FRATICELLI. — Name given to a sect that arose at the beginning of the fourteenth century and lasted until the second half of the fifteenth. The name, in itself a diminutive of the word frati, acquired a heterodox meaning with the bull Sancta Romana of 30 December 1317 (Bull. Franc., V, p. 134), by which John XXII condemned the Spirituals who had not submitted to the papal decisions concerning Franciscan poverty. Other names used in the same bull are
frati della povera vita —, «bizzocchi» and «beghini», of which the latter two, already in use earlier, then designated the lay adherents of the sect. To distinguish the heretical F. from the others, who were not heretical, the name «F. dell'opinione» came into use; they were so called because they held the «opinion» that John XXII, through his decretals on the poverty of Christ and the Apostles, had become a heretic, and that his successors and the bishops who had accepted them had lost all jurisdiction, which resided solely in the F., who constituted the true Church.
As regards the origin of the sect, there was great confusion almost down to modern times. At the end of the fifteenth century Giacomo Filippo da Bergamo (Suppl. Chronic., under the year 1298) names as the author of the sect Ermanno Puncilobo (Pungilupi), falsely venerated as a saint at Ferrara and, in 1301, exhumed as a heretic by order of Boniface VIII. Under the year 1299 he counts among the F. dell'opinione the adherents of the sect of the spirit of freedom. In the seventeenth century the Irish Franciscan Antonio Hiquey, under the pseudonym Dermicius Thadci, published Nitela Franciscanae Religiones et abterris sordina quibus cum conspurcare frustra tentusit Abrahamus Boonius (Lyon 1627), in order to demonstrate that the F. originated with Puncilobo and were renewed by the Apostolics of Gerardo Segarelli and Dolcino da Novara, by the sect of the free spirit, and by other similar groups. He was followed in this by Wadding (under the year 1297, no. 30), Manai (Miscellanea, III, pp. 303–67), and other authors down to the last century.
Against all these, Cardinal F. Ehrle has conclusively demonstrated that the sect derives from the ancient Spirituals condemned by John XXII.
The sect spread in Greece and even in Persia; traces of it are found in Bohemia, Catalonia, and Provence (in these two countries it was especially the lay bizzocchi who called themselves members of the Franciscan Third Order), but its principal field of activity was Italy, where the religious and political circumstances of the time — such as the Avignonese exile of the papacy, the Western schism, and the policy of the communes, often at odds with that of the Church — favored its expansion and toleration. From inquisitorial trials, papal bulls, and other documents it is clear that the F. were numerous in the Papal States and in Rome itself (S. Giovanni ante portam Latinam), in the Abruzzi, where Cola di Rienzo encountered them and was deceived by them through false prophecies, in Umbria, the Marches, Tuscany, Calabria, and Sicily.
They lived in secluded places, near rural chapels and in the woods; they wore the habit of the Friars Minor and were organized like them, that is, into provinces headed by a general, at least in the middle of the fourteenth century. Later, however, other groups were formed, and some claimed to observe the Rule of St. Augustine, as emerges from a trial held at Città di Castello in 1361. Some even had their own pope and bishops. In general, it may be said that these heretics lacked a single organization. They lived on alms and preached their errors to their adherents, among whom there were also nobles. They secretly visited their faithful and celebrated their religious rites at night in hiding places; according to certain inquisitorial trials, these degenerated into orgies (Bariletto), though not all historians admit the reliability of the relevant testimonies. The immorality of the fraticello Paolo Zoppo, tried at Rieti in 1334, is certain; he confessed that he had introduced his practices from the «rito di Spoleto».
In frequent manifestos addressed to all Christendom, to individual cities (Rome, Narni), and to individuals (Giovanni dalle Celle), they sought to prove their orthodoxy, but in truth they showed themselves to be at least schismatic. In the Gliotium ecclesium of 23 January 1318 (Bull. Franc., V, p. 137), by which the Tuscan Spirituals who had fled to Sicily are condemned — and from that moment must be counted among the F. — five different errors concerning the Church, the Sacraments, and the oath are expressly attributed to them.
