Bernardino of Siena, OFM (8 September 1380 – 20 May 1444), also known as Bernardine, was an Italian 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" made him famous/infamous during his own lifetime because they were frequently directed against sorcery, gambling, infanticide, witchcraft, homosexuals, Jews, Romani "Gypsies", usury, etc. Bernardino was later canonised by the Catholic Church as a saint – where he is also referred to as "the Apostle of Italy" – 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 "[t]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. In 1403 he joined the Observant branch of the Order of Friars Minor (the Franciscan Order), with strict observance of Saint Francis's Rule. Bernardino was ordained a priest in 1404 and was commissioned as a preacher the next year. In about 1406 Saint Vincent Ferrer, a Dominican friar and missionary, while preaching at Alessandria in the Piedmont region of Italy, allegedly foretold that his mantle should descend upon one who was then listening to him, and said that he would return to France and Spain, leaving to Bernardino the task of evangelizing the remaining peoples of Italy.

Return to Bernardino of Siena Autograph Profile