Question Four of Chapter Eight of the Third Decade
Whether preservation in the bodies of the dead is a work of God, nature, or the devil
It is asked whether apparitions and marvelous deeds which sometimes appear concerning the bodies of the dead—such as the preservation of bodies after death from reduction to ashes; the growth of nails, beard, and hair in the dead; or the issuing of blood from the body of a murdered person in the presence of the killer—are to be attributed to a divine miracle, to nature, or to a demon.
In response, Augustine says in Book XXI of The City of God that apparitions and the production of marvels ought generally to be reduced to four causes: to God, to angels, to demons, and to holy human beings or their spirits. They can also sometimes be effected through demoniacal human beings, such as magicians, and sometimes through deceitful human subtlety.
Master Henry of Assia, however, responds to this little question thus.
It is most difficult to give true causes for individual marvelous and unusual things. For if, according to the Poet, the person who was able to know the causes of things which appear naturally was called fortunate, certainly the person who knows how to discern the efficient and final causes of those things which appear and have appeared above nature can be called most fortunate.
For the same marvelous and unusual things concerning the bodies of the dead, he says, can be procured through the subtlety of demons and the craftiness of perverse human beings.
Thus blessed Augustine in Book XIV of The City of God relates concerning a certain man who, whenever he wished, made himself in every respect most like a dead man, and sometimes most like a blind, dropsical, or lame person.
Sometimes too, certain marvels concerning the bodies of the dead can be reduced to natural causes.
Thus, in response to the preservation of bodies from putrefaction after death, some say that the power of the place, or the power of an ointment or of some thing placed upon the body, can be the cause of the preservation of bodies from reduction to ashes.
The cause of nails, beard, and hair appearing to grow in a dead person can be natural—namely, the complexion of the dying person, in whose matter some imperfect form from the genus of vegetative living things can be induced after death; or because the flesh contracts, the nails appear more prominently, on account of which some believe that they grow.
Others, however, attribute the fact that a dead body remains unputrefied to a divine miracle. For God sometimes preserves the bodies of saints incorrupt as testimony to their singular holiness and to the innocence and integrity of their minds and bodies. Thus their bodies remain removed from putrefaction, reduction to ashes, and the gnawing or corrosion of worms, just as while they lived they remained whole from the corruption of the flesh.
This is evident concerning the one of whom it is written: “You will not permit your holy one to see corruption.”
Sometimes too the bodies of certain persons are preserved incorrupt by God because such persons died under excommunication. For, as certain persons report, the bodies of the excommunicated do not putrefy.
They set down the example of Charles, king of Hungary, who was killed many years ago and excommunicated by Urban VI. They say that he therefore still remains whole, so that this may be some sort of argument that the man who excommunicated him was a true pope. Thus the iniquity of the deceased is made apparent, and preservation from the corrosion of worms is shown to be a greater harm.
Sometimes too the bodies of evil persons are preserved incorrupt through the subtlety of demons for the sake of deception, so that it may be believed that this occurs through the merit of the lives of such persons; that the evils which they did may thus be approved as good; and that the credulous multitude may thereby be induced to invoke them.
Thus it has been seen concerning certain evil dead persons that, with the devil operating at their invocation or at the touch of their bodies, the blind were illuminated, the lame walked, the deaf heard, the sick were freed from various illnesses, and even the dead were raised.
For, as was said, these and similar things can be effected and procured either really by a divine miracle or sophistically.
Nevertheless, all bodies preserved for any causes whatsoever from reduction to ashes will be dissolved into ashes before the final resurrection, so that the universal sentence of God inflicted upon Adam and all his posterity may be fulfilled, which says: “In the sweat of your face you will eat your bread, and you will return to dust,” Genesis 3.
But as for the shedding of blood in the presence of the killer, concerning which the Philosopher writes in the book On the Mixture of the Elements, although some superstitiously say that this occurs through a deception introduced by a human being or a demon, nevertheless, if it happens always or for the most part, it appears that it should be ascribed rather to a divine miracle for the horror and detestation of sin than that some explanation should be sought elsewhere. This is evident in Genesis 4 concerning the blood of Abel, gushing and boiling before God in vengeance upon the murderer.
These things are from Master Henry of Assia upon Genesis.