the latter case all classes of the public are equally entitled to the same educational privileges and members of the fraternities may not be discriminated against.
The fraternities are admirably organized. The usual system comprises a legislative body made up of delegates from the different chapters and an executive or administrative body elected by the delegates. Few of the fraternities have any judiciary. None is needed. The financial systems are sound, and the conventions of delegates meet in various parts of the United States, several hundred in number, spend thousands of dollars in travel and entertainment, and attract much public attention. Most of the fraternities have an inspection system by which chapters are periodically visited and kept up to a certain level of excellence.
The leading fraternities publish journals usually from four to eight times during the college year. The earliest of these was the Beta Theta Pi, first issued in 1872. All publish catalogues of their members and the most prosperous have issued histories. They also publish song books, music and many ephemeral and local publications.
The alumni of the fraternities are organized into clubs or associations having headquarters at centres of population. These organizations are somewhat loose, but nevertheless are capable of much exertion and influence should occasion arise.
The college fraternity system has no parallel among the students of colleges outside of America. One of the curious things about it, however, is that while it is practically uniform throughout the United States, at the three prominent universities of Harvard, Yale and Princeton it differs in many respects from its character elsewhere. At Harvard, although there are chapters of a few of the fraternities, their influence is insignificant, their place being taken by a group of local societies, some of them class organizations. At Yale, the regular system of fraternities obtains in the engineering or technical department (the Sheffield Scientific School), but in the classical department the fraternity chapters are called “junior” societies, because they limit their membership to the three upper classes and allow the juniors each year practically to control the chapter affairs. Certain senior societies, of which the oldest is the Skull and Bones, which are inter-fraternity societies admitting freely members of the fraternities, are more prominent at Yale than the fraternities themselves. Princeton has two (secret) literary and fraternal societies, the American Whig and the Cliosophic, and various local social clubs, with no relationship to organizations in other colleges and not having Greek letter names.
At a few universities (for instance, Michigan, Cornell and Virginia), senior societies or other inter-fraternity societies exert great influence and have modified the strength of the fraternity system.
Of late years, numerous societies bearing Greek names and imitating the externals of the college fraternities have sprung up in the high schools and academies of the country, but have excited the earnest and apparently united opposition of the authorities of such schools.
See William Raimond Baird, American College Fraternities (6th ed., New York, 1905); Albert C. Stevens, Cyclopedia of Fraternities (Paterson, N.J., 1899); Henry D. Sheldon, Student Life and Customs (New York, 1901); Homer L. Patterson, Patterson’s College and School Directory (Chicago, 1904); H. K. Kellogg, College Secret Societies (Chicago, 1874); Albert P. Jacobs, Greek Letter Societies (Detroit, 1879). (W. R. B.*)
FRATICELLI (plural diminutive of Ital. frate, brother), the
name given during the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries to a number
of religious groups in Italy, differing widely from each other, but
all derived more or less directly from the Franciscan movement.
Fra Salimbene says in his Chronicle (Parma ed., p. 108): “All
who wished to found a new rule borrowed something from the
Franciscan order, the sandals or the habit.” As early as 1238
Gregory IX., in his bull Quoniam abundavit iniquitas, condemned
and denounced as forgers (tanquam falsarios) all who begged or
preached in a habit resembling that of the mendicant orders,
and this condemnation was repeated by him or his successors.
The term Fraticelli was used contemptuously to denote, not any
particular sect, but the members of orders formed on the fringe
of the church. Thus Giovanni Villani, speaking of the heretic
Dolcino, says in his Chronicle (bk. viii. ch. 84): “He is not a
brother of an ordered rule, but a fraticello without an order.”
Similarly, John XXII., in his bull Sancta Romana et Universalis
Ecclesia (28th of December 1317), condemns vaguely those
“profanae multitudinis viri commonly called Fraticelli, or
Brethren of the Poor Life, or Bizocchi, or Beguines, or by all
manner of other names.”
Some historians, in their zeal for rigid classification, have regarded the Fraticelli as a distinct sect, and have attempted to discover its dogmas and its founder. Some of the contemporaries of these religious groups fell into the same error, and in this way the vague term Fraticelli has sometimes been applied to the disciples of Armanno Pongilupo of Ferrara (d. 1269), who was undoubtedly a Cathar, and to the followers of Gerard Segarelli and Dolcino, who were always known among themselves as Apostolic Brethren (Apostolici). Furthermore, it seems absurd to classify both the Dolcinists and the Spiritual Franciscans as Fraticelli, since, as has been pointed out by Ehrle (Arch. f. Lit. u. Kirchengesch. des Mittelalters, ii. 107, &c.), Angelo of Clarino, in his De septem tribulationibus, written to the glory of the Spirituals, does not scruple to stigmatize the Dolcinists as “disciples of the devil.” It is equally absurd to include in the same category the ignorant Bizocchi and Segarellists and such learned disciples of Michael of Cesena and Louis of Bavaria as William of Occam and Bonagratia of Bergamo, who have often been placed under this comprehensive rubric.
The name Fraticelli may more justly be applied to the most exalted fraction of Franciscanism. In 1322 some prisoners declared to the inquisitor Bernard Gui at Toulouse that the Franciscan order was divided into three sections—the Conventuals, who were allowed to retain their real and personal property; the Spirituals or Beguines, who were at that time the objects of persecution; and the Fraticelli of Sicily, whose leader was Henry of Ceva (see Gui’s Practica Inquisitionis, v.). It is this fraction of the order which John XXII. condemned in his bull Gloriosam Ecclesiam (23rd of January 1318), but without calling them Fraticelli. Henry of Ceva had taken refuge in Sicily at the time of Pope Boniface VIII.’s persecution of the Spirituals, and thanks to the good offices of Frederick of Sicily, a little colony of Franciscans who rejected all property had soon established itself in the island. Under Pope Clement V., and more especially under Pope John XXII., fresh Spirituals joined them; and this group of exalted and isolated ascetics soon began to regard itself as the sole legitimate order of the Minorites and then as the sole Catholic Church. After being excommunicated as “schismatics and rebels, founders of a superstitious sect, and propagators of false and pestiferous doctrines,” they proceeded to elect a general (for Michael of Cesena had disavowed them) and then a pope called Celestine (L. Wadding, Annales, at date 1313). The rebels continued to carry on an active propaganda. In Tuscany particularly the Inquisition made persistent efforts to suppress them; Florence afflicted them with severe laws, but failed to rouse the populace against them. The papacy dreaded their social even more than their dogmatic influence. At first in Sicily and afterwards throughout Italy the Ghibellines gave them a warm welcome; the rigorists and the malcontents who had either left the church or were on the point of leaving it, were attracted by these communities of needy rebels; and the tribune Rienzi was at one time disposed to join them. To overcome these ascetics it was necessary to have recourse to other ascetics, and from the outset the reformed Franciscans, or Franciscans of the Strict Observance, under the direction of their first leaders, Paoluccio da Trinci (d. 1390), Giovanni Stronconi (d. 1405), and St Bernardine of Siena, had been at great pains to restore the Fraticelli to orthodoxy. These early efforts, however, had little success. Alarmed by the number of the sectaries and the extent of their influence, Pope Martin V., who had encouraged the Observants, and particularly Bernardine of Siena, fulminated two bulls (1418 and 1421) against the heretics, and entrusted different legates with the task of hunting them down. These measures failing, he decided, in
