The Resistance to Christianity : The Heresies at the Origins of the 18th Century

Bibliographical References
Bibliographical References Aegerter, E., Joachim de Flore. L’Evangile eternal, Paris, 1928. Aeneas Silvius, Piccolomini (Pius II), De hortu et historia Bohemorum, in Omnia Opera, Basle, 1551. Aland, Kurt, Bibliographie zur Geschicte des Pietismus, Berlin-New York, 1972. — , Augustin und der Montanismus in Kirchengeschichtliche Entwuerfe, Guetersloh, 1960. Albert le Grand, Determinatio de novo spiritu; in Haupt (see below). Alexandrian, Histoire de la philosophie occulte, Paris, 1983. Alfaric, P., Le probleme de Jesus, Paris, 1965. Allier, R., “Les freres du libre-esprit,” in Religions et Societes, Paris, 1905. Alphandery, P., De quelques faits de prophetisme dans les sec... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 48 : The End of the Divine Right
Chapter 48: The End of the Divine Right In the profusion of its diverse tendencies, the triumph of Protestantism — in which the economic mechanisms that chaotically governed historical evolution burst the skin of the God that had clothed them in his myth — put an end to the notion of repressive orthodoxy and, consequently, the existence of “heresy.” The sects gave the [Greek] word hairesis the neutral meanings of “choice” and “option.” They entered into the currents of opinions that soon claimed, with Destutt of Tracy and Benjamin Constant, the name “ideologies.” The decapitation of Louis XVI, monarch of divine right, removed from God the ecclesiastical head at which — like a monstrous cephalopod — were articulated the secular arms that were tasked with imposing his writs of mandamus. The jubilation that, around the end of the [Eighteenth] century, brought down the churches... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 47 : Pietists, Visionaries and Quietists
Chapter 47: Pietists, Visionaries and Quietists The Pietists Born from the preaching of the Lutherian pastor Philippe-Jacob Spener (1635–1705), Pietism proceeded from the tradition of Johannes Denck, for whom faith — or its absence, because only private conviction was important — did not bother with sacraments, priests or pastors, nor even with the allegedly sacred texts. Under German and English Pietism, there also smoldered the thought of Jacob Boehme (1575–1624), the shoemaker from Gorlitz (in Silesia), whose doctrine was part of the Hermetic tradition and the subtle alchemy of individual experience. Without entering into an analysis of a rich and dense conception, it is possible to emphasize the point at which Pietism’s God, dissolved into nature, more perfectly annihilated the idea of God than atheism, which was content to reduce God to a social function presented everywhere in the exercise of power and aut... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 46 : The Jansenists
Chapter 46: The Jansenists While Holland and England, both of which acclimated themselves to the formal freedoms of the bourgeois revolution, engendered a multitude of sects whose language — still taking on theological artifices — less and less dissimulated their ideological texture, the Catholic countries, which were prey to the distraction of the Counter-Reformation, once again found in monarchal and pontifical absolutism the guarantee of a Catholicism that was restored to its temporal and spiritual powers. Indulging in the Constantinian parody of the divine right, Louis XIV persisted in dissimulating — under the pomp of a Church in which Bossuet enjoyed Lully — the pusillanimities of a tormented nature, corroded by the sourness of prestige. The sun, with which (in the manner of the mediocre ones) he claimed to crown himself, only dispensed its light upon the courtiers of literature and the arts, apt to dilute their genius... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 45 : Levellers, Diggers and Ranters
Chapter 45: Levelers, Diggers and Ranters By decapitating King Charles , the English Revolution removed God from public affairs. Cromwell’s instauration of a new republic, which was profitable for the interests of the small landowners and the bourgeoisie, revived (with the breath of freedom) the fire of working-class insurrection that had not ceased to smolder since the days of John Ball. More than anywhere else, the legends of Robin Hood and the beloved brigand had, in England, illustrated the idea — widely held, all things considered — that robbing the rich so as to soften the misfortunes of the poor restored the natural obligations of solidarity. The development of Protestantism as the ideology of emerging modern capitalism broke the old structure of the religious myth, at the same time that the barriers and walls raised everywhere by feudalism and the predominance of the agrarian economy ceded place to the free circulation of commodi... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Spiritual Libertines
