Saint Bernardino of Siena was an Italian priest and Franciscan missionary preacher in Italy. He was born in 1380 to the noble Albizzeschi family in Massa Marittima, Tuscany. He was 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.
In 1403 he joined the Observant branch of the Order of Friars Minor (the Franciscan Order). He was ordained a priest in 1404 and was commissioned as a preacher the next year.
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. For more than 30 years, he preached all over Italy and played a great part in the religious revival of the early fifteenth century, which made him known as “the Apostle of Italy”.
