Cult of the Holy Spirit

The cult of the Holy Spirit (Portuguese: Culto do Divino Espírito Santo), also known as the cult of the Empire of the Holy Spirit (Culto do Império do Divino Espírito Santo), is a religious sub-culture, inspired by Christian millenarian mystics, associated with Azorean Catholic identity, consisting of iconography, architecture, and religious practices that have continued in many communities of the archipelago as well as the broader Portuguese diaspora. Beyond the Azores, the Cult of the Holy Spirit is alive in parts of Brazil (where it was established three centuries ago) and pockets of Portuguese settlers in North America. The cult of the Holy Spirit involves traditional rituals and religious celebrations of these faith communities.

In its original sense, "cult" referred to an accepted religious practice, in sharp contrast to the term's modern, negative connotation. Devotion to the Holy Spirit is part of classical Catholic dogma and is the inspiration of several Catholic religious institutes, including the Spiritans, but what is considered here has peculiar characteristics of its own.

Worship of the Holy Spirit was promoted by Joachim of Fiore, a millenarian prophet who, on the basis on his interpretation of the Book of Revelation, postulated that 1260 would see the beginning of a third age. (He himself died in 1202.) The third age would be governed by the Holy Spirit and would represent a monastic governance, in which the hierarchy of the Church would be unnecessary and infidels would unite with Christians. These theories became associated with the Fraticelli strand of the Franciscan Order and were condemned by Pope Alexander IV in 1256.

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