When the charter of the University of Lima was granted by the Emperor Charles V, in 1551, the town was scarcely more than fifteen years old. It had been founded in 1535. Curiously enough, just about the same interval had elapsed between the foundation of the Massachusetts colony by the Pilgrims and the legal establishment of the college afterward known as Harvard by the General Court of the colony. It is evident that in both cases it was the needs of the rising generation who had come to be from twelve to sixteen years of age that led to the establishment of these institutions of higher education. The actual foundation of Harvard did not come for two years later, and the intention of the founders was not nearly so broad as that of the founders of the University of Lima. Already at Lima schools had been [{314}] established by the religious orders, and it was with the idea of organizing the education as it was being given that the charter from the Crown was obtained. With regard to both Lima and Mexico, within a few years a bull of approval and confirmation was asked and obtained from the Pope. The University of Lima continued to develop with wonderful success. In the middle of the seventeenth century it had more than a thousand students, at the beginning of the eighteenth it had two thousand students, and there is no doubt at all of its successful accomplishment of all that a university is supposed to do.
Juan Antonio Ribeyro, who was the rector of the University of Lima forty years ago, said in the introduction to "The University Annals for 1869" that, "It cannot be denied that the University of Peru during its early history filled a large role of direct intervention for the formation of laws, for the amelioration of customs and in directing all the principal acts of civil and private society, forming the religious beliefs, rendering them free from superstitions and errors and influencing all the institutions of the country to the common good." Certainly this is all that would be demanded of a university as an influence for uplift, and the fact that such an ideal should have been cherished shows how well the purpose of an educational institution had been realized.
The scholarly work done by some of these professors at Spanish-American universities still [{315}] remains a model of true university work. It is the duty of the university to add to knowledge as well as to disseminate it. That ideal of university existence is supposed to be a creation of the nineteenth century, and indeed is often said to have been brought into the history of education by the example of the German universities. We find, however, that the professors of the Spanish-American universities accomplished much in this matter and that their works remain as precious storehouses of information for after generations. Professor Bourne has given but a short list of them in addition to those that have already been mentioned, but even this furnishes an excellent idea of how much the university professors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Spanish America were taking to heart the duty of gathering, arranging and classifying knowledge for after generations. They did more in the sciences than in anything else. It is often thought that our knowledge of the ethnology and anthropology of the Indians is entirely the creation of recent investigators, but that is true only if one leaves out of account the work of these old Spanish-American scholars. Professor Bourne says:
"The most famous of the earlier Peruvian writers were Acosta, the historian, the author of the 'Natural and Civil History of the Indies'; the mestizo Garciasso de la Vega, who was educated in Spain and wrote of the Inca Empire and De Soto's expedition; Sandoval, the author of the [{316}] first work on Africa and the negro written in America; Antonio Leon Pinelo, the first American bibliographer, and one of the greatest as well of the indefatigable codifiers of the old legislation of the Indies. Pinelo was born in Peru and educated at the Jesuit College in Lima, but spent his literary life in Spain."
Of the University of Mexico more details are available than of Peru, and the fact that it was situated here in North America and that the culture which it influenced has had its effect on certain portions of the United States, has made it seem worth while to devote considerable space to it. The University was called the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico, because, while it was founded under the charter of the King of Spain, this had been confirmed by a bull from the Pope, who took the new university directly under the patronage of the Holy See. The reason for the foundation of the university, as the men at that time saw it, is contained in the opening chapter of St. John's Gospel, which is quoted as the preamble of the constitutions of the university: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him and without Him was made nothing that was made. In Him was Life, and the Life was the light of men." This they considered ample reason for the erection of a university and the spread of knowledge with God's own sanction.
The patron saints of the university, as so declared by the first article of the constitutions, were St. Paul the Apostle, and St. Catherine the Martyr. Among the patrons, however, were also mentioned in special manner two other saints--St. John Nepomucen, who died rather than reveal the secrets of the confessional, and St. Aloysius Gonzaga, the special patron of students. It is evident that these two patrons had been chosen with a particular idea that devotion to them would encourage the practice of such virtues and devotion to duty as would be especially useful to the students, clerical and secular, of the university. On all four of the feast days of these patrons the university had a holiday. This would seem to be adding notably to the number of free days in a modern university, but must have meant very little at the University of Mexico, they had so many other free days. The most striking difference between the calendar of the University of Mexico and that of a modern university would be the number of days in the year in which no lectures were given. There were some forty of these altogether. Besides the four patron saint days, the feast day of every Apostle was a holiday. Besides these, all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church gave reasons for holidays. Then there was St. Sebastian's Day, in order that young men might be brave, St. Joseph's Day, the Annunciation, the Expectation, the Assumption and the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, the [{318}] Invention of the Holy Cross, the Three Rogation Days and the Feast of Our Lady of the Snows. Besides, there were St. Magdalen's, St. Ann's, St. Ignatius' and St. Lawrence's Day. These were not all, but this will give an idea how closely connected with the Church were the lectures at the university, or, rather, the intermission from the lectures. It might be said that this was a serious waste of precious time, and that our universities in the modern time would not think of imitating them, but such a remark could come but from some one who did not realize the real condition that obtained in the old-time universities. At the present time our universities finish their scholastic year about the middle of May and do not begin again until October--nearly twenty weeks. At these old universities their annual intermission between scholastic years lasted only the six weeks from the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, September 8, to St Luke's Day, October 18. They had five weeks at Easter time and two weeks at Christmas time. They spread their year out over a longer period and compensated for shorter vacations by granting holidays during the year. Their year's labor was less intense and spread out over more ground than ours.
The development of the University of Mexico into a real university in the full sense of the old studium generale, in which all forms of human knowledge might be pursued, is very interesting [{319}] and shows the thoroughgoing determination of the Spanish Americans to make for themselves and their children an institute of learning worthy of themselves and their magnificent new country.
Chartered in 1551, it was not formally opened until 1553. Chairs were established in this year in theology, Sacred Scripture, canon law and decretals, laws, art, rhetoric and grammar. Both Spanish and Latin were taught in the classes of grammar and rhetoric. To these was added very shortly a chair in Mexican Indian languages, in accordance with the special provisions of the imperial charter. The university continued to develop and added further chairs and departments as time went on. It had a chair of jurisprudence at the beginning, but its law department was completed in 1569 by the addition of two other chairs, one in the institutes of law, the other in codes of law. In the meantime the university had begun to make itself felt as a corporate body for general uplift by publications of various kinds. Its professor of rhetoric, Dr. Cervantes Salazer, published in 1555 three interesting Latin dialogues in imitation of Erasmus' dialogues. At the moment Erasmus' "Colloquia" was the most admired academic work in the university world of the time. The first of these dialogues described the University of Mexico, and the other two, taking up Mexico City and its environments, gave an excellent idea of [{320}] what the Spanish-American capital of Mexico was three centuries and a half ago.
"The early promoters of education and missions did not rely upon the distant European presses for the publication of their manuals. The printing press was introduced into the New World probably as early as 1536, and it seems likely that the first book, an elementary Christian doctrine called 'La Escala Espiritual' (the ladder of the spirit), was issued in 1537. No copy of it, however, is known to exist. Seven different printers plied their craft in New Spain in the sixteenth century. Among the notable issues of these presses, besides the religious works and church service works, were dictionaries and grammars of the Mexican languages, Puga's 'Cedulario' in 1563, a compilation of royal ordinances, Farfan's 'Tractado de Medicina.' In 1605 appeared the first text-book published in America for instruction in Latin, a manual of poetics with illustrative examples from heathen and Christian poets." (Bourne.)