Jean-Joseph Surin

Jean-Joseph Surin (9 February 1600, Bordeaux – 21 April 1665, Bordeaux) was a French Jesuit mystic, preacher, devotional writer and exorcist. He is remembered for his participation in the exorcisms of Loudun in 1634-37.

Surin was reared in a cloister. At the age of eight he took a vow of chastity, and at ten he was taught to meditate by a Carmelite. He entered the novitiate with the Jesuits in 1616. From 1623 to 1625 and from 1627 to 1629 he studied at the Collège de Clermont in Paris. As a priest he practiced severe self-denial, and cut himself off from nearly all social contact.

In the early 1630s, a convent of Ursuline nuns said they had been visited and possessed by demons. Suspicion soon fell upon Urbain Grandier, parish priest of Saint-Pierre-du-Marché in the town of Loudun, as the cause of the possessions. Grandier was already a controversial figure in the town because of a longstanding quarrel with the local church authorities. In the following weeks, numerous nuns were supposedly attacked and possessed by evil spirits: the Loudun possessions. This reached a point that exorcism rituals were organized by the local clergy. It was during these rites that the nuns accused Grandier of being in league with the devil and initiating their demonic possession. He was also accused of seducing the nuns.

Following a series of trials, Grandier was convicted. He was executed by burning on 18 August 1634, never having admitted guilt, even under torture. The demons then began leaving the nuns, but the improvement was only temporary. Jeanne des Anges, mother-superior of the convent, remained possessed by seven different demons.

After some missions in Guyenne and Saintonge, Surin was sent to Loudun in December 1634 to help with the exorcism of Jeanne des Anges. He was so horrified at the terrible sacrileges intended for three desecrated hosts that he immediately made an offering of his own spirit to be possessed by demons in expiation for this intended sacrilege. His prayer was granted, and for more than twenty years he was harassed by evil spirits, experiencing hallucinations, seizures and temporary paralysis, and slowly losing his power of speech. He became plunged in suicidal despair over his eternal damnation. At times he was unable to use his hands, his feet, his eyes, his tongue, or was impelled to commit a thousand extravagances, which even the most charitably inclined deemed foolish. The delusions under which he labored at such times caused him the greatest joy.

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