Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/87

CASTILE. Ixix was perpetuated by their enormous acquisitions of section wealth. Scarcelj 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 establish- ment. 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 over fourteen capital towns, and more than fifty smaller places ; and she was accounted inferior to the queen only in dignity. '^^ The arch- bishop of Toledo, by virtue of his office primate of Spain and grand chancellor of Castile, was esteem- ed, after the pope, the highest ecclesiastical digni- tary in Christendom. His revenues, at the close of the fifteenth century, exceeded eighty thousand ducats ; while the gross amount of those of the subordinate beneficiaries of his church rose to one hundred and eighty thousand. He could muster a greater number of vassals than any other subject in the kingdom, and held jurisdiction over fifteen large ■5^ Lucio Marineo Siculo, Cosas Memorables de Espana, (Alcala de Henares, 1539,) fol. 16.