Dist. 50, Part 2, Art. 2, Q. 1
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/4/d/50/q/bon-sent-IV-d50-p2-a2-q1
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### Article II. *On the worm which is in the damned.*

Next, as regards the second article, inquiry is made concerning the worm which will be in the damned. And about this three things are asked.

First it is asked whether the damned have a material or corporeal worm.

Second, whether there is in them a spiritual worm.

Third it is asked whether that worm is invariable.

### Question I. *Whether the damned have a material worm.*

As regards the first, then, one proceeds thus, and it is shown that that worm is material.

1. Ecclesiasticus, chapter seven: *The vengeance on the flesh of the impious is fire and worm*; and Judith, the last chapter: *He shall give fire and worms into their flesh*: therefore, if in the flesh there is nothing but a material worm, it is clear, etc.

2. Likewise, the damned will rise again with penalties and deformities: therefore they will have putrefiable bodies, as they now have; but from a putrefiable body worms are generated: therefore etc.

3. Likewise, the punishment of the worm is always joined to the punishment of fire, as is clear in many places of Scripture; but the fire is not only spiritual, but also material: therefore it seems likewise concerning the worm. For by fire both body and soul are punished, therefore likewise also by the worm: therefore it seems that it is material.

**On the contrary:** 1. In Isaiah, chapter fourteen, it is said of the devil: *Thy covering shall be worms*; but it is established that the devil does not have a material worm: therefore etc.

2. Likewise, no material worm is immortal, since it has a corruptible form; but that *worm does not die*, as is said in the last chapter of Isaiah: therefore etc.

3. Likewise, a material worm, both in its gnawing and in its origin, diminishes something of the substance of the body: therefore, if that body is not diminishable, there is not about it such a worm.

4. Likewise, there the fire will be much more intense than it is here; but worms cannot live in this fire: therefore neither will they be able to live in that one. — *If you say* that this is by miracle; then, since they do not suffer from the fire, they seem to have glorious and incorruptible bodies. — *If you say* that they are born again, I ask: how? since there is there no motion of the sun, and things chiefly putrefiable have to be generated by a supracelestial power.

### Conclusion

> *That worm is not material, but spiritual.*

**I respond:** It must be said that Augustine, in the twentieth book of the City of God, sets down two opinions about this. For some wished to understand that that worm is *material*, on account of the word of Scripture; others, however, following reason, wished to say that that worm is spiritual. And he says that the opinion of these latter pleases him more; and since it pleases him more, it ought likewise to please us. — Hence the reasons are to be conceded, that that worm is not material.

**To the arguments for the affirmative part:**

*To 1.* To that which is objected to the contrary by the likeness of fire, it must be said that, just as material fire, by afflicting the body, afflicts and punishes the soul united to it, so vehement pain and remorse or sadness of the soul overflows into the body, because *a sorrowful spirit dries up the bones*. Since, therefore, there will be in the damned a great remorse of conscience and pain, so much so that this sadness overflows into the flesh, therefore Scripture truly said that God would give *a worm into their flesh*, and expressed it forcefully for the terror of carnal men, who dread the punishment of the flesh more than that of the soul. — Or it could be said that "flesh" is there called *the carnal work*, that is, *the work of sin*, from which the spiritual worm is generated.

*To 2.* To that which is objected, that they will have deformity, it must be said that this is true, but not putrefaction.

*To 3.* The last has been solved concerning the fire, because fire proceeds from without to what is innermost, the worm from what is innermost to what is without; and therefore the fire is material, but the worm spiritual.