The Brothers, or Brethren of the Free Spirit, was a lay Christian movement which flourished in northern Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries. Antinomian and individualist in outlook, it came into conflict with the Catholic Church and was declared heretical by Pope Clement V at the Council of Vienne (1311–12). They are often considered similar to the Amalricans. They flourished at a time of great trauma in Western Europe during the conflict between the decadent Avignon Papacy and the Holy Roman Emperor, the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, the rise of the Cathar heresy and the subsequent Crusade against them, the beginnings of the Inquisition, the fall of the Templars and the internal strife of the Church — all of which helped fuel the appeal of their individualistic and millenarian approach to Christianity and Scripture.
In this time of crisis within the Church and society as a whole there was a strong sense that the end of the world was coming and so the issue of Man's spirituality and salvation became more and more important. Where people ceased to find the spiritual answers they sought from Rome, dissident movements like the Brethren sprang up all across Europe preaching an alternative view of Christianity. They fell foul of the Church and were persecuted as heretics by the temporal and spiritual authorities of the time.
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From the very beginning of what would become the Free Spirit Heresy its followers ran into trouble with the secular and religious authorities. Both Amaury de Bene and Giochinno de Fiori, whose ideas could be said to be at the fountainhead of the movement, underwent examination and persecution at the hands of the Church. Amaury's writings were condemned in 1204, Amaury himself dying in 1207 having been forced to recant his views. In 1209 ten of his followers were burnt at the stake in Paris, Amaury's body was exhumed, also burnt and the ashes scattered. By 1215 his work and followers were formally condemned by the Fourth Lateran Council and denounced as officially heretical.
In spite of the support of earlier Popes and his popularity among the people, in 1200 Gioacchino da Fiore submitted his works to Pope Innocent III for examination but, like Eckhart after him, died before judgement could be carried out. Some of his ideas were officially condemned along with Amaury's at the same Lateran Council of 1215 and his followers, the Joachimites, were brutally suppressed by the Church against whom they were starting to preach. By this time, with the rise of the Cathar movement in the south of France, the Church was increasingly on its guard against the threat of heresy.
Nevertheless the spread of Free Spirit ideas continued along with other possibly related Christian lay movements such as the Beguines and Beghards, even after the suppression of other heresies such as the Cathars and the Waldensians. By the 14th century the movement had spread widely across the Champagne, Thüringen and Bavaria and more northwards into what is now Belgium and Holland. It was during this time that works such as Porete's The Mirror of Simple Souls and Mechtild of Magdeburg's Light Flowing from the Godhead were being written and Meister Eckhart was preaching. As the heresy spread the Inquisition moved in to combat and root it out. Porete was burnt at the stake in 1310, Eckhart was put on trial in 1327 and other important Christian mystics, such as Jordan von Quedlinburg, Henry Suso and John of Ruysbroek spoke out against the heresy — even though some (Ruysbroek in particular) expressed similar ideas such as the immanence of God and the possibility of union with Christ in this life. Where they differed with the Brethren was in their belief in the validity of the Church and the need to experience these things within its framework. Eckhart himself denied that he had anything to do with the Free Spirits and insisted that his thinking remained within orthodox boundaries. Nevertheless he was forced to recant various ideas he had propounded that seemed to overlap them before he disappeared from public life.
From 1300 to 1350 the Brethren were found largely on the Rhine from Cologne to Strasbourg. In Brussels a similar movement appeared known as the Homines Intelligentiae or Men of Understanding. Towards the end of the 14th century the Lollards in England emerged, sharing many doctrines with the Free Spirit, as well as those of the Cathars and Waldensians. As with all these movements, the common ground included rejection of the Church as corrupt, a belief in the presence of God in the human soul via the Holy Spirit and the need to work out a grassroots salvation of mankind individually. The growing lay Christian movement with ecclesiastical connections, the secretive Friends of God, who are thought by some to have provided protection and anonymity for Meister Eckhart after his trial, may have absorbed some of the Brethren and their ideas into their ranks during the escalation of Church persecution of heretical movements. Johannes Tauler and Henry Suso are associated with this movement, although their view of the Brethren is disputed, Suso in particular preaching against them. The influential "anonymous" treatise, Theologia Germanica, was dissiminated during this time amongst many "heretical" groups and its approach to Brethren-like purification — mirroring Eckhart's style and language usage — became very influential. Some historians give it credit for the ultimate actions taken by Martin Luther, who prized the document, and the subsequent Protestant Reformation a century and a half later, although doctrinally Luther and the Reformation were very different from the Free Spirits.
