St. Vincent Ferrer, OP: His Life, Spiritual Teaching & Practical Devotion By Fr. Andrew Pradel (OP)
Vincent Ferrer (Valencian: Sant Vicent Ferrer [ˈsam viˈsɛm feˈreɾ], Spanish: San Vicente Ferrer, Italian: San Vincenzo Ferreri, German: Sankt Vinzenz Ferrer, Dutch: Sint-Vincent Ferrer, French: Saint Vincent Ferrier; 23 January 1350 – 5 April 1419) was a Valencian Dominican friar and preacher, who gained acclaim as a missionary and a logician. He is honored as a saint of the Catholic Church and other churches of Catholic traditions.
For twenty-one years he was said to have traveled to England, Scotland, Ireland, Aragon, Castile, France, Switzerland, and Italy, preaching the Gospel and converting many. Many biographers believe that he could speak only Catalan, but was endowed with the gift of tongues.[7] He was a noted preacher. Though he himself was an intellectual, his preaching style has been described as “innovative in that it incorporated a popular tone and rhetorical directness into the (by then traditional) Scholastic, thematic sermon structure”.
He preached to Colette of Corbie and her nuns, and it was she who told him that he would die in France. Too ill to return to Spain, he did, indeed, die in Brittany in 1419. Breton fishermen still invoke his aid in storms, and in Spain he is the patron of orphanages.
Nelson MCBS 