Francisco Suárez

Designated by Pope Paul V in 1607 as doctor eximius et pius (Eminent and Pious Doctor), Suárez was a prominent figure in the “Second Scholasticism” of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the successor to a medieval “First Scholasticism” during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which featured Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham. Suárez’s work had an enormous influence on early modern education on the Continent, in Lutheran and Reformed as well as Catholic institutions. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1564 and thereafter studied theology at the University of Salamanca. Suárez taught philosophy and theology at Segovia, Valladolid, Rome, Alcalà (where Suárez quarreled incessantly with his rival Gabriel Vázquez), Salamanca and, finally, Coimbra (but only because Phillip II, king of Spain and Portugal, insisted that he take this position). Though best known for his work on metaphysics, Suárez wrote on a wide variety of topics, including psychology, sacred theology, moral theory, international law, and political philosophy. Suárez’s writings reflect a commitment throughout to a Christianized form of Aristotelianism. From Aristotle he inherited, for instance, the view that being can be conceived in terms of ten basic categories, that material substances are composed of matter and form, that causes are divided into four kinds (viz., material, formal, efficient, and final), and that human activity is directed ultimately to a happiness that accords with virtue. Suárez also embraced orthodox Christian doctrines wholly foreign to Aristotle, such as that there are in one God three distinct Persons, that one of these Persons (the Word) became embodied in the Incarnation, and that due to original sin we depend essentially on divine grace for our salvation. The secondary literature on Suárez is vast and international. Though I cite some of the foreign-language scholarship, there is an emphasis on work in English.