Question Six of Chapter Ten of the Third Decade
Whether demons always appear to everyone who is dying
It is asked whether demons always appear to everyone who is dying.
To this it first appears that one must respond negatively.
For they would appear to the dying either according to the form of their incorporeal substance or in assumed bodies.
If in the first manner, they would not be seen, for a bodily eye does not see absolute spiritual things. There must be proportion and conformity between the visible object and the one seeing.
But if they appeared in assumed bodies, they would be seen by everyone. Yet a demon in an assumed body is not seen by everyone, as is evident in 1 Kings 28 concerning the pythoness and the devil in the form of Samuel, an old man clothed in a cloak. The pythoness saw him, but Saul and his two servants did not see him, although they heard him.
Therefore demons can in no way be seen by the dying.
To this difficulty it is answered that, according to the common law, demons appear to everyone who is dying.
This conclusion is proved by an argument, authorities, and examples.
The argument is thus, from Thomas, First Part, question 113, and Book I of the Sentences, distinction 11, article 4, and Bonaventure in the same place.
The devil is no less inclined and persistent in destroying and deceiving a human being than a good angel is in assisting and guarding him. But the good angel does not cease assisting a human being and persuading him toward good through the end of death inclusively—appearing to him, standing by, assisting, and persuading him toward good—as is evident in 4 Kings 6 concerning the king of Syria and the king of Israel; in the Lives of the Fathers concerning Abbot Moses and Abbot Isidore; and from Gregory in the homily for the twentieth Sunday of the Trinity and in his Dialogues. Therefore a bad angel acts similarly.
Second, it is proved by authorities.
First, on Genesis 3, “You will lie in wait for his heel,” the Ordinary Gloss says: “That is, the end of a human being’s life.”
And in Ecclesiasticus 39 it is said: “There are spirits which were created for vengeance, and in their fury they strengthened their torments, and in the time of consummation they will pour out their power,” and so forth. Saint Vincent and Hugh the Cardinal gloss this concerning evil angels appearing at death.
And upon the words of Psalm 55, “They will watch my heel,” it is said that by the heel, which is the end and lowest extremity of a human being, the end of life is understood. The malign spirit especially watches this and lies in wait for it, knowing that a final fall is damnation for the one who dies in it.
Gregory also says in Book I of the Moralia, chapter 7: “When our enemy does not strike at the beginning of an action and does not kill in the course of the action, he then stretches out harsher snares at the end; and he then lies in wait all the more solicitously, the more he considers that only the end remains to him for deceiving.” Hence also the Psalm: “The iniquity of my heel will surround me.” Thus he.
Gregory likewise says upon Luke 19, “Your enemies will surround you with a rampart,” that the devil comes at the end to the good and the evil, and even came to Christ dying on the cross.
But he came to Christ and found nothing. John 14: “For the prince of this world comes, and in me he has nothing.” For because he saw him to be a mortal human being, he believed that he would find something of his own in him. But he who entered the world without sin departed from the corruption of the world without any sin.
The devil also comes to the good and finds that something of his own has been in them, but nevertheless he cannot seize them because Christ paid their debt.
He also comes to the reprobate, finds many things of his own, and drags them down to Tartarus. Thus Gregory.
And the Gloss upon the words of Psalm 9, “He lies in wait like a lion in his den,” says that the Psalmist speaks of Antichrist at the end of the world or of the devil at the end of life.
Gregory likewise says upon Luke 19 that malign spirits press the soul from every side when they recount to it not only the iniquities of deed but also those of speech and thought, so that the soul which previously expanded itself in crime may at the end be constricted concerning all things in retribution.
And he again says that the devil brings more grievous temptations the more he sees the sinner approaching his end. Thus he.
The same thing is also evident from examples.
First, in the life of Saint Martin, to whom the devil appeared as he was dying. Seeing him, Martin said: “Why do you stand here, bloody beast?”
And the Blessed Virgin Mary asked Christ that demons not meet her on the day of her death, although this is apocryphal.
