FRATICELLI. — Name given to a sect that formed 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" (friars), took on 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 on Franciscan poverty. Other names used in the same bull are "frati della povera vita," "bizzocchi," and "beglini," the last two of which, already in use before, then designated the lay adherents of the sect. To distinguish the heretical Fraticelli from other non-heretical groups, the name "Fraticelli dell'opinione" became common. They were so called because they held the "opinion" that John XXII, with his decretals on the poverty of Christ and the Apostles, had become a heretic and that his successors and the bishops who accepted them had thereby lost all jurisdiction, which resided only in the Fraticelli who formed the true Church.
As to the origin of the sect, there has been great confusion almost up to modern times. At the end of the fifteenth century, Giacomo Filippo da Bergamo (*Suppl. Chronico*, ad ann. 1298) names as the author of the sect Ermanno Punicobo (Pungilupi), falsely venerated as a saint in Ferrara and, in 1391, by order of Boniface VIII, exhumed as a heretic. In the year 1299 he lists among the Fraticelli dell'opinione the adherents of the sect of the Spirit of Freedom. In the seventeenth century the Irish Franciscan Antonio Higuery, under the pseudonym Dernicius Thadé, published *Nitela Franciscana Religionis et absterro sordium quibus eam conspiracere finstra tenuunt Abrahamis Bozovits* (Lyons 1627), to demonstrate that the Fraticelli derived their origin from Punicobo and were renewed by the Apostolics of Gerard Segarelli and Dolcino of Novara, the sect of the Free Spirit, and other similar groups. This view was followed by Wadding (ad ann. 1297, n. 30), by Manai (*Miscellanea*, III, pp. 303-67), and by other authors up 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 to Greece and even to Persia; some traces of it are found in Bohemia, Catalonia, and Provence (in the last two regions the lay "bizzocchi" who called themselves of the Third Order of St. Francis were especially numerous), but their main field of action 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 in conflict with that of the Church—favored their expansion and tolerance. From inquisition trials, papal bulls, and other documents, it is established that the Fraticelli were numerous in the Papal States and even in Rome itself (S. Giovanni ante portam Latinam), in the Abruzzi, where Cola di Rienzo encountered them and was deceived by them with false prophecies, in Umbria, the Marches, Tuscany, Calabria, and Sicily.
They lived in secluded places, near rural chapels and in the woods, dressed in the habit of the Friars Minor, and were even organized like them, that is, in provinces, with a general at their head, at least by the middle of the fourteenth century. Later, however, other groups formed, and some claimed to observe the Rule of St. Augustine, as is evident from a trial held in Città di Castello in 1301. Some even had their own pope and bishops. In general, it can be said that these heretics lacked a unified 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, which, according to some inquisitorial trials, degenerated into orgies (*Barilotto*); but not all historians accept the reliability of these testimonies. Certain, however, is the immorality of the brother Paolo Zoppo, tried at Rieti in 1334, who confessed to having learned his practices from the "ritro of Spoleto."
In frequent manifestos addressed to all Christendom, issued from cities (Rome, Narni) and by individuals (Giovanni dalle Celle), they sought to prove their orthodoxy, but in truth they showed themselves to be at least schismatics. In the bull *Gloriosam ecclesiam* of 23 January 1318 (*Bull. Franc.*, V, p. 137), by which the Tuscan Spirituals who had fled to Sicily were condemned—from which time they must be numbered among the Fraticelli—five distinct errors concerning the Church, the Sacraments, and oaths are expressly imputed to them.
Not a few Catholic writers of the time combated the sect with their writings, such as Andrea Richi (1381), Manfredo da Vercelli, St. James of the Marches, St. John of Capistrano, St. Antoninus of Florence, and Giovanni dalle Celle. Numerous are the papal bulls against the Fraticelli, especially in the fourteenth century, and the inquisitors proceeded vigorously against them. The nascent Observant reform of the Franciscan Order contributed not a little to their suppression, demonstrating in practice that the Franciscan Rule could be observed within the Church. The blessed Paul Lucii of Trinci publicly refuted them around 1382 in Perugia; the Observants took over several of their convents in the Maremma and elsewhere. In 1426 St. John of Capistrano and James of the Marches were appointed inquisitors against the sect, and under Nicholas V several Fraticelli were burned at the stake in Fabriano. The last inquisitorial trial took place in Rome in 1466-67 against a group of Fraticelli from Maiolati (Marche) and Poli (Lazio), who, with their adherents, had gone on pilgrimage to Assisi for the indulgence of 2 August, where they were recognized, captured, and taken to Rome, where they were imprisoned in Castel Sant'Angelo. On the occasion of this trial, which also involved some noblewomen, several treatises (unpublished) were written against the sect, which then disappears from history. According to Giacomo Filippo da Bergamo, writing toward the end of the fifteenth century, in the year 1298 there still existed conventicles of the sect in some hidden places and certain valleys.
Finally, toward the middle of the fifteenth century, there are found Fraticelli free from error, living under the jurisdiction of bishops. They are called in the Marches and Umbria "poveri romiti" with or without the addition of the society of Fra' Angelo da Clareno; in Savona, instead, in 1455 they are called "poveri apostoli" (*Bull. Franc.*, new series, II, pp. 57 ff.).
morie, XII, pp. 353-477). Rome 1907, pp. 9-129 (cf. 47-54); L. Oliver, Documenta inedita ad historiam fratricellorum spectantia, Quaracchi 1913; id., Beiträge zur Geschichte der Spiritualen, Prazziellen und Clarner in Mittelitalien, in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 45 (1926), pp. 215-42; id., Acta inquisitoris Umbræ Fr. Angeli de Assisi... contra Fraticellos adiussae a. 1361, in Arch. Franc. hist. 24 (1931), pp. 63-90; J. Pou y Marti, Visionarios, Beguinos y Fraticellos Catalanes (siglos XIII-XV), Vico 1930; D. L. Douie, The nature and the effect of the heresy of F., Manchester 1932; M. Bihl, F. cuiusdam Decalogum evangelicae pauperinis ac. 1340-12 conscriptum, in Arch. Franc. hist. 32 (1930), pp. 270-411; R. Creytens, Manifest de Verceil O. et son Traité contre les Fraticellos, in Arch. Ord. Praed., 11 (1941), pp. 173-208. Livario Oliver