Love And Death, Life Of Holiness In Literature And Spirituality In Valencia In The 15th Century: From Saint Vicent Ferrer To Sor Isabel De Villena

The Kingdom of Valencia, in the 15th century, holds a major place in the history of literature and spirituality and in the religious history of the Iberian Peninsula, while the Reconquista is completed and the Spanish are united. The same quest for moral reform and spiritual elevation is expressed in the sermons of the Dominican fra Vicent Ferrer as well as in the translations of classical and Renaissance writers by another Dominican, Fra Antoni Canals. Valencian spirituality is militant: it wants to convince, seduce, give and sometimes impose what it recognizes as indispensable to perfection and salvation. Valencian heroes of the 15th century are knights and religious and saints. They wield the sword or the word, or both, to defend the values of Christianity, the art of loving and dying Christianity, truth, justice, peace. Thus the anonymous novel by Curial e Guelfa or the Cant espiritual of the knight Ausias March testify to the junction between chivalry and theology, while Joanot Martorell, knight author of the novel of Tirant lo Blanc, and Sor Isabel de Villena, Abbess of the clares of the Trinity, author of a Vita Christi, designate, each to its own measure, a spiritual opening of history, a necessary interior conversion. Poetic and theological games bring together clergy and knights, intertwining holiness and sensitive love and allowing the development of goigs, famous sung prayers that will take all their importance in the spiritual life of the faithful after the Council of Trent.