The alumbrados (Spanish pronunciation: [alumˈbɾaðos], illuminated), also called the illuminati, were the practitioners of a mystical form of Christianity in the Crown of Castile during the 15th–16th centuries.
[1] 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.
[2] 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.
"[3] A labourer's daughter known as La Beata de Piedrahita, born in Salamanca, 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.
[4] Henry Charles Lea, in his A History of the Inquisition in Spain, mentions, among the more extravagant alumbrados, a priest from Seville named Fernando Méndez, who had acquired a special reputation for sanctity: "he taught his disciples to invoke his intercession, as though he were already a saint in heaven; fragments of his garments were treasured as relics; he gathered a congregation of beatas and, after mass in his oratory, they would strip off their garments and dance with indecent vigor – drunk with the love of God – and, on some of his female penitents, he would impose the penance of lifting their skirts and exposing themselves before him.
This nun was famous in her day because she was allegedly able to heal the sick by transferring to her person the evils and diseases that afflicted them, in a manner similar to shamans in other cultures.
Those convicted of engaging 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.