y of the kings and princes of ancient Spanish
dynasties.

CHAPTER III.

CELIBACY AND MORALS.--Illicit relations formed by the clergy--Shameless
avowal of their fruits--Ferocious character of love in the
cloisters--Three flagrant cases--Murder of a young lady by her confessor,
the Carmelite of San Lucar--His trial and sentence--Murder by a wife of
her husband under the direction of her confessor, the Capuchine of
Cuenca--His trial, imprisonment, and escape--Murder of a lady by the
Agonizante of Madrid--His trial and execution--Scandalous occurrences in
the Convent of the Basilios of Madrid--Forcible entry of the civil
power--Murder of the abbot--Suppression of inquiry--Shameful profligacy
of the Capuchines of Cascante and the nuns of a neighbouring
convent--Mode of its discovery--Imprisonment of inmates of both
convents--Removal of prisoners--Their mysterious escape--Exemplary
performance of vows in some cases--Dangers of celibacy--Spanish women and
their influence on society.

Religious celibacy has been justly censured, by true Christians, as
opposed to the ends of creation, to the spirit of the gospel, and the
good order of human society. If so severe a prohibition can scarcely be
observed without great mortification and inconvenience by a few,--a very
small number of men, endued with an aptitude which places them above the
ordinary laws of humanity,--what shall we say to the possibility of its
exercise by men with no such fitness for the task,--men of a nation whose
very climate is incessantly soliciting the expansion of the sensual
faculties,--a nation of whose social organization frequent intercourse in
all the affairs of life between the two sexes is one of the most
essential and necessary elements? We have already alluded to the state
of concubinage in which the Spanish clergy were living prior to the reign
of Isabella the Catholic. But we shall not be guilty of an injustice in
admitting, that from that period until our own times a great number of
the Spanish clergy, as well regular as secular, have borne the yoke with
singular patience, and have, with exemplary self-denial, resigned
themselves to the severe privation imposed upon them by that ordinance of
their church. On the other hand, however, we cannot dissimulate the
violent struggle between inclination and duty which they have had to
sustain, and the immense difficulty of resisting a temptation which the
frequent intercourse with the female