Secret Societies and Hidden History
ALUMBRADO
A Spanish Catholic heresy, the Alumbrado—the word means "enlightened ones" in Spanish or, at a stretch, "Illuminati"—emerged in Toledo in the early sixteenth century; its first known teacher, María de Santo Domingo (known as La Beata de Piedrahita, "the blessed one of Piedrahita"), began preaching in 1511. Most of what is known about the Alumbrado comes from the archives of the Spanish Inquisition, which burned numerous members of the heresy at the stake. The beliefs for which the Alumbrado faced torture and death centered on the quietist doctrine that the human soul can experience the divine directly by emptying itself of thoughts and desires, and turning its attention wholly toward God.
These doctrines have nothing in common with the beliefs of two other organizations that used similar names, the Illuminés of Avignon and the Bavarian Illuminati, and nothing even close to organizational connections have ever been shown between these three groups.
Nonetheless conspiracy theorists for two centuries have insisted that the Alumbrado, the Avignon group, and Adam Weishaupt's Bavarian secret society are one and the same.
Text from The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies and Hidden History by John Michael Greer (HarperElement, 2006)