PETER OF PALUDE AND THE FIERY FURNACE

According to most medieval thinkers, whenever something causally acts on another thing, God also acts with it. Durand of St.-Pourçain, an early fourteenth-century Dominican philosopher, disagrees. This paper is about a fourteenth-century objection to Durand’s view, which I will call the Fiery Furnace Objection, as formulated by Durand’s contemporary, Peter of Palude. Although Peter of Palude is not usually regarded as a particularly original thinker, this paper calls attention to one of his more interesting controversies with his fellow friar, while it also clarifies how some medieval thinkers understood the broadly speaking Aristotelian conviction that causes and effects are necessarily related.