The Name of the Rose

When Gerard Segarelli was rejected by the Franciscans, he took matters into his own hands and formed the Apostolic Brethren in 1260. The Brethren, active in northern Italy, gained many followers with their life of extreme poverty and their message of repentance.

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In 1274, at the Second Council of Lyon, Pope Honorius IV prohibited all mendicant orders if they were not sanctioned by the papacy. In 1280, the Bishop of Parma imprisoned Segarelli, and in 1286 banished him from the diocese.

The prohibition against unapproved mendicant orders was renewed in 1290 by Pope Nicholas IV, who also began going after those "orders"; the Brethren were a particular target.

In 1294, four members of the sect were burned at the stake. Segarelli himself was sentenced to life in prison, but on 18 July, 1300, he was burned at the stake in Parma after being made to confess that he had relapsed into heresy. The Apostolic Brethren gained a new leader in the charismatic Fra Dolcino, who is worth his own post someday.

The motto of the Brethren under Segarelli, and later under Fra Dolcino, was Poenitentiam agite [Latin: Make penitence]. This was abbreviated to Penitenziagite! and made known to millions of readers 680 years after Segarelli's execution in Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose.

The Apostolic Brethren

Mendicants

In the later part of the 13th century, a new order was founded in northern Italy.

Sort of.

The founder, Gerard Segarelli, was a resident of a town in the territory of Parma. Poor and uneducated, he wished to follow a strict Christian life. He applied to be a Franciscan, thinking that their life of simplicity and poverty was suitable to his spiritual goals.

They turned him down.

So about 1260, inspired by a picture he had seen of the apostles, he made himself an outfit patterned after that design, sold his house, distributed the money in the marketplace, and became a mendicant, eschewing property, money, a place to live, and anything that might be considered a luxury. He preached repentance, urged the simple life that he embraced, and found many followers. The Apostolic Brethren, or Apostoli, were scoffed at by the Franciscans—they were a little "over the top" in their pursuit of poverty and simplicity.

But their lifestyle was tempting to many: surviving only on alms, living in the moment without plans for tomorrow, with no fixed dwelling, trusting on God's (and other humans') charity. They took no vows; they considered the vows of other orders hypocritical, because the vow of poverty did not mean living as poorly as the Apostolic Brethren were living. They followed one principle only, based on the Acts of the Apostles:

All who believed were together, and had all things in common. They sold their possessions and goods, and distributed them ..., according as anyone had need. [2:44-45]

But this was not to last. Tomorrow I'll tell you how Segarelli's dream ended, only to be remembered over 700 years later in a literary bestseller.