Eudæmon, John Andrew

, a learned Jesuit, was a native of Crete, and supposed to be descended from the imperial family of the Palseologi. He went to Rome in pursuit of knowledge, and entered himself a member of the society of Jesus. He was afterwards professor of philosophy, and then of theology in the university of Padua, rector of the Greek college in Rome, and censor of the inquisition. He was honoured with the esteem and friendship of pope Urban VIII. who appointed him chaplain to his nephew cardinal Francis Barberini, when he was sent papal legate into France. He died at Rome Dec. 24, 1625. He was suspected to be the author of a work entitled “Admonitio ad Regem Ludovicum XIII.” which attacked the authority of the kings of France, in matters of an ecclesiastical nature. This treatise brought the Jesuits into general disrepute; it was likewise censured by the faculty of the Sorbonne, and the assembly of the clergy at Paris in 1626, and condemned by the parliament. He merits notice here, however, chiefly for having frequently entered the lists of controversy with many eminent English divines, who wrote against popery about the beginning of the seventeenth century, particularly Burhill, Prideaux, Abbot, and Collins, but the titles of his works may now be spared. ²