Power and the Holy: Political and Religious Interests in the Canonization of Vincent Ferrer

Abstract

This article explores some of the political and religious considerations in the canonization of St. Vincent Ferrer through a close and sometimes against the grain reading of canonization materials, letters, and early hagiography. The most aggressive promoters of Vincent’s canonization were the Montfort dukes of Brittany, where the saint is buried, and who used their association with the holy friar to assert sacred legitimacy for their dynasty, which had come to power as the result of a bloody civil war and which adopted a quasi-royal image along the lines of the French monarchy. In Vincent’s native Aragon, the situation was more complicated. The friar had helped bring the Trastámara dynasty to power there in 1412, but Vincent’s role in announcing the crown of Aragon’s 1416 withdrawal of obedience from the Aragonese pope Benedict XIII would diminish his symbolic value in his homeland. Only after Alfonso V’s conquest of the kingdom of Naples did the Trastámaras begin to push in earnest for the opening of a canonization process as part of a strategy to show divine favor for the new Aragonese regime in Naples. Promoters of Vincent’s canonization acknowledged that they had overcome various “impediments”—presumably, rumors of a heresy conviction, as well as concerns about Vincent’s preaching on Antichrist and his actions vis-à-vis the Great Schism and the Council of Constance. In response, champions of the new saint subtly recast the friar as a gifted preacher whose apocalyptic sermons moved crowds to penitence and whose strenuous efforts brought unity to a divided church.