Chapter 41: The Spiritual Libertines At the same time that the Spanish Inquisition worried itself with people who, unconcerned with Catholicism, Protestantism, the Church and its reforms, lived in the quest for love and discovered in it the very meaning of their existence, Luther and Calvin attempted to subdue — in the countries slowly conquered by their glacial truths — the natural liberties that authorized among the people the spiritual liberties that were being arrogated by the Reformers. Eloi Pruystinck And The Loyists Thanks to economic development, around 1520 Antwerp saw the new wave of individual initiative push towards the shore the audacities of private enterprise, the reconversion of God into divine capital and, at th... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Three Local Christianities: Edessa and Bardesane, Alexandria and Origen, Antioch and Paul of Samosate
Chapter 17: Three Local Christianities: Edessa and Bardesane, Alexandria and Origen, Antioch and Paul of Samosate While the New Prophecy would, for the first time and despite the dissent of a minority of the bishops, concretize the project of a Christianity that wished to conquer the Greco-Roman Empire and ended up unifying the rival churches, there were three cities in which the oldest Judeo-Christian traditions guarded their particularities and perpetuated their privileges as ancient communities. Such was the case with Edessa, Alexandria and Antioch, the fortresses of Esseno-Nazarenism. Bardesane Of Edessa Starting from the First Century, Edessa was a hub of Christian expansion. “The structure of the archaic Christianity of Edessa,&... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Men of Intelligence and the Pikarti of Bohemia
Chapter 37: The Men of Intelligence and the Pikarti of Bohemia On 12 June 1411, Willem van Hildernissem of the Carmelite order was called before the Inquisitor Henri de Selles, acting on the behalf of the episcopal tribunal of Cambrai. Willem van Hildernissem was accused of playing an important role in a group of Free-Spirit known to Brussels under the name the Men of Intelligence. Formerly a reader of Holy Scriptures at the Carmel of Tirlemont, he found an inspired ally in Gilles of Canter (Gilles the Cantor, Aegidius Cantor), a sexagenarian layman (probably the son of a noble family) who was dead by the time of the trial. Everything seems to indicate that they shared an interest in the theories of Bloemardine, whose memory remained more v... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Carpocratus, Epiphanius and the Tradition of Simon of Samaria
Chapter 14: Carpocratus, Epiphanius and the Tradition of Simon of Samaria In the encounter with the generally ascetic Christian current, which was propagated in the Second Century by gnostic esotericism and by the pistis of the New Prophecy, the teachings of Carpocratus and his son Epiphanius inscribed themselves in a line of life that only Simon of Samaria knew how to trace in thin strokes on the tormented grays of the era. Carpocratus’ biography remains obscure. Origen confused him with Harpocratus, son of Isis and Osiris, a solar god under Greco-Roman domination, often represented in the magic papyrus seated on a lotus, the male principle penetrating the feminine principle so as to impregnate her with his light. Carpocratus taught ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Monophysites and Dyophysites
Chapter 22: Monophysites and Dyophysites Three currents stood out from the tormented landscape that was presented by the ecclesiatical rivalries and quarrels of the Church, which was struggling for the recognition of its authority and preeminence. They corresponded to the two poles of imperial power: Rome and Byzantium, and the cradle of Hellenized Christianity, Alexandria. Monophysism had more to do with schism than heresy. Born in Alexandria, this doctrine was not innovative but used old speculations on the nature of the Messiah to mark itself from Rome. After the Council of Chalcedoine, held in 451, the eastern Churches seized hold of the Jacobites of Syria and the Armenian churches, so as to constitute their dogma, which was still honor... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)