Transcribed from the 1855 Johnstone and Hunter edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org
ROMAN CATHOLICISM
IN SPAIN.
* * * * *
BY
AN OLD RESIDENT.
* * * * *
EDINBURGH:
JOHNSTONE & HUNTER.
LONDON: R. GROOMBRIDGE & SONS.
* * * * *
M.DCCC.LV.
* * * * *
EDINBURGH:
PRINTED BY JOHNSTONE AND HUNTER,
HIGH STREET.
CONTENTS.
Page
INTRODUCTION--Variableness of outward practice of 7
Christianity--The like as to that of Mahometanism--Roman
Catholicism most subject to that modification--Excesses of
Roman Catholicism in Spain accounted for by Spanish
history--The Goths and Moors of Africa--Their conversion
to Christianity--The aborigines of America--Traditional
coincidences with scriptural truth--National character of
the religion of Spaniards--Religion of the
affections--Santa Teresa--Amatory propensities in
connection with religion--Knight-errantry--Motto of
Spanish nobility--The four primitive
orders--Loyola--Religion the pretext for wars of
Spain--Three distinct features of the national character
of Spaniards, illustrated by Isabella the Catholic,
Charles V., and Philip II.
CHAPTER I.
THE SPANISH CLERGY--Their primitive state--Their 31
subsequent organization--_Barraganas_--Immoral practices
of the clergy--Their wealth, and its 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, 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
CHAPTER IV.
THE MASS--Its introduction but modern--The Spaniard Lainez 87
opposed it--On what grounds--Description of the
ceremony--Its religious and secular
peculiarities--Sacerdotal vestments worn while celebrating
it--High and Low Mass--Both performed in an unknown
tongue--Consequent indifference of the
congregation--Mercenary character of the mass--"_Masses
for the intention_"--Masses for the dead--The solemn mass
on Christmas eve, or _Noche buena_--Its profane
accompaniments--Passion week--Thursday--Good
Friday--Adoration of the Cross--Processions--Anecdotes of
Isabella II.--Brilliant rites and ceremonies on the day
after Good Friday--Uproarious conduct of the faithful on
that occasion--The mass as celebrated at Toledo--Judicial
combat, or judgment of God
CHAPTER V.
DEVOTION of Protestants scriptural and reasonable--That of 102
Roman Catholics poetical and affectionate--Religious
enthusiasm leads to insanity--Mental devotion as
distinguished from physical--Nature of Roman Catholic
devotion accounted for by the worship of
images--Intercession of saints--Saint Anthony--The
illiterate guided by bodily vision rather than spiritual
discernment--Horace confirms this--Illustrated by popular
errors--Sensual and poetical elements were introduced to
devotion by the Greeks--Destruction of images by the
Emperor Leo the Iconoclast--Opinion of Pope Leo the
Great--Images adorned like human beings perplex the mind
between truth and fiction--Familiar
examples--Money-contributions for adornment of
images--Belief that saints can cure certain
complaints--List of those--Saint Anthony of Padua's
miracles--The fete of _San Anton Abad_--Virgin Mary, and
her innumerable advocations--A list of several--The
Rosary--Statues of the Virgin--Immense value of their
wardrobes and trinkets--The most ugly of those statues
excite most devotion--Virgin of Zaragoza--The heart of
Mary--Month of Mary (May)--Kissing images--Anecdote of the
Duke of A--- and his courtezan--Habits and
promises--Penance
CHAPTER VI.
FEAST-DAYS--Processions and Novenas--Corpus Christi--How 122
performed in Seville, and the sacred dances of _los
seises_--How in Madrid--Procession of Holy Week--The
_Santo Entierro_--Clerical processions--Procession of the
Rosary--Rites of Roman Catholicism--Jubilee of forty
hours--_Romerias_ or pilgrimages
CHAPTER VII.
PURGATORY--Deliverance from by devotions of 142
survivors--Those devotions described--Difference between
dogma of purgatory and other dogmas--Modes of drawing out
souls--Masses for the dead--Legacies to pay for
them--External representations of images and pictures--Day
of All Souls and its practices--The Andalusian
Confraternity of Souls--_Mandas piadosas_--Debtor and
creditor account between the church and purgatory--How
balanced--Bull of
Composition--Soul-days--_Responses_--_Cepillo_, or
alms-box--Financial operation--Origin of bills of exchange
and clearing house--Wax Candles--Their
efficacy--Cenotaphs--Summary of funds, and reflections on
their misapplication
CHAPTER VIII.
AURICULAR CONFESSION--A sacrament inseparable from that of 152
communion--Obligatory on all once a year--Plan of
discovering defaulters--How punished--Evils of
confession--Power of the priest--Four evils pointed
out--Discoveries in the Inquisition in 1820--Facility of
obtaining absolution--Louis XIV.--Robbers and
assassins--The confessional--Practice, how
conducted--Expiatory acts--Refusal of absolution--A
husband disguised as his wife's confessor--The injunction
of secrecy on part of confessor--Advantages of the
knowledge he gains--Jesuits advocate the confessional--No
fees for confession, but gratuities are generally given
CHAPTER IX.
FASTS AND PENANCES--How observed--Indulgences--Spain is 170
privileged by the Bull of the Holy Crusade--Description of
that bull--Prices of copies--Commissary-General of
Crusades--His revenues--Their shameful application--Copy
of that bull--Other acts of penance--The _Disciplina_ or
whipping--_Cilicios_
CHAPTER X.
FALSE MIRACLES, RELICS, AND RELIGIOUS 187
IMPOSITIONS--Veneration of crucifixes and statues or
images--Their power of healing--Picture at Cadiz--_Lignum
Crucis_--Veronica--Bodies of saints--How
procured--Inscriptions--Lives of saints--Maria de
Agreda--St Francis--Scandalous representation of the
appearance of the Virgin to a saint--Fray Diego de
Cadiz--_Beata_ Clara--Her fame and downfall--The nun,
Sister Patrocinio--Her success, detection, confession, and
expulsion--She returns, and is protected by a high
personage--She is again expelled, but again returns and
founds a convent--Its disgraceful character and
suppression--Her flight towards Rome--Occurrences on the
road--Her return to Spain
CONCLUSION 201
Introduction
Variableness of outward practice of Christianity--The like as to that of
Mahometanism--Roman Catholicism most subject to that
modification--Excesses of Roman Catholicism in Spain accounted for by
Spanish history--The Goths and Moors of Africa--Their conversion to
Christianity--The aborigines of America--Traditional coincidences with
scriptural truth--National character of the religion of
Spaniards--Religion of the affections--Santa Teresa--Amatory propensities
in connection with religion--Knight-errantry--Motto of Spanish
nobility--The four primitive orders--Loyola--Religion the pretext for
wars of Spain--Three distinct features of the national character of
Spaniards, illustrated by Isabella the Catholic, Charles V., and Philip
II.
