Not all the missionaries who accompanied the conquerors joined Father Las Casas in denouncing the _encomiendas_; on the contrary, some of the worst abuses of the system were charged against the Christian teachers themselves. But, as a rule, the priests stood between the unfortunate Indians and their rapacious masters, and protected the victims of impatient greed. After the abolition of _encomiendas_, when the natives were settled in communities, the religious orders, to whose care their spiritual welfare was chiefly intrusted,—the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Jesuits,—had frequent controversies with the secular authorities, the former claiming the right to protect the Indians against oppression, while the latter declared that this right was abused in favor of the orders themselves, and that they were growing rich and powerful through the labor and contributions of their protégés. In a land where gold and silver flowed out of the mountains in a constant stream, apparently inexhaustible, it is not surprising that the Church, which was the controlling power in the state, should profit by such blessings; though the wealth of the religious communities was gained through the products of agriculture rather than those of the mines. It was chiefly under the direction of the Christian fathers that the fields were cultivated and orchards planted while the conquerors were occupying themselves solely with the extraction of ores. The power of the clergy has always been stronger in Spain than in any other Catholic land, and the national religion has been its most cherished institution ever since the Visigoths followed up their conquest of the country, after the fall of the Roman Empire, by embracing Christianity early in the sixth century. Their ecclesiastical synods were not only Councils of the Church but parliaments of the realm, and so great was the power of the clergy at that early date, we are told, that even the kings prostrated themselves before the bishops. Then followed the struggle against the Moors, which was first a fight for independence and later a campaign for conquest, but always a religious war. It is not strange that the final victory, won after a crusade that lasted eight hundred years, should have been signalized by a union of Church and State in the closest bonds, and that the pride of the people should be concentrated in the religion they had so tenaciously upheld and defended, and in the military prowess they had so gloriously vindicated.