SURIN (SEURIN), JEAN-JOSEPH. - Jesuit spiritual writer, born on 29 Feb. 1600 at Bordeaux, died there on 22 Apr. 1665. Of a well-to-do family, he was brought up in a very religious manner; his sister became a Carmelite, and his mother, after being widowed, followed her daughter into the convent.
After studying under the Jesuits, S. entered their Order in 1616, completing his philosophy and theology at the College of La Flèche and his third year of probation at Rouen under the guidance of Fr. ALLEMAND (v.), whose influence he always felt, becoming in turn a great spiritual author. During his pastoral activity at Marennes near La Rochelle, where he served as minister, consultor, and preacher (1630-34), he was entrusted by Cardinal Richelieu with the task of exorcising (1634) Mother Jeanne des Anges, superior Loudun (v.). Already weary from his studies and subject to neuroses, he went there and suffered severe psychological disturbances on that occasion. Having generously offered himself to God to share in the sufferings of the demonic possession in place of the poor religious, he believed from then on that he was under the influence of evil spirits. For twenty years S. endured this trial, which caused him much humiliation and indescribable suffering, even though he retained lucidity to write various works and to preach fruitfully. In the last eight years of his life he regained peace and calm of spirit and was abundantly gifted with mystical graces. A biography of him was published by Boudin (Chartres 1683).
S.'s importance lies in his Ignatian spirituality with a particular mystical emphasis, expressed above all in his works: *Catéchisme spirituel* (Paris 1657); *Les fondements de la vie spirituelle* (ibid. 1674). The first, initially circulated in manuscript form, was later printed without the author's knowledge by Prince Armand de Bourbon, then a Calvinist, under another name. The book enjoyed great success and numerous reprints (1659, 1663, 1665, 1669, 1673; the last edited by M. Bouix, 1882) and was also translated into various languages. It contains not a few interpolations by others. It was also placed on the Index, under pressure from the Jansenists (decree of 20 July 1695), but not the revised and corrected editions (e.g., that of Feilow, 1730, and of Bouix, 1882). He also wrote: *Dialogues spirituels* (ibid. 1695); *Sur l'amour de Dieu* (ed. Pottier-Mariès, ibid. 1930); *Throniphie de l'amour sur les puissances de l'Enfer* (ibid. 1929); *Lettres spirituelles* (1695-96), critical ed. by L. Michel - F. Cavallera (2 vols., ibid. 1926-28).
S. was a man of strong intellect, with a clear and attractive style. His psychological concreteness, ease and variety of observation and imagery, and imaginative power make him, as a writer, superior to Lallement. His defects, however, were his many repetitions. As a spiritual master S. reiterates the following principles. Through the total gift of oneself to God by renouncing all that is unnecessary, that is, every disordered affection for things and personal satisfactions, even in religious life and mystical experience, the soul must strive to act always from a supernatural principle of grace and to go directly to God with an intention as actual and intense as possible of charity. Docility to the Holy Spirit should lead the soul to a personal, intimate, and enthusiastic love for Jesus, even to a life of identification in which Jesus becomes as it were the soul of the loving soul. The goal is mystical union. Although contemplation is regarded by S. as an absolutely gratuitous gift and dependent solely on God's good pleasure, to which the soul can only prepare negatively, that is, by purifying its affections, he does not cease to affirm that God gives it, so that in fact it is offered to all humble, simple, pure, generous souls, entirely detached from earthly satisfactions, lovers of the Cross and of Jesus' glory, solely intent on serving Him and pleasing Him. S., however, is of the opinion that, since the above-mentioned dispositions are ordinarily lacking, few attain mystical contemplation.
Modern scholars tend to judge that S. was subject to psychological disturbance, whose phenomena can be explained as the result of neurosis and a consequent interpretive delusion. It is not excluded, however, that he may also have been subject to demonic influence. His psychological disturbances did not, however, deprive S. of the free exercise of his intellectual and moral faculties (of a cyclothymic type), so that he was able to rise to high degrees of spirituality and virtue. Among his writings, those that bear the mark of this state of disturbance are the autobiographical ones, such as *Le triomphe de l'amour divin*, *La science expérimentale des choses de l'autre vie acquise en la possession des Ursulines de Loudun*, and some of his *Lettres spirituelles*.