Quite a few Catholic writers of the time opposed the sect in their writings, such as Andrea Richi (1381), Manfredo da Vercelli, St. Giacomo della Marca, St. Giovanni da Capestrano, St. Antonino da Firenze, and Giovanni dalle Celle. Numerous papal bulls were issued against the F., especially in the fourteenth century, and the inquisitors proceeded vigorously against them. The nascent regular observance of the Franciscan Order contributed greatly to the struggle, demonstrating in practice that the Franciscan Rule could be observed within the Church. Blessed Paoluccio da Trinci publicly confounded them at Perugia around 1382; the Observants occupied several convents of the F. in the Marches and elsewhere. In 1386 St. Giovanni da Capestrano and St. Giacomo della Marca were appointed inquisitors against the sect, and under Nicholas V several F. were burned at the stake at Fabriano. The last inquisitorial trial took place in Rome in the years 1466–67 against a group of F. from Maiolati (Marches) and Poli (Lazio), who, with their adherents, had gone on pilgrimage to Assisi for the indulgence of 2 August, where they were recognized, captured, taken to Rome, and confined in Castel S. Angelo. On the occasion of this trial, in which several ladies of noble families were also involved, a number of treatises on the sect were written (unpublished); the sect then disappears from history. According to the sole testimony of Giacomo Filippo da Bergamo, who was writing toward the end of the fifteenth century, he states under the year 1298 that in his own time conventicles of the sect still existed in certain hidden places and valleys.
Finally, around the middle of the fifteenth century, some F. free from errors are found living under the jurisdiction of the bishops. In the Marches and Umbria they called themselves «poveri romiti», with or without the addition «della società del fra' Angelo da Chiarino»; at Savona, however, in 1455, they bore the name of «e» or «poveri apostoli» (Bull. Franc., new series, II, pp. 57 ff.).
BULL. Bull. Franc. V–VII, new series, I–II. Rome–Quaracchi 1898–1939; G. Gatzanni, Memorie ecclesiastiche della b. Chiara di Rimini, Rome 1755, pp. 131–64 and 318 ff.; E. Balusius, J. D. Manai, Miscellanea, I, Lucca 1761, pp. 481–84; II, ibid., 1761, pp. 509–610; [A. Dressel], Vier Documents aus römischen Archiven, Leipzig 1843, pp. 1–48 (Roman trial of 1466); mons., Storia di fra' Michele Minorita come fu arno in Firenze nel 1369, ed. F. Zambrini, Bologna 1864; ed. F. Flora, Florence 1942; G. Vanzolini, Lettera de' F. a tutti i cristiani, Bologna 1865; A. Wesselsky, Il Paradiso degli Alberti, I, ibid. 1869, pp. 334–45; Lett. di Gio. dalle Celle contro i F., pp. 356–67; response to it: Fr. Ehle, Die Spiritanten, ihr Verhältnis zum Franziskanerorden und zu den Fratricellen, in Archiv für Literatur- und Kirchengeschichte, 4 (1888), pp. 1–100; L. Puni, Erstizi e ribelli nell'Umbria del 1320 al 1330, in Bull. della r. dep. di storia patria per l'Umbria, 3 (1897)–5 (1899), with many documents, omitted from the separate edition of Todi (1916); P. Gividali, Il b. Giovanni dalle Celle (R. Acc. dei Lincei, 5ª series, Me-
meric. XII, pp. 353-477), Roma 1907, pp. 9-120 (cf. 47-54); L. Oliger, Documenta inedita ad historiarum fratriceliorum spectantia, Quaracchi 1913; id., Beiträge zur Geschichte der Spiritanten, Fratricellen und Clarener in Mitelitalien, in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 45 (1926), pp. 215-22; id., Acta inquisitoris Umbriae Fr. Angeli de Assisi... contra Fraticellos aliusque a. 1361, in Arch. Franc. hist., 24 (1931), pp. 63-90; J. Pou y Marti, Visionarios, Requinos y Fraticeles Catalanes (siglos XIII-XV), Vich 1930; D. L. Douie, The nature and the effect of the heresy of the F., Manchester 1932; M. Bibi, F. cuiusdam Decalogue evangelicus pauperinis au. 1310-12 contribuit, in Arch. Franc. hist., 23 (1930), pp. 379-411; R. Creytena, Manfred de Vercell O. P. et son traité contre les Fraticelles, in Arch. Ord. Praed., 11 (1941), pp. 173-208. Livario Oliger