“ARTICLE I. All properties of the secular clergy of whatever class; rights or shares of whatever origin or denomination they may be, or for whatever application or purpose they may have been given, bought, or acquired, are national properties.

“ART.  II.  The properties, rights, and shares corresponding in any manner to ecclesiastical unions or fraternities, are also national properties.

“ART.  III.  All estates, rights, and shares of the cathedral, collegiate and parochial clergy and ecclesiastical unions and fraternities referred to in the preceding articles, are hereby declared for sale.”

* * * * * The 15 articles that follow specify the properties in detail, the manner of sale, the disposition of the products, administration of rents, etc.

The law was not carried into effect.  Espartero, very popular at first, by adopting the principles of the progressist party, forfeited the support of the conservatives—­that is, of the clerical party, and the man is not born yet who can successfully introduce into Spain a radical reform of the nature of the one he sanctioned with his signature September 2, 1841.  From that moment his overthrow was certain.  Narvaez headed the revolution against him, his own officers and men abandoned him, and on July 30, 1843, he wrote his farewell manifesto to the nation on board a British ship of war.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 79:  San Juan had only about 100 “vecinos”—­that is, white people.]

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE INQUISITION

1520-1813

Bishop Manso, on his arrival in 1513, found Puerto Rico in a state bordering on anarchy, and after vain attempts to check the prevalent immorality and establish the authority of the Church, he returned to Spain in 1519.  The account he gave Cardinal Cisneros of the island’s condition suggested to the Grand Inquisitor the obvious remedy of clothing the bishop with the powers of Provincial Inquisitor, which he did.

Diego Torres Vargas, the canon of the San Juan Cathedral, says in his memoirs:  “Manso was made inquisitor, and he, being the first, may be said to have been the Inquisitor-General of the Indies; ... the delinquents were brought from all parts to be burned and punished here ...  The Inquisition building exists till this day (1647), and until the coming of the Hollanders in 1625 many sambenitos could be seen in the cathedral hung up behind the choir.”

These “sambenitos” were sacks of coarse yellow cloth with a large red cross on them, and figures of devils and instruments of torture among the flames of hell.  The delinquents, dressed in one of these sacks, bareheaded and barefooted, were made to do penance, or, if condemned to be burned, marched to the place of execution.  It is said that in San Juan they were not tied to a stake but enclosed in