SUSO  [SEIISEI, HEINRICH (13oo-1366),

German mystic, was born of good family at tberlingen on Lake Constance on the 21st of March, in all probability in the year . 1300; he assumed the name of his mother, his father being a Herr von Berg . He Susa, the Arab town which succeeded Hadrumetum (q.v.), was fortified by the Aghlabite rulers of Kairawan in the 9th century A.D . It shared the general fortunes of Tunisia and became a noted flaunt of pirates, who raided the coast of Italy . In 1537 it was unsuccessfully besieged by the marquis of Terra Nova, in the service of Charles V., but in 1539 was captured for the emperor by Andrea Doria . As soon as the imperial forces were withdrawn it became again the seat of Turkish piracy . The town was attacked by the French and the Knights of St John in 1770, and by the Venetians in 1764 . It remained, however, in the possession of the bey of Tunis . in Das Biichlein der ewigen Weisheit, written some years later in Constance, he discusses the practical aspects of mysticism . The latter work, which Suso also translated into Latin under the title of Horologium sapientiae, 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-Catholic tendencies which made the mystic movement in its later manifestations so important a forerunner of the Reformation are absent . Suso's works were collected as early as 1482 and again in 1512; recent editions: Heinrich Suso's Leben and Schriften, ed. by M .

Diepenbrock (1829; 4th ed., 1884); Suso's Deutsche Schriften, by F . H . S . Denifle (1878-188o, not completed), and Deutsche Schriften, by K . Bihlmeyer (2 vols., 1907) . See also W . Preger,

Die Briefe Heinrich Suusos (1867) ; W . Preger, Geschichte der deutschen Mystik (1882), vol. ii.; J . Jager, Heinrich Seuse aus Schwaben (1894) .