St. Vincent Ferrer, aged seven, is enrolled among the clergy of Valencia

VALENCIA, Crown of Aragon, 1357 AD — Some time this year, in this city, a boy of seven had his hair cut short and was invested with the surplice, and by those two acts he was received into the clerical order. He is Saint Vincent Ferrer, a son of William Ferrer, a notary of Valencia. A church income is to follow.

The decision was his father’s. William Ferrer wanted a churchman in the family, and no boy can be given a church income until he has been tonsured. The tonsure is not an ordination, and it asks no vows. It enrols a baptised boy among the clergy, with a cleric’s privileges and a cleric’s duties, and prepares him for the orders he may take when he is older.

A benefice is a right, granted permanently by the Church to a cleric, to draw the revenues of a church endowment in return for a spiritual service. The smallest kind carries only the duty of reciting the Divine Office or of celebrating Mass, and a cleric may hold one from his seventh year, provided he has been tonsured. The one the Ferrers have in view is a small one: the revenues of the chapel of Saint Anne, in the parish church of Santo Tomás. Two obligations are charged on whoever holds those revenues: a lamp kept burning at Saint Anne’s altar, and a Mass said at that altar once a year.

St. Vincent Ferrer was born in this city on January 23, seven years ago. His mother is Constantia Miguel, a kinswoman of the Bishop of Valencia; his father’s people came out of Catalonia. Two sons were in the house already, Peter and Boniface. The family lives on the street of the sea, where the Jews of the city live too. Next door is the shop of a grocer, Michel Guarrigues, a friend of William Ferrer. At the end of each year the Ferrers give away in alms whatever they have saved beyond what the family needed.

At the font in the parish church of San Esteban, seven years ago, the family and the magistrates who had come with them could not agree on a name for the infant, and the priest ended the argument by choosing one himself. Valencian tradition preserves what he said: “Since you are not agreed, let him be called Vincent.” It is a Valencian name, after the city’s own martyr.

What the tonsure changes is the shape of the boy’s week. He hears Mass daily now, and says the little office of Our Lady every day. He fasts on Wednesdays and Fridays, and has done since he was small. From an early age he has been drawn to the things of God and to prayer.

Valencia has no university. Teaching in the city is done in private schools, and there are a good many of them. What a boy learns in one of them is what students of this generation learn, and much of that is logic.