Apostolic Success of St. Vincent Ferrer Among the Mahometans

The Mahometans, like the Jews, were spread throughout different parts of Spain. In proportion as the noble-hearted Spaniards recovered possession of their provinces which had been subjugated by Saracen invasion, they re-established Christianity in all its rights, and favored by every means in their power the conversion of the followers of Mahomet, who dwelt in the country. There were many, however, who resisted this influence. Like the Jews, they were possessed of wealth and industry; it was necessary, therefore, to deal gently with them. St. Vincent labored with all his might to reclaim them from their unclean errors; he spared neither suffering nor fatigue to lead them to the saving waters of baptism. And to this end, wherever he preached he compelled the Mahometans, by the king's order, to be present at his discourses, reserving for them, as in the case of the Jews, the most convenient places.

But why constrain such people to hear him, since the law of Mahomet especially forbids his disciples to listen to Christian sermons? "This," said the Saint, "is one of the wicked artifices of this Antichrist, by which he directly closes the door of salvation to his followers. The Divine Word is the first condition of the success of the Gospel. He who hears it is easily drawn as by a kind of necessity to embrace the holy faith, provided it be announced with becoming dignity."

The Saracen King of Grenada, Mahomet Aben-Baha, moved by the renown of his miracles, was desirous to see St. Vincent, and to afford him liberty to preach in his kingdom. He therefore sent ambassadors to him, as to a prince, who informed him that he would have unrestricted license to announce the Gospel throughout the kingdom of Grenada. The Saint was then in the neighborhood of Genoa, in Italy. He forthwith set out on foot to Marseilles, where a vessel was placed at his service. A favorable wind soon brought him to the port of Andalusia. On the morning following his arrival at Grenada, St. Vincent commenced a course of sermons in presence of the king, his whole court, and innumerable people. The Mahometans, unaccustomed to hear discourses addressed to a great multitude, were filled with astonishment and admiration. Such was the effect of his preaching that, after three sermons, eighteen thousand Moors were converted to the Christian faith. St. Vincent promised himself an abundant harvest in this new field of labour; but the enemy of mankind sought to stifle its growth by sowing therein the seeds of discord.

Aben-Baha himself, with his whole court, had resolved to receive baptism; but the chiefs of the Mussulman superstition, determining at any cost to impede so great a good, menaced him with revolt, civil war, and the subversion of his throne. "If you embrace the Gospel," said they, "your subjects who believe in the Koran will never consent to be ruled by a prince who has abjured the law of Mahomet to become a Christian." Aben-Baha feared to lose a perishable crown of the earth. Dismayed by the threats of those fanatics, he called St. Vincent to him, and bade him depart from his kingdom, assuring him of his own personal esteem of him. "Return," said he, "into the countries of the Christians, and do so speedily, lest you oblige me to have recourse to violent measures against you. I should do it with regret, but I cannot allow you to remain." The Saint would gladly have exposed himself to persecution and death; the thought of martyrdom filled him with joy; but he was unwilling to excite the anger of the Mussulmans against the new converts, or to expose them to the danger of apostasy.

He, therefore, quitted the kingdom of Grenada, beseeching God to destroy in that country the reign of the crescent, and to establish in its stead that of the glorious Cross. A century later and the desires of the Saint were accomplished. Grenada was in its turn conquered, and the barbarous Mussulman was driven back to the shores of Africa. We may not unreasonably suppose that the band of converts formed by our Saint increased as years rolled by, and that when the missionaries of the Gospel arrived in that country they would find the hearts of its people better disposed to embrace the great truths of Christianity.

St. Vincent's zeal did not slacken in consequence of these accidents. Some time later, when an opportunity occurred to him, he resolved to go into Africa to preach to the people of Mauritania and to the Arabs of the Desert; but circumstances independent of his own will interfered with the accomplishment of this grand project. He, however, indemnified himself by laboring with renewed ardor for the conversion of the Mussulmans who were established in Christian countries. Ranzano, one of the Saint's biographers, relates that eighty thousand of those infidels were brought to the true faith. This is a high figure, and far exceeds the number given by Father Teoli, whose account appears to be more reliable, since in comparing the number of Jewish conversions with that of the Mahometans, the latter is found to be considerably less.

