Index of Questions

Index of Doubts of the Speculum peregrinarum quaestionum, arranged according to the order of the Decades

First Decade

Whether the rational soul is made from the essence of God. 1.
Whether souls were created at the beginning together with the angels in the Empyrean Heaven. 4.
Whether the soul is propagated anew from seed at the same time as the human body is sown. 8.
Whether those whom we call souls are souls, or demons enclosed in bodies. 12.
Whether souls, once the body has been organized, are successively created out of nothing by God, at once by being created and infused. 13.
Whether God acts reasonably in cooperating in souls arising from illicit intercourse. 15.
Why God creates souls which he knows are to be damned, and angels whom he knew would fall. 16.
Whether the rational soul is immortal and incorruptible. 19.
Whether the corrupted human body can rise, be vivified, and return numerically the same. 30.
Whether the world is eternal, or whether it must at some time come to an end. 41.
Whether the world, or any creature, could have been produced from eternity. 50.
Whether, when a human being is dead, the soul informs the body. 51.
Whether, when the heart is dead, the soul still informs the body or some part of it. 53.
Toward what difference of position the soul goes out when it departs from the body. 54.
Toward what termini the soul, having departed from the body, goes. 55.
Whether the particular judgment is conducted by Christ or by angels. 58.
Whether there is an interval between a human being’s death and the particular judgment. 60.
How many places there are for souls released from the body. 62.
Whether the Empyrean Heaven is found in truth. 63.
What the Empyrean Heaven is. 64.
What the spiritual dowry of the soul and of the blessed body in the Empyrean Heaven is. 67.
How many dowries souls existing in the Empyrean Heaven have. 72.
How many dowries glorified bodies have. 75.
Whether the dowries of souls and bodies in heaven are identical with their blessedness. 84.
Whether anything else is necessarily required for true and perfect blessedness beyond the four dowries. 85.
Whether the five senses of the glorified body are made blessed. 87.
What and how many are the aureoles that are given to some of the blessed. 96.
Whether hell exists in truth. 101.
Where the site and position of hell are. 123.
Whether, elsewhere than at the center of the earth, a place is found on the surface of the earth in which the souls of the damned undergo punishments. 118.
What relation Purgatory, Limbo, and Abraham’s bosom, or the bosom of the holy fathers, have to hell. 119.
Which is the greater region of the penal places. 121.
Which region is more lasting among the four penal places. 124.
How many mansions the infernal region has. 124.
Whether the fire of hell is corporeal, similitudinary, or imaginary. 126.
Whether demons and spiritual souls can suffer and be tormented by infernal and corporeal fire. 128.
Whether there is any difference between the fire of hell and that of this world. 133.
Whether the bodies of the damned, joined to their souls after the judgment, can subsist perpetually unconsumed in fire. 134.
On the kinds of punishments which are in hell. 137.
Whether the suffrages of the living can lessen or shorten the punishment of hell. 141.
Whether Purgatory is truly and really found in the center of the earth. 157.
Whether another place of Purgatory is found besides that which is in the center of the earth, where the souls of the moderately good are purged. 169.
That in Purgatory some sins are remitted as to fault, and every liability to punishment owed to venial and mortal sin. 174.
Whether the punishment of Purgatory exceeds every temporal punishment of this life. 180.
Whether purgatorial fire differs from the fire of hell. 183.
Whether the punishment which souls sustain in Purgatory is voluntarily assumed. 186.
Whether those detained in Purgatory can in any manner sin mortally or venially. 188.
That souls existing in Purgatory cannot merit. 189.
Why the punishment of the damned always grows and is increased. 190.
Why the soul alone suffers in Purgatory, although the whole human being commits sins. 194.
Whether the souls of Purgatory are relieved by the works of the living. 194.
Whether the pope can remit, wholly or in part, the punishments of those who are in Purgatory. 199.
Whether the pope, from the plenitude of his power, can bind or absolve one existing in Purgatory. 206.
Whether the pope can rescue from punishment all those existing in Purgatory. 210.
Whether, of two persons existing in Purgatory and deserving equal punishment, one can be liberated from there more quickly than the other. 212.
Whether Abraham’s bosom differs from the limbo of children. 215.
What punishment is owed to children dying in original sin. 216.
That in the limbo of children there is neither punishment of sense nor are there demons. 219.
Whether indulgences avail for children existing in limbo, and whether prayer should be made for them. 221.
Whether all children dying without baptism will rise on the day of judgment. 221.
Where the place of the Elysian Fields is according to the pagans. 223.
Whether the terrestrial Paradise is something corporeal or something spiritual. 225.
Where the Paradise of pleasure is situated. 231.
How many have been translated into the terrestrial Paradise. 237.
Which region is more desirable: the east of the unbelievers, or the west of the Christians? 240.
Whether the dead can appear to the living. 245.
Whether the dead have sometimes appeared in fact. 248.
By which angels the soul is accompanied when it departs from the body, and whether it is immediately conducted to the place assigned to it there. 251.
Whether it is lawful to ask a dying person to reveal his state after death. 253.
Whether the damned can, by right reason, desire not to exist, in order to escape the miseries of hell and attain their absence. 254.
Whether it is lawful to desire death. 260.
Whether it is more desirable to desire not to exist than to sin. 263.
Whether one who is brave with political courage ought to flee the sin opposed to courage more than bodily death. 264.
Whether the dead know the things which are done among the living. 267.
Whether a separated soul knows itself, and how. 271.
Whether separated souls speak with one another. 273.
Whether the soul retains after death the sciences and virtues acquired here, and whether the damned use them with delight. 274.
Why revelations occur more often to women than to men. 292.
Whether the prophecies of holy women should be received as true and preached. 293.
Why it was permitted to the Sibyls alone to prophesy concerning Christ. 299.
What bodily sleep is and whence it is caused. 295.
The question concerning universal and partial sleep. 297.
Whence Adam’s sleep was caused in the beginning. 301.
On the causes of dreams and their definition. 303.
Whether good or evil spirits can send dreams to the living. 306.
Whether the dead can in dreams admonish the living toward good or draw them away from evil, and whether credence should be given to their admonitions. 308.
Whether the dreams of the insane and of fools have a presage of some truth. 309.
Why good spirits instruct human beings enigmatically and parabolically, and not clearly. 309.
Whence it is that the influx of spirits upon human beings concerns sleep rather than wakefulness. 311.
How many and who are those who divine well by dreaming. 312.
Whether it is lawful to give credence to dreams. 314.
Whether it is a sin to foretell future things through dreams. 316.
Why children and the insane sometimes predict future things. 317.
Why brute animals show future effects by certain motions. 318.
Whether the powers of the rational soul are subjected to and necessitated by celestial bodies. 320.
Whence it is that one person has a sharper or slower understanding than another. 325.
Whether one person is inclined by the stars toward one science and another toward another science. 326.
What are the causes by which acuity of understanding is directed toward diverse sciences. 326.
Who judges better concerning the goodness or depravity of the intellect, a physician or an astrologer. 328.
Why a diversity of customs, namely of vices and virtues, appears among human beings in different regions. 331.
On fate according to the poets. 338.
What fate is, and what must be ascribed to fate. 339.
How, according to some, all things are subjected to fate. 340.
That there are three execrable dogmas concerning fate. 343.
That not all things are necessitated by fate. 349.
How one must respond theologically to those who think badly concerning fate. 355.
What fate is according to theologians, and whether it is to be conceded. 356.
What fortune is according to the poets, how it is depicted, and what things are subjected to it. 359.
What fortune is according to philosophers and theologians. 363.
What things make a human being well or badly fortuned. 366.
On the conditions of fortune. 369.
Whether a physician, farmer, gambler, and soldier are made fortunate by the stars in their actions. 372.
Whether God placed in the firmament images of animals and of the species of this inferior world. 377.
Whether images can in some manner be transferred superstitiously into heaven. 381.
Whether a certain divinatory practice concerning future events can be obtained from the stars and images. 383.
Whether astrologers can judge truly concerning the length and brevity of the lives of those born from inspection of the ylech and alcocoden in the degrees of the Zodiac. 386.
That no astrologer can predict and judge certain things concerning future events. 389.
In the act of which of the soul’s powers its beatitude consists. 395.
Whether one person is more blessed than another in heaven. 403.
Whether a less good but more learned soul is more worthy in heaven than a better but less learned soul. 406.
That the person who possessed a more intense degree of charity in this life is more blessed in heaven. 406.
How many names the soul obtains. 407.
Why the soul does not rule the body invincibly. 408.