Many edicts were published against the Brethren. In 1312 the Council of Vienne finally putting paid to any possibility of their avoiding the charge of heresy. But, notwithstanding the severities which they suffered, records show that the followers of the Free Spirit heresy continued until about the middle of the fifteenth century. Some sources identify their beliefs as precursors of later Christian movements such as the Ranters and the Quakers. Similarly, ideas reminiscent of the Free Spirit heresy can be found in the works of the poet and artist William Blake who preached a similar revolutionary, Gnostic Christianity (e.g. "One law for the lion and the ox is oppression... for everything that lives is holy" The Marriage of Heaven and Hell).
There is considerable confusion as to the relationship between the Brethren and other lay Christian movements of the time: the Beguines and Beghards with whom they were often confused. Indeed some have argued that the Brethren didn’t exist at all in the commonly held idea of a movement. It had no central leader, hierarchy or organisation and was very difficult to define. Such a view holds that rather than speaking of a Brethren of the Free Spirit in the same way as we speak of the Cathars, the Lollards or the Waldensians, we should talk about a Doctrine or Heresy of the Free Spirit or even little more than a loose set of ideas grouped together under a single title, i.e. "a state of mind as much as a settled body of doctrine", as British scholar Gordon Leff states it.
Not everyone accused of being a member of the Free Spirit or of disseminating their doctrines was part of the movement. Even at the Council of Vienne the Church authorities struggled to bring together documentation of what the Free Spirit stood for, using texts such as Marguerite Porete's The Mirror of Simple Souls as evidence of what the Brethren said. The very fact that no one spiritual thinker can be identified as the movement's founder (names linked to the movement include Amaury de Bene, Giochinno de Fiori and Meister Eckhart, all of whom, at different times, were cited by individuals proclaiming their adherence to the Heresy as the originators of their beliefs), or claimed to be so, indicate how disparate a movement it was.
As mentioned above, defining the doctrine of the Brethren of the Free Spirit is a complex undertaking. Central to their belief seem to be three fundamental ideas:
1. That God is incarnate/immanent in everything.
2. That history was divided into three periods, each corresponding to a different aspect of the Trinity.
3. That through a direct experience of God in which the Holy Spirit flourishes in the individual soul Man could achieve a union with God which meant that he could no longer sin.
Although not orthodox in interpretation, many of the ideas of the Free Spirit can be seen echoed in the Bible. In their preaching and literature followers of the Free Spirit (or rather those accused of being so) often drew justification, inspiration and imagery from Scriptural sources.
For instance, ideas of the 'indwelling' in Man of the Holy Spirit, the possibility of a union between Man and God in this life, an egalitarian relationship to God among humanity and the impossibility of sin once a union with God through Love has been established can be (and was) extrapolated from the following extracts:
The egalitarian vision of the Free Spirit which recognised no barriers of race, class or gender before God can be interpreted from the words of St Paul:
Similarly the idea of the journey towards union with God as an inner one can be interpreted from this passage in the Gospel of Luke:
Perhaps the clearest use of the Bible in a text associated with the Free Spirit is that found in Marguerite Porete's The Mirror of Simple Souls. Compare, for example, this passage from John's Epistle:
With Porete's words in her work:
All these strands of thought, coupled with a visionary, millenarian view of universal Christian redemption are perhaps found in the words of Paul in Athens in Acts:
A peculiarity of some of the writings and doctrines of the Free Spirit movement is in their echoes of Gnostic ideas in texts such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip. Imagery of the need to be 'naked' or purified before encountering salvation, the possibility of the Resurrection being a spiritual state of fullness experienced in this life rather than the next, the importance of Mary Magdalene, and descriptions of becoming drunk on the Holy Spirit all can be found in Thomas and other Gnostic writings as well as in the practises of various Free Spirit gatherings (some Beghard congregations are said to have conducted Masses nude), the Sister Catherine Treatise and the work of Marguerite Porete. A typical parallel, for instance, can be seen in the following extract from Thomas, which seems to endorse the pantheism of the Free Spirit's followers:
Similarly, the idea that one who has Knowledge (Gnosis) or Union with God cannot and does not sin is found in Philip:
Whether these echoes are circumstantial or not is up for debate, especially as these Gospels were presumed lost until their discovery among the Nag Hammadi manuscripts in the 20th Century. It is possible that such Gnostic ideas or texts were in circulation in the areas where the Free Spirit flourished via the Cathars, whose dualistic and transcendentalist approach to Christianity had its roots in the East but this is unproven, although it is true that the regions where the Cathars were strongest in northern Europe — Flanders, the Rhineland, Cologne — were the regions where the Free Spirit spread most strongly. Whatever the case the parallels are there and very striking.
