The Heresy of the Free Spirit (13th-15th century)

Before dates and stakes, one must understand what the word means, and what it does not mean. This is the point on which modern scholarship has most advanced the case, and it governs all the rest.

An inquisitors' label rather than an organized sect

The name "Free Spirit" is not primarily the name of a movement that gave itself a program: it is the label under which the Council of Vienne grouped, in 1311-1312, a set of propositions gathered by inquisitors in varied circles (Rhenish beghards, suspect beguines, itinerant preachers)^[2]. The condemned themselves sometimes claimed the fine name of "poor" or "perfect"; the case built against them is made up of heterogeneous pieces: witness depositions, seized treatises, lists of articles drawn from sermons.

This is why Robert E. Lerner, in the authoritative study (The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages, University of California Press, 1972), concludes that the Free Spirit was never a centralized organization of deviant anarchists, but rather a spectrum of beliefs emphasizing voluntary poverty and a form of radical quietism^[3]. Malcolm Lambert, in Medieval Heresy (2nd edition, Blackwell, 1992), reaches this conclusion: the alleged heresy never existed as a body of doctrines promoted by a structured organization, and still less by the beguines or beghards as such^[4]. Norman Cohn (The Pursuit of the Millennium, 1957) and Herbert Grundmann (Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, 1935) had already shown the way: behind the inquisitorial monolith, diverse groups, individual paths, mystical exaggerations that resemble one another without coordination^[5].

This clarification exonerates no one: it defines the object. There was no Church of the Free Spirit facing the Catholic Church, as there was a Cathar Church facing it (see the article Catharism). There was, by contrast, a real and recurring doctrine, professed here or there over two centuries: the soul that has reached perfection can no longer sin, and everything it does (or ceases to do) has no consequence for its salvation. It is this doctrine that Vienne condemned, and it is this doctrine that this article studies.

The heart of the doctrine: the soul made impeccable

All the pieces of the case converge on a hard core of three linked claims. First, union with God can be consummated in this life to such a degree that the soul sinks into Him with no return: it is "adnientie," annihilated in God, and henceforth God acts in it without its taking part in the action. Second, this soul is impeccable: whatever it does (or refrains from doing) it no longer sins, because it is no longer itself that acts but the Spirit in it. Third, it is set free: freed from practices (fasting, prayer, works), freed from obedience (prelates, confessors, precepts of the Church), freed even, in the crudest versions recorded by the inquisitors, from moral prohibitions, what theologians call antinomianism, exemption from the law^[6].

In other words: where authentic mysticism says "the more I am united to God, the more I obey and humble myself," the Free Spirit says "the more I am united to God, the less I need to obey and humble myself." It is the exact reverse of the path of the saints, and this is why the Church judged it so dangerous: not as a visible rival Church, but as an inner poison of the spiritual life, able to corrupt the most advanced souls by persuading them that they have outgrown the very means that sustain them.

The fourteenth-century Free Spirit was not born from nothing in 1310. It had Parisian, Rhenish and Swabian ancestors, and an intellectual matrix, the reading of the three ages, whose meaning it distorted.

Amaury of Bene and the Amalricians of Paris

The first act takes place in Paris, around 1200. Amaury of Bene (Amalricus de Bena), a master of arts in the nascent university, taught a pantheist doctrine whose most famous formula, as reported by his opponents, affirmed that all is God and that God is all: Creator and creature were said to be one^[7]. Condemned a first time around 1204-1207, he retracted and died shortly after, buried in consecrated ground at Saint-Martin-des-Champs^[8].

But his disciples, led notably by David of Dinant, drew every consequence from his thought, and that is where the heresy properly so called was born. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907-1912) sums up their shift as follows:

"The followers of Almeric, after his death, led by David of Dinanto, carried his doctrines out to their full consequences." - Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Amalricians" (Ignispedia translation)^[9]

Original text: "The followers of Almeric, after his death, led by David of Dinanto (q.v.), carried his doctrines out to their full consequences."^[10]

A synod gathered at Paris in 1209-1210 solemnly condemned the doctrine: several disciples were arrested, a few were sent to the stake, and Amaury's very body was exhumed and burned with his writings^[11]. The Amalricians further professed a Trinitarian reading of history in three successive reigns, of the Father, of the Son, then of the Holy Spirit, the third of which, beginning in the thirteenth century, would abolish sacraments and outward worship^[12]:

"They held, besides, peculiar views on the Trinity, distinguishing three periods in the Divine economy with regard to man: the reign of the Father, the reign of the Son, and the reign of the Holy Spirit, which was to last until the end of time, with the consequent rejection of the laws of morality." - Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Amalricians" (Ignispedia translation)^[13]

Original text: "They held, besides, peculiar views on the Trinity, distinguishing three periods in the Divine economy with regard to man; the reign of the Father [...] the reign of the Son [...] and the reign of the Holy Ghost, which [...] was to last until the end of time", with "the consequent rejection of the laws of morality"^[14].

