[148b] “Yo lo digo por media peseta.”
[174] The word alms in this case does not mean alms given away to the poor, but the money invested in the purchase of a copy of this bull, published and sold by the commissary-general, or by the different archbishops and bishops.
If we consider that the bull is printed on a small piece of very inferior paper, and that it is sold for 7½d., and that every Spaniard in the Peninsula and its colonies is bound to purchase it, at the risk of incurring a mortal sin every Friday in the year that he eats meat without this authorization, we may form some idea of the enormous revenue derived from this source by the Spanish Church, and by the Roman See, which has a profit in the speculation. The Spanish Peninsula contains at the present moment, on a very low calculation, fifteen millions of inhabitants, the Philippine Islands four millions, and Cuba and Porto Rico together something more than one million. In Spanish America, from Mexico to Cape Horn, there are nearly sixteen millions of inhabitants subject to the Catholic Church, and his holiness grants to them likewise the privilege of the Holy Crusade bull, with the further advantage of being allowed to cook their fish or vegetables with hog’s lard or beef and mutton fat, on those days too on which not even Spanish Catholics are allowed to eat meat.
[176] The name given to the administration of episcopal property in the interval between the death of a bishop and the consecration of his successor. A part of the revenues of such sees during the vacancy went to the public treasury, and the other to the church treasury.
[194] They so call certain women, who without being in the cloisters use the habit of nuns, and live in common together, in establishments called beaterios.
[200] What Roman Catholics generally understand by repentance.
[202] This spirit was preserved down to the time of Isabella of Castille. After the conquest of Granada, Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordova, known by the name of “the great captain,” and to whose valour and military foresight was owing, in a great degree, that glorious conquest, erected in the precinct of the same city a proud palace which was destined for his own use. The queen wished to see it ere it was scarcely finished, and after having examined it minutely, turning to Gonzalo she said,—“Gonzalo, this house is too good for a man; God only ought to live in it.” The hero, yielding to the suggestion, delivered up the edifice to the Hieronimite monks, in order that they might found a convent therein. The monks, grateful for so generous a gift, resolved, on the death of Gonzalo, to inter his body in the church of the establishment; and on the exterior of its tower they wrote in enormous letters the epitaph of its founder in these words:—
“Gonzalvo Ferdinandez de Cordova,
Hispanorum duci,
Gallorum et Turcarum terrori.”