The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages

TLDR

The Free Spirit heresy, regarded as the most significant continental European heresy of the fourteenth century, has been portrayed as an anarchistic, sexually libertine movement that subverted authority and is seen as a precursor to later radical thinkers. The study investigates the Free‑Spirit movement in its contemporary context, arguing it was a spectrum of beliefs rather than a tightly organized sect. The authors find that the movement was largely a typical late‑medieval quest for God and godliness, rather than a radical sect.

Abstract

The heresy of the Free Spirit is often considered to have been the most important continental European heresy of the fourteenth century. Many historians have described its membership as a league of anarchistic deviants who fomented sexual license and subversion of authority. Free Spirits are supposed to have justified nihilism and megalomania and to have been remote precursors of Bakunin and Nietzsche and twentieth-century bohemians and hippies. This volume examines the Free-Spirit movement as it appeared in its own age, and concludes that it was not a tightly-organized sect, but rather a spectrum of belief that emphasized voluntary poverty and quietistic mysticism. Overall, the movement was far more typical of the late-medieval search for God and godliness that is commonly supposed.