SURIO (SAUER), LAURENTIUS. – Carthusian writer, born in Lübeck in 1522, died on 23 May 1578 in Cologne.
As a student at Frankfurt an der Oder, he returned to Catholicism in Cologne through the agency of S. Pietro Canisio, his fellow student. Having obtained the degree of Magister artium in 1539, he entered the Carthusian monastery in Cologne on 23 February 1540, under the discipline of Giusto Lansperger. Ordained a priest in 1543, he scarcely ever left the Cologne charterhouse thereafter, always occupied with writing for the benefit of the faith. He translated into Latin the works of Suso, Tauler, Ruusbroec (v.), Gropper, and other German mystics and apologists. Against the work of Sleidano (v.) he published Commentarius brevis rerum in orbe gestarum, 1500-64 (Louvain 1566, translated into German by Enrico Fabricio [Cologne 1568], and into French), which aroused the ire of the Protestants and was continued by others until 1673. Then, in 1567, he published
in 4 volumes in Cologne a Conciliorum collectio; an edition of the works of St. Leo I (1568); and a volume entitled Homiliae sive Conciones, drawn from the Holy Fathers and arranged according to the feasts of the liturgical year. Better known and more widely circulated was the collection De probatis sanctorum historiis, which he took from the work of Alvise Lipomano and enriched with his own research; it appeared in 6 volumes, and then in 7 in 1576–81, followed by a German translation by E. Fabricio. Since S. had revised the original text in order to reduce it to better Latin, a new edition in 12 volumes in 1618, with a biography of the author, restored the lives to their original form. An edition with notes in 12 volumes appeared in Turin in 1875–80. It may be said that this work of S. paved the way for the work of the Bollandists. His letters are found among those of Sirleto and Canisio.