Emily Dickinson Lexicon

A-POS-TOL'ICS, n.

Certain sects so called from their pretending to imitate the practice of the apostles, abstaining from marriage, from wine, flesh, pecuniary reward, &c., and wandering about clothed in white, with long beards, and bare heads. Sagarelli, the founder of one of these sects, was burnt at Parma in 1330. – Encyc.