Saint Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419) and the philosophical-rethorical efficacy of sermon: Art and Philosophy
Ricardo da COSTA, Gustavo Cambraia FRANCO
Original title: São Vicente Ferrer (1350-1419) e a eficácia filosófico-retórica do sermão: Arte e Filosofia
Published in Art, Criticism and Mysticism
Keywords: Art, Medieval Rethoric, Philosophy, Saint Vincent Ferrer, Sermon.
The aim of this work is to analyze some aspects of the philosophical discourse and the medieval rethoric elements contained in the sermons of Saint Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419), especially his thoughts about a theme currently and universally present in the Christian Middle Ages: the moral virtues or cardinal virtues. For this, we will utilize a specific sermon wrote in Latin language (the Vth Sermon of the IVth Sunday of Advent), in which the preacher relates the four cardinal virtues with episodes of the life and deeds of Christ, as reported in the Gospels. The theme will be related with some artistic representations of the saint: the paintings of Joan Macip (1540-1545) and the most famous, of Alonso Cano (1601-1667), “Saint Vincent Ferrer Preaching” (1644-1645), as well as the central altarpiece of the Dominican Convent Church of Cervera (Segarra c. 1456), which represents Saint Vincent Ferrer and the Mother of God (Apocalyptic Virgin) of Pedro García de Benabarre (1445-1485). Our iconographic analysis is based on the theoretical perspective of Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968), and in the definition of image for the period according with the considerations of Jean-Claude Schmitt (1946- ).
The Sapientia Christiana and the Analogy of the Liberal Arts in a Sermon of Saint Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419)
Gustavo Cambraia FRANCO, Ricardo da COSTA
Original title: A sapientia christiana e a analogia das artes liberais em um Sermão de São Vicente Ferrer (1350-1419)
Published in
Keywords: Analogical Thinking, Medieval Science, Medieval Sermon, Saint Vincent Ferrer, liberal arts.
This article contains an exposition and an analysis on the theme of the Liberal Arts in a sermon of Saint Vincent Ferrer, renowned Dominican Valencian preacher during the passage between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. We intend to show that the Liberal Arts are addressed by the sermonist within the traditional theoretical scope of classification of sciences in the medieval period, as branches of knowledge for the service of the higher science, Theology, to avail the scholastic dictum philosophia ancilla theologiae. In his exposition, the author follows the medieval didactic principles of analogical thinking, the figurative hermeneutics and the allegorical exegesis of the Bible, by which he ensnares the meanings and properties of each science or Liberal Art, namely Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric, the Trivium sciences, and Music, Arithmetic, Geometry and Astrology, Quadrivium sciences, in a web of metaphorical and analogical relations aimed, at the end, to confer spiritual, religious and moral meaning and utility to each of them, as well as subordinate them to the royal domain of the sapientia christiana.
