Saint Saint Bernardine of Siena, Priest

Bernardino of Siena, OFM (Bernardine or Bernadine; 8 September 1380 – 20 May 1444), was an Italian Catholic priest and Franciscan missionary preacher in Italy. He was a systematizer of scholastic economics. His preaching, his book burnings, and his "bonfires of the vanities" established his reputation in his own lifetime; they were frequently directed against gambling, infanticide, sorcery/witchcraft, sodomy (male homosexuality), Jews, Gypsies, usury, and the like. Bernardino was canonized by Pope Nicholas V in 1450 and is referred to as "the Apostle of Italy" within the Roman Catholic church for his efforts to revive the country's Catholicism during the 15th century. Two hagiographies of Bernardino of Siena were written by two of his friends; the one the same year in which he died, by Barnaba of Siena; the other by the humanist Maffeo Vegio. Another important contemporary biographical source is that written by the Sienese diplomat Leonardo Benvoglienti, who was another personal acquaintance of Bernardino's. The historian Franco Mormando notes that "he first works to be produced about Bernardine right after his death [in 1444] were biographical: by the year 1480, there were already over a dozen written accounts of the preacher's life". Bernardino was born in 1380 to the noble Albizzeschi family in Massa Marittima, Tuscany, a town in the contado of Siena of which his father, Albertollo degli Albizzeschi, was then governor. Left orphaned at six, he was raised by a pious aunt. In 1397, after a course of civil and canon law, he joined the Confraternity of Our Lady attached to the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala. Three years later, when the plague visited Siena, he ministered to the plague-stricken, and, assisted by ten companions, took upon himself for four months entire charge of this hospital. He escaped the plague but was so exhausted that a fever confined him for several months.