HEROLT, JOHANN. - Dominican preacher, born c. 1380, probably in Nuremberg, died during a journey at the Convent of Regensburg in August 1468.
H. was a zealous follower of strict observance and an extremely active preacher. Reader and prior (1438) at the Convent of Nuremberg, he was also confessor at the famous Dominican monastery of St. Catherine in the same city. He collected homiletic and catechetical materials and composed refined cycles of sermons under the humble title Discipulus. H. was neither speculative nor mystical, but clear, simple, popular, and accessible to all classes, illustrating everything with examples.
His works enjoyed extraordinary diffusion in manuscripts and incunabula. A complete edition appeared in 3 vols. at Mainz in 1612. Besides a volume of German sermons collected under the title Rosengart, the following Latin works by him are known: Liber de eruditione Christifidelium (1416) on the Ten Commandments, the Seven Capital Sins, the Pater, Ave, Credo, the Seven Sacraments, the Seven Gifts, and other preachable topics; Sermones de tempore (1418); Promptuarium exemplorum; Promptuarium de miraculis b.M.V.; Promptuarium de festis sanctorum; Quadragesimale (1435); Postilla super evangelia dominicalia et de sanctis (1437); Sermones super epistolas dominicales (1444); Applicationes ad sermones secundum proprietates rerum naturalium (1463).