Christianity, although of divine origin, and, consequently, like all that
participates in the essence of Divinity, immutable in its doctrines and
creeds, submits itself nevertheless, in outward practice, to the
incidents common to all human institutions, and receives an impression
from the particular character of the people who observe its rites, and
subject their conduct to its precepts. Every religious idea lays hold on
the heart and understanding: consequently the state of the affections and
the intellectual bias of each nation must communicate to the worship it
professes a particular influence, which is seen, not only in the way in
which ceremonies are practised, or in the organization of the hierarchy,
or in the style and language which man uses in addressing the Deity, but
in the entire system of actions, relations, and thoughts, which
constitutes what is called worship.
Worship participates in the impulse which a nation has received at its
origin,--from its historical antecedents,--from its political
system,--and from the peculiarities which predominate in the formation of
its intelligence. The Greek polytheism did not distinguish itself from
the Roman either in its theogony or its rites; but there is no doubt that
the former was more poetical, more artistic, and more scrupulous than the
latter. The Romans, being brought into close contact with all the
nations of the earth, and having become subjugated by the insolent
despotism of the Caesars, opened the doors of their Pantheon, not only to
the Goths of Egypt and of Gaul, but to monsters of cruelty, and to men
sunk in every class of those vices which had stained the throne of
Augustus. The Greeks, lovers of science, had placed their city of Athens
under the protection of Minerva; but Rome was too proud to humble herself
by playing the inferior part of the protected. In order to provide for
her own security, she declared herself a goddess, and erected her own
temples and altars. The Roman priests were warriors and magistrates;
those of Athens were philosophers and poets. The same observations apply
to Mahometanism. In India it has always shown itself more contemplative,
more tolerant, than in Arabia, Turkey, or on the northern coast of
Africa, and when it propagated itself in the southern regions of Europe,
its stern inflexibility was not able to resist even the influence of
clime; the perfumed breezes of the Betis and the Xenil despoiled it, in
part, of the austere physiognomy which had been impressed on its whole
structure by the sands of Arabia. Even the severe laws of the harem were
relaxed in the courts of Boabdil and of Almanzor, for the wives of those
two monarchs, openly, and without shame, took part in the pompous fetes
of the Alhambra and of the _serrania_ of Cordova.
Of all the religious systems hitherto known, none allows itself, with so
much docility, to be modified by external circumstances which constitute
the national character as does Roman Catholicism; and there are many
causes for this: Roman Catholicism exercises an infinitely greater
dominion over the senses than over the reason and intelligence; the
objects of its veneration, of its meditations, and of its devotional
practices, are infinitely more various and numerous than those of any
other sect of Christians; it introduces itself, so to speak, to all the
occupations of life, in all hours of the day, in the trades, professions,
amusements, and even gallantries of individuals; it fetters their reason,
and deprives it of all liberty and independence; and, above all, it
raises up in the midst of society, a privileged and isolated class,
superior to the power of the law and the government; into the hands of
that class it puts an absolute and irresistible authority, which is
exercised by invisible means, but means far more efficacious and terrible
in their effects than those of the civil power. From this universal and
irresistible predominance it results that the entire existence of the
Roman Catholic is a continual observance of the worship which he
professes, and consequently, that Roman Catholicism, at the same time
that it entirely modifies man, must of necessity, in its turn, receive,
in some degree, the impress of that temper which nature has bestowed upon
him. Thus we see that Roman Catholicism is more zealous, more
enthusiastic, more turbulent, in Ireland, more artistic in Italy, more
philosophic in Germany, more literary and discursive in France, more
idolatrous in the States of South America, more reserved and modest, more
decent and tolerant, less ambitious in its aspirations, and less
audacious in its polemics, in England than in any other part of the
world.
As to Roman Catholicism in Spain: we see thrown in its face its cruel
intolerance, its puerile practices, its profane language, its blind
submission, or rather the absolute slavery in which it places the
believer with respect to the priest. There is much truth in these
charges; but all of them are accounted for by an observance of history,
and by a knowledge of the natural character and circumstances which have
contributed to foster and strengthen religious sentiments in Spain.
The intolerance of Roman Catholicism in the Peninsula, carried to
tyranny, and, frequently, even to ferocity, has been a consequence of the
religious wars of six centuries,--wars which the Goths sustained with
unwearied perseverance against the Moors of Africa. The Goths had
embraced the Christian religion with all the ardour and sincerity
peculiar to a nation but recently delivered from a violent and savage
state; for, although a generous race, they were ignorant and coarse in
their habits. Their conversion to Christianity not only entirely
modified their moral and religious notions, and introduced among them a
greater elevation of feeling and an amplitude of ideas, but associated,
intimately, the religious with the poetical sentiment, in such a manner
that, in their eyes, every enemy of Christ was the enemy of the whole
nation; difference of creed, therefore, according to their rude code of
international laws, was a legitimate cause of war. In their eyes the
unbeliever was a political enemy. Mere contact with an unbaptized person
was considered a pollution. They believed that all who did not worship
Christ were worshippers of the devil, and that Mahomet and the Moses of
the Jews were nothing more than the representatives and agents of the
fallen angel. Whilst those ideas were gaining ascendancy, the clergy,
the only depositaries of letters and of knowledge, were rapidly
possessing themselves of power, riches, and influence, and endeavouring
to conserve and confirm those advantages by all possible means. Of those
means none was so convenient, in times of continual violence and warfare,
to the habits of a nation just emerging from a savage state, and which
recognised no other merit than physical force and warlike valour, as that
of encouraging those sanguinary and ruthless propensities, sanctifying
them in some way or other by religious sentiment, and stirring up and
inflaming the passions of the nation, with a view of exterminating all
persons who did not acknowledge the jurisdiction of the church and the
power of its ministers. Thus it happened that Christianity, from a very
early period after its introduction to Spain, was deprived of that spirit
of meekness, suavity, and tolerance, impressed upon it by its Divine
Founder, and became possessed of a spirit of the most implacable
resentment against every person who had not gone through the baptismal
ceremony; and thus, also, it was that the religion of the country
degenerated into a violent and revengeful sentiment, and took part in all
the excesses and all the aberrations of the human passions; thus it was,
in fine, that the national spirit became predisposed to the persecution
of the Jews, Mahometans, and Protestants, by means of that execrable
tribunal, the Inquisition.
