| Zusammenfassung: | ABSTRACT The Libertines against whom Calvin wrote in his notorious 1545 treatise remain unidentified even today. This article argues that all previous attempts to identify the group have failed because they have focused on the religious ideas of a particular sect. Little attention has been paid, by contrast, to the fact that a group of so-called λιβερτίνoι, that is, freedmen, is mentioned in Acts of the Apostles (6,9), and that the term libertini, rare in Classical Latin, is attested several times in medieval and early modern Latin, as well as in vernacular languages. By studying a range of commentaries on Acts before Calvin, the article tries to discover whether the term “libertines” had acquired a sense other than ‘freedmen’, that was shared by Calvin and his contemporaries, and to which he probably referred in choosing to label his opponents in this way. The picture that emerges is that of a well-grounded and influential exegetical tradition - starting with the Glossa ordinaria by Anselm of Laon - identifying the Libertines of Acts as “figurantes haereticos et persecutores fidei et sanctitatis.”Moreover, the article argues that Calvin, as he had done the year before against the Nicodemites, seems to have picked up a ‘character’ in the Bible as a paradigmatic example. The analogies with the case of the Nicodemites also prove that Calvin, in this phase, was far more concerned about behaviour than about theological attitudes: if the Nicodemites were guilty of cowardice in concealing their Reformed Faith, the Libertines spuriously opposed Calvin’s teachings in the same way that the Libertines of Acts had opposed Stephen when he preached the Gospel in Jerusalem. Their opposition, however, was especially damnable because it came from within the Protestant party, and developed in areas like Germany, France, and especially the Netherlands, where Calvinistic ideas were preached openly and were winning ground.
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