Henry Suso

c.1300-1366. Swabian mystic. Well-born, he entered the Dominican friary at Constance when he was thirteen and had a deep conversion five years later. Completing his studies at Cologne under the influence of Meister Eckhart, he returned to Constance as lector in the friary school, then became prior. At forty he abandoned his extreme asceticism to preach and be a pastor. As an itinerant preacher, teacher, adviser, and confessor, he visited regularly the Dominican convents about Constance. His writings are essentially devotional; an important one is The Life of the Servant, which records his mystical experiences. His speculative book, The Little Book of Truth, and the more practical, The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, discuss mysticism in detail. He settled in 1348 in the Dominican convent at Ulm.