Vincent Ferrer’s Vision: Oral Traditions, Texts and Imagery

Abstract

All stories vary depending on the channel through which they are presented. In the Late Middle Ages, the transmission of a single fact or event differed significantly according to the means of communication. Since at least 1408, Dominican preacher Saint Vincent Ferrer (c. 1350–1419) used to talk, in some sermons, about the vision experienced by a nameless friar who, being healed in extremis by Christ, preached the arrival of Antichrist afterward. In 1412, Ferrer wrote a letter addressed to pope Benedict XIII including the story of this ecstasy, though with some changes. In 1429, in the parish church of Santa Maria Assunta (frazione Stella, Macello, Piedmont) the earliest depiction of this legendary episode was made. Ferrer was explicitly identified for the first time as the unknown friar mentioned in his sermons from 1408. Extraordinarily, a picture of the friar’s figure appeared beside a literal copy of some passages from Ferrer’s letter to Benedict XIII, incorporated in the same frescoes. This rich documentation reveals the importance of interactions between sermons, texts and images in shaping the narrative of Vincent Ferrer’s vision and its later memory.