fits of generosity were held
to be sufficient to absolve the donors from all their sins, and at the
hour of death, when the terror of future punishments burdened the soul of
the ambitious politician, of the assassin, of the adulterer, and of the
usurper of others' goods, a very handsome legacy, and sometimes the
abandonment of all he possessed, was considered as a safe passport to the
enjoyment of treasures in heaven. The priest, called to administer the
last consolations to the patient, never lost an opportunity of exacting
these imprudent donations; and so long did this abuse endure, and to such
an extent did it arrive and predominate in the public customs of the age,
that, under the reign of Charles III., the Council of Castille
promulgated a royal order, declaring that all such testamentary
dispositions made at the hour of death, in favour of chapels, churches,
convents, and other religious establishments, should be null and void.

The opulence which the Spanish clergy enjoyed from the conquest of
Granada until the period of invasion by the French, cannot be reduced to
calculation, nor even to any accurate conjectures. It was said of
England that, previous to the Reformation, the clergy possessed a fifth
part of the whole territory within the British Isles; of Spain it may be
said that the proportion amounted to one-third. The lands most
productive, and the estates in the most choice situations, certainly
belonged to the Spanish clergy; and there were cities, such, for example,
as Toledo, Cuenca, Leon, and Santiago, in which nearly the whole
territory belonged to their respective cathedrals.

Several other circumstances tended to strengthen the imperium of the
church. Many young men of noble families took holy orders, with a view
of aspiring to the rich prebends belonging to the cathedrals; in the
universities and in the colleges the best organised and most popular
study was that of theology, in which many Spaniards excelled. At the
same time, by means of the confessional, the clergy got power over the
conscience; they knew all the secrets of families as well as those of the
state, and there was no grave matter, concerning any class of society,
which was not submitted to the decision of some dignitary of the church.
The magnificence of the edifices consecrated to worship, the frequency
and the pomp of religious ceremonies, the alms which the bishops
distributed, the public works which they paid for, and the ab