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Patarenes or Patareni

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a name used in Italy during the 12th and 13th centuries as a general appellation to denote sects contending against the dominant Church and clergy. Different opinions have been entertained in regard to the origin of the name, some believing that it is derived from a certain place called Patara, where the heretics, as they were considered, held their meetings. The word Pataria (q.v.), however, in the dialect of Milan, signified a popular faction; and as the sects in question were generally held in favor with the common people, it must be that the name was applied in derision by the aristocracy. It may also have been used because, after the contest between the Pataria at Milan and the clergy, the term implied in general a spirit of hostility to the priesthood. The name of Tisserands originated from the circumstance that many of their adherents were weavers by trade. The common characteristic of all these sects was opposition to the clergy ‘ and the hierarchy. They differed in the extent to which, and the grounds on which, they opposed the prevailing ecclesiasticism and attempted to set up a Church of their own. The Patareni should be especially recognized as the Italian Manichaeans, who were condemned by the Lateran Council of A.D. 1179. As in the East, so in the West, Gnostic speculations had in all probability continued to exist, though by secret tradition. In point of fact, we know that the Vandals had transported shiploads of Manichaeans to the shores of Italy, while the Priscillianists openly avowed their tenets in Spain as late as the 7th century. Probably, however, the movement issued again from the East, in all likelihood from Bulgaria, where, since the time when the Paulicians had settled in that district, Gnostic and Manichaean views were widely entertained and zealously propagated. Even the names of these sects prove the correctness of this assertion. The most general designation was that of Cathari (καθαροί ); but they were also called Bulgari (whence, in popular parlance, the opprobrious name Bougre) or Gazari, perhaps after the inhabitants of the Crimea (the Chazars), or else a different mode of pronouncing the word καθαροί , and Publicani, probably a transposition by which the foreign term of Paulicians was converted into a well-known term of reproach. The Duchobortzi (q.v.) of Russia are by Krasinski conjecturally referred to the Patarenes, who existed in Russia also to the middle of the 18th century. See Mosheim, Eccles. Hist. 2:33; Neander, Ch. Hist. vol. 5; Hardouin, Concilia, 7:163; Hardwick, Church Hist. of the Middle Ages, p. 204, 305.