BERNARDINO de' Bustis. — A great Franciscan preacher, born in Milan from the noble family de' B., c. 1450. He completed his early studies in Milan and his legal studies at Pavia, obtaining a degree in law. He was received among the Observant Friars Minor c. 1475. To his contemporaries he appeared as another St. Bernardino. He died in a reputation for holiness between 1513 and 1515, and probably on 8 May 1515, in the convent of Santa Maria della Misericordia at Melegnano. He is called “Blessed” by popular voice.
De' B. excelled as an apostle and writer, particularly in Marian works. Besides some ascetical booklets (*Expos. super Orationem dominicam*, and *Tract. de Imitatione Christi per assumptionem status Tertii Ordinis de Poenitentia* [Italian trans., Naples 1621]), he published the famous *Defensorium Montis Pietatis* against fierce opponents of the institution (Milan 1497), later supplemented by the booklet *Contilium de retrovendendo et de pacto retrovendendi*. His most voluminous oratorical work is the *Rosarium Sermonum per Quadragesimam*, a handbook for preachers and Latin outlines of sermons which he himself delivered in the vernacular (Strasbourg 1498; revised and definitive ed., Venice 1498). The *Officium et Missa glorios. Nominis Iesu* (Milan 1492) was approved by Sixtus IV.
On the Blessed Virgin he published 9 sermons *De Immac. Conceptione* (later part 1 of the *Mariale*), *Opusculum* (148a), *Elucidarium* (1492), and *Off. et Missa de Immac. Concept.* (1492; approved by Sixtus IV in 1480), and finally his major and most widespread work, the *Mariale de singulis festis B.V.M.*, composed in 1492 (1st ed. Nuremberg 1493; 7th and last ed., Cologne 1607), in 12 parts and 63 sermons illustrating the entire life of the Blessed Virgin. Particularly noteworthy is his teaching on the Immaculate Conception and on universal mediation, admitted in its two phases, in a strict and formal sense.
BERNARDINO della Chiesa: see della Chiesa BERNARDINO.