his alleged reformist policies provoked the opposition of the most conservative opinion. this resulted from his refusal to allow a german monk, father romauld, to build a monastery in one of the andalusian settlements "to help the (wealthy) german settlers get to heaven". the envious fr romauld let it be known that olavide was part of an indiscrete transgression concerning the spanish clergy; accusing him of reading prohibited books and speaking disrespectfully of the catholic religion. and the spanish inquisition charged him with impiety and heresy in 1775. he was thus removed from his offices, exiled from madrid, the royal residences, from sevilla and even from lima; imprisoned on remand in 1776, and condemned to eight years of reclusion in a monastery in 1778 for being a believer in the doctrines of the encyclopedie and for having kept company with voltaire and rousseau. his trial and condemnation caused great consternation among spanish and european enlightened thinkers. due to his health problems, he was authorized to bathe often in spas. in 1780, during one of these stays, in caldes de malavella, very near to the french frontier, he fled to france. he resided in paris but with no involvement in political life. he observed the french revolution with interest and sympathy but its radicalization worried him. in 1791 he moved to a castle in meung-sur-loire, but he was arrested in 1794 as a suspicious foreigner and he was imprisoned until the fall of the jacobins. the french imprisonment experience was shocking for him and he returned to religious observance and even wrote an apology of christianity, anonymously published in valencia in 1797: "el evangelio en triunfo, o historia de un filósofo desengañado" (the gospel of triumph, or the story of a disenchanted philosopher). the success of this book in the anti-revolutionary spain was great and he could return to his country in 1798. he was publicly rehabilitated and gained an annuity. he retired to baeza.