Abstract
Most modern accounts of the heretic Fra Dolcino and his Order ofApostles, active in north-central Italy from 1260–1307, tend to be sensationalistic because of their uncritical reliance on ecclesiastical sources.1 Such accounts emphasize everything from the Order’s scandalous origins under Gerard Segarelli in Parma, to its rabid violence and brutality against innocent villagers in the mountains of Piedmont, to the vivid apocalypticism of Dolcino himself. By highlighting the depravity of the Apostles, such narratives also subtly endorse the equally violent ecclesiastical response that came in the form of numerous crusades.
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Notes
One of the main obstacles for analyzing the history of Segarelli, Dolcino, and the Apostles, especially in Valsesia, is that there are only a handful of sources available, the majority of which are written by rivals (in the case of Segarelli) or hostile opponents (episcopal and inquisitorial records). As such, these sources are not entirely reliable. My approach here is that the sources do indeed provide a historial framework of key events (a basic chronology) but many of the details (such as sexual promiscuity or atrocities attributed to the heretics) are suspect. Although these sources presented here do not include the more fanciful, and thus easily dismissed, stories associated with heretics, witches and Jews in the Middle Ages (notably midnight masses and meetings or fornication with devils and demons), they do contain episodes that appear at best embellished or at worst fabricated. For some stories, as demonstrated below, more likely explanations are offered while for others, internal inconsistencies or the lack of eyewitness evidence suggest the sources’ misrepresentation of events. In short, the sources are useful for establishing a historical narrative but the details should be met with a dose of skepticism. For the problems associated with trying to reconstruct events based solely on ecclesiastical, elite, and often hostile sources, see Robert Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972), 11–13;
Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, A History of Medieval Heresy and Inquisition (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011), 107ff;
Brian R. Carniello, “Gerardo Segarelli as the Anti-Francis: Mendicant Rivalry and Heresy in Medieval Italy, 1260–1300,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 57, no. 2 (2006): 232;
and, Shulamith Shahar, Women in a Medieval Heretical Sect: Agnes and Huguette the Waldensians, trans. Yael Lotan (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 2001), xv–xix.
The few primary sources relating to the Order of Apostles are: Salimbene’s Cronica; see Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, ed. Giuseppe Scalia, 2 vols., Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Mediaevalis 125. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998); the anonymous Historia fratris Dulcini heresiarche, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, H. 80 inf., 28r–47r (hereafter Historia); and Bernard Gui, De secta illorum qui se dicunt esse de ordine apostolorum, Rerum Itallcarum Scriptores (Citta di Castello: S. Lapi, 1907), 9.5:19. An additional treatment by Gui can be found in Inquisitionis heretice pravitatis,
in Manuel de l’Inquisiteur, ed. Guillaume Mollat, 2 vols. (Paris: Champion, 1964). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
Many of the modern impressions of Segarelli and Dolcino originated with Henry Charles Lea’s A History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, 3 vols. (1888; reprint New York: Russell and Russell, 1955), 3: 104–24, particularly due to his near-verbatim retelling of the Order’s origins found in Salimbene’s Cronica.
The modern sources that have taken up the same uncritical narrative include Gordon Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages, special ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 191–5;
Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969; South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 242–7;
and, Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 202–3.
The shift from acceptance to condemnation only happened over the course of several years, beginning with the Second Council of Lyons in 1274, which sought to curb new religious orders, followed by the bull Olim felicis recordationis by Pope Honorius IV in 1286, which cited Segarelli’s Apostles by name (“sub nomine Ordinis Apostolorum”) and mandated that they join an established Order (“se transferant de religionibus approbatis”), Les Registres d’Honorius IV, ed. Maurice Prou (Paris: Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 1888), no. 310. Only in 1290, when Pope Nicholas IV was forced to repeat the warning of his predecessor, was it clear that the Apostles were disobedient, but even then it was another four years before any Apostles were denounced and burnt as heretics. See Carniello, “Gerardo Segarelli as the Anti-Francis,” 238–9.
Benvenuto de Rambaldis de Imola, Comentum super Dantis Aldigherii comoediam nunc primum integre in lucem editum, ed. Jacobo Philippo Lacaita, 5 vols. (Florence: typ. G. Barbèra, 1887), 2:332–63. For a discussion of the usefulness of Benvenuto’s commentary,
see J. C. De Haan, “La Setta degli Apostolici e i suoi Capi,” in Fra Dolcino e gli Apostolici tra eresia, rivolta e roghi, ed. Corrado Mornese and Gustavo Buratti (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2000), 54.
Corrado Mornese, Eresia Dolciniana e Resistenza Montanara (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2002), 34.
Fra Dolcino e gli Apostolici tra eresia, rivolta e roghi, ed. Mornese and Buratti, 23–24. See also Alberto Bossi, Fra Dolcino, gli Apostolici e la Valsesia (Borgosesia: Palmiro Corradini, 1973), 69–87;
Alberto Bossi, “Fra Dolcino e i Valsesiani,” Novarien 5 (1973): 41–9;
and, Grado Giovanni Merlo, “Fra Dolcino e i Movimenti di Rivolta Contadina,” in La Crisi del Sistema Comunale, ed. Giovanni Cherubini, Franco della Peruta, Ettore Leporé, Giorgio Mori, Giulano Procacci, and Rosario Villari, Storia della Società Italiana apt. 2, 7 (Milan: Nicola Teti-Editore, 1982), 281–99.
