803 



SUAREZ, FRANCIS 



SUCHET, LOUIS GABRIEL. 



804 



he had been introduced. At this period, while enjoying the present, 

 he could look forward to still brighter prospects for the future ; but 

 the scene suddenly changed. Implicated in Struensee's fall, he was 

 arrested in January 1772, just as he was on the eve of being married, 

 and although released within about four months, so great was the shock 

 he experienced, that he never completely recovered from it, for it 

 continued more or less to affect both his mind and his body during the 

 rest of his life. His circumstances too were greatly changed by that 

 event ; and although he obtained an appointment which afforded him 

 a sufficiency, it was in a small town in the duchy of Oldenburg, where 

 he was completely removed from that polished and intellectual 

 society which he had enjoyed in the capital. He had pined in this 

 sort of banishment several years, when letters reached him from 

 Copenhagen announcing the most flattering prospects, but such was 

 the effect the unexpected intelligence had upon him, that he survived 

 it only two or three days, being suddenly carried off by fever on the 

 12th of November 1779. Besides the work above mentioned, and his 

 ' Reminiscences of Bernstorf,' he wrote a number of literary papers 

 on miscellaneous subjects, which he had begun to collect and publish 

 just before his death. 



SUA'REZ, FRANCIS, eldest son of Gasper Suarez of Toledo, and 

 of Antonia Vasquez of Utiel, was born at Granada, where his father 

 practised as an advocate, on the 5th of January 1548. After receiving 

 a good elementary education, he was sent to Salamanca to study law 

 in 1562. The members of the Society of Jesuits, founded about 

 twenty years before, were at this time labouring to extend the ramifi- 

 cations of their order with the full force of the enthusiasm which gave 

 it birth. John Ramirez, as Suarez asserted in after-life, induced no 

 less than five hundred students of Salamanca to devote themselves to 

 a religious life by the fervour of his preaching on Quadragesima 

 Sunday in 1564. Suarez himself was among the number. He expe- 

 rienced considerable difficulty before he could induce the superiors of 

 the order to admit him to probation ; and even after John Suarez, the 

 provincial-general, had resolved to receive him, on account of his 

 possessing qualifications which appeared capable of being turned to 

 account, remonstrances were offered against this determination by 

 more than one member of the Society. During the period of his 

 noviciate Suarez eminently distinguished himself by that obedience 

 and humility, which it was one of the great objects of the founders of 

 the order to impress upon their disciples. Before the probationary 

 two years were completed, he was made to begin his philosophical 

 studies. In these he made little progress, and earnestly begged of his 

 superiors to allow him to desist from studies for which he was 

 convinced he had no capacity. A more favourable opinion of his 

 talents continued notwithstanding to gain ground among the order, 

 and Martin Guttierez, then in high estimation among his brethren, 

 was wont to say, pointing to Suarez, " God intends, through the 

 instrumentality of that brother, to magnify the church, and do honour 

 to the Society." Deferring in this, as in everything, to the directions 

 of his superiors, Suarez toiled through the usual course of philo- 

 sophical study, but apparently with indifferent success; for when 

 advanced to the theological classes, in which he took more pleasure, 

 he found his progress obstructed by his deficiency in the prepara- 

 tory branches of instruction, and he now laboured to make up his 

 deficiencies. With this view he compiled for himself a system of 

 metaphysics, the same which, published at a later period, with a very 

 few finishing touches, elicited much applause. Having completed this 

 task, he devoted the whole of his private hours to self-tuition in the 

 science of casuistry. Having taken his vows at the usual time, Suarez 

 was immediately employed in the educational department. He taught 

 philosophy for a short time at Segovia, and next theology, for several 

 years, at Valladolid. In 1580 he was called to Rome, and lectured on 

 theology there, in the College of the Society, with great applause for 

 eight years. The climate of Rome affecting his health, he obtained 

 leave to return to his native country in 1588, where he was appointed 

 professor of theology in the University of Alcala", a situation which he 

 held till 1596. On quitting Alcala he lectured for a year at Salamanca. 

 The University of Coimbra in Portugal had, in the meantime, by 

 repeated solicitations obtained of Philip II. that Suarez should be 

 appointed its principal professor of divinity. On his way thither 

 Suarez received the degree of Doctor in theology from the University 

 of Eyora. He arrived at Coimbra in 1597, and spent there the 

 remaining twenty years of his life. His lucid arrangement, extra- 

 ordinary memory, and fervid eloquence, rendered his lectures emi- 

 nently popular. But the manner in which his contemporaries speak 

 of him is calculated to leave an impression that his striking personal 

 character had quite as great an influence in raising him to fame as his 

 intellectual powers. He shunned applause; he was indefatigable in 

 his endeavours to render himself serviceable to others; he was 

 guarded in his language, even when expressing himself under strong 

 excitement ; he was abstinent, both in regard to meat and drink ; and 

 the same enthusiasm vvhich impelled him "to take the order by storm," 

 continued to show itself unabuted to the last, in his eager discharge of 

 devotional offices. 



