The Familia Caritatis, also known as the Familists, was a mystical religious sect founded in the sixteenth century by Henry Nicholis, also known as Niclaes. Familia Caritatis translates from Latin into "Family of Love", and in other languages, "Hus der Lieften", "Huis der Liefde" and "Haus der Liebe" (English: House of Love).^[1]

History

The outward trappings of Nicholis's system were Anabaptist. His followers were said to assert that all things were ruled by nature and not directly by God, deny the dogma of the Trinity, and repudiate infant baptism. They held that no man should be put to death for his opinions, and apparently, like the later Quakers, they objected to the carrying of arms and to anything like an oath. They were quite impartial in their repudiation of all other churches and sects, including Brownists and Barrowists.^[2]

Nicholis's message is said to have appealed to the well educated and creative elite, artists, musicians and scholars. They felt no need to spread the message and risk prosecution for heresy. Members were usually a part of an otherwise-established church, quietly remained in the background and were confident in their elite status as part of the Godhead. The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition states:

Nicholis's followers escaped the gallows and the stake, for they combined with some success the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove. They would only discuss their doctrines with sympathizers; they showed every respect for authority, and considered outward conformity a duty. This quietist attitude, while it saved them from molestation, hampered propaganda.^[2]

Members of the Familists included the cartographer Abraham Ortelius and the publisher Christopher Plantin. Plantin worked by day as Philip II of Spain's printer of Catholic documents for the Counter Reformation, and otherwise surreptitiously printed Familist literature.

Nicholis's chief apostle in England was Christopher Vitell, who led the largest group of Familists in Balsham, Cambridgeshire. In October 1580 Roger Goad, Dr Bridgewater and William Fulke engaged in the examination of John Bourne, a glover, and some others of the Family of Love who were confined in Wisbech Castle, in the Isle of Ely.^[3] In the 1580s, it was discovered that some of the Yeomen of the Guard for Elizabeth I were Familists. The Queen did nothing about it, which raised questions about her own beliefs. The keeper of the lions in the Tower of London for James I was a Familist.

The society lingered into the early years of the eighteenth century. The leading idea of its service of love was a reliance on sympathy and tenderness for the moral and spiritual edification of its members. Thus, in an age of strife and polemics, it seemed to afford a refuge for quiet, gentle spirits and meditative temperaments.^[4] The Quakers, Baptists and Unitarians may have derived some of their ideas from the "Family".^[2]