* Antiochus IV Epiphanes [Антиох IV Эпифан] (c -215--164). Antiochus IV Epiphanes (Ancient Greek: Antíochos ho Epiphanḗs, "God Manifest") also called Epimanes ("The Mad") was a Greek Hellenistic king of the Seleucid Empire from 175 BC until his death in 164 BC. He was a son of King Antiochus III the Great. His original name was Mithradates (alternative form Mithridates); he assumed the name Antiochus after he ascended the throne. Notable events during the reign of Antiochus IV include his near-conquest of Egypt, his persecution of the Jews of Judea and Samaria, and the rebellion of the Jewish Maccabees. Antiochus is notable as the first successful usurper in the history of the Seleucid realm and his rise to power set a pattern for further attempts in subsequent generations. After his own death, power struggles between competing lines of the ruling dynasty heavily contributed to the collapse of the empire. Antiochus' often eccentric behaviour and capricious actions during his interactions with common people such as appearing in the public bath houses and applying for municipal offices led some of his contemporaries to call him Epimanes ("The Mad One"), a word play on his title Epiphanes. (...) Jewish tradition. Antiochus IV is remembered as a major villain and persecutor in the Jewish traditions associated with Hanukkah, including the books of Maccabees and the "Scroll of Antiochus". Rabbinical sources refer to him as harasha ("the wicked"); the Jewish Encyclopedia concluded that "[s]ince Jewish and heathen sources agree in their characterization of him, their portrayal is evidently correct", summarizing this portrayal as one of a cruel and vainglorious ruler who tried to force on all the peoples of his realm a Hellenic culture, "the true essence of which he can scarcely be said to have appreciated". Whether Antiochus' policy was directed at extermination of Judaism as a culture and a religion, though, is debatable on the grounds that his persecution was limited to Judea and Samaria (Jews in the diaspora were exempt), and that Antiochus was hardly an ideologically motivated Hellenizer. Erich S. Gruen suggests that, instead, he was driven more by pragmatics such as the need to gather income from Judea.

* Apocalypse of Baruch [2 Baruch, Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch] (I-III). 2 Baruch [Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch] (I/II). 2 Baruch is a Jewish pseudepigraphical text thought to have been written in the late 1st century AD or early 2nd century AD, after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. It is attributed to the biblical Baruch and so is associated with the Old Testament, but not regarded as scripture by Jews or by most Christian groups. It is included in some editions of the Peshitta, and is part of the Bible in the Syriac Orthodox tradition. It has 87 sections (chapters). 2 Baruch is also known as the Apocalypse of Baruch or the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (used to distinguish it from the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch). The Apocalypse proper occupies the first 77 chapters of the book. Chapters 78–87 are usually referred to as the Letter of Baruch to the Nine and a Half Tribes. (...) Chapters 47–52: This central part of the Apocalypse begins with the great prayer of Baruch, full of humility in front of the majesty of God. God reveals to him the oppressions in the latter days, the resurrection, the final destiny of the righteous ("there shall then be excellency in the righteous surpassing that in the angels"), and the fate of the godless. Thus Baruch understands not to grieve for those who die, but to feel joy for the present sufferance. Chapters 53–74: A second prophetic vision follows, whose meaning is explained by the angel Ramiel. A cloud which arises from the sea rains down twelve times, dark and bright waters alternately. This indicates the course of events from Adam to the Messiah. The six dark waters are the dominion of the godless—Adam, Ancient Egypt, Canaan, Jeroboam, Manasseh, and the Chaldeans. The six bright waters are Abraham, Moses, David, Hezekiah, Josiah, and the time of the Second Temple ("nevertheless, not fully as in the beginning"). After these twelve waters comes another water, still darker than the others and shot with fire, carrying annihilation in its wake. A bright flash puts an end to the fearful tempest. The dark cloud is the period between the time of the Second Temple and the advent of the Messiah; the latter event determines the dominion of the wicked, and inaugurates the era of eternal bliss. (...) Chapters 78–87 (known also as Letter of Baruch to the Nine and One-half Tribes): the main themes of this letter are the hope for a future reward after the present sufferance, the speeding up of the times, the constancy of Moses's covenant, and the freedom of man to follow God. The Letter of Baruch had a separate and wider circulation than the rest of the book, and is attested in thirty-six Syriac manuscripts. || 3 Baruch or the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch is a visionary, pseudepigraphic text written some time between the fall of Jerusalem to the Roman Empire in 70 AD and the third century AD. Scholars disagree on whether it was written by a Jew or a Christian, or whether a clear distinction can be made in this era. It is one of the Pseudepigrapha, attributed to the 6th-century BC scribe of Jeremiah, Baruch ben Neriah, and does not form part of the biblical canon of either Jews or Christians.[citation needed] It survives in certain Greek manuscripts, and also in a few Old Church Slavonic ones. Like 2 Baruch, this Greek Apocalypse of Baruch describes the state of Jerusalem after the sack by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BC and discusses how Jerusalem can survive when the temple is no longer in existence. It frames this discussion as a mystical vision granted to Baruch ben Neriah. Also like 2 Baruch, 3 Baruch argues that the Temple has been preserved in heaven and is presented as fully functional and attended by angels; thus there is no need for the temple to be rebuilt on earth. This third book of Baruch addresses the question of why God permits good people to suffer, and answering with a vision of the afterlife in which sinners and the righteous get their just rewards. During the vision, Baruch is shown various heavens, there witnessing the punishment of the builders of the "tower of strife against God" (perhaps the Tower of Babel); a serpent named Hades who drinks from the sea; and other such marvels, until he is finally stopped by a locked gate at the fifth heaven, which only the archangel Michael has the ability to open. The builders of the "tower of strife" are described in terms that could be regarded as demonic – with the faces of cattle, horns of sheep, and feet of goats; while those who commanded them to build it are punished eternally in a separate heaven where they are reincarnated in the forms of dogs, bears or apes. Baruch also witnesses a phoenix, which the text portrays as a massive singular bird that protects the earth from the rays of the sun.

* Papias of Hierapolis [Папий Иерапольский] (c 60-c 130). Papias was a Greek Apostolic Father, Bishop of Hierapolis (modern Pamukkale, Turkey), and author who lived c. 60 – c. 130 AD. He wrote the Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord in five books. This work, which is lost apart from brief excerpts in the works of Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 180) and Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 320), is an important early source on Christian oral tradition and especially on the origins of the canonical Gospels. Very little is known of Papias apart from what can be inferred from his own writings. He is described as "an ancient man who was a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp" by Polycarp's disciple Irenaeus (c. 180). Eusebius adds that Papias was Bishop of Hierapolis around the time of Ignatius of Antioch. In this office Papias was presumably succeeded by Abercius of Hierapolis. The name Papias was very common in the region, suggesting that he was probably a native of the area. (...) Eschatological. Eusebius concludes from the writings of Papias that he was a chiliast, understanding the Millennium as a literal period in which Christ will reign on Earth, and chastises Papias for his literal interpretation of figurative passages, writing that Papias "appears to have been of very limited understanding", and felt that his misunderstanding misled Irenaeus and others. Irenaeus indeed quotes the fourth book of Papias for an otherwise-unknown saying of Jesus, recounted by John the Evangelist, which Eusebius doubtless has in mind: "The Lord used to teach about those times and say: "The days will come when vines will grow, each having ten thousand shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand branches, and on each branch ten thousand twigs, and on each twig ten thousand clusters, and in each cluster ten thousand grapes, and each grape when crushed will yield twenty-five measures of wine. And when one of the saints takes hold of a cluster, another cluster will cry out, "I am better, take me, bless the Lord through me." Similarly a grain of wheat will produce ten thousand heads, and every head will have ten thousand grains, and every grain ten pounds of fine flour, white and clean. And the other fruits, seeds, and grass will produce in similar proportions, and all the animals feeding on these fruits produced by the soil will in turn become peaceful and harmonious toward one another, and fully subject to humankind.… These things are believable to those who believe." And when Judas the traitor did not believe and asked, "How, then, will such growth be accomplished by the Lord?", the Lord said, "Those who live until those times will see."" Parallels have often been noted between this account and Jewish texts of the period such as 2 Baruch. On the other hand, Papias is elsewhere said to have understood mystically the Hexaemeron (six days of Creation) as referring to Christ and the Church. (...) Eusebius had a "low esteem of Papias' intellect". Eusebius, despite his own views on Papias, knew that Irenaeus believed Papias to be a reliable witness to original apostolic traditions. We should be hesitant to take much from Eusebius' comment about Papias' intellect though. Eusebius’ use of sources suggests that he himself did not always exercise the soundest of critical judgement, and his negative assessment of Papias was in all likelihood dictated simply by a distrust of chiliasm.

* Commodian [Commodianus; Коммодиан] (III). Commodian (Commodianus) was a Christian Latin poet, who flourished about AD 250. The only ancient writers who mention him are Gennadius, presbyter of Massilia (end of 5th century), in his De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, and Pope Gelasius in De libris recipiendis et non recipiendis, in which his works are classed as Apocryphi, probably on account of certain heterodox statements contained in them. Commodianus is supposed to have been from Roman Africa, partly on the ground of his similarity to Cyprian, partly because the African school was the chief center of Christian Latinity in the third century; a Syrian origin has also been suggested. As he himself tells us, he was originally a heathen, but was converted to Christianity when advanced in years, and felt called upon to instruct the ignorant in the truth. He was the author of two extant Latin poems, Instructiones and Carmen apologeticum. (...) The first part of the Instructiones is addressed to the heathens and Jews, and ridicules the divinities of classical mythology; the second contains reflections on Antichrist, the end of the world, the Resurrection, and advice to Christians, penitents, and the clergy. In the Apologeticum all mankind are exhorted to repent, in view of the approaching end of the world. The appearance of Antichrist, identified with Nero and the Man from the East {Persian ??}, is expected at an early date. Although they display fiery dogmatic zeal, the poems cannot be considered quite orthodox.

* King asleep in mountain [Король под горой]. The king asleep in mountain (D 1960.2 in Stith Thompson's motif index system) is a prominent folklore motif found in many folktales and legends. Thompson also termed it as the Kyffhäuser type. Some other designations are: king in the mountain, king under the mountain, or sleeping hero. Examples include the legends of King Arthur, Fionn mac Cumhaill, Charlemagne, Ogier the Dane, King David, Frederick Barbarossa at Kyffhäuser, Constantine XI Palaiologos, Kraljević Marko, Sebastian of Portugal and King Matjaž. (...) Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, said to have been turned into marble and thus was known as "Marmaromenos", "the Marble King". He was said to be hidden somewhere underground until his glorious return as the Immortal Emperor. Король под горой. Король под горой, или Спящий герой, — традиционный мотив фольклора и мифологии, встречающийся в легендах многих народов Европы и Кавказа. Истории данного типа повествуют о легендарных героях, часто сопровождаемых вооружённым отрядом соратников, которые спят в земных недрах — горных пещерах, на удалённых островах или в потустороннем царстве, и проснутся, когда их родина будет испытывать трудности. Данный герой зачастую является исторической фигурой и военным лидером, оставившим след в истории той страны, где показывают данную гору, проигравшим свою последнюю битву и погибшим в ней, но любимый народным сознанием. (...) Император Константин XI Драгаш согласно греческой легенде был превращён в мрамор.

* Kyffhäuser Mountains. Kyffhäuser Mountains, German Kyffhäuser Gebirge, double line of hills on the northern edge of the Thüringer Basin in central Germany that extend for 13 miles (21 km) and reach a maximum height in the Kulpen-Berg (1,565 feet [477 m]). Lying in the lowland of Thuringia on the south side of the Harz Mountains, the range cuts off steeply to the north and slopes gently to the south. The northern hills look down upon the valley of the Goldene Aue and are crowned by two ruined castles, the 7th-century Rothenburg on the west and the 10th-century Kyffhäuser on the east. The hill of Kyffhäuser is surmounted by an imposing equestrian statue (erected 1896) of the German emperor William I. According to legend, the 12th-century Holy Roman emperor Frederick I Barbarossa is asleep within the mountain and one day will awaken to lead the united peoples of Germany to victory against their enemies. Britannica - Thuringia

* Hirsau Reforms (XI). Against this background William introduced to Hirsau, from no later than 1079, a number of reforms originating in Cluny, on which he based the Constitutiones Hirsaugienses ("Customs of Hirsau"), which later became very widespread as a result of the Hirsau Reforms (see below). These reforms particularly focussed on discipline and obedience, tough punishments for infringements of the rules and continuous supervision of the monks. Parallel with these developments he found it necessary, in order to bring under some sort of control the great numbers of laymen flocking to Hirsau, to create the institution of the conversi {lay brother} in the German Benedictine monasteries. Before this there were certainly men-servants in the monasteries, but they lived outside the monastery, wore no specifically religious clothing and took no vows. Despite – or rather, precisely because of – the unusually strict monastic discipline and ascetic piety which William introduced from Cluny, Hirsau had become very attractive: the number of choir monks increased from 15 to 150. Due to this increase in its popularity, the existing monastery (dedicated to Saint Aurelius) proved too small, and the community therefore re-settled to the other side of the River Nagold. There, sometime after 1083, was built the largest monastery complex in Germany of the time, with its great Romanesque church dedicated to Saint Peter. (William of Hirsau) // It was however Frederick's successor who revived and even surpassed the former renown and prosperity of the abbey. This was the famous William of Hirsau, a monk descending from St. Emmeram's Abbey in the Bavarian capital Regensburg, who was appointed abbot in 1069. But the abbot's greatest work, perhaps, and that for which his name is best remembered, was the reformation that he effected within the community itself. Cluny was then at the height of its fame and William sent some of his monks there to learn the Cluniac customs and rule, after which the Cluniac discipline was introduced at Hirsau. By his Constitutiones Hirsaugienses, a new religious order, the Ordo Hirsaugiensis, was formed. Known as the Hirsau Reforms, the adoption of this rule revitalised Benedictine monasteries throughout Germany. (Hirsau Abbey)

* Aldebert (VIII). Aldebert, or Adalbert, was a preacher in 8th century Gaul. He claimed that an angel had conferred miraculous powers on him at his birth and that another had brought him relics of great sanctity from all parts of the earth. He also claimed to be able to see the future and read people's thoughts, telling those who came to him that they had no need to confess, since he knew what they had done, and that their sins were forgiven. Adalbert appeared in the district of Soissons sometime in the 8th century and practised and preached a life of Apostolic poverty. He was banned by the local bishop from preaching in churches, and preached in the countryside, in the open air and later in churches that his followers (he had acquired many of them) had built for him. According to St Boniface, he erected crucifixes at fields and springs. According to the same saint, Adalbert had also claimed to have received a letter that Jesus Christ had given from heaven to Jerusalem, which Aldebert used in his own preachings. He also used mystic prayers of his own composition to call on the names of angels that were not accepted by the church canon (Uriel, Raguel, Tubuel, Adinus, Tubuas, Sabaoc and Simiel), and which his detractors alleged were demons that he invoked (some of these angel names also had gnostic connections). One of his prayers invoked by name the angel Raguel. His "miracles" gained him the awe of the people and he began to give away parings from his nails and locks of his hair as powerful amulets. He managed to get 'unlearned' (indoctri) bishops to consecrate him a bishop. He would erect crosses or build small chapels in the countryside and at springs and ordered public prayers to be said there. Adalbert gained many followers, but Boniface wrote to Rome asking for the Pope to help him "lead back the Franks and Gauls to the right path" and claiming that Adalbert had seduced the multitudes. St Boniface appealed to the Pope for a synod, which was then granted in 744 a synod in Soissons, with the help of Carloman and Pepin. The synod, led by Boniface, decided to take Adalbert into custody. The Synod ordered the burning of the crosses that Adalbert had set up in the countryside. However Adalbert escaped and continued to preach. A German synod the following year, presided by Boniface and Carloman, excommunicated him along with an Irish preacher named Clement and many others. (...) A century later, the Anonymous of Mainz wrote that Adalbert had been condemned and deposed at a Synod at Mainz (which may have been the council that Pope Zachary had called for), and that afterwards he was imprisoned for blasphemy in the monastery of Fulda. The same account reported that he later escaped and was killed by thieves, although he may have rather died in jail. He wrote an account of his own life, but only a fragment survives. St Boniface also wrote about him, and left the largest extant record of him. // A letter by Boniface charging Aldebert and Clement with heresy is preserved in the records of the Roman Council of 745 that condemned the two. (Saint Boniface)

* Clement Scotus I (VIII). Clement Scotus I (fl. 745) was a bishop. Doubtless a native of Ireland, Clement Scotus lived in the Frankish realm in the time of St. Boniface, who was then archbishop of Mentz. He contended against Boniface's attempts to introduce the complete Roman discipline into Germany, but in vain. The archbishop cited him before a synod in 743 or 744, at which Carloman and Pepin were present. Clement was deprived of his priesthood and imprisoned for his acts and opinions, which it deemed heretical. Pope Zacharias, to whom the affair was reported, approved Boniface's action and confirmed the former part of the sentence. The charges against Clement were first, that he had a wife—although Boniface calls her a concubine—and two children; more than this, that he justified marriage with a deceased brother's wife, in conformity with the Jewish law. Religious beliefs. In dogmatic theology Clement held views which seemed to contradict the Latin doctrine of predestination {??}. He also asserted that Christ on rising from the dead 'delivered all who had been Kept in prison, faithful and unbelievers, worshippers of God as well as idolaters.'[citation needed] This description, drawn by his enemy, probably indicates that Clement maintained a universalism of some sort. Accusations of heresy. He was also accused of denying the canons of the church and rejecting the authority of {Church Fathers} Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine, and Saint Gregory. He had in fact brought into collision with the rigour of Latin Christianity those freer usages and more speculative habits of thought which prevailed in the Church of Ireland, at this time the fountain-head of literary culture and missionary enterprise for the west of Europe. The German opponents of Boniface, who seem to have been in a majority, must have supported Clement. When the matter was brought before a synod at Rome, on 25 Oct. 745 (not 746 or 748, as was formerly supposed), Deneard, Boniface's representative, stated that the archbishop was powerless to close his mouth. The synod confirmed Boniface's action, anathematised Clement, and once more declared him to be deprived of his orders. But in spite of this sentence Clement persisted in his opinions, and so soon as 5 Jan. 747 we find the pope writing again to Boniface, enjoining him to re-examine the whole question at a council which was shortly to be held in Germany, and to do his best to bring Clement to repentance; should he prove contumacious {stubbornly or wilfully disobedient to authority}, he was to be sent on to Rome. The outcome of the affair is not known; but it is probable that Clement's case from the beginning was prejudiced by the fact that his opinions were mixed up in all the proceedings with those of a certain Adelbert, who held views of a very fanatical character. Clement, on the other hand, to judge even from the meagre and distorted accounts of his doctrine which we possess, seems to represent in some ways the free characteristics of Irish theology expressed in the writings of his countryman, John Scotus {Eriugena}, a century later. This Clement has been often confounded with Clement Scotus II. // One of the few Irishmen active on the Continent in the eighth century of whom we have some information was a priest (or bishop) named Clemens. Together with the Gaul Aldebert, this peregrinus was the subject of an extensive correspondence between Boniface and the pope, which eventually led to the condemnation of both men at the Roman Council of 745. The accusations brought against Clemens by Boniface display parallels with known Irish teachings and practices, as well as other allegations leveled against individual traveling Irishmen and the Irish in general. (JSTOR) Sven Meeder - Boniface and the Irish Heresy of Clemens

* Fulk of Neuilly (XII/XIII). Fulk of Neuilly (also appearing in the forms "Fulke," "Foulque," "Foulques," "Fulco," "Folco," etc., and as "de Neuilly") (died 1201) was a French preacher of the twelfth century, and priest of Neuilly-sur-Marne. His preaching encouraged the Fourth Crusade. He is a beatus of the Roman Catholic Church; his feast is celebrated on March 2. A priest at Neuilly from 1191, he attended the lectures of Peter the Chanter in Paris. He began to preach from 1195, and gained a reputation for piety and eloquence. His preaching focused on reforming people's morality and many of his denunciations were upon the sins of usury and lustfulness. Clerical concubinage was a common target of his and he would often point out priests and concubines that were guilty of this sin in the crowd when he was preaching. It was reported that he rebuked King Richard I of England by advising him to marry off his three evil daughters, his Pride, Greed, and Lechery; and that the king replied that he would marry them appropriately to the Templars, the Cistercians, and to the bishops and abbots of the Church. An invitation for Fulk to preach a crusade came from Pope Innocent III in 1199. His preaching influenced both Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, and Alix de Montmorency. Fulk's assiduous enthusiasm in carrying out his mission led to rumours concerning the usage made of the monetary sums it produced[specify]. He died shortly afterwards. // Preacher of the Fourth Crusade; d. March 2, 1201. Nothing is known of his early life, but from 1191 he was a priest in the church of Neuilly-sur-Marne near Paris. He was an eloquent speaker and served as a wandering missionary-preacher through Normandy, Picardy, and Burgundy. The historian Villehardouin stated that it was Fulk who had inspired Count Thibaut III of Champagne (d.1201) to urge Pope Innocent III to organize the Fourth Crusade (1202–04), which resulted in the capture of Constantinople. Fulk then served as Innocent's chief recruiting agent in France, touring the country urging the people to follow their lords to the Holy War. He died, however, before the crusade got under way. Fulk was famed for his fearlessness before princes, and he reputedly ordered King Richard I of England to abandon his pride, avarice, and lust. Reference to Fulk can be found in Villehardouin, Roger of Hoveden, Ralph of Coggeshall, and Jacques de Vitry. He was buried in Neuilly-sur-Marne. New Catholic Encyclopedia - Fulk Of Neuilly, Bl. // In 1198 for the first time there seems to have appeared a propheta who summoned the poor to a crusade which should be theirs and theirs alone. Fulk of Neuilly was a typical ascetic miracle-worker whose immense popular prestige owed much to his supposed ability to heal the blind and the dumb. And what he envisaged would seem to have been nothing less than an independent army which would be as rigorously insistent on its poverty as, it was said, the horde of King Tafur had been. The crowds set in motion by Fulk perished miserably on the coast of Spain; but within a few years they were succeeded by the Children’s Crusades. In 1212 armies of children set out to recapture the Holy City, one army from France and another, much larger, from the Rhine valley. Each was headed by a youth who believed himself chosen by God and who was regarded by his followers as a miracle-working saint. These thousands of children could be held back neither by entreaty nor by force; their faith was such that they were convinced the Mediterranean would dry up before them as the Red Sea had dried up before the Israelites. These crusades too ended disastrously, with almost all the children either drowned in the sea or starved to death or sold into slavery in Africa. Nevertheless these mass migrations had inaugurated a tradition; for more than a century autonomous crusades of the poor continued to occur from time to time, and with consequences which were no longer disastrous to themselves alone. The Pseudo-Baldwin and the ‘Master of Hungary’

* Tafurs (XI). Tafurs were a group of participants of the First Crusade, under the Franks. Zealots following strict oaths of poverty, they are said to have committed acts of cannibalism during the Siege of Antioch. The Tafurs took their name from a horseless Norman knight, who assumed the organization and armed leadership of peasants gathered by the preaching and spiritual leadership of Peter the Hermit, and so became known as "King Tafur". "Tafur" appears to mean just "beggar" or "vagrant". "King Tafur" took harsh vows of poverty, relinquished his weapons and armour and donned a sack-cloth and a scythe {!!}, urging the rest of his followers to do the same. Tafurs wore no shoes, little clothing and barely lived off roots or herbs, frequently exhibiting sores and bruises throughout their bodies and were kept separated from the rest of the Crusaders. They wielded clubs, knives, hatchets etc, but were not allowed to have money or sophisticated weapons, otherwise they'd be sent to fight with the regular army. Anything gained through plunder however, was legitimate, and in fact seen as validation of God's favour towards their poverty. Hence, they were viciously rapacious and ruthless in the search of spoils. Arguably, what made the Tafurs infamous was their disregard for danger and reported acts of cannibalism: as starvation befell the Crusader army in Antioch, the Tafurs showed little hesitation in consuming the bodies of fallen enemies. Indeed, the Muslims greatly dreaded the Tafurs, much more so than even the rest of the Crusaders. When the governor of Antioch appealed to the Crusaders' princes to restrain the Tafurs, the princes had to admit to having little sway over them. Most of the barons (with the notable exception of Bohemond of Taranto) seem to have held the Tafurs in contempt, and never mention them in 'official' accounts back to Europe. They are, however, featured in chronicles written from a lower social standpoint, such as the Dei gesta per Francos or popular epics such as the Chanson d'Antioche The Tafurs followed the Crusaders to Jerusalem, and participated in the siege of the city in 1099.

* Pseudo-Baldwin [Bertrand of Ray] (XII). Meanwhile in Flanders and Hainaut the Fourth Crusade itself gave rise, indirectly and after an interval of a generation, to a movement which appealed strongly to the messianic hopes of the masses, even though its origin lay in a political intrigue {Hainaut vs Paris}. When the crusaders captured Constantinople in 1204 they installed Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders, as Emperor of Constantinople and suzerain {feudal overlord} of all the princes from the West who were now carving fiefs for themselves out of the territories of the Eastern Empire. Baldwin’s state was however very vulnerable and within a year the Emperor was captured by the Bulgarians and put to death. (...) At this point the age-old phantasy of the Sleeping Emperor reappeared in a form adapted to the hour. In virtue of his extraordinary history Baldwin had become in the popular imagination a figure of superhuman dimensions, a fabulous creature, half demon and half angel. Gradually a whole legend was elaborated. It was rumoured abroad that the Count was after all not dead but, having sinned greatly, was still discharging a penance imposed on him by the Pope. For many years he had been living in obscurity as a wandering beggar and hermit; but his expiation was now almost completed and he would very soon be returning in glory to free his land and people. In 1224 a stranger passed through the country around Tournai, distributing largesse and announcing that Baldwin was about to return. A few months later there appeared between Tournai and Valenciennes a begging hermit, in appearance a typical propheta, of imposing stature, with long hair and flowing beard. He was traced to a nearby forest, where he was found to be living in a hut made of branches; and at once the rumour began to spread that he was no other than the missing Count. (...) Fortified by this support the hermit announced that he was indeed Baldwin, returned home from the East after terrible sufferings. Great crowds streamed out from Valenciennes to see him and in April 1225 brought him back to the town on horseback, clad in a scarlet robe, amidst scenes of wild jubilation. Accepted by most of the nobility and towns of Flanders and Hainaut, the hermit assumed sovereign powers. (...) The towns were in a turbulent mood, not only because they saw a chance to extend their liberties by throwing off the suzerainty of the King of France but because they really believed that their true lord had been restored to them. Now they rose in arms and deposed Joanna, who only narrowly escaped capture. Civil war broke out; and the hermit, at the head of a powerful force, devastated Hainaut from end to end, pillaging and destroying every centre of resistance and setting fire to churches crammed full with people. This was no ordinary war but (as a modern historian has described it) a war of religious exaltation, a crusade against the Countess Joanna – who was now detested not merely as the ally of France but as an undutiful and rebellious daughter. And the leader of the crusade was no ordinary commander but a holy prince, a being so revered that people kissed the scars which bore witness to his long martyrdom, fought for a hair of his head or a scrap of his clothing and drank his bathwater as an earlier generation had drunk Tanchelm’s. In May the hermit was crowned, probably at Valenciennes, as Count of Flanders and Hainaut and Emperor of Constantinople and Thessalonica, in a ceremony in which the splendours of western and of eastern ritual were combined. (...) As a contemporary observer significantly remarked: ‘If God had come down to earth, he could not have been better received.’ Yet the enthusiasm was not equally great in all classes. While the rich tended to look askance at the new sovereign, the poor were all convinced that it was indeed Baldwin who had appeared amongst them. Although modern historians have tended to ignore the fact, the original sources show clearly enough that it was the urban poor, and especially the workers in the great textile industry, who adopted the man as their messiah. According to the same observer, ‘the poor folk, weavers and fullers, were his intimates, and the better-off and rich people got a bad deal everywhere. The poor folk said they would have gold and silver … and they called him Emperor.’ The comment seems all the more significant when one realizes that in that year of 1225 Flanders and Hainaut were in the throes of an appalling famine, such as had not been seen for generations. Politically the hermit had become a force to be reckoned with, for he had not only established his authority at home but was winning recognition abroad. (...) To all this the French king Louis VIII replied by concluding a treaty of alliance with the Countess Joanna, at the same time hinting that he himself might recognize the claims of the new ruler if the latter would visit him in person. The hermit accepted the invitation and made his way in magnificent state to the French court at Péronne. This turned out to be a fatal blunder. In conversation with Louis the hermit proved unable to recall things which the real Baldwin must certainly have known. Very soon he was identified as one Bertrand of Ray in Burgundy, a serf who had indeed taken part in the Fourth Crusade as a minstrel in the suite of his lord and who in later life had become notorious as a charlatan and impersonator. (...) And Valenciennes was indeed about to be besieged by the French when the pseudo-Baldwin again lost his nerve and fled, taking with him a large sum of money. Recognized and captured, he was paraded with great ignominy through the towns which had witnessed his triumph. In October he was hanged in the market-place at Lille, some seven months after he had first declared himself Count and Emperor. The Pseudo-Baldwin and the ‘Master of Hungary’ // Twenty years later, in 1225, a man appeared in Flanders claiming to be the presumed dead Baldwin. His claim soon became entangled in a series of rebellions and revolts in Flanders against the rule of Baldwin's daughter Jeanne. A number of people who had known Baldwin before the crusade rejected his claim, but he nonetheless attracted many followers from the ranks of the peasantry. Eventually unmasked as a Burgundian serf named Bertrand of Ray, the false Baldwin was executed in 1226. (Baldwin I, Latin Emperor)

* Capetian dynasty. In France messianic expectations centred on the Capetian dynasty, which during the twelfth and the thirteenth century came to enjoy a quasi-religious prestige of peculiar intensity. Already at the time of the Second Crusade Louis VII had been regarded by many as the Emperor of the Last Days. By the beginning of the thirteenth century the common people were at one with the king and his official apologists in claiming for the French monarchy an absolute primacy over all other monarchies. The King of France was anointed from the sainte ampoule, which had been brought by a dove from heaven; his standard was the oriflamme {The Oriflamme, a pointed, blood-red banner flown from a gilded lance, was the battle standard of the King of France in the Middle Ages.}, which had also descended from heaven; he himself possessed miraculous powers, particularly as a curer of disease. Philip Augustus – whose very title was modelled on the semper augustus of the imperial title — saw himself as a second Charlemagne, appointed by God to be the leader of all Latin Christendom. On the day of the battle of Bouvines in 1214, which by smashing the coalition of England, Germany and Flanders went far towards gaining him that leadership, Philip actually assumed the role of priest-king and, like Charlemagne in the Chanson de Roland, blessed his army as a host which was fighting for the true faith. In those same years there were sectarians in Paris who saw in the Dauphin, the future Louis VIII, a messiah who would reign for ever under the dispensation of the Holy Spirit over a united and purified world. If in the event Louis VIII {participated in the Albigensian Crusade in southern France, driving it to its successful and deadly conclusion} distinguished himself by his shrewdness and determination rather than by any spiritual gifts, his successor was indeed a secular saint. Louis IX {his reign is remembered as a medieval golden age in which the Kingdom of France reached an economic as well as political peak} – St Louis – set a new standard for kings throughout Christendom. Together with his rigorous asceticism, the genuine solicitude {care, concern } which he extended to the humblest of his subjects earned him an extraordinary veneration {He was seen as inspired by Christian zeal and Catholic devotion. Enforcing strict Catholic orthodoxy, his laws punished blasphemy by mutilation of the tongue and lips, and he ordered the burning of some 12,000 manuscript copies of the Talmud and other important Jewish books after the Disputation of Paris of 1240.}. What miraculous happenings were expected, one wonders, when this radiant figure set off on the Seventh Crusade? Certainly when he was defeated at Mansura in 1250 and led into a captivity which was to last four years it was a terrible blow to all Christendom. The disillusionment was so great that many in France began to taunt the clergy, saying that after all Mohammed seemed to be stronger than Christ {??}.

