Bertold of Regensburg
Berthold of Regensburg (* 1210 in Regensburg, † December 14, 1272 in Regensburg ) was one of the most famous preachers of the Middle Ages.
General
Berthold of Regensburg was Franciscan and worked as a preacher, but also as a preacher against heretics, but against the persecution of Jews. It is believed that he attended 1231-35 studying Provinciale the Friars Minor in Magdeburg and there worked as a lecturer.
Since 1240, he first preached in Augsburg, in 1246 he was Visitor of the Lower Cathedral in Regensburg. Since the middle of the century, he acquired the reputation of a major preacher. In his preaching tours he passed by several countries in Europe and preached to his large audience often in the open field.
His style of preaching was the pros and cons of speech, also between God and the devil. Berthold saw the arrival of the Antichrist imminent, relentlessly denounced the abuses in all walks of life and called on no uncertain terms to turn back. He worked on his preaching tours with the Franciscan David of Augsburg.
On March 21, 1263, Pope Urban IV ordered him to agents of the Albertus Magnus to perform crusade sermons in favor of a crusade to the Holy Land in the German-speaking areas. These traveled Berthold 1263 Austria, Bohemia and Thuringia. As Berthold himself from the Crusades had no high opinion, he will have this papal command probably run only with inner reluctance.
His grave stone is still preserved. The central motif is a figural carved drawing with a Latin inscription. In the course of secularization in 1803 the grave stone was installed with the dissolution of the monastery as a paving stone in a private home, but in 1862 rediscovered discovered and placed in the cathedral cloister. Recently, the grave stone is back in the Minoritenkirche.
From Berthold no authentic sermons have survived. The approximately 400 sermons in Latin and about 70 sermons in Middle High German language, which are handed down under his name, based on transcripts of witnesses and resulting in monasteries devotional works that emulate the style of Berthold in characteristic style and shape. Questions of authorship and the very complicated in detail tradition situation are controversially discussed in recent research.
But it is precisely the complex and controversial question of authorship make traditional under his name sermons to an inexhaustible field of research, which is also due to the " mass media " people preaching in the Middle Ages. Thus, a thematic approach, such as about anti-Judaism in the Middle Ages, always as complicated as instructive as always necessary to distinguish between reception of popular mindset and dogmatic church doctrine and usually can.
Expenditure
- Berthold of Regensburg. Complete edition of his sermons with introductions and notes. 2 vols, edited by Franz Pfeiffer and Joseph Strobl; reissued by Kurt Ruh, Berlin 1965.
- Berthold of Regensburg: Four sermons. Middle High German / High German. Edited and translated by Werner skirts. Reclam, Stuttgart, 1983 ( Loeb Classical Library, Volume 7974-7977 ).
Remembrance
Berthold Memorial Day on December 14, applies to the following denominations:
- Evangelical: a teacher of the church in the name Evangelical Calendar
- Roman Catholic: as Seliger