SEGARELLI (SEGALELLI), GERARDO. – In Parma, around 1260, he initiated the heretical movement known as 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., naïve and fanatical, was refused admission among the Friars Minor of Parma; he embarked on an ascetic life independently, following the pattern of Franciscan practice and coinciding with the beginning of the Joachimite third age of the Holy Spirit, Spirituals (v.).
He dreamed of restoring the evangelical and apostolic life; on the model of the iconography of the Apostles, he dressed himself in a coarse tunic and a white mantle, girded with a cord, with a long beard and flowing hair, and sandals on his bare feet; he sold his own house and distributed the money to boys, lived as a vagrant, preaching penance and proclaiming Gospel verses. He gained followers, men and women, and the benevolence of the civic authorities and of Bishop Obizzo Sanvitali. S. clothed his adherents in the apostolic habit and sent them throughout the world; they lived on daily alms, recited prayers, sang religious hymns, and exhorted people to the evangelical life. S. neither knew how nor wished to give the movement an organized structure; indeed, he conceived it in freedom of spirit, without a rule, without a hierarchy, with the sole bond of an inner, spiritual obedience to God; without vows, not even of chastity, with uncontrolled association between men and women; in place of formal residences with churches and regulated worship, he substituted free devotional wandering, easily idle and often immoral; oaths, too, were not regarded as binding. To this was added the claim to reconstitute the true spiritual Church of the Apostles, in opposition to the carnal and adulterated Church of Rome.
Bishop Obizzo imprisoned S. for his growing eccentricities and scurrilities; later he kept him under benevolent surveillance, considering him foolish and harmless. The heretical and moral degeneration of the pseudo-apostles provoked the explicit condemnations of Honorius IV (11 March 1286) and Nicholas IV (7 March 1290), as well as the repressive action of the inquisitors. They convinced S. of heresy, and the bishop condemned him 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.