PASSAGINI (PASAGINI). - Heretics, also known as Pas(sagi), particularly noted in Lombardy in the second half of the 12th century, condemned in the constitution *Ad abolendam* by Lucius III and by Frederick I Barbarossa (Verona, 1184); mentioned in imperial edicts of the years 1238–39 and in subsequent papal documents.
They are combated as a well-known sect in a section added to the *Manifestatio haeresis catharorum* BONACCORSI, PIERINO (v.) and especially in a *Summa contra catharos et passagi(nos* of uncertain authorship, much copied in the 13th century; mention is made of them in a *Compilatio auctoritatum* or *Summa breviata* (ed. C. Douais).
Their characteristic is a return to the religiosity of the Old Testament. Interpreting monotheism in an anti-Trinitarian sense: Jesus Christ, an adopted son, is the first creature of God, the sole principle and sole divine person; even the Holy Spirit does not have a divine nature. They take as the exclusive means of salvation the Mosaic prescriptions, particularly those concerning circumcision, which they oppose to Baptism, the observance of the Sabbath in place of Sunday, the prohibition against eating blood and the flesh of animals that have been suffocated and of what has been offered to idols (cf. Acts 15:20–29); however, they explicitly exclude the revival of ancient sacrifices; they reject the Eucharist along with everything they consider to be of purely ecclesiastical institution, such as infant Baptism, Confirmation, etc. God has manifested Himself only through the Old and New Testaments. It was therefore natural for them to have a particular veneration for the ancient Patriarchs and the righteous: they ascended directly to heaven, without a stay in limbo until the liberating descent of Jesus Christ. For the others who have died, the P. believe that they, whether good or bad, are awaiting the Last Judgment, which will assign them to paradise or to hell; there is therefore no purgatory, and prayers for the dead are useless; they consider them idolatry.
They reject the cult of images and the veneration of the Cross. In other points they coincide with other heretics: their aversion to the Church and its representatives; clerics cannot possess or wear precious vestments; prelates and preachers must eat common foods, and the faithful are free to criticize their conduct. They even contest the powers of secular authority, denying it, for example, the *ius gladii*; they condemn oaths.
The sources leave various points in the doctrinal and organizational complex of the P. obscure. It is highly probable that they are distinct from the circumcised (v.); they are not true Jews, since they admit the New Testament and the work of Jesus Christ, albeit unspecified, and it seems that a task of preaching and direction is left to the Catholic hierarchy. Some would derive their name from the use of itinerant preaching or propaganda, though this was shared by all heretical sects. It is not necessary to seek the Mosaicism of these Christians in contacts with the Palestinian world, induced by pilgrimage (*passagium*, from which their name derives) or by the crusade to the Holy Land, since Jewish proselytism was always alive in medieval Europe.