The crowds were asked to throw into the fire all objects of vanity and sin such as playing cards, dice, pornographic books and pictures, jewelry, wigs, superstitious charms, cosmetics, and so forth.

The institution was founded as an alternative to the high interest loans of the money lenders and Lombard traveling bankers of the Middle Ages.

[5] His fund raising drives were generally preceded with a procession featuring an image of either the Man of Sorrows or Pietà to encourage charitable donations.

[6] His insistence on charging a low interest to protect the institution's permanency raised a controversy among the theologians who thought it promoted the continuance of usury.

[3] He died in 1494 in the monastery of San Giacomo della Vernavola in Pavia and his relics are kept in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in the same city.

[8][9] Bernardine is generally represented in iconography as carrying in his hand a monti di pietà, that is, a little green hill composed of three mounds and on the top either a cross[4] or a standard with the inscription Curam illius habe (a snippet from the Vulgate translation of the Gospel of Luke's Parable of the Good Samaritan).

The fact, however, that the Anima Christi was composed sometime before 1439 disproves any claim that he might have of being its author,[5] though much like Ignatius of Loyola, Bernardine made frequent use of it and recommended it to his brethren.