Alumbrados

Illuminated

The term ‘Alumbrados’ loosely describes practitioners of a mystical form of Christianity in Spain during the 15th-16th centuries.

Some were only mildly heterodox, but others held views that were clearly heretical. Consequently, they were firmly repressed and became some of the early victims of the Spanish Inquisition.

Beliefs

The alumbrados held that the human soul can reach such a degree of perfection that it can even in the present life contemplate the essence of God and comprehend the mystery of the Trinity. All external worship, they declared, is superfluous, the reception of the sacraments useless, and sin impossible in this state of complete union with God. Persons in this state of impeccability could indulge their sexual desires and commit other sinful acts freely without staining their souls.

Repression

In 1525, the Inquisition issued an Edict on the alumbrados in which the Inquisitor General, Alonso Manrique de Lara, explained how the new heresy of alumbradismo was discovered and investigated. The text then gave a numbered list of forty-eight heretical propositions which had emerged from the trials of the alumbrados' first leaders, Isabella de la Cruz and Pedro Ruiz d Alcaraz. After each proposition were given the grounds on which it was judged heretical.

Odd

Among the odder of these propositions are that it is a mortal sin to read a book to console one's soul, which the Inquisition's theologians described as "crazy, erroneous, and even heretical"; and that one sinned mortally every time one loved a son, daughter, or other person, and did not love that person through God, which the theologians said was "erroneous and false, and against the common teaching of the saints".

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia