LIBERTINI. — Over time, the word *libertini* has taken on various meanings. Calvin defined *libertini* as the supporters of panesthetic theories who lived in France at the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. This libertine group originated in Lille around 1525, through the efforts of the tailor Quentin and later the priest Antonio Pocques, and then spread to Paris. For these individuals, there exists only one spirit, and God Himself, who animates men, is formally united with their bodies and is the operator of both good and evil. In 1547, a Franciscan friar from Rouen argued that man lives in a kind of peace even after committing evil, because this is the will of God, thus foreshadowing Quietist theories. Alongside these religious *libertini*, there were also those of a distinctly political stripe who operated in Geneva against Calvin’s theocratic government (they were definitively crushed by Calvin in 1555).
By the 17th century, the term *libertini* came to signify free thinkers (v. FREE THINKER). In the 18th century, *libertini* were also used to describe those who advocated or supported religious tolerance, and later those who would today be called *libertini*—the epicureans of life (a concept that was also present in the 17th century). In the 18th century, an alliance can be observed between the *libertino* and the *honnête homme* (the bourgeois) in their shared defense, on an economic level and against evangelical morality, of every form of interest-bearing loan.
Libertinism is not merely an action but also an adherence to a theocracy—the theocracy of unbelief and the desire to free oneself from the fear of eternal punishment. In the study of the modern world, the influence of 17th-century libertinism is fundamental: all the rationalistic secularism of the 18th century and the positivistic secularism of the 19th century stem from II.