«Així com un camp de batalla»: About the Military Imagery in Vincent Ferrer’s Sermons

Abstract

Saint Vincent Ferrer’s corpus of sermons presents a rich variety of military similes and allegories. The present paper analyzes the use of these images in Ferrerian preaching, and does it mainly by means of a comparative approach which takes into account also the work of other medieval preachers and several Artes praedicandi treatises. Particular consideration has been given to three diferent aspects of the use of this sort of imagery in Ferrer’s sermons: a) the portrayal of Jesus Christ as a knight (Christus miles) who jousts against the devil for human salvation; b) the elaboration of complex similitudines in which the whole of Christendom is represented as a host assembled in battle array against temptations and vices; c) the regular use of the spiritual allegory of the castle under siege, a symbol whose meaning fluctuates from sermon to sermon.