LIBERTINES, Libertini, in ecclesiastical history, a religious sect which arose in the year 1525, and the principal tenets of which were, that the Deity was the sole operating cause in the mind of man, and the immediate author of all human actions; that, consequently, the distinctions of good and evil, which had been established with regard to those actions, were false and groundless; that men could not, properly speaking, commit sin; that religion consisted in the union of the spirit or rational soul with the Supreme Being; that all those who had attained this happy union, by sublime contemplation and elevation of mind, were allowed to indulge, w thout exception or restraint, their appetites or passions; that all their actions and pursuits were then perfectly innocent; and that, after the death of the body, they became united to the Deity. This sect likewise held that Jesus Christ was nothing but a mere entity, composed of the spirit of God, and of the opinion of men. These maxims occasioned their being called Libertines ; and the word has been employed in a bad sense ever since.

The Libertini spread principally in Holland and Brabant. Their leaders were one Quintin, a native, Picards, Pockesius, Ruffus, and another person called Chopin, who joined Quintin, and became his disciple.

This sect obtained a certain footing in France through the favour and protection of Margaret, queen of Navarre, sister of Francis I., and it found patrons in several of the reformed churches. It was probably a remnant of the more ancient Beguards, or Brethren of the Free Spirit.

Libertines of Geneva, were a cabal of rakes rather than of fanatics; for they made no pretence to any religious system, but pleaded only for the liberty of leading voluptuous and immoral lives. This cabal was composed of a certain number of licentious citizens, intolerant of the severe discipline of Calvin, who punished with rigour not only dissolute manners, but also whatever bore the aspect of irréligion and impiety. In this turbulent cabal there were several persons who were not only notorious for their dissolute and scandalous manner of living, but also for their atheistical impiety, and contempt of all religion. To this odious class belonged one Gruet, who denied the divinity of the Christian religion, the immortality of the soul, and the difference between moral good and evil, and who rejected with disdain the doctrines that are held most sacred among Christians; impieties for which he was at last brought before the civil tribunal, in the year 1550, and condemned to suffer death. At this time the Genevan spirit of reformation, directed by the excessive zeal of Calvin, tended to defeat itse l and to introduce the greatest disorders. In 1544, Castalio, master of the public school of that city, a man of probity, and distinguished by his learning and taste, was, nevertheless, deposed from his office and banished the city, because he disapproved of some of the measures which were pursued, as well as of the opinions entertained by Calvin and his colleagues, particularly that of absolute and unconditional predestination. Jerome Bolsec, also a man of genius and learning, who became a convert to the Protestant religion, and fled to Geneva for protection, was cast into prison, and soon afterwards driven into exile, because, in 1551, he imprudently declaimed, in full congregation, against the doctrine of absolute decrees.