SEGARELLI (SEGALELLI), GERARD. - Around 1260 he began in Parma the heretical movement known as that of the "Apostles" and "Apostolissae Christi" (= Fratres and Sorores Apostolorum), continued and organized by Fra Dolcino (v.); he died at the stake on 18 July 1300.
The young S., naive and fanatical, found himself refused entry among the Friars Minor of Parma; he devoted himself on his own to the ascetic life, along the lines of Franciscan custom and in coincidence with the beginning of the third Joachimite age of the Holy Spirit, popularized by the Spirituals (v.).
He dreamed of restoring the evangelical and apostolic life; following the model of the iconography of the Apostles, he dressed himself in a rough tunic and a white mantle, girded with a rope, with a long beard and flowing hair, sandals on bare feet; he sold his own house and distributed the money to the boys, lived as a wanderer, preaching penance and proclaiming Gospel verses. He had followers, men and women, and the benevolence of the city authorities and of Bishop Obizzo Sanvitali. S. dressed his adherents in the apostolic habit and sent them throughout the world; they lived on daily alms, recited prayers, sang religious hymns, exhorted others to the evangelical life. S. neither knew how nor wished to give the movement an organization; indeed he conceived it in freedom of spirit, without rule, without hierarchy, with the sole bond of an inner, spiritual obedience to God; without vows, not even of chastity, with uncontrolled cohabitation with women; in place of formal dwellings with churches and regulated worship he substituted free devotional wandering, easily idle and often vicious; even oaths were not held binding. To this was added the claim to reconstitute the true spiritual Church of the Apostles, against the carnal and adulterated one of Rome.
Bishop Obizzo imprisoned S. because of his growing eccentricities and buffooneries; then he kept him under benevolent surveillance, considering him fatuous and harmless. The heretical and moral degeneration of the pseudo-apostles provoked the explicit condemnations of Honorius IV (11 March 1286), of Nicholas IV (7 March 1290) and the repressive action of the inquisitors. These convinced S. of heresy, and he was condemned by the bishop to perpetual imprisonment in 1294; four of his followers were sent to the stake by the Commune. Six years later the Dominican inquisitor Mandredo of Parma found S. relapsed, and he was handed over to the secular arm.
Bibliography2 works
Ilarino da Milano