ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how, in the 1520s and 1530s, a number of people rejected the authority of theologians and established themselves as spiritual leaders, while the Spanish Church endeavoured to maintain its monopoly on the teaching of spiritual doctrine through a number of trials which reinforced the importance of Tradition. In the 1550s more radical measures were taken to fight heterodoxy, such as the banning of vernacular Bibles by the Spanish Index of 1551 and of any books with Protestant or mystical overtones by the 1559 Index. The spiritual reform undertaken by Cardinal Cisneros, with the support of the Alcala printing house, also involved the establishment of new seats of learning like the University of Alcala, with its own centre for the study of biblical languages and texts, which in 1517 completed the famous Complutensian Polyglot.