Immediately after the conquest of Granada, in which these cruel and
destructive habits were openly displayed, an occasion presented itself
for giving still greater scope to their exercise. The subjugation of the
Continent discovered by Columbus was a war of religion no less than of
ambition and of conquest. The mere circumstance that the aborigines of
America had not received the light of the gospel was sufficient to induce
Spaniards to regard them as so many enemies of God, and as slaves and
worshippers of the devil. In the various forms of religious worship
which prevailed in those vast territories were embodied certain
principles which might, if carried out, have been of great service to the
conquered nation. In nearly all of those forms, the unity of God was
acknowledged, and also, in many of them, the necessity of a spiritual
regeneration. In Mexico, and that part of the country now called Central
America, was preserved a traditional remembrance of a severe chastisement
inflicted by the Supreme Creator on rebellious humanity, but accompanied
with a promise that the species should not be annihilated. That
tradition taught that God had sent into the world his Son, called
_Teot-belche_, in order to repeople the earth;--that this personage had
been shut up in a floating house during the time of the great flood, and
was afraid to venture out, until he had seen an eagle bringing in its
mouth a branch from a tree--a sign that the waters had abated, and that
vegetation had re-appeared. Other great coincidences with revealed truth
discovered themselves in the religious creeds of the people of Mechoacan,
Guatemala, and in those also of the inhabitants of Peru, where the dogma
had acquired a certain degree of elevation and purity, very different
from the sensual ideas so common among the ancient Asiatics. The
conquerors, therefore, whilst attempting to make proselytes to the true
faith might have availed themselves of those antecedents, and could
easily have corrected such notions, although founded on a tradition
having the weight of ancestral authority. The right moral ideas found
already impressed on the minds of these aborigines, especially those of
Peru, might have been encouraged and amplified. Instead of embracing the
system indicated by the mild and conciliatory spirit of Christianity, the
Americans, _en masse_, were considered, from that moment, as enemies of
God, and compelled, sometimes by force, to receive baptism, without any
previous explanation of the origin and design of that rite; at other
times they were tortured with the greatest cruelty, under a notion that
in the extremity of their agony they might be induced to renounce the
only creed which had come to their conviction. Many thousands of that
unhappy people were exterminated, for they did not even understand the
language in which doctrines the most sublime and marvellous in history
were attempted to be enforced.
It has already been observed that this rancorous extravagance of the
religious spirit in Spain had its origin in a political and patriotic
struggle; but long and sanguinary as that was, it could not eradicate the
primitive type of the nation, nor prevent its characteristic qualities
from reflecting themselves in worship, devotion, and every thing else
that constitutes a national religion. Thus it was, that, with those
intolerant and persecuting propensities, were also associated, in Spanish
Catholicism, the gorgeous, romantic, and poetic, which are still
preserved among that semi-oriental race. The Spaniard, endowed with a
lively imagination, appears to identify himself with the objects of his
endearment; his soul is transported by them, and he dresses them up in
his imagination till he fancies they reciprocate his own affections.
This vehement expansion of sentiments frequently opposes his reason, and
transforms his real existence into a perpetual vision. Hence also we
find that his devotion is not only tender and sympathetic, but passionate
and warm. His fervour in prayer arrives at such a pitch as to produce
copious tears. The language of Spain's mystical writers, especially that
of the elegant Santa Teresa de Jesus, contains the same expressions as
those which are used in addressing profane objects of the affections.
One of her most celebrated spiritual songs differs in nothing from those
which might have been written by Ovid or Tibullus. Its burden is this:--
Cubridme de flores,
Que muero de amores. {15}
The word _amores_, in the plural, does not signify merely the abstract
feeling of love, the application of which is as various as are the
objects which inspire it; for example, the divine love, the parental, the
filial, and the sexual. _Amores_ signifies courtship, flirtation,
interchange of sentiments between two lovers; and yet we find this word,
at every turn, in the prayers and ejaculations of devout Spaniards.
The distinguished woman to whom we have alluded carried, even to an
incredible excess, this mixture of the sacred affections with the
profane. In her voluminous writings, unrivalled in purity of language
and elegance of style, she considers herself, always, as the bride of
Jesus Christ, to whom she addresses herself with the same transports of
love, and with the same demonstrations of tender submission and endearing
respect, that might be used by an affectionate and dutiful wife to her
husband. It requires but little knowledge of the human heart to see, at
once, that in this mixture of two sentiments so opposed to each other as
are that of the love profane and that of the love divine, the latter is
liable to succumb to the former; and, in truth, this danger can only be
averted by minds as favoured and as pure as was, without a doubt, the
mind of that extraordinary woman. It is generally the case, and commonly
observed in Spain, that the sensual element dominates over the mystical,
and corrupts it. The common mass of mankind employs devotion as an
instrument favourable to worldly views and to the material interests of
life. In Andalucia, enamoured girls confide to the Virgin their ardent
sorrows and desires, as the following couplet will show, and which is
sung with frequency and is very popular in that province of the
Peninsula:--
La Virgen de las Angustias,
Es la que sabe mi mal,
Pues me meto en su capilla,
Y no me harto de llorar. {16}
With these amatory propensities was naturally bound up that spirit of
knight-errantry which so much distinguished the national character of
Spaniards among all the other nations of Europe; a spirit which neither
the course of centuries, nor intestine nor foreign war, nor even
revolution itself, although it has transformed in a few ages the temper
of modern nations, has been able to blot out. The Spaniard was
completely carried away in a transport by his religious practices, his
gallantry, loyalty, bravery, exalted notions of honour, and other
qualities of the mind, impregnated as they were with that poesy and wild
romance which are delineated with so much propriety and skill by the
immortal Cervantes.
