SURIN (SEURIN), JEAN-JOSEPH. – Jesuit spiritual writer, born on 29 February 1600 at Bordeaux, died there on 22 April 1665. Of a prosperous family, he was brought up with great religious devotion; his sister was a Carmelite, and his mother herself, after being widowed, followed her daughter into the convent.
Having completed his studies with the Jesuits, S. entered their Order in 1616, completing philosophy and theology at the College of La Flèche and his third year of probation at Rouen under the direction of Fr. LALLEMANT, LOUIS (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 commissioned, at the request of Cardinal Richelieu, to exorcise (1634) Mother Jeanne des Anges, superior Loudun (v.). S., already exhausted by his studies and prone to neurosis, went there and on that occasion suffered severe psychological disturbances. Having, in a spirit of generous piety, offered himself to God to endure the pains of diabolical possession in place of the unfortunate nun, he thereafter believed himself to be under the influence of evil spirits. For twenty years S. suffered this trial, which caused him numerous humiliations and indescribable sufferings, although he retained sufficient clarity to write various works and to preach fruitfully. During the last eight years of his life he regained peace and serenity of spirit and received an abundance of mystical gifts. Boudin published an enthusiastic biography of him (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 former, initially circulated in manuscript sheets, was later, without the author’s knowledge, printed by Prince Armand de Bourbon, then a Calvinist, under another name. The book enjoyed immense success and numerous reprintings (1659, 1663, 1665, 1669, 1673; the last edited by M. Bouix, 1882) and was also translated into various languages. It contains quite a few alterations by an external hand. It was also placed on the Index, under pressure from the Jansenists (decree of 20 July 1695), but not the revised and corrected editions (for example, that of Fellow, 1730, and that of Bouix, 1882). He also wrote: Dialogues spirituels (ibid. 1695); Sur l'amour de Dieu (edited by Pottier-Mariès, ibid. 1930); Thriomphe de l'amour sur les puissances de l'Enfer (ibid. 1929); Lettres spirituelles (1695–96), critical edition by L. Michel – F. Cavallera (2 vols., ibid. 1926–28).
S. was a man of powerful intellect, with a clear and attractive style. His psychological concreteness, the facility and variety of his observations and images, and his imaginative power make him, as a writer, superior to Lallemant. His defects, on the other hand, were his many repetitions. As a spiritual master, S. reaffirms the following principles. Through the total gift of oneself to God by renouncing all superfluities—that is, every disordered attachment to things and personal satisfactions, including those of the religious world and of the mystical life—the soul must strive always to act according to a supernatural principle of Grace and to go directly to God with an intention of charity that is as actual and intense as possible. Docility to the Holy Spirit must lead the soul to a personal, intimate, and enthusiastic love of 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 S. considers contemplation an absolutely gratuitous gift, dependent exclusively on God’s good pleasure, to which the soul can prepare itself negatively, that is, through the purification of its affections, God does not cease to bestow it, so that de facto it is offered to all souls who are humble, simple, pure, generous, wholly detached from earthly satisfactions, lovers of the Cross and of the glory of Jesus, and solely intent on serving and pleasing him. S. is nevertheless of the opinion that, since the dispositions mentioned above are ordinarily lacking, few attain mystical contemplation.
Modern scholars tend to judge that S. was subject to psychological disturbance, the phenomena of which can be explained as the result of a neurosis and a consequent interpretive delirium. It cannot, however, be excluded that he may also have been subject to demonic action. The psychological disorders did not deprive S. of the free exercise of his intellectual and moral faculties (he was of a cyclothymic type), and thus he was able to rise to high degrees of spirituality and virtue. Among his writings, the autobiographical works show to some extent the effects of this disturbed state, 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.