Like the Carthusians, the Hieronimites had their establishments far from towns and cities. They were very wealthy, but did not cultivate their own lands; they let them out on hire, and showed great consideration to their tenants. These fathers devoted themselves, almost entirely, to teaching, to singing, and to sacred music. From their halls have been sent forth to the world many vocalists, organists, and composers, of eminence. When Philip II. built the Escurial, he confided that sumptuous edifice to the Hieronimites; and so high a position did the prior hold in the hierarchy and in the state, that he was privileged to enter, at all times, into the king’s apartments without asking leave to do so, and his coachman and other servants were permitted to wear the royal livery.
General opinion accuses these reverend fathers of too great a propensity to indulge in gastronomy, and it is related of them that, in prescribing for themselves, as a rule for their supper rations, one dozen of mincemeat-balls (_abondigas_), they afterwards, by a supplementary rule, extended that number to thirteen, from which circumstance the number thirteen is generally called, in Spain, “_the friars’ dozen_.”
The inferior section of Monachism, viz., that of the Friars, is composed of many orders, among which the most important and numerous were the following: _Mercenarios_, or Friars of Mercy (_de la Merced_), founded with the exclusive object of ransoming Christian captives who groaned in the dungeons of the Barbary States; the _Carmelites_,—_calzados_, wearing shoes and stockings, and _descalzos_, without either; the _Augustines_, _calzados_ and _descalzos_; the _Preachers_, or _Dominicans_; the Friars of _St John of God_, whose duty was to serve sick persons in the hospitals attached to their convents; and above all the large family of _St Francis_, divided into four great ramifications, viz., the _Franciscan_ properly speaking; the _Fathers of Observance_; the _Fathers of St Diego_; and the _Capuchins_. All these orders had convents in the principal towns of the Peninsula, and its colonies. In some cities,—as, for example, Madrid, Seville, and Toledo,—there were as many as twenty or thirty of these establishments, many of which contained from one hundred to one hundred and fifty inmates; but the average may be stated, with reason, at thirty for each convent. The _calzados_ orders were at liberty to hold property; but the _descalzos_, in whose number are to be reckoned all the family of Franciscans, were strictly forbidden to do so; and hence they lived, exclusively, on the alms of the faithful.