In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

274 Epilogue Saint Vincent Ferrer in the Spanish Americas As Iberian explorers sailed westward across the Atlantic Ocean, they brought their Catholic faith with them. The sails of Columbus’s vessels were painted with religious images, while millennial dreams fired the imagination of the admiral who came to see himself as Christo-ferens, Christ-bearer. By papal decree, the claims of Portugal and Spain to lands in the NewWorld rested upon their acceptance of the charge to bring Christianity to the peoples they found there. In turn, the church functioned in many ways as an arm of the state in Spanish colonies. Still, if the oft-cited triad “gold, God, and glory” lays bare the mercenary motives behind many of the Spanish conquistadors, it also acknowledges the sense of mission, often tinged with apocalyptic fervor, that inspired the clergy who accompanied them.1 Among the numerous cargoes of books that arrived in Latin American ports to support the clergy’s task were the lives of saints: saints who inspired and served as role models for both missionaries and their converts, saints who mediated between native and European religious traditions , saints whose examples became fodder in political conflicts, and saints whose intercession offered hope and succor to the faithful.2 Although the Franciscans and Jesuits were the most prominently represented among the religious orders who served as New World missionaries, 1. Nice overview in Bakewell and Holler 2010, 97–108, 171–94. On Columbus:Watts 1985, 74, 95–102. 2. Greer and Bilinkoff 2003. E.g., Saint Anne, mother of theVirgin, was equated with the Aztec goddess Toci,“Our Grandmother.” Black 2003, 22–24. 275 SAINT VINCENT FERRER IN THE SPANISH AMERICAS Vincent’s own Order of Preachers played a major role—and in some regions constituted the dominant presence—in the Americas. Dominican friars, naturally, looked to and promoted the example of their brother saint, particularly sinceVincent was known as a new apostle whose effective preaching had converted tens of thousands of souls to the Christian faith in Europe. As Dominicans established missions and provinces in the Americas, the sainted Valencian preacher was not forgotten. But while in Europe, by the eighteenth century, biographies of Vincent Ferrer had come to echo Pietro Ranzano’s portrait of the saint as healer of the Schism and converter of Jews and Muslims, the predominant view of him in colonial Latin America was as a miracle worker and the angel of the apocalypse. True, works that issued from presses in New Spain and Peru demonstrate that Vincent served to inspire fellow Dominicans as they worked to Christianize indigenous populations , but more important, they indicate his significance as an intercessor and miracle worker for the Catholic faithful. In Latin American art,Vincent Ferrer is typically associated with his apocalyptic preaching, but a handful of paintings survive that also allude to his many miracles. Among them, predictably , numbers the tale of the saint and the chopped-up baby. Dominican Implantation in the Spanish Colonies The first Dominican missionaries in the NewWorld arrived on the island of Hispaniola in 1510.They almost immediately set themselves up as advocates for and protectors of the indigenous peoples whom they sought to convert, a position that often put the friars at odds with Spanish settlers and the crown. Antonio de Montesinos, for example, was compelled to return to Spain to answer for a sermon he preached on December 21, 1511, pointing out the abuses of the Spanish forced labor system on the island and asserting the basic humanity and rights of the natives.3 Bartolomé de las Casas, who later would become the best known “protector of the Indians,” took inspiration from Montesinos’s words,entering the Dominican order in 1523. The Dominican convent established in Santo Domingo, Hispaniola, became the basis of and staging point for the order’s expansion into other Spanish possessions. Most notably, a group of twelve friars—a number chosen for its apostolic resonance—arrived in the newly conquered territory of Mexico on June 24, 1526, to announce the advent of Christ, just as had John the Baptist, the saint on whose feast day they had landed.4 3. M. A. Medina 1992, 15–17; Schwaller 2008, 2:848; Gibson 1966, 75–76. 4. As pointed out by Lara 2004, 67. The group did not fare well; five died within the year and four returned to Spain by the year’s end.See Schwaller 2008,2:848;and Ricard 1974,22,who places the friars...

Share