Alumbrado

Palace of the Dukes of the Infantry , Guadalajara , where a group of  "alumbrados" who were under the protection of Duke met.

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Alumbrado,is Spanish meaning “Enlightened” or Illuminati, a mystical movement in Spain during the 16th and 17th centuries. Its adherents claimed that the human soul, having attained a certain degree of perfection, was permitted a vision of the divine and entered into direct communication with the Holy Spirit.

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"...according as the "light" claimed was veiwed as directly communicated from a higher source, or as due to a clarified and exalted condition of the human intelligence. To the former class belong the alumbrados of Spain. Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo found the name about 1492 (in the form aluminados, 1498), but traces them to a Gnostic origin, and thought their views were promoted in Spain through influences from Italy. One of their earliest leaders, born in Salamanca, a laborer's daughter known as La Beata de Piedrahita, came under the notice of the Inquisition in 1511, as claiming to hold colloquies with our Lord and the Virgin; having high patrons, no decision was taken against her (Menendez Pelayo, Los Heterodoxos Espa–oles, 1881, vol. V.). Ignatius Loyola, founder of the (The Jesuits {Society of Jesus}) while studying at Salamanca (1527) was brought before an ecclesiastical commission on a charge of sympathy with the alumbrados, but escaped with an admonition. Others where not so fortunate. In 1529 a congregation of unlettered adherents at Toledo was visited with scourging and imprisonment. Greater rigouts followed, and for about a century the alumbrados afforded many victims to the Inquisition, especially at Cordova. The movement (under the name Illumints) seems to have reached France from Seville in 1625, and obtained some propertions in Picardy when (1634) by Pierre Guerin, cure of Saint-Georges de Roye, whose followers, known as Guerinets, were suppressed in 1635."-Encyclopedia Brittanica, Vol. 14, 1911 page 320

Pedro Ruiz de Alcaraz (Guadalajara, circa 1480) was one of the first members and propagators.

September 23 1525 the General Inquisitor Alonso Manrique de Lara promulgated an edict against the Alumbrados.