The corruption of the monastic orders began during the earliest times of the monarchy. In the time of Isabella the Catholic, the immorality of the friars had arrived at such a height as to induce that eminent woman, led by the counsels of the Cardinal Cisneros, to demand of Pope Alexander VI. a bull permitting her to introduce a radical reform among the religious orders in Spain. The Pope resisted, but, ultimately, was obliged to cede to the Spanish court; and Isabella checked, for some years, the disorders which brought so much scandal on the nation. The fact is, that the friars formed a separate state, independent of the government, and even of the bishops; they acknowledged no authority but that of the Pope, and their communications with the court of Rome were as frequent as they were private and mysterious. The bishops often claimed the right to exercise their own authority over this part of the ecclesiastical state, but always in vain; and although the Chamber of Castille, which was the supreme tribunal, lent its support to those just pretensions, that support was always disregarded by the pontifical court. The friars never would submit themselves to the bishops, except to receive holy orders from them; and whenever these were refused, although it might be on strong and just grounds, the friar had recourse at once to Rome, and returned from thence ordained. We have not entered, in our list of religious orders, that of the Jesuits, because these formed an entirely separate class, and the greatest insult that could be committed against a Jesuit was to call him a friar. The Spanish Jesuits, like those throughout all Europe, were, in their exterior conduct, modest and decorous. They mixed but little with the lower classes of society, and their chief occupation was to direct the consciences of eminent persons, and particularly those of kings, bishops, and ministers. In Spain, as in all other places, they took a large share in politics, they patronised good studies, and accumulated great wealth. If jesuitical casuistry had not its birth in Spain, at least the greater part of its ecclesiastical writers, who propagated and defended that absurd and immoral conceit, were Spaniards, as may be seen on reference to the catalogue of them published by Pascal, in his _Lettres d’un Provincial_. The names of Escobar and of Sanchez have left a deplorable reputation for them in this branch of ecclesiastic literature. The treatise _De Matrimonio_ of the latter contains such profound immorality, and such dangerous and obscene queries and doctrines, that the Inquisition included the publication in its index of prohibited books. But far greater scandal was produced throughout Europe by the book entitled _De Rege et Regis Institutione_, written by the celebrated Jesuit, Juan de Mariana. This man, truly great, and whom Gibbon places in the number of the most distinguished historians of