For the background on the counts of the Biandrate, see Paola Guglielmotti, Comunità e Territorio: Villaggi del Ptiemonte Medievale (Rome: Viella, 2001), 183–91
and Francesco Cognasso, Storia di Novara (Novara: Libreria Lazzarelli, 1992), 124.
For their holdings in Valsesia, see Maria Giovanna Virgili, “I possessi dei Biandrate nei Secoli XI–XIV,” Bollettino Storico-Bibliografico Subalpino 62 (1974): 639–49, 654–61.
Carlo Guido Mor, Carte Valsesiane: fino al Seculo XV (Turin: Biblioteca della Società Storica Subalpina, 1933), n. 13, 25–7, n. 14, 27–9.
For the text of the 1260 pact, see Mor, Carte Valsesiane, n. 50, 118–27. Regarding the designation of outlaw, the pact states, ibid., 125, “quod comune Vercellarum teneant et debent tenere bannitos homines vallis Scicide qui sunt banniti per ipsos comites, eo quod sunt rebelles ipsorum comitum … et generaliter per commune Vercellarum teneantur banniti omnes homines vallis Scicide qui per ipsos comites de cetero bannizabuntur pro maleficio.” On the impact of the pact, see Federico Tonetti, La Valsesia Descritta e Illustrata nei Principali Fatti e Avvenimenti della sua Storia (Varallo: Tipografa G. Zanfa, 1911), 300; and Mornese, Eresia Dolciniana, 54–7.
See Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., Lust for Liberty: The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval Europe, 1200–1425 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 28, 118.
Eugene L. Cox, The Green Count of Savoy: Amadeus VI and Transalpine Savoy in the Fourteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 45–6.
See Francesco Gabatto, “Biella e I Vescovi di Vercelli,” Archivio Storico Italiano 18 (1896): 24–7. See also Mornese, Fra Dolcino, 23–4.
Imola, Comentum super Dantis, 3:359. For events immediately after Segarelli’s execution, see Tavo Burat, “Dolcino e gli Apostolici: La Storia in breve,” in Fra Dolcino e gli Apostolici, ed. Mornese and Buratti (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2000), 35–6 and Imola, Comentum super Dantis, 3:359. For events immediately after Segarelli’s execution,
see Tavo Burat, “Dolcino e gli Apostolici: La Storia in breve,” in Fra Dolcino e gli Apostolici, ed. Mornese and Buratti (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2000), 35–6;
and Raniero Orioli, Venit Perfidus Heresiarcha: Il Moviemento Apostolico-Dolciniano dal 1260 al 1307 (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1988), 103–14.
For the text of the pact, see Mor, Carte Valsesiane, XI n. 65, 168–70. For the misuse of the document in an otherwise important study, see Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 3:114. For the debunking of the document, see Cognasso, Storia di Novara, 299–300, as well as Tavo Burat, L’Anarachia Cristiana di Fra Dolcino e Margherita, 2nd ed. (Biella: Leone & Griffaj 2002), 32–3.
Historia, 30v, “quod fuerunt in numero mille quatuorcentum et ultra.” For analysis of the exaggerated number, see Cognasso, Storia di Novara, 299; Rosaldo Ordano, “Dolcino,” Bollettino Storico Vercellese 1 (1972): 28; Mornese, Eresia Dolciniana, 123–4.
Historia, 31v–32r, “qui nulla victualia habebant … [i]n adventu ipsorum hereticorum descenderunt ipsi Gazzari ad villam et ecclesiam Triverii summo mane, de quo homines Triverii nullatenus advertebant et improvisi erant, et spoliaverunt ecclesiam Triverii exportando calices libros et alia bona et derobaverunt alias domos quam plurimas de Triverio.” The term “Gazzari,” although it originally meant “Cathar,” became a generic designation for “heretic” in Italy. See Malcolm Lambert, The Cathars (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 295.
Several authors have tackled this issue of stigmatization, stereotyping, and slander, most notably Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages, 10–34 and passim. See also R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), esp. 58–60, 88–94, 138–43;
Jennifer Wright Knust, Abandoned to Lust: Sexual Slander and Ancient Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), esp. 32, 115–16;
and, Jeffrey Richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 1994), 42–73.
Today there are numerous monuments dedicated to Dolcino that can be found, for example, in the towns of Vercelli, Biella, Varallo. In Varallo, in 2006, the mayor himself, Gianluca Buonanno, presided over the dedication ceremony of a plaque commemorating Dolcino, as well as hosting a conference on Dolcino in the same year. For images of the plaque, as well as the Buonanno’s inauguration of the conference, see Commune di Varallo and Centro Studi Dolciniani, Dolcino: Storia, Pensiero, Messagio: Atti del Convegno (Novara: Millenia, 2007), 4–7.
For other monuments, including newspapers, pamphlets, and journals associated positively with Dolcino, see Corrado Mornese, Maledetto Dolcino! Storia di una Memoria Scandalosa (Novara: Millenia, 2007).
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© 2014 Karen Bollermann, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Cary J. Nederman
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Pierce, J.B. (2014). Autonomy, Dissent, and the Crusade Against Fra Dolcino in Fourteenth-Century Valsesia. In: Bollermann, K., Izbicki, T.M., Nederman, C.J. (eds) Religion, Power, and Resistance from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137431059_11
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