Of all his works, that which attracted most attention in this country 

 was, as might have been expected, the controversial treatise called 

 forth by the defence of the oath of fidelity published by James I., 

 ' P. efensio Fidei Catholicse et ApostolicEO adversus Anglicanse Sectse 



Errores, cum Respousione ad Apologiam pro Juramento Fidelitatis et 

 Prsefationem Monitoriam Serenissimi Jacobi, Angliae Regis." It 

 appeared at Coimbra in 1613. It is the work of an enthusiastic 

 recluse, who, deeply convinced of the truth of his principles, and 

 accustomed to teach them as abstractions to youth, not to attempt to 

 practise them amid the hindrances of real life, pursues them out to 

 all their consequences with a bold and severe logic. The language 

 is decorous, but the conclusions are stated without reserve or soften- 

 ing, and at the conclusion of each chapter an exhortation is addressed 

 to King James, begging him to acknowledge their truth, and submit 

 to them in practice. The king replied by having the book condemned 

 to be burnt in London. By order of the Parliament of Paris, it 

 Buffered the same fate in that capital in 1614. It was not such a work 

 as political leaders in the court of Rome would have ventured to put 

 forth ; but it was such a one as they rejoiced to see put forth by 

 their abstract thinkers, for whom they could apologise to sovereigns 

 as well-meaning men, but ignorant of the world, and therefore not 

 worth minding, at the same time that they reckoned, and not with- 

 out cause, upon the effects to be produced by tlie single-minded 

 expression of a sincere enthusiast. With Suarez however it was per- 

 fect earnestness and conscientious conviction. When informed of the 

 treatment experienced by his book, he expressed the enthusiastic wish 

 that his body had enjoyed the privilege of bearing testimony to his 

 faith by suffering the same fate ; and he was in truth the stuff of 

 which martyrs are made. His systematic works were after his death 

 collected and published under the auspices of the Society in twenty- 

 four volumes. The most important are : four volumes on the chief 

 end of man, in which he treats of the will, good and evil, virtue and 

 vice, and sins ; a volume on laws, and God viewed in his capacity of 

 legislator; four volumes on grace, viz. on justification and the 

 necessity of grace, on actual grace and the means of grace, on habitual 

 grace and its effects, on the true meaning of efficacious means of 

 grace, &c. ; two volumes of metaph) sics, and one of commentaries on 

 different works of Aristotle. The chief merits of the writings of 

 Suarez 'are order and precision. His system is a modification of 

 Molinism, with a view to obviate some of the objections urged against 

 it by the strict adherents to the views of St. Augustine. The contro- 

 versy between the Jesuits and the sectaries of that father, like that 

 between the Armiuians and Calvinists in the Reformed Church, ia 

 parallel to the controversy between recessitarians and those who 

 maintain the freedom of human action. The qualities of mind elicited 

 in theological controversy are acuteuess and logical neatness. These 

 are to be found in Suarez, nor is there anything in his writings to 

 warraut the opinion that he possessed higher intellectual attributes. 

 He was something more than a mere logician and verbal critic ; but 

 his greatness consisted in his elevation of sentiment, impassioned 

 temperament, and energetic will. Suarez died at Lisbon, whither he 

 had gone to make arrangements for the publication of his volumes on 

 Grace, on the 25th of September 1615. 



(Life, prefixed to the edition of Suarez's Works, published at Venice 

 in 1740; Bibliotheca Neva Scriptorum Hispanorum, v. ' Franciscus 

 Soarez.' 



SUBLEYRAS, PIERRE, a distinguished Fretch painter, was born 

 at Usez in 1699. His father, who was also a painter, was his first 

 instructor, but at the age of fifteen he took his son to Toulouse and 

 placed him with Antoine Rivalz, a painter of reputation in that part 

 of France. In 1724 he went to Paris, and two years afterwards 

 obtained the grand prize for painting given by the French Academy 

 for a picture of the Brazen Serpent. He was accordingly sent in 

 1728 to Rome, with a pension from the then government, and he 

 continued there the remainder of his life, and acquired a great reputa- 

 tion. In 1739 he married a Roman lady, Maria Felice Tibaldi, a 

 distinguished miniature painter, and they were both a short time 

 afterwards elected members of the academy of St. Luke. Subleyras 

 was patronised by the popes Clement XII. and Benedict XIV., by 

 several cardinals, and many of the Roman nobility. He painted 

 Benedict's portrait, and was commanded by that pope to execute one 

 of the altarpieces for St. Peter's, to be worked in mosaic. The picture 

 representing St. Basil celebrating mass before the Emperor Valens, 

 who is seized with a fainting fit, was finished in 1745, and after being 

 exposed in St. Peter's for three weeks, was removed to the mosaic 

 offices, and completed in mosaic before the death of Sublejras. He 

 died at Rome of pulmonary consumption May 28, 1749, aged fifty. 



There are several fine pictures by Subleyras in Rome and in some 

 other cities of Italy, and a few in France ; there are eight in the 

 Louvre. His execution was delicate, but he composed well, aud was 

 an agreeable colourist. He etched a few plates ; among them three 

 of the pictures which are in the Louvre the Brazen Serpent, Mary 

 Magdalen at the feet of Christ, and St. Bruno restoring an infant to 

 life. There is also a Holy Family by him. 



SUCHET, LOUIS GABRIEL, Duke of Albufdra and Marshal of 

 France, was a native of Lyon, where his father was a silk manufacturer. 

 The year of his birth is stated by some authorities to have been 1770, 

 by others 1772. On the breaking out of the French Revolution, he 

 entered as a volunteer in the cavalry of the national guard of Lyon ; 

 shortly afterwards, he became captain of a volunteer company raised 

 in the department of 1'Ardeche, which he commanded during four 

 months, when he was raised to the grade of " chef de bataillou " in 



