Bertoldo Of Rohrbach

BERTOLDO di ROHRBACH. — Heretic who lived in the first half of the fourteenth century and was burned at the stake in Speyer in 1356, by order of the Inquisition. A fanatical follower of the false mysticism professed by the sect of the Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit, he had sought to spread its strange ideas in Würzburg and elsewhere. Denounced to the Inquisition, he initially recanted his false doctrines, but, having fallen back into them shortly thereafter, was condemned. The sources do not always agree in outlining his doctrine. It seems that he taught the existence of “beings illuminated by God,” who, although not priests, could preach the word of the Lord and transubstantiate the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ.