ILLUMINATING HERETICS: ALUMBRADOS AND INQUISITION IN SIXTEENTH CENTURY CUENCA by JESSICA FOWLER (Under the Direction of Benjamin Ehlers) ABSTRACT This thesis delves into two cases of alumbradismo brought before the Spanish Inquisition in the archbishopric of Cuenca, during the 1590s. The fact that the cases of Juana Rubia and Francisco de los Reyes exist breaks with historiographical understandings of alumbrados and thus forces historians to reconsider the heresy at large. INDEX WORDS: Alumbrados, Cuenca, Spanish Inquisition, Heresy, Spain ILLUMINATING HERETICS: ALUMBRADOS AND INQUISITION IN SIXTEENTH CENTURY CUENCA by JESSICA FOWLER B.A., Appalachian State University, 2007 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS ATHENS, GEORGIA 2009 © 2009 Jessica Fowler All Rights Reserved ILLUMINATING HERETICS: ALUMBRADOS AND INQUISITION IN SIXTEENTH CENTURY CUENCA by JESSICA FOWLER Major Professor: Benjamin Ehlers Committee: Pamela Voekel Michael Kwass Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2009 DEDICATION To my mother, Jackie Fowler, who would support me even if I said I wanted to fly to the moon. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This particular project would never have been possible without the chance to conduct research in Spain. For this opportunity I must thank the Department of History, who reached as deeply as possible into its all too shallow pockets; the Bartley Foundation and its selection committee for believing in the potential of both myself and my thesis; and the Graduate Dean of Arts and Science who so generously agreed to purchase my airfare. Without these resources I would never have been able to go to Spain and find these cases and so I am indebted to these institutions and groups for envisioning the potential such a research trip could hold for such a young scholar. Increasingly I have come to realize that no academic work springs from a single hand. This thesis would be both unimaginable as well as impossible without the assistance of a number of individuals. First, I would like to thank Dr. Benjamin Ehlers for his consistent support. His patience was unfailing as I delved into both the paleography as well as the writing of this project. He looked over more paleography and thesis drafts than he likely ever cared to. In general, I could not have asked for a better advisor. Also at the University of Georgia I would like to thank Pamela Voekel for teaching me not only how to use theory in the abstract but also how to embrace it in my own work, and Michael Kwass, whose subtle insights always cultivated a refinement in the way I thought about these cases. Additionally, Ed Behrend-Martinez’s encouragement and advice was pivotal to this work. Under his direction, I began work on the alumbrados years ago. Behrend-Martinez ‘s insistence was also the only reason I v chose to visit the archives of Cuenca, though I don’t think even he had any idea of just how fruitful that would turn out to be. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1 PRECEDENTS ................................................................................................12 Toledo ..........................................................................................................12 Estremadura .................................................................................................21 Alonso de la Fuente .....................................................................................29 Andalusia .....................................................................................................42 2 CONTEXT .......................................................................................................45 3 JUANA RUBIA ...............................................................................................61 4 FRANCISCO DE LOS REYES.......................................................................81 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................99 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................109 vii INTRODUCTION “…que la Inquisición también sirvió como un órgano para trasmitir ideologías, y más importante aún, para crear y validar aquellas que difundiría. Así, la Inquisición no solo reprimió, sino que a través de ello produjo ideas y realidades.”1 The Spanish Inquisition, founded in 1480, acted as an agent of royal control over religious orthodoxy. Because of this charge, the inquisition held the responsibility of classifying, defining, and judging beliefs and practices from the local level and fitting them into a dichotomous schema of orthodoxy and heterodoxy. The motive for creating the institution was to curb and eradicate heresies, not to define and then, in turn, propagate them. However, this is exactly what happened in the case of the heretics that came to be known as alumbrados. Beginning in 1525, after the first arrests of suspect individuals, inquisitors began defining what it meant to be member to this ‘new’ heresy, classifying it as heterodoxy and thus simultaneously re-iterating a standardized orthodoxy for the community of believers. At this moment, the inquisition was in a period of transition, searching out a reason for its continued existence despite the decline of crypto-Judaism, its original raison d'être. Thus, these individuals, eventually defined as alumbrados by inquisitors, despite never self-identifying with this title, appeared in a period where the inquisition sought out new heresies with which to concern itself. The institution needed a reason to justify its continuation. Trumping the importance of the accusation’s initial appearance 1 Elia Nathan Bravo, “La Inquisición como generadora y trasmisora de idolologías” in Inquisición Novohispana. Vol. I. eds. Noemi Quezada, Martha Eugenia Rodríguez, and Marcela Suárez, 273-286 (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2000), 273. 1 is the fact that the charge continued into later centuries, throughout the empire, indicating its long-term importance to Spanish as well as inquisitorial history. The historiography of alumbrados, though of great breadth, often lacks significant depth. The heresy was important enough to garner at least some attention, sometimes only a paragraph to a few pages, from books written on the inquisition in particular, or Early Modern Spain more generally. Monographs on alumbrados specifically are much less frequent, and seem to have passed out of vogue in more recent years. Despite frequent mentions of these heretics and the handful of works available, the historiography is in no way complete. Most of the acknowledgments of the heresy expend extensive energy on debating its origins, explanations of its persecution, and questions of who the defendants were. Additionally, these discussions disproportionately focus on the first manifestation of alumbrados in Toledo with significantly less written about other occurrences within the Peninsula, or even the Empire for that matter. What the historiography lacks is a closer look at later occurrences of alumbradismo. Most historians dismiss these as ‘outbreaks’, implying that the inquisitors used the term haphazardly as a catch-all accusation. However, considering the large number of defendants eventually charged as alumbrados, numbering in the hundreds, and the longevity of the accusation, as late as the eighteenth century, it seems that greater nuance is warranted. However, in assessing the heresy as a panorama, instead of individual portraits, it becomes clear that the charge was not elastic, but rather it evolved. Though the historiography on the alumbrados is sizeable, each author continues to ask similar questions about the heresy and thus finds similar answers. Therefore, new questions are necessary. 2 The origin of the alumbrado movement, first appearing in 1525, has sparked an ongoing historical debate. Answers have been sought as far as India or as close as Spain’s own religious reform. The question of genesis remains pivotal as historians seek to understand what precedents the inquisitors looked back to when assessing this ‘new’ heresy. In general the historiography concurs that alumbradismo did not arise spontaneously, nor were its beliefs particularly novel for that matter. In fact, the extensive debate over origins signals the impossibility of such a conclusion. Foreign influences posited as possible sources of origin for the alumbrado heresy range widely from Hindu Brahmanism, Greek Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism, to the heresies of the Beghards, Albigensians, and Martin Luther.2 Such an approach seems almost grasping for a way to discuss alumbrados as anything but the “single native heretical movement” of Spain.3 Although recent scholarship has largely discredited the alumbrado-Lutheran nexus, the subject remains in contention due to the 1525 Inquisitorial Edict’s acknowledgment of a Lutheran connection.4 Though Luther’s true influence remains questionable, one stimulus that remains largely recognized by historians is that of Erasmus of Rotterdam. This humanist enjoyed wild popularity in Spain at the turn of the sixteenth