The Brethren of the Free Spirit were adherents of a loose set of beliefs deemed heretical by the Catholic Church but held (or at least believed to be held) by some Christians, especially in the Low Countries, Germany, France, Bohemia, and Northern Italy between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The movement was first identified in the late thirteenth century. It was not a single movement or school of thought, and it caused great unease among Church leaders at the time. Adherents were also called Free Spirits.
The set of errors condemned in the decree Ad nostrum at the Council of Vienne (1311–12) has often been used by historians to typify the group's core beliefs, though there was wide variation over how the heresy was defined during the era, and there is substantial debate over how far the individuals and groups accused of holding the beliefs (including Marguerite Porete, the Beguines, the Beghards, and Meister Eckhart) actually held the views attributed to them.
The meaning of the term has in more recent times been extended to apply to the beliefs of other Christian individuals and groups, active both before and after the core period of the late Middle Ages.
Origins
The set of beliefs ascribed to the Free Spirits is first to be found in a text called the Compilatio de novo spiritu put together by Albert the Great in the 1270s, concerning a group of persons investigated in the Swabian Ries area of Germany. The themes which occur in these documents, and which would emerge again in subsequent investigations, included: Autotheism – in other words, a belief that the perfected soul and God are indistinguishably one. This was often expressed through the language of indistinction or annihilation. This belief would be heretical because it would undermine the necessary distinction between fallen created being and creator. Denial of the necessity of Christ, the church and its sacraments for salvation – such that austerity and reliance on the Holy Spirit was believed to be sufficient for salvation. They believed that they could communicate directly with God and did not need the Catholic Church for intercession. Use of the language of erotic union with Christ. Antinomian statements ("Nothing is a sin except what is thought to be a sin"). Critics of the Free Spirit interpreted their beliefs to mean that they considered themselves to be incapable of sin and above the moral conduct of the Church. Verses such as Galatians 5:18 ("Those who are driven or led by the Spirit of God are no longer under the law") were seen as foundational to such beliefs. Anticlerical sentiment.
During the late thirteenth century, such concerns increasingly became applied to the various unregulated religious groups such as the Beguines and Beghards, who had greatly increased in number in the preceding decades. Concerns over such sentiments then began to occur elsewhere, especially during the 1300s, and especially in Italy. Partly motivated by such concerns, in 1308 Pope Clement V summoned a general council, which met at Vienne from October 1311 to May 1312. In particular, it had to engage with the report from the Paris inquisition (1308–1310) into the beguine Marguerite Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Souls (Porete’s writing, which had become well read through France, had been condemned in 1310 as heresy, and Porete had been burned at the stake) . It was the Council of Vienne which first associated these various beliefs with the idea of the 'Free Spirit'.
14th and 15th century
During subsequent centuries, there was great fear of the Heresy of the Free Spirit, and many individuals and groups were accused of it. In particular, beguine and beghard groups came under suspicion.
John of Dirpheim, Bishop of Strasbourg from 1306 to 1328, was a particularly fervent opponent of heresy. Another person accused, by Bishop John's colleague Henry of Virneburg, Bishop of Cologne, was Meister Eckhart, a German Dominican, who lived during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. In 1326, Eckhart was charged by the Pope for teaching heresy. He rigorously denied and defended against that charge until he disappeared from public life. Eckhart may have been familiar with the work of Marguerite Porete through his proximity to theologians involved in her trial, such as Berengar of Landora and William of Poitiers. More broadly, as a result of his prominence and through the statements of his used in the bull In agro Dominico he came to be recognised by the later mystical tradition as the "father" of the Free Spirit. This is seen particularly in the writings of Jan van Ruusbroec and his followers.