San Marcos in Lima claims the Americas' oldest university
On this day · 12 May 1551
A royal decree of 12 May 1551 underpins Lima's claim, four months ahead of Mexico's charter, though the San Marcos name came 23 years later.
The National University of San Marcos in Lima dates its founding to a royal decree issued in Valladolid on 12 May 1551 by Queen Juana I of Castile and her son, Emperor Charles V, and on that date it claims to be the oldest university in the Americas, a title disputed by rivals, above all the University of Mexico, chartered the same year.
The argument turns on what counts as a founding. A university in Spanish America normally required three acts: sanction by the Church, a royal charter and the actual start of teaching, and any one of them can be treated as its birthday. San Marcos counts the charter, which beat Mexico’s royal decree of 21 September 1551 by about four months.
| Milestone | Date |
|---|---|
| Royal decree for a university in Lima | 12 May 1551 |
| Royal decree for Mexico’s university | 21 September 1551 |
| Teaching begins in Lima’s Dominican convent | 1553 |
| Papal bull Exponi Nobis makes it pontifical | 1571 |
| Takes the name San Marcos | 1574 |
The petition came from the Dominican friar Tomás de San Martín, a defender of Indigenous people against the conquistadors, and Jerónimo de Aliaga, on behalf of Lima’s town council, who wanted a general school to train colonial-born men for government. San Martín never ran it: appointed bishop of Charcas, he sent the decree back to Lima and died in 1554.
The early years were lean. In 1557 the viceroy allotted the university just 400 pesos for its upkeep. The 1571 bull had its degrees recognised throughout Christendom and its chairs ranked with those of Salamanca, Bologna and Paris, but that December Philip II ordered it taken out of Dominican hands. In 1574 professors and students left the monastery for their own premises and voted in a new title, the Royal and Pontifical University of San Marcos. The name Lima’s university is known by is therefore 23 years younger than the decree it celebrates.
Peruvians still call it the “Dean of the Americas”. Europe’s oldest universities were far older still: Oxford was teaching before the Aztec Empire existed.
Sources & references
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