The spiritual love of Mary especially appealed to the German temper.  Among the adoring monks Suso deserves particular mention.  He laid great stress on the difference between high love and low love.  “Low love begins with rapture and ends with pain, but high love begins with grief, and is transformed into ecstasy, until finally the lovers are united in eternity.”  He was keenly conscious of the older motive of the cult of Mary, namely, the need of a gentle mediator between man and the inaccessible Deity.  “Oh, thou!  God’s chosen delight, thou dulcet, golden song of the Eternal Wisdom, suffer me, a poor sinner, to tell thee a little of my sufferings.  My soul prostrates itself before thee with timorous eyes, shamefaced.  Oh! thou Mother of all mercies, I ween that neither my soul nor the soul of any other poor sinner needs a mediator, or permission to come to thy throne, for thou, thyself, art the intercessor for all sinners.”  Compared to his forerunner, St. Bernard, Suso exhibits a marked degree of intimacy in his relationship with Mary.  He describes heaven as a kind of flowered meadow, and Mary keeping court, like any earthly princess.  “Now go and behold the sweet Queen of Heaven, whom you love so profoundly, leading the procession of the celestial throng in great gladness and stateliness, inclining to her lover with roses and lilies!  Behold her wonderful beauty shedding light and joy on the heavenly hosts!  Eya!  Look up to her who giveth gladness to heart and mind; behold the Mother of Mercy resting her eyes, her tender, pitiful eyes, on you and all sinners, powerfully protecting her beloved child.”  The whole sixteenth chapter of the Booklet of Eternal Wisdom is an ardent hymn to the Madonna, almost comparable to St. Bernard’s prayer to Mary in Dante’s Divine Comedy.  It was written about the time of Dante’s death, not very long, therefore, after the composition of the last chapters of the Paradise.

The Life of Suso (the first German biography ever written) evidences his adoration for the Lady of Heaven:  “It was customary in his country, Swabia, for the young men to go to their sweethearts’ houses on New Year’s Eve, singing songs until they received from the maidens a chaplet in return.  This custom so pleased his young and ardent heart that he, too, went on the eve of the New Year to his eternal love, to beg her for a gift.  Before daybreak he repaired to the statue which represented the Virginal Mother pressing her tender child, the beautiful Eternal Wisdom, to her bosom, and kneeling down before her, with a sweet, low singing of his soul, he chanted a sequence to her, imploring her to let him win a chaplet from her Child....”  “He then said to the Eternal Wisdom” (and it is uncertain whether he is addressing the mother or the child):  “Thou art my love, my glad Easter day, the summer-joy of my heart, my sweet hour; thou art the love which my young heart alone worships, and for the sake of which it has scorned earthly love.  Give me a guerdon, then, my heart’s delight, and let me not go away from thee empty-handed.”