BARTOLOMEO di VICENZA, also called di BREGANZE, blessed. — Dominican, b. 18 September, c. 1200, d. at Vicenza in 1270; celebrated preacher, mystical writer, and distinguished by the many offices he held in the service of the Church. That he belonged to the family of the counts of Breganze (a castle near Vicenza) is known only by tradition, confirmed by no contemporary document.
A student at Padua, he entered the Order of St. Dominic and became a celebrated preacher. In 1233 he founded at Parma the Milizia di Gesù Cristo (not to be confused with the later Militia Beatae Mariae Virginis, or that of the Frati Gaudenti). He was subsequently appointed penitentiary and papal chaplain, and by Innocent IV reader (later called Master of the Sacred Palace) at the theological school of the Curia. He then became bishop of Limassol in Cyprus (1252–55), from which see he was transferred to Vicenza (1255–70). Alexander IV sent him on a diplomatic mission to the courts of London and Paris; on this occasion Louis IX gave him a relic of the Holy Crown, for which he built the homonymous Gothic Church at Vicenza. Pius VI beatified him in 1793, and his feast is celebrated on 23 October.
Of his works, all unpublished, manuscripts identified by Käppeli preserve the following: Expositio Cantici Canticorum; De venatione divini amoris, and three cycles of Sermones: De b. Virgine; In festis Iesu Christi; De epistolis et evangelis dominicalibus post Trinitatem. Other works have been lost.