Legatus a Latere Christi: Provence, Lombardy, and in Between

Abstract

Bernard Montagnes provides the standard account of when and how Vincent Ferrer went from being the pope’s confessor to Christ’s legate:

After France’s withdrawal of obedience on 1 September 1398, while remaining convinced that the only legitimate pope was the one at Avignon, but incapable of getting Benedict XIII to resign in order to end the Schism, Vincent Ferrer retired to the Dominican convent. There he experienced the vision of 3 October 1398, of which Vincent Ferrer himself wrote to Benedict XIII in his letter dated 27 July 1412. Around one year after he experienced his investiture, on 22 November 1399, Vincent Ferrer began his career as a wandering preacher in his capacity as legatus a latere Christi, Legate of Christ.¹

The account is in some respects accurate, but in other respects at odds with what Vincent himself said. That he left Avignon on November 22, 1399, to preach as Christ’s legate is correct. In a sermon delivered years later on Saint Cecilia’s day (November 22), Vincent reminisced about how it was on Saint Cecilia’s day that he had begun his preaching mission as legatus a latere Christi.² In his reminiscence, he specified only the day, not the year, when he began his itinerant preaching mission. But on other occasions Vincent spoke of how long he had wandered and preached, and he always dated the mission’s start to 1399. In Vincent’s letter ofJuly 1412 to Benedict XIII, he wrote of a preacher—himself— who had spent the previous 13 years wandering and warning listeners of the apocalypse’s imminence.