For all the reasons given above it is hard to establish who was representative of the Free Spirit and who was not. Similarly, perceptions of how members of the movement behaved are complex and multifarious. Although sharing similar ideas about how to interpret the Bible — antinomian, egalitarian, believing in a mystical apprehension and union with God in this life — how this happened in practice is hard to determine. For instance, there is no evidence in Porete's work that amorality was justified. Although Porete argues that the Unencumbered or Annihilated Soul is above the Virtues and demands of Holy Church she believes that sin is not possible because, because the Soul is now One with God, sin is simply not available to it as an option:
Porete's expression of Free Spirit ideas is highly mystical and predicates the idea of the impossibility of sin on this mystical union with God through Love. This view of the ideas of the Free Spirit suggests that among certain of its members a complete giving over of the individual to a spiritual relationship with God is the goal of the believer. It is echoed in other works and sayings of people accused or suspected of expressing Free Spirit heresies such as Meister Eckhart and the unknown author of the Sister Catherine Treatise. Nowhere in these writings is a belief in unbridled sensuality countenanced, in fact exactly the opposite, the woman speaker in the Sister Catherine Treatise, for instance, expressing her desire never to "diverge from the path of our Lord Jesus Christ" after her personal union with God. Scholar of the movement Ellen Babinsky summarizes this view thus:
On the other hand there are copious records of the use of the Free Spirit interpretation of Scripture to justify non-monogamous sex, violence, robbery and rape. Whether these records are merely anti-heretical propaganda (other heretical movements such as the Cathars were accused of similar crimes) or not is unclear. The sheer volume of evidence suggests that there was abuse of the ideology, particularly by those who professed to follow the heresy who were not living in closed communities such as Beguine and Beghard settlements. The image presented is of roving bands or isolated individuals travelling across Europe spreading havoc with their amoral, millenarian vision of Christianity. Free Spirit heretics were accused of enjoying group sex, of conducting masses naked, claiming that they were God and, in one instance, that there was no God and that blind chance ruled the universe. Historian Barbara Tuchman vividly conjures up this vision of moral and religious anarchy in her seminal book on the Middle Ages, A Distant Mirror, :
Here we find the central paradox in evaluating the Free Spirit. Both extracts speak of the same root belief — that the soul in union with God cannot sin. Where one suggests that to achieve this state is arduous and involves a process of purification, the other sees that once the state of union with God exists, by any means, easy or hard, it justifies what would be seen as immoral acts in the authoritarian churches of that time (or this). The Free Spirit heresy challenged the authority of the Church, which traditionally used accusations of sexual perversion and immorality to attack heretical movements. Individuals who lived exemplary lives were also suspected of Free Spirit leanings (such as Meister Eckhart and even John of Ruysbroek who preached against the movement). The Free Spirit interpretation of the Bible, like any doctrine, was open to interpretation, with some following a more conventional path for the time, and others using the doctrines to provide themselves with a more freedom than was commonly available under Church rule.
This ambiguity inherent within the movement is perhaps well illustrated in the following extract from a Beghard writer who was clearly influenced by the ideas of the Free Spirit:
The similarities but also the differences with the words of Porete are clear, as is the difficulty of understanding quite what the morality of the extract is, and how easily it could be misconstrued.
This interpretation of the role of sin on the road to an understanding of God is not dissimilar to that put forward by English mystic Julian of Norwich in her work Revelations of Divine Love, in which she says that, although undesirable, 'sin is behovely' as through repentance sin can become part of God's pattern whereby the soul can reach God. Again, Julian, like Porete, is at pains to explain that this is not to justify sin (both argue that sin is something to be avoided) but to understand its place in the universe — that sometimes before one reaches a state of bliss in union with God one cannot avoid sinning but that when it is rightly understood, those sins are forgiven, thus becoming part of God's plan in guiding the Soul to God. It is significant that Julian was not branded a heretic while Porete and other supposed followers of the Free Spirit were. Where Julian differed from Porete perhaps, was in her belief that the union with God and the particular view of the role of sin she spoke were possible within the established structure of the Church and not in opposition to it.