Berthold of Regensburg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Berthold von Regensburg (Vienna, Austrian National Library , Cod. 2829, fol. 1v, 1447)

Berthold von Regensburg (* around 1210 in Regensburg ; † December 14, 1272 in Regensburg) was one of the most famous preachers of the Middle Ages.

General

Berthold von Regensburg was a Franciscan and worked as a penitential preacher, but also as a preacher against heretics , but against the persecution of the Jews. It is believed that he attended the Provincial Studies of the Minorites in Magdeburg from 1231 to 1235 and worked there as a lecturer .

From 1240 he preached first in Augsburg , in 1246 he was a visitor to the Niedermünster in Regensburg. Since the middle of the century he gained the reputation of an important preacher. During his preaching trips he traveled through several European countries and often preached in the open to his large audience.

His preaching style included the pro and contradiction, also between God and the devil . Berthold saw the arrival of the Antichrist imminent, relentlessly denounced the grievances in all social classes and called for people to turn back with clear words. He worked with the Franciscan David of Augsburg on his preaching trips .

Berthold accused cats of being animals of the devil and called for them to be killed. “The breath that comes out of your throat is the plague; and if she drinks water and a tear falls from her eyes, the spring is spoiled: everyone who drinks from it from now on experiences a certain death. ”Cat lovers were persecuted as witches. As a result, mice and rats multiplied and epidemics spread.

On March 21, 1263, Pope Urban IV ordered him to be Albertus Magnus ' assistant , in order to carry out crusade sermons in the German-speaking areas for the benefit of a crusade to the Holy Land . In addition, Berthold traveled to Austria, Bohemia and Thuringia in 1263. Since Berthold himself did not have a high opinion of the Crusades, he will probably have carried out this papal order only with reluctance.

His tombstone has been preserved to this day. The central motif is a figurative incised drawing with a Latin inscription. In the course of secularization in 1803, the tombstone was installed as a paving stone in a private house with the dissolution of the monastery, but rediscovered in 1862 and placed in the cathedral cloister. The tombstone is back in the Minorite Church .

No authentic sermons have come down to us from Berthold. The approx. 400 sermons in Latin and approx. 70 sermons in Middle High German, which are handed down under his name, are based on notes from contemporary witnesses and on edification writings that were created in monasteries and which emulate Berthold's style in terms of style and form. Questions of authorship and the very complicated tradition of the individual are discussed controversially in recent research.

This difficult challenge, together with the journalistic peculiarities of the medieval popular sermon, which functionally corresponded to a mass medium, results in an inexhaustible field of research. A topic-specific approach, for example on the topic of anti-Judaism in the Middle Ages, is always as complicated as it is revealing, since a distinction must and usually can always be made between the reception of popular thinking and church dogmatic teaching.

expenditure

  • Berthold of Regensburg. Complete edition of his sermons with introductions and notes . 2 vols., Edited by Franz Pfeiffer and Joseph Strobl; newly published by Kurt Ruh, Berlin 1965.
  • Berthold von Regensburg: Four sermons. Middle High German / New High German . Edited and translated by Werner Röcke . Reclam, Stuttgart 1983 ( Reclam's Universal Library , Volume 7974-7977).

Remembrance day

Berthold's memorial day on December 14th applies to the following denominations:

literature

  • Julius Hamberger:  Berthold of Regensburg . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, pp. 546-549.
  • Hellmut Rosenfeld:  Berthold of Regensburg. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 164 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  Berthold of Regensburg. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 1, Bautz, Hamm 1975. 2nd, unchanged edition Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-013-1 , Sp. 553-554.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Christian Friedrich Kling (editor): Berthold des Franciskaners German sermons from the second half of the thirteenth century: partly complete, partly in excerpts with a foreword by August Neander , Berlin 1824 ( digitized in the Google book search)
  • Carola L. Gottzmann : Article Berthold von Regensburg . In: Marienlexikon , ed. on behalf of the Institutum Marianum Regensburg eV by Remigius Bäumer and Leo Scheffczyk, Volume 1, St. Ottilien 1988, pp. 457-460.
  • Dagmar Neuendorff: Reflections on the history of the text and the edition of German sermons ascribed to Berthold von Regensburg . In: Robert Luff (Hrsg.): Mystik - Tradition - Naturkunde. Objects and methods of mediaeval research practice . Olms, Hildesheim 2002, ISBN 3-487-11805-X , pp. 125-178.
  • Dieter Richter : The German tradition of Berthold's sermons from Regensburg. Investigations into the spiritual literature of the late Middle Ages . CH Beck, Munich 1969.
  • Elmar Schieder: Brother Berthold von Regensburg - preacher and beggar monk 1210-1272 . In: Regensburger Almanach 1982 . Regensburg 1982. pp. 61-69.
  • Christian Wilhelm Stromberger: Berthold von Regensburg, the greatest public speaker of the German Middle Ages. Gütersloh 1877 ( urn : nbn: de: hbz: 6: 1-77131 )
  • Andreas Weißenbäck : Sacra Musica. Lexicon of Catholic Church Music . Publishing house of Augustinus-Druckerei, Klosterneuburg 1937.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann: Linguistic exclusion in the Middle Ages: The German sermons of Berthold of Regensburg . In: Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann, Oskar Reichmann (ed.): Early New High German. Tasks and problems of its linguistic description (=  German linguistics . No. 213-215 ). Olms, Hildesheim / Zurich / New York 2011, ISBN 978-3-487-14657-7 , pp. 553-582 .
  2. ↑ Tradition of the cat sacrifice . In: catplus.de . Retrieved January 29, 2020.
  3. ^ Hugo Stehkämper : Albertus Magnus. Exhibition on the 700th anniversary of death , Historical Archive of the City of Cologne, Cologne 1980, p. 81. The appointment document is now in the Vatican Secret Archives : Register 27 No. VC.
  4. ^ Berthold von Regensburg in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints
personal data
SURNAME Berthold of Regensburg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German preacher
DATE OF BIRTH around 1210
PLACE OF BIRTH regensburg
DATE OF DEATH December 14, 1272
Place of death regensburg