Question Two
Whether the dead have sometimes appeared
It is asked whether it is discovered by Christian or Gentile proof that any spirits have actually appeared.
To this an affirmative answer is given. For among Christians it is read, first, that in the year of the Lord 1323, in a certain city of France, a certain William de Corvo died. For eight days after his death a certain lamentable, weak, horrible, and desolate voice was heard by many in his house.
His wife had been so terrified by this voice that she lay ill in bed and almost died. A message was sent to Brother John Gobi, prior of the convent of the Order of Preachers in that place, that, accompanied by some friars and citizens, they should prudently visit her.
Taking three fathers with him, therefore, and accompanied also by citizens, while no other friar or citizen knew, he reverently received the body of Christ into his breast and set out, intending to test whether that voice was something fabricated or an illusion of demons.
When he had most diligently searched all the concealed places of the house suited to fabrications, lest he be deceived, he asked the wife in what place that voice was heard more by her. She answered: in the bed in which her husband had died.
They sat upon the dead man’s bed and began there to recite the nine lessons of the dead together with the litany. At the end of the rogations, however, a certain shadow began to go before them toward the wife’s bed, and it made a sound as though a broom were being drawn over the floor.
The wife, shaken and trembling, began to cry out: “Behold, behold, O fathers!” They, somewhat terrified, fell silent. But the prior admonished the wife to ask who it was. When she asked, it answered in a marvelous voice in the middle of the room that it was the soul of William de Corvo, her husband.
Then the prior, having put away every fear, approached nearer with his companions to where that voice was sounding. Fortifying himself with the sign of the cross, he asked the spirit whether it knew him and the companion friars. It answered that it did, naming each of them individually by name.
Then, while everyone present stood by and listened, the prior began to adjure it thus:
I adjure you, creature of God, by the infinite power of God, by his ineffable wisdom, by his inexpressible goodness, by the power of the most holy Trinity by which he created all things, by the mystery of the holy Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection, by the power of all the orders of the holy angels, and by everything which through God’s power can bind you more: I constrain and bind you not to depart from this place until you have answered truthfully those things concerning which I shall question you.
First he asked whether it was a good or an evil spirit, and it said that it was good.
Second, he asked whether souls finally passing over without any defect possessed beatitude immediately, and it assented.
Likewise, when asked who it was, it said that it was the soul of William de Corvo, which had to suffer a particular Purgatory there for two years on account of an offense against his mother, against whom he had sinned—an offense which is accounted most grave before God—unless, aided by prayers, it should be freed.
The prior also asked whether a good or an evil angel had led him there. It said a good one. When asked which suffrages better bring help to the dead, it said Masses and the penitential Psalms.
After the prior had asked many things, however, the spirit said: “I ask you, father, not to torment me by questioning me further. Know, nevertheless, that because of the presence of the body of Christ which you hold in your breast, my punishment is lighter.”
A certain doctor of laws among those present asked it what he carried upon himself. It replied in Latin, although before this it had been uneducated: “You carry beneath your belt the concealed Office of the Blessed Virgin”; and so it was.
When asked under what form it was speaking, it answered for all to hear: “Under the form of a dove.” As a sign of the truth, at the hour of cockcrow that doctor found himself covered with white feathers.
It was also asked whether evil spirits encountered every person dying, and whether all knowledge is infused into souls stripped of their bodies. It answered yes to both.
When asked what punishment it suffered there in its lodging, it answered: the punishment of fire. Likewise, when asked whether it had another punishment, it answered: another in the common Purgatory. And when asked how it could suffer simultaneously in two distant places, it answered that by day it suffered fire in the common Purgatory and by night fire in the Purgatory of its house.
Ordered to sign itself with the sign of the cross, it answered that it did not have hands. Asked whether it heard, it answered that it did, but not through ears: rather, through the power of God.
Asked again how long it would have to remain in the Purgatory of its lodging, it answered, crying out in a very loud voice: “Pray for me with prayers, Masses, and the penitential Psalms until the feast of Easter, and then I shall be freed.”
When asked by his wife, however, how long he would have to remain in the common Purgatory, he answered with a wail: “Pray, and cause God to be entreated for me; and do not fear me, because I shall soon be freed.” Immediately he vanished and went out like a certain wind, which blew upon all who stood by after the fashion of a certain feeble breath. From that time nothing was heard there.
I, the compiler of the present little work, read this marvelous apparition in a certain roll and truthful instrument sent to the Supreme Pontiff and the cardinals then residing at Avignon.
Pliny the Younger also writes in Book VII concerning apparitions of this kind as follows:
There was a freedman of mine who was not uneducated. His younger brother was resting with him in the same bed. He seemed to see a certain person sitting upon the bed, moving shears toward his head and even cutting the hair from the crown itself. When daylight came, he was found shorn around the crown, with the hairs lying there.
Again, a boy, Pliny says in the same place, was sleeping in the school among several others. Two persons in white tunics came through the windows, sheared him as he lay there, and departed by the way they had come. Daylight likewise revealed this boy shorn and the hairs scattered around him.