Bernardino of Siena

Born in 1380 at Massa Marittima into a noble Sienese family and orphaned young, he nursed plague victims in Siena in 1400 before entering the Franciscans. An itinerant preacher from 1417, he crossed Italy on foot for nearly thirty years; his open-air sermons lasted hours and drew vast crowds, and he was credited with emptying whole towns of their factional quarrels. He had the monogram IHS painted on a tablet within rays of gold and raised it at the close of his preaching: the sign spread so fast that it brought him three trials for heresy, from each of which he emerged cleared. As vicar general of the Franciscan Observants he took the order from three hundred friars to more than four thousand. Three times he refused a bishopric — Siena, Ferrara, Urbino. He died at L'Aquila on 20 May 1444 and was canonised six years later. In 1956 Pius XII made him patron of advertising professionals, for the art with which he could make a message heard and remembered.