PATARÍA. — Under this name is meant a politico-religious movement that took place in Milan in the second half of the 11th century, in the age of the Gregorian reform and in function of it. The p. is the reaction on the part of the pure elements of the Ambrosian Church against the corruption spreading within it under the twofold form of simony and Nicolaitism. The beginnings of the movement are not very clear. The Ambrosian Church, after the death of Ariberto d'Intimiano (1045), received from the emperor Henry III as the new archbishop Guido da Velate; the latter seems to have been proposed by a group of nobles, while the clergy had put forward other names. The imperial designation met with no resistance, but it should be noted that the reform movement later had as its leaders the ecclesiastics rejected by Henry III: Anselmo da Baggio, Landolfo Cotta, Arialdo da Carimate (v.). Archbishop Guido represented in the Ambrosian see the concordant interests of the feudal aristocracy of Milan and of the high clergy that issued from it; as St. Peter Damian assures us, the Milanese clergy was deeply corrupt: many had wives, many kept concubines, and access to ecclesiastical dignities occurred regularly and openly for money.
The reform movement was headed by Anselmo da Baggio, although in 1056 he had accompanied Archbishop Guido to the court of Henry III and the latter had assigned him the episcopal see of Lucca: the Roman Church had already proclaimed the struggle against lay investitures. After Anselmo's departure from Milan, the reforming band was led by Landolfo Cotta and by Arialdo: the death of the Emperor and the lack of a strong government could permit a vigorous campaign against the simoniacal and Nicolaitan clergy and against Archbishop Guido, who was the indolent exponent of Milanese corruption.
Against the opponents, who had begun their propaganda in the churches and in public, the archbishop appealed to Pope Stephen IX and, at his invitation, summoned his accusers to clear themselves at the Synod of Fontaneto (Novara). Arialdo and Landolfo did not appear and were excommunicated in contumacy.
At this moment the term patari appears in the sources, first in Arnulf (Gesta archiepiscoporum Mediolanensium), then in Bonizo and other writers. Arnulf, however, saying «hos tales cetera vulgaritas hyronice Patarinos appellat», confesses that he does not know the origin of the denomination. Bonizo instead (Liber ad Amicum) says that patarini meant rag-wearers, tatterdemalions. Many have been the attempts to explain this term, and it has been sought to connect it with the street of Milan called that of the «patari». The p. was soon to transform itself into a true organized party, thanks to the oath which, if at first it concerned only the commitment to a religious and temperate life, must soon have become a commitment of fidelity to the leaders.
Against the excommunication of Fontaneto, the leaders of the p. appealed to the Pope; Stephen IX sent to Milan Anselmo of Lucca together with the Roman archdeacon Hildebrand (Dec. 1057). The two apostolic visitors preached to the Milanese people, encouraging them to persist in the work of purification, and admonished the clergy to collaborate in the reform. But now not only the high clergy felt itself struck, but also the Milanese aristocracy. Open struggles occurred in Milan, so that Nicholas II, after the Council of 1059, sent to Milan two new commissioners, Anselmo of Lucca and Peter Damian. The arrival of the two Roman legates was the cause of serious tumults: the anti-reform party sought to make the people believe that the apostolic delegates wished to encroach upon the traditional Ambrosian ecclesiastical liberties. Peter Damian spoke to the people in the Cathedral and convinced them of the falsity of the accusations and of the goodness of the reform program. The p. was therefore the party of Rome, and Archbishop Guido submitted to the formula of retraction and to the oath of obedience drawn up by Peter Damian; indeed he consented to make a penitential journey to St. James of Compostela and to present himself at the Council of Rome of 1060, in which Nicholas II, having declared the royal investiture invalid, solemnly invested him with the archiepiscopal see of Milan.
The p. considered the ascension to the pontifical throne of Anselmo da Baggio, under the name of Alexander II (1061), as its triumph. However, an impressive reaction did not delay in Lombardy with the gathering of the imperialist Lombard bishops around their candidate, Cadalus bishop of Parma, who was elected pope at Basel under the name of Honorius II (Oct. 1061). Archbishop Guido now returned to his old attitude: imperialism united all those who saw their material interests harmed in the moral reform of the p. Landolfo having died, it seems from the wounds he had received at Piacenza, his brother Erlembald (v.) replaced him, a man of arms who gave the movement a more political character. Ariald was always at his side. Against the p. the adversaries insisted more vigorously with accusations of heresy; the chronicler Landulf the Elder accused the Patarines of being the continuators of the heresy discovered around 1030 at Monforte and which appears to have been of the Manichaean type. The accusation arose from the superficial linking of the theories of the p. against the marriage of ecclesiastics with those of the heretics of Monforte, clearly hostile to marriage and procreation. Some heretical element may have infiltrated the Milanese Patarine movement, but it is beyond doubt that the conceptions of the p. have nothing in common with Manichaean heretical doctrines. Landulf the Elder calls the Patarines of Milan pseudo-prophets and false pure ones (falsis catharis). It is to be supposed that precisely in the Milanese milieu the term Cathars arose for the first time to designate the Patarines, so that afterwards the two terms Cathars and Patarines equivocally designated the heretics of the Manichaean type, for whom no specific term yet existed in usage, and to say Cathars and to say Patarines was the same thing.
The conflict between Alexander II and Honorius II was deeply felt in Milan, where it came to open war between the two parties. Ariald continued his religious preaching; Erlembald had organized a party, placed at its head a council of thirty persons, and the bourgeoisie and the people united in the p. probably aimed at seizing the government of the city. In 1064 Erlembald went to Rome and received from the hands of Alexander II the vexillum sancti Petri to signify that the Patarines of Milan were fighting for the Roman Church. The battle, however, was bitter: the opponents of the reform energetically held their own against Ariald and Erlembald. In 1065 the papal bull that deposed two ecclesiastics who had seized the abbeys of S. Celso and S. Vincenzo served Erlembald to stir up a violent agitation against the archbishop; the latter abandoned Milan and was excommunicated by Alexander II. In his turn Guido da Velate threw Milan into confusion by placing the city under interdict as long as Ariald remained there. Ariald having been secretly killed (1066), Erlembald remained alone to direct the movement. Two new apostolic legates now appeared, posing as peacemakers, but Erlembald went to Rome to Alexander II and returned with unconditional approval for his conduct. Faced with the triumphant p., the archbishop Guido decided to abandon the struggle and renounced the see (1071), designating the subdeacon Gotofredo to Henry IV as his successor; but although the Emperor proceeded to the investiture, the Pope condemned it, and the p. obtained his consent for its own candidate Atto. The question of Milan becomes one of the points on which Papacy and Empire are in absolute opposition to each other. Imperial support allows the old party of the simoniacs to resi-
to resist the p.; moreover, with its acts of violence it had offended interests and created resentments, so as to allow its adversaries to regain ground. The death of Erlembald in 1075 marked the collapse of the p. The city returned to obedience to the Empire: the aristocracy asked Henry IV to designate a new archbishop, who was Theobald of Castiglione. He maintained an ambiguous attitude between Church and Empire and in 1078 was excommunicated. Henry IV entered Milan in 1081 and found the city obedient. Theobald was followed by two archbishops of the imperial party, Anselm of Rho and Arnulf, but the latter in 1096 ended up submitting to Urban II. The p. had disappeared, but it had destroyed the imperialist tendencies in Milan and set the Ambrosian Church on the path of Rome's reform program; the aristocracy too had spent its strength in the long civil struggle, facilitating the incipient communal organization.