Pongilupus, Hermannus

Pongilupus, Hermannus an Italian monastic, flourished near the middle of the 13th century at Ferrara. He practiced great austerity as one of the Consolati, and died in 1269. Several years after his death (1300) charges of heresy were brought against him, and a judicial process having been declared, his bones were exhumed and ourned, and his tomb demolished by order of pope Boniface VIII. His tomb, in the principal church at Ferrara, had been the object of great veneration, and many miracles were said to have been wrought there. Some think that the process was instituted and the tomb demolished to put an end to the extravagant devotion paid to his memory. The Franciscans attribute to Pongilupus the origin of the Fratricelli (q.v.), but Mosheim considers this an error, and believes him to have been one of the Bagnotiants. Natalis Alexander (Hist. Eccles. 8, 87) speaks of Pongilupus as reviving several vile practices of the Gnostics. See Wadding, Annal. Minor. Fratr. 6, 279; Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity, 7, 37 sq. (J.H.W.)