He entered the Dominican cloister aged only 13, and his life was soon to be one of great hardship, of psychological and physical torment. Out of Roman Catholic humility and devotion to his mother, he took the unusual step of adopting his maternal family name, Süs. Heinrich Suso (also rendered Henry Suso or Seuse) was born into the ruling family of Berg as Heinrich von Berg in c. Few biographies show this more painfully and eloquently than that of Heinrich Suso. While we share the broad common themes of human existence with people of the past – survival, love, power, conflict – the idea that they were ‘just like us’ is demonstrably false: their culture, their thought-world, their imaginative universe, was very different to ours. Historical films and novels want us to be emotionally involved, to empathise, and to do this they make the characters seem just like us, transported back into another age. To step back in time into the life of another person is like entering a different universe. “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” (L. (Click to play video – opens in new window.) In dulci jubilo, played on medieval harp with variations by Ian Pittaway. We begin with a performance on medieval harp. This article tells Heinrich Suso’s disturbed and disturbing life, and the continuing life of In dulci jubilo, its words repeatedly reworked over the centuries, from the original Latin and German into many vernacular languages, and its music transformed with new musical arrangements from the 14 th to the 21 st century. The song is first mentioned in 1328, sung and danced by an angel in a vision of Heinrich Suso, German Christian mystic of the 14 th century, extreme practitioner of Christian self-mortification.

In dulci jubilo is one of the most recognisable and joyful melodies of the middle ages, but it carries one of the most shocking and astonishing stories. 7, Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg), c. Woodcut self-portrait by Heinrich Suso (Inkunabel K.

Dulci paina