Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 2.1 (2002) 1-14
In creating the Horologium, Suso revised and expanded an earlier German work, the Little Book of Eternal Wisdom (Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit, ca. 1330), even as he translated it into Latin. In turning to the universal language of theology and learning, the mystic aimed to reach a much larger, international audience of monks, friars,
... [Show full abstract] and secular priests. Both the Horologium and its precursor teach the love of Christ Crucified, whom Suso venerates under the title of Eternal Wisdom. But the Büchlein is a straightforward dialogue on the Passion, while the Horologium interweaves its meditations on the Cross with fervent professions of love to one whom Suso calls "the goddess of all beauty"--none other than Eternal Wisdom (Sophia or Sapientia), acknowledged in her female form as the friar's courtly mistress and spiritual bride. This text was widely copied, cited, illustrated, adapted for liturgical use, and translated into nine vernacular languages before 1500. Through the Horologium and the prayer books inspired by it, Suso fired all Christendom with his devotion to Christ/Sophia, which enjoyed its heyday in the fifteenth century. Despite its eclipse by the more conventional pieties of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Suso's sapiential devotion retained a toehold almost to the present through its lingering influence on German pietism, Boehmian theosophy, and even Russian Sophiology.
Erotic mysticism had long been considered an appropriate form of devotion for women. Before Suso, however, it was highly unusual for a man to play the male role in a scenario of celestial love. If homoeroticism was to be avoided, as it usually was, he had to take on the woman's role as feminine soul, in the tradition of male bridal mysticism popularized by Bernard of Clairvaux. Thus, in the Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, Suso refers to his own soul as Wisdom's "poor servant girl," and Wisdom responds to him as "my daughter." The biblical figure of Lady Wisdom is mentioned only in passing, for in this text Eternal Wisdom is predominantly the suffering Jesus. But when Suso decided to recast his book in Latin for a male readership, he altered the heterosexual romance with divinity by reclaiming the male role for himself, while recasting God as a goddess. In the Horologium, Suso programmatically oscillates between two versions of the divine love affair: sometimes the writer speaks as the female Soul pining for her divine Bridegroom, but more often as the male Disciple ravished by love of his heavenly Bride. As he himself explains in the prologue, he "changes his style in different ways according to what seems suited to the material. Now he presents the Son of God as bridegroom of the devout soul, and then he introduces the same as Eternal Wisdom betrothed to the just man."
As an example of the alterations Suso made for his Latinate readers, he replaces chapter 7 of the Büchlein, "How Loving God Is," with chapter 6 of the Horologium: "What the Divine Bride, Eternal Wisdom, Is Like, and the Quality of Her Love." Suso here constructs a typical romance scene: a young man strolls through a blooming meadow on a spring morning, resolved to sing and dance with his fellows and gather rosebuds while he may. But alas, these "human flowers," so fresh and lovely, wither before his eyes in an instant, leaving their beholder stunned. As he meditates on the brevity of the world's bliss, another vision accosts his sight:
