Fraticelli

Fraticelli ('little brethren'), a sect of the middle ages which may be regarded as an embodiment, outside of the medieval church, of the same spirit to which is due, within the church, the Franciscan order with its many offshoots. The Italian word Fraticelli originally was the popular name of the Franciscan monks; but, in the progress of the disputes that arose in the order (see FRANCISCANS), the name was specially attached to the members of the rigorist party, and eventually to those among them who pertinaciously refused to accept the pontifical explanations of the monastic rule, and in the end threw off all subjection to the authority of the church. Several of the popes, especially Gregory IX. and Nicholas III., attempted to reconcile the disputants. Pope Celestine V. granted permission to the rigorists to form for themselves a separate organisation, in which the rule of St Francis might be observed in all its primitive and literal rigour. The suppression of this order by Boniface VIII. appears to have furnished the direct occasion for the secession of the extreme party from the church. They openly resisted the authority of the pope, whom they proclaimed an apostate from the faith. The party thus formed was increased by adhesions from other sectarian bodies, as the 'Beghards' and the 'Brethren of the Free Spirit.' In vain Clement V., in the Council of Vienna (1311-12), put forward a new declaration regarding the rule of St Francis. They still held their ground, especially in Sicily, central and northern Italy, and Provence. John XXII., against whom they sided actively with Louis of Bavaria, condemned them by a special bull in 1317, and again in a similar document directed against Henry of Ceva, one of their chief leaders in Sicily. From these sources we learn that they regarded the existing church as in a state of apostasy, and claimed for their own community the exclusive title of the Church of God. They forbade oaths, and discountenanced marriage. They professed a divine mission for the restoration of the gospel truth. They held that all spiritual authority was forfeited by sin on the part of the minister. It would even appear that they proceeded so far as to elect for themselves a pope, with a college of cardinals, and a regular hierarchy. Their principles, in a word, seem to have partaken largely of the same fanatical and anti-social tendencies as characterised the Brethren of the Free Spirit; and in common with them the Fraticelli were the object of a rigorous persecution about the middle of the 14th century. The principles of the sect formed the subject of a public discussion at Perugia in 1374 between them and a Franciscan monk named Paolucci, which appears to have ended in their discomfiture. They still maintained themselves, nevertheless, in central Italy, down to the 15th century, when John of Capistrano received a commission to labour for their conversion in the March of Ancona; but before the beginning of the following century they seem to have disappeared altogether. See Mosheim, De Beghardis et Beguinabus (Leip. 1790); Milman's Latin Christianity, vol. v.; Herzog's Realencyklopädie; also Lea's History of the Inquisition (1888).