Bartolomeo di Trento

BARTOLOMEO di TRENTO. - Dominican, hagiographer of the 13th century, b. at Trent, d. ca. 1251. In 1233 he assisted at the first translation of the body of St. Dominic at Bologna. He traveled a great deal and, as he himself attests, also stayed at the courts of the pope and of the emperor.

In the intervals he resided in the convent of S. Lorenzo at Trent, where he wrote, between 1245 and 1251, the Epilogus in gestis sanctorum. This work begins a new genre of hagiographic literature, namely collections of abbreviated lives of the saints, intended no longer for reading in the liturgical office but, as the author himself says in the prologue, for private use and for preachers as compilations of examples. The collection, according to the oldest codex (perhaps incomplete), Vatic. Barber. 2500, embraces about 200 notices of greater or lesser length, of which only a dozen have so far been published in various works, indicated in the Analecta Bollandiana, 29 (1910), p. 16. The author shows a certain preference for the saints of the Trentino and in general for the saints of Italy and Germany.