* Disputation of Paris [Trial of the Talmud; Парижский диспут] (1240). The Disputation of Paris (Hebrew: Mishpat Pariz; French: disputation de Paris), also known as the Trial of the Talmud (French: procès du Talmud), took place in 1240 at the court of King Louis IX of France. It followed the work of Nicholas Donin, a Jewish convert to Christianity who translated the Talmud and pressed 35 charges against it to Pope Gregory IX by quoting a series of allegedly blasphemous passages about Jesus, Mary, or Christianity. Four rabbis defended the Talmud against Donin's accusations.

* The Master of Hungary [monk Jacob; Shepherds' Crusade 1251] (XIII). It was in response to this catastrophe that there sprang up the first of the anarchic movements known as the Crusades of the Shepherds. At Easter 1251 three men began to preach the crusade in Picardy and within a few days their summons had spread to Brabant, Flanders and Hainaut – lands beyond the frontiers of the French kingdom, but where the masses were still as hungry for a messiah as they had been in the days of Bertrand of Ray {pseudo-Baldwin} a generation earlier. One of these men was a renegade monk called Jacob, who was said to have come from Hungary and was known as the ‘Master of Hungary’. He was a thin, pale, bearded ascetic of some sixty years of age, a man of commanding bearing and able to speak with great eloquence in French, German and Latin. He claimed that the Virgin Mary, surrounded by a host of angels, had appeared to him and had given him a letter — which he always carried in his hand, as Peter the Hermit is said to have carried a similar document. According to Jacob, this letter summoned all shepherds to help King Louis to free the Holy Sepulchre. God, he proclaimed, was displeased with the pride and ostentation of the French knights and had chosen the lowly to carry out his work. It was to shepherds that the glad tidings of the Nativity had first been made known and it was through shepherds that the Lord was now about to manifest his power and glory. Shepherds and cowherds — young men, boys and girls alike — deserted their flocks and, without taking leave of their parents, gathered under the strange banners on which the miraculous visitation of the Virgin was portrayed. Before long thieves, prostitutes, outlaws, apostate monks and murderers joined them; and these elements provided the leaders. But many of these newcomers too dressed as shepherds and all alike became known as the Pastoureaux. Soon there was an army which – though the contemporary estimate of 60,000 need not be taken seriously — must certainly have numbered some thousands. It was divided into fifty companies; these marched separately, armed with pitchforks, hatchets, daggers, pikes carried aloft as they entered towns and villages, so as to intimidate the authorities. When they ran short of provisions they took what they needed by force; but much was given freely for — as emerges from many different accounts – people revered the Pastoureaux as holy men. Soon the Pastoureaux were behaving exactly like the hordes which had followed Tanchelm and Eudes de l‘Étoile. Surrounded by an armed guard, Jacob preached against the clergy, attacking the Mendicants as hypocrites and vagabonds, the Cistercians as lovers of land and property, the Premonstratensians as proud and gluttonous, the canons regular as half-secular fast-breakers; and his attacks on the Roman Curia knew no bounds. His followers were taught to regard the sacraments with contempt and to see in their own gatherings the sole embodiment of truth. For himself he claimed that he could not only see visions but could heal the sick – and people brought their sick to be touched by him. He declared that food and wine set before his men never grew less, but rather increased as they were eaten and drunk. He promised that when the crusaders arrived at the sea the water would roll back before them and they would march dryshod to the Holy Land. On the strength of his miraculous powers he arrogated to himself the right to grant absolution from every kind of sin. If a man and a woman amongst his followers wished to marry he would perform the ceremony; and if they wished to part he would divorce them with equal ease. He was said to have married eleven men to one woman – which rather suggests that he saw himself as a ‘living Christ’ requiring ‘Disciples’ and a ‘Virgin Mary’. And anyone who ventured to contradict him was at once struck down by the bodyguard. The murder of a priest was regarded as particularly praiseworthy; according to Jacob it could be atoned for by a drink of wine. It is not surprising that the clergy watched the spread of this movement with horror. Jacob’s army went first to Amiens, where it met with an enthusiastic reception. The burghers put their food and drink at the disposal of the crusaders, calling them the holiest of men. Jacob made such a favourable impression that they begged him to help himself to their belongings. Some knelt down before him ‘as though he had been the Body of Christ’. After Amiens the army split up into two groups. One of these marched on Rouen, where it was able to disperse a synod which was meeting there under the Archbishop. The other group proceeded to Paris. There Jacob so fascinated the Queen Mother Blanche that she loaded him with presents and left him free to do whatever he would. Jacob now dressed as a bishop, preached in churches, sprinkled holy water after some strange rite of his own. Meanwhile the Pastoureaux in the city began to attack the clergy, putting many to the sword and drowning many in the Seine. The students of the University – who of course were also clerics, though in minor orders — would have been massacred if the bridge had not been closed in time. When the Pastoureaux left Paris they moved in a number of bands, each under the leadership of a ‘Master’, who, as they passed through towns and villages, blessed the crowds. At Tours the crusaders again attacked the clergy, especially Dominican and Franciscan friars, whom they dragged and whipped through the streets. The Dominicans’ church was looted, the Franciscan friary was attacked and broken into. The old contempt for sacraments administered by unworthy hands showed itself: the host was seized and, amidst insults, thrown on to the street. All this was done with the approval and support of the populace. At Orleans similar scenes occurred. Here the Bishop had the gates closed against the oncoming horde, but the burghers deliberately disobeyed him and admitted the Pastoureaux into the town. Jacob preached in public, and a scholar from the cathedral school who dared to oppose him was struck down with an axe. The Pastoureaux rushed to the houses where the priests and monks had hidden themselves, stormed them and burned many to the ground. Many clergy, including teachers at the University, and many burghers were struck down or drowned in the Loire. The remaining clergy were forced out of the town. When the Pastoureaux left the town the Bishop, enraged at the reception that had been accorded them, put Orleans under interdict. It was indeed the opinion of contemporaries that the Pastoureaux owed their prestige very largely to their habit of killing and despoiling priests. When the clergy tried to protest or resist they found no support amongst the populace. It is understandable that some clerics, observing the activities of the Pastoureaux, felt that the Church had never been in greater danger. At Bourges the fortunes of the Pastoureaux began to change. Here too the burghers, disobeying their Archbishop, admitted as many of the horde as the town could hold; the rest remaining encamped outside. Jacob preached this time against the Jews and sent his men to destroy the Sacred Rolls. The crusaders also pillaged houses throughout the town, taking gold and silver where they found it and raping any woman they could lay hands on. If the clergy were not molested it was only because they remained in hiding. But by this time the Queen Mother had realized what sort of movement this was and had outlawed all those taking part in it. When this news reached Bourges many Pastoureaux deserted. At length, one day when Jacob was thundering against the laxity of the clergy and calling upon the townsfolk to turn against them, someone in the crowd dared to contradict him. Jacob rushed at the man with a sword and killed him; but this was too much for the burghers, who in their turn took up arms and chased the unruly visitors from the town. Now it was the turn of the Pastoureaux to suffer violence. Jacob was pursued by mounted burghers and cut to pieces. Many of his followers were captured by the royal officials at Bourges and hanged. Bands of survivors made their way to Marseilles and to Aigues Mortes, where they hoped to embark for the Holy Land; but both towns had received warnings from Bourges and the Pastoureaux were caught and hanged. A final band reached Bordeaux but only to be met there by English forces under the Governor of Gascony, Simon de Montfort, and dispersed. Their leader, attempting to embark for the East, was recognized by some sailors and drowned. One of his lieutenants fled to England and having landed at Shoreham collected a following of some hundreds of peasants and shepherds. When the news of these happenings reached King Henry III he was sufficiently alarmed to issue instructions for the suppression of the movement to sheriffs throughout the kingdom. But very soon the whole movement disintegrated, even the apostle at Shoreham being torn to pieces by his own followers. Once everything was over rumours sprang up on all sides. It was said that the movement had been a plot of the Sultan’s, who had paid Jacob to bring him Christian men and youths as slaves. Jacob and other leaders were said to have been Moslems who had won ascendency over Christians by means of black magic. But there were also those who believed that at the time of its suppression the movement of the Pastoureaux had broached {began (??)} only the first part of its programme. These people said that the leaders of the Pastoureaux had intended to massacre first all priests and monks, then all knights and nobles; and when all authority had been overthrown, to spread their teaching throughout the world.

* Types of dualism. Various distinctions may be discerned in the types of dualism in general. In the first place, dualism may be either absolute or relative. In a radical or absolute dualism, the two principles are held to exist from eternity; for example, in the Iranian dualisms, Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, both the bright and beneficent and the sinister and destructive principles are from eternity {Zoroasterism: not of the same power}. In a mitigated or relative dualism, one of the two principles may be derived from, or presuppose, the other as a basis; for example, the Bogomils, a medieval heretical Christian group, held that the Devil is a fallen angel who came from God and was the creator of the human body, into which he managed by trickery to have God infuse a soul. Here the Devil is a subordinate being and not coeternal with God, the absolute eternal being. This, then, is clearly a qualified, not a radical, dualism. Both radical and mitigated types of dualism are found among different groups of the late medieval Cathari, a Christian heretical movement closely related to the Bogomils. Another and perhaps more important distinction is that between dialectical and eschatological dualism. Dialectical dualism involves an eternal dialectic, or tension, of two opposed principles, such as, in Western culture, the One and the many, or Idea and matter (or space, called by Plato “the receptacle”), and, in Indian culture, maya (the illusory world of sense experience and multiplicity) and atman-brahman (the essential identity of self and ultimate reality). Dialectical dualism ordinarily implies a cyclical, or eternally repetitive, view of history. Eschatological dualism—i.e., a dualism concerned with the ultimate destiny of humanity and the world, how things will be in the “last” times—on the other hand, conceives of a final resolution of the present dualistic state of things, in which evil will be eliminated at the end of a linear history constituted of a series of unrepeatable events instead of a cyclical, repetitive one. The ancient Iranian religions, Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, and gnosticism—a religio-philosophical movement influential in the Hellenistic world—provide examples of eschatological dualism. A type of thought, such as Platonism, that insists on a profound harmony in the cosmos, is thus more radically dualistic, because of its irreducibly dialectical character, than Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, with their emphasis on the cosmic struggle between two antithetical principles (good and evil). Midway between these extremes is gnostic dualism, which has an ontology (or theory of being) of an Orphic-Platonic type (see below Among ancient civilizations and peoples) but which also affirms the final disappearance and annihilation of evil with the eventual destruction of the material world—and thus comprises both dialectical and eschatological dualism. Britannica - dualism (religion)

* Medieval commune. Medieval communes in the European Middle Ages had sworn allegiances of mutual defense (both physical defense and of traditional freedoms) among the citizens of a town or city. These took many forms and varied widely in organization and makeup. Communes are first recorded in the late 11th and early 12th centuries, thereafter becoming a widespread phenomenon. They had greater development in central-northern Italy, where they became city-states based on partial democracy. At the same time in Germany they became free cities, independent from local nobility. During the 10th century in several parts of Western Europe, peasants began to gravitate towards walled population centers, as advances in agriculture (the three-field system) resulted in greater productivity and intense competition. In central and northern Italy, and in Provence and Septimania, most of the old Roman cities had survived—even if grass grew in their streets—largely as administrative centers for a diocese or for the local representative of a distant kingly or imperial power. In the Low Countries, some new towns were founded upon long-distance trade, where the staple was the woolen cloth-making industry. The sites for these ab ovo towns, more often than not, were the fortified burghs of counts, bishops or territorial abbots. Such towns were also founded in the Rhineland. Other towns were simply market villages, local centers of exchange. Such townspeople needed physical protection from lawless nobles and bandits {local militia}, part of the motivation for gathering behind communal walls, but also strove to establish their liberties, the freedom to conduct and regulate their own affairs and security from arbitrary taxation and harassment from the bishop, abbot, or count in whose jurisdiction these obscure and ignoble social outsiders lay. This was a long process of struggling to obtain charters that guaranteed such basics as the right to hold a market. Such charters were often purchased at exorbitant rates, or granted, not by the local power, but by a king or by the emperor, who came to hope to enlist the towns as allies in order to centralize power.

* Nazareth Baptist Church [Shembe church, Zulu messiahs]. The Nazareth Baptist Church (Alternatively called "The Nazarite Church" "iBandla lamaNazaretha") is the second largest, African initiated church based in South Africa, founded in 1910. It reveres Shembe as a prophet sent by God to restore the teachings of Moses, the prophets, and Jesus. Members are Sabbath-observers and avoid pork, smoking, and premarital sex. (...) The religion uses leopard skins as part of their ceremonies, which some activists are trying to stop or replace with synthetic leopard skin.

* Pope Urban II [Урбан II] (c 1035-1099). Pope Urban II (Latin: Urbanus II), otherwise known as Odo of Châtillon or Otho de Lagery, was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 12 March 1088 to his death. He is best known for initiating the Crusades. As pope, he dealt with Antipope Clement III, infighting of various Christian nations, and the Muslim incursions into Europe. In 1095 he started preaching the First Crusade (1095–99). He promised forgiveness and pardon for all of the past sins of those who would fight to reclaim the holy land from Muslims and free the eastern churches. This pardon would also apply to those that would fight the Muslims in Spain. While the First Crusade resulted in the liberation of Jerusalem from the Fatimids, Pope Urban II died before he could receive this news. He also set up the modern-day Roman Curia in the manner of a royal ecclesiastical court to help run the Church.

* Self-immolation [Jewish]. The cornerstone of Shepkaru's argument lies in chapter four, where he argues that a radical shift occurred in the way Jews responded to and represented religious persecution under Byzantine rule. The sixth through eleventh centuries saw a turn towards idealizing active "self destructive martyrdom" (133). He credits two seemingly contradictory forces with influencing this change in the way that Jews confronted cultural and political challenges. On the one hand, prolonged contact with a Christian culture that valorized self-immolation as the proper response to religious subjugation or persecution {??} enabled Jews to assimilate this value. And on the other hand, Jews' close association with heretics who were willing to martyr themselves {Cathars ??} had a strong impact on the way Jews responded to persecution. This idealization of self-sacrifice, which breached the traditional legal prohibition against suicide, rather than passive acceptance of persecution, laid the foundation for a mode of response that became relatively common in medieval Ashkenaz (i.e. France and Germany). 08.10.21, Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs _ The Medieval Review

* Radulphe [Rudolph, crusader-monk] (XII). Radulphe (also spelled Radulph, Rodolphe, etc.) was a French monk who, without permission from his superiors, left his monastery in France and travelled to the Rhine Valley during the Second Crusade (1147–49) where he preached "that the Jews should be slain as the enemies of the Christian religion." At Cologne Simon "the Pious" {??} was murdered and mutilated; at Speyer a woman was tortured on the rack to persuade her to Christianity.[citation needed] Secular prelates {??} tried to protect the Jews. Arnold, the Archbishop of Cologne gave them a fortified castle as refuge, and allowed them to arm themselves; the Crusaders refrained from attacking the castle, but killed any unconverted Jew that fell into their clutches. Henry I, Archbishop of Mainz admitted into his house some Jews pursued by a mob; the mob forced its way in, and killed them before his eyes. The Archbishops appealed to Bernard of Clairvaux, the most influential Christian of his time; Bernard replied with a strong denunciation of Radulphe, and demanded an end to violence against the Jews. When Radulphe continued his campaign Bernard came in person to Germany, "protested energetically against the unchristian behavior of Radulph" and forced the monk to return to his monastery. Thereafter in 1147 the mutilated body of a Christian was found at Würzburg; Christians charged Jews with the crime, and, despite the protests of Bishop Emicho von Leiningen, attacked them, killing 20 and wounding many more; the Bishop buried the dead in his garden. From Germany, Rodolphe's idea of "beginning the Crusades at home" passed back to France, and Jews were massacred at Carentan, Rameru, and Sully. In Bohemia 150 Jews were murdered by Crusaders. After the terror had passed, the local Christian clergy did what it could to help the surviving Jews; and those who had accepted baptism under duress were allowed to return to Judaism without incurring the dire penalties of apostasy.

* Benzo of Alba (d c  1089). Benzo of Alba was an Italian bishop. He was an opponent of Gregorian reform who supported Henry IV of Germany in the Investiture Controversy. Benzo's date of birth is unknown but he was probably born in northern Italy. Benzo began his career in the imperial chapel, and was probably raised to the see of Alba by Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor. During the Cadalan Schism (1061–1064), Benzo supported the imperial candidate, Bishop Cadalus of Parma, against the reform candidate, Pope Alexander II. Benzo later opposed Pope Gregory VII. He was driven from his see by members of the Pataria around 1076 or 1077, and probably returned to the imperial court during 1081–1084. Around 1085–1086, he wrote his only extant work: Ad Heinricum IV imperatorem libri VII (Seven Books To Emperor Henry IV): this polemical text was dedicated to Henry IV of Germany.

* Last World Emperor prophecy - Louis VII. We have seen Otto’s comments on the conflict between Frederick I and Hadrian IV. However, near the beginning of his Gesta Frederici Imneratori3. written between 1156 and 1158, he also recounts a Last World Emperor prophecy. The prophecy appears to have been directed toward Louis VII of France around 1146 when he was preparing to go on crusade, and survives in several forms.00 Otto recounts the general pattern of events th at occurred in the prophecy: "It goes like this: 'I say to you, L, shepherd of bodies, whom the spirit of the pilgrim God has inspired, addressing you by the first letter of the sum total that makes up your name.' In the course of this writing, under a certain husk of words concerning the storming of the royal city and also of ancient Babylon, a triumph over the entire Orient, after the manner of Cyrus, King of the Persians, or of Hercules, was promised to the aforesaid Louis, King of France." After noting this summary, which is consistent with the familiar pattern of the Last World Emperor, Otto goes on to recount an actual section of the prophecy: "When you have arrived at the side of the eternal seated square and come to the side of the eternal standing squares and to the product of the blessed number through the first actual cube, raise yourself to her whom the Angel of your mother promised to visit and did not visit. You shall extend from her even to the penultimate-when the promisor ascends her first, the promise fails on account of the best goods. Then plant your rose-colored standards even as far as the utterm ost labors of Hercules, and the gates of the city of B will be open before you. For the bridegroom has set you up as a mainsail, he whose bark has almost foundered and on whose peak is a triangular sail, th at he who proceeded you may follow you. Therefore your L will be turned into a C, who diverted the waters of the river, until those toil to procure sons have crossed the stream." Much in this small passage is obscure: the "first actual cube" may refer to the city of Jerusalem as described in Rev. 21-27; the "bridegroom," "bark," "triangular sail," and "mainsail" undoubtedly stand for, respectively, Christ, the Church, the Trinity, and the Last World Emperor. The "L" refers to Louis as we have seen, and the "C" perhaps recalls the name Constans, the Sibylline name for the Last World Emperor, who would attain victory over "B," Babylon, which by the twelfth century meant the Moslem world. Otto credits a Sibylline source, but scornfully: "This document was then considered by the most excellent and pious personages of the Gauls to be of so great authority that it was declared by some to have been found in the Sibylline books, by others to have been divinely revealed to a certain Armenius. But whosoever that prophet or charlatan was who spread this around, let him determine whether its fulfillment may yet be expected in the future, or if (being scorned as already having failed of fulfillment) the fact that it gained some credence may be attributed to Gallic credulity." Otto’s words express a scornful derision like that of Ekkehard of Aurea, as well as something else-a consciousness of a difference between the Germans and the French, and a corresponding derision by a German for the French and their "Gallic credulity." The nationalist thread to the eschatological figures begins here, but remains largely undeveloped until later. The Empire was still tied firmly to the Germans in people’s minds; it was not until that Empire was brought low th at the idea of imperial apocalyptic could be transferred to other groups. Christopher Joseph Beiting - The Last World Emperor and the Angelic Pope: Eschatological Figures as Repr es as Representativ esentative of the Medie e of the Medieval Struggle of al Struggle of “Sacerdotium" and “Imperium”

* Mystery play [miracle play] (V-XVI). Mystery plays and miracle plays (they are distinguished as two different forms although the terms are often used interchangeably) are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song. They told of subjects such as the Creation, Adam and Eve, the murder of Abel, and the Last Judgment. Often they were performed together in cycles which could last for days. The name derives from mystery used in its sense of miracle, but an occasionally quoted derivation is from ministerium, meaning craft, and so the 'mysteries' or plays performed by the craft guilds. (...) Miracle plays, or Saint's plays, are now distinguished from mystery plays as they specifically re-enacted miraculous interventions by the saints, particularly St. Nicholas or St. Mary, into the lives of ordinary people, rather than biblical events; however both of these terms are more commonly used by modern scholars than they were by medieval people, who used a wide variety of terminology to refer to their dramatic performances. (...) Origins. As early as the fifth century living tableaux were introduced into sacred services. The plays originated as simple tropes, verbal embellishments of liturgical texts, and slowly became more elaborate. At an early period chants from the service of the day were added to the prose dialogue. As these liturgical dramas increased in popularity, vernacular forms emerged, as travelling companies of actors and theatrical productions organized by local communities became more common in the later Middle Ages. The Quem quaeritis? is the best known early form of the dramas, a dramatised liturgical dialogue between the angel at the tomb of Christ and the women who are seeking his body. These primitive forms were later elaborated with dialogue and dramatic action. Eventually the dramas moved from church to the exterior - the churchyard and the public marketplace. These early performances were given in Latin, and were preceded by a vernacular prologue spoken by a herald who gave a synopsis of the events. The writers and directors of the earliest plays were probably monks. Religious drama flourished from about the ninth century to the sixteenth. In 1210, suspicious of the growing popularity of miracle plays, Pope Innocent III issued a papal edict forbidding clergy from acting on a public stage. This had the effect of transferring the organization of the dramas to town guilds, after which several changes followed. Vernacular texts replaced Latin, and non-Biblical passages were added along with comic scenes, for example in the Secunda Pastorum of the Wakefield Cycle. Acting and characterization became more elaborate. These vernacular religious performances were, in some of the larger cities in England such as York, performed and produced by guilds, with each guild taking responsibility for a particular piece of scriptural history. From the guild control originated the term mystery play or mysteries, from the Latin ministerium meaning "occupation" (i.e. that of the guilds). The genre was again banned, following the Reformation and the establishment of the Church of England in 1534. The mystery play developed, in some places, into a series of plays dealing with all the major events in the Christian calendar, from the Creation to the Day of Judgment. By the end of the 15th century, the practice of acting these plays in cycles on festival days was established in several parts of Europe. Sometimes, each play was performed on a decorated pageant cart that moved about the city to allow different crowds to watch each play as well as provided actors with a dressing room as well as a stage The entire cycle could take up to twenty hours to perform and could be spread over a number of days. Taken as a whole, these are referred to as Corpus Christi cycles. These cycles were often performed during the Feast of Corpus Christi and their overall design drew attention to Christ's life and his redemption for all of mankind. The plays were performed by a combination of professionals and amateurs and were written in highly elaborate stanza forms; they were often marked by the extravagance of the sets and 'special effects', but could also be stark and intimate. There was a wide variety of theatrical and poetic styles, even in a single cycle of plays.

* Passion Play. The Passion Play or Easter pageant is a dramatic presentation depicting the Passion of Jesus Christ: his trial, suffering and death. It is a traditional part of Lent in several Christian denominations, particularly in Catholic tradition. Passion Plays have had a long and complex history involving faith and devotion, civic pageantry, antisemitism, religious and political censorship, large-scale revival and historical re-enactments.

* Medieval pageant. A medieval pageant is a form of procession traditionally associated with both secular and religious rituals, often with a narrative structure. Pageantry was an important aspect of medieval European seasonal festivals, in particular around the celebration of Corpus Christi, which began after the thirteenth century. This festival reenacted the entire history of the world, in processional performance, from Bible's Genesis to the Apocalypse, employing hundreds of performers and mobile scenic elements. Plays were performed on mobile stages, called waggons, that traveled through towns so plays could be watched consecutively. Each waggon was sponsored by a guild who wrote, designed, and acted in the plays. Other pageants in the Christian world have centered on Saints' festivals, Carnival (Mardi Gras), and Easter, while vernacular agrarian festivals have celebrated seasonal events such as the harvest, and the Summer and Winter solstices. Drawing on this medieval tradition contemporary artists such as Bread and Puppet Theater, the Welfare State, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, Spiral Q, and Superior Concept Monsters have used pageants as a potent community-based performance form.

* Feast of Corpus Christi [Праздник Тела и Крови Христовых]. The Feast of Corpus Christi (Ecclesiastical Latin: Dies Sanctissimi Corporis et Sanguinis Domini Iesu Christi, lit. 'Day of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ the Lord'), also known as the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, is a Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Western Orthodox liturgical solemnity celebrating the Real Presence of the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ in the elements of the Eucharist. Two months earlier, the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper is observed on Maundy Thursday in a sombre atmosphere leading to Good Friday. The liturgy on that day also commemorates Christ's washing of the disciples' feet, the institution of the priesthood, and the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. The feast of Corpus Christi was proposed by Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church, to Pope Urban IV, in order to create a feast focused solely on the Holy Eucharist, emphasizing the joy of the Eucharist being the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. Having recognized in 1264 the authenticity of the Eucharistic Miracle of Bolsena, on input of Aquinas, the pontiff, then living in Orvieto, established the feast of Corpus Christi as a Solemnity and extended it to the whole Roman Catholic Church. The feast is liturgically celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday or, "where the Solemnity of The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ is not a holy day of obligation, it is assigned to the Sunday after the Most Holy Trinity as its proper day". At the end of Holy Mass, there is often a procession of the Blessed Sacrament, generally displayed in a monstrance. The procession is followed by the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. A notable Eucharistic procession is that presided over by the Pope each year in Rome, where it begins at the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran and passes to the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, where it concludes with the aforementioned Benediction. The celebration of the feast was suppressed in Protestant churches during the Reformation for theological reasons: outside Lutheranism, which maintained the confession of the Real Presence, many Protestants denied the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist other than as a merely symbolic or spiritual presence. Today, most Protestant denominations do not recognize the feast day. The Church of England abolished it in 1548 as the English Reformation progressed, but later reintroduced it. Most Anglican churches now observe Corpus Christi, sometimes under the name "Thanksgiving for Holy Communion".

+ Catharism. There is academic controversy about whether Catharism was an organized movement or rather a construct of the medieval Church, which alleged the existence of a heretical group. The lack of any central organization among Cathars, regional differences in beliefs and practices as well as the lack of sources from the Cathars themselves has prompted some scholars to question whether Catharism existed {as an organized movement; it might have existed otherwise}. Other scholars say that there is evidence of the existence of Catharism, and also evidence that the threat of it was exaggerated by its persecutors in the Church. (Catharism)

* Minor orders. Minor orders are ranks of church ministry lower than major orders. In the Catholic Church, the predominating Latin Church traditionally distinguished between the major holy orders of priest (including both bishop and simple priest), deacon and subdeacon, and the four minor orders of acolyte, exorcist, lector, and porter (in descending sequence). In 1972, the minor orders were renamed "ministries", with those of lector and acolyte being kept throughout the Latin Church. (...) Some traditional Catholics continue to use minor orders, as do Old Roman Catholics and the Liberal Catholic Church. In the Orthodox Church, the three minor orders in use are those of subdeacon, reader and chanter.

* Third Crusade [Kings' Crusade] (1189-1192). The Third Crusade (1189–1192) was an attempt by three European monarchs of Western Christianity (Philip II of France, Richard I of England and Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor) to reconquer the Holy Land following the capture of Jerusalem by the Ayyubid sultan Saladin in 1187. For this reason, the Third Crusade is also known as the Kings' Crusade. (...) The failure to re-capture Jerusalem inspired the subsequent Fourth Crusade of 1202–1204, but Europeans would only regain the city—and only briefly—in the Sixth Crusade in 1229.

* Fourth Crusade (1202-1204). The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was a Latin Christian armed expedition called by Pope Innocent III. The stated intent of the expedition was to recapture the Muslim-controlled city of Jerusalem, by first defeating the powerful Egyptian Ayyubid Sultanate, the strongest Muslim state of the time. However, a sequence of economic and political events culminated in the Crusader army's 1204 sack of Constantinople, the capital of the Greek Christian-controlled Byzantine Empire, rather than Egypt as originally planned. This led to the partitioning of the Byzantine Empire. In exchange for building a dedicated fleet and providing sea transport, the Republic of Venice set the condition that the Crusaders help them capture Zadar (or Zara), on the Adriatic Sea. This led in November 1202 to the siege and sack of Zara, the first attack against a Catholic city by a Catholic Crusader army. The city was then brought under Venetian control. When the Pope heard of this, he excommunicated the Crusader army. In January 1203, en route to Jerusalem, the Crusader leadership entered into an agreement with the Byzantine prince Alexios Angelos to divert the Crusade to Constantinople and restore his deposed father Isaac II Angelos as emperor. The intent of the Crusaders was then to continue to Jerusalem with promised Byzantine financial and military aid. On 23 June 1203, the main Crusader army reached Constantinople, while other contingents (perhaps a majority of all crusaders) continued to Acre. In August 1203, following the siege of Constantinople, Alexios was crowned co-emperor. However, in January 1204 he was deposed by a popular uprising. The Crusaders were no longer able to receive their promised payments from Alexios. Following the murder of Alexios on 8 February, the Crusaders decided on the outright conquest of the city. In April 1204, they captured and plundered the city's enormous wealth. Only a handful of the Crusaders continued to the Holy Land thereafter. The conquest of Constantinople was followed by the fragmentation of the Byzantine Empire into three states centered in Nicaea, Trebizond and Epirus. The Crusaders then founded several new Crusader states, known as Frankokratia, in former Byzantine territory, largely hinged upon the Latin Empire of Constantinople. The presence of the Latin Crusader states almost immediately led to war with the Byzantine successor states and with the Bulgarian Empire. The Nicaean Empire eventually recovered Constantinople and restored the Byzantine Empire in 1261. The Fourth Crusade is considered to have solidified the East–West Schism. The crusade dealt an irrevocable blow to the Byzantine Empire, contributing to its decline and fall.

