Observations on the State of Religion and Literature in Spain

Name: Observations on the State of Religion and Literature in Spain
Author: Bowring, John

Bowring, John

Catholic Church -- Spain; Spain -- Description and travel; Spain -- Religion; Spanish literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism

Transcribed from the 1819 George Smallfield edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

                      [Picture: Public domain cover]





                               OBSERVATIONS
                                    ON
                                THE STATE
                                    OF
                         RELIGION AND LITERATURE
                                    IN
                                  SPAIN,


                               MADE DURING

                    _A JOURNEY THROUGH THE PENINSULA_

                                 IN 1819.

                                * * * * *

                                 London:

                 _Printed by George Smallfield Hackney_.

                                * * * * *

                                  1819.




OBSERVATIONS, &c.


THERE are in Spain, according to Antillon’s {3a} calculations, two
hundred thousand ecclesiastics.  They possess immense revenues and an
incalculable influence over the mass of the people; though it is certain
that influence is diminishing, notwithstanding the countenance and
co-operation of a government deeply interested in preserving their
authority.

It would be great injustice to the regular clergy of Spain to class them
with the immense hordes of monks and friars, scattered over the face of
the Peninsula, some possessing rich and well-stored convents, large
estates and accumulating wealth, and others (the mendicant orders) who
prey more directly on the labours of the poor, and compel the industrious
to administer to their holy, uninterrupted laziness.  The former, though,
doubtless, by far too numerous, are for the most part intelligent and
humane: dispensing benevolence and consolation in their respective
parishes; friendly, in many instances, to liberty and devoted to
literature.  The latter, with few, but striking exceptions, {3b} are
unmanageable masses of ignorance and indolence. {3c}  They live (as one
of the Spanish poets says) in a state of sensual enjoyment between the
organ-loft and the refectory, to which all other enjoyment is but
purgatory; {3d} the link which should connect them with the common weal
for ever broken; the ties of family and friend dissolved; their authority
founded on the barbarism and degradation of the people, they are
interested in stemming the torrent of improvement in knowledge and
liberty, which must in the end inevitably sweep away these “cumberers of
the soil.”  No society in which the sound principles of policy are at all
understood, would consent to maintain a numerous body of idle,
unproductive, useless members in opulence and luxury, (at the expense of
the active and the laborious,) merely because they had chosen to decorate
themselves with peculiar insignia—to let their beards grow, or to shave
their heads; and though the progress of civilization in Spain has been
greatly retarded, or rather it has been compelled to retrograde under the

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Observations on the State of Religion and Literature in Spain

No reviews yet