s sources--Their
territorial possessions--Their influence and
incomes--Their opposition to the sciences--Their
ultramontane principles--The "pass" of the Spanish
sovereign necessary to the validity of the Pope's
bulls--Doctrine of the Jansenists favoured by the
ministers of Charles III.--Port-Royal and San
Isidro--Parish priests--Sources of their income--Many of
them good men, but deficient in scriptural knowledge and
teaching--Their preaching--Abolition of tithes by the
minister, Mendizabal--Effects of that measure--Poverty and
present state of the clergy--Their degraded character and
unpopularity--Their timidity in recent times of
tumult--Ecclesiastical writers of the Peninsula--Power of
the Inquisition curtailed by Charles III.

CHAPTER II.

MONACHISM--The superiority of the monastic over the 47
secular clergy--Reasons for it--Orders of Monks--The
Carthusians--Their advancement in agriculture, and love of
the fine arts--Their seclusion and mode of living--Only
learned men admitted to their order--Their form of
salutation--Curious adventure of a lady found in the cell
of a Carthusian--The Hieronimites--The Mendicant
orders--"Pious works"--The _Questacion_--Decline of Spain
accounted for--Vows of chastity, poverty, and
obedience--How vow of poverty eluded--_La
honesta_--Vicar-general of the Franciscan orders--His
immense income--Religious orders have produced many great
and good men--Cardinal Ximenez de Cisneros--His celebrated
Bible--Corruption of monastic orders--Insubordination of
friars to the bishops--The Jesuits--Deplorable reputation
of their literature--Pascal, Escobar, Sanchez, and
Mariana--Suppression of the Jesuits by Charles III.--Their
subsequent expulsion by Espartero under Isabella
II.--Nunneries, though spared on suppression of religious
houses, utterly useless--The Pope's attempt to perpetuate
them by _concordat_--The lives of the nuns
described--Their means of subsistence is now
precarious--Convent de las Huelgas.

CHAPTER III.

CELIBACY AND MORALS--Illicit relations formed by the 73
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,