The National University of San Marcos is founded in Lima, Peru
On this day · 12 May 1551
A royal decree signed in Spain in 1551 chartered the university that calls itself the Dean of the Americas.
On May 12, 1551, Emperor Charles V (Charles I of Spain) signed a royal decree in Valladolid chartering a studium generale in Lima, the institution that became the National University of San Marcos. The push came from the Dominican friar Thomas de San Martín, and the new university was granted the privileges of Spain’s famed University of Salamanca.
Classes did not begin until 1553, in the Dominican convent of Santo Domingo, and in 1571 Pope Pius V added a pontifical title. San Marcos rests its claim as the oldest university in the Americas on the date of that decree.
The rivalry is real: Mexico’s university won its own royal decree the same year, on September 21, 1551.
Because San Marcos’s charter predates Mexico’s by months—and because it has operated continuously ever since—Peruvians style it the “Dean of the Americas.” Whichever institution one crowns, the New World’s university tradition is older than most people assume.
Sources & references
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