Bertold of Regensburg

Bertold of Regensburg (c. 1220 – 13 December 1272) was a German preacher during the high Middle Ages.

He was a native of Regensburg, and entered the Franciscan monastery there.

He was a member of the Franciscan community founded at Regensburg in 1226. His novitiate was passed under the guidance of David of Augsburg; and by 1246 he is found in a position of responsibility. By 1250 at the latest, he had begun his career as an itinerant preacher, first in Bavaria, where he endeavored to bring Duke Otto II back to obedience to the church. He then appears farther westward, at Speyer in 1254 and 1255, afterwards passing through Alsace into Switzerland. In the following years the cantons of Aargau, Thurgau, Konstanz, and Grisons, with the upper Rhine country, were the principal scenes of his activity. In 1260 he went farther afield, traversing after that date Austria, Moravia, Hungary, Silesia, Thuringia, and possibly Bohemia, reaching his Slavonic audiences through an interpreter. Some of his journeys in the East were probably in the interest of the crusade, the preaching of which was specially entrusted to him by Pope Urban IV in 1263.

The German historians, from Berthold's contemporary, Abbot Hermann of Niederaltaich, down to the middle of the sixteenth century, speak in the most glowing terms of the force of his personality and the effect of his preaching, which is said to have attracted almost incredible numbers, so that the churches could not hold them; and he was forced to speak from a platform or a tree in the open air. The gifts of prophecy and miracles were soon attributed to him, and his fame spread from Italy to England. He must have been a preacher of great talents and success.

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