* Holy Ampulla [Holy Ampoule; Fr. Sainte Ampoule]. The Holy Ampulla or Holy Ampoule (Sainte Ampoule in French) was a glass vial which, from its first recorded use by Pope Innocent II for the anointing of Louis VII in 1131 to the coronation of Louis XVI in 1774, held the chrism or anointing oil for the coronation of the kings of France. (...) The ampoule, a vial of Roman glass about 1½ inches tall, came to light at Reims in time for the coronation of Louis VII in 1131. The legend that was associated with it at that time, asserted that it had been discovered in the sarcophagus of Saint Remi and identified it with the baptism of Clovis I, the first Frankish king converted to Christianity; it was kept thereafter in the Abbey of Saint-Remi, Reims and brought with formality to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Reims at each coronation, where the emphasis was on the anointment rather than on the crowning. The ampoule was destroyed in 1793 by French revolutionaries, when the Convention sent Philippe Rühl to smash the ampoule publicly on the pedestal of the statue of Louis XV with a hammer. The day before its destruction the constitutional curé, Jules-Armand Seraine and a municipal officer, Philippe Hourelle had nevertheless largely emptied the ampulla of its balm and they as well gave some part of it respectively to Bouré, curé of Berry-au-Bac and Lecomte, judge at the tribunal of Reims. Furthermore, Louis Champagne Prévoteau (a witness of the destruction by Rühl) ensured the preservation of two pieces of the glass vial with some remaining balm on them. All these fragments except the one kept by Hourelle which was lost were gathered on 25 May 1825 by the Archbishop of Reims. These were placed in a new reliquary made in time for the coronation of Charles X four days later which is now displayed at the Palace of Tau. Since 1906, the preserved contents of the Holy Ampulla are kept at the Archbishopric of Reims.

* Augustus [epithet, Holy Roman Empire]. Charlemagne used the title serenissimus Augustus as a prefix to his titles. The style assumed by Otto I was imperator Augustus. The relative simplicity of the style and absence of any mention of Rome was in deference to Byzantium (although he would briefly use the title imperator Augustus Romanorum ac Francorum (Emperor-Augustus of the Romans and Franks) in 966), which would soon reach the medieval apex of its power. By the 12th century, the standard style of the {Holy Roman} Emperor had become Dei gratia Romanorum imperator semper Augustus (By the grace of God, Emperor of the Romans, ever Augustus) and would remain so until at least the 16th century. The formula of semper Augustus ("ever exalted") when translated into German in the late period of the Holy Roman Empire was not rendered literally, but as allzeit Mehrer des Reiches ("ever Increaser of the Realm"), from the transitive verbal meaning of augere "to augment, increase". (Augustus (title))

* Blanche of Castile (1188-1252). Blanche of Castile (Spanish: Blanca de Castilla) was Queen consort of France by marriage to Louis VIII. She acted as regent twice during the reign of her son, Louis IX: during his minority from 1226 until 1234, and during his absence from 1248 until 1252. She was born in Palencia, Spain, 1188, the third daughter of Alfonso VIII, King of Castile, and Eleanor of England.

* Caputiati [Durand Chadiuz] (XII). Members of a religious confraternity of laymen organized c. 1182 in the neighborhood of Le Puy, France, to restore peace by combating roving bands of mercenaries who were ravaging the countryside. Their name derived from the white hood (caputium ) worn by the members, to which was attached a picture or medal of the Virgin and Child, bearing the inscription Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi dona nobis pacem. The founder of the movement, Durand Chaduiz, was a woodcutter or carpenter who claimed to have received his mission from the Blessed Virgin in a vision. The brethren bound themselves to refrain from cursing and swearing, gaming, drunkenness, and ostentation in dress. They undertook to live in harmony and to proceed against disturbers of the peace. The movement spread rapidly through Auvergne and the neighboring provinces and received support from the clergy. It succeeded in pacifying Auvergne and in reducing the exactions of feudal lords from their subjects. In 1183, with the assistance of the army of King Philip II, the Caputiati massacred a great number of mercenaries. They are said to have subsequently developed revolutionary and heretical ideas, demanding absolute liberty and equality for all. Whatever the truth of these charges, within a year or two they were ruthlessly suppressed by the feudal nobility assisted by the hated mercenaries. New Catholic Encyclopedia - CAPUTIATI

* Rich man and Lazarus [Dives and Lazarus]. The rich man and Lazarus (also called the parable of Dives and Lazarus) is a parable of Jesus appearing in the Gospel of Luke. In the parable (Luke 16–31), Jesus tells his audience – his disciples and some Pharisees – of the relationship, during life and after death, between an unnamed rich man and a poor beggar named Lazarus. The traditional name Dives is not actually a name, but instead a word for "rich man", dives, in the text of the Latin Bible, the Vulgate. The rich man was also given the names Neuēs (i.e. Nineveh) and Fineas (i.e. Phineas) in the 3rd and 4th centuries. Along with the parables of the Ten Virgins, Prodigal Son, and Good Samaritan, it was one of the most frequently illustrated parables in medieval art, perhaps because of its vivid account of an afterlife.

* Great Famine of 1315–1317. The Great Famine of 1315–1317 (occasionally dated 1315–1322) was the first of a series of large-scale crises that struck Europe early in the 14th century. Most of Europe (extending east to Russia and south to Italy) was affected. The famine caused many deaths over an extended number of years and marked a clear end to the period of growth and prosperity from the 11th to the 13th centuries. The Great Famine started with bad weather in spring 1315. Crop failures lasted through 1316 until the summer harvest in 1317, and Europe did not fully recover until 1322. Crop failures were not the only problem; cattle disease caused sheep and cattle numbers to fall as much as 80 percent. The period was marked by extreme levels of crime, disease, mass death, and even cannibalism and infanticide. The crisis had consequences for the Church, state, European society, and for future calamities to follow in the 14th century. Background. (...) During the Medieval Warm Period (the period prior to 1300), the population of Europe exploded compared to prior eras, reaching levels that were not matched again in some places until the 19th century—indeed, parts of rural France today are still less populous than at the beginning of the 14th century. However, the yield ratios of wheat, the number of seeds one could harvest and eat per seed planted, had been dropping since 1280, and food prices had been climbing. After favourable harvests, the ratio could be as high as 7:1, but after unfavourable harvests it was as low as 2:1—that is, for every seed planted, two seeds were harvested, one for next year's seed, and one for food. By comparison, modern farming has ratios of 30:1 or more (see agricultural productivity). The onset of the Great Famine followed the end of the Medieval Warm Period. Between 1310 and 1330, northern Europe saw some of the worst and most sustained periods of bad weather in the entire Middle Ages, characterized by severe winters and rainy and cold summers. The Great Famine may have been precipitated by a volcanic event, perhaps that of Mount Tarawera, New Zealand, which lasted about five years beginning in 1315. The event is thought to have caused a volcanic winter. Changing weather patterns, the ineffectiveness of medieval governments in dealing with crises, and population level at a historical high made it a time with little margin for error in food production.

* Ransom of King John II of France. The ransom of King John II of France was an event during the Hundred Years War, between France and England. Following the English capture of the French king during the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, John was held for ransom by the English crown.

* Petrarch [Francesco Petrarca; Франческо Петрарка] (1304-1374). Francesco Petrarca, commonly anglicized as Petrarch, was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited with initiating the 14th-century Italian Renaissance and the founding of Renaissance humanism. In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio, and, to a lesser extent, Dante Alighieri. Petrarch would be later endorsed as a model for Italian style by the Accademia della Crusca. Petrarch's sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. He is also known for being the first to develop the concept of the "Dark Ages," which most modern scholars now find misleading and inaccurate.

* Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor [Фридрих II, император Священной Римской империи] (1194-1250). Frederick II (German: Friedrich II) was King of Sicily from 1198, King of Germany from 1212, King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor from 1220 and King of Jerusalem from 1225. He was the son of emperor Henry VI of the Hohenstaufen dynasty and Queen Constance of Sicily of the Hauteville dynasty. His political and cultural ambitions were enormous as he ruled a vast area, beginning with Sicily and stretching through Italy all the way north to Germany. As the Crusades progressed, he acquired control of Jerusalem and styled himself its king. However, the Papacy became his enemy, and it eventually prevailed. Viewing himself as a direct successor to the Roman emperors of antiquity, he was Emperor of the Romans from his papal coronation in 1220 until his death; he was also a claimant to the title of King of the Romans from 1212 and unopposed holder of that monarchy from 1215. As such, he was King of Germany, of Italy, and of Burgundy. At the age of three, he was crowned King of Sicily as a co-ruler with his mother, Constance of Hauteville, the daughter of Roger II of Sicily. His other royal title was King of Jerusalem by virtue of marriage and his connection with the Sixth Crusade. Frequently at war with the papacy, which was hemmed in between Frederick's lands in northern Italy and his Kingdom of Sicily (the Regno) to the south, he was excommunicated three times and often vilified in pro-papal chronicles of the time and after. Pope Gregory IX went so far as to call him an Antichrist. (...) He was also the first king to formally outlaw trial by ordeal, which had come to be viewed as superstitious. After his death his line did not survive, and the {'sacred' ??} House of Hohenstaufen came to an end. Furthermore, the Holy Roman Empire entered a long period of decline during the Great Interregnum from which it did not completely recover until the reign of Charles V, 250 years later.

* Pseudo-Joachite commentary on Jeremiah. But it was only in the 1240s that the Dominicans {??} and Franciscans both chose unequivocally to identify themselves as the viri spirituales who would herald the new age. The highly controversial pseudo-Joachim Super Hieremiam, one of the most influential prophecies of the late Middle Ages, illustrates the nature of this mendicant engagement with Joachim’s thinking, by no means limited to the prophecy of the viri spirituales. The author or authors remain anonymous, and the text has been variously dated to 1241-3, 1248 or two phases (post 1241, but updated 1246-7).148 It is a commentary on the Old Testament book of the prophet Jeremiah, preceded, as customary, by a dedicatory letter purportedly addressed to Henry VI. It is laden with criticism of the corruption of the Roman Church and in particular of the Cardinals. It emphasizes the importance of the two orders of hermits and preachers and their role in liberating Christians from worldly wealth and defending the Church in the time of the three final tribulations: inflicted by the empire, saracens, and heretics. Until the mid-19th century it was believed to be by Joachim himself, substantially shaping his reputation. Frances Andrews - THE INFLUENCE OF JOACHIM IN THE 13TH CENTURY

* In the letter "to all the faithful to Jesus Christ" - to be dated to 1246, and not to 1248 (as affirmed by its editor E. Winkelmann)-, the Dominican Arnold, close to Friedrich, formulates twenty-five charges against Innocent IV and announces the imminent trial to the latter, which will culminate in his divine condemnation. The letter is a further testimony of the brief phase in which the emperor, reacting against the deposition judgment issued by the Pope against him at the Council of Lyon (July 1245), addressed the kings and the faithful invoking a general and radical reform of the Church in an evangelical direction. Aiming at Innocent's deposition and at the replacement of the Roman hierarchy with friars loyal to Friedrich, Arnold's vision uncovers the broader resistance of certain Dominican sectors vis-à-vis the Pope, and represents a significant historical and doctrinal document on the climate in which the emperor conceived the aborted expedition to Lyon, which is characterized by the proliferation of texts of propaganda replete of prophetical promises and apocalyptical threats. G.L. Potestà - The Dominican Arnold and the "deposition sentence" of Innocent IV (1246)

* Interregnum (Holy Roman Empire). There were many imperial interregna in the history of the Holy Roman Empire, when there was no emperor. Interregna in which there was no emperor-elect (king of the Romans) were rarer. Among the longest periods without an emperor were between 924 and 962 (38 years), between 1245 and 1312 (67 years), and between 1378 and 1433 (55 years). The crisis of the government of the Holy Roman Empire and the German kingdom thus lasted throughout the late medieval period, and ended only with the rise of the House of Habsburg on the eve of the German Reformation and the Renaissance. The term Great Interregnum is occasionally used for the period between 1250 (the death of Frederick II) and 1273 (the accession of Rudolf I).

* Crusade apology. The Crusades were a sideshow on the 1400 years of conflict of Islam and Christendom. It was basically Christendom transferring the war on enemy territory. The real cause of the Crusades were Emperor Alexios I Komnenos’s Realpolitik and Western Christian Zionism - the desire to liberate the Holy Land from infidels. (...) Surprisingly, the Franks (as the Western Christians were called) proved popular rulers. Feudalism was far more advanced system of society than Despotism, and Roman civil law was far more advanced system of jurisprudence than sharia and despot’s whim. Every inhabitant now had his law-stated place in the society, and had his law-coded rights and responsibilities. The Franks proved surprisingly religiously tolerant. No dhimma-like bullying nor forced conversions in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Few Muslims migrated away from the Kingdom, yet there was a constant influx of runaway slaves, mistreated fellahs and other Islamic migrants to Christian lands as they found Western legislature better than sharia and despot’s whim. Oh, and the conquest of Jerusalem 1099 and the ensuing massacre of the inhabitants? It was perfectly according to the rules of war. If a town surrendered without resistance, it was left alone. If a town surrendered after a siege or a battle, the conqueror would levy a fire tax (a tax paid in lieu the conqueror sacking and burning the town) and once it was paid, life would go on. But if a town was captured by assault - i.e. the conqueror crossing the walls or gates in anger - the conqueror was allowed to rape, loot and pillage the town for three days and three nights. Jerusalem was 1099 captured by assault. The Crusaders acted perfectly according to the rules of war - they raped, looted and pillaged the town for three days and three nights. Cruel, but c’est la mort. Nothing especially savage, brutal or barbarous here. Same happened in Constantinople 1453. Jerusalem surrendered to Saladin after a siege in 1187 - this is the real reason, the surrender, why Saladin didn’t repeat the sack of 1099, not his magnanimosity. Saladin levied a tax from the inhabitants, and life went on. Susanna Viljanen - What was the real cause of the Crusades?

* Gamaleon [Pseudo-Gamaleon]. E.g., the Pseudo-Gamaleon text of c. 1439 has an evil French King crowned by the Pope. Then “… the Germans will choose themselves an Emperor from Upper Germany, that is, from the Rhine. He will summon a secular Council at Aachen and will set up a Patriarch in Mainz who will be crowned Pope.” See Herrmann, Erwin, “Veniet aquila de cuius volatu delebitur leo. Zur Gamaleon-Predigt des Johann von Wunschelburg,” Festiva Lanx. Studien zum mittelalterlichen Geistesleben (Munich, 1966), p. 115. Cambridge University Press - Angel Pope and Papal Antichrist

* Council of Basel (1431). Council of Basel, a general council of the Roman Catholic Church held in Basel, Switzerland. It was called by Pope Martin V a few weeks before his death in 1431 and then was confirmed by Pope Eugenius IV. Meeting at a time when the prestige of the papacy had been weakened by the Western Schism (1378–1417), it was concerned with two major problems: the question of papal supremacy and the Hussite heresy. (The Hussites were followers of the Bohemian religious reformer Jan Hus.) Britannica - Council of Basel // The Seventeenth Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church was convoked as the Council of Basel by Pope Martin V shortly before his death in February 1431 and took place in the context of the Hussite wars in Bohemia and the rise of the Ottoman Empire. At stake was the greater conflict between the Conciliar movement and the principle of papal supremacy. Pope Eugene IV passed the anti-Jewish legislation. Amongst the decrees it passed are the following: “Converts should be forbidden, under pain of severe penalties, to bury the dead according to the Jewish custom or to observe in any way the sabbath and other solemnities and rites of their old sect. Rather, they should frequent our churches and sermons, like other Catholics, and conform themselves in everything to Christian customs.” “Furthermore, renewing the sacred canons, we command both diocesan bishops and secular powers to prohibit in every way Jews and other infidels from having Christians, male or female, in their households and service, or as nurses of their children; and Christians from joining with them in festivities, marriages, banquets or baths, or in much conversation, and from taking them as doctors or agents of marriages or officially appointed mediators of other contracts.” “They should not be given other public offices, or admitted to any academic degrees, or allowed to have on lease lands or other ecclesiastical rents. They are to be forbidden to buy ecclesiastical books, chalices, crosses and other ornaments of churches under pain of the loss of the object, or to accept them in pledge under pain of the loss of the money that they lent. They are to be compelled, under severe penalties, to wear some garment whereby they can be clearly distinguished from Christians. In order to prevent too much intercourse, they should be made to dwell in areas, in the cities and towns, which are apart from the dwellings of Christians and as far distant as possible from churches. On Sundays and other solemn festivals they should not dare to have their shops open or to work in public.” 7 September 1434 Council of Basel forbids Jewish believers in Jesus from observing Jewish practices

* Reformatio Sigismundi (1439). The Reformatio Sigismundi document appeared in connection with efforts to reform the Holy Roman Empire during the reign of Emperor Sigismund (1410–1437). It was produced in 1439 at the Council of Basle, published by an anonymous author, and referred to the injustice of the German rulers. The Reformatio was published in German and probably as a result became the most widely circulated reform paper of its time. The text was first printed in 1476 and there were seven new editions by 1522. In part it was even treated in the 15th century as an imperial law. The Reformatio stands at the beginning of a trend to no longer publish constitutional and political principles solely in Latin, but also in German. In terms of content the Reformatio differed little from other political reform texts of Sigismund's reign. It presented proposals for the reform of church and empire, some of which were practical, others were unrealistic. The text contained a teaching of the sacraments and argued in favour of the marriage of priests and the secularization of church property. In addition it included a vision of Emperor Sigismund's about the appearance of a priest-king Frederick and plans for a wide reform of the monarchy (and emperorship) and the (German) empire.

* Frederick of Lantnaw. For apocalyptic sections, see especially the description of the coming Priest-King Frederick of Lantnaw.

* Anonymous - Book of a Hundred Chapters (early XVI). Early in the 16th century, the Book of a Hundred Chapters, an apocalyptic text written by an anonymous publicist who lived in upper Rhine, demonstrated the durability of these fantasies. He prophesised the coming of a Bretheren of the Yellow Cross, who would “control the whole world from West to East by force of arms”. For this age of terror, it had a motto: “Soon we will drink blood for wine!” The Worship of False Gods

* Upper Rhine revolutionary [Oberrheinischer Revolutionär] (XVI). Since the discovery of Herman Haupt, the author of an anonymous reform pamphlet from the Upper Rhine region (published in 1893) has been referred to as the Upper Rhine Revolutionary (also shortened to Upper Rhine) , which the author himself initially referred to as the book of one hundred chapters with forty statutes. It was essentially created in the first decade of the 16th century and was completed around 1509/10. The partly chiliastic script negotiates, similar to the Reformatio Sigismundi, the social and political questions of their time: the discrepancy between legal practice and theory, clerical fiscalism and the decline of imperial power are some of the author's themes. The Upper Rhine revolutionary derives this criticism of the present from reform biblical assumptions. The author uses the historiographical construct of a German primeval empire as the basis of his (reform) demands made on Maximilian I, which had achieved ideal statehood through the absolute application of divine law. It is important to orientate oneself on this. In the research literature , the book, of which only a copy has survived in Colmar, is sometimes cited as evidence of the utopian potential of the Middle Ages (by Seibt, among others). second.wiki (Second Wiki) - Upper Rhine revolutionary - Oberrheinischer Revolutionär // Another problem is making the link between the late medieval and early modern sources Hirschi cites and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In a discussion of the fifteenth century "revolutionary of the Upper Rhine" (probably best known to English-speaking readers from Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millenium (1957), Hirschi asserts that this individual's belief that the Germans were God's Chosen People and that Adam and Eve spoke German served as the origins of Fichte's notion of the Germans as an Urvolk. He fails to explain how an unpublished fifteenth-century manuscript exerted its influence on an author writing over three hundred years later. The book is simply replete with such assertions of intellectual influence based on some sort of intellectual similarity that is at times quite far-fetched. Jonathan Sperber - When and What was Nationalism?

* Bundschuh movement (1493-1517). The Bundschuh movement (German: Bundschuh-Bewegung) refers to a series of localized peasant rebellions in southwestern Germany from 1493 to 1517. They were one of the causes of the German Peasants' War (1524–1526). The Bundschuh movement was not a movement in the proper sense, but a number of loosely linked local conspiracies and planned uprisings. It was so called because of the peasant shoe (Bundschuh) the peasants displayed on their flag. Under this flag, peasants and city dwellers had defeated the troops of the French count of Armagnac along the upper Rhine in 1439, 1443, and 1444. Individual uprisings – seeking relief from oppressive taxes, arbitrary justice systems, high debts, costly ecclesiastic privileges, serfdom, prohibitions on hunting and fishing, and the like – occurred in 1476 in Niklashausen (Tauber valley), 1493 in Schlettstadt (now Sélestat)/Alsace (for the first time under the Bundschuh banner), 1502 in Bruchsal and Untergrombach, 1513 in Lehen (Breisgau), and 1517 along the upper Rhine. Each of these was defeated very quickly, and the leaders, such as Joß Fritz, were generally executed.

* Antichrist plays (XII-XIV?). In the tradition of Otto of Freising, the Ludus de Antichristo entirely lacks the 'Adsonian' {Adso of Montier-en-Der} motives that characterize the Antichrist as Jewish: his descent from the tribe of Dan, his circumcision, or the reconstruction of the temple at Jerusalem. The play steers clear of all anti-Jewish polemic, which even Rupert {Rupert of Deutz} had not been able to avoid. Jerusalem is displaced in a rather Augustinian moment by the 'Great City', the civitas diaboli (city of the Devil), as the 'home' of the Antichrist. The Synagogue is treated with dignity, indeed the Jews are cast as Antichrist's victims whan after hearing Enoch and Elijah, they declare: (...). The Latin ecclesiatical drama of this period is characterized by a singular consciousness that the Jews are necessary to the action and history of salvation, and that they will convert at the end. However, the middle High German (and middle French) versions of this material would cast the Jews as evil apocalyptic destroyers, especially in the period after the Black Death. From the fourteenth to sixteenth century, Antichrist plays depicted Jews not as the last, temporary subjects of the Antichrist, but as his first and foremost adherents. (GB) Andrew Colin Gow - “The” Red Jews: Antisemitism in the Apocalyptic Age 1200 - 1600 // The medieval Antichrist plays are considered as politically disinterested. But this opinion is a result of an ahistorical retrospective, which classifies the medieval plays against the backdrop of the reformatory Antichrist plays, where the political dimension is blatantly obvious with the identification of the pope with the Antichrist. Indeed, the medieval Antichrist plays eschew this bold and simple way of articulating a political opinion - but they are not at all politically neutral. The German Antichrist plays, in particular, focus on the relationship between Antichrist, emperor and empire. They follow the ambivalent picture of the empire which is drawn by the apocalyptic books and passages of the Bible and show us a differentiated political awareness rather than the bold antipapal statements of the reformatory Antichrist plays. Silvan Wagner - Kaiser, Reich und Antichrist: Die politische Dimension der deutschsprachigen vorreformatorischen Antichristspiele // Ludus de Antichristo [Play About the Antichrist] (XII). The Ludus de Antichristo (Play About the Antichrist) is a liturgical-oriented drama from the 12th century whose original author is unknown. Its origins are almost certainly from southern Germany, likely a product of the Benedictine monastery in Tegernsee, Bavaria--as the manuscript that contains the play was kept at the monastery. Most likely the play was written c. 1160 as much of the thematic material corresponds closely to events occurring during the reign of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa I and his troubles with Pope Alexander III. A roughly seventy-line fragment of the play is also extant in a thirteenth-century Gospel text from the St. Georgenberg Abbey in modern-day Fiecht, Austria--suggesting a link between the two monastic communities. Overall, the play is a critique of reform efforts instituted by the Papacy in the twelfth century that would potentially weaken monastic self-rule in favor of a more centralized Papal control over Christian instruction and education, specifically centered on the growth of cathedral schools. The monastery at Tegernsee had enjoyed suzerainty from Papal oversight since the tenth century--answering directly to the Holy Roman Emperor--and sought employ a propaganda effort amongst the many Benedictine communities in Bavaria and Austria in the form of a dramatic interpretation of eschatological events that were supportive of the Emperor as God's instrument in bringing about the final events Christian narrative, rather than those efforts of the Papacy. The long-standing designation of the play as a "liturgical" (dating back to the nineteenth century) is a result of the inclusion of several well-known liturgies popular amongst Benedictine monastic communities. But these liturgies reflect an "insider's knowledge" of their traditional means of performance, altering the reception of changes made by the author of the play so that the propagandistic messages are codified specifically for the monastic communities that surround Tegernsee. The drama warned its audience of the dangers posed by the Antichrist, a prophesied figure of evil whose coming (according to the Old and New Testaments) was an indication that the end of the world, or apocalypse, was near.

* Massacres on Jews during the Black Death. Over the past forty years, studies of the period from the First Crusade at the end of the eleventh century to the rise of the mendicant orders in the early thirteenth century have dominated research into anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages. Curiously, far less attention has been devoted to the most monumental of medieval Jewish persecutions, one that eradicated almost entirely the principal Jewish communities of Europe — those of the Rhineland — along with many other areas. Coupled with mass migration that ensued, they caused a fundamental redistribution of Jewry. These persecutions were the burning of Jews between 1348 and 1351, when in anticipation of, or shortly after, outbreaks of plague Jews were accused of poisoning food, wells and streams, tortured into confessions, rounded up in city squares or their synagogues, and exterminated en masse. Samuel K. Cohn, Jr - The Black Death and the Burning of Jews // As the bubonic plague swept thru European communities, beginning in 1348, killing as much as half the Continent’s general population, blame for the scourge was sometimes assigned to the Jews, even though they, too, were not immune to the disease. In some cases, their rate of infection was lower because they lived in confined communities and because their hygienic practices were stricter. Pope Clement VI and his successor, Innocent VI, urged the public not to punish the Jews for the plague. Clement said the Jews bore no responsibility. But local priests sometimes encouraged the slaughter, which also provided an opportunity to loot and pillage the property of the Jews. Evidence of self-immolation. Estimates of the number of Jewish victims of the 1349 pogrom range from 100 to 1,000. Evidence indicates that some victims chose to set fire to their homes and kill themselves and their families rather than fall into the hands of the rioters. HAARETZ - This Day in Jewish History / The People of Erfurt Slaughter the Jews // In the middle of the 14th century, most towns in German-speaking territories and beyond massacred their Jewish communities. Thousands of Jews were burnt, often connected with accusations of well-poisoning. Medical and socio-historical literature usually attributes these massacres to the anxiety created by the Black Death, which was sweeping over Europe during this period. This article argues that there is no direct link between the massacres and the plague. How other researchers showed before, far from acts of plague-terrified, frenzied mobs, the massacres were the carefully planned and executed work of the Christian local governments. In addition, the slaughtering of Jews began long before the Black Death broke out in Europe. No relation can be found between the intensity of the disease and the violence of the murderers, even though there were wide regional differences. Causes of the persecutions other than the effects of plague seem evident, mainly religious fears fueled by the Church, financial profit, and political interests. This article wants to draw the attention to a myth in the history of medicine, the myth of the plague as the main cause of the massacres in the 14th century. It also raises the question, whether the plague as a trigger for the massacres really was a basic requirement. Ritzmann I. - The Black Death as a cause of the massacres of Jews: a myth of medical history?

* Western Schism [Schism of 1378] (1378-1417). The Western Schism, also known as the Papal Schism, the Vatican Standoff, the Great Occidental Schism, or the Schism of 1378 (Latin: Magnum schisma occidentale, Ecclesiae occidentalis schisma), was a split within the Catholic Church lasting from 1378 to 1417 in which bishops residing in Rome and Avignon both claimed to be the true pope, and were joined by a third line of Pisan popes in 1409. The schism was driven by personalities and political allegiances, with the Avignon papacy being closely associated with the French monarchy. These rival claims to the papal throne damaged the prestige of the office. The papacy had resided in Avignon since 1309, but Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome in 1377. However, the Catholic Church split in 1378 when the College of Cardinals elected both Urban VI and Clement VII pope within six months of Gregory XI's death. After several attempts at reconciliation, the Council of Pisa (1409) declared that both popes were illegitimate and elected a third pope. The schism was finally resolved when the Pisan pope John XXIII called the Council of Constance (1414–1418). The Council arranged the abdication of both the Roman pope Gregory XII and the Pisan pope John XXIII, excommunicated the Avignon pope Benedict XIII, and elected Martin V as the new pope reigning from Rome. The affair is sometimes referred to as the Great Schism, although this term is also used for the East–West Schism of 1054 between the Churches remaining in communion with the See of Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Churches.

* Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419). Vincent Ferrer was a Valencian Dominican friar and preacher, who gained acclaim as a missionary and a logician. He is honored as a saint of the Catholic Church and other churches of Catholic traditions. (...) Western Schism. {supported the antipope} The Western Schism (1378–1417) divided Roman Catholicism between two, then eventually three, claimants to the papacy. Antipope Clement VII lived at Avignon in France, and Pope Urban VI in Rome. Vincent was convinced that the election of Urban was invalid, although Catherine of Siena was just as devoted a supporter of the Roman pope. In the service of Cardinal Pedro de Luna, Vincent worked to persuade Spaniards to follow Clement. When Clement died in 1394, Cardinal de Luna was elected as the second antipope successor to the Avignon papacy and took the name Benedict XIII. Vincent and his brother Boniface, General of the Carthusians, were loyal to Benedict XIII, commonly known as "Papa Luna" in Castile and Aragon. He worked for Benedict XIII as apostolic penitentiary and Master of the Sacred Palace. Nonetheless Vincent labored to have Benedict XIII end the schism. When Benedict XIII did not resign as intended at either the Council of Pisa (1409) or the Council of Constance (1414–1418), he lost the support of the French king and of most of his cardinals, and was excommunicated as a schismatic in 1417. Vincent later claimed that the Western Schism had had such a depressing effect on his mind that it caused him to be seriously ill. (...) Conversion of Jews and controversy. Vincent is said to have been responsible for the conversion of many Jews to Catholicism, often by questionable means according to the Jewish Encyclopedia; for instance, he is said to have made their lives difficult until they converted and to have "dedicated" synagogues as churches on the basis of his own authority. One of his converts, a former rabbi by the name of Solomon ha-Levi, went on to become the Bishop of Cartagena and later the Archbishop of Burgos. Vincent is alleged to have contributed to anti-Semitism in Spain, as violence accompanied his visits to towns that had Jewish communities. Because of the Spanish's methods of converting Jews at the time, the means which Vincent had at his disposal were either baptism or spoliation. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, he won them over by his preaching, estimated at 25,000. Sources are contradictory concerning Vincent's achievement in converting a synagogue in Toledo, Spain, into the Church of Santa María la Blanca. One source says he preached to the mobs whose riots led to the appropriation of the synagogue and its transformation into a church in 1391; a second source says he converted the Jews of the city who then changed the synagogue to a church after they embraced the Faith, but hints at the year 1411. A third source identifies two distinct incidents, one in Valencia in 1391 and one in Toledo at a later date, but says that Vincent put down an uprising against Jews in one place and defused a persecution against them in the other. Vincent also attended the Disputation of Tortosa (1413–14), called by Avignon Pope Benedict XIII in an effort to convert Jews to Catholicism after a debate among scholars of both faiths.

