A mystical religious movement from 17th-century France emphasizing inner divine illumination and spiritual ecstasy as the path to God.
Named after Antoinette Bourignon (1616-1680), a Flemish mystic, with the suffix -ism indicating a system of beliefs. The name traveled from Dutch to French religious circles and entered English through theological texts discussing European mystical movements.
Bourignianism represents one of history's earliest documented movements emphasizing personal spiritual experience over church authority—ideas so radical they influenced both Quakerism and later movements like Pietism, making Antoinette Bourignon a proto-feminist spiritual revolutionary.
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