And in the Passing of Blessed Jerome, Cyril relates to Augustine concerning Eusebius, a disciple of blessed Jerome, who at the end of his life cried to the brothers standing by: “O brothers, assist me lest I perish! Do you not see the ranks of demons which hasten to vanquish me and lead me to Tartarus?”
And, to conclude in this matter with a summary concerning the snares of the devil’s insatiable murderousness against a human being, it must be known that, after his fall at the beginning, when Lucifer knew that he had irrevocably lost the heavenly seats, he was touched inwardly by the pain of envy lest it should happen that a human being ascend to the place from which he himself had been cast out.
He began to rage against the human being with the whole spirit of malignity, so that he moves against him with all his powers not only in death but also in life and after death.
In life he first began to rage against the first parents when, beneath the covering of the slippery serpent, he secretly deceived the woman and through her caused the man to sin, when he represented God as a liar and envious, saying: “You shall by no means die. For God knows that, at whatever hour you eat from the tree of life, you will be like gods.”
Then too, by the hiss of his venom, he inflamed and infected with the goads of the flesh the bodies of the first parents and our bodies, which were radically present in them; thereafter he corrupted the origin of all posterity by a thousand modes of harm and a thousand modes of death.
Moreover, he does not cease to vex human beings in death. For he watches their heel and sits in hiding like a lion in his den so that he may devour anyone and kill the innocent.
Indeed, even after death he rages against human bodies.
For it is reported by Pythagoras, afterward by Ovid and Isidore, that by nature, by the art of a demon, or perhaps because of the enmity which—Scripture bearing witness—was placed by God between the serpent and the seed of human beings, a serpent is generated from the marrow of a dead human being which is in the seat of Venus and in the spine. After devouring the brain, it exits through the eyes, intending to feed upon the remaining part of the body.
To the argument made at the beginning of the question, a twofold response is given.
First, the apparitions of demons to the dying are imaginary. For demons, by moving the humors and the blood, form certain images representing themselves. What is seen imaginatively, however, appears only to those to whom the vision is made, as is evident in the prophets. Therefore it can be so also in apparitions of demons.
Second, it is said that demons and good angels have a power over bodies assumed by them similar to that which the souls of the blessed have over their own glorified bodies. It will be in the power of those souls that their bodies be seen or not seen, by one or by many, at a small or great distance, so that every action of the body will be in the power of the soul. Otherwise, the glorified body would not be an instrument supremely obedient to the principal agent—namely, the soul.
We therefore say similarly concerning demons and good angels: it is in their power to appear in assumed bodies or not, to one or to many, from a distance or nearby.
These things are drawn from Thomas in Book IV of the Sentences, distinction 44, question 2.
This is also evident concerning a good angel in Daniel 10 and concerning the glorified Christ who appeared to Paul. Paul saw him, but the men who accompanied him stood astonished, hearing a voice but seeing no one, Acts 9.
Let us therefore pray to the most holy Trinity, the blessed Virgin Mother of God, and our father, namely Saint Dominic, that when the hour of our departure to the Father comes—“when Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people”—Christ may meet us; that a host of angels may accompany our departure; that the enemies who meet us may find nothing deadly in us; but that Abraham’s bosom may receive us. Amen.
Addition
How harsh the devil’s temptation is at a human being’s death, and how greatly he opposes us after our departure from this life, is evident from what the holy Apostle Jude wrote in his canonical Epistle, when Michael the Archangel disputed with the devil concerning the body of Moses.
For Michael the Archangel is said to have presided over the burial of Moses. The devil would not allow this, but brought a charge against Moses because he had killed the Egyptian and consequently belonged to the devil; nor did he wish to permit Moses’s burial to be honored so greatly.
This example signifies the rendering of accounts which is owed to each person after departure from the body.
For the devil, knowing that he possesses no further time to deceive a human being beyond the limit of life, reserves all the poison of his malice in his tail—that is, at the end—as was said figuratively to the serpent: “You will lie in wait for his heel”—that is, for the soul, whose heel is the limit of life.
And frequently, before the soul departs from the body, he begins to torment obstinate sinners whom he knows will be enslaved with him in hell.
End.