Feast day: May 20

St. Bernardine of Siena

Priest & Missionary · 1380–1444

Patron of Advertisers, public relations, gamblers

Franciscan preacher who revived Italy's faith with electrifying sermons and spread devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus, symbolized 'IHS.'

Bernardine was born in 1380 to a noble family of the Sienese territory and orphaned young. As a youth he nursed the sick through a terrible plague in Siena at the risk of his own life, then, at about twenty-two, entered the Franciscans of the Observant reform, embracing strict poverty.

For many years a hidden, contemplative friar, he emerged in his forties as the most famous preacher of his age. Travelling on foot the length and breadth of Italy, he drew immense crowds with a vivid, witty, plain-spoken eloquence, preaching peace among the warring factions of the Italian cities and attacking vice, vendetta, gambling, and usury.

His great cause was devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus. He carried and displayed a tablet bearing the monogram 'IHS' in golden rays, urging cities to replace the partisan emblems on their walls with this sign of Christ — a knack for the memorable image that has made him a whimsical modern patron of advertisers.

Three times he refused a bishopric, preferring to preach, and he laboured to reform and expand his own Franciscan order. He died, worn out by his travels, in 1444, and was canonized only six years later, in 1450.

He's the patron of advertising — his 'IHS' monogram campaigns were so effective that playing-card makers complained he was ruining their business.

Image: Jacopo Bellini (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/02505b.htm