The motto of the Spanish nobility has always been, "My God, my king, and
my lady,"--a very significant one, and one which described in a lively
manner the predominating sentiments of the nation and the equal degree of
veneration and enthusiasm which those three objects excited in the minds
of the people. The Spaniard is always as disposed to brandish the sword
in defence of the religion which he professes, as in that of the king
whom he serves or of the lady whom he loves. The processions and all the
feasts of the church are invariably accompanied by a military show. The
four primitive orders of the nation, viz., Santiago, Alcantara,
Calatrava, and Montesa, were, in their origin, institutions as religious
in their character as the order of the Templars and as that of St John of
Jerusalem. Even in the present day, though they have degenerated, they
preserve still much of their primitive character. The knights, it is
true, do not observe celibacy, as in ancient times; but they still have
churches in which they celebrate sumptuous festivities; they take an oath
to defend the Catholic religion and the doctrine of the immaculate
conception of the Virgin, and to each of these orders there still
pertains a certain number of convents of nuns, who wear the habit and
carry the cross of their respective orders. These nuns are called
_Commendadoras_, and none can be admitted into their numbers but ladies
who are descended from an ancient nobility, preserved for many
generations from any mixture of plebeian blood.
The celebrated Ignatius de Loyola, founder of the order of the Jesuits,
carried this singular amalgamation of piety and of a belligerent spirit
to such an extreme as, in our times, cannot but appear ridiculous. On
the day on which he was made a knight, it being then the custom that a
candidate for such an honour should choose for himself a lady to whose
service he might consecrate his arms, and whose image should be
constantly before him, his election fell upon the Virgin, as in the same
manner did that of Durandarte on Belerma, and that of the celebrated hero
of La Mancha on Dulcinea.
In all wars which have been waged by Spaniards, from the times of Pelayo
down to those of Espartero, religion has been one of the motives which
have impelled them to arms. In the war of succession of 1770, which gave
the throne of Castille to the grandson of Louis XIV., the dispute was
between two nations equally Roman Catholic--Austria and France.
Nevertheless, the circumstance that Great Britain had embraced the cause
of the archduke was sufficient for considering the war as a religious
one; and those who fought for Philip V. regarded the extirpation of the
heretical subjects of the House of Orange as the consolidation of the
Bourbon dynasty. In our own times we have seen these same sentiments
predominating in the civil war of Don Carlos, whose partisans considered
their enemies as impious and as atheists, words which in their dictionary
were synonymous with "constitutional and liberal." Most of the
proclamations emanating from the press of Onate spoke of the dangers
which threatened Roman Catholicism, in case the Christine party should
triumph.
Thus far we have spoken of the influence exercised by the national
character on the religion of Spaniards. That influence has not been
lessened by the circumstance that some of their monarchs have exercised
it, and, among others deserving particular mention, the three gigantic
models, viz., Isabella the Catholic, Charles V., and Philip II. Each one
of the distinctive features which we have hitherto noted in the religion
of Spaniards is represented in history by one or another of those three
sovereigns: Isabella represented the tender, affectionate, and
correlative; Charles, the knight of chivalry and the warrior; Philip, the
cruel and sanguinary persecutor.
Isabella united to her eminent qualities, to her profound policy, to her
unrivalled valour, to her constancy in the prosecution of her designs,
and to the elevation and grandeur of her views, a heart full of
tenderness and benevolence, and an ardent disposition to contribute, by
all possible means, toward the good of her fellow-creatures. Persuaded
that religion was the greatest good which it was possible for man to
enjoy, all her anxiety was concentrated in extending that benefit to the
greatest number of human beings. It was this which induced her to show
herself benevolent and compassionate toward the Moors of Granada after
the conquest of that city; it was this, also, which induced her to lavish
her gifts upon, and afterwards to take under her protection, such of
those Moors as submitted to baptism. All the incidents of her private
life, all her letters, many of which are still extant, show that she was
actuated by the most ardent spirit of Christian charity.
History accuses Isabella of having established the Inquisition in Spain.
This great blot in her character, the origin of many of the misfortunes
and of all the intellectual drawbacks which that nation has experienced,
explains, if it cannot justify, itself, by the circumstances in which, at
that time, the people of the Peninsula were placed. After the surrender
of Granada, there remained in the kingdom a great part of the Mussulman
population. The queen fostered the hope of their conversion to
Christianity and omitted no means to realise it. But the Moors, with
very few exceptions at the beginning, resisted every effort whether by
persuasion or by promises; they became but the more firmly addicted to
their own faith, and being prohibited the public celebration of its
rites, they practised them in secret, with all the zeal and enthusiasm
which the rigours of intolerance invariably produce in the persecuted.
The clergy, who imagined they saw in the religion of Mahomet the worship
of Satan, nay even warriors themselves who had wrought prodigies of
valour and shed their blood in order to exterminate that religion, could
not regard its prevalence with indifference, nor endure the thought that
it should survive the ruin of the capital of the Saracenic empire.
Bitter complaints were made to the queen on account of the impunity with
which such excesses against her authority were committed. To her
indulgence the principal persons of the state attributed the obstinacy of
the Moors who persisted in their errors, and the perfidy of the converted
who were accused of continuing in them after having submitted to the
ordinance of baptism. Religious phrenzy had arrived at its climax; men's
only occupation seemed to be that of building churches, destroying
mosques, and ostentatiously displaying the triumphs of the new creed over
that which for many centuries had polluted the soil. It was impossible
that Isabella could long resist these continuous remonstrances. The
institution of the Inquisition was proposed to her as a last resource to
maintain the purity of the faith, and that woman, superior to the age in
which she lived, and naturally affectionate and charitable, had the
unpardonable weakness of ceding to the councils of the implacable
Torquemada.
Among the qualities for which Isabella was remarkable none were more
admired by contemporary writers than her humility. In proof of this we
have but to follow the line of conduct pursued by her during the whole
course of her existence. She humbled herself before the church, whose
voice she believed she heard through the lips of her confessor.
We have referred to the cruel character of Roman Catholicism in Spain: is
not the Inquisition a proof of it? Experience shows how easily habit
familiarises us with spectacles most revolting to those feelings of pity
and compassion which Nature has bestowed upon us. Habit always destroys
the essential qualities of our moral constitution, sometimes associating
ideas of pleasure and enjoyment with those of blood and destruction; as,
for example, it happened in the games of the circus under the Roman
emperors; nay, some have even looked upon homicide and torture as
religious duties, and a part of the worship due to the Divine Being!
Fanaticism naturally engenders that sacrilegious alliance, and man, under
its irresistible influence, becomes more frightful in his hatred, more
cruel in his hostilities, than the beasts of the forest.
