APOSTOLICI. — 1. Followers of a heretical movement that sought to restore a rigorous ascetic life after the example of the apostles. The earliest information is provided by St. Epiphanius, who sketched a brief profile of them in his Panarion; following in his footsteps, St. Augustine, St. Isidore of Seville, St. John Damascene, and Rabanus Maurus wrote about them.
Their origin, however obscure and uncertain, seems possibly connected with the Encratites, with whom the a. shared several doctrines. They professed absolute poverty and condemned marriage as impure; they abstained from meat and wine, to the point of refusing to use them in the Mass, and they did not admit to ecclesiastical communion those who, even once, had fallen into one of the three canonical sins. They were especially widespread in Phrygia, Cilicia, and Pamphylia. In support of their theories, besides the canonical Gospels, they made particular use of the apocryphal Acts of Andrew and Thomas.
2. A second sect took this name in the twelfth century. Its adherents are not to be confused with the followers of Gerardo Segarelli and fra' Dolcino, with whom they shared only the aspiration to restore the life of the apostles, living in absolute poverty and perfect continence. The conditions in which the Church in the West found itself at the end of the eleventh century, owing to the deplorable state of the wealthy and lax clergy and to the consequences of the struggle against investiture, favored the movement and development of a poor apostolic life, modeled on that of the apostles, according to the norms of the Gospel.
Thus two independent movements arose: one Catholic, under the vigilance and obedience of the Church, through the work of itinerant preachers such as Roberto d'Arbrissel, Bernardo di Tiron, Norberto di Xanten, and others, which was of genuine assistance to the reform of Christian life; the other subversive, indeed opposed to the legitimate authority of the Church and heretical.
The origins of this second movement are fairly obscure. They probably stem from a heretical movement that, around the year 1000, came from the East to Italy and from there to France, and which contemporaries designated by the name of neo-Manichaeism. During the eleventh century, this movement spread to various centers of southern and northern France, especially in the region of Châlons-sur-Marne, and from there passed into Flanders and the Rhineland, particularly to Cologne and Bonn, where at the beginning of the twelfth century it appeared with pronounced ideas of apostolic life and evangelical poverty.
The characteristics common to all these heretics, besides their vaunted apostolic life, may be summarized as follows: an austere life of prayer and fasting; work to procure food, without accepting alms; wandering from city to city barefoot and bearded, taking with them women with whom they claimed to live as brothers, and preaching with ostentatious simplicity and humility. They were enemies of the Church and of the hierarchy, which they attacked by portraying it as having fallen away from its apostolic mission because it was corrupt and immersed in worldly affairs.
From the surviving documents, five sects can be distinguished, independent of one another and united only by their common doctrine. The first is mentioned in a speech by Rodolfo Ardente, bishop of Agen, who around 1090 warned his diocesan clergy to beware of the new heretics, who professed to be apostolic men but were Manichaeans reborn: this is the first document in which these heretics are branded as Manichaeans. About twenty years later, in 1114, another was discovered in the diocese of Soissons. Its leaders, a certain Clemenzio and his brother Eberardo, were brought before the bishop’s tribunal and recognized as orthodox in doctrine. Nevertheless, they were kept in prison because they had held secret meetings and claimed to lead an apostolic life; then, during the bishop’s absence, they were dragged outside the city and burned by the people, who hated them. A few years later, in the city of Périgueux in Aquitaine, a third sect appeared, fairly numerous and active, which attracted many followers even among the nobility and some members of the clergy. A fourth sect appeared around 1145 in Brittany, particularly in the city of Nantes; and finally a fifth, akin to the Cathars and perhaps an offshoot of them, appeared in the Rhineland. Several of its followers were captured at Cologne and Bonn. Some recanted their error and were released; the obstinate, however, were burned. Shortly afterward others were captured, and Evervino di Steinfeld wrote to St. Bernard, asking him to refute their errors. He replied with sermons LXV and LXVI on the Song of Songs. Egberto di Schönau also speaks of this last sect in his sermons; summoned by the bishop, he had publicly disputed against one of its leaders.
BIBLI: Baldrico, Vita Roberti de Arbriello: PL 162, 1043-1078; Goffredo Grosso, Vita Bernardi Tironensis: PL 172, 1363-1446; Vita s. Norberti Xantensis, in MGH, Xeropares, XII, pp. 663-703; Rodolfo Ardento, Homilia XIX: PL 155, 2011; Guiberto di Nogent, De vita sua, III, 17: PL 156, 951; Eriberto, Epistola de harcticis Petrogoricis: PL 181, 1721; Ugo di Rouen Contra harcticus sui temporis: PL 192, 1255-98; Evervino di Steinfeld, Epistola ad s. Bernardum: PL 182, 676-80; s. Bernardo, Sermones LXV et LXVI in Canticum Canticorum: PL 183, 1088-1102; Egberto di Schönau, Sermones adversus Catharas: PL 195, 11-08. — Chr. Hann, Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter, Stoccarda 1845-47; C. Schmidt, Histoire et doctrine de la secte des Cathares au Albigens, Parigi 1849; F. Tocco, L'erosia nel medioevo, Firenze 1884; I. Dollinger, Beiträge zur Sehtengeschichte des Mittelalters, Monaco 1890; H. Theloe, Die Ketzerverfolgungen im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert, Berlino-Lipsia 1913; H. Grundmann, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, Berlino 1935.