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column · BARCELONA, September 1409 AD

Aragon's heirless king remarries, and Saint Vincent Ferrer sings the Mass

Less than two months after his only son and heir died at Cagliari, King Martin married Margaret of Prades in a tower above Barcelona, before the Avignon pope.

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Saint Vincent Ferrer
A gold-ground panel painting of St. Vincent Ferrer, a haloed Dominican friar in a black cape over a white habit, right hand raised with one finger pointing up and left hand holding an open book, a rosary hanging from his wrist, standing before a walled city with a small vision of Christ in judgment above him.
St. Vincent Ferrer, robed as a Dominican friar with an open book and a rosary, in the central panel of the Griffoni Polyptych, painted by Francesco del Cossa around 1472-1475 AD for San Petronio in Bologna.

BARCELONA, September 1409 AD — King Martin of Aragon married Margaret of Prades this month in the tower of Bellesguard at Barcelona, and the Dominican Saint Vincent Ferrer sang the nuptial Mass. The king is fifty-one and has been a widower for several years, and since July he has had no heir. The marriage is meant to give him one before the claimants to his succession can move.

Benedict XIII, the Avignon pope, came to the wedding under sentence of deposition. An assembly at Pisa this year met to end the split that has divided Europe since 1378 AD between a pope at Rome and a pope at Avignon. It declared the papacy vacant, deposed him along with Gregory XII at Rome, and elected a third claimant, Alexander V. He carried on regardless, with four realms still recognising him: Scotland, Castile, the island of Sicily and Aragon. Aragon is his own country: he is Pedro de Luna, an Aragonese. The friar who sang the Mass had served in his household as Master of the Sacred Palace, Grand Penitentiary and private chaplain. St. Vincent Ferrer had refused the bishoprics and the cardinal’s hat the pope offered him.

In September 1398 AD Charles VI of France released his subjects from obedience to Benedict XIII. Every bull or letter of his had to be handed over to the king, and no privilege he had granted counted for anything. A priest who wanted a dispensation had to ask his own bishop for it instead. French troops then besieged him in his palace at Avignon. St. Vincent Ferrer stayed beside him through the siege, pressing him to give up the pontificate for the good of the Church. Benedict XIII negotiated a truce instead.

St. Vincent Ferrer came into Barcelona on June 14 this year with a great crowd of men and women who had followed him from many countries, and eight days later the city council voted three hundred florins to feed them. People took their places in the garden of the Dominican convent from one in the morning, so as not to miss his Mass and his sermon.

On July 14 Barcelona had word that the king’s son Martin, king of Sicily, had beaten rebel subjects in Sardinia, and the city held celebrations for the victory. Eleven days later he was dead at Cagliari. He had been king of Sicily in his own right and the heir to Aragon, so one death cost his father both crowns.

Benedict XIII had the news first. He expected it to overwhelm King Martin, so he travelled to Barcelona and sent St. Vincent Ferrer to tell the king, because the king loved and venerated the friar as a father. The magistrates of the city and the leading men of the nobility walked out to the king with him. St. Vincent Ferrer told him: “Sire, the kings of the earth are not immortal; their birth and their death resemble those of other men, though they are venerated as fulfilling divine offices here below. The King of kings has called the king of Sicily to himself… all your vassals weep your misfortunes; they will not be consoled unless they see Your Highness resign himself to the will of God.” The king took the news without despairing.

When the days of mourning were over, his counsellors asked him to marry again and give his states an heir. A second marriage, they argued, would forestall the pretenders’ intrigues and keep the peace among his peoples. He took the advice and chose Margaret of Prades, a princess of the Aragonese blood royal.

At Bellesguard this month the king married her solemnly. Benedict XIII performed the marriage, with the quarrel Pisa had stirred up at its height, and St. Vincent Ferrer sang the nuptial Mass before him. The moment the ceremony ended, St. Vincent Ferrer left in haste to preach.

The marriage produced no child. Plague reached Barcelona the next spring, and the king went out to Bellesguard and then on to the monastery of Valdonzella. He died there on May 31, 1410 AD, less than nine months after the wedding.

St. Vincent Ferrer was preaching at Morella that day and knew of the death by revelation; he warned his hearers of the turmoil that was coming. Aragon then went two years without a king, until nine judges at the castle of Caspe — St. Vincent Ferrer among them — gave the crown to Ferdinand of Castile in June 1412 AD.

Benedict XIII kept Aragon for six more years. In May 1415 AD King Ferdinand fell ill and sent St. Vincent Ferrer to Perpignan in his place, and the friar spent that autumn trying to make the pope resign, and got nowhere. On the feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1416 AD, he sang Mass at Perpignan and preached to some ten thousand people. Then, before the king, the ambassadors and the crowd, he read out the act by which Aragon left the Avignon obedience. St. Vincent Ferrer told them that Benedict XIII was the lawful pope, and that because Benedict XIII would not resign to give the Church peace, Ferdinand had taken his states out of the obedience.

About this story

Catholic Saints News tells the lives of the saints as news from their own time and place. This story was written with AI from the historical record, and we read and approved it before it ran.

The Saints' words. This newspaper will never make a saint say something the historical record does not preserve.

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Image. Saint Vincent Ferrer, central panel of the Griffoni Polyptych from San Petronio, Bologna (NG597), Francesco del Cossa, c. 1472-1475 AD, The National Gallery, London — see the original.

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A painting of a bare whitewashed cell at night: a thin tonsured friar lies on a low wooden bed with his hands joined on his chest, while one friar in a black cloak holds a candle, a second kneels wringing a cloth over an earthenware basin and a third stands with clasped hands; a crucifix hangs on the wall, a book, a jug and a cloth sit on a stool, and a small window shows the towers of a city under a starry sky.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a fifteenth-century panel painting in egg tempera and early oil, from the paper's reference portrait based on Szene aus dem Leben des Hl. Vinzenz Ferrer: Durch Aufregungen infolge des Schismas erkrankt der Heilige; er wird am Krankenbett vom hl. Dominikus besucht und von Christus geheilt (GG 6695) (Agnolo degli Erri, c. 1470-1490 AD, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) View source artwork.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, a Dominican friar, was thought to be dying of a fever at Avignon on October 3, 1396 AD. He wrote years later, without giving his name, that Christ came to the sick man's bed with St. Dominic and St. Francis, cured him with a touch and commanded him to go through the world preaching. Benedict XIII, the Avignon claimant to the papacy who had made him his confessor, kept him at court for two more years before letting him go.

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A panel painting of a hall with three cloth-covered trestle tables set on three sides of a square, nine seated men in religious and civic dress turned towards a thin, tonsured friar in a white habit and black cloak who stands at the left with his right index finger raised and a sealed parchment in his left hand; two mitres lie on a cushion on a side table and a clerk writes at the right.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of a fifteenth-century panel painting in egg tempera and early oil on gessoed poplar, from the paper's reference portrait based on Szene aus dem Leben des Hl. Vinzenz Ferrer (GG 6695) (Agnolo degli Erri, c. 1470-1490 AD, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) View source artwork.

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