+ Бакунин, Михаил Александрович. Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876). Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, socialist and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major founder of the revolutionary socialist and social anarchist tradition. Bakunin's prestige as a revolutionary also made him one of the most famous ideologues in Europe, gaining substantial influence among radicals throughout Russia and Europe. (...) Bakunin is remembered as a major figure in the history of anarchism, an opponent of Marxism, especially of the dictatorship of the proletariat and for his predictions that Marxist regimes would be one-party dictatorships over the proletariat, not by the proletariat. His book God and the State has been widely translated and remains in print.

* Mystical materialism. Mystical materialism is the thought that the entire universe is composed of matter, without mind. This philosophy is mystical since matter has never been observed directly, but is an idea in the mind of materialist philosophers. If it were to be observed, it would be perceived as external to the mind of the observer, in the mental activity of perception. Matter is a construct of the mind. The idea that matter pervades the universe, even parts of the universe that have never been observed is again, an idea in the mind of materialists. The material model, that is, the models of matter created by scientists, such as the “Bohr atom,” are reconstructions of the scientific imagination, that is, models crafted in the minds of scientists. In short there can be no “matter” without mind, since matter is a conceptual hypothesis of the mind. (PDF, downloads) Two MYSTICAL MATERIALISM - Brill

* William Aurifex. William Aurifex (that is, Goldsmith). This may be a pseudonym or, perhaps, an allusion to alchemical activity. According to the chronicler William the Breton his untimely zeal aroused the suspicions of the Church. That he is called a "prophet" seems to indicate that he propagated the ideas of Joachim of Fiore in a radical form, almost fifty years before Gerard of Borgo San Donnino. (PDF) Raoul Vaneigem - The Movement of the Free Spirit.

* Epicureanism (-III-II). Epicureanism is a system of philosophy founded around 307 BC based upon the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. Epicureanism was originally a challenge to Platonism. Later its main opponent became Stoicism. (...) Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following the Cyrenaic philosopher Aristippus, Epicurus believed that the greatest good was to seek modest, sustainable pleasure in the form of a state of ataraxia (tranquility and freedom from fear) and aponia (the absence of bodily pain) through knowledge of the workings of the world and limiting desires. Correspondingly, Epicurus and his followers generally withdrew from politics because it could lead to frustrations and ambitions which can directly conflict with the Epicurean pursuit for peace of mind and virtues. Although Epicureanism is a form of hedonism insofar as it declares pleasure to be its sole intrinsic goal, the concept that the absence of pain and fear constitutes the greatest pleasure, and its advocacy of a simple life, make it very different from "hedonism" as colloquially understood.

* Armilus ['Jewish Antichrist'; Армилус]. Armilus (also spelled Armilos and Armilius) is an anti-messiah figure in medieval Jewish eschatology who will conquer the whole Earth, centralizing in Jerusalem and persecuting the Jewish believers until his final defeat at the hands of the Jewish Messiah. His believed destruction symbolizes the ultimate victory of the Jewish Messiah in the Messianic Age. (...) According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Armilus is "a king who will arise at the end of time against the Messiah, and will be conquered by him after having brought much distress upon Israel." He is spoken of in the Midrash Vayosha, Sefer Zerubbabel and other texts. He is an adversary similar to Gog and Magog, and in some instances he is considered identical to Gog, but under another name. In the Sefer Zerubbabel he takes the place of Magog and defeats the Messiah ben Joseph.: 60  The origin of this figure, said to be the offspring of Satan and a virgin, or Satan and a statue (or "stone"), is regarded as questionable by the Jewish Encyclopedia, due to the variation and clear relation (if not parody) to Christian doctrine, legend, and scripture. This reference to him being born of a virgin, evoking the Virgin Mary, would correlate with Jewish sources stating that he is seen by the Christians as their Messiah and as their God, further identifying him to Jesus Christ.

* Friar. A friar is a brother and a member of one of the mendicant orders founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century; the term distinguishes the mendicants' itinerant apostolic character, exercised broadly under the jurisdiction of a superior general, from the older monastic orders' allegiance to a single monastery formalized by their vow of stability. The most significant orders of friars are the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, and Carmelites. Friars are different from monks in that they are called to live the evangelical counsels (vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience) in service to society, rather than through cloistered asceticism and devotion. Whereas monks live in a self-sufficient community, friars work among laypeople and are supported by donations or other charitable support. Monks or nuns make their vows and commit to a particular community in a particular place. Friars commit to a community spread across a wider geographical area known as a province and so they will typically move around, spending time in different houses of the community within their province.

* Bull Ad nostrum [The Beghards or Beguines—8 errors]. We entertain in our heart a deep longing that the catholic faith prosper in our time and that the perverseness of heresy be rooted out of Christian soil. We have therefore heard with great displeasure that an abominable sect of wicked men, commonly called Beghards, and of faithless women, commonly called Beguines, has sprung up in the realm of Germany. This sect, planted by the sower of evil deeds, holds and asserts in its sacrilegious and perverse doctrine the following errors. 1. First, that a person in this present life can acquire a degree of perfection which renders him utterly impeccable and unable to make further progress in grace. For, as they say, if someone could always make further progress, he could become more perfect than Christ. 2. Secondly, that it is not necessary to fast or pray after gaining this degree of perfection, for then the sensitive appetite has been so perfectly subjected to the spirit and to reason {!!} that one may freely grant the body whatever pleases it. 3. Thirdly, that those who have reached the said degree of perfection and spirit of liberty, are not subject to human obedience nor obliged to any commandments of the church, for, as they say, where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 4. Fourthly, that a person can gain in this life final beatitude in every degree of perfection that he will obtain in the life of the blessed. 5. Fifthly, that any intellectual nature in itself is naturally blessed, and that the soul does not need the light of glory to elevate it to see God and enjoy him blissfully. 6. Sixthly, that the practice of the virtues belongs to the state of imperfection and the perfect soul is free from virtues. 7. Seventhly, that to kiss a woman is a mortal sin since nature does not incline one to it, but the act of intercourse is not a sin, especially in time of temptation, since it is an inclination of nature. 8. Eighthly, that at the elevation of the body of Jesus Christ, they ought not to rise or show reverence to it; it would be an imperfection for them to come down from the purity and height of their contemplation {sanctimony} so far as to think about the ministry or sacrament of the eucharist, or about the passion of Christ as man. With the counterfeit appearance of sanctity they say and do other things also that offend the eyes of the divine majesty' and constitute a grave danger to souls. Since the duty of the office committed to us obliges us to exstirpate from the catholic church this detestable sect and the above execrable errors, lest they be further propagated and corrupt the hearts of the faithful, we condemn and utterly reject, with the approval of the sacred council, the sect itself and the errors described above, and we strictly forbid anyone henceforth to hold, approve or defend the errors. We decree that those who act otherwise are to be punished with canonical censure. The diocesans and the inquisitors of heresy for the regions where these Beghards and Beguines live, are to exercise their office with special care concerning them, making inquiries about their life and behaviour and about their beliefs in relation to the articles of faith and the sacraments of the church. They are to impose due punishment on those whom they find guilty, unless there is voluntary abjuration of the above errors and repentance with fitting satisfaction. COUNCIL OF VIENNE (1311-1312) [item 28]

+ Brethren of the Free Spirit ['like the Cathars, never existed' - subjective opinion]. Remember that papal bulls are named by their first few Latin words, which may not reflect their English translation. That's the case here. Here's a link to a translation of the Council of Vienne. The 28th Canon is the translation of "Ad nostrum" ("in our time" in the trans.). As you note, this is the canon condemning the Beghards and Beguines, no mention of "free spirits." As you've probably discovered, there isn't good evidence that there ever was such a group. Rather in the same way that the church hierarchy created a system of belief for the Cathar heresy that never existed among groups identified as Cathars, the "Free Spirits" seem to be concocted out of bits and pieces of Beghard and Beguine piety which paranoid theologians and inquisitors compiled into a dogma for an organized sect that likewise never existed. [existence or non-existence of a coherent movement is a matter of interpretation - in the case of decentralized movements, mutual identification and support would have presented a form of coherence in itself, even without a rigid structure] Looking for information or original text of the papal bull 'Ad Nostrum'.

+ Marguerite Porete. Sometime during the early to mid-1290s, Marguerite Porete wrote a mystical book known as The Mirror of Simple Souls. Written in Old French, the book describes the annihilation of the soul, specifically its descent into a state of nothingness—of union with God without distinction. While clearly popular throughout the Middle Ages and beyond (perhaps dozens of copies circulated throughout late-medieval western Europe) the book provoked some controversy, likely because of statements such as "a soul annihilated in the love of the creator could, and should, grant to nature all that it desires," which some took to mean that a soul can become one with God and that when in this state it can ignore moral law, as it had no need for the Church and its sacraments, or its code of virtues. This was not what Porete taught, since she explained that souls in such a state desired only good and would not be able to sin. Nevertheless, the book's teachings, for some, were too easily misconstrued, particularly by the unlearned. At issue too was the way Porete disseminated her teachings, which was evocative of actions and behaviors some clerics were—at the time—finding increasingly problematic among lay religious women. Indeed, Porete was eventually tried by the Dominican inquisitor of France and burned at the stake as a relapsed heretic in 1310. In 1311—the year after Porete's death—ecclesiastical officials made several specific connections between Porete's ideas and deeds and the Beguine status in general at the Council of Vienne. One of the council's decrees, Cum de Quibusdam, claimed that Beguines "dispute and preach about the highest Trinity and the divine essence and introduce opinions contrary to the catholic faith concerning the articles of the faith and the sacraments of the church." (Beguines and Beghards)

* Both the Council of Tarragona (1317) and the one of Mainz (1318) proscribed beguines and banned their habit. Likewise, in August 1317, John of Dürbheim, bishop of Strasbourg, issued a decree calling the “bad” beghards and beguines (begging sisters or ‘Swestrones,’ also nicknamed brod durch gott, “bread for God”) to give up, within three days, their way of life and the habits that, in their ‘perversity,’ they had been wearing. They could neither wear garments that were open below the navel, nor small hoods, especially if attached to the tunic. Moreover, although its closing clause supposedly protected both the “good” beguines and the penitents of the third Franciscan order, the Strasbourg chronicler observed in his entry for 1318 that some ecclesiastical authorities in Germany, interpreting Clement V’s bull indiscriminately, and executing it unjustly, had forced devout and humble women to give up their coarse and poor habits, to wear undergarments (camisia), and to resume their use of lay and coloured clothes. Hence, in the face of the growing harassment experienced by both “good” and “bad” beguines, John XXII sought to clarify the terms of Clement V’s earlier condemnation, with his bull Ratio recta of 13 August 1318. Although he explicitly did not grant official approval (‘nullatenus ex praemissis intendimus approbare’), he stated that the Clementine document was not aimed at “good” beguines, and that those leaving a perfectly orthodox life should not be persecuted. (PDF) Alejandra Concha Sahli - The Meaning of the Habit: Religious Orders, Dress and Identity, 1215-1650

* Walter of Cologne [Beghard leader] (XIV). In the early fourteenth century the Beghards of Cologne enacted naked masses in which participants rejoiced that they had returned to the state of Adam and Eve before the fall. Denounced by the husband of one of the women, the leader, Walter of Cologne, and fifty of his followers were executed by burning and drowning. Rejoice with me, for I have become God. I am made eternal in my eternal blessedness.

+ Brethren of the Free Spirit. Brethren of the Free Spirit was the name of a peculiar, quietistic-pantheistic group in the Christian Church in the Middle Ages whose history is still largely unknown. It was influenced by the mystics and leaned toward Libertinism. The fundamental ideas in their doctrine, traced back to Amalarich of Bena (d. 1204 as professor of theology in Paris) are as follows: In the human soul and all earthly things the divine substance is present {divine spark - Hasidism}. The merging of the soul in God is the final goal of all religion. Whoever attains this, the "perfect one," is sinless; his will is God's will. The commandments and means of grace are meaningless to him. Since all human conduct has been determined from eternity, all freedom of the human will is eliminated and moral striving without value. One must permit the Spirit to rule in him freely and allow himself to develop. This doctrine of unrestrained freedom of spirit was attributed to the Waldenses by their Catholic opponents. It is also charged against the Beguines and Beghards without warrant. It is apparently incorrect to try to define the development and organization of the Brethren as a unified brotherhood, a "sect of the free spirit." They were rather isolated groups that arose within and in opposition to the church. Perhaps some widely circulated writings hostile to the church, like Die neun Felsen in their original formulation and Schwester Kathrei were an important factor in their rise. Among the advocates of the doctrine were Margarete Porete (burned in Paris in 1310), Marie of Valenciennes, Hadewig Bloemmard of Brussels, who opposed Ruysbroek about 1330, Berthold of Rohrbach (burned at Speyer in 1356), and Hermann Küchener of Nürnberg. Whether Walter of the Netherlands (executed at Cologne in 1322), whom Keller calls an apostle of the Waldenses, belonged to them is very doubtful. Still less should the "Friend of God," Nikolaus of Basel be mentioned in connection with them. The accusation made again and again against the Anabaptists that they belonged to the "sect of the free spirit" was probably based on the unfounded assumption that they advocated the doctrine of sinlessness. GAMEO (Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online ) - Brethren of the Free Spirit

* Baal Shem Tov [Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer] (c 1698-1760). Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, known as the Baal Shem Tov or as the Besht, was a Jewish mystic and healer from Poland who is regarded as the founder of Hasidic Judaism. "Besht" is the acronym for Baal Shem Tov, which means "One with the Good Name" or "one with a good reputation". The little biographical information about the Besht comes from oral traditions handed down by his students (Jacob Joseph of Polonne and others) and from the legendary tales about his life and behavior collected in Shivḥei ha-Besht (In Praise of the Ba'al Shem Tov; Kapust and Berdychiv, 1814–15). A central tenet in the Baal Shem Tov's teaching is the direct connection with the divine, "dvekut", which is infused in every human activity and every waking hour. Prayer is of supreme importance, along with the mystical significance of Hebrew letters and words. His innovation lies in "encouraging worshipers to follow their distracting thoughts to their roots in the divine".

+ Nicholas of Basel [Nicholas Of Basle]. Nicholas Of Basle the great lay-preacher of the Middle Ages, and a leader of the Mystics in the 14th century, the man who taught Tauler (q.v.) that God's illuminating grace was not confined to the Church of Rome or her clergy, but comes to every one of God's people directly from Jesus Christ himself, was the son of a wealthy merchant in Basle, and was born in the year 1308. (...) He renounced the world, but made the renunciation in his own way. For five years he labored to obtain a nearer approach to God, reading the lives of saints and practicing austerities. At length God revealed himself to him, and he found peace. Now he began to feel himself specially inspired by God, and specially taught by the Holy Spirit. (...) While separating himself from the Church, and denying her claim to be the mediator between God and man in the revelation of doctrine, Nicholas did not associate himself with any heretical sects. He had no connection whatever with the Waldenses, although some of his doctrines were the same as theirs, and he was the determined opponent of the licentious Brethren of the Free Spirit, and of the pantheistic Beghards. (...) Nicholas's doctrine of self-renunciation is the barest and most absolute Quietism (q.v.), and if logically adhered to prevents every kind of human action and exertion. He went so far as to assert that "temptations to sin should always be faced and never shirked, nor are we to pray to be delivered from them; and in the same way it is not right to pray for any alteration of circumstances, nor even for the coming of the kingdom of heaven." The highest form of the divine life in man is, according to Nicholas, "resignation to the will of God, and prayer is a means of bringing about this state of resignation; hence the believer should only pray for a right and suitable frame of mind and will- that is, a frame of mind and will resigned to whatever is sent or is to be sent by God in his providence. (...) "When self-renunciation is complete, the soul of man having become entirely resigned to the divine will, becomes," Nicholas taught, "so entirely assimilated to the divine nature that it has continual and near fellowship with God. Thus the man who has so far triumphed over his natural inclination to self-assertion as to become wholly resigned to the ways of God, is always in familiar intercourse with the Spirit of God, who communicates to him all divine knowledge." Thus Nicholas claimed for himself and for such of his followers as had reached a state of perfection in self-renunciation a direct acquaintance with things divine. God revealed himself to them, they believed, not indirectly and only through the medium of the Holy Scriptures; but directly and immediately through dreams and waking visions, and in this way taught them to understand perfectly all the sublimest mysteries in theology. (...) This private inspiration, which Nicholas believed that he possessed, was quite different from the ordinary efforts of the human reason, and in this respect Tauler and Nicholas held opinions altogether opposed to the rationalism of Eckhart {??}. It was a supernatural gift especially bestowed upon men from without, and showed itself in ways altogether different from the exercise of the ordinary reason. The men who were believed to be possessed of it had in it a new gift, altogether different from the capacities of their fellows, which made them independent of all churchly and other aids to a religious life, and they were, as possessors of the same spirit, brought into such a close spiritual fellowship with each other, that they could, while far distant, correspond with each other through alternate visions. McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia - Nicholas of Basle // According to Martin of Mainz, a disciple of his burnt in 1393, Nicholas claimed to understand the Gospels better than the Apostles, assumed ecclesiastical functions, and professed to release his followers from their obedience to the Church into a state of primal innocence. It is not clear that his views were as radical as Martin's confession implies. After evading the Inquisition for many years, he was burnt at Vienna. Oxford Reference - Nicholas of Basle

* Mechthild of Magdeburg [Matilda of Magdeburg] (c 1207-c 1282/1294). Mechthild of Magdeburg, a Beguine, was a Christian medieval mystic, whose book Das fließende Licht der Gottheit is a compendium of visions, prayers, dialogues and mystical accounts. She was the first mystic to write in German. (...) She was born into a noble Saxon family. She had her first vision of the Holy Spirit at the age of twelve. In 1230 she left her home and “renounced worldly honour and worldly riches” to become a Beguine at Magdeburg. There, like Hadewijch of Antwerp, she seems to have exercised a position of authority in a Beguine community. In Magdeburg she became acquainted with the Dominicans and became a Dominican tertiary. It seems clear that she read many of the Dominican writers. It was her Dominican confessor, Henry of Halle, who encouraged and helped Mechthild to compose The Flowing Light. Her criticism of church dignitaries, religious laxity and claims to theological insight aroused so much opposition that some called for the burning of her writings. (...) What is unusual about her writings is that she composed her work in Middle Low German at a time when most wisdom literature was composed in Latin. Thus she is remembered as an early proponent and popularizer of German as a language worthy of the divine and holy. Mechthild's writing is exuberant and highly sophisticated. Her images of Hell are believed by some scholars to have influenced Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy, and Mechthild is thought to have been represented by Dante in that work, in the character of Matelda.

* Hadewijch (XIII). Hadewijch, sometimes referred to as Hadewych or Hadewig (of Brabant or of Antwerp) was a 13th-century poet and mystic, probably living in the Duchy of Brabant. Most of her extant writings are in a Brabantian form of Middle Dutch. Her writings include visions, prose letters and poetry. Hadewijch was one of the most important direct influences on John of Ruysbroeck. No details of her life are known outside the sparse indications in her own writings. Her Letters suggest that she functioned as the head of a beguine house, but that she had experienced opposition that drove her to a wandering life. This evidence, as well as her lack of reference to life in a convent, makes the nineteenth-century theory that she was a nun problematic, and it has been abandoned by modern scholars. She must have come from a wealthy family: her writing demonstrates an expansive knowledge of the literature and theological treatises of several languages, including Latin and French, as well as French courtly poetry, in a period when studying was a luxury only exceptionally granted to women. Most of Hadewijch's extant writings, none of which survived the Middle Ages as an autograph, are in a Brabantian form of Middle Dutch. Five groups of texts survive: her writings include poetry, descriptions of her visions, and prose letters. (...) Visions. Hadewijch's Book of Visions (Visioenenboek), the earliest vernacular collection of such revelations, appears to have been composed in the 1240s. It prominently features dialogue between Hadewijch and Christ in visionary speech, an early example of this mode of vernacular religious instruction.

* John of Ruusbroec [Jan vab Ruysbroeck] (1293/4-1381). John van Ruysbroeck, original Flemish name Jan van Ruusbroec was an Augustinian canon and one of the most important of the Flemish mystics. Some of his main literary works include The Kingdom of the Divine Lovers, The Twelve Beguines, The Spiritual Espousals, A Mirror of Eternal Blessedness, The Little Book of Enlightenment, and The Sparkling Stone. Some of his letters also survive, as well as several short sayings (recorded by some of his disciples, such as Jan van Leeuwen). He wrote in the Dutch vernacular, the language of the common people of the Low Countries, rather than in Latin, the language of the Catholic Church liturgy and official texts, in order to reach a wider audience.

* Geert Groote [Gerhard Groot] (1340-1384). Gerard Groote, otherwise Gerrit or Gerhard Groet, in Latin Gerardus Magnus, was a Dutch Catholic deacon, who was a popular preacher and the founder of the Brethren of the Common Life {religious but non-monastic community}. He was a key figure in the Devotio Moderna movement. He was born in the Hanseatic city Deventer in the Bishopric of Utrecht, where his father held a good civic position. He studied at Aachen, then went to the University of Paris when only fifteen. Here he studied scholastic philosophy and theology at the Sorbonne under a pupil of William of Occam's, from whom he imbibed the nominalist conception of philosophy; in addition he studied Canon law, medicine, astronomy and even magic, and apparently some Hebrew. (...) In 1374 Groote turned his family home in Deventer into a shelter for poor women and lived for several years as a guest of the Carthusian monastery. In 1379, having received ordination as a deacon, he became a missionary preacher throughout the diocese of Utrecht. (...) The bishop of Utrecht supported him warmly, and got him to preach against concubinage in the presence of the clergy assembled in synod. The impartiality of his censures, which he directed not only against the prevailing sins of the laity, but also against heresy, simony, avarice, and impurity among the secular and regular clergy, provoked the hostility of the clergy, and accusations of heterodoxy were brought against him. (...) The bishop was induced to issue an edict which prohibited from preaching all who were not in priestly orders, and an appeal by Groove to Pope Urban VI was without effect. (...) Devotio Moderna. A movement known as the Modern Devotion (Devotio Moderna) was founded in the Netherlands by Groote and Florens Radewyns, in the late fourteenth century. For Groote the pivotal point is the search for inner peace, which results from the denial of one's own self and is to be achieved by "ardour" and "silence". This is the heart of the "New Devotion", or the "Devotio moderna". Solitary meditation on Christ’s Passion and redemption, on one’s own death, the Last Judgment, heaven, and hell was essential. In the course of the 15th century, the Modern Devotion found adherents throughout the Netherlands and Germany. Its precepts were further disseminated in texts such as The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, which reached an increasingly literate public. In this context small works of art such as diptychs that provided a focus for private worship enjoyed wide popularity.

* Nominalism - Medieval philosophy. In medieval philosophy, the French philosopher and theologian Roscellinus (c. 1050 – c. 1125) was an early, prominent proponent of nominalism. Nominalist ideas can be found in the work of Peter Abelard and reached their flowering in William of Ockham, who was the most influential and thorough nominalist. Abelard's and Ockham's version of nominalism is sometimes called conceptualism, which presents itself as a middle way between nominalism and realism, asserting that there is something in common among like individuals, but that it is a concept in the mind, rather than a real entity existing independently of the mind. Ockham argued that only individuals existed and that universals were only mental ways of referring to sets of individuals. "I maintain", he wrote, "that a universal is not something real that exists in a subject ... but that it has a being only as a thought-object in the mind [objectivum in anima]". As a general rule, Ockham argued against assuming any entities that were not necessary for explanations. Accordingly, he wrote, there is no reason to believe that there is an entity called "humanity" that resides inside, say, Socrates, and nothing further is explained by making this claim. This is in accord with the analytical method that has since come to be called Ockham's razor, the principle that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible. Critics argue that conceptualist approaches answer only the psychological question of universals. If the same concept is correctly and non-arbitrarily applied to two individuals, there must be some resemblance or shared property between the two individuals that justifies their falling under the same concept and that is just the metaphysical problem that universals were brought in to address, the starting-point of the whole problem (MacLeod & Rubenstein, 2006, §3d). If resemblances between individuals are asserted, conceptualism becomes moderate realism; if they are denied, it collapses into nominalism. (Nominalism)

* Heilwige Bloemardinne [Heilwijch Blomart] (1265?-1335). Heilwige Bloemardinne (1265? – 23 August 1335) was a Christian mystic who lived in Brussels and was loosely associated with the Brethren of the Free Spirit. She was also known as Heilwijch Blomart. She was the daughter of a wealthy merchant, Wilhelm Bloemart, one of the most consistently powerful figures in the municipal government of Brussels. She is differentiated from earlier teachers such as Aleydis (executed, Cambrai, 1236) or Marguerite Porete (executed, Paris, 1310) by the support she enjoyed from the secular authorities which made her untouchable by the Inquisition. Some idea of her prestige is given by the fact that, on her death, the silver chair upon which she sat when instructing disciples was given to the Duchess of Brabant. This chair was popularly believed to possess miraculous powers derived from its association with her. According to Professor Cohn she was popularly revered as a living saint. She is known to have written a book because John of Ruysbroeck also known as John of Ruusbroec attacked it calling by it heretical, but no copy seems to have survived. Ruysbroeck does not bring himself to refer to her by name but calls her Pseudo-Hadewijch. One view is that John of Ruysbroeck's time as a priest in Brussels was brought to an end by being driven out by supporters of Bloemardinne. These grounds for personal animosity make it hard to know if the views he attributes to her are fairly stated. The view that can most confidently be attributed to her is the doctrine of seraphic love - that melting into God is a possibility and that a blissful foretaste of paradise is available to the earth-bound. "At the head of the sect in Brussels was a certain woman, who excited such admiration among the people that they believed that two seraphim accompanied her when she approached the Holy Table." Accusations that this spilled over into incitement to sensual indulgence were levied at Bloemardinne or those who claimed to follow her. Another view which Ruysbroeck attributes to her followers is that of complete passivity before God. "Thus they are poor in spirit for they are without will of any sort having forsaken everything and making no choices of their own." This has echoes of Marguerite Porete's annihilation of souls. Another similarity to Porete may be the method of disseminating her views among the population. If Ruysbroeck's attacks are accurate, Bloemardinne produced pamphlets which acted as teaching summaries from which travelling teachers could expound these lessons to the poor. Parts of the Mirror of Simple Souls read as if they began with this purpose in mind, particularly as the words 'reader' and 'hearer' are used indiscriminately. Heilwige Bloemardinne seems to be developing a tradition started more conservatively by Beatrice of Nazareth of whom it was said, "in all her deeds and thoughts, she neither feared nor was in awe of men, nor devil, nor angel, nor even divine judgment." The movement spread and seems to have inspired Jeanne Dabenton who led the "Society of the Poor" in Paris and was executed there around 1372.

