They skipped Mass, swore, and were superstitious. Rather than speaking generally about sin, he was not afraid to hurt his listeners’ tender feelings by identifying their actual sins.įifteenth-century Italian Catholics broke the same Ten Commandments that are commonly broken today. His humility, knowledge, and talents as a speaker were not the only reasons that he attracted so many people. Penance might not seem like an attention-getting topic today, but when the zealous Bernardine preached about it, he drew audiences so large that he was often forced to preach outside the church to accommodate the crowd. That is, he would remind his listeners that we are all sinners and that we should repent of our sins because they offend God. When Bernardine entered a city, he would preach for hours at a time, sometimes giving multiple sermons in a day. 1 But how could a bonfire be part of a parish mission? Although the term is most often associated with the tragic Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498), Saint Bernardine made these bonfires an important part of his missionary activity long before Savonarola was even born. The Bonfire of the Vanities is more than the title of a 1987 novel by Tom Wolfe. But our post-Christian world remembers (and ridicules) Bernardine for a different reason: his bonfires of vanities. On Bernardine’s feast day, Catholics typically focus on one of his favorite preaching topics: devotion to the Most Holy Name of Jesus.
Bernardine (or Bernardino) of Siena (1380-1444), a famous Franciscan priest who preached all over Italy.
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