§ 114.5. =Henry Suso=, born A.D. 1295, entered the Dominican cloister of Constance in his 13th year. When eighteen years old he took the vow, and till his twenty-second year unceasingly practised the strictest asceticism, in imitation of the sufferings of Christ. He completed his studies, A.D. 1325-1328, under Eckhart at Cologne, and on the death of his pious mother withdrew into the cloister, where he became reader and afterwards prior. The first work which he here published, in A.D. 1335, the “Book of the Truth,” is strongly influenced by the spirit of his master. Accused as a heretic, he was deposed from the priorship in A.D. 1336. His “Book of Eternal Wisdom” was the favourite reading of all lovers of German mysticism. Blending the knight’s and fanatic’s idea of love with the Solomonic conception of Wisdom, which he identifies sometimes with God, sometimes with Christ, sometimes with Mary, he chose her for his beloved, and was favoured by her with frequent visions and was honoured with the title of “Amandus.”--Like most of his fellow monks at Constance, Suso was a supporter of the pope in his contest with Louis the Bavarian, while the city sided with the emperor. When, in A.D. 1339, the monks, in obedience to the papal interdict, refused to perform public worship, they were expelled by the magistrates. In his fortieth year Suso had begun his painful career of self-discipline, which he carried so far as to endanger his life. Now driven away as an exile, he began his singularly fruitful wanderings, during which, passing from cloister to cloister as an itinerant preacher, he became either personally or through correspondence most intimately acquainted with all the most notable of the friends of mysticism, and made many new friends in all ranks, especially among women. In A.D. 1346, along with eight companions, he ventured to return to Constance. There however he met with his sorest trial. An immoral woman, who pretended to him that she sorrowed over and repented of her sins, while really she continued in the practice of them, and was therefore turned away by him, took her revenge by charging him with being the father of the child she was about to bear. Probably this painful incident was the occasion of his retiring into the monastery of Ulm, where he died in A.D. 1366. In him the poetic and romantic element overshadowed the speculative, and in his attachment to ecclesiastical orthodoxy he kept aloof from all reformatory movements.