The Inquisition inaugurated, in Spain, a sanguinary fanaticism which
consecrated, as religious virtues, the blackest crimes that man can
commit against his fellow-creatures; and although it must be admitted
that many thousands of human beings perished in the flames for their
religious opinions under the reign of Isabella, yet the natural suavity
of her mind, influenced as it was by the tender and passionate,
repressed, to a considerable degree, those intolerant impulses with which
Torquemada was wont to impose upon the good sense of Spaniards. Isabella
was liberal, even in the sense which that word conveys according to the
language of modern politics. {22} She, doubtless, consented to the
formation of the bloody tribunal; and hence the annals of even her reign
are stained with some of those hecatombs which were more frequent in a
subsequent era, and banished from the Spanish peninsula those mental
energies which, at that time, were enabling human reason to recover her
rights, and Spain once more to occupy that eminent position assigned her,
by Providence, in the scale of creation.
History cannot accuse the Emperor Charles V. with having lent himself, as
a docile instrument, to the intolerant devices of the clergy. Charles
was never the sincere friend of the court of Rome. On the contrary, no
Christian monarch ever treated that court with greater contumely, or in a
manner more hostile and effectively prejudicial to its prosperity and
influence. The war which he made against the Pope, and which terminated
by the invasion of Rome itself, involved that court in all the ills of a
destructive conquest. The pillage and burning of the public temples and
of private houses, the violation of the nuns, the massacre of the
citizens, were not enough to satisfy the fury of his soldiers. Released
suddenly from that respect which, from childhood, they had been
accustomed to show towards the practices and ministers of religion, they
now openly ridiculed them in the streets of Rome, representing mock
processions, dressing themselves up in the splendid and ornamental attire
of cardinals and bishops. Their spirit of profanation and impiety
arrived at the extreme pitch. They composed satirical and other songs
against the Pope--one of these in the form of a parody on our Lord's
prayer--and sung them in the public streets, and even under the windows
of the pontifical palace.
To those deeds, which proved how little the heart of the emperor was
disposed to favour the doctrines of Roman Catholicism, we could add many
others which the patient investigation of German writers have discovered
in the archives of Italy. A tolerable knowledge, however, of the
occurrences of that reign will be sufficient to convince us that Charles
V. was not sincerely religious until age, infirmities, and misanthropy,
had brought upon him the misfortunes which attended the last years of his
life, and induced him to abdicate the crown, and retire to the solitudes
of Yuste. It is already known that, at the beginning of Luther's
rebellion against the Roman church, Charles resolved to avail himself of
the terror which the name of that celebrated reformer inspired in the
hearts of Roman Catholics, in order to intimidate the court of Rome and
humiliate its pride. It is not therefore to be wondered at, that, with
this vacillation of principles and declared antipathy to Rome, Charles
should have regarded, in his dominions, if not with manifest favour, at
least with cold indifference, the propagation of what were then called,
by Spaniards, the new doctrines.
Under his reign, notwithstanding the austere character of his minister,
the Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros, the Inquisition dared not, in Spain,
commence a system of intolerance.
One proof of this assertion is to be found in the progress which, at that
time, Lutheranism made in the Peninsula. To those days belonged, in
truth, the illustrious victims who were subsequently sacrificed on the
altar of fanaticism, and whose names may be found by the reader in the
celebrated work of M'Crie, or in that of De Castro. {25}
Philip II. ascended the throne, and the whole aspect of the unhappy
nation, delivered over by Providence to the hands of that implacable
enemy of humanity, was entirely changed. Philip's inclination was to
hate and persecute; and religion, in name, afforded him the pretext for
giving vent, with impunity, to those propensities, and covering with a
sacred veil all the excesses of a bloodthirsty and revengeful heart to
which he could abandon himself. Some writers have doubted the sincerity
of his religious sentiments, considering them as mere pretexts, of which
he availed himself in order to suggest false motives for his bitter
spirit in the war which he carried on against Henry IV. of France. And,
in truth, what sincerity could there be in the religion of a man who
lived in perpetual adultery; who seduced the wives of his most faithful
servants; who paid assassins to get rid of men he disliked, and
afterwards relentlessly persecuted these same persons hired by him to
commit such crimes? How could faith, devotion, hope, charity, and
self-consecration to God, exist in combination with vices the most
degrading to human nature, and a system of conduct diametrically opposed
to the letter and spirit of the gospel? But, without discussing those
questions which more properly pertain to the severe tribunal of history
and will be found fully examined in the works cited, it is sufficient,
for the present purpose, to indicate the reign of Philip II. as that
epoch in which an intolerant fanaticism extended its roots wide and deep
in the hearts of Spaniards,--a fanaticism which, until but a few years
previous to our own times, formed one of the most conspicuous elements of
the national character. The frequent repetition of the _autos de fe_, in
which the terrible spectacle of burning human victims alive was
countenanced by the presence of the court,--the furious harangues of the
friars,--the excommunications fulminated from the pulpit against all
those who did not prostrate themselves as slaves before the power of the
church,--and, above all, the example of the monarch, who was always ready
to exalt the clergy above other classes of the community, and whose
domestic and foreign policy was founded, invariably, on the principle of
the identity of the altar and the throne, were circumstances more than
sufficient to mould the genius, the habits, the affections, and even the
literary tastes and domestic intercourse, of any nation in the world.
Hence the entire existence of the nation was, so to speak, exclusively
religious. The mass, confession, processions, and _novenas_, {26} were
the occupations which consumed all the days and all the hours of life.
The priesthood was the grand social supremacy. All the riches of the
nation were in its hands. All consciences ceded to its voice, and were
directed by its influence. The king favoured all its pretensions,
enlarged its privileges, and put into its hands the highest dignities and
employments. The bishops occupied the principal posts in the councils of
Castille, of the finances, and of the Indies; to many of these bishops
embassies and vice-regal appointments were confided; and, in the
provinces, the civil authority was eclipsed before their influence, for
they became usurpers of its most important functions. Those were the
palmy days of the Inquisition, when, secure of the monarch's favour and
co-operation, it gave itself up, without restraint, to that spirit of
hatred which constituted the chief ingredient of its institution, and
covered the Spanish peninsula and its colonies with suffering, with
tears, and with blood.
