Chapter 1

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.