Second Decade

Whether demons are found in the nature of things. 411.
What the spirits whom we call angels are. 412.
On the number of angels. 415.
On the beginning of the angels. 416.
Where the angels were created. 418.
Whether free choice is found in God, in angels, in the blessed, in demons, in the damned, and in wayfarers. 419.
Whether angels are deputed to the guardianship of human beings. 426.
Whether the guardian angels of souls, when sent, enjoy their happiness in heaven. 429.
To which hierarchy of angels it belongs to guard human beings. 430.
That, notwithstanding divine governance, the guardianship of angels also ought to be given. 432.
To whom the guardianship of angels is necessary. 433.
That one or several angels can be assigned to the guardianship of human beings. 436.
Why a guardian angel is assigned to a human being. 437.
On the beginning and end of the guardianship of angels. 437.
Whether the guardianship of angels is sometimes withdrawn from a human being. 438.
That angels receive accidental joy from the salvation of those whom they guard. 440.
That they have no sadness over the damnation of the one guarded. 441.
That angels are more solicitous for the salvation of human beings than demons are for their destruction. 443.
Why angels permit human beings to be vexed by demons. 445.
That the fear of falling away from God through sin is not in angels or in the blessed. 446.
How angels can alter the interior and exterior powers of human beings. 447.
Whether angels can consecrate the body of Christ. 449.
Whether an angel, having assumed the appearance of a priest, can baptize or absolve. 450.
Whether one angel understands another. 452.
On morning and evening cognition in angels. 453.
On the speech of angels among themselves. 454.
How a spirit can address a human being. 455.
Whether local distance impedes the speech of angels to one another. 456.
On the threefold conflict of angels. 457.
Whether the conflict of the angels with the dragon was real and corporeal. 459.
On the cause of the conflict of Michael with the dragon. 460.
Whether human beings after their death are assumed into the company of the angels. 461.
Whether the Blessed Virgin was assumed above the choirs of angels. 464.

