The Mirror of Unusual Questions, the Speculum peregrinarum quaestionum of Bartholomaeus Sibylla, O.P., is now in the library, complete in English for the first time.
Sibylla, a Dominican who studied at Bologna and Ferrara and became prior of the convent of his order at Monopoli in Apulia, died in 1493, the year his book was first printed. In three decades of ten chapters each he gathers the uncommon questions of theology and answers them from Scripture, the Fathers, St. Thomas and the schoolmen, the canonists, and the philosophers.
The First Decade treats the rational soul: its creation and immortality; heaven, hell, purgatory, the limbo of children, and the earthly Paradise; the apparitions of the dead and what the dead know; ecstasy, sleep, and dreams; and the beatitude of the soul. The Second treats the good angels: their nature and number, free choice, their guardianship of men, their speech and knowledge, the war of Michael with the dragon, and the Virgin assumed above the choirs of angels. The Third treats the demons: their fall, their assumed bodies, possession, illusions, and temptation, their knowledge of the future, exorcism, and their assaults upon the dying.
The translation follows the Venice edition of 1587, which the Dominican Cyprianus Guidus of Lucca revised and restored throughout to the teaching of St. Thomas, with his dedicatory letter and both of the book’s printed indexes — the index of questions and the alphabetical index of memorable matters — whose page numbers link to the passages they cite. The work may be read online question by question, or downloaded as a PDF or an EPUB.