Barletta

BARLETTA: More correctly Gabriel of Barletta (on the e. coast of Italy, 33 m. w.n.w. of Bari), a Dominican of the fifteenth century. About 1480 he preached in different cities of northern Italy. His sermons (first collected at Brescia, 1497; often reprinted in the following century) have the usual scholastic form of the time, but are enlivened by an originality of ideas, a lively wit, and a sense of humor often grotesque, which gave rise to the adage, “He knows not how to preach who knows not how to barlettize.” The moral seriousness of the sermons and their striking descriptions of the distress of the country and its lost greatness made them influential and powerful. In a history of popular preachers Barletta must have a chief place (cf. Zeitschrift für praktische Theologie, vii, 1885, 30 sqq.; viii, 1886, 227 sqq.).

K. Benrath.