* Aleydis(1204-c 1236). A Beguine named Aleydis was executed for heresy as early as 1236, which provoked an outcry from a public that still venerated the movement. (Susan R. Pitchford - God in the Dark: Suffering and Desire in the Spiritual Life) // Earlier, around 1236, the Beguine Aleydis of Schaerbeek (1204–c.1236) had been executed for heresy, accused of Amalrcian beliefs or "Free Love". (Elizabeth Gillan Muir - Women's History of the Christian Church: Two Thousand Years of Female Leadership)

* “Fin Amor”. Hadewijch of Antwerp (XIII) – whose exegetes, more concerned with religion than with history, have improperly annexed her to their pantheon of devotees – mentioned in her List of Perfect Ones the Beguine Aleydis, who was condemned to the pyre by Robert the Bulgarian for her [concept of] “just love.” Unlike the Waldensians burned at Cambrai in 1236 by that sinister hunter of heretics, Aleydis was alleged to have professed Amalrician ideas, which were found in the towns along the Rhine (Cologne, Mainz, and Strasbourg) and the northern cities (Valenciennes, Amiens, Cambrai, Tournai, Brussels, and Antwerp). The doctrine of pure love – which, fifty years later, Marguerite Porete identified with the life force in which human nature liberated itself from its alienation from nature [sa dénaturation] in order to mix itself with the will of a Good God – haunted the poems and visions of Hadewijch of Antwerp and several Cistercian Monials in the north, without one being able to decide with certitude if pure love was spiritual ecstasy, an amor extaticus, or an exaltation of amorous pleasure, or a combination of the two, as in the diverse paths of Tantrism. The bawdiness of the times, from which only a part of the bourgeoisie and several defenders of clerical austerity escaped, was enjoyed – as was attested to by various fables, [works of] literature and [historical] chronicles – with an equal attraction in the cottages, convents, chateaux and churches. The ordinary obstacles to such bawdiness were feelings of guilt, contrition and remorse, which fed the coffers of penitential redemption and the market in indulgences. Thus, the union with the Spirit, or with its Christian form, the Christ, alias the pneuma or Sophia, was revealed in the eyes of the adepts of the free spirit as identical to the union of man and woman, the koinos [the shared-in-common] that was evoked by the Hermetic work by Asclepios and the Gospel attributed to Philippe. Amorous pleasure, identified with the finally renewed unity between the body and the spirit, regenerated the Adamite state, the state of innocence in which there existed neither sin nor guilt. This was why, from the poorest people to the aristocracy, the free spirit gained adhesion – an adhesion that was most often above suspicion, to the great disappointment of the inquisitorial police. Because they were little interested in sacrifice, the supporters of the free spirit obeyed prudence and, with rare exceptions, neither preached nor issued propaganda. Resistance to Christianity - Chapter 31: The Movement of the Free Spirit

* The Spiritual Marriage [Ruysbroeck]. This volume contains three of Jan van Ruysbroeck's best works: The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, The Sparkling Stone, and The Book of Truth. These works are remarkable for their combination of lofty spiritual philosophy and robust common sense. As we read them, we feel that we are in touch with a man who, in his ecstatic ascents to God, never loses hold of the actualities of human life. In the Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, he traces the gradual development of the soul through the active life of Christian virtue, the interior life of contemplation, and the superessential life of union with God. The Sparkling Stone further elaborates on some of the more difficult passages in The Adornment, and The Book of Truth was written as a refutation of the accusation that van Ruysbroeck's work supported a pantheistic and heretical view of the union of the soul with God. Primarily influenced by St. Paul and St. Augustine, van Ruysbroeck was driven to speak out on the mystical life in reaction to the rising of heretical sects in the lowlands of Belgium that were preaching a quietism of - the most soul-destroying kind - early in the 14th century. The singular feature of Ruysbroeck's teaching is achieving a balanced career of action and contemplation as the ideal of the Christian soul. Adornment Of The Spiritual Marriage: The Sparkling Stone & The Book of Supreme Truth (Ibis Western Mystery Tradition) <> The Spiritual Marriage between Christ and His Church and Every One of the Faithful. Developing from {Reformed pastor} Girolamo Zanchi’s exegetical labors through Ephesians, Spiritual Marriage draws readers into the rich theological of doctrine of union with Christ. Following the lead of the apostle Paul, Zanchi demonstrates how our earthly marriages fulfill their truest purpose by drawing our attention toward the spiritual marriage between Christ and His Church. By paying attention to the Genesis account of Adam’s marriage to Eve, to pertinent Old Testament laws, and to the teachings of Jesus and His apostles, we begin to understand something of that higher and heavenly union. This new translation helps us better understand the great mystery of Christ and His bride. The Spiritual Marriage between Christ and His Church and Every One of the Faithful (Zanchi)

* Homines Intelligentiae [Men of Understanding] (XIV/XV). The Men of Understanding (in Latin Homines Intelligentiae) is the name assumed by a heretical sect (from the Catholic point of view) in the Low Countries, which in 1410-11 was cited before the Inquisition at Brussels. The sect was doctrinally related with the earlier Brethren of the Free Spirit. It taught the eventual salvation of all human beings and even of the demons, maintained that the soul of man cannot be defiled by bodily sin, and believed in a mystical state of illumination and union with God so perfect that it exempted from all subjection to moral and ecclesiastical laws and was an infallible pledge of salvation. Both its leaders, Egidius Cantoris, an illiterate layman, and the Carmelite William of Hildernissen, near Bergen-op-Zoom, gloried in {glory in - feel or show that you are very proud and happy about something} the visions with which they claimed to have been favoured. Cantoris in a moment of religious exaltation went so far as to run nude through the streets of Brussels, declaring himself the saviour of mankind. About 1410 Peter d'Ailly, Bishop of Cambrai, seems to have taken the first steps towards the suppression of the heresy. William of Hildernissen consented to a retraction, the sincerity of which appeared doubtful. In 1411, a second investigation resulted in another retraction, but also in a sentence compelling William to return permanently to an extra-diocesan Carmelite monastery after three years' detention in one of the episcopal castles. Nothing is known about the result of the inquisitorial procedure against the other members of the sect. // In 1410 the Carmelite William of Hildernissen was accused of leading the Homines intelligentes, a heretical sect in Brussels, which, according to tradition, had sprung up muh earlier around the legendary {!!} lay preacher Aegidius Cantor, a self-appointed saviour of mankind who proclaimed an unlimited doctrine of salvation. It was said that, as a sign of his perfection, he indulged in nudity, and rumour had it that he invited his followers to perform all natural acts - including sexual intercourse (even outside marriage) - in complete freedom. Thanks to their unbridled libertinism, the Homines intelligentes have been secured a place in every publication on medieval heresy. Many historians were eager to believe the incredible stories. Only Robert Lerner, historiographer of the Free Spirit, studied their case with a cool eye. After his critical examination of the evidence, little remained of the legendary Aegidius Cantor. The most revealing conclusion was that the great number of accusations were intended to cover up the lack of evidence in the case against William of Hildernissen. The principal accusation involved preaching a radical doctrine that closely resembled the ideas espoused by Eckhart's admirers. Texts expounding those ideas were already circulation in Brussels in Ruusbroec's days. The outcome of the affair indicates that the alleged Brussels heresy was not as outrageous as the sources would have us believe. William was banished from the diocese for a time {rather than being burned; but that could also have been a sign of influence or protection}, although ten years later he resurfaced as a lector at the Carmelite convent in Tienen, but not before he had publicly distanced himself from any outlandish notions about the perfection of the inner person. William was instructed to renounce his teachings publicly before the Church of St Gudula and in the beguinage known as the Wijngaard {Cohn: William had to make a public recantation in the district of Brussels inhabited by the Beguines}, that is to say, in the presence of clerics and beguines - the two groups traditionally most open to suspicions of Free Spirit heresy. (GB) Geert Warnar - Ruusbroec: Literature and Mysticism in the Fourteenth Century

* Robert E. Lerner (b 1940). Robert E. Lerner (born 1940 in New York) is an American medieval historian and professor of history emeritus at Northwestern University. Lerner gained his B.A. at the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. at Princeton in 1964, where he studied with Joseph R. Strayer. Lerner has specialised in medieval heresy and millennial eschatology, as well as writing on a variety of topics in medieval religious and intellectual history. His major monographs are The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (1972), The Powers of Prophecy (1983), and The Feast of Saint Abraham (2001). Prominent among his articles are the widely cited “Refreshment of the Saints” (1976) and “Ecstatic Dissent” (1992). In addition, he was the co-author of a best-selling Western Civilization textbook, a work translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Korean.

* Turlupins [Society of the Poor] (XIV). The turlupins were a religious sect in medieval France, loosely related to the Beguines and Beghards and the Brethren of the Free Spirit. The name turlupin is a derisive epithet; they appear to have called themselves the "society of the poor" or "fellowship of poverty". Mention of them survives only in writings of their opponents, who condemned them as heretics. From Avignon, Pope Gregory XI excommunicated them as heretics. Therefore, very little is known about them, but they apparently wore few clothes as an expression of the vow of poverty, which led to accusations of nudism and promiscuity. Some historians think their importance may have been exaggerated to add "local colour" to academic theological disputes. The sect was active mainly in the second half of the 14th century around Paris, being one of the few heretical sects active in Paris at that time. In 1372 a number were imprisoned, with a female leader, Jeanne Daubenton, burnt at the stake for witchcraft and heresy. A similar sect may have been active in the 1460s around Lille.

* Jeanne Daubenton (c 1337-1372/3). French preacher burned alive for heresy in 1372 // Jeanne (ou Pieroime) Daubenton, Daubentonne ou D'Aubenton fut une prédicatrice {preacher} et mystique champenoise particulièrement remarquée dans les chroniques du xive siècle, née vers 1337 à Aubenton (Aisne) et brûlée vive pour hérésie à Paris en juillet 1372 ou 1373. Elle compte au nombre des martyrs de la liberté de penser. (...) fr.wikipedia.org - Jeanne Daubenton

* Eligius Pruystinck [Loy Pruystinck, Loy/Looi de Schaliedecker] (d 1544). Eligius Pruystinck or Looi de Schaliedekker ("Eloy the Slater") (fl. 1525 – 24 October 1544) was an Antwerp slater who became the leader of a radical Protestant faction named Loists (Loïsten in Dutch) after him. Pruystinck was likely born a poor man in Antwerp and remained poor through his life, leaving nothing after his death in 1544. He had contact with David Joris, probably before 1525, but his movement was not Anabaptist. In March 1525, Pruystinck visited Melanchthon and Luther in Wittenberg. In a letter he wrote immediately afterwards, Luther warned the Protestant community at Antwerp against him (and "blustering and noisy spirits" in general) by summarizing Pruystinck's doctrines as: every man possesses faith and the Holy Spirit, where the first is the desire to treat one's neighbor as oneself and the second is human reason and intelligence; all souls enjoy eternal life; only the flesh and not the spirit suffers hell {in this life ??}; no sin has been committed when not acting on an evil thought and small children cannot sin. These doctrines have been compared to those of the much older Brethren of the Free Spirit and Beghards and the 15th-century Homines Intelligentiae of the Low Countries, and Pruystinck's movement was a form of Panentheism. The notion of radicalism was fueled by their rejection of religious marriage, lent, praying and other basic church regulations. Called before the Inquisition of Antwerp in January 1526, Pruystinck and his followers recanted and were sentenced to public penance. They were let free on orders of Mary of Austria, Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. Despite the recantation, his teaching spread through the Low Countries in the following years. In 1535 he met Christophe Hérault, a French Lutherian who had fled from Paris to Antwerp and who became a follower. While a pauper himself, his movement attracted many followers amongst merchants, rich citizens and even nobility. Pruystinck's teachings were written down, probably by Dominicus van Oucle, but this writing is lost. On July 14, 1544, Hérault and Pruystinck were arrested and tortured on accusation of interactions with David Joris and other Anabaptists. Many other Loists were captured, though quite a few managed to escape to England and Germany. In September and October of that year Dominicus van Oucle committed suicide in prison and Hérault and some other leaders were decapitated. Pruystinck himself was brought back to Antwerp, and after a sentencing on October 24, 1544, he was burned at the stake outside the city. It is unknown if he recanted before he died. // Eligius Pruystinck (actief 1525 – Antwerpen, 24 oktober 1544), ook gekend als Loy de Schaliedecker was de leider van de loïsten, een religieuze libertijnse beweging waartegen Maarten Luther de Antwerpse protestantse gemeenschap waarschuwde. Pruystinck, een leidekker van beroep, was hoogstwaarschijnlijk een Antwerpenaar van bescheiden afkomst: in 1544 woonde hij waarschijnlijk in de Rijke Beukelaarstraat, een straat in een van de armste kwartieren van de stad. Bronnen beschrijven hem als ongeletterd. Toen hij te Antwerpen op de brandstapel stierf, liet hij geen materieel erfgoed na.

* Philip Melanchthon [Филипп Меланхтон] (1497-1560). Philip Melanchthon was a German Lutheran reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and an influential designer of educational systems. He stands next to Luther and John Calvin as a reformer, theologian, and moulder of Protestantism. Melanchthon along with Luther denounced what they believed was the exaggerated cult of the saints, asserted justification by faith, and denounced what they considered to be the coercion of the conscience in the sacrament of penance (confession and absolution), which they believed could not offer certainty of salvation. Both rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation, i.e. that the bread and wine of the eucharist are converted by the Holy Spirit into the flesh and blood of Christ; however, they affirmed that Christ's body and blood are present with the elements of bread and wine in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. This Lutheran view of sacramental union contrasts with the understanding of the Roman Catholic Church that the bread and wine cease to be bread and wine at their consecration (while retaining the appearances of both). Melanchthon made his distinction between law and gospel the central formula for Lutheran evangelical insight. By the "law", he meant God's requirements both in Old and New Testament; the "gospel" meant the free gift of grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

+ Libertines. When John Calvin arrived in Geneva in 1553, he was met by the godless Libertines. This group appealed to the freedom of the Spirit as an excuse to indulge the desires of the flesh. They argued against the Evangelists, jeered at the Apostles calling each of them nicknames, and denied the resurrection. Some have said of the Libertines, that the "communion of saints" meant the common possessions of all goods, including other men's wives. They were sexually immoral and proud of their liberty, and all the while insisting on their right to attend the Lord's Table. (...) This sect was led by Quintin Thieffry, and Calvin simply had to expose their use of Scripture, in which they interpreted it allegorically {'spiritual interpretation'}, and even expected Calvin and Co. to go beyond it in search of new revelations {??}. Such a suggestion angered Calvin, who viewed it as heretical to go beyond the clear teaching of Scripture. If these ‘theologians’ were prepared to tamper with the Scriptural data, they would have Calvin to answer to. Making Scripture say what the writers never intended it to say was anathema to the Reformer, a lesson we all need to keep in mind. These Libertines were dogma-driven, but Calvin was data-driven; they had made up their minds about what the Scripture taught, and then looked for texts to back up those beliefs. Calvin sought what God was saying in His Word, and drew his doctrine from that. (...) The Libertines were quite a troublesome lot, and became very concerned about there being too many ministers (Geneva only had four, but for them, this was four too many), too many sermons, and Calvin was writing too many books. These men wanted to abolish the sermon from church services because in these sermons, their promiscuous life-styles were being lashed by this faithful preacher, and this condemnation found its way into the press and from platforms. They preferred a harmless kind of worship – we might say, a user-friendly form of worship where anything goes, where large numbers of contemporary worship-tasters are attracted, where there is a high level of worldly entertainment, where the Word read and preached is kept to a respectable minimum, and where the young are catered for fully – this is the kind of worship services the Libertines desired, the kind of thing we see in all liberal evangelical churches around our country. (...) These Genevan ‘liberals’ were prepared to tolerate, as a minimum, the “Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments,” as the content of teaching. More than that was too much, too dangerous, and not needed. The Reformed Faith - Calvin and the Libertines // The Libertines or Spirituels, as they called themselves, were far worse than the Patriots. They formed the opposite extreme to the severe discipline of Calvin. He declares that they were the most pernicious of all the sects that appeared since the time of the ancient Gnostics and Manichaeans, and that they answer the prophetic description in the Second Epistle of Peter and the Epistle of Jude. He traces their immediate origin to Coppin of Yssel and Quintin of Hennegau, in the Netherlands, and to an ex-priest, Pocquet or Pocques, who spent some time in Geneva, and wanted to get a certificate from Calvin; but Calvin saw through the man and refused it. They revived the antinomian doctrines of the mediaeval sect of the "Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit," a branch of the Beghards, who had their headquarters at Cologne and the Lower Rhine, and emancipated themselves not only from the Church, but also from the laws of morality. The Libertines described by Calvin were antinomian pantheists. They confounded the boundaries of truth and error, of right and wrong. Under the pretext of the freedom of the spirit, they advocated the unbridled license of the flesh. Their spiritualism ended in carnal materialism. They taught that there is but one spirit, the Spirit of God, who lives in all creatures, which are nothing without him. "What I or you do," said Quintin, "is done by God, and what God does, we do; for he is in us." Sin is a mere negation or privation, yea, an idle illusion which disappears as soon as it is known and disregarded. Salvation consists in the deliverance from the phantom of sin. There is no Satan, and no angels, good or bad. They denied the truth of the gospel history. The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ have only a symbolical meaning to show us that sin does not exist for us. The Libertines taught the community of goods and of women, and elevated spiritual marriage above legal marriage, which is merely carnal and not binding. The wife of Ameaux justified her wild licentiousness by the doctrine of the communion of saints, and by the first commandment of God given to man: "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth (Gen. 1). The Libertines rejected the Scriptures as a dead letter, or they resorted to wild allegorical interpretations to suit their fancies. They gave to each of the Apostles a ridiculous nickname.734 Some carried their system to downright atheism and blasphemous anti-Christianity. They used a peculiar jargon, like the Gypsies, and distorted common words into a mysterious meaning. They were experts in the art of simulation and justified pious fraud by the parables of Christ. They accommodated themselves to Catholics or Protestants according to circumstances, and concealed their real opinions from the uninitiated. The sect made progress among the higher classes of France, where they converted about four thousand persons. Quintin and Pocquet insinuated themselves into the favor of Queen Marguerite of Navarre, who protected and supported them at her little court at Nérac, yet without adopting their opinions and practices.735 She took offence at Calvin’s severe attack upon them. He justified his course in a reply of April 28, 1545, which is a fine specimen of courtesy, frankness, and manly dignity. Calvin assured the queen, whose protection he had himself enjoyed while a fugitive from persecution, that he intended no reflection on her honor, or disrespect to her royal majesty, and that he wrote simply in obedience to his duty as a minister. "Even a dog barks if he sees any one assault his master. How could I be silent if God’s truth is assailed?736 ... As for your saying that you would not like to have such a servant as myself, I confess that I am not qualified to render you any great service, nor have you need of it … . Nevertheless, the disposition is not wanting, and your disdain shall not prevent my being at heart your humble servant. For the rest, those who know me are well aware that I have never studied to enter into the courts of princes, for I was never tempted to court worldly honors.737 For I have good reason to be contented with the service of that good Master, who has accepted me and retained me in the honorable office which I hold, however contemptible in the eyes of the world. I should, indeed, be ungrateful beyond measure if I did not prefer this condition to all the riches and honors of the world." Philip Schaff - History of the Christian Church, Volume VIII: Modern Christianity. The Swiss Reformation. § 108. Calvin’s Struggle with the Patriots and Libertines. // ‘There are not many spirits,’ said Quintin, ‘there is only one spirit of God, who is and lives in all creatures. It is this sole spirit which does everything; man has no will, no more than if he were a stone.’ Such language surprised Calvin. He examined the strange prophets, and discovered several capital errors in them. ‘The Holy Spirit is our reason,’ said some, ‘and that spirit teaches us that there is neither condemnation nor hell.’ — ‘The soul,’ said others, ‘is material and mortal.’ — ‘God is everything,’ said Quintin, ‘and everything is God.’ Immoral doctrines were combined with this system. Calvin’s conscience was terrified: he had risen up for the purpose of destroying a worm-eaten framework that men had built round the temple of God, and now rash hands were presuming to destroy the temple itself. He wished to destroy the superstitious traditions of so many ages, only to set the Divine truths of the apostolic times in their place; and all of a sudden he found himself face to face with men who desired no other God but nature, and would change the world into a vast wilderness. (...) One day a man had been murdered in the streets of Paris; a great crowd gathered round his body, and a pious Christian exclaimed: ‘Alas! who has committed this crime?’ Quintin, who was there also, made answer immediately, in his Picard patois : ‘Since you want to know, it was me!’ The other said to him with surprise: ‘What! could you be such a coward?’ ‘It was not me, it was God.’ (...) He {Calvin} quoted the commandments of God against theft and murder: ‘You call God impure,’ he said, ‘a thief and a robber, and you add that there is no harm in it. Who, I pray, has condemned impurity, theft, murder, if God has not?’… Quintin, who was generally very liberal with passages from Scripture, answered with a smile: ‘We are not subject to the letter which killeth, but to the Spirit which giveth life… The Bible contains allegories, myths which the Holy Spirit explains to us.’ ‘You make your Scripture a nose of wax,’ said Calvin, ‘and play with it, as if it were a ball.’ — ‘You find fault with my language because you do not understand it,’ said Quintin. HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION - CALVIN’S FIRST RELATIONS WITH THE LIBERTINES AND SERVETUS. // Libertines THE, or as they called themselves, Spiritualists, were a Pantheistic and Antinomian sect of the Reformation days. They appeared first in the Netherlands as an ultra division of the "Brethren of the Free Spirit." They spread into France, and, by the interest they manifested in political affairs, gained considerable influence also in Switzerland, especially in Geneva. The impulse given to thought by the Reformation gave rise also to many errors, which flourished by the side of evangelical truth. "Lofty as our ideas of the Reformation should be, we must not be blind to the fact that.... Protestantism [referring especially to the Continent] bears sad evidence of early mismanagement" (Hurst, Hist. of Rationalism, page 37). Foremost among the heretics of this period were the Brethren of the Free Spirit, who, although hotly persecuted, had never been entirely exterminated, and who were yet numerous in Germany and the Netherlands. They now suddenly emerged from the secrecy in which they had lately hidden themselves, as soon as the power of the Church began to wane. Luther clearly saw, however, that not to Romanism, but to Protestantism as well, the influence of the Libertines must be baneful, and he took an early opportunity to warn the Christians of those countries against them (Gieseler, Kirchenlesch. 3 [1], 557). Calvin also had to contend against the influence of these Rationalists, and, in speaking of them, mentions a certain Coppin, of Lille, as the first who attempted to introduce, as early as 1529, the doctrines of the Free Spirit in his native city. This Coppin was soon eclipsed by his disciple Quintin, of Hennegaui, who, with his companions Bertrand, became the leader of the sect in France in 1534, and with whom a priest called Plocquet (Pocques) connected himself. These two, for Bertrand soon died, are represented as uneducated but shrewd men, who made religion a means of securing earthly goods, and who were very successful in the attempt. They openly professed to have found the principle of "moral falsehood" (or mental reservation) inculcated in the Scriptures, and, in consequence, thought it but right to profess Roman Catholicism when among Roman Catholics, and Protestantism when with Protestants. They are said to have made 4000 proselytes in France alole. They did not, moreover, confine their attempts at deceit to the lower classes, but, on the contrary, endeavored to gain proselytes among the learned and in the higher walks of society; they succeeded even in gaining the ear of the queen Margaret of Navarre, sister of Francis I, who received them, as also a certain Lefevre d'Etaples and others, at her court, and daily consulted with them. They made great use of allegory, figures of speech, etc., taking their authority from the precept, "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." (...) McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia - Libertines

* Alumbrados (XV-XVII). The alumbrados was a term used to loosely describe practitioners of a mystical form of Christianity in Spain during the 15th-16th centuries. Some alumbrados were only mildly heterodox, but others held views that were clearly heretical, according to the contemporary rulers. Consequently, they were firmly repressed and became some of the early victims of the Spanish Inquisition. The alumbrados held that the human soul can reach such a degree of perfection that it can even in the present life contemplate the essence of God and comprehend the mystery of the Trinity. All external worship, they declared, is superfluous, the reception of the sacraments useless, and sin impossible in this state of complete union with God. Persons in this state of impeccability could indulge their sexual desires and commit other sinful acts freely without staining their souls. Their correction, by Inquisitional standards, was not particularly severe. Those convicted of engaging in the mystical practices and heresy of the alumbrados were not executed, few endured long-term sentences, and most were tried only after they managed to acquire large congregations in Toledo or Salamanca. Not all, however, were so fortunate. In 1529 a congregation of naïve adherents at Toledo was subjected to whippings and imprisonment. Greater rigors followed, and for about a century alleged connection with the alumbrados sent many to the Inquisition, especially at Córdoba. In spite of this determined action, however, the heresy maintained itself until the middle of the 17th century. The connection of later alumbrados, whose practices varied in different places, to the original alumbrados, Isabella de la Cruz and Pedro Ruiz del Alcaraz, is debatable, but the continuing influence of their teachings is not improbable.

* Sister Catherine Treatise [Schwester Katrei] (XIII-XIV). The Sister Catherine Treatise (German: Daz ist Swester Katrei Meister Eckehartes Tohter von Straezburc) is a work of Medieval Christian mysticism seen as representative of the Heresy of the Free Spirit of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Europe. Wrongly attributed to Christian mystic Meister Eckhart it nevertheless shows the influence of his ideas (as evinced by the full German title), or at least the ideas which he was accused or attributed as having had by the Inquisition. Mystical dialogue. The Sister Catherine Treatise takes the form of a series of dialogues in Middle High German between a woman (Sister Catherine) and her Confessor (not named but sometimes said to be Eckhart). Sister Catherine is determined to find "the shortest way" to God {Khlyst} and comes to her Confessor for advice. In the first section her Confessor urges her to rebuke sin and seek purity so as to receive God. She leaves with the intention of doing so. Years later Sister Catherine returns to speak again to her Confessor, but this time the roles are reversed. Sister Catherine has experienced God and, after falling seemingly dead for three days (in imitation of Christ), reawakens to claim that she has achieved a unity with God which is eternal and which will last throughout this life and beyond. Sister Catherine is presented as having gone further down the road of spiritual development to her Confessor and he finds himself praising her for her Holiness rather than the other way round. Sister Catherine speaks of her unity with God in the following terms: "I am where I was before I was created: that place is purely God and God. There are neither angels nor saints, nor choir, nor this nor that. Many people speak of eight heavens and of nine choirs. They are not where I am. You should know that everything stated in such a way and presented to people in images is but an incitement to seek God. Realise that in God is nothing but God. You must also understand that no soul may come unto God before it has become God as it was before it was created. No one may come into the naked Godhead except the one who is naked as he was when he flowed out of God. The masters say that no one may enter here as long as he has any attachment to lower things, even if it is only as much as the tip of a needle can carry." (Sister Catherine Treatise: Trans Elvira Borgstaedt. Paulist Press 1986) The rest of the treatise consists of a continued dialogue with the Confessor - often held at a fever-pitch of excitement and emotion - in which both Sister Catherine and the Confessor exchange ideas about God's immanence, the possibility of humanity's union with Him in this life, the role of Mary Magdalene's relationship with Christ as his Lover and chief Apostle and the need to recognise the deceptions of the reality and unreality of Union with God i.e. what true Union is as opposed to false Union. Here the treatise is careful to delineate the danger of those who interpret the Free Spirit ideals as carte blanche to commit sinful and/or immoral acts. The treatise finishes with Sister Catherine abjuring the Confessor to strive after higher feats of spiritual understanding, the pupil having become the master (or mistress) and the Confessor needing the guidance of the Sister to achieve union with God. Assessment. The Sister Catherine Treatise is often cited, along with Marguerite Porete's The Mirror of Simple Souls, as one of the representative literary expressions of the Heresy of the Free Spirit, which held that a divine union with God was possible to people in this life and, more controversially, independently of the ministrations of the Church. Initially attributed to Meister Eckhart in Franz Pfeiffer's ground-breaking edition of the Christian mystic's works in 1857 it is now regarded as not being by him but showing evidence of his thinking, or at least evidence of the Free Spirit movement which Eckhart was accused of adhering to. Written in a heightened emotional prose which gives the Treatise a slightly hysterical, hallucinatory quality the work espouses a highly feminine approach to the Christian Mystery, with lengthy discussions of the significance of Mary Magdalene as the true lover of Christ (an element which links it to Porete, some of the alleged beliefs of the Cathars and the speculations of Dan Brown) and the figure of Sister Catherine herself emerging as more initiated into the inner spirituality of Christianity than her male counterpart. In it many of the articles of faith of the Free Spirit movement are expressed - a neo-Platonic/panentheistic belief in God's immanence in Creation, the possibility of salvation and the Unio Mystica in this life {and its permanence}, the limitations of Church teaching in terms of real mystical insight - and as such it is a valuable document for those in search of understanding the more radical approach to interpreting the Gospels of the Medieval period known as the Heresy of the Free Spirit. The treatise is the only known medieval work which could contain an allusion to the well-known question of how many angels can stand on the point of a needle: tusent selen siczen in dem himelrich uff einer nadel spicz "in heaven a thousand souls can sit on the point of a needle." However the reference is to souls, not angels, and dancing on the point of a needle or pin appears to be a later concept.

* Joseph-Antoine Boullan [Буллян, Жозеф-Антуан] (1824-1893). Abbé Joseph-Antoine Boullan was a French Roman Catholic priest who was later laicized, and was often accused of being a Satanist although he continued to defend his status as a Christian. He was a friend and inspiration of the writer Joris-Karl Huysmans. Huysmans with Henri Antoine Jules-Bois supported Boullan in a celebrated occultist feud with the Marquis Stanislas de Guaita. Буллян, Жозеф-Антуан. Жозе́ф-Антуа́н Булля́н (или Булла́н, фр. Joseph-Antoine Boullan; 18 февраля 1824, Сен-Поркье, департамент Тарн и Гаронна — 4 января 1893, Лион) — французский католический священник, обвинённый в поклонении Сатане и лишённый сана. Так называемое «дело Булляна» вызвало большой резонанс среди парижских оккультистов. Стал прототипом доктора Иоганнеса, одного из персонажей романа Жориса-Карла Гюисманса «Там, внизу». (...) В 1854 году Буллян отправился в Париж, где стал простым священником и опубликовал несколько статей в христианских журналах. Примерно в это же время он познакомился с монахиней по имени Адель Шевалье, о которой ходили слухи, будто бы она чудесным образом излечилась от слепоты и обрела способность исцелять других. Буллян стал её духовником, однако вскоре их отношения с Шевалье вышли за рамки религиозного общения, и они вступили в сексуальную связь. Вдвоём {together} любовники основали организацию под названием «Орден Искупления», получившую одобрение епископа Версальского. Деятельность «ордена» сводилась главным образом к проведению «ритуалов экзорцизма» и «исцелению одержимых монахинь»; в качестве лекарств Буллян использовал припарки и смеси, составленные из обломков освящённых просфор, смешанных с человеческими экскрементами и мочой. Утверждается также, что он обучал монахинь технике самогипноза, предлагая им представлять, будто они совокупляются с Христом и святыми. Считается, что 8 декабря 1860 года Буллян провёл чёрную мессу, на которой якобы принёс в жертву собственного новорождённого ребёнка от Адель Шевалье; это преступление долгое время сохранялось в тайне. Вскоре церковным властям начали поступать жалобы на деятельность Булляна. В 1861 году, после короткого расследования, он был признан виновным в мошенничестве и приговорён к заключению. Наказание он отбывал в тюрьме Бон-Нувель в Руане с декабря 1861 года по сентябрь 1864. В 1869 году Буллян вновь был арестован, на этот раз Инквизицией; он признал себя виновным, изложив некоторые подробности своих действий в так называемой «Розовой тетради», ныне хранящейся в библиотеке Ватикана. Помилованный Инквизицией, он вернулся в Париж на исходе того же года и почти сразу же начал издавать собственный журнал «Анналы святости», в котором продолжил развивать свои основные идеи. В частности, Буллян утверждал, что некоторые души обречены грешить, чтобы другие могли пребывать в безгрешности, и пропагандировал сексуальную магию. По его словам, «поскольку грехопадение наших прародителей было результатом плотской связи, именно посредством актов любви, совершённых в благочестивом состоянии духа, может и должно быть достигнуто Искупление человеческое». Буллян верил в возможность совокупления с астральными телами архангелов и других сверхъестественных сущностей («спектрофилию»), а также в существование инкубов. В 1875 году он наконец был лишён священнического сана архиепископом Парижским.

* Henry Suso [Генрих Сузо] (d 1366). Henry Suso (also called Amandus, a name adopted in his writings, and Heinrich Seuse in German), was a German Dominican friar and the most popular vernacular writer of the fourteenth century (when considering the number of surviving manuscripts). Suso is thought to have been born on March 21, 1295. An important author in both Latin and Middle High German, he is also notable for defending Meister Eckhart's legacy after Eckhart was posthumously condemned for heresy in 1329. He died in Ulm on 25 January 1366, and was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1831. (...) In the prologue to his Life, Suso recounts how, after about five years in the monastery (in other words, when he was about 18 years old), he experienced a conversion to a deeper form of religious life through the intervention of Divine Wisdom {Sophia}. He made himself "the Servant of Eternal Wisdom" {Solovyov}, which he identified with the divine essence and, in more specific terms, with divine Eternal Wisdom made man in Christ {~Logos (??)}. From this point forward in his account of his spiritual life, a burning love for Eternal Wisdom dominated his thoughts and controlled his actions; his spiritual journey culminated in a mystical marriage to Christ in the form of the Eternal Wisdom, an allegorical Goddess in the Hebrew Bible {??} associated with Christ in medieval devotion. (...) Early in his life, Suso subjected himself to extreme forms of mortifications; later on he reported that God told him they were unnecessary. During this period, Suso devised for himself several painful devices. Some of these were: an undergarment studded with a hundred and fifty brass nails, a very uncomfortable door to sleep on, and a cross with thirty protruding needles and nails under his body as he slept. In the autobiographical text in which he reports these, however, he ultimately concludes that they are unnecessary distractions from the love of God.

