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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
One might sufely expect that in a country possessing eight archbishops , more than fifty bishops , and in ore than a hundred abbacies , with a jurisdiction almost episcopal 5 " in which , '' to use the language of a Spanish writer , " there are more
churches than houses , more altars than hearths , more priests than peasants 5 " in which every dwelling has its saint , and every individual his
scapuj £ ry ;—one might expect to see some benefits , some blessings resulting from this gigantic mass of ecclesK astical influence . Let us , then , look upon a picture drawn by the hand of an acknowledged master . € i
Our universities * are the faithful depositaries of the prejudices of the middle age ; our teachers , doctors of the tenth century . Beardless
noviciates instruct us in the sublime mysteries of our faith ; mendicant friars in the profound secrets of philosophy ; while barbarous monks explain the nice distinctions of metaphysics .
" Who goes into our streets without meeting cofradias , f processions or rosaries ; without hearing the shrill voice of eunuchs , J the braying of sacristans , the confused sound of sacred music , entertaining and instructing the devout with compositions so exalted , and imagery so romantic , that devotion itself is forced' into a smile ?
In the corners of our squares , at the doors of our houses , the mysterious truths of our religion are commented on by blind beggars to the discordant accompaniment of an untuned guitar . Our walls are papered with records of ' authentic miracles , * compared to
destroyed , that a herd of friars might enlarge their kitchen-g'arclen ! I inquired for the MSS . of Xnnenes Cisneros : they had l > een cut up for sky-rockets to celebrate the arrival of some worthless grandee !
* Some of the Professors of the Spanish universities , those especially of civil law and medicine , and perhaps even some of theology , are enlightened men and lovers of liberty . This is decidedly the case at Salamanca and Alcalu , and partially so at
Valencia . To the rest the text may safely be applied . -f Cofradias— assemblies for religious Jobjects . Eunuchs are not now common in Spain . The inhuman practice , once so frectuent , is now prohibited by law .
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which , the metarmorphoses of Ovid are natural and credible .
" And ignorance has been the pa ^ rent , not of superstition alone , but of incredulity and infidelity . The Bible , the argument and evidence of our Christian faith , has been shamefully abandoned , or cautiously buried beneath piles of decretals , formularies , puerile meditations , and fabulous histories .
" Monkish influence has given to the dreams and deliriums of foolish women , or crafty men , the authority of revealed truth . Our friars have pretended to repair with their rotten and barbarous scaffolding , the eternal edifice of the gospel . They have twisted and tortured the moral law
into a thousand monstrous forms , to suit their passions and their interests . Now they describe the path to heaven as plain and easy , —now it is difficult , —to morrow they will call it impassable . They have dared to obscure with their artful commentaries the
beautiful simplicity of the Word of God . They have darkened the plainest truths of revelation , and on the hallowed charter of Christian liberty , they have even erected the altar of civil despotism ! " In the fictions and falsehoods
they have invented to deceive their followers , in their pretended visions and spurious miracles , they have even ventured to compromise the terrible majesty of heaven . They shev \ i us our Saviour lighting one nun to put cakes into an oven ; throwing oranges at another from the sagrario ; tasting different dishes inthecon vent-kitchens ,
and tormenting friars with childish and ridiculous playfulness . They represent a monk gathering together the fragments of a broken bottle , and depositing in it the spilt wine , to console a child who had let it fall at
the door of the wine-shop . Another , repeating the miracle of Cana to satisfy the brotherhood , and a third restoring a still-born chicken to life that some inmate of the convent might not be disappointed .
* ' 1 hey represent to ys a man preserving his speech many years after death , in order to confess his sins ; another throwing himself from a high balcony without danger , that he might go to mass . A dreadful fire instantly extinguished by a scapulary
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596 State of Religion in Spain .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1819, page 596, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1777/page/8/
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