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By Preeve which that is Demonstratif (11) You may object that the being in the story is a fiend, and Aquinas is dealing not with fiends but with angels. However in Quaestio 63 Aquinas argues, what is standard Christian doctrine, that the fiends are fallen angels, and therefore share in their nature. The difference between the answer given by the fiend and that given by Aquinas could be explained in different ways. Although angels and fiends share the same nature, they do not have the same powers. To assume a body out of air is a miracle requiring the assistance of God himself, as Aquinas himself points out: "The angels, then, assume bodies made of air, but condensed by divine power in an appropriate manner." Perhaps the fiends, deprived of this power, are reduced to inhabiting the bodies of the dead. Or perhaps Chaucer is following some theologian other than Aquinas. There is considerable diversity of opinion among theologians about the nature of angels, more so than about more central matters. And in any case Aquinas had not by the fourteenth century acquired anything like the status of infallible guide in theological matters which was later conferred on him. There was ample room for disagreement. Or perhaps we should notice the words "alway . . . sometime . . . sometime." Is the point that they don't ALWAYS make new bodies out of elements, but sometimes use other methods? It seems to me worth noticing, all the same, that the only occasion in the D-Group when a theological opinion is cited in opposition to the Thomist position, the speaker is a devil. What is undeniably true, is that Chaucer is putting his two penn'orth into a medieval theological debate. The fiend patients answers the Summoner's theological questions, but finally warns him: Thou shalt herafterward, my brother deere, Come there thee nedeth nat of me to leere. For thou shalt, by thyn owene experience, Konne in a chayer rede of this sentence Bet than Virgile, while he was on lyve, Or Dant also. (1514-20) "Experience" will again take the place of "Auctoritee": the Summoner will, by his own experience, become as great an auctoritee on the subject of demons as Virgil or Dante, who in the sixth book of the Aeneid and in the Inferno respectively had written the standard treatises on demons. And so it proves, when the fiend drags the summoner off to hell. The Supple Doctor. * * * * * %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%