THE EAGLE. The rite during which the rector father was renewed yesterday morning in the basilica of San Bernardino Daniele Di Sipio closed the reliquary containing the mortal remains of the Sienese saint, kept in the monumental mausoleum designed by Silvestro dell’Aquila.
The rite anticipates the solemnity dedicated to the co-patron saint of the city of L’Aquila, which will be celebrated on May 20th. The rite of the urn, updated over the centuries, refers to the popular tradition of L’Aquila which the Order of Friars Minor celebrates by allowing the faithful to take, on the day before the feast of San Bernardino, a small blessed wad of cotton wool, which is placed in contact when closing the inside of the saint’s urn. Bernardino was proclaimed a saint by Nicholas V in 1450: even before his canonization numerous insistent stories had spread about the miracles he performed, some of which found space in a printed edition of the Legenda aurea, with a specifically modified text, printed a few years later, which remains one of the oldest known incunabula. Among his works, both the treatises and the texts of the sermons written directly by him in Latin have been published, as well as those in the vernacular which are the result of the compendious notes taken from time to time by his most assiduous listeners. Immediately after his passing, the Minorite Order wanted to promote his figure as a champion of testimony of faith in Christ and of the saving power of his holy name. The bald and emaciated image of the saint that the IHS trigram tablet presents is widespread. Immediately after his death, a portrait of him was circulating in Siena which must have been very similar, which is also confirmed by the comparison with the mortuary cast made in L’Aquila. It was probably the prototype of the many subsequent representations where the characteristic features of the saint almost always appear similar to each other. Bernardino was the teacher of an entire generation of Observant Franciscans who after him preached and wrote theological treatises.
