Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/464

436 436 FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. PART filled with laws designed to limit their jurisdiction, ! and restrain their encroachments on the secular au- , thorities.^^ Towards the Roman See, she main- tained, as we have often had occasion to notice, the same independent attitude. By the celebrated concordat made with Sixtus the Fourth, in 1482, the pope conceded to the sovereigns the right of nominating to the higher dignities of the church.^^ The Holy See, however, still assumed the collation to inferior benefices, which were too often lavished on non-residents, and otherwise unsuitable persons. The queen sometimes extorted a papal indulgence grantinjz; the right of presentation, for a limited time ; on which occasions she showed such alacrity, that she is known to have disposed, in a single day, of more than twenty prebends and inferior digni- ties. At other times, w^hen the nomination made by his Holiness, as not unfrequently happened, was distasteful to her, she would take care to defeat it, by forbidding the bull to be published until laid before the privy council ; at the same time seques- trating the revenues of the vacant benefice, till her own requisitions were complied with.^'' Career She was equally solicitous in watching; over the morals. j o fol. 9.) He notices also the great more than once, uith her usual opulenceof the churches of Seville, sense of justice, on their applica- Guadalupe, &c. Fol. 11, 13. tion, to shield them from the en- 15 See Pragmaticas del Reyno, croachments of the civil tribunals, fol. 11, 140, i41, 171, et loc. al. Riol, Informe, apud Semanario — From one of these ordinance^, Erudito, torn. iii. pp. 98, 99. it appears the clergy were not i" See Part I. Chapter C, of this backward in remonstratinir against History. what rhey deemed an infringement '^ See examples of this, in Riol, of their rights. (Fol. 172.) The Informe, apud Semanario Erudito, queen, however, while she guarded torn. iii. pp. 95- 102. — Pragmati- against their usurpations, interfered cas del Reyno, fol. 14.