| THE reason for including Suarez in a series of texts on mediaeval philosophy is apparent. Suarez is the channel through which the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages passed to the modern world. Although he belongs to the Renaissance, his philosophy breathes the spirit of the Schoolmen. His Disputationes metaphysicae is the last great achievement of scholastic philosophy. |
| Francis Suarez, known as the Doctor Eximius ever since Benedict XIV conferred this honorary title on him, was born at Granada in Spain on January 5, 1548. At the age of thirteen he was sent to Salamanca to study canon law. His first request for admission into the Society of Jesus was refused: he was judged deficient in health and in talent. But in 1564, after insistent pleading, he was accepted. |
| In the beginning his endeavors to learn philosophy met with scant success. But by the end of the first year knowledge had made its bloody entrance; the new science yielded to his stubborn efforts, and he became marked as one of the better students. From 1566 to 1570 he studied theology at Salamanca. He taught philosophy for four years, and then theology for ten years at Segovia, Valladolid, and Rome. For reasons of health, he returned to Spain, and lectured in the schools at Alcal, Salamanca, and Coimbra. The twenty-year professorship at the latter university was broken by his residence in Rome from 1603 to 1606. He died on September 25, 1617, in Lisbon, having reached his seventieth year. |
| Up to the age of forty-two, although he had been teaching philosophy and theology for some nineteen years, Suarez had not published a single page. In 1590 appeared the first of his long series of works, De Incarnatione Verbi. This was followed by De mysteriis vitae Christi, in 1592; De sacramentis, I, in 1595; Disputationes metaphysicae, two volumes, in 1597; Varia opuscula theologica, in 1599; De sacramentis, II, in 1602; De censuris, in 1603; De Deo Uno et Trino, in 1606; De virtute et statu religionis, vol. I, in 1608, vol. II, in 1609; De legibus, in 1612; and the Defensio fidei catholicae, in 1613. All of these Suarez saw through the press himself. After his death were published: De gratia, I and III, in 1619; De angelis, 1620; De opere sex dierum, and De anima, 1621; De fide, spe, et caritate, 1621; De virtute et statu religionis, vol. III, in 1624, |
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Moyses E. Kiley