* Johannes Tauler [Таулер, Иоганн] (c  1300-1361). Johannes Tauler OP was a German mystic, a Roman Catholic priest and a theologian. A disciple of Meister Eckhart, he belonged to the Dominican order. Tauler was known as one of the most important Rhineland mystics. He promoted a certain neo-platonist dimension in the Dominican spirituality of his time. (...) Around 1330 Tauler began his preaching career in Strasbourg. The city contained eight convents of Dominican nuns and perhaps seventy smaller beguine communities. It seems likely that (as with Meister Eckhart and Henry Suso), much of his preaching was directed to holy women. (...) Tauler worked with the Friends of God, and it was with them that he taught his belief that the state of the soul was affected more by a personal relationship with God than by external practices. // Johannes Tauler OP was a German Dominican, one of the greatest mystics and preachers of the Middle Ages. He was born at Strasburg about 1300; died at the same place, 16 June, 1361. The centre of Tauler's mysticism is the doctrine of the visio essentice Dei, the blessed contemplation or knowledge of the Divine nature. He takes this doctrine from Thomas Aquinas, but goes further than the latter in believing that the Divine knowledge is attainable in this world also by a perfect man {personal morality}, and should be sought by every means. The way to God is through love; God replies to its highest development by His presence. Tauler gives advice of the most varied character for attaining that height of religion in which the Divine enters into the human subject. FATHER JOHN TAULER O.P. - Attentive to the Divine Influence

* Divine Abyss [Christian self-emptying]. Eckhart's disciple, Johannes Tauler, substantially increased the use of depth language in the German mystical tradition. In the quote that introduces this chapter, he speaks of the soul losing itself in the divine abyss. Unlike Eckhart, however, he believed that the soul's abyss is created, while that of God is uncreated, although he understood that the perception of this difference melts away during divine union. "The abyss that is the created thing," he wrote, "draws the Uncreated Abyss into itself, and the two abysses become a single One, a pure divine being, so that the spirit is lost in God's Spirit. It is drowned in the bottomless sea." For Tauler, the self-emptying of the created abyss actually compels the divine Abyss to swallow it up. This, therefore, is union of a sort of "double nothing," since the nature of both abysses is a no-thing. Here, "the soul's depth and its recognition of nothingness draws the open Abyss into itself, and there the one abyss flows into the other abyss and there is a Single One - one nothing in the other nothing." The soul is "truly swallowed up in the wondrous divinity! Oh what a wondrous chasm that is!" [goes on to mark the differences with Suso (different imagery, but For Suso as for Tauler, the two abysses are distinct from one another, with the soul's abyss consisting of desire and God's abyss being perfection itself) and Hadewijch (viewed the desire as mutual and insatiable on both sides)] (GB) Stephen K. Hatch - Wilderness Mysticism: A Contemplative Christian Tradition

* State of nature. The state of nature, in moral and political philosophy, religion, social contract theories and international law, is the hypothetical life of people before societies came into existence {pre-stratification}. Philosophers of the state of nature theory deduce that there must have been a time before organized societies existed, and this presumption thus raises questions such as: "What was life like before civil society?"; "How did government first emerge from such a starting position?," and; "What are the hypothetical reasons for entering a state of society by establishing a nation-state?". In some versions of social contract theory, there are no rights in the state of nature, only freedoms, and it is the contract that creates rights and obligations. In other versions the opposite occurs: the contract imposes restrictions upon individuals that curtail their natural rights. Societies existing before or without a political state are currently studied in such fields as palaeolithic history, and the anthropological subfields of archaeology, cultural anthropology, social anthropology, and ethnology, which investigate the social and power-related structures of indigenous and uncontacted peoples. This has been criticized as an essentialist and othering view, similar to the concept of the noble savage.

* Saturnalia. Saturnalia was an ancient Roman festival and holiday in honour of the god Saturn, held on 17 December of the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities through to 23 December. The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn, in the Roman Forum, and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms: gambling was permitted, and masters provided table service for their slaves as it was seen as a time of liberty for both slaves and freedmen alike. A common custom was the election of a "King of the Saturnalia" {Prince Carnival, the 'prince of fools'}, who would give orders to people, which were to be followed and preside over the merrymaking. The gifts exchanged were usually gag gifts or small figurines made of wax or pottery known as sigillaria. The poet Catullus called it "the best of days". Saturnalia was the Roman equivalent to the earlier Greek holiday of Kronia, which was celebrated during the Attic month of Hekatombaion in late midsummer. It held theological importance for some Romans, who saw it as a restoration of the ancient Golden Age {Eliade}, when the world was ruled by Saturn. The Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry interpreted the freedom associated with Saturnalia as symbolizing the "freeing of souls into immortality". Saturnalia may have influenced some of the customs associated with later celebrations in western Europe occurring in midwinter, particularly traditions associated with Christmas, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, and Epiphany. In particular, the historical western European Christmas custom of electing a "Lord of Misrule" {??} may have its roots in Saturnalia celebrations. // Lord of Misrule. In England, the Lord of Misrule – known in Scotland as the Abbot of Unreason and in France as the Prince des Sots – was an officer appointed by lot during Christmastide to preside over the Feast of Fools. The Lord of Misrule was generally a peasant or sub-deacon appointed to be in charge of Christmas revelries, which often included drunkenness and wild partying. {Christmas in England is a bingefest indeed.}

* Ambrosiaster [Амброзиастер] (IV). Ambrosiaster is the name given to the unknown author of a commentary on the epistles of Saint Paul, written some time between 366 and 384 AD. This commentary was erroneously attributed for a long time to St. Ambrose, hence the name "Ambrosiaster" (literally in Latin: "would-be Ambrose") {pseudo-Ambrose}. Various conjectures have been made as to Ambrosiaster's true identity, and several other works have been attributed to the same author, with varying degrees of certainty.

* Acts 4:32-34 NIV (The Believers Share Their Possessions). 32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. 33 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all 34 that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them {finite process}, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

* Jean de Meun [Жан де Мен] (c  1240-c  1305). Jean de Meun (or de Meung) was a French author best known for his continuation of the Roman de la Rose. (...) The continuation of Jean de Meun is a satire on the monastic orders, on celibacy, on the nobility, the papal see, the excessive pretensions of royalty, and especially on women and marriage. Guillaume {Guillaume de Lorris (c. 1200 – c. 1240) was a French scholar and poet from Lorris. He was the author of the first section of the Roman de la Rose.} had been the servant of love, and the exponent of the laws of "courtoisie"; Jean de Meun added an "art of love," describing with brutality the supposed vices of women and the means by which men may outwit them. Jean de Meun embodied the mocking, sceptical spirit of the fabliaux. He did not share in current superstitions, he had no respect for established institutions, and he scorned the conventions of feudalism and romance. His poem shows in the highest degree, in spite of the looseness of its plan, the faculty of keen observation, of lucid reasoning and exposition, and it entitles him to be considered the greatest of French medieval poets. He handled the French language with an ease and precision unknown to his predecessors, and the length of his poem was no bar to its popularity in the 13th and 14th centuries. Part of its vogue was no doubt because the author, who had mastered practically all the scientific and literary knowledge of his contemporaries in France, had found room in his poem for a great amount of useful information and for numerous citations from classical authors. The book was attacked by Guillaume de Deguileville in his Pèlerinage de la vie humaine (c. 1330), long a favorite work both in England and France, by Jean Gerson, and by Christine de Pisan in her Épître au dieu d'amour. It also found energetic defenders.

* Fabliau. A fabliau (plural fabliaux) is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs in northeast France between c. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by sexual and scatological obscenity, and by a set of contrary attitudes—contrary to the church and to the nobility. (...) Typical fabliaux contain a vast array of characters, including cuckolded husbands, rapacious clergy, and foolish peasants, as well as beggars, connivers {schemers, plotters}, thieves, and whores. Two groups are often singled out for criticism: the clergy and women. The status of peasants appears to vary, based on the audience for which the fabliau was being written. Poems that were presumably written for the nobility portray peasants (vilains in French) as stupid and vile, whereas those written for the lower classes often tell of peasants getting the better of the clergy. (..) The subject matter is often sexual: fabliaux are concerned with the elements of love left out by poets who wrote in the more elevated genres. (...) Fabliaux derive a lot of their force from puns and other verbal figures; "fabliaux . . . are obsessed with wordplay." (...) Gombert et les deus clers. A well-known storyline is found in "Gombert et les deus clers" ("Gombert and the two clerks"). Two traveling clerks (students) take up lodging with a villain, and share the bedroom with Gombert, his beautiful wife, and their two children—one teenage girl, and one baby. One of the clerks climbs into bed with the teenage daughter and, promising her his ring, has his way with her; the other, while Gombert is "ala pissier" ("gone pissing", 85), moves the crib with the baby so that Gombert, on his return, lies down in the bed occupied by the clerks—one of whom is in bed with his daughter, while the other is now having sex with Gombert's wife, who thinks it's Gombert come to pleasure her. When the first clerk returns to his bed where he thinks his friend still is, he tells Gombert all about his adventure: "je vien de fotre / mes que ce fu la fille a l'oste" ("I've just been fucking, and if it wasn't the host's daughter", 152–53). Gombert attacks the first clerk, but ends up being beaten up by both.

* Piers Plowman [poem] (XIV). Piers Plowman (Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman (William's Vision of Piers Plowman); written c. 1370–86; possibly c. 1377) or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman (William's Vision of Piers Plowman) is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in un-rhymed, alliterative verse divided into sections called passus (Latin for "step"). Like the Pearl Poet's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman is considered by many critics to be one of the greatest works of English literature of the Middle Ages, even preceding and influencing Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Piers Plowman contains the first known reference to a literary tradition of Robin Hood tales. (...) The poem, a mix of theological allegory and social satire, concerns the narrator/dreamer's quest for the true Christian life in the context of medieval Catholicism. This journey takes place within a series of dream-visions; the dreamer seeks, among other things, the allegorical characters Dowel ("Do-Well"), Dobet ("Do-Better"), and Dobest ("Do-Best"). The poem is divided into passus ('steps'), the divisions between which vary by version.

* John Bromyard (d c 1352). John Bromyard was an influential English Dominican friar and prolific compiler of preaching aids. (...) Bromyard was a pioneer or early adopter of new techniques in the organization of information. Each of his surviving works is provided with an alphabetical index. He employs standardized divisions of his texts, and uses them for systematic cross-references. As aids to preaching, his works included all manner of preachable material according to the homiletic practice of the time: exempla, authorities from the church fathers and bible as well as from classical authors, natural lore, proverbs and verses (some in French or English), etc. He uses "scientific knowledge" (natura ratione) to explain natural phenomenon such as "rain" taking away the mysticism of "acts of God". These explanations are apparently drawn from Greek and Arab ancient texts. (Bromyard: Summa Praedicantium, De Natura Ratione). He was particularly fond of Canon law, devoting the Tractatus iuris to expounding Christian doctrine and morality almost exclusively by means of citations from legal texts. He engages in occasional political commentary on problems in English society, and even criticises abuses in his own Dominican order.

* Jean Froissart [Фруассар, Жан] (1337-1405). Jean Froissart was a French-speaking medieval author and court historian from the Low Countries who wrote several works, including Chronicles and Meliador, a long Arthurian romance, and a large body of poetry, both short lyrical forms as well as longer narrative poems. For centuries, Froissart's Chronicles have been recognised as the chief expression of the chivalric revival of the 14th-century kingdoms of England, France and Scotland. His history is also an important source for the first half of the Hundred Years' War.

* Savoy Palace. The Savoy Palace, considered the grandest nobleman's townhouse of medieval London, was the residence of John of Gaunt until it was destroyed during rioting in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. The name derives from a 1246 grant to Peter II, Count of Savoy, which property later came to be controlled by Gaunt's family. (...) Destruction. During the Peasants' Revolt led by Wat Tyler in 1381, the rioters, who blamed John of Gaunt for the introduction of the poll tax that had precipitated the revolt, systematically demolished the Savoy and everything in it. What could not be smashed or burned was thrown into the river. Jewellery was pulverised with hammers, and it was said that one rioter found by his fellows to have kept a silver goblet for himself was killed for doing so. Despite this, the name Savoy was retained by the site.

* Elector. elector - hist. a German prince entitled to take part in the election of the Holy Roman Emperor; electorate - hist. the office or territories of a German elector.

* Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia [Вацлав IV] (1361-1419). Wenceslaus IV (also Wenceslas; Czech: Václav; German: Wenzel, nicknamed "the Idle"), also known as Wenceslaus of Luxembourg, was King of Bohemia from 1378 until his death and King of Germany from 1376 until he was deposed in 1400. As he belonged to the House of Luxembourg, he was also Duke of Luxembourg from 1383 to 1388. (...) In the Papal Schism, Wenceslaus had supported the Roman Pope Urban VI. As Bohemian king he sought to protect the religious reformer Jan Hus and his followers against the demands of the Roman Catholic Church for their suppression as heretics. This caused many Germans to withdraw from the University of Prague, and set up their own university at Leipzig. He then met Charles VI of France at Reims, where the two monarchs decided to persuade the rival popes, now Benedict XIII and Boniface IX, to resign, and to end the papal schisms by the election of a new pontiff. Many of the princes were angry at this abandonment of Boniface by Wenceslaus, who had also aroused much indignation by his long absence from Germany and by selling the title of duke of Milan to Gian Galeazzo Visconti. Hus was eventually executed in Konstanz in 1415, and the rest of Wenceslaus' reign in Bohemia featured precursors of the Hussite Wars that would follow his death during the Defenestrations of Prague. (...) Wenceslaus died in 1419 of a heart attack during a hunt in the woods surrounding his castle Nový Hrad at Kunratice (today a part of Prague), leaving the country in a deep political crisis. His death was followed by almost two decades of conflict called the Hussite Wars, which were centred on greater calls for religious reform by Jan Hus and spurred by popular outrage provoked by his martyrdom.

* Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor [Генрих VII, император Священной Римской империи] (c 1273-1313). Henry VII (German: Heinrich),[3] also known as Henry of Luxembourg, was Count of Luxembourg, King of Germany (or Rex Romanorum) from 1308 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1312. He was the first emperor of the House of Luxembourg. During his brief career he reinvigorated the imperial cause in Italy, which was racked with the partisan struggles between the divided Guelf and Ghibelline factions, and inspired the praise of Dino Compagni and Dante Alighieri. He was the first emperor since the death of Frederick II in 1250, ending the Great Interregnum of the Holy Roman Empire; however, his premature death threatened to undo his life's work. His son, John of Bohemia, failed to be elected as his successor, and there was briefly another anti-king, Frederick the Fair, contesting the rule of Louis IV.

* Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor [Sigismund of Luxembourg; Сигизмунд, император Священной Римской империи] (1368-1437). Sigismund of Luxembourg was prince-elector of Brandenburg from 1378 until 1388 and from 1411 until 1415, king of Hungary and Croatia from 1387, king of Germany from 1411, king of Bohemia from 1419, king of Italy from 1431, and Holy Roman Emperor from 1433 until 1437, and the last male member of the House of Luxembourg. Sigismund was born in Nuremberg, the son of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV and Elizabeth of Pomerania. He married Queen Mary of Hungary in 1385 and was crowned King of Hungary soon after. He fought to restore and maintain authority to the throne. Mary died in 1395, leaving Sigismund the sole ruler of Hungary. In 1396, Sigismund led the Crusade of Nicopolis, but was decisively defeated by the Ottoman Empire. Afterwards, he founded the Order of the Dragon to fight the Turks and secured the thrones of Croatia, Germany and Bohemia. Sigismund was one of the driving forces behind the Council of Constance (1414–1418) that ended the Papal Schism, but which also led to the Hussite Wars that dominated the later period of his life. In 1433, Sigismund was crowned Holy Roman Emperor and ruled until his death in 1437.

* Battle of Nicopolis [Crusade of Nicopolis] (1396). The Battle of Nicopolis took place on 25 September 1396 and resulted in the rout of an allied crusader army of Hungarian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Wallachian, French, Burgundian, German, and assorted troops (assisted by the Venetian navy) at the hands of an Ottoman force, raising the siege of the Danubian fortress of Nicopolis and leading to the end of the Second Bulgarian Empire. It is often referred to as the Crusade of Nicopolis as it was one of the last large-scale Crusades of the Middle Ages, together with the Crusade of Varna in 1443–1444.

* Martin Húska (d 1421). Martin Húska (wegen seiner Sprachfertigkeit Loquis genannt) war tschechischer Prediger und radikaler Kirchenreformator. Der wahrscheinlich aus Mähren stammende Húska war führender Vertreter der Pikarden, des radikalen Flügels des neu entstandenen Lagers der Taboriten. Wie andere Pikarden auch, bekam er mit seiner Sekte bald Probleme mit dem Prager Bischof Nikolaus von Pelgrims. Anfang 1421 mussten die Pikarden Tábor verlassen und siedelten sich in Příběnice an. Kurz darauf berief man ihn nach Tábor zurück. Dort wurde er gezwungen, seine Lehre zu widerrufen. Nachdem ein Großteil der Pikarden (etwa 50 Personen) nach einem Kampf in der Gemeinde Klokoty (heute ein Ortsteil von Tábor) verbrannt wurden, predigte Húska weiterhin zu seinen wenigen übrig gebliebenen Anhängern. Er wurde verfolgt und von Diviš Bořek z Miletínka gefangen genommen. Da er auch gegenüber Ambrož Hradecký, der ihn auf den „rechten Weg“ zurückführen wollte, mehrere Wochen lang den Widerruf verweigerte, wurde er in die Hand des Erzbischofs Konrad von Vechta überführt. Als er auch dort trotz Folter nicht widerrief, wurde er in Roudnice öffentlich verbrannt.

+ Picards. Pikarden. Als Pikarden (Pikarti) wird eine Gruppe religiöser Flüchtlinge aus der Picardie bezeichnet, die sich vor 1420 unter ihrem Anführer Richardus Picard zunächst in der Stadt Tábor in Böhmen ansiedelten. Picards Nachfolger wurde der Schmied Adam Rohan aus Veselí, nach dem sie auch als Adamiten bezeichnet wurden. Sie wurden aus Tábor von den Hussiten vertrieben und siedelten sich in der Nähe von Příběnice an und besetzten Ostrov. Jan Žižka ließ sie 1421 vernichten, 50 wurden verbrannt, weitere 25 dem Volkszorn freigegeben. Die Pikarden waren radikale Hussiten. In ihrer Messe verzichteten sie auf Kelch und Ornat, sie verwendeten gewöhnliches Brot. Die Pikarden glaubten, dass eine perfekte Seele keine Tugend {virtue} nötig hätte. Ihre Ideen beeinflussten Martin Húska, der sich aber von ihnen fernhielt. Ähnlich den Adamiten sollen sie einen rituellen Nudismus geübt und Liebesfeste veranstaltet haben.

+ Adamites. Adamiten. Adamiten, auch Adamianer, ist eine abwertende Bezeichnung für mehrere christliche Gruppierungen, die angeblich den Zustand der Nacktheit wiederherstellen wollten, wie er bei Adam und Eva vor dem Sündenfall herrschte. Zum ersten Mal taucht diese Bezeichnung bei Epiphanius von Salamis (haer. 52) für eine Gruppe antinomistischer Gnostiker in Nordafrika aus dem 2. Jahrhundert n. Chr. auf; durch Augustinus blieb sie bekannt und diente ab dem Hochmittelalter zur Verunglimpfung {disparagement, calumny, scurrility} verschiedener christlicher Sondergruppen, wie der Katharer, Waldenser und Täufer. Dazu gehörten die Brüder und Schwestern des freien Geistes und namentlich eine Gruppe der Taboriten im 15. Jahrhundert, welche nach ihrem Gründer, dem Bauern Niklas, auch Nikolaiten genannt wurden. Diese lehnten das Christentum und alle äußeren religiösen Formen ab, hatten kein Privateigentum und vertraten Formen Freier Liebe. Viele waren angeblich {allegedly} im Alltagsleben unbekleidet. Auch die Hussiten bekämpften im Mittelalter diese von ihrem Glauben abweichende Gruppierung genauso hart und unbarmherzig, wie sie selbst von der Umwelt bekämpft wurden. Als Adamiten wurden auch die Pikarden unter ihrem Anführer Adam Rohan bezeichnet, diese wurden 1421 vom Hussitenführer Jan Žižka geschlagen und vernichtet. Adamiten soll es auch unter den Dissenters in England gegeben haben. Die Anhänger von Eva von Buttlar, die sich selbst „Mutter Eva“ nennen ließ, in Altona wurden auch Adamiten genannt. Angeblich seien sie bei ihren „Zusammenkünften nacket [sic] einhergegangen“. Eine im Chrudimer Kreis (Ostböhmen) agierende „Secte der Adamiten“ (so ihre Selbstbezeichnung!) wurde zunächst 1783 erwähnt, dann wieder 1848. Damals stand die Gruppe unter der Führung ihres Oberadams Pelzmann. Der Brief an das Neue Wiener Tagblatt (veröffentlicht im November 1874), in dem es hieß, dass Adamiten den Wiener Zentralfriedhof um 9 Uhr „nach ihren Gebräuchen“ eingeweiht hätten, war wohl ein „Jux“ {joke, lark} (so schrieb die Zeitung später selber). Soviel von der streng geheim gehaltenen Lehre seiner Mitglieder bekannt ist, glaubten sie an eine Macht als Schöpferin des Weltalls, das nun selbständig bestehe. Ihre nächtlichen Zusammenkünfte sollen sie in völliger Nacktheit gefeiert und im Übrigen untereinander bürgerliche Umgangsformen gepflegt haben.

* Eva von Buttlar [Бутлар, Ева Маргарита фон] (1670-1721). Eva Margaretha von Buttlar was a mystic-libertine sectarian and the eponym for a group known as Buttlarsche Rotte (Buttlarian gang). Eva von Buttlar was born in the German town of Eisenach. She left her husband, the count tutor Jean de Vèsias. Together with Justus Gottfried Winter, a theology student and Johann Georg Appenfeller, a medical student, she founded a philadelphical {philadelphy - brotherly love} society in Allendorf called the "Christliche und Philadelpische Sozietät" (Christian and Philadelphical Society). This society grew to about seventy members and proclaimed the dawn of the millennial empire. After the pietistscommand (assembly ban for separatist societies) of Karl von Hessen-Kassel, they moved from Allendorf to Glashütte and, later to Saßmannshausen near Lassphe in the shire of Wittgenstein. The Society was rejected by different Pietists like Spener and Francke and other separatist Societies. In November 1704, the Society was arrested for fornication, blasphemy, abortion and double infant murder. They escaped in March 1705 from Castle Wittgenstein. On 3 November 1705, Winter announced Eva as the fiancé of the holy spirit and Appenfeller to be God's son. In 1706, the activities of the society peaked in Lüdge near Pyrmont. Again driven by court order, they moved to Altona, where the society caused no further issues. Butllar then married Appenfeller. In 1713, she gave birth to her only child, a son designated as the Messiah. After her death in April 1721, the Society continued, but their history was lost. Beliefs and viewpoints. Buttlar rejected ecclesiasticism and any religious restriction made by Philadelphian groups and the contempt of worship and sacrament made by separatist groups. Everything else the society practiced can be summarized as sectarian-sexual libertinism, particularly the society's idiosyncratic interpretation of the Sophia-Speculation and the myth of androgynous primeval man. With Winer as the "Godfather" and Appenfeller as the "Son", she, the "heavenly Sophia", allegorized the visible "heavenly trinity". the "practical application" of the mystical idea of the marriage of spiritual man with heavenly Sophia, as developed by Jakob Böhme and Johann Georg Gichtel involved the physical union with "Mother Eve" at the "Pool of Bethesda", which restored the androgynous "creation condition". The "carnal intercourse as something sacred" (Winter considered), bound the members of the society in the practice of their faith. Бутлар, Ева Маргарита фон. Ева Маргарита фон Бутлар (нем. Eva Margaretha von Buttlar; 1670—1721) — основательница так называемого «филадельфийского религиозного общества». Ева Маргарита фон Бутлар родилась 22 июня 1670 года в немецком городе Айзенах, в семье лютеран. В 1687 году она вышла замуж за французского эмигранта Жана де Везиаса. После десяти лет светской жизни, она, увлеченная пиетистическим мистицизмом, оставила мужа и сгруппировала вокруг себя приверженцев, после чего, вместе с кандидатом богословия Винтером, молодым врачом Аппенфельдером, двумя девицами фон Каленберг и другими основала в Аллендорфе (в Гессене) религиозное «филадельфийское» общество. В этом кружке она возвещала, что произошло новое воплощение Святой Троицы, в лице её самой, Винтера и Аппенфельдера, что все члены безусловно должны повиноваться велениям новой пророчицы. в секте отвергался христианский брак и проповедовалось какое-то мистическое учение о духовно-плотском единении; предвещалось в будущем падение церкви, общность имуществ, близкое наступление царства небесного и т. д. В действительности в этом обществе проявился в самых разнообразных формах разврат, что навлекло на его членов преследование со стороны властей. Изгнанное из Алендорфа, общество безуспешно пыталось поселиться в других местах; много его членов для виду приняло католичество. Присужденное к большому штрафу, общество наконец распалось, и в Альтоне прекратило своё существование после смерти Евы фон Бутлар, которая незадолго до своей смерти объявила, что возвращается в лютеранство. Ева Маргарита фон Бутлар умерла 27 апреля 1721 года в Альтоне.

* Johann Georg Gichtel [Гихтель, Иоганн Георг] (1638-1710). Johann Georg Gichtel was a German mystic and religious leader who was a critic of Lutheranism. His followers ultimately separated from this faith. Gichtel was born at Regensburg, where his father was a member of senate. Having acquired at school an acquaintance with Greek, Hebrew, Syriac and even Arabic, he proceeded to Strasbourg to study theology; but finding the theological prelections of J. S. Schmidt and P. J. Spener distasteful, he entered the faculty of law. He was admitted an advocate, first at Speyer, and then at Regensburg; but having become acquainted with the baron Justinianus von Weltz (1621–1668), a Hungarian nobleman who cherished schemes for the reunion of Christendom and the conversion of the world, and having himself become acquainted with another world in dreams and visions, he abandoned all interest in his profession, and became an energetic promoter of the Christerbauliche Jesusgesellschaft (Christian Edification Society of Jesus). The movement in its beginnings provoked at least no active hostility; but when Gichtel began to attack the teaching of the Lutheran clergy and church, especially upon the fundamental doctrine of justification by faith, he exposed himself to a prosecution which resulted in sentence of banishment and confiscation (1665). After many months of wandering and occasionally romantic adventure, he reached the Netherlands in January 1667, and settled at Zwolle, where he co-operated with Friedrich Breckling (1629–1711), who shared his views and aspirations. Having become involved in the troubles of this friend, Gichtel, after a period of imprisonment, was banished for a term of years from Zwolle, but finally in 1668 found a home in Amsterdam, where he made the acquaintance of Antoinette Bourignon, and in a state of poverty (which, however, never became destitution) lived out his life of visions and day-dreams, of prophecy and prayer. He gathered a community of the "Brethren of the Angelic Life". He became an ardent disciple of Jakob Böhme, whose works he published in 1682 (Amsterdam, 2 vols); but before the time of his death, he had attracted to himself a small band of followers known as "Gichtelians" or "Brethren of the Angels," who propagated certain views at which he had arrived independently of Böhme. Seeking ever to hear the authoritative voice of God within them, and endeavouring to attain to a life altogether free from carnal desires, like that of "the angels in heaven, who neither marry nor are given in marriage," they claimed to exercise a priesthood "after the order of Melchizedek," appeasing the wrath of God, and ransoming the souls of the lost by sufferings endured vicariously after the example of Christ. While, however, Böhme "desired to remain a faithful son of the Church," the Gichtelians became separatists. Gichtel's correspondence was published without his knowledge by Gottfried Arnold, a disciple, in 1701 (2 vols.), and again in 1708 (3 vols.). It has been frequently reprinted under the title Theosophia practica. The seventh volume of the Berlin edition (1768) contains a notice of Gichtel's life.

* Chronicle of Dalimil [Czech Rhymed Chronicle; Далимилова хроника] (XIV). The Chronicle of Dalimil (Czech: Dalimilova kronika; Kronika tak řečeného Dalimila) is the first chronicle written in the Old Czech language. It was composed in verse by an unknown author at the beginning of the 14th century. The Chronicle compiles information from older Czech chronicles written in Latin and also the author's own experiences. The chronicle finishes before 1314, but it is usually published including the entries of later authors describing events up to 1319. The Chronicle alleged that all Slavs originated "in the south". It stated that "in the Serbian nation there is a land, known as Croatia; in this country there was a chieftain whose name was Čech." The validity of the events are nowadays rejected by some western historians as purely mythological folklore, an archetypal origin myth. The events in the chronicle seem to simply reinterpret the myth of Lech, Czech, and Rus that is repeated in various forms in many other historical records and national chronicles, like e.g. Russian Primary Chronicle. // The Dalimil Chronicle ( Czech Dalimilova kronika ) is the oldest written in Czech history. Besides their importance as they memorial speech is mainly for the late 13th and early 14th century of historical value, since it describes the events at the end of Přemyslids rule eyewitness perspective. Although the name of the author is unknown, it is since the 17th century commonly known as " Dalimil Chronicle " or " chronicle of the so-called Dalimil ". The rhymed chronicle is divided into 106 chapters. It begins with a short chapter on the Tower of Babel and then describes the history of Bohemia from the first legendary rulers until the year 1314. Several supplements are mainly related to the years 1315 and 1316. Besides the Chronica Boemorum used the author several legends of the saints and also referred to oral tradition. The chronicle was written during the reign of King John of Luxembourg and reflects the then aristocratic opposition against the " foreign" king and his advisers resist. The author writes patriotic, as a proponent of the Bohemian nobility and opponents of foreign influences in Bohemia. It applies, for example, against tournaments, foreign clothes and other " harmful " foreign fashions. His work has therefore particularly common in times of national revival movement. The Chronicle is one of the most famous works of the early Czech literature. MEMIM Encyclopedia - Chronicle of Dalimil

* Revelation 18:7-11 [Whore of Babylon] NIV Give her as much torment and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself. In her heart she boasts, ‘I sit enthroned as queen. I am not a widow; I will never mourn.’ 8 Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her: death, mourning and famine. She will be consumed by fire, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her. (Threefold Woe Over Babylon’s Fall) 9 “When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. 10 Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: “‘Woe! Woe to you, great city, you mighty city of Babylon! In one hour your doom has come!’ 11 “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore KJV 7 How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. 8 Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. 9 And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, 10 Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. 11 And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:

+ Adamites. Once the external threat was removed by Hussite victories, the various Hussite factions turned on each other. At the beginning of 1421, the Adamites, who completely rejected the Eucharist, were expelled from Tábor. Under the leadership of priests Petr Kániš and Martin Húska, they settled in Příběnice, where the Adamites fell. Žižka suppressed their movement, and most sectarians, including both leaders, were then burnt as heretics under his orders. (Taborites)

* Matthew 21:31 NIV 31 “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” “The first,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.

