Los tópicos de la carne: Ayuno, purificación y penitencia en la predicación cuaresmal vicentina de 1413

Abstract

Eating, or better non-eating, was one of the main focuses of Vicente Ferrer?slife. The Spanish preacher lived in a costant state of fasting. This practice derived from his own way of interpreting the imitation of Christ, in which fasting,and Lent, were the center of the preacher?s life and preaching. In his sermons,feeding is subject od exemplas, metaphors and repression. The body instead is scene of the battle between the soul seeking salvation and the flesh that is tempted.The body is also the place where penitence is performed: there the soul findsits purification through continuous abstinence, in full harmony with the Lentenspirit. Based on these premises, the essay aims to explore some sermons preachedin Valencia by Vicente Ferrer. They focus on the religious bodily experience ofnon-feeding. Although rich in references to public practices of penance, Ferrer?stexts intorduce penance and fasting as a mystical union path with the sufferingChrist. The essay therefore analyzes the words of the preacher at the apex of his Iberian career when he preached integration between body and soul. Such process made abstinence and self-inflicted sufference the center of salvation. Finally,Vicente?s sermons that recovered the body as motor and center of soul salvation.