Overview

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were times of tumultuous change in medieval Europe; they witnessed the Black Death, the Great Papal Schism, heightened fears of the apocalypse, and the elimination of Spain's non-Christian population. Few figures were as widely and as intimately involved in late medieval Europe's struggles as Saint Vincent Ferrer. Perhaps the foremost preacher of his day, Ferrer spent the final two decades of his life traversing Europe, preparing the world for its imminent destruction. Saint Vincent Ferrer (d. 1419), His World and Life reassesses the controversial preacher's motives, methods, and impact, tracing Ferrer's journey from obscure logician to angel of the apocalypse, as he came to be known. At the same time, the book offers new insights into the depth and breadth of late medieval apocalyptic anticipation, and into the processes that ultimately led to the expulsions of Spain's Jews and Muslims.

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9781349571819

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This book is a beautifully written and carefully researched biography of one of the superstar preachers of the later Middle Ages. Despite Ferrer's dark history, Daileader, in elegant and compelling prose, portrays Vincent as a man of conscience, one convinced that he was living at the end of days and whose final years marked a sort of tragic crisis. In short, Daileader has produced that rarest of historical works: one that is as satisfying to scholars as it is pleasing to the general reader. - Laura A. Smoller, Professor of History, University of Rochester, USA The complex, conflicted life of Vincent Ferrer has been illuminated with a deft hand and a lucid vision in this welcome new study. Like panels in a stained-glass window, each chapter reveals both a distinctive aspect of the apocalyptic preacher's career, and the context that shaped it. The result is a balanced and well-documented yet highly readable narrative one that helps make sense of the bewildering political, social, and religious world of the Great Schism. - Robin Vose, Associate Professor of History, St. Thomas University, Canada

This book is a beautifully written and carefully researched biography of one of the superstar preachers of the later Middle Ages. Despite Ferrer's dark history, Daileader, in elegant and compelling prose, portrays Vincent as a man of conscience, one convinced that he was living at the end of days and whose final years marked a sort of tragic crisis. In short, Daileader has produced that rarest of historical works: one that is as satisfying to scholars as it is pleasing to the general reader. - Laura A. Smoller, Professor of History, University of Rochester, USA The complex, conflicted life of Vincent Ferrer has been illuminated with a deft hand and a lucid vision in this welcome new study. Like panels in a stained-glass window, each chapter reveals both a distinctive aspect of the apocalyptic preacher's career, and the context that shaped it. The result is a balanced and well-documented yet highly readable narrative-one that helps make sense of the bewildering political, social, and religious world of the Great Schism. - Robin Vose, Associate Professor of History, St. Thomas University, Canada

Author Information

Philip Daileader is Associate Professor of History at The College of William and Mary, USA. He is the author of True Citizens: Violence, Memory, and Identity in the Medieval Community of Perpignan, 1162-1397 (2000; French translation, 2004) and co-editor of French Historians, 1900-2000: New Historical Writing in Twentieth-Century France (2010).

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