FREE THINKERS. — This term is used to designate all those who, rejecting any revelation or dogmatic definition of religious or moral truths, claim for rational and human capacities an absolute emancipation. Hence the anticlerical and antiecclesiastical attitude of free thinkers.
The historical origins of the movement are to be traced to 17th-century England, which was influenced by the Italian Renaissance, particularly by G. C. Vanini, P. Pomponazzi, Leone l’Ebreo, G. Bruno, and T. Campanella (cf. L. Einstein, *The Italian Renaissance in England*, New York 1902). To these sources is linked H. de Cherbury (1582–1648), who may be considered the father of English deism, whose purely natural and rational religion could be accepted by any people (cf. *De Veritate*, London 1633, p. 212). The Cambridge school gave this religion an ethical orientation, while J. Toland, J. Collins, M. Tindal, T. Woolston, etc., emphasized the naturalness of religion as excluding every dogma, rejecting the authority of Scripture, the divinity of Christ, and miracles. English free thinkers, who had long constituted a sect, published from 1778 in London the periodical *The Freethinker*. But even earlier, A. Collins had given a great impetus to their movement with his *Discourse of Freethinking* (London 1713), in which he proclaimed that to place limits on reason was to go against reason itself.
In France, the activity of libertine writers and the knowledge of English deist works contributed to the formation of free thought. To this trend adhered the Encyclopedists and Voltaire, who further accentuated the antidoctrinal spirit by discrediting the Church and Revelation with irony and sarcasm.
In Germany, after the coronation of Frederick II, many translations of English free thinkers circulated, finding fertile ground in Wolffian rationalism and shaping German Enlightenment. The results of German free thought were more concrete than those achieved in France, especially in the field of biblical criticism and regarding the life of Jesus (H. S. Reimarus, D. F. Strauss, etc.; cf. G. Ricciotti, *La vita di Gesù Cristo*, 12th ed., Rome 1949, pp. 210 ff.). Alongside the development of these schools, the influence exerted by the positive sciences further accredited the autonomy of reason, and the free-thought movement organized itself into civic associations. From then on, free thought was synonymous with atheism and a badge of opponents of religion and the Church.
In Milan, an Association of Free Thinkers was founded in 1865 (in the immediately preceding years, identical associations had been founded in Parma, Siena, and Florence), which published from 1866 to 1875 the periodical *Il libero pensiero*, edited by L. Stefanoni, who from 1867 also directed the *Biblioteca del razionalista* (Milan). In the statute of the Milanese Association, it is stated: “free thinkers admit no truths other than those demonstrated by reason; no moral law other than that sanctioned by conscience... they consider dogmatic religions, called revealed, as negations of conscience and human freedom” (cf. *Il libero pensiero*, Milan 1866, pp. 56–57). Practical manifestations included the free thinkers’ abstention from religious marriage, the baptism of children, and the cremation of the dead, on which topic two medical congresses were held in Florence in 1869 and in Milan in 1874. In 1880, the International Federation of Free Thought was founded in Brussels, to which local associations already in existence adhered. In Germany, the *Deutsche Freidenkerbund* (organ: *Menschenfutun*, later *Der Freidenker*) was founded in Frankfurt in 1881 by L. Büchner, so that “the scattered forces of German free thought may unite and, through the organization of associations, promote action in public life” (cf. L. Büchner, *Am Sterbelager des Jahrhunderts*, Giessen 1898). A notable development of the movement occurred in 1896 with the meeting in Zurich of various Austrian, Swiss, French, Italian, English, and American societies of moral action and culture, which formed an *Internationale Ethische Bund*.
In 1906, Haeckel founded the *Monistenbund*, which in 1911, together with all monistic associations, organized itself with headquarters in Hamburg into an *Internationale Komitee für Monismus*.
While in France the free-thought movement benefited from the rise of the left to power after the Dreyfus Affair (1899–1905), in 1913 in Berlin the *Bund der Konfessionen* (organ: *Der Weg*) was formed, uniting masses that had left the Church. In 1915, the general free-thought movement divided into radical and moderate factions, the former forming the *International proletarischer Freidenker* in Vienna (organ: *Der proletarische Atheist*), the latter establishing itself in Leipzig and organizing there the *Volksbund für Geistesfreiheit* (organ: *Die Geistesfreiheit*). The *Arbeiter Freidenkerbewegung*, which had separated from the general movement in 1905, moved to Russia, where it constituted the League of the Godless.
In 1904, the International Federation of Free Thought in Brussels held an international congress in Rome, in which it was proclaimed that free thinkers have the right and duty to remove from reactionary clerical spirit “the official direction of States and above all the compulsory direction of consciences, of popular education, and of works of popular solidarity” (cf. *Atti del Congresso della Federazione internazionale dei liberi pensatori di Roma*, Milan 1904, pp. 14–15). Regarding the anticlerical attitude of the free-thought movement, the words of M. Rapisardi are apt: “Not being able to hurl my final cry directly in the face of the Vatican is a great sorrow for me” (op. cit., p. 16).
From the passages cited, it is easy to discern the content and consistently antidoctrinal and anti-Catholic attitude of free thinkers, based on a mistaken understanding of human and religious values: the former as capable of naturally achieving human happiness; the latter as limiting human nature and enslaving the individual. Their movement, born with the intention of reconciling the rational fact with the religious fact, annuls the problem by excluding supernatural values and reducing every religious content to the domain of positive and experimental science. The theories of free thinkers are embraced and spread by Bolshevism, communism, and the “Godless.”