"Mit bildgebender wise". Heinrich Seuse and the Utility of Images in Mystical Discourse

In his Exemplar (the famous compilation of his German texts that is extant in several manuscripts and printed copies), Henry Suso develops a deep reflection on the place of images in spiritual experience, as well as on the role of images in mystical discourse, and notably on their capacity to express the ineffable nature of God. This image theory relies on a rich vocabulary based on the term bild and its derivatives (entbilden, überbilden, bildgebend, bildlos, bildrich,…), but also on a key phrase (Daz man bild mit bilden ûs tribe) on which we need to take a fresh look. Furthermore, the most striking aspect of the Exemplar lies in the presence of actual drawings in many manuscripts. Although we cannot know for certain that Suso designed this iconographical programme himself, there are arguments that suggest that it is well the case. These drawings, not only illustrating the text but also completing it, make the Exemplar a unique example of the complex relationship between texts and images in the field of spiritual literature of the Late Middle Ages. As Jeffrey Hamburger has shown, this compilation shows a complex pattern of imitation/model where not only the text, but also the images help the reader to imitate Suso in his quest to the spiritual perfection. For a long time, scholars have acknowledged that medieval theologians and mystics – beginning with Bernard of Clairvaux – advocated an aniconic spiritual ideal: necessary during the first steps of the meditative process, images were only considered as tools that had to give way to an imageless contemplation, which was devoid of sensible things. By affirming that “images must drive out images”, Suso offers a more subtle vision of the place and the role of images in mystical transformation. Indeed, it appears that he did not mean that images need to be dispensed with entirely but that each image must be replaced by another one so as to complete and correct each other. In doing so, he offers a continually changing, flexible, and dynamic alternation of images which fundamentally modifies our understanding of the meditative image theory in the Exemplar. In this paper, I propose to focus on Suso’s discourse on images and on the drawings (more precisely on the complex depiction of Eternal Wisdom) in order to show that Suso conceived images as instruments that allow the reader to attain the best understanding of the ineffable nature of God. I will thus show that these images are not simple illustrations meant to bring his teaching within a larger audience’s reach by simplifying it. On the contrary, they are entirely embedded to his discourse, make it denser and can be considered as a visual discourse on mystical experience