BAGNOLESI - Cathar heretics (v.) who in 13th-century Lombardy formed a middle group between the two Albanesi (v.) CONCORREZZESI (v.). Their name derives from a Lombard locality where they had a hierarchical centre: Bagnolo Mella (Brescia), or Bagnolo Cremasco, or more probably Bagnolo S. Vito (Mantua). The inquisitor R. Sacconi (c. 1250) counted their adherents at 200 and scattered their followers across the territories of Mantua, Brescia, Bergamo, Milan, and in Romagna; yet members of the Cathar Churches of the Marca Trevisana, Tuscany, and the Val Spoletana mostly adhered to the doctrines of the Bagnolesi. Inquisitorial trials reveal that in the second half of the 13th century hierarchs and affiliates of this sect operated in Verona, Sirmione, Vicenza, Rimini, Ferrara, and Bologna. The Bagnolesi are also called *francigenae*, because members of the Cathar Church of ancient France, who emigrated to Lombardy and the area around Verona, shared their doctrinal stance; in some sources they are termed *calcolari*, from the name of one of their bishops, Caloianus.
The Bagnolesi followed the mitigated or monarchian dualism of the Concorezzesi: the devil, personification of evil, did not create but merely comprehended the four primordial elements, the material world, and human bodies; within these, souls are imprisoned, which—unlike the Concorezzesi claim—did not originate through traducianism, that is, from the spirit enclosed by the devil in the body of the first man, but were created by God all at once before the formation of the world and sinned in heaven. Part of them will be saved, part will remain damned. Like the Albanesi, the Bagnolesi were Docetists: Jesus Christ possessed a celestial body, which he took from the Madonna, who was likewise an angel; the Passion, like the whole life of Jesus, was only apparent. They derived this Docetic doctrine from a certain Nazzaro, a Concorezzese bishop, who at the end of the 12th century imported it from the Cathar Church of Bulgaria. The intermediate position of the Bagnolesi made it easy for them to shift to various opinions.