The position of Fra Jacopo del Bussolaro in Pavia differed from that of Fra Giovanni da Vicenza in Verona.  Yet the commencement of his political authority was very nearly the same.  The son of a poor boxmaker of Pavia, he early took the habit of the Augustines, and acquired a reputation for sanctity by leading the austere life of a hermit.  It happened in the year 1356 that he was commissioned by the superiors of his order to preach the Lenten sermons to the people of Pavia.  ‘Then,’ to quote Matteo Villani, ’it pleased God that this monk should make his sermons so agreeable to every species of people, that the fame of them and the devotion they inspired increased marvelously.  And he, seeing the concourse of the people, and the faith they bare him, began to denounce vice, and specially usury, revenge, and ill-behavior of women; and thereupon he began to speak against the disorderly lordship of the tyrants; and in a short time he brought the women to modest manners, and the men to renunciation of usury and feuds.’  The only citizens of Pavia who resisted his eloquence were the Beccaria family, who at that time ruled Pavia like despots.  His most animated denunciations were directed against their extortions and excesses.  Therefore they sought to slay him.  But the people gave him a bodyguard, and at last he wrought so powerfully with the burghers that they expelled the house of Beccaria and established a republican government.  At this time the Visconti were laying siege to Pavia:  the passes of the Ticino and the Po were occupied by Milanese troops, and the city was reduced to a state of blockade.  Fra Jacopo assembled the able-bodied burghers, animated them by his eloquence, and led them to the attack of their besiegers.  They broke through the lines of the beleaguering camp, and re-established the freedom of Pavia.  What remained, however, of the Beccaria party passed over to the enemy, and threw the whole weight of their influence into the scale of the Visconti:  so that at the end of a three years’ manful conflict, Pavia was delivered to Galeazzo Visconti in 1359.  Fra Jacopo made the best terms that he could for the city, and took no pains to secure his own safety.  He was consigned by the conquerors to the superiors of his order, and died in the dungeons of a convent at Vercelli.  In his case, the sanctity of an austere life, and the eloquence of an authoritative preacher of repentance, had been strictly subordinated to political aims in the interests of republican liberty.  Fra Jacopo deserves to rank with Savonarola:  like Savonarola, he fell a victim to the selfish and immoral oppressors of his country.  As in the case of Savonarola, we can trace the connection which subsisted in Italy between a high standard of morality and patriotic heroism.[1]

    [1] The best authorities for the life and actions of Fra Jacopo
    are Matteo Villani, bks. 8 and 9, and Peter Azarius, in his
    Chronicle (Groevius, vol. ix.).