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. CHAPTER II. MONACHISM—The superiority of the monastic over the 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.