The calendar of saints sets aside this day, May 20, as the feast of St. Bernardine of Siena, famous across Renaissance Italy for his impassioned sermons against what he saw as the luxury, vice and corruption of his times, especially usury (the lending of money at interest). While opposition to usury has faded in the West — we now recognize interest-charging as a foundation stone of capitalism and modern economics generally — Bernardine is still invoked on behalf of such causes as relief from respiratory ailments, help for compulsive gamblers, the welfare of the California city of San Bernardino, and, of interest here, the fields of advertising and public relations. The scope of public relations is often taken to include lobbying, and it’s as a forerunner of modern lobbyists that Bernardine appears in a tale, fanciful or otherwise, told a century ago: 

A comic incident throwing light upon Bernardine’s attitude toward usurers is reported in an old chronicle. While preaching at Milan, he was often visited by a merchant who urged our saint to inveigh so strenuously against usury as to render it obnoxious in the eyes of all. On making inquiries, however, the latter ascertained his visitor to be himself the greatest usurer of the place, whose action in this matter was prompted by a wish to lessen the number of his competitors by inspiring them with a wholesome horror of the trade.

Our own era, as we know, is one in which moralistic attacks on gambling have been secretly backed by nearby casino proprietors who don’t want the competition, in which “the estate-planning industry [has lobbied] hard against a [reduced federal] estate tax, which would kill its costly tax-avoidance schemes,” and in which various energy producers quietly assist environmental and NIMBY resistance to projects advancing competing sources of energy. My colleague Chris Edwards has compiled many more examples. You have to wonder whether much has really changed since Bernardine’s time.