As those ideas and sentiments entirely absorbed the minds of Spaniards;
so, on the other hand, all public action was concentrated in the king, he
having silenced the voice of the Cortes and abolished the charters
(_fueros_) of the municipalities, to which had pertained all the
political and civil legislation of Spain from the foundation of the
monarchy; in fine, as the severity of the fiscal laws opposed an
insuperable barrier to all sorts of industry and enterprise, it is not
surprising that it should have transformed, as in effect it did, the
national character, or that the whole social and domestic life of
Spaniards should be nothing short of an entire and absolute consecration
to the church and its ministers, to religious ceremonies, and to the
exercises of devotion and penance. In all the hours of his life, in all
professional and lucrative occupations, in all functions incident to
public employments, nay, even in his very amusements, the religious idea
is always present to the eyes of a Spaniard; sometimes, indeed, severe
and gloomy, at others majestic and solemn, but always overwhelming him
with the weight of its preponderance, and assuming the rule and
arbitrament of his thoughts and actions. The following pages will offer
to the reader sufficient proofs of this truth; and in each of the scenes
which they present will be discovered, without difficulty, the features
of the sketch which, in this introduction, we have endeavoured to trace.
We have written them without anger and without partiality, and we propose
to insert in them no facts, or even statements, but those gathered from
personal observation, and which no Spaniard will dare to deny; facts
which many sensible and upright men in that nation worthy a better
condition, do most bitterly lament.
It may be right to add, as an undoubted fact which cannot be too often
referred to or too widely made known, that among all classes of
Spaniards, and even among the clergy themselves, are to be found men
eminently pious; men who, although outwardly submitting to the exigencies
of the worship which they are bound by their present laws to profess, are
not ignorant of the true spirit and doctrines of Christianity, and who,
perhaps, only need a more intimate acquaintance with scriptural truth in
all its purity to be transformed into a visible part of the faithful and
chosen flock of Christ, and enabled to adopt, in all its latitude, the
true gospel as the rule and standard of their faith and conduct.
The publication of this work, at the present juncture, has no other
object than to accelerate that desired transition, the influence of which
may give fecundity to the noble qualities of a nation under all aspects
interesting, worthy, and capable of figuring in the foremost rank of the
polished and regenerate.
CHAPTER I.
THE SPANISH CLERGY--Their primitive state--Their subsequent
organization--_Barraganas_--Immoral practices of the clergy--Their
wealth, and its 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.
Among the northern nations which invaded Europe, on the fall of the Roman
Empire, the Goths were those who most distinguished themselves by the
promptitude with which they embraced Christianity, and by the sincerity
and constancy with which they observed its precepts and adhered to its
dogmas.
When they founded the Spanish monarchy, they were in a complete state of
ignorance and barbarism; and as the clergy were at that time the sole
depositaries of the little that was known of the dead languages, science,
and literature, they were the counsellors of the sovereigns, the
directors and prime movers of the public power, and the oracles of the
court, the nobility, and the people. The Councils of Toledo, which were
true legislative bodies, better and more methodically constituted than
the assemblies of the great barons, not only legislated in religious and
ecclesiastical matters, but in all political branches of the
administration and of the government. To these celebrated assemblies is
owing the _Fuero-Juzgo_, the most ancient of the codes promulgated in the
new monarchies founded on the ruins of the empire. But what gave most
renown to these assemblies was the system which they embraced with
respect to the relations between the court of the Gothic kings and the
pontifical see. In no Catholic nation was the ecclesiastic independence
consolidated with greater vigour than in the Spanish church of those
times. In truth the Pope, as such, exercised no authority whatever,
directly or indirectly, either in the discipline or the administration of
that church. He was acknowledged as the first of its bishops, but only
as equal in power to each of them. Thus it was that the bishops of the
Spanish peninsula had formerly no need of recourse to Rome for the
presentation of candidates, the investiture of ecclesiastical dignities,
or for matrimonial and other dispensations. Spain presented, at that
time, an edifying spectacle of pure and evangelical Christianity,
resembling that which prevailed in the primitive ages of the church, when
neither councils nor traditions, nor the _motu propria_ of popes, had
corrupted the dogma and the ritual. In the fourth Eliberitan council,
celebrated in Granada, not only the worship but even the use of images,
pictures, and sculpture, was prohibited in the temples, a prohibition
before unheard of in the annals of that age,--an age in which the
practice of invoking saints had become familiar, and more importance was
beginning to be attached to the pomp of rites than to true piety and
sincere devotion. The Spanish clergy, it is true, were then powerful,
and could do much; but there is no reason to think that they abused such
power, or that their conduct was regulated, at that early period, with a
view to their temporal interests. That golden age, however, was of short
duration; at least there are strong grounds for believing that, under the
reign of Alfonso the Wise, the manners of the clergy had become greatly
corrupted, and still more so under that of John II. Their ambition had
so far increased as to provoke the rigour of the laws and of the civil
authority. It is proved by the codes of that time, by several
chronicles, and a variety of other documents worthy of credit, that the
greater number of the clergy were living openly in a state of
concubinage. The term _barraganas_ formed part of the ordinary language
of the people, as well as of that used in legislation, and was applied to
designate the paramours of the ecclesiastics: indeed, these _barraganas_
were commanded by certain sovereigns to dress in a peculiar manner, so
that they might be distinguished from virtuous women; while other
sovereigns insisted on their also living in separate buildings, called
_barraganerias_, one of which, according to tradition, was situated in
that spot in Madrid now called Puerta del Sol. In one of the ancient
codes is to be found a regulation, in virtue of which it was ordered that
no clergyman should have more than one _barragana_!
Many of the bishops were accustomed to take these creatures with them on
official visits to their dioceses. This scandal began to disappear under
the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, "the Catholic sovereigns," and from
that time the clergy, by slow degrees, began to give to their body a more
compact organization, and to introduce among their ranks a stricter
discipline. Those amendments, however, did but tend to augment their
influence and their power. But what most contributed to the
aggrandisement of that privileged class was the wealth which rapidly
accumulated in their treasury and in all their establishments.
This wealth flowed from a variety of sources. The church took its tithes
and first-fruits; and this income, slender and precarious as it was
during the wars against the Moors and the lengthened dispute between the
crowns of Castille and Arragon, increased, afterwards, to such an extent
as to produce most incredible amounts so soon as order had once become
consolidated under the firm rule of Isabella; for, then, all kinds of
useful labour began to fructify, especially those of agriculture, which
had to sustain the weight of these onerous burdens.