* Janko and Livin of Wirsberg (XV). In the 1450s and 1460s two brothers, Janko and Livin of Wirsberg, claimed to be precursors of a coming saviour who would inaugurate a last historical age. Preaching in the Last Days: The Theme of ''Two Witnesses'' in the 16th and 17th Centuries // Among those that appear to have been influenced by the Hussites and to have provoked some popular following was the radical Joachite sect led by the brothers Janko and Livin of Wirsberg on the Czech-German border in the early 1460s. Interesting as these brothers and their shadowy Franciscan adviser were, I have chosen to concentrate on three writers of the end of the century as a way of illustrating the most general themes of the period. Bernard McGinn - Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages // Around 1460, when Bohemia had just ended a long civil war, two nobles demonstrated the point at which the expectation of the millennium remained alive. Besides the usual chronological calculations of the Parousia, Janko and Livin of Wirsberg expounded an original conception of God in his relations with the world that he created. Through his imminent return, the Son of Man prepared to save not only humanity but God himself, paralyzed since the beginning of time by the sins of mankind. It was to be delivered from his own suffering that God appealed to the Savior. The idea of a divinity who is nothing without the men whom he created thus pursued its course. How would this new reign, destined to restore God to his power, begin? With the extermination of the armed forces of the Antichrist: the Pope, his ministers, followed by all of their followers. Only 14,000 people would survive to found the Spiritual Church. The “sword” of the crusade was formed by the old Taborites, generally regrouped into bands of brigands. After the disaster at Munster, Jan van Batenburg would not act otherwise. Raoul Vaneigem - The Resistance to Christianity. The Heresies at the Origins of the 18th Century // As a slave of the past and the present, we are all been educated by coming into the world to have learned what is being taught by thinking reason of desires for the good of the body and the bad without even knowing the whole truth, we lack the way to come out of this prison to recognize itself, the slavery is a real world and we have been subjected by those leaders who are slave themselves to make other slaves, in large part they are politicians or religious who seek to be elected for the honour and glory, they occupy the first places to control the world. They mention the name of God, but without knowing the true god and if they will have been chosen by God everything the man does will be pure of truth and honest with everyone else and it is not the case, man who only destroys himself has no heart in this present situation and without knowing God that’s why the world is a slave to himself and blind not knowing where is going God teaches love to rebuild this paradise on earth by people who have known the slavery of these former rulers they have understood the difference by going through the judgment of pure divine truth, and that all of us must pass to acknowledge the mistakes that the world has caused us to trust in men, we are all guilty not to seek the truth to be free it is absolutely necessary to discover the truth which cannot be denied, Jesus was put on the cross by us all, He Was condemned by those who did not want him and the others by ignorance of the truth which makes us all guilty, Jewish Christians and Muslims, and to reconquer life faith is not enough we must know the whole truth and finally see God, to all of you who want to be happy for life eternity read this book (Voir Dieu) from Janko and Livin of Wirsberg you will be surprised at the revelations it contains, happy are you who seek eternal life.and all the work will be done by the Spirit of Truth. open your heart God is there. Stars Go Dim - Alive In You Lyrics - (comment) Jean Labrie

* Hans Böhm. // A Safe Conduct is a brilliant novel that not every reader will appreciate. It was inspired by the story of Hans Bohm, a fifteenth-century German peasant who had a vision of the Virgin Mary and began preaching on equality, insisting the earth's resources belonged to all, and no one should pay rents, taxes or forced labor to the nobility. His preaching sparked a peasant revolt, and he was burned as a heretic on July 19, 1476. A Safe Conduct by Peter Vansittart // The image above depicts the drummer and shepherd, Hans Bohm spreading his anti-clerical, communistic ideas from a window in 1476. The figure directly behind Hans is based on a suggestion by contemporary chroniclers that he had a friar to prompt him in his preaching, as they couldn't believe an illiterate herder of lower class status was capable of performing such effective oration. Brilliantly documented in Richard Wunderli's 'Peasant Fires: The Drummer Of Niklashausen', Hans Bohm's preaching began after he saw a vision of the Virgin Mary telling him to burn his drum in a bonfire of the vanities, and preach the virtues of poverty and devotion to God. After thousands of peasants from all over Germany came to hear the shepherd preach, Bohm's ideas became even more radical (all property to be held in common, abolition of forced labour, and priests' heads severed!). The authorities were alarmed by Bohm's popularity with the lower classes, after which he was burned at the stake in 1476. However, his execution became emblematic for future revolts, notably the 'Bundschuh' and the massive German Peasants' Revolt of 1524-25. The drum in medieval and early modern Europe was considered low social status by the upper classes, because anybody could play the instrument, which was usually associated with carnival, mimes and minstrels, in taverns, and other lower class social spaces. To contrast the seriousness of upper-class life and official culture, laughing, dancing and whistling {Stoglav} were of similar lowly status, and sometimes even banned by authorities. The Drummer Of Niklashausen, Hans Bohm.

* John of Capistrano [Иоанн Капистран] (1386-1456). John of Capistrano (Italian: San Giovanni da Capestrano) was a Franciscan friar and Catholic priest from the Italian town of Capestrano, Abruzzo. Famous as a preacher, theologian, and inquisitor, he earned himself the nickname “the Soldier Saint” when in 1456 at age 70 he led a crusade against the invading Ottoman Empire at the siege of Belgrade with the Hungarian military commander John Hunyadi. Elevated to sainthood, he is the patron saint of jurists and military chaplains. (...) He soon gave himself up to the most rigorous asceticism, violently defending the ideal of strict observance and orthodoxy. (...) When he was not preaching, John was writing tracts against heresy of every kind. (...) Like Bernardine, he strongly emphasized devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus, and, together with Bernardine, was accused of heresy on this account. (...) As legate, or inquisitor, he prosecuted the last Fraticelli of Ferrara, the Jesuati of Venice, the Crypto-Jews of Sicily, Moldavia and Poland, and, above all, the Hussites of Germany, Hungary and Bohemia; his aim in the last case was to make talks impossible between the representatives of Rome and the Bohemians, for every attempt at conciliation seemed to him to be conniving at heresy. He also worked for the reform of the Order of Friars Minor. He upheld, in his writings, speeches and sermons, theories of papal supremacy rather than the theological wranglings of councils (see Conciliar Movement). (...) Anti-Jewish incitement. John was known as the "Scourge of the Jews" for his inciting of antisemitic violence. Like some other Franciscans, he ranged over a broad area on both sides of the Alps, and his preaching to mass open-air congregations often led to pogroms. In 1450 the Franciscan "Jew-baiter" arranged a forced disputation at Rome with a certain Gamaliel called "Synagogæ Romanæ magister". Between 1451 and 1453, his fiery sermons against Jews persuaded many southern German regions to expel their entire Jewish population, and in Silesia, then Kingdom of Bohemia, at Wroclaw many were burned at the stake.

* Sans-culottes (XVIII). The sans-culottes (French: literally "without breeches") were the common people of the lower classes in late 18th-century France, a great many of whom became radical and militant partisans of the French Revolution in response to their poor quality of life under the Ancien Régime. The word sans-culotte, which is opposed to that of the aristocrat, seems to have been used for the first time on 28 February 1791 by Jean-Bernard Gauthier de Murnan in a derogatory sense, speaking about a "sans-culottes army". The word came into vogue during the demonstration of 20 June 1792. The name sans-culottes refers to their clothing, and through that to their lower-class status: culottes were the fashionable silk knee-breeches of the 18th-century nobility and bourgeoisie, and the working class sans-culottes wore pantaloons, or long trousers, instead. The sans-culottes, most of them urban labourers, served as the driving popular force behind the revolution. They were judged by the other revolutionaries as "radicals" because they advocated a direct democracy, that is to say, without intermediaries such as members of parliament. Though ill-clad and ill-equipped, with little or no support from the upper class and middle class, they made up the bulk of the Revolutionary army and were responsible for many executions during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars.

* Prophets of Zwickau (XVI). The “Zwickau prophets,” i.e., Nicholas Storch, Thomas Drechsel, and Mark Stübner, etc., claimed to be prophets of God and to have received revelations directly from God. They were leading an anti-Protestant, anti-Catholic, spiritualistic attempt at communism and anarchy based on a view of taking the millennium by force as prophets. Zwickau, however, was near the Bohemian border, and there Müntzer was converted by the weaver and adept Niklas Storch, who had lived in Bohemia, to the old Taborite creed: in particular, continuing personal divine revelation to the prophet of the cult, and the necessity for the Elect to seize power and impose a society of theocratic communism by brutal force of arms. In addition, there was to be communism of women: marriage was to be prohibited, and each man was to be able to have any woman at will. Thomas Müntzer now claimed to be the divinely chosen prophet, destined to wage a war of blood and extermination by the Elect against the sinners. Müntzer claimed that the "living Christ" had permanently entered his own soul. Endowed thereby with perfect insight into the divine will, he asserted himself to be uniquely qualified to fulfill the divine mission. He even spoke of himself as "becoming God." Having graduated from the world of learning, Müntzer was now ready for the world of action. (Karl Marx as Religious Eschatologist, Mises Daily: Friday, October 09, 2009 by Murray N. Rothbard) Who were the the "Prophets of Zwickau"?

* Ulrich Hugwald (1496-1571). Ulrich Hugwald (Udalricus Hugualdus, Huldaricus Mutius Hugwaldus) was a Swiss humanist scholar and Reformer. Born in Wilen near Bischofszell, county of Thurgau, he was enrolled in the theological faculty in Basel University from 1519. He published critical pamphlets with Basel printer Adam Petri from 1520. He was in correspondence with a number of reformers, such as Vadianus, Michael Stifel, Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and Guillaume Farel. He also opened a private school of rhetorics in Basel. In 1524, he debated with Oecolampadius and Thomas Müntzer on the topic of believer's baptism. He joined the Basel Anabaptists in 1525, and was consequently imprisoned. He retired to his native Thurgau, working as a craftsman and farmer for some time. On his return to Basel, he distanced himself from the Anabaptists and was no longer active in religious debate. He taught at the Basel gymnasium from 1535, becoming rector in 1540, and he was professor for logic and ethics at the University of Basel from 1542. In 1539, he published De Germanorum prima origine, a chronistic account of the Germanic peoples (edited by Struve in 1726). In an early expression of German nationalism, the publication aimed to defend the antiquity and nobility of the German race against the opinion held by Italian humanists which considered the Germans barbarous and enlightened only by Latin learing. Hugwald's work is substantially based on the Chronography by Swabian historian Johannes Nauclerus, published in 1516, to a lesser degree drawing on Franciscus Irenicus, Heinrich Bebel, Beatus Rhenanus, and others. The work is therefore of little value independent of that of Nauclerus except for its expressions of early German national sentiment paired with a patriotic love of his own homeland in Switzerland (Müller 1886).

* Isaiah 5 NIV Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land. KJV Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!

* Hans Hut [Ганс Гут] (c 1490-1527). {<> Jacob Hutter. founder of the Hutterites} Hans Hut was a very active Anabaptist in southern Germany and Austria. (...) On Pentecost 1526 he was baptized in Augsburg by Hans Denck, who had previously been baptized by Balthasar Hubmaier. Some feel that Hut and Denck taught Universal salvation, but others question whether this was so. He expected the 1528 coming of the Kingdom of God in the form of a violent apocalyptic imposition of the rule of Christ. Therefore he curtailed his extensive missionary activity to await Pentecost 1528 and be among the 144,000 elect. He baptised not only with water, but sealed the baptism with a sign of the cross on the forehead. His mission activity extended from the Thuringian-French border in the north to Tyrol and Moravia and in his mission journeys he often seemed to seek former Peasants' War participants. His preaching was strongly influenced by Thomas Muentzer's mysticism. Gottfried Sebaß, an expert on Hut's biography and theology, calls him simply "Muentzer's heir. (...) In August 1527 Hans Hut was a key participant at the Martyrs' Synod in Augsburg, a gathering of 60 Anabatists from the surrounding region, trying to come to a common understanding about various teachings. When the Augsburg town council learned of the meeting, they attempted to arrest the group. Hut was arrested along with the major Augsburg Anabaptists. Though the arrest did not end Hut's teaching, after a trial he and the others were sentenced to indefinite imprisonment. Hans Hut was tortured horribly, and accidentally died as a result of a fire which caused his asphyxiation in the Augsburg prison on 6 December 1527. The next day, the authorities sentenced his dead body to death and burned him. Hut is the author of Ausbund no. 8, “O Thou Almighty Lord and God” (O Allmächtiger Herr Gott) which is still in the hymnal used today by North American Amish congregations.

* Martyrs' Synod [Augsburg; Синод мучеников] (1527). The Martyrs' Synod took place in Augsburg, Germany, from 20 to 24 August 1527. The purpose of this meeting, attended by about sixty representatives from different Anabaptist groups, was to come to agreement over the differences related to the central Anabaptist teachings among the Swiss and south German Anabaptists. The Anabaptists were early promoters of freedom of religion during a period in which German-speaking people equated religious freedom with anarchy. The Martyrs' Synod took place just as persecution of the Anabaptists began to escalate throughout Switzerland, Germany and Austria: it became known as the Martyrs' Synod because most participants were killed for their faith soon afterwards. The young Anabaptist movement had the difficult task of forming a common foundation from groups of varying belief. In early 1527 under the leadership of Michael Sattler an Anabaptist meeting in Schleitheim had produced a basic Anabaptist confession of faith, the Schleitheim Confession. In this confession, this Anabaptist group renounced participation in government, including the taking of oaths as well as participation in military service. Other groups of Anabaptists, though, including the South German Anabaptists, believed that Romans 13 permitted authorities to require their citizens to swear oaths and perform military service, and an agreement between the Swiss and South German Anabaptists was achieved on this point. Augsburg was selected as the meeting place because it was a central location for Anabaptist groups. (...) The Synod opened with discussions of a proposed Anabaptist oath and bearing of arms. Hans Hut argued against the Swiss Anabaptists position and advocated both oath-taking and military service.[citation needed He also resisted the demand of the Swiss to establish a uniform dress code for Anabaptists.[citation needed] Hut had prophesied that in 1528, three and a half years after the German Peasants' War, the Kingdom of God would come, sinners would be punished and authorities exterminated. Participants at the Synod agreed that Jesus Christ's return was imminent, but rejected Hut's calculations and his indication of specific dates and times with references to relevant Bible verses. After a long discussion, Hut did not recant his views, but did promise to no longer openly teach them, but instead to only share them privately. (...) This mission effort failed. Most of those sent out were martyred shortly after arrival in their designated region, giving this gathering its name, Martyrs' Synod. When the Augsburg town council learned of the meeting, they had Hans Hut and other participants arrested. They were later tried and sentenced to indefinite imprisonment. Hans Hut was tortured horribly, and accidentally died as a result of a fire which caused his asphyxiation in the Augsburg prison on 6 December 1527. The next day, the authorities sentenced his dead body to death and burned him. The Martyrs' Synod was both a high point and a turning point in the development of early Anabaptism. For the last time there were so many Anabaptist leaders with varying views. After Augsburg, the Anabaptist continued to be persecuted for more than a hundred years, eventually leading to mass emigrations to North America.

* Bernt Rothmann (c 1495—1535). German Anabaptist. In 1529 he was appointed chaplain of a church in Warendorf, near Münster. After visiting P. Melanchthon and W. Capito in 1531, he supported the cause of the Reformation. He was backed by the Council and guilds of Münster and given the pulpit of a large church in the city. In 1532 he published a confession of faith, which was Lutheran in most respects, but Zwinglian on the Eucharist {as symbolic}. His Bekenntnisse van beyden Sacramenten (1533), however, showed that Rothmann and his circle now rejected both Lutheranism and Zwinglianism and repudiated Infant Baptism. They were rebaptized by followers of M. Hoffmann and Münster became an Anabaptist city-state. Community of goods and polygamy were established. Rothmann's role is uncertain, but he wrote in defence of the ‘New Jerusalem’ of Münster. Münster fell to the prince-bishop in 1535; Rothmann's fate is unknown. Oxford Reference - Bernt Rothmann

* Theology of Huldrych Zwingli [Zwinglianism] (XVI). The theology of Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) was based on an interpretation of the Bible, taking scripture as the inspired word of God and placing its authority higher than what he saw as human sources such as the ecumenical councils and the church fathers. He also recognised the human element within the inspiration, noting the differences in the canonical gospels. Zwinglianism is the Reformed confession based on the Second Helvetic Confession promulgated by Zwingli's successor Heinrich Bullinger in the 1560s. Zwingli's views on baptism were largely a response to Anabaptism, a movement which attacked the practice of infant baptism. He defended the baptism of children by describing it as a sign of a Christian's covenant with disciples and God just as God made a covenant with Abraham. He denied the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and following Cornelius Henrici Hoen, he agreed that the bread and wine of the institution signify and do not literally become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Zwingli's differences of opinion on this with Martin Luther resulted in the failure of the Marburg Colloquy to bring unity between the two Protestant leaders. Zwingli believed that the state governed with divine sanction. He believed that both the church and the state are placed under the sovereign rule of God. Christians were obliged to obey the government, but civil disobedience was allowed if the authorities acted against the will of God. He described a preference for an aristocracy over monarchic or democratic rule.

* Bernhard Knipperdolling [Bernt Knipperdollinck; Бернт Книппердоллинг] (c 1495-1536). Bernhard Knipperdolling was a German leader of the Münster Anabaptists. He was also known as Bernd or Berndt Knipperdollinck or Knypperdollynck or Bertrand Knipperdoling; his birth name was van Stockem. Born at the beginning of the sixteenth century in Münster, Knipperdolling was the son of a wealthy, patrician cloth merchant. Little is known of his life as a young man. He first came into the public eye when he became a guild leader in the city council. A follower of the preacher Bernhard Rothmann, in 1528 he showed his colours as a "bold and proud" Protestant by suing the Catholic Münster town council and the Bishop Franz von Waldeck at the Imperial Court of Justice. His position as guild leader meant he had the financial and political support of the guilds. In January 1534, wandering Dutch Anabaptist preachers arrived in Münster proclaiming that a new prophet was on his way. They were soon followed by the "prophet" himself, the baker Jan Matthys of Haarlem. Knipperdolling became a passionate believer. (...) Bernhard Knipperdolling taught that the righteous before the day of Judgment, [each person would] have a monarchy on earth and the wicked be destroyed, that men are not justified by their faith in Christ; that there is no original sin; that infants ought not to be baptized, and that immersion is the only mode of baptism; that every one has the authority to preach and administer the sacraments; that men are not obliged to pay respect to magistrates; that all things ought to be in common, and that it is lawful to marry many wives. Anabaptist revolution. {Main article: Münster Rebellion} On February 10, 1534, Knipperdolling joined the movement to overthrow the town council and bishop, along with Jan Matthys and Jan Bockelson (or John of Leiden), one of Matthys' twelve disciples. He rallied the Anabaptists against conservative forces with "frenzied ecstasies". Accepted by the council, Knipperdolling won the elections of February 24, 1534, becoming Lord Mayor of Münster – this was the high point of the Anabaptist movement. His house became the centre of the Anabaptist movement; on January 15, 1534 the first believers' baptisms were performed there. When Matthys made his demand for the execution of all "godless" citizens of Münster, Knipperdolling convinced him to allow people a week's time to be baptised, or leave the city. This avoided arousing international opposition against Münster and risking internal stability. Knipperdolling organised military defenses against the Bishop's troops. He was also made chief executioner to the Twelve Judges; as chief executive he balanced out Bockelson, the Judges' spokesman. He was in charge of executions, "immigration officer", and the administrator of state property. Some of Matthys' policies went against Knipperdolling's best interests, such as the dissolution of the guilds and the confiscation of private property. After Matthys' death on April 4, 1534, Knipperdolling supported the leadership of Jan Bockelson, who was crowned king, supported by poor non-Münsterite Anabaptists. Soon, however, he was claiming superiority to Bockelson and prophesying that "while Jan was king according to the flesh", he, Knipperdolling, was "called to be the spiritual king". This led to his brief imprisonment in 1535. On his release, Knipperdolling was named Stadholder (vice-king and governor) and executioner. His daughter Clara was married to Jan Bockelson after the introduction of polygamy. In 1535, Knipperdolling's position of power was however once again lost when Heinrich Krechting became the king's right-hand man. On June 24–25, 1535, the Bishop, with the aid of the deserter Henry Gresbeck, retook Münster. Knipperdolling, Bockelson and Bernhard Krechting were imprisoned and interrogated. On January 22, 1536, Knipperdolling, Krechting, and Bockelson were publicly tortured and executed in Münster. Their corpses were suspended in metal baskets from the Lambertuskirche (St. Lambert's Church), which had been the initial focus of the Anabaptist revolution. Significance. As the worldly leader of the Münster Anabaptists, Knipperdolling was "Steigbügelhalter" (facilitator, literally "stirrup-holder") and chief executive of the movement. Knipperdolling represented the local Münsterite basis of the revolution and his path shows their mode of adaptation to the siege situation and the rule of the Dutch Jans. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary the word "knipperdolling" once was used as a derogatory synonym for an Anabaptist and now generally refers to any person who is a religious fanatic.

* Heinrich Krechting (c 1501-1580). Heinrich Krechting was a leader of the radical Anabaptist movement in Münster. Krechting was the son of the town clerk and organist Engelbert Krechting. He attended grammar school and married Elsle Oedefelt in 1526, daughter of a Schöppingen draper. They had four children. In 1531 he became mayor in Schöppingen. A year later he became a judge and Gograf (presiding judge) in the greatest Gogericht (regional court) of Münster. In fall 1533 Jan van Leiden visited him, who possibly baptized him in January 1534. When Johann von der Wieck was arrested in early 1534, he fled with a large number of other citizens to Münster, where his brother Bernhard Krechting already was an Anabaptist preacher. Leiden appointed Krechting as his secretary and later as "Chancellor of the Kingdom" - his personal representative. Krechting was responsible for organizing the defenders against the siege. As the cathedral fell through treachery after 16 months on 25 June 1535, Krechting barricaded himself with a few hundred survivors on the principal market in a wagon fort. They fought fiercely, and it was decided to guarantee the fighters their lives and a safe passage if they laid down their arms. Krechting and 24 of his comrades were allowed to leave town with a bishop's permit and 10 gold florins. Krechting fled first to Lingen and tried with the toleration of Count Anton of Oldenburg to rally the Anabaptists again. After the execution of Jan van Batenburg in February 1538, he was leader of the radical Anabaptists. His efforts to choose a new king and win back Münster during the Oldenburg feud in 1538 failed due to the weakness of his movement. When Count Anton of Oldenburg removed the Anabaptists from his country in 1538, Krechting was able to remain and find shelter in Gödens. Nothing more is known about his work as an Anabaptist after that time. In 1580, he died a respected man. His grandson Knechting and his great-grandson Hermann Wachmann were mayors of Bremen.

* Bernhard Krechting (before 1500-1536). Bernhard Krechting was one of the leaders of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster. Krechting was born in Schöppingen, Münster, the son of the town clerk and church musician Engelbert Krechting. Like his five brothers, he received higher education. He became a priest, a tutor for the Earl in Bentheim and a pastor at Gildehaus in the county of Bentheim. But when he proclaimed Anabaptist teachings, he was removed from his position. With many that he had convinced, he moved to Westphalian Münster (the so-called "New Jerusalem"), where he was one of the Anabaptist preachers. In the court of Jan van Leiden, he served on the council with his brother Heinrich Krechting, the Chancellor of the Anabaptist kingdom. Heinrich, however, escaped capture, while Bernhard Krechting suffered an agonizing end. On 22 January 1536 he was tortured to death with Jan van Leiden and Bernhard Knipperdolling at the principal market in Munster. As a deterrent to those who opposed the Catholic Church, their bodies were placed in three iron cages hung from the tower of St Lambert's Church. Although the bodies were removed about 50 years later the cages have remained into the 21st century.

* Heinrich Gresbeck [Henry Gresbeck] (XVI). Heinrich Gresbeck, also known as Henry Gresbeck, was a carpenter who was living in the city of Münster in 1534 when the Münster Rebellion began. He wrote the only eyewitness account of events within the city for the fifteen months duration of the rebellion, and played a key role in the recapture of the city by guiding the siege forces of Franz von Waldeck, Bishop of Münster, inside the fortress gates. For these actions Gresbeck has been described in various texts as a "convert", "traitor", "collaborator", "deserter", "chronicler", and "disgruntled city refugee".

* Jan Willemsen (XVI). The last flare-up of revolutionary Anabaptism would embrace the regions of Cleve and Wesel in Westphalia in 1567. A shoemaker named Jan Willemsen would led 300 adepts (among whom were survivors of Munster) in the nth version of the New Jerusalem, to which Adamite practices gave a bit of piquancy. Polygamy was prescribed and the Messiah Willemsen would marry 21 chosen ones. The community of goods did not implicate an economy of production; the saints lived off of raids and pillaging, attacking the homes of the priests and nobles. They lasted a dozen years before succumbing to punitive expeditions. Raoul Vaneigem - The Resistance to Christianity - Chapter 42: The Anabaptists

* Abiezer Coppe (1619-1672). Abiezer Coppe was one of the English Ranters and a writer of prophetic religious pamphlets. He was born in Warwick on May 20, 1619, and was a pupil of Thomas Dugard at The King's School, Warwick. From there he went to All Souls College, Oxford and also Merton College, Oxford. One of Coppe's major works is the Fiery Flying Roll of 1649, a (highly heretical) tirade against inequality and hypocrisy which vividly evokes the charged and visionary atmosphere that swept over England during the civil war and interregnum. While Coppe's views were unpopular with Royalists {'old established order'}, they were equally disliked by Parliamentarians {'new established order'}, and shortly after the Fiery Flying Roll was published he was imprisoned at Newgate Prison and the book burned. Coppe was later released and celebrated by publishing Coppe's return to the ways of righteousness, in which he retracted his previous heresies, while adding a few more. Like Lodowick Muggleton and the Diggers' leader Gerrard Winstanley, Coppe combined an egalitarian social vision with an apocalyptic religious one. In 1657 he apparently changed his name to Dr Higham, and was buried under that name at Barnes church on August 23, 1672.

* A Fiery Flying Roll. At the Putney Debates of 1647, the New Model Army and its elected “Agitators” composed what was essentially the first proper political party. They advanced a “Leveler” case for vesting governmental power in the House of Commons, they questioned the legitimacy of great landholdings, they proposed stripping Kings and Lords of their rights to veto legislation from the Commons, and indeed, the Levelers sought to begin a worldwide revolution against the ruling classes. But the Army’s leadership followed Cromwell and his grandees in the Parliament ensured that the most radical notions from Putney would not become incorporated into the English constitution. Conservative Parliamentarians successfully prevented Putney‐style radicalism from having much institutional impact, but they could not contain a set of ideas. Abiezer Coppe was born on 20 May, 1619 in Warwick, England. At age thirty, he published the following screed {a long speech or piece of writing, typically one regarded as tedious} against all forces which would rule over the free individual. Coppe’s Fiery Flying Roll lashed out at both sides of the English Civil War–the monarchists who lost the war but retained so much power and influence, and the Parliamentarians who represented new classes on the make and old rulers who knew when to make a truce. Coppe was a “Ranter.” The designation was one foisted on a diverse popular movement of nonconformist dissenters. Conservatives tended to smear the most radical elements of their new Commonwealth, and “Ranter” was intended to call out and shame those of loose morals and irreligion. In practice, Ranterism was characterized by popular antinomianism–no one and no institutions should come between the individual and their personal connection with God. They believed all man‐made laws, bodies, moral codes, and creeds tended to separate the individual from their real covenant with the Lord. What appeared to conservatives to be sexual promiscuity was in fact liberated individualism; religious fanaticism was inspired spiritualism; lawlessness was in fact a fierce and uncompromising sense of social justice. Coppe’s Word from the Lord to all the Great Ones of the Earth is a study in Commonwealth high weirdness. It provides a fascinating look into popular ideas during a truly radical, revolutionary time. In an era when state terrorism pushed common people to the breaking point, Ranters like Coppe fought back with fierce, fiery, flying rants like the following. ANTHONY COMEGNA - A FIERY FLYING ROLL: A RANTER’S WARNINGS TO THE GREAT ONES - “Ranter” Abiezer Coppe launches his Fiery Flying Roll against all those who would rule over the free individual. // AL Morton saw Coppe’s ideas as positing a far greater social upheaval than the political changes advocated by John Lilburne and his party, or even Gerard Winstanley’s proposals for joint cultivation on the commons and waste land. Coppe’s writings and sermons melded a passionate attack on the rich and their wealth, looking forward to a primitive Communism which echoed early Christianity and channelled the teachings of the theorist of the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, John Ball. Coppe tried to address himself to the poorest and most depressed strata of society, at a time when the slum population of London was suffering terrible hardships as a result of the wartime dislocation of trade and industry; he declares that God, in whose name he writes, will come upon the rich like a highwayman. Today in publishing history, 1650: House of Commons orders burning of of A Fiery Flying Roll by ranter Abiezer Coppe.(Harris, 2014) and the new Stoicisms (Robertson, 2015). Neoplatonism is also alive and well among those who take psychedelic drugs for spiritual purposes. Shanon says the worldview inspired by taking the psychedelic brew ayahuasca closely resembles the metaphysics of Plotinus. He writes that ideas and feelings inspired by taking ayahuasca “usually converge upon a coherent metaphysical outlook, one which is monistic, idealistic, pantheistic, imbued with religiosity and tainted with optimism, joy, and love” (2010: 269). Neoplatonic ideas are expressed by ravers, who enter ecstatic trances by dancing to electronic music, often under the influence of psychedelics. During their ecstatic trances, ravers often experience a profound energy flowing through their bodies; they see that all things are connected and unified {source of theurgy ??}; they feel that this same energy flows through all things (Sylvan, 2005: ch. 3). (PDF - draft) ERIC STEINHART - NEOPLATONIC PANTHEISM TODAY

* English Dissenters [English Separatists] (XVII-XVIII). English Dissenters or English Separatists were Protestant Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 17th and 18th centuries. A dissenter (from the Latin dissentire, "to disagree") is one who disagrees in opinion, belief and other matters. English Dissenters opposed state interference in religious matters, and founded their own churches, educational establishments and communities. Some emigrated to the New World, especially to the Thirteen Colonies and Canada. Brownists founded the Plymouth colony. English dissenters played a pivotal role in the spiritual development of the United States and greatly diversified the religious landscape. They originally agitated for a wide-reaching Protestant Reformation of the established Church of England, and they flourished briefly during the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell. King James VI of Scotland, I of England and Ireland, had said "no bishop, no king", emphasising the role of the clergy in justifying royal legitimacy. Cromwell capitalised on that phrase, abolishing both upon founding the Commonwealth of England. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the episcopacy was reinstalled and the rights of the Dissenters were limited: the Act of Uniformity 1662 required Anglican ordination for all clergy, and many instead withdrew from the state church. These ministers and their followers came to be known as Nonconformists, though originally this term referred to refusal to use certain vestments and ceremonies of the Church of England, rather than separation from it.

