The Apostolic Order, a late medieval Italian mendicant order remains fundamentally little understood despite several centuries of research and writing devoted to their history. Much of the work done on the Apostolic Order (or Followers of Dolcino) has been focused on their leaders, taken as given the order’s heretical status, or presumed the marginalized status of those who supported the order. This thesis attempts to reconsider the order and its supporters by placing them as another mendicant order prior to the papal condemnation, and put forth the new perspective that the supporters were much like other medieval persons and became socially marginalized by the inquisitorial focus on the Apostolic Order. To support this theory, this thesis will compare the inquisitorial records of the Apostolic supporters found in Historia Fratris Dulcini Heresiarche and the Acta S. Officii Bononie—ab anon 1291 usque ad annum 1310 to those of another group of mendicants and supporters, the Beguins of Provence, which are found in Spirituali e Beghini in Provenza, Bernard Gui’s Le Livre des Sentences de L’inquisiteur Bernard Gui 1308-1323, and the martyrology in Louisa Burnham’s So Great a Light, So Great a Smoke: The Beguin Heretics of Languedoc. These two groups of data were compared using statistical analysis and network and game theory, and the results were that 1) the groups were similar; 2) most differences could be reasonably explained by the objectives of respective inquisitions or length of persecution prior to the inquisition. That these two groups are comparable suggests that there are patterns in mendicant supporter membership exemplified by Franciscan tertiaries and that the supporters of the Apostolic Order fit this pattern.

My thesis examines relations among practitioners of various religions, especially Christians and Jews, during the era when Jesus’ project went from being a Galilean sect, to a persecuted minority, to religio licita status, and eventually to imperial favor, all happening between the first century resurrection of Jesus and the fourth century rise of Constantine. There is an abiding image of the Church in wider public consciousness that it is unwittingly and in some cases antagonistically exclusionist. This is not a late-developing image. I trace it to the period that the church developed into a formal organization with the establishment of canons and creeds defined by Church councils. This notion is so pervasive that an historical retrospective of Christianity of any period, from the sect that became a movement, to the Reformation, to the present day’s multiple Christian iterations, is framed by the late Patristic era. The conflicts and solutions reached in that period provided enduring definition to the Church while silencing dissent. I refer here to such actions as the destruction of books and letters and the banishment of bishops. Before there emerged the urgent perceived need for doctrinal uniformity, the presence of Christianity provided a resilient non-militant opponent to and an increasing intellectual critique of all religious traditions, including that of the official gods that were seen to hold the empire together. When glaringly manifest cleavages in the empire persisted, the Emperor Constantine sought to use the church to help bring political unity. He called for church councils, starting with Nicaea in 325 CE that took no account for churches outside the Roman Empire, and many within, even though councils were called “Ecumenical.” The presumption that the church was fully representative without asking for permission from a broader field of constituents is just that: a presumption. This thesis studies the ancient world of Christianity’s growth to explore whether, in that age of new and untested toleration, there was a more advisable way of responding to the invitation to the political table. The answer to this can help us formulate, and perhaps revise, some of our conduct today, especially for Christians who obtain a voice in powerful places. / Christian Spirituality, Church History & Missiology / D. Th. (Church History)

My thesis examines relations among practitioners of various religions, especially Christians and Jews, during the era when Jesus’ project went from being a Galilean sect, to a persecuted minority, to religio licita status, and eventually to imperial favor, all happening between the first century resurrection of Jesus and the fourth century rise of Constantine. There is an abiding image of the Church in wider public consciousness that it is unwittingly and in some cases antagonistically exclusionist. This is not a late-developing image. I trace it to the period that the church developed into a formal organization with the establishment of canons and creeds defined by Church councils. This notion is so pervasive that an historical retrospective of Christianity of any period, from the sect that became a movement, to the Reformation, to the present day’s multiple Christian iterations, is framed by the late Patristic era. The conflicts and solutions reached in that period provided enduring definition to the Church while silencing dissent. I refer here to such actions as the destruction of books and letters and the banishment of bishops. Before there emerged the urgent perceived need for doctrinal uniformity, the presence of Christianity provided a resilient non-militant opponent to and an increasing intellectual critique of all religious traditions, including that of the official gods that were seen to hold the empire together. When glaringly manifest cleavages in the empire persisted, the Emperor Constantine sought to use the church to help bring political unity. He called for church councils, starting with Nicaea in 325 CE that took no account for churches outside the Roman Empire, and many within, even though councils were called “Ecumenical.” The presumption that the church was fully representative without asking for permission from a broader field of constituents is just that: a presumption. This thesis studies the ancient world of Christianity’s growth to explore whether, in that age of new and untested toleration, there was a more advisable way of responding to the invitation to the political table. The answer to this can help us formulate, and perhaps revise, some of our conduct today, especially for Christians who obtain a voice in powerful places. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Church History)