Note 349 — Chapter IX · CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The order subsisted for a time in secret, numbers cherishing Dolcino’s memory, and practising a priestless and riteless religion, prohibiting oaths, and wholly repudiating every claim of the Church.349 Yet another sect, called by the name of “The Spirit of Liberty”—probably the origin of the name libertini, later applied to freethinkers in France—was linked on the one hand to the Apostolicals and on the other to the German Brethren of the Free Spirit, as well as to the Franciscan Fraticelli. This sect is heard of as late as 1344, when one of its members was burned.350 And there were yet others; till it seemed as if the Latin Church were to be resolved into an endless series of schisms. But organization, as of old, prevailed; the cohesive and aggressive force of the central system, with the natural strifes of the new movements, whether within or without351 the Church, sufficed to bring about their absorption or their destruction. It needed a special concurrence of economic, political, and culture forces to disrupt the fabric of the papacy.