Here, already in seed form, is the whole Free Spirit: the pantheism that divinizes the soul, the three ages that relativize the Church of the present, and the final antinomianism. The Catholic reading of the three ages belongs to the article Radical Joachimism (13th-14th century).

David of Dinant and the pantheist temptation

David of Dinant, a cleric of the diocese of Liege who became Amaury's chief continuator, gave the doctrine its philosophical framework: relying on a materialist reading of Aristotle, then barely rediscovered in the West, he identified God, the soul and prime matter, three names for one and the same reality^[15]. His work was condemned along with the Amalrician doctrine, and he himself fled: all trace of him is lost after 1210. The episode matters less for its direct posterity, since the Parisian Amalrician group was wiped out, than for the model it set for a century: a learned speculation on the unity of all things in God which, popularized by untrained preachers, became a spirituality of emancipation.

Ortlieb of Strasbourg and the first Swabian circles

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, a preacher named Ortlieb preached a kindred doctrine at Strasbourg: his followers, the Ortliebians, professed that the soul united to God can no longer sin and no longer needs the sacraments^[16]. Condemned and scattered, they spread into Swabia and Switzerland, where small groups survived discreetly for decades. Historians see in them the link between the Parisian Amalricians of 1210 and the Rhenish Brethren of the Free Spirit of 1300: not a filiation proven document by document, since the sources are lacking, but one same spiritual family, handed on by itinerants, copied manuscripts and preaching at crossroads^[17].

The shadow of Joachim: the three ages distorted

A decisive influence must be named here, without confusing it with its source. Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202) had proposed a reading of history in three status, of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, as a hope for a spiritual deepening within the Church and her sacraments^[18]. The radical currents that claimed him in the thirteenth century drew the opposite conclusion from it: if the age of the Spirit is beginning, then the age of the Son, with its visible Church, its priests and its sacraments, is outmoded. The Free Spirit adopted this pattern as its own: the "perfect" man was said to live already in the age of the Spirit, dispensed from the mediations of the age of the Son. This is a distortion, not Joachim's own thought: see the article Radical Joachimism (13th-14th century).

The most precise doctrinal dossier available is not a catechism of the Free Spirit, since none ever existed, but its condemnation: the eight articles of the decree Ad nostrum, promulgated at the Council of Vienne. Historians debate the exact representativeness of each article, since some may have been professed by few individuals, or even reconstructed by the inquisitors from scattered remarks^[19], but the whole faithfully outlines the doctrine as the Church judged it. Reference text: Denzinger, Enchiridion, §§891-899^[20].

The eight articles of Ad nostrum: overview

The table below summarizes the eight condemned propositions, in the order of the decree. Each is then explained, and refuted, in the subsections that follow.

Impeccability: the central dogma

The first article is the key to the whole edifice. The decree formulates it thus, in the Latin of Denzinger:

"Man can acquire in the present life such a degree of perfection that he becomes entirely impeccable, and can no longer progress in grace." - Council of Vienne, decree Ad nostrum, art. 1 (Ignispedia translation)^[21]

Original text: "Quod homo in vita praesenti tantum et talem perfectionis gradum potest acquirere, quod reddetur penitus impeccabilis, et amplius in gratia proficere non valebit."^[22]

Two claims in one: impeccability (no longer being able to sin) and inability to progress (no longer being able to grow). Yet the experience of the saints says exactly the opposite: the further the soul advances, the more it discovers the distance separating it from God and the more it grows. Saint Paul himself, caught up to the third heaven, writes that he has not yet reached the goal and that he presses on toward it (Phil 3:12-14)^[23]. And Scripture decides the matter without appeal:

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." - Saint John, First Epistle, 1:8^[24]

Impeccability here below also contradicts the dogma of purgatory and the Church's prayer for the dead: if living men were already impeccable and confirmed in grace, what need would there be for the purification beyond the grave taught by the faith?^[25]

Release from the means: fasting, prayer, obedience

Articles 2 and 3 draw the practical consequence: the "perfect" man would need neither ascetic practices (fasting, prayer, works) nor obedience to men and to ecclesiastical precepts. On the pretext that "the senses are henceforth subject to the spirit," he might licitly grant his body whatever pleases it^[26].

