The set of errors condemned in the decree Ad nostrum at the Council of Vienne (1311–12) has often been used by historians to typify the group's core beliefs, though there was wide variation over how the heresy was defined during the era, and there is substantial debate over how far the individuals and groups accused of holding the beliefs (including Marguerite Porete, the Beguines, the Beghards, and Meister Eckhart) actually held the views attributed to them.
[1] The meaning of the term has in more recent times been extended to apply to the beliefs of other Christian individuals and groups, active both before and after the core period of the late Middle Ages.
The set of beliefs ascribed to the Free Spirits is first to be found in a text called the Compilatio de novo spiritu put together by Albert the Great in the 1270s, concerning a group of persons investigated in the Swabian Ries area of Germany.
Eckhart may have been familiar with the work of Marguerite Porete through his proximity to theologians involved in her trial, such as Berengar of Landora and William of Poitiers.
More broadly, as a result of his prominence and through the statements of his used in the bull In agro Dominico he came to be recognised by the later mystical tradition as the "father" of the Free Spirit.
[9] In the early fifteenth century, Jean Gerson accused Jan van Ruusbroec of misdescribing the nature of union with God in a way that placed him in the company of the 'Free Spirit' heretics.
Fears over sets of beliefs similar to the Heresy of the Free Spirit have recurred at various points in Christian history.