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Spain The Enlightenment
Charles III (r. 1759-88), Spain's enlightened despot
par
excellence, served his royal apprenticeship as king of
Naples. He
was one of Europe's most active patrons of the
Enlightenment, a
period during which attempts were made to reform society
through
the application of reason to political, social, and
economic
problems. Despite Charles's attempt to reform the economy,
the
impact of the Enlightenment was essentially negative.
Anticlericalism was an integral part of Enlightenment
ideology,
but it was carried to greater lengths in Spain than
elsewhere in
Europe because of government sponsorship. Public charities
financed by the church were considered antisocial because
they
were thought to discourage initiative, and they were
therefore
abolished. The state suppressed monasteries and
confiscated their
property. The Jesuits, outspoken opponents of regalism,
were
expelled. Their expulsion virtually crippled higher
education in
Spain. The state also banned the teachings of medieval
philosophers and of the sixteenth-century Jesuit political
theorists who had argued for the "divine right of the
people"
over their kings. The government employed the Inquisition
to
discipline antiregalist clerics.
Economic recovery was noticeable, and government
efficiency
was greatly improved at the higher levels during Charles
III's
reign. The Bourbon reforms, however, resulted in no basic
changes
in the pattern of property holding. Neither land reform
nor
increased land use occurred. The rudimentary nature of
bourgeois
class consciousness in Spain hindered the creation of a
middleclass movement. Despite the development of a national
bureaucracy
in Madrid, government programs foundered because of the
lethargy
of administrators at lower levels and because of a
background
rural population. The reform movement could not be
sustained
without the patronage of Charles III, and it did not
survive him.
Data as of December 1988
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