This is the exact reversal of the Gospel. Christ, who had no need to fast, fasted forty days (Mt 4:2); at Gethsemane, at the supreme hour, he asked his own to watch and pray (Mt 26:41)^[27]. As for obedience, it is not the enemy of the Spirit but his fruit: "If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law" (Gal 5:18) means that charity fulfils the law from within, not that it allows anyone to despise pastors: "He who hears you hears me" (Lk 10:16)^[28]. And no one arrogates to himself the mission to preach: "No one takes this honour upon himself" (Heb 5:4)^[29].

Anticipated beatitude and the soul divinized by nature

Articles 4, 5 and 6 form the speculative summit: final beatitude would be attainable already in this life (art. 4); every intellectual nature would be blessed by nature, with no need of the light of glory (art. 5); and the practice of the virtues, the mark of the imperfect, would be dismissed by the perfect soul (art. 6)^[30].

Article 5 is properly Pelagian and naturalist: it makes the beatific vision a due of nature instead of a gratuitous and supernatural gift. Yet the constant doctrine of the Church, formulated by Saint Thomas, teaches that no created nature can see God by its own powers: the light of glory is needed, a gift that raises the intellect above itself (Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 12, a. 5)^[31]. Article 6, for its part, takes the opposite course to the whole tradition: charity is "the bond of perfection" (Col 3:14), not a scaffolding dismantled once the building is finished^[32].

Moral antinomianism and contempt for the sacraments

Articles 7 and 8 descend to the most concrete level, and the gravest. Article 7 declares that a kiss given to a woman is a mortal sin, because nature would not incline to it, whereas the carnal act, to which nature inclines, would not be a sin, especially for one who is tempted^[33]. Christ closed this door in advance:

"Whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." - Gospel according to Saint Matthew, 5:28^[34]

Article 8 dispenses from rising and paying homage at the elevation of the Body of Christ^[35], that is, it denies in act the Real Presence and the Eucharistic worship that the faith of the Church has never ceased to render to the Blessed Sacrament^[36].

No name is as closely attached to the Free Spirit as that of Marguerite Porete, and no case better shows the method of the Church, which struck the book and the obstinacy, not mysticism as such. The detailed story of the beguinal drift belongs to the article Heterodox Beguines and Beghards; only what properly belongs to the Free Spirit is kept here.

A beguine of Hainaut and her book

Marguerite Porete, a beguine of Hainaut (the region of Valenciennes), wrote in the vernacular, in Picard, a treatise of a then new kind: the Mirror of Simple Souls, an allegorical dialogue between the Soul, Love and Reason, which describes the journey of the soul to its annihilation in God^[37]. The work circulated in manuscripts, was read, copied, discussed, apparently even by sympathetic readers who at first saw in it only a daring mysticism^[38]. For the Mirror is no crude pamphlet: it is a literarily powerful work, some pages of which express abandonment to God with beauty, and it is precisely this mixture of beauty and error that made its danger and its posterity.

The doctrinal tipping point is that of the whole Free Spirit: the soul "adnientie", annihilated in God, would be freed from virtues and works, having taken "leave" of consolations as well as practices^[39]. The critical edition of reference is that of Romana Guarnieri (1965)^[40].

The Paris trial and the burning at the Place de Grève

The bishop of Cambrai first had the work burned and forbade the author to spread it; Marguerite persisted, circulated her book as far as Paris, and then the inquisitor of France seized the case^[41]. After a long detention (a year and a half in prison) and her obstinate refusal to defend herself or to retract, she was condemned as a relapsed heretic and burned at the Place de Grève, in Paris, on 1 June 1310^[42]. The sentence struck obstinacy as much as the book: the medieval Church did not burn for one daring page, but for the persistent refusal, after repeated warnings, to submit to the judgment of the Church^[43].

A year later, the Council of Vienne condemned the eight errors: the chronological coincidence is no accident, for the Porete case lay on the table of the conciliar Fathers, and Ad nostrum is in part its doctrinal outcome^[44].

The fifteenth ecumenical council opened at Vienne, in Dauphiné, on 16 October 1311, under Clement V, with some three hundred prelates^[45]. The agenda was dominated by the affair of the Templars, suppressed by the bull Vox in excelso, but the Fathers also treated the Franciscan quarrel over poverty (Exivi de paradiso) and the case of suspect beghards and beguines^[46]. Critical text of reference: Norman P. Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1, 1990^[47].

