concubinage was familiarly practised by the clergy, as well as laity, of
the period; and, so far from being reprobated by the law of the land,
seems anciently to have been countenanced by it. [77] This moral
insensibility may probably be referred to the contagious example of their
Mahometan neighbors; but, from whatever source derived, the practice was
indulged to such a shameless extent, that, as the nation advanced in
refinement, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it became the
subject of frequent legislative enactments, in which the concubines of the
clergy are described as causing general scandal by their lawless
effrontery and ostentatious magnificence of apparel. [78]

Notwithstanding this prevalent licentiousness of the Spanish
ecclesiastics, their influence became every day more widely extended,
while this ascendency, for which they were particularly indebted in that
rude age to their superior learning and capacity, was perpetuated by their
enormous acquisitions of wealth. Scarcely a town was reconquered from the
Moors, without a considerable portion of its territory being appropriated
to the support of some ancient, or the foundation of some new, religious
establishment. These were the common reservoir, into which flowed the
copious streams of private as well as royal bounty; and, when the
consequences of these alienations in mortmain came to be visible in the
impoverishment of the public revenue, every attempt at legislative
interference was in a great measure defeated by the piety or superstition
of the age. The abbess of the monastery of Huelgas, which was situated
within the precincts of Burgos, and contained within its walls one hundred
and fifty nuns of the noblest families in Castile, exercised jurisdiction
ever fourteen capital towns, and more than fifty smaller places; and she
was accounted inferior to the queen only in dignity. [79] The archbishop
of Toledo, by virtue of his office primate of Spain and grand chancellor
of Castile, was esteemed, after the pope, the highest ecclesiastical