Laura Ackerman Smoller - The saint and the chopped-up baby : the cult of Vincent Ferrer in medieval and early modern Europe

THE SAINT AND THE
CHOPPED-UP BABY

THE CULT OF VINCENT FERRER
IN MEDIEVAL AND
EARLY MODERN EUROPE

LAURA ACKERMAN SMOLLER

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

Ithaca and London

This book began modestly, as a study of the miracles reported by fifteenth-century Breton witnesses testifying on behalf of the canonization of a Dominican preacher named Vincent Ferrer. The project has grown enormously since then. In the course of its many transformations, I have encountered a great number of debts, and it is a pleasure to recall at least some of them here. No historical study could be accomplished without the help of archivists and librarians in numerous institutions. I owe a special expression of gratitude to Karen Russ and, above all, Brenda Jackson from the Ottenheimer Library at my own University of Arkansas at Little Rock, miracle workers both of them. I have received as well extraordinary kindnesses from John Rawlings at Stanfords Green Library, Eric White at SMUs Bridwell Library, William Monroe at Brown University, Jane Jackson at Providence Colleges Phillips Memorial Library, and Adan Benavides at the Benson Collection at the University of Texas, Austin. A fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as summer funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at UALR; and the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at UALR have all helped to support the research and writing of this book. I owe profound thanks as well to the Division of Medical Humanities of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, as well as to the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at UALR, for funds to help defray the costs of publication of this book.

The true joy in scholarship is not in the solitary pursuit of knowledge but rather in sharing ideas with others, and this project would never have taken the shape it has without the generous input of friends and colleagues, in formal venues and informal conversations and e-mails. Philippe Buc, Maureen Miller, Amy Remensnyder, Lou Roberts, Ellen Neskar, and Lisa Rothrauff were all there at the beginning and helped me to discover how rich a treasure trove lay in Vincents canonization records. Alison Frazier, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Thomas Wetzstein, Otfried Krafft, Christian Krtzl, Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, Fernando Vidal, and the late Michael Goodich have all been sources of enlightenment and good cheer, as have colleagues Moira Maguire, Kristin Dutcher Mann, and Carl Moneyhon at UALR, and Lynda Coon at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. I have benefited immeasurably from the comments of those who have kindly read drafts of chapters: Maureen Miller, Bruce Venarde, Alison Frazier, Marc Forster, Kristin Dutcher Mann, Vince Vinikas, Carl Moneyhon, and the other members of the WIMPS reading group in Little Rock. Participants at workshops at Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of California at Berkeley have all provided insights that shaped my thinking on Vincent Ferrer. Jorge and Maria Villegas, Hctor Schenone, Augustine Thompson, O.P., Michael Morris, O.P., Anne Pushkal, Roberto Rusconi, Igor Gorevich, and Vera Tyuleneva generously helped me to find illustrations. I owe heartfelt thanks to Philip Daileader and Robin Vose for their careful and sensitive readings of my manuscript for Cornell University Press, as well as to my editor, Peter J. Potter, who has shepherded this book on its journey to print with uncommon good sense and humor, and to Jamie Fuller, who copyedited the manuscript with admirable thoroughness. And no one could provide a better model of scholarly exchange, friendship, and generosity than has Alison Frazier. I am a different type of scholar for having known all of these people. Needless to say, the faults and flaws in my work remain all my own.

Finally, I owe my family more thanks than can adequately fit here. My parents provided me early on with a taste for the life of the mind and have continued to take delight in my intellectual pursuits, no matter how bizarre the path my own research has taken. My sister, Susan Ackerman, has been a source of inspiration, scholarly wisdom, and practical assistance, even making her own pilgrimage in search of one of my Vincent Ferrers. My sons Jason and Gabriel not only have put up with too many saintly field trips but have also, as they have grown to manhood, reminded me daily of the sense of awe and wonder at the heart of the word miracle, as well as of the depth of the care and concern felt by those anxious parents in the past who uttered up vows to Vincent Ferrer. And the greatest thanks go to my husband, Bruce, who has been not only a reliable sounding board and critic but also a more patient and effective cheerleader than he can ever know.

This story of Vincent Ferrers cult relies on sources in a variety of languages and from a number of different regions and cultures. In order to retain some of the sense of that diversity, I have kept the names of rulers in the language of their native regions (French for the dukes of Brittany, Catalan for the count-kings of Aragon, Castilian for the Trastmara rulers of Aragon and Naples). For Vincent himself, as well as for popes, I use the more common English spelling. In the case of persons who appear in the canonization inquests, I have left their names in the Latin of the records.