St. Vincent Ferrer

Valencia, the Dominicans, and the Schism

St. Vincent Ferrer was born on January 23, 1350, in Valencia, Spain. He entered the Dominican Order in 1367 and quickly distinguished himself in philosophy and theology, teaching in Valencia and elsewhere and earning a reputation for both learning and austerity of life. His gifts drew him into the highest circles of the Church at the worst possible moment: the Great Western Schism, which from 1378 divided Catholic Europe between rival claimants to the papacy.

Illness, Vision, and a Call to Preach

Vincent, like most of Spain, sincerely supported the Avignon line, and he became confessor and adviser to the Avignon pope Benedict XIII. Grieved by the scandal of the divided Church and worn by his labors, he fell gravely ill in 1398. During that illness he experienced a vision of Christ accompanied by Sts. Dominic and Francis, commissioning him to go through the world preaching penance. Released from his duties, he began in 1399 the itinerant mission that would fill the remaining twenty years of his life.

The Angel of the Judgment

For two decades he traveled on foot and by donkey through Spain, southern France, Switzerland, and Italy, preaching penance, the mercy of God, and the approach of the Last Judgment. Contemporaries called him the 'Angel of the Judgment,' after the angel of Revelation 14 proclaiming the eternal Gospel. Enormous crowds followed him; companies of penitents traveled with him; and chroniclers of the time attributed thousands of conversions and numerous miracles to his preaching — accounts the Church weighed carefully in his cause. Though he preached in his native tongue, he was said to be understood by hearers of many languages.

Withdrawing Obedience and Death at Vannes

His final service to the Church was among his hardest: convinced that Benedict XIII's obstinacy was perpetuating the schism, Vincent publicly withdrew Spain's obedience from him in 1416, a decisive step toward the schism's resolution at the Council of Constance. He died on April 5, 1419, at Vannes in Brittany, where his relics are venerated in the cathedral. He was canonized in 1455 by Pope Callixtus III, a fellow Valencian. His feast is April 5, and he is invoked as a patron of builders and construction workers, remembered as one who labored to rebuild the unity of the Church itself.

Significance

Vincent Ferrer spent twenty years on the roads of Europe calling sinners to repentance and reminding them of God's mercy and judgment. His willingness to break with the claimant he had once served, when that loyalty prolonged division, shows that love for the Church's unity must come before personal ties. Builders and all who labor to repair what is broken can look to him as a patron who spent himself restoring the Church's unity.