Exemplar. Suzo G.

Henry Suzo (1295/1297-1366) - a pupil, a follower, an apologet, but partly the critic of his teacher Mayister Eckhart (whose works have already been published in the series “Literary Monuments”), harsh ascet, fiery ecstatic, preacher and confessor of female women Monasteries, who gained wide fame from the domestic reader as one of the main characters of the famous book of I. Hoyzingi “Autumn of the Middle Ages”, is included, along with his Cologne mentor Eckhart and another John Tauler (whose works are still waiting for their academic representation of the Russian audience), in the top three great Mistikov late medieval Germany and the ancestors of its philosophy. Neoplatonian theology of Eckhart in the editors of Suzo came close to the theology of the Byzantine Palamites of the XIV century. And it composed of it Western European analogue. That is why the work of Constantine Charismatic will undoubtedly turn out to be in demand by the Russian religious thought, brought up in the writings of V. Lossky and prot. I. Meyendorf, and his searches in the context of the search for modern forms of spiritual life, not involved in the church official and alternative to him, will be perceived as fresh and relevant.

Creations of G. Suzo cannot be left indifferent in another respect. First of all, this is the autobiography of our hero - “Vita”, the first in German literature, which is the true encyclopedia of the life of medieval Germany: the bloody, frankly savage ascosis, radical methods of “imitation of Christ” (killing the flesh, self -flawning) and ecstatic contemplations; common customs, festivities, plague epidemics, worship of relics and faith in miracles that take the form of mass stir; The objective culture of that time and scenes of the everyday life of social classes - all this performed passions and intellectual fights the picture is revealed by the Russian reader in all its multiplain and inconsistency. Here is the history of monastic life, and the captivating catechist travel of the minister - the literary image of the city of Suzo, - falling into the hands of the robbers or into the thick of the angry, ambulance for the reproduction of the crowd, drowning in the turbulent waters of the Rhine, slandered by the nearest spiritual children and persecuted by feudal lords, swore to betray it to betray it deadly reprisal.

The publication includes all the German -speaking works of Suzo - both entered and not included in the author’s collection prepared by him - “Exemplar”. The first group includes the autobiography “Vita”, “The Book of Eternal Wisdom”, written in the traditions of spiritual dialogue, “The Book of Truth” - the sum and apology of the Echarrtic theology, and the “Book of Letters” - a kind of epistolary compensation. The second group is made up of a “big book of letters” addressed to different persons and subsequently collected by the spiritual daughter of G. Suzo with Dominican E. Stagel, four sermons, the authorship of two of which is considered completely not established, as well as a meditative treatise of the Pseudo-Suzu “Book of Love”. The only Latin work of the Konstanta mysticism, the “Wisdom of Wisdom”, is represented by a number of parallel places (more than 120) to the “Book of Eternal Wisdom” - a brief edition of this watchman included in EXEMPlar. The translation is accompanied by detailed notes and two articles dedicated to both the work of G. Suzo as a whole and his "time of wisdom" in particular.