Cum de quibusdam: dissolving without breaking

The decree Cum de quibusdam attacked the way of life: it forbade beguines and penitent women to lead a religious life in common without an approved rule, to dispute about theology and to preach^[48]. But, and this is the capital point which black legends forget, it did not condemn beguines as such: those who lived honestly, in obedience and work, were not targeted. Proof of this is that the great Flemish beguinages survived until the twentieth century, and that thirteen of them have been listed as UNESCO world heritage since 1998^[49]. A few years after Vienne, John XXII softened the sentence and allowed communities of honest life to subsist, a measure which the Catholic Encyclopedia dates to 1321^[50].

Ad nostrum: eight condemned propositions

The decree Ad nostrum attacked the doctrine: it listed and condemned the eight errors summarized above, impeccability, leave from ascetic practices, insubordination, anticipated beatitude, natural divinization, leave from virtues, carnal antinomianism, eucharistic contempt^[51]. It is, in Robert Lerner's phrase, the birth certificate of the Free Spirit heresy as a category: before Vienne, scattered beliefs; after Vienne, a heresy named, defined, condemned, and therefore prosecuted as such^[52]. Canonical reference: Denzinger, sections 891-899^[53].

The condemnation of Vienne did not extinguish the current: it opened half a century of targeted prosecutions, whose major episodes lay in the Rhineland, and the most famous of which nearly carried off a Dominican who did not belong to the Free Spirit.

The Rhineland Trials: Strasbourg and Cologne

Strasbourg (1317-1319) produced the first large roundup after Vienne: dozens of suspects were heard, many punished, with exile striking the greatest number^[61]. At Cologne, in 1326, Archbishop Henry of Virneburg had beghards arrested who were explicitly accused of professing the heresy of the Free Spirit^[62]. Repression continued in waves in the Rhineland and Swabia throughout the century, with its usual retinue: itinerant preachers, small circles discovered, abjurations and, for the relapsed, the stake^[63].

Master Eckhart Suspected, Submissive, and Set Apart from the Free Spirit

The most delicate case is that of the Dominican Master Eckhart (d. 1328). A brilliant preacher in the German language, a theorist of the birth of God in the soul and of absolute detachment, he moved at Strasbourg and then at Cologne in the very circles where the Free Spirit was fermenting, and some of his boldest formulas, torn from their context, look exactly like the condemned theses^[64]. In 1326, the archbishop of Cologne retained against him a list of propositions drawn from his sermons^[65].

But what followed sets Eckhart radically apart from the true free spirits: on 13 February 1327, in the Dominican church at Cologne, he solemnly and unconditionally revoked everything in his words or writings that might depart from the Catholic faith^[66]. The case was referred to Avignon; Eckhart died in 1328 before the sentence, and John XXII, by the bull In agro dominico (27 March 1329), condemned twenty-eight propositions drawn from his works, some as heretical, others as rash, ill-sounding and suspect of heresy^[67]. The bull expressly notes his final submission: the Church struck formulas, not a rebel, the exact opposite of Marguerite Porete, whose obstinacy made her relapsed^[68]. The Dominicans never ceased to venerate him as one of their own, and his cause remains that of a great speculative mind with imprudent formulas, not of a heretic of the Free Spirit.

John XXII and the Distinction of the Faithful

Throughout these proceedings, the Church maintained the distinction laid down at Vienne: it was errors and misconduct that were struck, not a state of life. Orthodox beguinages continued to prosper in the Low Countries, tertiaries supervised by the Mendicants were not troubled, and authentic mystics, from Jan van Ruusbroec (d. 1381), who himself denounced the false contemplatives of Brussels^[69], to the great faithful Rhinelanders, wrote and preached freely. The repression of the Free Spirit was not a war against mysticism: it was its close guard.

After the great wave of the years 1310-1330, the current did not vanish at once: it sank and scattered. Traces of it are found in Swabia, Switzerland and the Low Countries until the end of the 14th century, small circles around a preacher, manuscripts circulating secretly, occasional denunciations such as the one Ruusbroec brought against the Brussels beguine Heilwijch Bloemardinne^[70]. In the 15th century, mentions grow rarer: the centers died out or merged into other dissenting movements of the time, late Waldensians, Taborites, radical Hussite circles, of which they never formed the heart^[71]. For these late cousins, see the articles The Waldensians (1170-1532), Hussitism (1415-1436) and The Taborites (1420-1452).

