APOSTOLIC BRETH'REN, or APOSTOLIC!. The name given in Italy, toward the end of the Thirteenth Century. 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 Gherardo Sega relli, a weaver in Parma. Rejected, from some cause or other, by the Franeisean Order, his long continued and enthusiastic meditations led him to the profound conviction that it was shove 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 repentance, and by his practical discourses gathered many adherents into a kind of free society, hound by no oaths. At first he man aged to avoid any direct collision with the dog mas of the Church; but after twenty years of undisturbed activity and growing influence, Se garelli was arrested by the Bishop of Parma, who, however, soon after released him and kept him in his palace as his fool, and in 1286 ban ished him from his diocese. Upon the occasion of his release, Pope Honorius IV. renewed a de cree of the Council of Lyons (1274) against all religious communities not directly sanctioned by the Papal chair. In 1290, Nicholas IV. set
ting himself to expose and persecute the Apos tolic Brethren, they, on their side, began to de nounce the Papacy as the Babylon of the Apoca lypse. Alany, both men and women, perished at the stake, among them Segarelli (July 18, 1300). But his cause survived him. Doleino, a more energetic and cultivated man. brought up as a priest, who had previously taken an active part in Tyrol against the alleged corruptions of the Church, now headed the sect in Italy. He taught the duty of a complete renunciation of all worldly ties, of property, and settled abode, etc. Having retreated into Dalmatia, he an nounced from thence the dawning 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 gal lant defense, compelled by fsmine to submit. After horrible tortures, which he bore with the utmost fortitude, he was burned at Vercelli, June 1, 1307. in Lombardy and the south of France, brethren lingered till 1368.