But to resume the thread of our narrative. St. Vincent was truly another St. Paul, sent by God to bring back to the faith of Christ a multitude of Jews and Mahometans, to convert innumerable sinners, and to harmonise the faithful of every nation and condition of life in the most perfect bonds of Christian fellowship. We are thus able to see at a glance the general effect of the miraculous apostolate which he received from Christ Himself at Avignon. The Saint was not afraid to affirm it with his own lips. In one of his sermons which he preached in Castile, in the year 1411, we read thus: "The end of the world cannot be far distant, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Has not our Lord Himself said that the bearing of the fig-tree foreshadows the coming summer? Behold, then, the fig-tree of the Christian people. Each day records its reconciliations, and we witness souls forgetting and forgiving the greatest injuries. The delicate, sensual, and vicious do penance. Obstinate sinners are converted, and approach frequently the Sacraments. Nor is the Jewish fig-tree any longer barren; for we see it daily producing its abundant and choicest fruits in every city in Spain." He might have added heretics and Mussulmans likewise. Truly, then, St. Vincent exercised in the Church an apostolate such as never was witnessed since the establishment of the Gospel.

St. Vincent having evangelized Avignon and the neighboring towns, set out on foot for Spain, preaching in divers places where he was obliged to stay. It was at Graus, in Catalonia, that he instituted the procession of Disciplinants, and laid the foundation of that marvelous company of pious souls who accompanied him in his apostolic journeyings. Here also he left behind him, as a souvenir, a crucifix which the inhabitants begged of him, and which became the instrument of many miracles.

From Graus, the Saint went to Barcelona, a city which he frequently visited, and where he was always received with extraordinary respect. On one of these visits he beheld the guardian angel of the city, and on his relating the occurrence to the inhabitants, they constructed, near the gate where he had this vision, a chapel dedicated to this heavenly protector.

While at Cerveva, St. Dominic appeared to Vincent in his cell, to encourage him in the execution of our Lord's commands. The Saint preached everywhere with extraordinary success, God confirming his words by striking prodigies. In the beginning of the year 1400, our illustrious preacher quitted Catalonia, and following the southern coast of France, arrived in Provence. Aix and Marseilles heard his voice. He announced in like manner the good news of salvation in many small towns and villages; and that no one might be deprived of it, he sent priests of his company into the places where he could not himself go. Having preached the Lent of 1402 at Marseilles, Vincent went to Romans for an interview with Father John de Puynoix, General of the Order, to lay before him the plans of his mission, and to solicit his paternal blessing. The Father-General sanctioned his proceedings, exhorted him to pursue his vocation till death, and lovingly blessed so worthy a subject.

It was then that Vincent journeyed into the valleys of the diocese of Embrun, and entirely transformed them. He passed thence from the side of the Alps into Piedmont and Lombardy, then into the state of Genoa. In 1403, he was in the Marquisate of Montferrat. Crossing again the Alps, he was at the close of that year at Chambray, where he founded a convent of Friars of his Order. In 1404, he preached the Lent at Lausanne. Towards the end of August he quitted Switzerland. On the 6th September he was at Lyons, where he preached for fourteen days with extraordinary results. After traversing the whole of Lyonnais, Vincent arrived in Lorraine, and passed from thence into Flanders.

While preaching in the latter country, Benedict XIII. enjoined him to accompany him to Genoa, where he was to hold a conference with the Italian cardinals, with reference to putting an end to the schism. Vincent obeyed his orders. But learning on the route that the journey to Genoa was deferred till the spring of 1405, he stayed in Auvergne. The city of Claremont heard his exhortations during Advent and Lent.

In the month of May, 1405, he was at Genoa with Benedict XIII. There he beheld with sorrow every effort that was made to extinguish the schism rendered abortive. Nothing remained to him then but to evangelize the population, and he traversed the coast of the state of Genoa. At Savone he received an embassy of the Mussulman King of Grenada, who invited him to preach the kingdom of God in his capital. We have already related how he yielded to this request, the extraordinary success of his preaching among the Mahometans, the jealousy of the chiefs of the false religion, and the obligation he was under of abandoning a harvest already so ripe. These events occurred in the year 1406.

On leaving Grenada, St. Vincent pursued his apostolic missions in Andalusia. The whole city of Baeza was converted by his preaching; Ezija and Seville profited no less thereby. Thence he passed into Castile. Here he received letters and ambassadors from Henry IV., King of England, who entreated him to come into Great Britain to evangelize its people. St. Vincent, whose charity would willingly have embraced the whole world, joyfully accepted the king's proposal, and arriving at San Sebastian, a port in the Gulf of Gascony, he was conveyed to England in a vessel sent expressly to bring him. He arrived in the summer of the year 1406. The indefatigable apostle remained over a year in these islands, preaching throughout the kingdom, and producing the same results as in his other missions. Having thus evangelized England, Scotland, and Ireland, he returned into France towards the autumn of 1407.