Two lessons emerge from this slow decline. First, a heresy without a Church survives only by spiritual contagion, not by institution: when the inquisitors cut off the preachers and burn the manuscripts, nothing remains to rebuild, unlike the Waldensians, who had an organization, or the Hussites, who had a people^[72]. Second, the condemnation paradoxically protected authentic mysticism: by drawing a clear boundary, Vienne allowed the Ruusbroecs, the Susos and the Catherines of Siena to preach union with God without suspicion reaching them^[73].

The fundamental question remains: why are these theses incompatible with the Catholic faith, and how can one distinguish, still today, true mysticism from its counterfeit? Three criteria, given by Scripture and verified by the experience of the saints, decide.

First Criterion: Union Increases Obedience, It Does Not Abolish It

In the whole tradition, from Saint Benedict to Saint Teresa of Avila, from Saint Francis to Therese of Lisieux, the more the soul is united to God, the more it obeys, the more it attaches itself to the sacraments, the more it humbles itself^[74]. Catherine of Siena rebuked popes without breaking with them by an inch; stigmatics lived under direction; founders submitted their works to the judgment of the Church^[75]. The Free Spirit reverses the direction: that is the infallible sign of the counterfeit. The table below sets the boundary.

Second Criterion: the Fruits

The criterion is evangelical:

"By their fruits you shall know them," Gospel according to Saint Matthew, 7, 16^[76]

The fruit of the Spirit is "charity, joy, peace, patience" (Gal 5, 22)^[77]. Yet the documented fruits of the Free Spirit are spiritual pride, division of communities, moral license and, at the end, obstinacy against the Church even to the stake, the exact opposite^[78]. The fruits of authentic mysticism are the reverse: humility, gentleness, zeal for souls, submission, from Mary of Oignies to the seers of Fatima^[79].

Third Criterion: No One Exempts Himself from the Means of Salvation

Christ gave His Church visible means, baptism, Eucharist, confession, pastors, and no one can declare on his own authority that he has surpassed them^[80]. To claim that the Spirit dispenses from the sacraments is to claim that the Spirit contradicts Christ who instituted them; yet "the Spirit does not speak on His own" but receives from Christ (Jn 16, 14)^[81]. That is why article 8 of Ad nostrum, contempt for Eucharistic homage, is perhaps the most revealing: where adoration of the Body of Christ ceases, one knows that the spirit speaking is not the Spirit of God^[82].

The Free Spirit dossier is one of the most thoroughly worked in medieval historiography, and one of the most debated. Three positions divide the specialists, and they must be presented fairly.

The classical position, Henry Charles Lea (A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, New York, 1888, vols. 2 and 3), takes the inquisitorial dossiers literally: there was indeed a Free Spirit sect, ramified and formidable, which the Inquisition was right to hunt down^[83]. That is the reading that long reigned, and that still feeds both black legends and reverse apologies.

The revisionist position, Robert E. Lerner (1972), followed by Malcolm Lambert (1992), holds that the "sect" is for the most part an inquisitorial construction: real but scattered beliefs, sincerely misguided individuals, verbal exaggerations of clumsy mystics, all amalgamated by inquisitors who needed a nameable heresy^[84]. Recent research on the Low Countries and the Lower Rhine (the journal Oliviana, series "Persecuted by the Unknowing") refines this further: the campaigns of the early 14th century targeted above all a new milieu of beguines and beghards that had appeared around Cologne about 1290, neither fully orthodox nor constituted as a sect^[85].

The intermediate position, the most held today, admits both parts: yes, the inquisitors amalgamated and at times fabricated links where there was only resemblance; but the condemned doctrine was indeed professed, by real persons, with real consequences, burnings included^[86]. To deny the organized sect does not require denying the heresy: an error needs no headquarters to lead souls astray.

For the Catholic reader, the essential point fits in one sentence: whether the Free Spirit was a sect or a specter, the eight articles remain condemned, and the discernment founded on them remains valid, for the same claims (impeccability, exemption from the means, disobedience in the name of the Spirit) resurface in every century under new names^[87].

• The heterodox fringe of the beguines and beghards, and the Porete case in detail: Heterodox Beguins and Beghards
• The Franciscan Spirituals and absolute poverty: Fraticelli
• The reading of the three ages of history: Radical Joachimism (13th-14th century)
• The dualists of the South: Catharism and The Albigensians (12th-13th century)
• The poor of Lyon and their Balkan cousins: The Waldensians (1170-1532), Bogomilism (10th-15th century) and Paulicianism
• The English and Bohemian challenges: Wycliffism, Hussitism (1415-1436), The Taborites (1420-1452) and Radical Conciliarism