But besides that source of income, the churches were daily enriched by
the donations which they received from the munificence of kings and
magnates. The most meritorious act of devotion and of religion,
according to the popular notion of those times, was the endowment of a
church with lands, flocks, and plate. These 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 absolute
direction of all charitable establishments, of which they had taken the
command, were so many other favourable supports to that supremacy which
they had assumed and maintained in society.
During the reigns succeeding that of Philip II., the condescendence of
the government, the submission of the people, and the acquisition of
riches by cathedrals, colleges, and parish churches, were greatly
augmented.
The incomes of the archbishops, bishops, and canons, rose to an
incredible amount. The sees of Toledo, Seville, Santiago, and Valencia,
were endowed with much greater revenues than even some of the states in
Germany. Great as have been the efforts to investigate and ascertain
with exactitude the precise returns of these sees, it has not been found
possible to obtain any data worthy to be relied on: and in truth, all
years were not equally productive; for those revenues depended in a great
measure on the abundance or scarcity of the crops. It is, however,
certain that the archbishop of Toledo, in particular, did not receive
less, annually, than 150,000 pounds. Some prebends, particularly those
called archdeaconries, were estimated at 6000 pounds a-year, and these
were sometimes disposed of, by the crown, in favour of a cardinal or
foreign prince.
Besides the clergy employed in the cathedral and parish churches, there
were many in orders without income or benefice of any kind, and who yet
contrived to get a very decent and comfortable living by means of the
influence which they exercised in rich houses, where their presence was
regarded as a blessing from heaven. There was scarcely a family of
consideration and of wealth in any town in Spain that was not under
submission to some individual of the clergy. In this way, and deeply
interested as they were that the people thus prostrate at their feet
should not have their eyes opened, the clergy made war against the
cultivation of the sciences and the propagation of useful knowledge.
The Spanish church, however, produced many and very eminent writings on
those particular sciences which, at that time, formed part of the general
course of their studies. It also sent forth many distinguished poets,
orators, and learned men, but never was disposed to protect or to
cultivate those sciences which give to man a power over nature: thus it
was that mathematics were most shamefully neglected; in physics the
absurd doctrines of the Peripatetics predominated; and the name of
philosophy was given to a puerile and complicated dialectic which had
neither the merit of ingenious classification, nor that subtlety of
argument which distinguished the school of Aristotle.
It is easy to conceive from this situation in which the clergy was
placed, that, in point of ecclesiastical discipline, Spaniards were
extreme ultramontanes. The clergy acknowledged the Pope, not only as the
vicar of Jesus Christ,--not only as the head of the visible church, but
as superior to all councils and kings, as the possessor of the keys of
heaven and as the absolute legislator in all matters of faith and
conscience. On many occasions the bishops and the cathedral authorities
consulted the court of Rome as to whether they ought to obey or disregard
the authority of the monarch; at other times they disobeyed it openly;
and, in spite of the efforts made by the Chamber of Castille to maintain
the cause of the throne and of the law, the fear of provoking a
revolution on the part of the lower classes, entirely the creatures of
the clergy, paralysed, on more than one occasion, the zeal of the
magistrates and the action of the military chiefs.
The Spanish laws required that, in order to give validity to a pontifical
bull, it should have the approbation, or, as it was called, _the pass_ of
the crown. Sometimes, and by virtue of the representation of the Chamber
of Castille, the government refused that pass, and on such occasions the
clergy became greatly irritated, the bishops energetically insisting upon
its being given, but urging their demands with such vehemence, as even to
threaten the monarch himself with the terrible penalty of
excommunication.
The clergy sustained the excesses of the pontifical authority, and
acknowledged the principle of the universal sovereignty of the Pope. All
notions or opinions that proposed to re-establish the discipline of the
first ages of the church and to defend the rights of the bishops,
considering their authority as equal to that of the Pope in jurisdiction,
and inferior only in dignity in the hierarchy, were considered as
dangerous and as heretical as that heresy most opposed to the articles of
the faith. Yet, at the beginning of the reign of Charles III., the
progress of Jansenism in France had a considerable influence on the
opinions of the Spanish clergy. The ministers, Campomanes, Aranda, and
Floridablanca, embraced with ardour the doctrines of Port-Royal; the
canonries of the collegiate church of San Isidro, in Madrid, which had
belonged to the Jesuits, were all conferred on wise and virtuous
clergymen who were generally known as confirmed Jansenists. Indeed there
were very few of the Spanish clergy who assisted in that establishment
that were not addicted to the same doctrines.
Hitherto no mention has been made of the parish priests. In the ancient
organization of the clergy these ecclesiastics participated, in some
dioceses, in the tithes; but the principal part of their incomes arose
from the surplice-fees, called in Spanish, _de pie de altar_, which were
those payable on baptism, interment, and marriage. The quota from these
sources varied according to the pomp and luxury of the ceremonies
performed. In baptisms, this augmentation of splendour consisted chiefly
in music, flowers, and lighted candles, in the chapel where the rite was
performed. But the extravagance of the rites of interment extended
itself to a wider range; for the idea was deeply rooted in the public
mind, that the greater the expense incurred in a funeral, the greater
would be the efficacy of the service in favour of the soul of the
departed. The sums which were wont to be spent in this ceremony are
incredible; and from their results many families have been entirely
ruined. This subject will, however, be more particularly considered in a
subsequent part of this work.
In the yearly receipts of those parish priests there is an enormous
difference, which depends on the number, the class, and the wealth, of
the parishioners living within the parish. There are some cases in which
those receipts amount to nearly 2000 pounds per annum; whilst in some
others the sum total is hardly sufficient to sustain an existence of
misery and penury. Notwithstanding this deplorable condition, there have
been, it must in candour be said, notable examples of charity, zeal, and
self-denial, among the inferior classes of the parochial clergy. The
poor have frequently found in their priests consolation in their
afflictions and succour in their miseries. In small towns the priest is
the first personage of the place. But still it cannot be concealed that
there is a sad deficiency in the inculcation of the fundamental
principles of scriptural truth in the exercise of his ministry; this same
deficiency is equally observable in other Catholic countries. As a
general rule, the only instruction which children receive from the priest
is the learning to repeat from memory a very incomplete and superficial
catechism. Preaching has rarely any other object than the explanation of
some article of the faith, or a panegyric on the life of some saint.
