Christendom disturbed
Pope Honorius IV., who in 1286 ordered them to adhere to an already
recognized rule. On their refusal, the pope condemned them to banishment
and Opizo imprisoned Segarelli. The councils of Wurzburg (1287) and
Chichester (1289) took measures against the Apostles of Germany and
England. But in 1291 the sect reappeared, sensibly increased, and Pope
Nicholas IV. published anew the bull of Honorius IV. From that day the
Apostles, regarded as rebels, were persecuted pitilessly. Four were
burned in 1294, and Segarelli, as a relapsed heretic, went to the stake
at Parma in 1300.

They had had close relations with the dissident Franciscans, but the
Spirituals often disavowed them, especially when the sect, which in
Segarelli's time had had no very precise doctrinal character, became
with Dolcino frankly heterodox. Dolcino of Novara was brought up at
Vercelli, and had been an Apostle since 1291. Thrice he fell into the
hands of the Inquisition, and thrice recanted. But immediately after
Segarelli's death he wrote an epistle, soon followed by a second, in
which he declared that the third Joachimite age began with Segarelli and
that Frederick of Sicily was the expected conqueror (_Hist. Dulcini_ and
_Addit. ad Hist. Dulcini_ in Muratori, _Scriptores_, vol. ix.). He gave
himself out as an angel sent from God to elucidate the prophecies. Soon
he founded an _Apostolic congregation_ at whose head he placed himself.
Under him were his four lieutenants, his "mystic sister," Margherita di
Franck, and 4000 disciples. He taught almost the same principles of
devotion as Segarelli, but the Messianic character which he attributed
to himself, the announcement of a communistic millennial kingdom, and,
besides, an aggressive anti-sacerdotalism, gave to Dolcino's sect a
clearly marked character, analogous only to the theocratic community of
the Anabaptists of Munster in the 16th century. On the 5th of June 1305
Pope Clement V., recognizing the impotence of the ordinary methods of
repression, issued bulls for preaching a crusade against the Dolcinists.
But four crusades, directed by the bishop of Vercelli, were required to
reduce the little army of the heresiarch, entrenched in the mountains in
the neighbourhood of Vercelli. Not till the 23rd of March 1307 were the
sectaries definitively overcome. The Catholic crusaders seized Dolcino
in his entrenchments on Mount Rubello, and the pope at once announced
the happy event to King