He would doubtless travel by sea to Bordeaux, since historians speak of him as passing from England into Gascony. He went thence into Picardy and Poitou. In 1408, he preached during Lent in Auvergne; then he crossed the Pyrenees to preach once more throughout Spain. A record of that period notices that he journeyed from one country to another on horseback. He had then a wound in the leg which tortured him during the last eleven years of his life. Yet his sufferings in no way hindered him from pursuing his apostolate: the happiness of laboring for the salvation of souls made him forgetful of suffering. Having passed through the north of Spain--where in Cuenca and Molina he was pained at witnessing the barren effects of his preaching--he arrived at Perpignan, where Benedict XIII. had convoked a council.

The obstinacy of Peter de Luna paralyzed the good results of that assembly. Grieved at the unhappy dispositions of the Pontiff, Vincent resumed the course of his preaching till he reached Montpellier, and after a fruitful mission, returned once more to Perpignan. There he received letters from the King of Aragon, dated the 22nd January, 1409, who called him to Barcelona to confer with him on business of importance. In obeying the summons of that prince, Vincent availed himself of the opportunities which the journey afforded him, to preach at Elne, Girone, and Vich. Arrived at Barcelona in the month of June, 1409, he was not content with attending the king in council, but continued his apostolic preaching, which produced marvelous fruits. Towards the end of the same year a vessel conveyed him into Tuscany. He travelled through the dioceses of Pisa, Lucca, Florence, and Siena, everywhere converting sinners and reviving Christian piety. At the commencement of the year 1410 he returned to Barcelona, and traversed once more the whole of Catalonia and Aragon. It was at this epoch that he instituted a university at Valencia, his native city. He came thence into Castile. At Salamanca he raised a woman to life, to prove to his auditory that he was himself the angel precursor of the judgment, announced in the Apocalypse. This miracle is related in detail in the "Spiritual Instruction," for the fifth Friday before the Saint's Feast.

The succession to the throne of King James of Aragon, who died childless, led him to return to Barcelona. He was constrained to occupy himself with this affair, and after many negotiations full of patience and wisdom, he turned it to the advantage of his country. In 1413 St. Vincent evangelized the Balearic Isles. In 1414 he went to Tortosa, where he converted many Jews. Then he returned to Saragossa, and remained there till the beginning of the year 1415, preaching with much fruit. He was a second time drawn by the Spirit of God towards central Italy, and so great was the success of his apostolate, especially in Bologna, that its inhabitants were pleased to accord him the title of citizen. Returning thence into Spain, he was speedily summoned to the Congress of Perpignan, in which the obstinacy of Peter de Luna showed itself more strongly than ever. St. Vincent was so deeply afflicted that he fell grievously ill. The glorious confessor, refusing medical succor, placed his entire confidence in our Lord. Jesus Christ appeared to him, consoled him, cured him, and announced to him that he should yet visit divers countries.

The Congress of Perpignan was fatal to Peter de Luna. Through the advice of the Theologians, and of St. Vincent in particular, the King of Aragon detached himself from his obedience, and from that moment the cause of the union was accomplished. The king's edict was published on the 6th January, 1416. Our Saint spent the beginning of this year in traveling through many provinces of Aragon to withdraw the people from obedience to Benedict XIII., and to attach them to that of the Council of Constance, an undertaking by no means easy, considering the long period in which those countries had lived under the spiritual dominion of Peter de Luna. But to all their prejudices the Saint opposed solid reasons which carried conviction to every mind. In a short time Spain, as well as Italy and the rest of Christendom, awaited with submission the choice of the Council of Constance, ready to acknowledge the elect of the Council as the veritable Vicar of Jesus Christ.

The King of Aragon, well knowing how advantageous to the interests of the Church would be the presence of St. Vincent, entreated him to repair to Constance in quality of his theologian. But the latter declined this honor, believing it was better to follow the extraordinary mission which God had confided to him. He then went into Languedoc. At the end of January, 1416, history points to him at Carcassonne. From there he went to Besziers and Montpellier; then retracing his steps, he preached throughout Roussillon. In the month of March he passed again into the diocese of Carcassonne, and that year celebrated the Festival of the Annunciation at Montolieu, where he wrought the miraculous cure recorded in the "Spiritual Instruction" for the first Friday preceding the Saint's Feast.

