VINCENZO FERRERI (FERRER), saint. – Spanish Dominican, celebrated for his apostolic peregrinations and thaumaturgical power, as well as for the part he played in the religious and political affairs of his time; born in Valencia on 23 (?) January 1350, died at Vannes in Brittany on 5 April 1419.
He donned the religious habit in the convent of his native city in February 1367. Barely twenty years old, he taught logic at Lérida. In 1378, while he was being ordained a priest, the great schism broke out. The Saint, probably urged on by the Aragonese cardinal Pietro de Luna, sided with Clement VII, the Avignon pope, and won for him the obedience of part of Spain. From 1383 to 1389 he was a lecturer in theology at the cathedral of Valencia. When de Luna was elected at Avignon under the name of Benedict XIII (1394), the Saint was summoned to Avignon as his confessor and counsellor. But after three years, disgusted by Benedict XIII’s conduct and impelled by a vision following a serious illness, he obtained permission to leave the Curia (November 1399), in order to devote himself to a more fruitful apostolate. Thus he began, in the capacity of legate a latere Christi, his apostolic peregrinations throughout south-western Europe. For two decades, often enormous crowds were drawn after the new apostle, who announced the imminent end of the world, to which the calamities of the age moreover lent credence. Public penances and numerous miracles accompanied his preaching, together with an abundant harvest of conversions among the Jews and Moors in Spain.
Meanwhile he did not cease working for the unity of the Church: in 1408 he tried in vain to bring the two rival Pontiffs together for a solution to the schism; and in 1415 he did everything in his power to persuade Benedict XIII to renounce his position. Having seen all attempts shattered, the Saint definitively broke with him and, through his preaching, withdrew Spain’s obedience from him, thus becoming one of the principal restorers of the unity of the Church.
In 1412, through the Compromise of Caspe, by designating the successor of the deceased king of Aragon, he contributed to the unity of Spain. He also sought to bring an end to, or at least secure a truce in, the Hundred Years’ War, and it was precisely at Vannes that he concluded his industrious and eventful
existence. Among his writings are remembered the two philosophical treatises Incipiunt supposizione and De unitate universali (Paris 1900); Tractatus de vita spirituali sive de interiori homine (Spanish translation in 1520, and French in 1920: Latin text and account of the various Latin editions in H. D. Fages [V. BIBLICA.]); De moderno schismate (Rome 1901; 2nd ed., Bologna-Modena 1906); sermons, etc.
Callistus III declared him blessed on 3 June 1455, and Pius II published the bull of canonization on 12 October 1458. Feast day: 5 April. Art usually depicts s. Vincenzo F. with a flame above his head and an open book bearing the words Timete Deum et date illi honorem. At times he has the wings of the Angel of the Apocalypse.