Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/374

 SUGER

326

SUICIDE

Suger, Abbot of St-Denis, statesman and his- torian, b. probably at or near St-Denis, about lOSl; d. there, 13 Jan., 1151. Towards 1091 he was offered to the monastery of St-Denis where he became a fel- low-student of King Louis VI. From 1104 to 1106 he attended another monastic school, perhaps that of St-Benoit-sur-Loire near Orleans. He became secre- tary to Abbot Adam of St-Denis in 1106, was named provost of Berneval in Normandy towards 1107 and of Toury in Beauce in 1109. Louis VI sent him (1118) to the Court of Gelasius II at Maguelonne in Southern France, and later to that of Callistus II at Rome. During his stay at Rome (1121-22) he was elected Abbot of St-Denis, and ordained to the priesthood on his return. He attended the First Gen- eral Council of the Lateran in 1 123, and so favourably impressed Callistus II that eighteen months after his return to France this pope, desirous of conferring new honours (probably the cardinalate) upon him, invited hira to Rome. Suger proceeded as far as Lucca, but ' ' ( raced his steps ii|ion receipt of the III \\s of the pope's li ith. Henceforth lMll^t of his time \\ 1.^ spent at Court until 1127, when he Muti.itcd, and sub- sequently success- fully accomplished, the reform of his monastery. He contmued to re- mam, however, the constant adviser of Louis VI and of his successor Louis VII. During the latter's absence on the Second Crusade he was appointed regent of the kingdom (1147-49). He had opposed the king's departure on the groimd that the powerful and turbulent vass;ils were a danger to the royal power, but so successful was his administration that the king, upon his return, bestowed upon him the title of "Father of the Coun- try". Although the crusade ended in failure, Suger equipped an array and was about to depart for the Holy Land when he died. As a statesman he sought to strengthen the royal power, to improve agricul- ture, commerce, and trade, and to reform the admin- istration of justice. As abbot he not only intro- duced thorough-going reforms, but also completed in 1144 the new monastic church. He has left an ac- count of the consecration of this edifice, " Libellus de consecratione eccl. S. Diony.sii", and a memoir on his own abbatical administration, "Liber de rebus in administratione sua gestis". Of greater importance for the knowledge of the period are his " Vita Ludovici Grossi regis", a eulogistic but rehable life of Loius the Fat, and "Historia Ludovici VH", a history of Louis VII, which in its present form is the work of a Burgundian monk of St-( !eriiiain-de,s-Pr6s. We also possess of him .some letters, official documents, and a will of the year 1137.

The complete works of SuoER were published by de la Mahciib, (Euvrea completes de Suger (Paris, 1867): they are also in P. L., CLXXXVI, 1211-1468; Huouenin, Etude »ur I'abbt Suger (Paris. 18.'>5); Cautellieri. .46/ Suger von Saint-Denis (Berlin, 1898); Mabson, Barlu Chroniclers of Europe: France (London, fl.d.),. 56-59; MohisiKH^ Lcs Sources del' hist, de France, I, ii, DOS. ISl.'j-SO.

N. A. Weber. Su^^estion. See Psychotherapy.

From Dear*

Suicide. — This article will treat the subject under the following three heads: — I. The notions and divisions of suicide; II. The principles according to which its morality must be judged; III. Statistics and explanations of its frequency.

I. Notion. — Suicide is the act of one who causes his own death, either by positively destroying his own life, as by inflicting on himself a mortal wound or injury, or by omitting to do what is necess.ary to escape death, as by refusing to leave a burning house. From a moral standpoint we must treat therefore not only the prohibition of positive suicide, but also the obliga- tion incumbent on man to preserve his life. Suicide is direct when a man has the intention of causing his own death, whether as an end to be attained, or as a means to another end, as when a man kills himself to escape condemnation, disgrace, ruin etc. It is indi- rect, and not usually called bj' this name when a man does not desire it, either as an end or as a means, but when he nevertheless commits an act which in effect involves death, as when he devotes himself to the care of the plague-stricken knowing that he will succumb under the task.

II. MoR.\LiTY. — The teaching of the Catholic Church concerning the morality of suicide may be summarized as follows: —

A. Positive and Direct Suicide perpetrated without God's consent always constitutes a grave injustice towards Him. To destroy a thing is to dispose of it as an absolute master and to act as one having full and independent dominion over it; but man does not possess this full and independent dominion over his life, since to be an owner one must be superior to his property. God has reserved to himself direct domin- ion over life; He is the owner of its substance and He has given man only the serviceable dominion, the right of use, with the charge of protecting and pre- serving the substance, that is, life itself. Conse- quently suicide is an attempt against the dominion and right of ownership of the Creator. To this injus- tice is added a serious offence against the charity which man owes to himself, since by his act he de- prives himself of the greatest good in his possession and the possibility of attaining his final end. More- over, the sin may be aggravated by circumstances, such as failure in conjugal, paternal, or filial piety, failure in justice or charity, if by taking his life one eludes existing obligations of justice or acts of charity which he could and should perform. That suicide is unlawful is the teaching of Holy Scripture and of the Church, which condemns the act as a most atrocious crime and, in hatred of the sin and to arouse the horror of its children, denies the suicide Christian burial. Moreover, suicide is directly opposed to the most powerful and invincible tendencj- of every creature and especially of man, the preservation of life. Fi- nally, for a sane man deliberately to take his own life he must, as a general rule, first have annihilated in himself all that he possessed of spiritual life, since suicide is in absolute contradiction to everything that the Christian religion teaches us as to the end and object of life and, except in cases of insanity, is usually the natural termination of a life of disorder, weakness, anil cowardice.

The reason we have advanced to prove the malice of suicide, namely, God's right and dominion, likewise justifies the modification of the general i)rinciple: God being the master of our life He may with Hisown consent remove from suicide wliateviT constitutes its disorder. Thus do some authorities justify the con- duct of certain .saints, who, impelled by the desire of martyrdom and especially to jirotect their chastity, did not wait for their executioners to put them to (leath, l)ut sought it in one maimer or other thern- selvcs; nevertheless, the Divine will should be certain and clearly manifested in each particular case. The question is asked: Can one who is condemned to death

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