* Joseph Salmon (1647-1656). Joseph Salmon was a significant English religious and political writer of the middle of the seventeenth century. (...) He was known to the Quaker George Fox, from 1648/9, who identified him as one of the Ranters. Who exactly the Ranters were is now a topic of scholarly debate, and it is suggested Fox may have supplied that name later; Christopher Hill considers Salmon to have belonged to the ‘mystical and quietist wing’ of the Ranters. Salmon's last known work is Heights in Depths, from 1651, an apparent if partial recantation, written to fulfil a promise he had made to secure release from jail; he then fell silent as an author. He became a Quaker. His views were pantheistic, taking an allegorical-psychological view of the interpretation of the Bible.

* The Protectorate (1653-1659). The Protectorate was the period during the Commonwealth (or, to monarchists, the Interregnum) during which England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland and the English overseas possessions were governed by a Lord Protector as a republic. The Protectorate began in 1653, when the dissolution of the Rump Parliament and then Barebone's Parliament allowed Oliver Cromwell to be appointed Lord Protector of the Commonwealth under the terms of the Instrument of Government. In 1659, the Protectorate Parliament was dissolved by the Committee of Safety as Richard Cromwell, who had succeeded his father as Lord Protector, was unable to keep control of the Parliament and the Army. That marked the end of the Protectorate and the start of a second period of rule by the Rump Parliament as the legislature and the Council of State as the executive.

* Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1676). Gerrard Winstanley was an English Protestant religious reformer, political philosopher, and activist during the period of the Commonwealth of England. Winstanley was the leader and one of the founders of the English group known as the True Levellers or Diggers. The group occupied formerly common land that had been privatised by enclosures and dug them over, pulling down hedges and filling in ditches, to plant crops. True Levellers was the name they used to describe themselves, whereas the term Diggers was coined by contemporaries.

* Thomas Edwards [heresiographer] (1599-1647). Thomas Edwards was an English Puritan clergyman. He was a very influential preacher in London of the 1640s, and also one of the most ferocious polemical writers of the time, arguing from a conservative Presbyterian point of view against the Independents. (...) His major work was Gangraena from 1646, a large catalogue of sectarian Protestant views, written from a fearsomely adversarial point of view and treating them as heresies. He hoped that the list would silence or damage his opponents, but they responded, criticising Presbyterianism. In the work, as the first ideological identification of Levellers, Edwards summed up Levellers' views and attacked their radical political egalitarianism that showed no respect for the constitution. The prime targets in part III of his work were the men who were to be recognized as the leaders of the Leveller party.

* Richard Baxter (1615-1691). Richard Baxter was an English Puritan church leader, poet, hymnodist, theologian, and controversialist. Dean Stanley called him "the chief of English Protestant Schoolmen". After some false starts, he made his reputation by his ministry at Kidderminster in Worcestershire, and at around the same time began a long and prolific career as theological writer. After the Restoration he refused preferment {??}, while retaining a non-separatist Presbyterian approach, and became one of the most influential leaders of the Nonconformists, spending time in prison. His views on justification and sanctification are somewhat controversial and unconventional within the Calvinist tradition because his teachings seem, to some, to undermine salvation by faith, in that he emphasizes the necessity of repentance and faithfulness. // Religious separatism. English Christians in the 16th and 17th centuries who wished to separate from the Church of England and form independent local churches were influential politically under Oliver Cromwell, who was himself a separatist. They were eventually called Congregationalists. The Pilgrims who established the first successful colony in New England were separatists. // Nonconformist (Protestantism). In English church history, the Nonconformists were Protestant Christians who did not "conform" to the governance and usages of the established church, the Church of England (Anglican Church). The English Dissenters such as the Puritans who violated the Act of Uniformity 1559 – typically by practising radical, sometimes separatist, dissent – were retrospectively labelled as Nonconformists.

* Left-hand path and right-hand path [Путь левой руки и Путь правой руки]. In Western esotericism the Left-Hand Path and Right-Hand Path are the dichotomy between two opposing approaches to magic. This terminology is used in various groups involved in the occult and ceremonial magic. In some definitions, the Left-Hand Path is equated with malicious black magic or black shamanism, while the Right-Hand Path with benevolent white magic.  Other occultists have criticised this definition, believing that the Left–Right dichotomy refers merely to different kinds of working and does not necessarily connote good or bad magical actions. In more recent definitions, which base themselves on the terms' origins in Indian Tantra, the Right-Hand Path (RHP, or Dakshinachara), is seen as a definition for those magical groups that follow specific ethical codes and adopt social convention, while the Left-Hand Path (LHP, or Vamamarga) adopts the opposite attitude, espousing the breaking of taboo and the abandoning of set morality. Some contemporary occultists, such as Peter J. Carroll, have stressed that both paths can be followed by a magical practitioner, as essentially they have the same goals. Another distinguishing characteristic separating the two is based upon the aim of the practitioner. Right-handed path practitioners tend to work towards ascending their soul towards ultimate union (or reunion) with the divine source, returning to heaven, allegorically alluded to as restoration or climbing back up the ladder after the "great fall". In Solomon's lesser key, they embrace the light and try to annihilate anything they regard as "dark" or "evil". On the other hand, left-handed path practitioners do not see this as the ultimate aim but a step towards their goal. Left-handed path practitioners embrace the dark as well as the light in order to invoke the alchemical formula solve et coagula ("dissolve and precipitate"), confronting the negative in order to transmute it into desirable qualities. Left-handed path practitioners descend towards union with the divine to obtain Godhood status, with God-like powers of their own, having reunited with the ultimate divine source-energy; then once there, taking one more step separating from that divinity, out of this creation into a new creation of their own making, with themselves as the sole divinity of the new universe, apart from the previous creation. The godhood self sought by Left Hand Path followers is represented by the Qlipha Thaumiel in the Tree of Knowledge. Terminology. Right-Hand Path. The Right-Hand Path is commonly thought to refer to magical or religious groups which adhere to a certain set of characteristics: 1) They divide the concepts of mind, body and spirit into three separate, albeit interrelated, entities. 2) They adhere to a specific moral code and a belief in some form of judgement, such as karma or the Threefold Law. The occultist Dion Fortune considered Abrahamic religions to be RHP. Left-Hand Path. The historian Dave Evans studied self-professed followers of the Left-Hand Path in the early 21st century, making several observations about their practices: 1) They often reject societal convention and the status quo, which some suggest is in a search for spiritual freedom. As a part of this, LHP followers embrace magical techniques that would traditionally be viewed as taboo, for instance using sex magic or embracing Satanic imagery.  As Mogg Morgan wrote, the "breaking of taboos makes magic more potent and can lead to reintegration and liberation, [for example] the eating of meat in a vegetarian community can have the same liberating effect as anal intercourse in a sexually inhibited society." 2) They often question religious or moral dogma, instead adhering to forms of personal anarchism.  3) They often embrace sexuality and incorporate it into magical ritual.  Criticism. Criticism of both terms has come from various occultists. The Magister of the Cultus Sabbati, Andrew D. Chumbley, stated that they were simply "theoretical constructs" that were "without definitive objectivity", and that nonetheless, both forms could be employed by the magician. He used the analogy of a person having two hands, a right and a left, both of which served the same master. Similar sentiments were expressed by the Wiccan High Priest John Belham-Payne, who stated that "For me, magic is magic."

* John Holland (XVII). The sexual radicalism of the Ranters certainly made an impressive contrast with the repressive society that created them. They saw Original Sin as being lifted, meaning that none of the repressive commandments laid down by the Church through the ages still applied. John Holland’s anti-Ranter pamphlet The Smoke of the Bottomless Pit claims that “they say for one man to be tied to one woman, or one woman to be tied to one man, is a fruit of the curse; but they say, we are freed from the curse; therefore, it is our liberty to make use of whom we please.” Another called them “the merriest of all devils, for... lascivious songs... downright bawdry and dancing”, and claimed that the last two were commonly accompanied by orgies. Of course, it is important not to take this too uncritically: unless accompanied by a commitment to women’s liberation, sexual liberation has frequently just been a way to extend male power. But the Ranters’ relaxed and positive attitude to sexual pleasure still seems vastly preferable to the fear of our own bodies many Christians still promote today. A shadow of glorious (though strange) good things to come: The Ranters and libertarian communism in the English civil war

* William Franklin and Mary Gadbury (XVII). Hampshire during the English Civil War was a pretty miserable place. Looting was rife and the population politically divided and plagued by disease. Into this gloomy scene came the London rope-maker William Franklin, a self-proclaimed Messiah, who set up camp in Andover in 1649 with his female companion Mary Gadbury. WHEN THE MESSIAH CAME TO ANDOVER // The term Ranter seems to have been used in a rough and ready way to describe not only people like Coppe and Salmon but a rather different type of group like that around John Robins in London or William Franklin and Mary Gadbury in Winchester. While the Ranters properly so-called identified themselves with God only in the sense that all men and even all living things shared in the divine nature, Robins and Franklin claimed to be Gods, or to be inspired by God, in a special and personal sense. Each formed a small, self-contained group around its own prophet or messiah, with a chosen woman disciple who filled the role of Mary – in the case of the Robins group at least she claimed that a child she was about to bear would be a new Christ. These groups, in their nature exclusive, do not seem to have had any connection either with one another or with the Ranters as a whole, and though some of their teachings were similar, it is not necessary to discuss them here in any detail. a glorious Liberty // Puritans, that is to say, inhabited an allegorical world in which true reality, the final release into plain truth, lay hereafter, to be glimpsed only through worldly intimations and foreshadowings: 'reformed Christianity, for all of its insistence on literalism, remains profoundly committed to an allegorical ontology'. Luxon develops this point through an examination of the case of William Franklin and Mary Gadbury, who, in 1649, claimed respectively to be the Christ and his spouse. They were excoriated {criticize so. severely} not, as we might expect, for being absurdly literalistic but for being subject to 'Allegorical fancies'. Literal Figures: Puritan Allegory and the Reformation Crisis in Representation.

* Samuel Sheppard (1624-1655). Samuel Sheppard was an English poet and prose author, who published under the pseudonym "Raphael Desmus". He took holy orders, and was an ardent royalist. He twice suffered imprisonment for his opinions. During the Civil War he supported the king, and was imprisoned, and abandoned public life to write his major poem, The Faerie King (a continuation of Spencer's Faerie Queene. He died young, at 30, with the work unfinished.

* Jacob Bauthumley [Jacob Bottomley] (1613–1692). Jacob Bauthumley or Bottomley was an English radical religious writer, usually identified as a central figure among the Ranters. He served as part of the New Model Army, leaving in March 1650. After the Restoration of 1660, he took up a job as a librarian in Leicester, where he produced a book of extracts from John Foxe, published in 1676. Bauthumley is known principally for The Light and Dark Sides of God (1650). This work was regarded as blasphemous for its pantheistic tendencies, including the following: "Nay, I see that God is in all Creatures, Man and Beast, Fish and Fowle, and every green thing, from the highest Cedar to the Ivey on the wall; and that God is the life and being of them all, and that God doth really dwell, and if you will personally; ... and hath his Being no where else out of the Creatures {'biological God' ??}." After the Blasphemy Act of August 1650, he was arrested, convicted, and burned through the tongue. Bauthumley had served in the Parliamentarian Army; Norman Cohn states that he was in the Army while writing the pamphlet, and took part in Ranter and Quaker meetings in Leicestershire in the mid-1650s. Christopher Hill says that he left the Army in March 1650. His family had earlier suffered ostracism, for permitting sermons by Jeremiah Burroughes to be said in their house; he was a shoemaker. After the Restoration of 1660 he was a librarian in Leicester. He produced a book of extracts from John Foxe, published in 1676. Views. Bauthumley denied that the Bible was the Word of God, and that Christ was more divine than other men. He considered that the real Devil lay in human nature, while God dwells in the flesh of man. Historian E. P. Thompson calls his views 'quasi-pantheistic' in their re-definition of God and Christ, and quotes A. L. Morton to the effect that this is the central Ranter doctrine.

* Sin for grace. If our sin is already paid for, why should we stop sinning? In fact, doesn’t the vastness of our sin just make his grace more beautiful? Shall we sin that grace may abound? // Luke 7:47 NIV 47 Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.” // Romans 5:12-14, 20-21 NIV (Death Through Adam, Life Through Christ) 12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come. ... 20 The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more {KJV where sin abounded, grace did much more abound}, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

* Romans 6:1-2, 11-14 NIV (Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ) 6 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace {forgiveness ??} may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? ... 11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

* Romans 6:9 NIV {anti-Eucharist argument (Eucharist as sacrifice; Cathars ??)} 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.

* Laurence Clarkson [Laurence Claxton] (1615-1667). Laurence Clarkson, sometimes called Claxton, born in Preston, Lancashire, was an English theologian and accused heretic. He was the most outspoken and notorious of the loose collection of radical Protestants known as the Ranters. According to Charles William Sutton, writing in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, "the name is written Clarkson in his earlier tracts and Claxton in the later ones. It was no doubt originally Clarkson. In that form the name is still common about Preston, where it is pronounced 'Clackson'". Clarkson's ideas are set out in a 1650 tract sponsored by the wealthy Leveller military man, William Rainborowe, called A Single Eye. Clarkson opposed the idea of sin, considering it to be "invented by the ruling class to keep the poor in order." He felt that only the intention of an act, and nothing at all about its content, mattered to God, so that no specific morality could be prescribed on religious bases. He considered the danger of sin to be in the mind: "till acted that so called Sin, thou art not delivered from the power of sin, but ready upon all Alarums to tremble and fear the reproach of thy body." The only commandment he felt worthwhile was "Thou shalt not kill"; most of the others he confessed to having broken, and even adultery was acceptable under certain circumstances. In fact, Clarkson was known in the period for his sexual promiscuity, for which he was repudiated by the Digger Gerrard Winstanley. Clarkson considered himself to be the truest of the radical religious thinkers of the period to the Protestant ideal of separating religion from money, and accused Winstanley of taking tithes. Some time before 1660 Clarkson left the Ranters and joined the Muggletonians (apparently to the consternation of some of the current members). Clarkson claimed to be the chief follower and disciple of John Reeve, of whom Lodowicke Muggleton was himself an acolyte, and claims in his book The Lost Sheep Found (1660) to be "the true and only bishop now living." A protracted struggle for control followed between Clarkson and Muggleton, which Clarkson lost. J. C. Davis, who has in general expressed considerable doubt about some of the more peculiar doctrines ascribed to the Ranters, considers Clarkson to be genuine, if alone: "I have conceded that Laurence Clarkson in 1650 came closest to the Ranter stereotype, while arguing that he was an isolated individual leniently dealt with by authorities, and that his so-called autobiography of 1660, The Lost Sheep Found, is no valid source for the events of 1649-50." Though considerable controversy has followed from Davis's dismissal of the canonical account of the Ranters, that controversy has not been over the content of Clarkson's ideas, which are by and large agreed on by all parties to the debate, but merely the extent of their influence. He died in 1667 whilst imprisoned for debt.

* John Reeve [religious leader] (1608-1658). John Reeve was an English plebeian prophet who believed the voice of God had instructed him to found a Third Commission in preparation for the last days of earth. This commission was third in succession to the Mosaic Law and the gospel of Christ Jesus {'third age'}. He and his followers came to be known as Muggletonians, named after his cousin Lodowicke Muggleton. The pair saw themselves as the last prophets and the Two Witnesses foretold in the Book of Revelation chapter 11 verse 3. They are sometimes called “ the Staffordshire prophets”. (...) The Antichrist was identified as John Robins because he exalted himself in God's place.

* John Robins [prophet] (XVII). John Robins (fl. 1650–1652) was an English Ranter and plebeian prophet. Though imprisoned for his teachings, he avoided charges of blasphemy by signing a recantation. Robins, a ranter, was a man of little education. By his own account, "As for humane learning, I never had any; my Hebrew, Greek, and Latine comes by inspiration". He appears to have been a small farmer, owning some land. This he sold, and, coming to London with his wife Mary (or Joan) Robins, was known in 1650 to Lodowicke Muggleton (1609–1698) and John Reeve (1608–1658) as someone claiming to be something greater than a prophet. He was commonly spoken of as "the ranters' god" and "the shakers' god", and was effectively deified by his followers. His wife expected to become the mother of a Messiah. Robins probably viewed himself as an incarnation of the divine being; he asserted that he had appeared on earth before, as Adam, and as Melchizedek. He claimed a power of raising the dead. Robins put forward a scheme for leading a host of 144,000 persons to the Holy Land; Joshua Garment was to be his Moses for this expedition; the volunteers were prepared by a vegetarian diet of dry bread, raw vegetables, and water. Robins publicly declared that "the Lord Jesus was a weak and Imperfect Saviour, and afraid of death", unlike himself who had no fear of death. Robins acted as a cult leader and promised his followers he would lead them to the Mount of Olives in the Holy Land of Jerusalem where he would feed them on manna from heaven. He also stated he would part the water of the English channel and march his followers over dry land to bliss and safety. On 24 May 1651 Robins, his wife, and eight of his followers were apprehended at a meeting in Long Alley, Moorfields, and jailed in the New Bridewell at Clerkenwell, where three other disciples were sent to join them. During three days they held a kind of public reception of the "gentry and citizens" who "resorted thither to dispute with them". Robins reduced his former claim to one of inspiration, and rested his hopes of salvation on the merits of our Lord; his followers stoutly maintained his higher pretensions. Among the disputants was "an Oxford scholar", who referred to the previous fanaticism of William Hacket, Edmund Coppinger, and Henry Arthington, giving this last name as Arthingworth, perhaps because among the followers of Robins was a Mary Arthingworth. Robins remained in prison for more than ten months. On 5 February 1652, Reeve and Muggleton, who had just received their own "commissions" as prophets, visited Robins in his Clerkenwell prison, and passed sentence of eternal damnation upon him. The scene is graphically narrated by Muggleton. Robins said afterwards that he felt "a burning in his throat", and heard an inward voice bidding him recant. Accordingly, about two months later, he addressed to Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England at the time, a letter of recantation, and as a result was freed. Afterwards, he returned to the country, repurchased his land, and lived quietly. Though he professed to expect to "come forth with a greater power", he was not heard of again. Vegetarianism. Robins was one of the earliest vegetarians in England. Robins claimed he was the third Adam and that his followers should eat a vegetable diet like Adam did before the fall of man. Robins also condemned the use of alcohol as a poisonous liquor. Robin commanded his followers to eat a strict vegetable diet and abstain from meat until they should be fed with manna from heaven. Some of his followers starved to death on this diet {??}.

* Muggletonianism (XVII-XX). The Muggletonians, named after Lodowicke Muggleton, were a small Protestant Christian movement which began in 1651 when two London tailors announced they were the last prophets foretold in the biblical Book of Revelation. The group grew out of the Ranters and in opposition to the Quakers. Muggletonian beliefs include a hostility to philosophical reason, a scriptural understanding of how the universe works and a belief that God appeared directly on Earth as Jesus Christ. A consequential belief is that God takes no notice of everyday events on Earth and will not generally intervene until it is meant to bring the world to an end. Muggletonians avoided all forms of worship or preaching, and met only for discussion and socializing. The movement was egalitarian, apolitical and pacifist, and resolutely avoided evangelism. Members attained a degree of public notoriety by cursing those who reviled their faith. This practice ceased in the mid-nineteenth century. One of the last to be cursed was the novelist Sir Walter Scott. The faith attracted public attention in 1979 when Philip Noakes left the entire Muggletonian archive of correspondence, general papers and publications to the British Library. (...) The six principles of Muggletonianism were perhaps best set out by George Williamson, a Roman Catholic who visited the London Muggletonians in 1913: 1) There is no God but the glorified Man Christ Jesus. 2) There is no Devil but the unclean Reason of men. 3) Heaven is an infinite abode of light above and beyond the stars. 4) The place of Hell will be this Earth when sun, moon and stars are extinguished. 5) Angels are the only beings of Pure Reason. 6) The Soul dies with the body and will be raised with it. (...) Muggletonianism was profoundly materialist. Matter pre-existed even the creation of our universe; nothing can be created from nothing. God, identified as the Holy One of Israel, is a being with a glorified body, in appearance much like a man. There can never be a spirit without a body. A purely spiritual deity, lacking any locus, would be an absurdity (so Muggletonians vehemently told the Quakers) incapable of action in a material world. The man Christ Jesus was not sent from God but was the very God appearing on this earth. Speculation about a divine nature and a human nature, or about the Trinity, is not in error so much as unnecessary. At worst, John Reeve said, it encourages people to ascribe to the deity a whole ragbag of inconsistent human attributes expressed as superlatives. Or, as Thomas Tomkinson drily remarked, it tends to give you a father of justice just when you most wanted a son of mercy. The Devil, on the other hand, should not be likened to a character from a Ben Jonson play. When the one reprobate angel was tossed from heaven to earth, he perished, but not before impregnating Eve so that Cain was born to perpetuate his frustrated rage upon this earth. The natural process of generation ensured that, even by the time of Noah, all humans had within themselves something from Seth and something from Cain. Muggletonians call this the doctrine of the two seeds: the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. The former promoted faith within us, the latter promoted reasoning and desire. This is the conflict within every person. This is a predestinarian belief but, because there are two seeds and not one, humanity is not rendered abject and the innocence of Adam and Eve still has a chance of coming to the top within modern humankind.

* Seekers [Legatine-Arians] (XVII). The Seekers, or Legatine-Arians as they were sometimes known, were an English dissenting group that emerged around the 1620s, probably inspired by the preaching of three brothers – Walter, Thomas, and Bartholomew Legate. Seekers considered all organised churches of their day corrupt and preferred to wait for God's revelation. Many of them subsequently joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Origins. Long before the English Civil War there already existed what the English Marxist historian, Christopher Hill, calls a "lower-class heretical culture" in England. The cornerstones of this culture were anti-clericalism and a strong emphasis on Biblical study, but specific doctrines had "an uncanny persistence": rejection of Predestination, Millenarianism, mortalism, anti-Trinitarianism and Hermeticism {!!}.[clarification needed] Such ideas became "commonplace to seventeenth-century Baptists, Seekers, early Quakers and other radical groupings which took part in the free-for-all discussions of the English Revolution." Beliefs and practices. The Seekers were not an organised religious group in any way that would be recognised today (not a religious cult or denomination), but informal and localised. Membership in a local Seekers assembly did not preclude membership in another sect. Indeed, Seekers shunned creeds (see nondenominational Christianity) and each assembly tended to embrace a broad spectrum of ideas. Seekers after the Legates were Puritan but not Calvinist. Some contemporary historians, though accepting their zeal in desiring a "godly society", doubt whether the English Puritans during the English Revolution were as committed to religious liberty and pluralism as traditional histories have suggested. However, historian John Coffey’s recent work has emphasised the contribution of a minority of radical Protestants who steadfastly sought toleration for so-called heresy, blasphemy, Catholicism, non-Christian religions, and even atheism. This minority included the Seekers, as well as the General Baptists. Their collective witness demanded the church to be an entirely voluntary, non-coercive community able to evangelise in a pluralistic society governed by a purely civil state. Such a demand was in sharp contrast to the ambitions of magisterial Protestantism held by the Calvinist majority. Nevertheless, in common with other Dissenters, the Seekers believed that the Roman Church corrupted itself and, through its common heritage, the Church of England as well. Only Christ himself could establish the "true" Church. However, there were a number of beliefs and practices that made the Seekers distinctive from the large number of nonconformist dissenting groups that emerged around the time of the Commonwealth of England. Most significant was their form of collective worship; the Seekers held meetings free of all Church ritual and in silence, mindful of direct inspiration and guidance. Seekers anticipated aspects of Quakerism and a significant number of them became Quakers and many remaining Seekers attended the funeral of George Fox. Richard Baxter, a contemporary and unsympathetic author, claimed that they had merged with the "Vanists" or followers of Henry Vane the Younger. Often when "heretics" were faced with being burnt at the stake they retracted, retaining their beliefs in a less public way. The Legates were exceptional. Thomas died in Newgate Prison after being arrested for his preaching and Bartholomew was burnt for heresy in 1612.

* Christian mortalism. Christian mortalism incorporates the belief that the human soul is not naturally immortal and may include the belief that the soul is uncomprehending immediately after bodily death, a time known as the intermediate state. "Soul sleep" is often used as a pejorative term, so the more neutral term "mortalism" was also used in the nineteenth century, and "Christian mortalism" since the 1970s. Historically the term psychopannychism was also used, despite problems with the etymology and application. The term thnetopsychism has also been used; for example, Gordon Campbell (2008) identified Milton as believing in the latter though in fact both De doctrina Christiana and Paradise Lost refer to death as "sleep" and the dead as being "raised from sleep". The difference is difficult to identify in practice. Related and contrasting viewpoints of life after death include universal reconciliation, where all souls are immortal (or are mortal, but universally given continuance) and eventually are reconciled, and conditional immortality, where a positive afterlife is exclusively held by just some souls. Christian mortalism has been taught by several theologians and church organizations throughout history while also facing opposition from aspects of Christian organized religion. The Catholic Church condemned such thinking in the Fifth Council of the Lateran as "erroneous assertions". Supporters include the sixteenth-century religious figure Martin Luther and the eighteenth-century religious figure Henry Layton, among many others.

* Isaiah 42:16 NIV 16 I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.

* 1 John 1:5-10 NIV (Light and Darkness, Sin and Forgiveness) 5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 8 If we claim to be without sin {i.e. claim to be 'the pure' ??}, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

* Lamentations 3:38 NIV 38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come? KJV Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good? 39 Why should the living complain when punished for their sins?

* Luke 19:22 NIV 22 “His master replied, ‘I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant! You knew, did you, that I am a hard man, taking out what I did not put in, and reaping what I did not sow? KJV 22 And he saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow: // Matthew 7-2 NIV 1 "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. // John 3:17 NIV 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

+ Neoplatonism. {Neoplatonic pantheism} Neoplatonism is alive and well today. It expresses itself in New Thought and the mind-cure movements derived from it. However, to avoid many ancient errors, Neoplatonism needs to be modernized. The One is just the simple origin from which all complex things evolve. The Good, which is not the One, is the best of all possible propositions. A cosmological argument is given for the One and an ontological argument for the Good. The presence of the Good in every thing is Spirit. Spirit sits in the logical center of every body; it is surrounded by the regulatory forms of that body. Striving for the Good, Spirit seeks to correct the errors in its surrounding forms. To correct the errors in biological texts, modern Neoplatonists turn to the experimental method. This Neoplatonism is pantheistic not because of some theoretical definition of God but rather because of its practical focus on the shaping of Spirit. Eric Steinhart - Neoplatonic Pantheism Today // Plotinus says “all men instinctively affirm the god in each of us to be one, the same in all” (Enneads, 6.5.1). On this point, and many others, Plotinian Neoplatonism is alive and well in much current Western religious thought and practice. During the 1800s, Neoplatonism was highly influential in America (Bregman, 1990). By way of the New England Transcendentalists, it entered the American religious movement known as New Thought. New Thought turned esoteric Plotinian metaphysics into popular theological psychotherapy. It inspired many small sects, such as Christian Science (Eddy, 1875); the Unity Churches (Cady, 1895); and Religious Science (Holmes, 1936). Among these original sects, the Unity Churches still flourish today. From these sects, Plotinian ideas spread out into the wider culture. Taking inspiration from New Thought, Napoleon Hill wrote the bestseller Think and Grow Rich (1938). Norman Vincent Peale studied with Hill, and the ideas of New Thought were central to his own bestseller, The Power of Positive Thinking (1952). Peale’s work helped shape the positive psychology movement and the human potential movement. Ideas from New Thought entered Pentecostal theology, including the Word of Faith movement and the Prosperity Gospel. Neoplatonic and New Thought ideas drive much of the New Age movement. New Thought inspired movements based on the idea that our minds create our realities. These include superstitious movements based on sympathetic magic like the law of attraction (Byrne, 2006). Other popular mind-power movements argue that the purification of consciousness is the key to flourishing. These movements include Western Buddhisms

* Apocalyptic visions and prophecies often include the detail that mountains and valleys will disappear, producing a level plain. Close reading of the way this image figures in a variety of texts and contexts (Christian, Zoroastrian, Japanese, Melanesian) shows it to encode a utopian imaginary in which class distinctions, privilege, and inequity will be abolished. Bruce Lincoln - "The Earth Becomes Flat" --A Study of Apocalyptic Imagery

* As we have seen, Coppe publicly identified God with the ‘libertine’ cause. Here, he cements this daring identification by placing an explicitly radical speech into God’s mouth. In the given passage, it is swiftly apparent that God’s voice is promoting the cause of the vanquished Levellers, employing a capitalised ‘LEVELLING’ as if to threaten any royalist reading. The radicalism of Coppe’s voice of God is confirmed by the open reference to ‘the late slaine or dead Charles’, which presents God as revelling in the death of the monarch. Towards the end of the given extract, the noun ‘Levellers’ is equated with the ‘Devill’: a formulation which places the ‘Levellers’ in an antagonistic relationship with contemporary royalists. After this, Coppe’s God puns menacingly on the idea of rhetorical ‘LEVELLING’. Harold Chancellor - The Voice of God in Early Modern English Literature and Culture, c. 1590-1671

* Isaiah 23 NIV 9 The Lord Almighty planned it, to bring down her pride in all her splendour and to humble all who are renowned on the earth. KJV 9 The LORD of hosts hath purposed it, to stain the pride of all glory, and to bring into contempt all the honourable of the earth.

* Psalm 9 NIV 12 For he who avenges blood remembers; he does not ignore the cries of the afflicted. KJV 12 When he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them: he forgetteth not the cry of the humble. // EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS. Verse 12. When he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them. There is a time when God will make inquisition for innocent blood. The Hebrew word doresh, from darash, that is here rendered inquisition, signifies not barely to seek, to search, but to seek, search, and enquire with all diligence and care imaginable. Oh, there is a time coming when the Lord will make a very diligent and careful search and enquiry after all the innocent blood of his afflicted and persecuted people, which persecutors and tyrants have spilt as water upon the ground; and woe to persecutors when God shall make a more strict, critical, and careful enquiry after the blood of his people than ever was made in the inquisition of Spain, where all things are carried with the greatest diligence, subtlety, secrecy, and severity. Psalm 9:12

* James 5-9 NIV (Warning to Rich Oppressors) 5 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you. (Patience in Suffering) 7 Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. 8 You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. 9 Don’t grumble against one another, brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!

* Revelation 10:5-6 NIV 5 Then the angel I had seen standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven. 6 And he swore by him who lives for ever and ever, who created the heavens and all that is in them, the earth and all that is in it, and the sea and all that is in it, and said, “There will be no more delay!

* Nehemiah 13:25 NIV 25 I rebuked them and called curses down on them. I beat some of the men and pulled out their hair. I made them take an oath in God’s name and said: “You are not to give your daughters in marriage to their sons, nor are you to take their daughters in marriage for your sons or for yourselves.