Vincent Ferrer and the Musical Chairs of St. Peter

There are few chairs that have rocked so much as the chair of St. Peter. Pope Francis’s freewheeling papal style offers only a tiny taste of the kind of controversies and conundrums that lie at the feet of many of the Church’s popes and antipopes.

Problems with the papacy have always gone hand in glove with rumors and rumblings of the end of the world. Some may recall the bolt of lightning that struck the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica hours after the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. The doomsday prophets and their placards will never go out of style—but whenever and however the apocalypse should truly be revealed, but the Church will march on.

St. Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419) lived to witness one of the most famous of all the papal crises: the Avignon papacy with its string of antipopes. Vincent, an end times preacher if ever there was one, was full of alarms, yet the effect of his homiletics was harmony. Even though no one really knew who the true pope was at that time, Vincent held to a single vision of the Church of Christ and the one true way to salvation.

In a whirling struggle for control over Christendom between emperors and kings, crusaders and curates, it fell out that a string of seven popes ruled from Avignon, France, beginning from 1309 to 1376. And so the year 1378 ushered in the Great Western Schism, which divided the Church in its allegiances, setting even great saints and Doctors of the Church at odds.

After Pope Gregory XI returned from Avignon to Rome and died two years later, sixteen of the twenty-three cardinals of the Roman College hurriedly assembled, under tremendous pressure from the Italian people for an Italian pope, and elected Urban VI. Later, when the entire college held a conclave, they decided that the election had occurred hastily, and so, in spite of Urban, the cardinals illegitimately elected the Frenchman Clement VII. As Urban would not resign, Clement took up papal residence, once again, in Avignon. Upon his death shortly thereafter, Benedict XIII ascended to the schismatic Avignon papacy.

After his election, Benedict XIII summoned a Dominican priest from Valencia to be his adviser. This was Vincent Ferrer. Known for his exquisite preaching and writing, Vincent was also famous for his ability to inspire penitence in Catholics and conversion in Jews. Some even said he had a gift of prophecy. With this reputation, Vincent came to Avignon at Benedict’s behest, where he was welcomed with honor and, with characteristic humility, immediately refused a bishopric.

It did not take long in Avignon for Vincent to realize the damage the warring papacies were inflicting on the body of Christ—with the pope he had avowed contributing especially by his obstinate refusal to consider compromise or reconciliation. Though Vincent pressed Benedict to come to terms with his Roman rival, the ersatz pontiff would not budge. And when a council of Parisian theologians made a clear case opposing the Avignon antipope, Vincent’s misgivings about Benedict’s rightful election turned to conviction.

Under the enormous pressures of his position and the turmoil of his soul, Vincent took ill. He is said to have had a vision of Our Lord, appearing with St. Dominic and St. Francis, giving him an order to go out and preach repentance as those two holy men had done. Upon recovering, Vincent wrested permission to depart and take up missionary work. If the so-called pope in all his power would not hear the will and wisdom of God, perhaps the poor pagans of the world would.

Vincent left Avignon in 1399 and sounded a militant call for penance throughout France, gathering followers wherever he went. These “Penitents of Master Vincent” would follow him from town to town and even stay behind to carry on the mission work he began. Their master prophesied three terrible afflictions to come:

First, Antichrist, a man but a diabolical one; second, the destruction by fire of the terrestrial world; third, the universal judgment. And with these tribulations the world will come to an end.

But for all the fire and brimstone, Vincent’s disciples and listeners were filled with the love of God. Vincent waxed eloquent on sin, death, eternity, and Judgment Day, and his followers shone with hope and bravery, finding new life in conversion and confession.

From France, Vincent traveled to Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, and Ireland, performing so many miracles that an hour was set aside in his schedule just for healing the sick and infirm. He spoke in tongues to people of varied languages as he marched across Europe and finally back to his homeland of Spain, where it is said he baptized 8,000 Moors.

“Do penance now,” he preached; “forgive injuries, make restitution of any ill-gotten goods, live up to and confess your religion. If it were certain that in a short time this town was going to be destroyed by fire, would you not exchange all your immovable goods for something that you could take away with you?”

Though Vincent worked tirelessly to prepare people for the end of the world, it was the end of the fractured papacy that he was born to realize. Over the years in Rome, Urban VI was succeeded by Boniface IX, who was succeeded by Innocent VII, who was succeeded by Gregory XII, who was pope in 1414, when Vincent was called upon to help resolve the crisis once and for all.

Vincent went back to Avignon to persuade with his old lord, Benedict XIII, who was still holding out against Rome. At that time, and making matters even more complicated, there was even a third contender for the chair of St. Peter. Cardinals from Avignon and Rome had banded together at the Council of Pisa to depose both Benedict XIII and Gregory XII, and they had named a new pope, also an antipope, Alexander V, who was succeeded by John XXIII.

For all his earnest efforts, Vincent found old Benedict as intractable as ever. When Ferdinand of Castile, the Spanish king, asked for his opinion, Vincent reported that Benedict’s unwillingness to restore the union that was so vital to the Church justified the faithful in removing their allegiance from him forthwith.

At the Council of Constance, and with deep thanks to the leadership of Vincent Ferrer, the great scandal of Christendom was finally put to rest. John XXIII and Benedict XIII were officially deposed, and Gregory XII willingly resigned, allowing for the fresh election of Pope Martin V in 1417.

St. Vincent Ferrer passed his declining years in France, dying in 1419. He said of himself, “I am a plague-spot in soul and body; everything in me reeks of corruption through the abomination of my sins and injustice”—but it is nearness to the high God that engenders such opinions in the saints. Though damnation was Vincent’s text, salvation was his trajectory. And though he was assured that the world was poised to fall in fire, his fiery faith lifted that same world up with all the security Christ promised his Church under the pope of Rome—with some assistance from shepherds, like Vincent Ferrer, who devote themselves to keeping the flock from scattering into the abyss.