John of Capistrano

Born at Capestrano in 1386 and a doctor of law at Perugia, he became its governor at twenty-six. A war made him a prisoner; in his cell he resolved to change everything. A Franciscan Observant in 1416 and a disciple of Bernardino of Siena, whose memory he would defend at the canonisation process, he became one of the most listened-to preachers in Europe and was charged with missions by four successive popes. Those missions had two faces that cannot be separated: reforming lax convents, but also pursuing Hussites and Fraticelli as inquisitor, and preaching against the Jews of central Europe — a part of his work history does not wash clean. In 1456, at seventy, he gathered an army of peasants and joined Hunyadi before Belgrade, besieged by Mehmed II. The city held. He died of plague three months later, at Ilok.