The Jesuits, the Inquisition and the spiritual frontier of 1559

This article examines the role played by the Jesuits in uncovering groups of Spanish Protestants in the mid-16th century. It also studies the Society of Jesus's involvement in identifying and re-educating a broad spectrum of the population that had associated with those men and women found guilty by the Inquisition. The Society's labours on behalf of the Church and Crown at that fraught time are clarified, and especially its collaboration with the Holy Office, showing how the Jesuits used the work they did in these respects to generate good publicity for themselves and to dispel much of the criticism and suspicion that until then had hindered the expansion of the Society of Jesus in Spain.