Saint Bernardine of Siena

Bernardine was born in Massa Marittima on September 8, 1380, to the noble Sienese family of the Albizzeschi; his father Tollo was governor of the town. He lost his mother at three and his father at six, and grew up in Siena in the care of his aunts. At twenty, during the plague of 1400, he volunteered to run the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala: four months in the thick of the contagion, with a group of young men like himself. He came out alive and, two years later, took the Franciscan habit. Then he started walking, and didn’t stop for forty years. He crossed Italy on foot preaching in the squares, because the churches couldn’t hold the people who came to hear him. He spoke in the vernacular, loud and clear, poking fun at the vices of his listeners — usury, gambling, vanity, feuds between families — and the crowds were enormous. His sermons have come down to us because someone took them down as he spoke: they are among the most vivid records we have of the Italian spoken in the fifteenth century. He also invented a symbol. At the end of his sermon he would show a tablet with the trigram IHS, the name of Jesus, in rays of gold on a blue background, and urge people to put that on the doors of their houses instead of the coats of arms of the factions. He was put on trial for it, and acquitted. That symbol can still be seen on buildings all over Italy. He died in L’Aquila on May 20, 1444, while traveling to preach. He was proclaimed a saint six years later. If your name is Bernardine, today is your name day.