Bernardino of Siena

Bernardino of Siena was born in 1380 in Massa Marittima, a Tuscan town then under the rule of Siena, to the noble Albizzeschi family. His father, Albertollo degli Albizzeschi, was serving as governor of Massa Marittima at the time. His mother, Nera di Bando, died when he was about three, and his father died a few years later, leaving him an orphan. He was raised in Siena by an aunt and other relatives and received an education that included civil and canon law. In 1400, when plague struck Siena, he and a group of young companions took charge of the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala and nursed the sick for several months. That experience, together with the example of pious relatives, turned him toward religious life.

In 1402 or 1403 he entered the Observant branch of the Order of Friars Minor at San Francesco in Siena and was ordained a priest in 1404. After a relatively quiet early ministry he emerged around 1417 as one of the most celebrated itinerant preachers in Italy. For more than two decades he traveled the peninsula, preaching in the vernacular in city squares and churches and drawing enormous crowds in places such as Milan, Florence, Siena, and Venice. He is especially associated with devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus, which he represented by the trigram IHS set in a blazing sun, often shown on a tablet at the close of a sermon. He denounced usury, luxury, factional violence, and gambling, and he often called cities to public bonfires of vanities. His preaching also included harsh attacks on Jews and on those he regarded as heretics or morally corrupt, attitudes common among some late medieval preachers. Charges that the Holy Name devotion was superstitious or heretical were examined at Rome; he was cleared under Pope Martin V and later had the support of Pope Eugene IV.

Bernardino repeatedly refused episcopal office, declining the sees of Siena, Ferrara, and Urbino in order to remain a traveling friar. He became a leading figure in the Observant reform of the Franciscans, serving as vicar general of the Observants in Italy and encouraging the foundation and growth of Observant houses. His health, long strained by a weak constitution and constant travel and preaching, failed in his last years. In 1444, while journeying to preach in the Kingdom of Naples, he fell ill and died at L'Aquila on 20 May.

He was canonized by Pope Nicholas V on 24 May 1450, only six years after his death, a rapid recognition that reflected the strength of his popular cult. His body was enshrined at L'Aquila, where the Basilica of San Bernardino was later built over his tomb. His feast is kept on 20 May. Later Catholic tradition has invoked him as a patron of advertisers and of communications and public relations workers, of people struggling with compulsive gambling, and of those suffering from respiratory or chest ailments and hoarseness, as well as of the city of L'Aquila and of the Diocese of San Bernardino in California, which takes its name from him. He remains one of the most influential popular preachers of fifteenth-century Italy and a central figure in the Observant Franciscan movement.