BERTHOLD von REGENBURG. — He was the most famous German preacher of the 13th century, born in Regensburg around 1210 and dying there in 1272. Having entered the Franciscan Order around 1240, he soon became known throughout Central Europe as a powerful and effective preacher.
His sermons, both in Latin and in German, were often delivered in the open air because of the exceedingly large number of listeners (40,000, it is said!). Their popular style and the vitality—now dramatic, now humorous—of the images presented are far removed from the intellectualistic abstraction of the models then in vogue.
BIBL.: G. Jacob, Die lateinischen Reden des seligen B. von R., Regensburg 1880. For the sermons in German V. the edition in 2 vols. edited by F. Pfeiffer and S. Strobl, Vienna 1862; K. Rieder, Das Leben B. von R., Freiburg im Breisgau 1901. Alda Manghi