Relationship To Other Christian Lay Movements
There is considerable confusion as to the relationship between the Brethren and other lay Christian movements of the time: the Beguines and Beghards with whom they were often confused. Indeed some have argued that the Brethren didn’t exist at all in the commonly held idea of a movement. It had no central leader, hierarchy or organisation and was very difficult to define. Such a view holds that rather than speaking of a Brethren of the Free Spirit in the same way as we speak of the Cathars, the Lollards or the Waldensians, we should talk about a Doctrine or Heresy of the Free Spirit or even little more than a loose set of ideas grouped together under a single title, i.e. "a state of mind as much as a settled body of doctrine", as British scholar Gordon Leff states it.
Not everyone accused of being a member of the Free Spirit or of disseminating their doctrines was part of the movement. Even at the Council of Vienne the Church authorities struggled to bring together documentation of what the Free Spirit stood for, using texts such as Marguerite Porete's The Mirror of Simple Souls as evidence of what the Brethren said. The very fact that no one spiritual thinker can be identified as the movement's founder (names linked to the movement include Amaury de Bene, Giochinno de Fiori and Meister Eckhart, all of whom, at different times, were cited by individuals proclaiming their adherence to the Heresy as the originators of their beliefs), or claimed to be so, indicate how disparate a movement it was.
Read more about this topic: Brethren Of The Free Spirit
Famous quotes containing the words relationship to, relationship, christian, lay and/or movements:
“Women, because of their colonial relationship to men, have to fight for their own independence. This fight for our own independence will lead to the growth and development of the revolutionary movement in this country. Only the independent woman can be truly effective in the larger revolutionary struggle.”
—Women’s Liberation Workshop, Students for a Democratic Society, Radical political/social activist organization. “Liberation of Women,” in New Left Notes (July 10, 1967)
“Every relationship that does not raise us up pulls us down, and vice versa; this is why men usually sink down somewhat when they take wives while women are usually somewhat raised up. Overly spiritual men require marriage every bit as much as they resist it as bitter medicine.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“What is clear is that Christianity directed increased attention to childhood. For the first time in history it seemed important to decide what the moral status of children was. In the midst of this sometimes excessive concern, a new sympathy for children was promoted. Sometimes this meant criticizing adults. . . . So far as parents were put on the defensive in this way, the beginning of the Christian era marks a revolution in the child’s status.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“The novel is not “a crazy quilt of bits”; it is a logical sequence of psychological events: the movements of stars may seem crazy to the simpleton, but wise men know the comets come back.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)