Bernardine of Siena

The Lives Of The Saints: Volume 05, May · S. BERNARDINE OF SIENA, O.M.

S. BERNARDINE OF SIENA, O.M.

(A. D. 1444.)

[Canonized by Nicholas V. in 1450. Authority : — His life, written a few months after his death by his disciple, Bishop John Capistran. Another by Maphseus Vegius, an eye-witness of much that he relates.]

On the 8th September, 1380, S. Bernardine was born at Dassa, a little town near Siena. He lost his mother when he was aged three, and his father when he was six years

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Lives of the Saints .

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old, and was then taken by one of his aunts to live with her. This good woman educated him in virtue, and the boy grew up gentle, pious, bashful. At school he retained the same simplicity and purity, inspiring reverence even in the school-boys who were his associates, to such an extent that they were careful not to use improper words before him. If some of them were conversing on unbecoming topics, and the saintly child drew nigh, “ Hush,” one of them would say, “ here comes little Bernardine.” ,

He is said once at table to have rebuked a gentleman who began to make coarse jokes and tell unseemly stories.

The boy’s cheek grew scarlet, his eye flashed, and he started up exclaiming, “ Remember, you are a Christian.” The gentleman looked at his noble, excited young face, and was silent.

In the year 1400 a terrible plague broke out in Italy, and Siena was not spared. Bernardine devoted himself to the care of the sick at a time when fear of infection dried up the ordinary springs of compassion. He collected twelve young men like himself, and together they served the sick, removed corpses from the houses, carried those infected to the hospital, and were unremitting in their attendance to the plague stricken during the four months that the pestilence raged. When the plague abated, and his energies were less taxed, he fell ill, and for some time hovered between life and death. On his recovery he devoted himself to an aged aunt of ninety years named Bartholomea, who was blind and palsied ; he bore with her infirmities and tended her with the most loving gentleness till her death. After he had closed her eyes he went to live with a friend outside Siena ; in his house one day as he prayed before his crucifix, it seemed to him as if the nakedness of his Saviour on the cross, bereft of friends, possessions, clothes, without even a grave, reproached him, and he resolved to give up all that was his own, and