Deutsche Mystiker des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, Vol. 2: Meister Eckhart (1857). Leipzig: Aalen, Scientia.Google Scholar
Poisson, Albert (1986) Théories et symboles des alchimistes. Le grand oeuvre, suivi d'un essai sur la bibliographie alchimique du XIXe siècle. Paris: Éditions Traditionnelles.Google Scholar
Ruh, Kurt (1996) ‘Heinrich Seuse’, in Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik. Band III: Die Mystik des deutschen Predigerordens und ihre Grundlegung durch die Hochscholastik, pp. 415–75. Munich: Beck.Google Scholar
Schwietering, Julius (1964) ‘Zur Autorschaft von Seuses Vita’, in Kurt, Ruh, Altdeutsche und niederländische Mystik. Darmstadt.Google Scholar
Spamer, Adolf (1912) Texte aus der deutschen Mystik des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts. Jena: Diederichs.Google Scholar
Suso, Henry (2005) Tel un aigle. Initiation à la vie spirituelle, trans. from the Middle German, presented and annotated by Wackernagel, Wolfgang. Paris: Payot & Rivages.Google Scholar
Vetter, Ferdinand (1906) Das Leben der Schwestern zu Tss beschrieben von Elsbeth Stagel samt der Vorrede von Johannes Meier und dem Leben der Prinzessin Elisabeth von Ungarn. Berlin.Google Scholar
Wackernagel, Wolfgang (1997) ‘Maître Eckhart et le discernement mystique. A propos de la rencontre de Suso avec “La chose sauvage sans nom”’, Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie, 129: 113–26.Google Scholar