Alumbrados

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Alumbrados (Illuminated) was a term used to loosely describe practitioners of a mystical form of Christianity in Spain during the 15th-16th centuries. In spite of their lack of organization and their peaceful forms of expression through the Catholic church in the late 15th century, they were severely repressed and became some of the early victims of the Spanish Inquisition.

The historian Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo found the name as early as 1492 (in the form aluminados, 1498), and traced the group to a Gnostic origin. He thought their views were promoted in Spain through influences from Italy. One of their earliest leaders, born in Salamanca, was a labourer's daughter known as La Beata de Piedrahita. She came to the notice of the Inquisition in 1511, by claiming to hold colloquies with Jesus and the Virgin Mary; some high patronage saved her from a rigorous denunciation. (Menéndez Pelayo, Los Heterodoxos Españoles, 1881, vol. V.). Ignatius of Loyola, while studying at Salamanca in 1527, was brought before an ecclesiastical commission on a charge of sympathy with the alumbrados, but escaped with an admonition. Miguel Molinos was also accused of connection due to his publication of The Spiritual Guide and its similarity with the early Alombrados publications from Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz and Isabella de la Cruz.

Most of those persecuted as Alumbrados were Conversos (Jewish converts to Christianity) or Moriscos (Moorish converts)^{[citation needed]}. Their persecution was typically based on supposed reversion to original religious practices, but the proof of such conspiring against Ferdinand and Isabella was minimal, usually hearsay. As many of the remaining Jewish and Moorish families in Spain after its Catholic converion were wealthy, and the mere accusation of heresy warranted confiscation of all wealth and property, the local Catholic Bishops were believed to wrongfully accuse Conversos and Moriscos to acquire their wealth and strengthen their Bishopric. The few accused and tried that actually engaged in the mystical practices and heresy of the Alumbrados were not executed, few endured long term sentences, and most were tried only after they managed to acquire large congregations in Toledo or Salamanca.

Others were not so fortunate. In 1529 a congregation of naïve adherents at Toledo was subjected to whippings and imprisonment. Greater rigors followed, and for about a century alleged connection with the alumbrados sent many to the Inquisition, especially at Córdoba.

Later Alumbrados followed several forms in different places. Their connection to the original Alumbrados, Pedro Ruiz del Alcaraz and Isabella de la Cruz, is debatable, but since early Alumbrados literature was still available the influence is probable. In Llerena and Seville, for example, Teresa of Avila openly confessed to her meditative practices being directed towards 'the devil.'^{[citation needed]} Another Beata claimed her copulation with her three male priests released souls from purgatory.

[edit] Illuminés of France

The movement (under the name of Illuminés) seems to have reached France from Seville in 1623, and attained some following in Picardy when joined (1634) by Pierce Guerin, curé of Saint-Georges de Roye, whose followers, known as Gurinets, were suppressed in 1635.

A century later, another, more obscure body of Illuminés came to light in the south of France in 1722, and appears to have lingered till 1794, having affinities with those known contemporaneously in the United Kingdom as 'French Prophets', an offshoot of the Camisards.