Third Decade

Whether evil angels, who are called cacodaemons, truly exist in the nature of things. 469.
What demons are. 474.
Whether the fall of the demons was possible. 478.
On the interval between the creation and the fall of the angels. 483.
Whether the evil angels fell into hell. 485.
How many angels fell from heaven. 486.
Whether demons possess bodies naturally united to them as form to matter. 487.
Whether among demons there is generation through seed, as among human beings and perfect animals. 490.
That demons assume bodies from the nature of an element. 493.
What operation of life a demon exercises in an assumed body. 493.
That a demon transformed into an angel cannot be adored without sin, even by one who is ignorant. 495.
Whether demons can enter the bodies of human beings and animals. 496.
Whether a demon can enter the whole body or some part of it. 498.
Whether a demon can move bodies by the command of the will alone. 500.
That a demon cannot enter the soul. 501.
Whether the spirit of a damned human being can enter the body of another human being. 503.
That credence is not to be given to a possessed person who says that he is the spirit of someone deceased. 504.
Whether a demon can produce a natural effect without seed. 505.
On the miracles of Pharaoh’s magicians and of necromancers. 507.
Whether, from the teaching of demons, a human being can form a true human body through the operation of natural powers alone. 509.
Whether demons attack human beings. 510.
How, and in how many ways, a demon deludes a human being’s senses. 515.
On the many ways by which a demon deceives human beings. 517.
Why God permits the human race to be tempted by demons. 521.
Whether tempting human beings is the office of demons. 522.
Why demons tempt human beings. 524.
How many and who are the tempters of human beings. 524.
Whether temptations are to be desired. 525.
Why the demon, having attacked the woman Eve, tempted her in the form of a serpent and by vocal speech. 527.
That Hebrew speech was the first language, and after the judgment will be the last language. 528.
Whether demons know future things. 529.
Whether demons know the thoughts of human beings. 531.
Whether demons can perform miracles. 534.
Whether women said to ride at night with Diana are a demonic illusion. 535.
Whether demons can be compelled by some natural art to give oracles to human beings. 536.
How demons can be expelled from possessed bodies. 540.
Whether fascination is a natural or diabolical work. 543.
Whether preservation in the bodies of the dead is a work of God, nature, or the devil. 544.
Whence the reason is to be taken that certain marvels are from the devil and not from God. 547.
Whether anyone can predict future things through invocation of demons without sin. 548.
How many genera and species of divinations there are in which demons are invoked. 550.
Whether it is lawful to use natural things in order to acquire bodily health. 553.
Whether signs employed to induce certain effects accomplish anything naturally. 553.
Whether it is lawful to observe certain signs in order to foreknow future good or bad fortunes. 553.
Whether observation of a time for doing something is lawful. 554.
Whether it is a sin to investigate stolen things by inspection of an astrolabe and by judgment of the stars. 555.
Whether, besides the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, it is lawful to recite charms or use other observances when gathering herbs. 556.
Whether it is lawful to hang divine words around the neck. 556.
Whether it is lawful to keep relics of saints with oneself. 557.
Whether it is lawful to charm serpents or another genus of animals. 558.
Whether it is lawful to use red-hot iron or boiling water for the investigation of something hidden. 558.
Whether it is lawful to use the notory art for acquiring sciences. 559.
Whether illusions and divinations of demons are to be believed when the effect occurs. 561.
Whether it is evil to use lots. 562.
Why sortileges, divinations, and incantations abound more among women than among men. 565.
Whether evil spirits or evil human beings have greater power over human beings. 566.
Whether greater power to afflict the good is given to a natural agent or to a free human being. 567.
Why the afflictive action of natural agents was sometimes permitted by God and sometimes impeded when applied by free agents. 568.
How many species of demons there are which torment human beings before and after the judgment. 569.
On the causes why demons tempt human beings. 570.
Whether demons always appear to everyone who is dying. 573.

First Decade

Second Decade

Third Decade

End of the Index of Questions