APOSTOLIC BRETHREN, or APOSTOLICI, the name given in Italy, towards the end of the 13th c., to one of those sects which, animated by the spirit of an Arnold of Brescia, felt constrained to oppose the worldly tendencies of the church. Its founder was Gerhard Segarelli. a weaver in Parma. Rejected, from some cause or other, by the Franciscan order, his long-continued and enthusiastic meditations led him to the profound conviction that it was above all things necessary to return to the simple forms of apostolic life. Accordingly, he went about (1260) in the garb of the apostles, as a preacher of repent ance, and by his practical discourses gathered many adherents into a kind of free society, bound by no oaths. At first he managed to avoid any direct collision with the dogmas of the church ; but after twenty years of undisturbed activity and growing influence, Segarelli was arrested by the bishop of Parma; and in 1286, upon the occasion of his release, pope Honorins IV. renewed a decree of pope Gregory X. against all religious communities not directly sanctioned by the papal chair. In 1290, Nicholas IV. setting himself to expose the A. B., they, on their side, began avowedly to denounce the papacy, and its corrupt and worldly church, as the Babylon of the Apocalypse. In 1300, many, both
men and women, and among them Segarelli, as having, after abjuration, relapsed into heresy, perished at the stake. But his cause survived him. Dolcino, a more energetic and cultivated man, brought up as a priest, who had previously taken an active part in the Tyrol against the corruptions of the church, now headed the orphan sect in Italy. He taught the duty of a complete renunciation of all worldly tics, of property and settled abode, etc. having retreated into Dalmatia, he announced from thence the dawnhig of the new era, and in 1304 reappeared in upper Italy, with thousands of adherents, as the enemy of the papacy—at that time humbled and impoverished by France. In 1305, a crusade was preached against him. He fortified the mountain Zebello, in the diocese of Vercelli, but was, after a gallant defense, compelled by famine to submit. After horrible tortures, which he bore with the utmost fortitude, he was burned. In Lombardy and the south of France, remnants of the A. B. lingered on till 1368. See Krone, Fra Dolan() and die Patarener. (Leipsic, 1844.)