Saint Bernardine of Siena

Saint Bernardine of Siena was a Catholic saint, a descendant of the ancient Italian noble Albizzeschi family, a priest, preacher and Franciscan missionary. The life of Saint Bernardine, as the reader will quickly notice, was not written by any great scientist or theologian. The only attempt of the writer was to use the primary sources at his disposal to provide the reader with a living portrait of the saint, a graphic representation of his time and his environment, and, above all, to reveal the secret of the sermon that was present with such amazing results. Undoubtedly, the Italian was in many respects better prepared for this task, a fact of which the author of this article is in no way suspicious and which makes him all the more ready to refer the reader to a precedent. A few years after the death and canonization of Bernardine, Louis XI, King of France, presented the city of Aquila, where the remains of the saint were kept, an expensive shrine of gilded silver, and the Pope immediately ordered the relics to be placed in it.