Religious culture and heresy in Portugal in the Old Regime: notes for an interpretation of Molinism

Abstract

This article is concerned with the religious experience of a group of people who were persecuted by the Portuguese Inquisition for the practice of “molinosismo”, false ecstasies, visions and revelations, in the early eighteenth century. It approaches the group as a sect or heretical circle, whose conduct was indeed inspired by the mystical doctrine of the Aragonese theologian Miguel de Molinos. It explores the sect’s conceptual and ritual universe and the ways in which it has interpreted Molinos’ ideas.