There are no interpreters of the gospel to be heard from the Spanish
pulpit, except during the period of Lent. The preachers like rather to
refer to and expatiate largely on miracles, than to unfold the morals of
the New Testament; and, in general, it may be taken as a fact that the
immense majority of the Spanish population, and especially those of the
poorer class, have the most incomplete and erroneous ideas of the life
and doctrines of Jesus Christ.
The greatest part of what has been advanced hitherto touching the Spanish
clergy applies to that epoch which preceded the preponderance of liberal
ideas. Since the abolition of tithes, under the minister, Mendizabal,
who replaced them by moderate fixed salaries to the priests, now paid by
the state, like other public functionaries, the situation of the Spanish
clergy has entirely changed its aspect. No man of any respectable family
now enlists himself under the banners of the clergy, whose influence is
only kept up in some of the smallest and obscure towns;--in the cities it
has entirely disappeared: nor does there remain in that body sufficient
energy to make the least attempt to recover it. There have always been
in Spain, in former epochs, some ecclesiastics, eminent for their virtues
and their learning, who have commanded the respect of all classes of
society, and whose word was so powerful that criminals of the most
hardened description have fallen down at their feet; and even their
appearance, in a town of some importance, has been followed by numerous
conversions, and a great amendment of the public manners. Since the
abolition of tithes, however, there is not a name in all the
ecclesiastical state which has the least celebrity. There is now no such
thing ever heard of as an eloquent speaker, a writer notable for his
theological learning, or for works of piety and devotion. The bishops,
whose titles, generally, are owing to their political sympathies, now
live like courtiers and take part in the dissensions of parties; and the
people regard them with an indifference corresponding to the few benefits
received at their hands. There are various honourable exceptions to this
rule, but these exceptions are scarce; and if there has been of late
years a bishop of Cadiz, an admirable model of all Christian virtues,
there are many others, such as that of Barcelona, impregnated with the
maxims of the most absurd ultramontanism, and who are the declared
enemies of all that contributes to make human society moral and
enlightened.
It is very common to see priests begging in the streets. Few of them are
now permitted to visit in respectable families, or even to mix in general
society; and the strangest of all things connected with such a change is,
that the clergy themselves know the state of degradation into which they
have fallen--the total loss of their influence and of their
importance--without making the least effort to raise themselves from that
state of humiliation and abasement.
On two recent occasions have been seen evident proofs of the utter
prostration of that class which once domineered over the entire nation.
When the famous Merino attempted, in the summer of 1851, to assassinate
Isabella II., and also during the political convulsions of July 1854,
from the results of which the liberal party remained triumphant, so
fearful were the clergy of exciting the popular indignation, and so
persuaded were they that public opinion was against them, that their
prelates advised them not only to abstain from appearing in the streets
in their clerical costume, but even to discontinue the use of the
church-bells, with which they had been in the habit of calling their
congregations to the mass and other religious exercises. This advice was
followed with as much eagerness and precipitation by the clergy, as
though they wished to hide themselves from public notice, or as though
they had been guilty of some illicit and scandalous offence.
It is clear that, to some extent, such a transition is the result of that
state of poverty to which the secular clergy have been reduced; and hence
it is that many priests, particularly those in the country, have given
themselves up to a variety of secular pursuits and speculations, which
are expressly prohibited by the canon laws, and which appear incompatible
with the dignity and character of their ministry. Some of them have
become publicans, others coach-proprietors, and not a few of them
smugglers on the coasts and frontiers,--a propensity, however, to which
they have always been addicted, even in the times of their greatest
prosperity.
We have spoken of the ultramontanism of the Spanish clergy. Never had
those doctrines more fanatical defenders, nor sectarians more fiery
partisans, than the ecclesiastical writers of the Peninsula; the dogma of
the infallibility of the Pope, the superiority of his jurisdiction with
respect to the bishops and to the general councils, was propagated not
only in books but in the pulpit and the confessional. Nevertheless the
enlightened ministers of Charles III., Aranda, Campomanes, and
Floridablanca (the first initiated in the school of French philosophers
of the eighteenth century, and the last two in that of the learned and
pious recluses of Port-Royal), after having procured from the king the
abolition and banishment of the Jesuits, desired to foment in Spain the
opinions which those eminent ministers of the crown maintained against
falsifiers of Christian truth; and, to that end, they founded a
collegiate church in the principal convent which those fathers had in
Madrid, conferring its canonries upon ecclesiastics who professed the
same doctrines as themselves, and who were, besides, generally venerated
for the profundity of their scientific knowledge, as well as for the
sanctity of their lives. The canons of San Isidro, to whom allusion has
already been made, were Jansenists; and, consequently, they professed
opinions diametrically opposed to those of the Spanish clergy. According
to them, as has already been intimated, the episcopal dignity was equal
in all those who possessed it, and the pope was no more than the first
among equals--_primus inter pares_; the right to confer dispensations was
not vested exclusively in the court of Rome, but each bishop could
exercise it with equal authority in his diocese; external discipline of
the church belonged of right to the regal authority, as also did that of
presentation to benefices; the bulls and other papal precepts were not to
be obeyed without the indispensable requisite of the monarch's
approbation; and, finally, the Pope, as well as the rest of the bishops,
was inferior in authority to the general council, in which was
concentrated the legislative power of the church, whether with respect to
the dogma or discipline and administration.
The boldness of these tenets excited the displeasure and irritation of
the Inquisition; but the power of that formidable tribunal had already
notably declined. Charles III. had taken two means calculated to
militate against its preponderance, to humble its pride, and deprive it
of the faculty of exercising its sanguinary vengeance. In the first
place, the penalty of death was prohibited, and it could only impose the
punishment of confiscation, imprisonment, and banishment. In the second
place, he ordered that one of the judges of each tribunal of the
Inquisition should be a secular person; and, for the discharge of the
duties of these functionaries, men were selected in whom was reposed all
the confidence of the ministers. The inquisitors knew that, once
committed to those coadjutors, they could not expose themselves to the
beginning of a struggle in which all inferiority was on their side. The
canons of San Isidro were not, ostensibly, persecuted; but no means were
spared to discredit them in public opinion. Thus it was that they lived
isolated, and were regarded with mistrust by all the clergy; and with
them disappeared from the Peninsula the only element of opposition to the
tyranny of Rome, which had been notorious in the Spanish Church from the
times of the Gothic monarchy.