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The Apostolic Brethren (sometimes referred to as Apostolici, Apostoli, Apostles) were a Christian sect founded in northern Italy in the latter half of the 13th century by Gerard Segarelli, a native of Alzano in the territory of Parma. He was of low birth and without education, applied for membership in the Franciscan order at Parma, and was rejected. Ultimately he resolved to devote himself to the restoration of what he conceived to be the apostolic manner of life. The movement later degenerated in the infamous Dulcinian movement. This article is becoming very long. ...
A sect is generally a small religious or political group that has branched off from a larger established group. ...
(12th century - 13th century - 14th century - other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 13th century was that century which lasted from 1201 to 1300. ...
Gerard or Gherardo or Gherardino Segarelli or Segalelli (around 1240 Parma – July 18, 1300 Parma) was the founder of Apostolic Brethren (in Latin Apostolici). ...
The Dulcinian movement was a heretic movement inspired by the Franciscans ideals, influenced by the Joachimites and derived from the Apostolics. ...
History
About 1260 he assumed a costume patterned after representations which he had seen of the apostles, sold his house, scattered the price in the market-place, and went out to preach repentance as a mendicant brother. He found disciples, and the new order of penitents spread throughout Lombardy and beyond it. At first the Franciscans and other churchmen only scoffed at Segarelli's eccentric ways; but about 1280 the Bishop of Parma threw him into prison, then kept him awhile in his palace as a source of amusement, and in 1286 banished him from the diocese. All new mendicant orders without papal sanction having been prohibited by the Council of Lyon in 1274, Pope Honorius IV issued a severe reprobation of the Apostolic Brethren in 1286, and Nicholas IV renewed it in 1290. Lombardy (Italian: Lombardia) is a region in northern Italy between the Alps and the Po river valley. ...
Franciscans is the common name used to designate a variety of mendicant religious orders of men or women tracing their origin to Francis of Assisi and following the Rule of St. ...
The Council of Lyons refers to either the 13th or 14th ecumenical councils of the Roman Catholic Church, both held in Lyon, France during the 13th century: First Council of Lyons (1245; Pope Innocent IV; regarding the Crusades) Second Council of Lyons (1274; Pope Gregory X; regarding papal election procedures...
Honorius IV, né Giacomo Savelli (Rome, ca. ...
Nicholas IV, né Girolamo Masci (Lisciano, a small village near Ascoli Piceno, September 30, 1227 – April 4, 1292), was Pope from February 22, 1288 to April 4, 1292. ...
A time of persecution followed. At Parma in 1294 four members of the sect were burned, and Segarelli was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. Six years later he was made to confess a relapse into heresies which he had abjured, and was burned in Parma on July 18, 1300. A man of much greater gifts now took the lead of the sect. This was Dolcino, the son of a priest in the diocese of Novara, and a member of the order since 1291, an eloquent, enthusiastic utterer of apocalyptic prophecies. July 18 is the 199th day (200th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 166 days remaining. ...
Events February 22 - Jubilee of Pope Boniface VIII. March 10 - Wardrobe accounts of King Edward I of Englanddo (aka Edward Longshanks) include a reference to a game called creag being played at the town of Newenden in Kent. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
At the head of a fanatical horde, who were in daily expectation of seeing the judgment of God on the Church, he maintained in the mountainous districts of Novara and Vercelli a guerilla warfare against the crusaders who had been summoned to put him down. Cold and hunger were still more dangerous enemies; and finally the remnant of his forces were captured by the bishop of Vercelli: about 150 persons in all, including Dolcino himself and his "spiritual sister," Margareta, both of whom, refusing to recant, were burned at the stake on June 1, 1307. Novara is a city of Piedmont, in North-west Italy, to the west of Milan. ...
Vercelli (Varséj in Piedmontese; Vercellae in Latin) is a commune and city of about 46,000 inhabitants in the Province of Vercelli, Italy. ...
June 1 is the 152nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (153rd in leap years), with 213 days remaining. ...
Events July - The Knights Hospitaller begin their conquest of Rhodes. ...
This was really the end of the sect's history. It is true that even later than the middle of the century traces of their activity are found, especially in northern Italy, Spain, and France; but these are only isolated survivals.
Ideals The ideal which the Apostolic Brethren strove to realize was a life of supposed perfect sanctity, in complete poverty, with no fixed domicil, no care for the morrow, and no vows. It was a protest against the invasion of the Church by the spirit of worldliness, as well as against the manner in which the other orders kept their vows, particularly that of poverty. In itself the project might have seemed harmless enough, not differing greatly from the way in which other founders had begun. When the order was prohibited, however, the refusal to submit to ecclesiastical authority stamped its members as heretics. The name Catholic Church can mean a visible organization that refers to itself as Catholic, or the invisible Christian Church, viz. ...
Heresy, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the Catholic or Orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, or, by extension, to that of any church, creed, or religious system, considered as orthodox. ...
Persecution embittered their opposition; the Church, in their eyes, had fallen completely away from apostolic holiness, and become Babylon the Great, the persecutor of the saints. Their apocalyptic utterances and expectations are a link with the Joachimites; in fact, parallels to their teaching, mostly founded on literal interpretations of Scripture texts, may be found in many heretical bodies. They forbade the taking of oaths, apparently permitting perjury in case of need, and rejected capital punishment; their close intercourse with their "apostolic sisters" gave rise to serious accusations against their morals, though they themselves boasted of their purity, and considered the conquest of temptation so close at hand as especially meritorious. Joachimites were a millenarian group that arose from the Franciscans in the thirteenth century. ...
Theories The Apostolics did not have a fully developed theory, Segalelli being uneducated. They based their belief on the Acts of the Apostles (2,44-45): The Acts of the Apostles (Greek Praxeis Apostolon) is a book of the Bible, which now stands fifth in the New Testament. ...
All who believed were together, and had all things in common. They sold their possessions and goods, and distributed them to all, according as anyone had need. They lived a simple life of fasting and prayer; often they worked to earn enough to eat, otherwise living off charity, preaching, and always invoking penitence.
Their maxim was Penitentiam agite (make penitence) soon misspelled as Penitençagite! and cited in present days by The Name of the Rose, a novel by Umberto Eco. The Name of the Rose, a novel by Umberto Eco, is a murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the year 1327. ...
Photo of Umberto Eco by Robert Birnbaum Umberto Eco (born January 5, 1932) is an Italian medievalist, philosopher and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose and his many essays. ...
References - This article includes content derived from the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1914, which is in the public domain.
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