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The saints

St. Lawrence of Brindisi

A Capuchin who spoke eight languages and led an army with a crucifix.

Feast: 21 July · 1559 to 1619 · Reformation and missions · Brindisi, Venice, Prague and Lisbon

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A plain typographic plate: St. Lawrence of Brindisi, with the feast day.

Typographic plate by Stone & Incense: we found no public-domain image of this saint we could verify.

Home / The saints / St. Lawrence of Brindisi

Székesfehérvár, Hungary, 1601

Lawrence was a Capuchin friar with an extraordinary gift for languages, including Hebrew.1

He preached across Europe and became head of his order.1

When a Christian army in Hungary faced a far larger Turkish force, he rode at its front holding up a crucifix.

Patronage No official patronage we can cite yet. The Church honors him as a Doctor of the Church.

01St. Lawrence of Brindisi

Doctor of the Church

He was a peacemaker and diplomat between rulers, and wrote volumes of sermons.1

He was later named a Doctor of the Church.1

Live it this week

Learn a prayer in Scripture’s language

Lawrence studied Hebrew to understand Scripture better. Learn one Hebrew or Greek word from the Bible this week (shalom, amen, hosanna, abba) and what it really means.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Lawrence of Brindisi”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.