St. Vincent Ferrer brings the emperor to Perpignan after a month's argument

PERPIGNAN, Roussillon, September 19, 1415 AD — The Emperor Sigismund rode into Perpignan today expecting the meeting to succeed, and he came because Saint Vincent Ferrer spent a month riding between Perpignan and Narbonne to argue him into the journey. The friar wants what the emperor wants: the resignation of Benedict XIII. He is asking it of the man who gave him his doctorate and called him to Avignon.

Two men have claimed the papacy since 1378 AD, and since the assembly at Pisa in 1409 AD there have been three. The Council of Constance is Sigismund’s doing: he compelled John XXIII to open it in November 1414 AD, and it demanded the abdication of the other two claimants. The council has since deposed John XXIII and accepted Gregory XII’s abdication. That leaves Pedro de Luna, who reigns as Benedict XIII and will not resign. Sigismund wants a prompt, sincere and unreserved resignation out of him.

What Benedict XIII still has, and the council does not, is the obedience of Aragon. Pisa’s sentence did not shift him, and Scotland, Aragon, Castile and Sicily went on recognising him. A council’s deposition changes nothing on the ground until a king orders his subjects to stop treating the man as pope. Charles VI of France did that in 1398 AD. He forbade French subjects to submit to the claimant at Avignon, and sent them to their own bishops for the dispensations they had been asking of Avignon. King Ferdinand of Aragon, whom St. Vincent Ferrer helped put on the throne three years ago, can do the same.

The king sent him in his own place. Ferdinand wrote to St. Vincent Ferrer on May 18 to say that a meeting with the emperor was being arranged and that he wanted the friar at it. The king’s letter ran: “We beg you and affectionately charge you in the Lord to go there, for the happy success of this business, so important, for which the mediation of the devout faithful and above all your prayers and your counsels are so necessary.” Then Ferdinand fell dangerously ill at Valencia and asked him to go to Perpignan instead, and to press Benedict XIII to resign.

St. Vincent Ferrer had been in Pedro de Luna’s service since long before there was a Benedict XIII. He was a young friar when Cardinal de Luna took him into his household, and the cardinal gave him his doctorate in theology. As Benedict XIII he called the friar to Avignon and made him his confessor. He offered him bishoprics and a cardinal’s hat, and St. Vincent Ferrer refused them. Three years ago St. Vincent Ferrer was still heading his letters to him: “To our most holy Lord, Benedict XIII, Pope, Brother Vincent Ferrer, Preacher, a useless servant in regard to both preaching and actions, places himself at the feet of His Holiness.”

At Constance’s sixteenth session on July 11 the emperor undertook to go into Spain and settle matters with the king of Aragon and Pedro de Luna. St. Vincent Ferrer moved faster. He left Saragossa on July 17, crossed Catalonia, and was welcomed into Perpignan towards the end of August. He began pressing Benedict XIII at once to resign.

Benedict XIII did not yield to him. This month at Perpignan he argued back, seated on his throne with the tiara on his head, hour after hour, tireless at over eighty. His answer to the demand for his resignation was that without him no one could make a pope at all. “You tell me that I am a doubtful pope,” Benedict XIII said. “Perhaps — but before being pope I was a cardinal, and a sure and certain cardinal of the Holy Church of God, that was before the schism. I am even the sole survivor of the cardinals from before the schism… Since I am the only authentic cardinal, I am the only one who can make an authentic pope, and no legitimate pope can ever be named without me.”

Sigismund had left Constance on August 5 in great state, a crowd of churchmen and diplomats behind him, and got as far as Narbonne. There he stopped, and would come no further and send Benedict XIII no word. St. Vincent Ferrer put his case to him in the Gothic cloister and the chapter room of the cathedral of Saint-Just, and it took him a month. A man who was in Narbonne through those weeks gave this account of the friar: “The apostle put into this affair all his zeal and all his strength. He went back and forth from Narbonne to Perpignan and from Perpignan to Narbonne. I was in this latter city and I heard two speeches delivered by him. There was a crowd of archbishops, bishops, masters of theology and doctors whose main occupation was to attend these sermons.”

Today the emperor came, and the town filled with him. The counts of Armagnac, Foix, Savoy, Lorraine and Provence rode in, France, Castile and England sent lavish embassies, and Constance sent an army of prelates and doctors. Benedict XIII was lodged with the Carmelites, the emperor with the Franciscans, St. Vincent Ferrer with the Dominicans.

The next day the emperor called on Benedict XIII, who received him kindly and gave him the kiss of peace.