From Montolieu, Vincent journeyed onwards to Toulouse. Two Fathers of his Order awaited him at Castanet. He entered the city on the Friday before Palm-Sunday, amidst pompous solemnities, and was received as an angel from heaven. In the evening of his arrival a procession of public penance took place. The number of those who took part in it was extraordinary. Besides the grown-up people, there were three hundred little children, who scourged their tender shoulders with the discipline.

We may judge, by those prognostics, of the immense good which the preaching of St. Vincent Ferrer would produce in Toulouse. There especially were realized the marvelous fruits of which we have given but a feeble description in the seventh article of this section. The sermons lasted a month; but their results were as abundant as though the Saint had preached a whole year. The priests of the city, and the religious who accompanied Vincent in his missions, hardly sufficed to receive the confessions of those that were converted. They who had enriched themselves by fraud and injustice restored their ill-gotten gains; they who had long scandalized the city by the publicity of their crimes were desirous to edify it by public repentance. The penances that were imposed on these great sinners did not seem to them sufficient; but they believed themselves bound to the severest expiation. All the women of ill-fame abandoned their disorders, and gave unequivocal and consoling proofs of the sincerity of their conversion.

The Saint left behind him in the city the greater part of the pious women who had followed him till then. They dwelt together in community, and observed the rules which he gave them. On the 3rd May, Vincent quitted Toulouse. He was accompanied as far as Portet, where he gave a short mission, and then went on to Muret. Having held a station in that town, he passed into the district of Caraman. From thence he repaired to Saix and Castres. In the latter city he received an express invitation from the Fathers of the Council of Constance to join them; the invitation being transmitted to him by an emissary of the King of Aragon. When this was notified to him, he started in the direction of the city where the Council was sitting, but travelled by short stages in order to preach to the people whom he might encounter on the journey.

He reached Alby on the 28th May, 1416, and preached there eight days. Then traversing the country, he visited Gaillac, Cordes, Najac, and arrived on the 22nd June at Villefranche du Rouergne, where he gave a mission of five days. After that he went to Rodez. Tradition says he preached in a large meadow of the Priory of St. Felix, which is not far distant. He passed thence across the mountains of Auvergne to reach by a direct route Puy-en-Velay. In the latter city he found an ambassador of John VI., Duke of Brittany, who invited him into his dominions. The Saint promised to respond to the wishes of the prince; but was desirous first to repair to Constance, and to preach in the neighboring provinces on the German frontier. He traversed the eastern portion of Auvergne and Bourbonnais, and then entered the Duchy of Bourgogne.

At Dijon, St. Vincent received a solemn embassy of the Council of Constance with a cardinal at its head. Certain difficulties of grave importance were proposed to him, which the man of God explained with such wonderful lucidity that the ambassadors marveled at the clearness and solidity of his judgment. When the Fathers of the Council were apprised of the Saint's answer, they shared the admiration of their envoys, and accepted it as an oracle. History does not inform us of the nature of the questions at issue, nor of the solution given thereto. But when the ambassadors withdrew, instead of pursuing his journey to Constance, Vincent directed his steps towards Brittany, either because he had been dispensed from attending the Council, or because he no longer considered his presence necessary after the answer he had given to the questions which had been submitted to him.

Leaving Dijon, he passed through Champagne. At the celebrated Monastery of Clairvaux he dispersed the pestilential fevers with which the community were afflicted. Langres and many other cities of that province enjoyed the privilege of seeing and hearing him. He pushed on his course as far as Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, where he again received an embassy of the Duke of Brittany, who implored him to hasten into his dominions. The Saint, considering himself bound to yield to such pressing solicitations, quitted Lorraine, and travelled towards Brittany by way of Berry. The Archbishop of Bourges had conceive certain unfavorable impressions of him, which disappeared as soon as he had seen and heard him; and from that moment he manifested the greatest goodwill towards him. Crossing Berry into Lorraine, St. Vincent converted its capital, which was a Babylon of iniquity, into a Jerusalem of peace and virtue. There a third messenger from the Duke of Brittany rejoined him. He then hastened his journey to that country through Anjou. Preaching at Angers against the excessive extravagance of the women, he effectually put a stop to the scandal.

It was in the beginning of March, 1417, that St. Vincent entered Brittany, where, two years later, he was to terminate his career.