Absent at Salamanca: whether a man could keep or claim an American encomienda while studying at a university, argued in a named suit in the Council of the Indies
Residence in the province was a condition of holding an encomienda. The standard treatise on the government of Spanish America asks whether study at an approved university excused it, and answers from a suit brought a few months before it was written: a claimant at Salamanca sought restitution against a grant made in New Granada while he was away, and the Council refused it. The student's privilege was real, and it did not reach a grant he had not yet got.
Why this wins its question: Search for the residence duty of the encomendero and you get the rule: live in the province, marry, build a house, or lose the grant. What no accessible source gives is the litigated edge of that rule, and this object supplies one case of it from the page where it is reported. The privilege of the university student — a real and strong privilege in early modern European law, good enough to hold an ecclesiastical benefice from a distance — was pressed against an American encomienda by a claimant sitting in Salamanca, and the Council of the Indies drew a line that a modern reader will recognise as the difference between defending a vested right and asserting a new one against a third party who has meanwhile been lawfully provided. The object keeps the counterweights on the page rather than picking a side: the privilege is conceded in full before it is cut down, the doctors who would have decided the other way are named and quoted, and their argument — that students are the equivalent of soldiers and should be free of every other care — is printed in their own terms. It also names what it cannot deliver: nothing outside this book was opened on either litigant, no record of the suit was consulted, and the object says so in its own text rather than in a footnote.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The question is the third of four the chapter raises, and it is put in the author's own words with an unusual reason for putting it at all. At §33 of libro III, capítulo XXVII of Juan de Solórzano Pereira's Política Indiana, "La tercera question sea, de los que se ausentan de sus Encomiendas, para ir à estudiar à alguna Universidad aprobada, ò estando estudiando, se les defiere la succession de ella, si pódràn ser privados, ò excluydos por esta causa? Y pongola de mejor gana, porque pocos meses ha, que puso pleyto sobre este punto en el Consejo de las Indias" a named litigant. The chapter is not expounding an abstraction: it is reporting a suit the author says was brought a few months before he wrote.
The litigant, his province, his university and his plea are all named on the page, and are given here as the page prints them. The same paragraph continues that the suit was brought by "Don Juan Felix de Heredia, Domiciliario de los Musos en el Nuevo Reyno de Granada, pidiendo, que à él, como à mas benemerito, se le havia de dár una Encomienda, que el Governador de aquella Provincia havia dado à un Capitán Juan de la Peña, no obstante, que ni él, ni otro en su nombre al tiempo de la Provision, huviessen parecido à oponerse: porque decia, que todo esto se le debia suplir por el privilegio del estudio, por cuya causa se ausentó de su patria, y estaba en la Universidad de Salamanca. Y à este Titulo, ò por esta cabeza, pedia restitucion in integrum contra la colacion de la dicha Encomienda, y omissa alegacion de su Derecho, y Justicia." No source outside this book was opened on either man: the persons, the kinship to a province, the university, the plea and the outcome are stated here only as this page prints them. The procedure is worth noting on its own account. An encomienda in New Granada was granted by the provincial governor on a comparison of merits, and a man who thought himself the better candidate could contest the grant in Madrid.
The privilege the claimant relied on is conceded, and conceded in strong terms, before it is cut down. At §34 "Y verdaderamente no se puede negar, que entre otros Privilegios de los Estudios, y Estudiantes en Universidades aprobadas, sea uno, y muy considerable este de escusar de la residencia, aun en los Beneficios Eclesiasticos, como refiriendo muchos textos, y AA. lo resuelve Nicolao Garcia, poniendo la Bula, que llaman Eugeniana, y disputando si esto procede tambien en los Curatos, y si el que se ausenta para este efecto, debe pedir licencia à su Prelado?" A benefice with a duty of residence could be held by a man away at an approved university. That is the rule the encomienda question is measured against.
The civil law is conceded too, and with it the specific remedy the claimant asked for. At §35 "Y asimismo de Derecho Civil es cierto, que esta causa se ha juzgado siempre por bastante, para conceder restitucion à los ausentes, que por respecto de ella incurrieron en alguna pérdida, ò lesion por la clausula general, que llaman, Si qua mihi justa causa videbitur, como lo prueban muchos textos, y AA, y una célebre Glossa, alabada, y exornada por Jasson en un §. de la Instituta." Absence for study had always been held a sufficient cause for restitution against a loss suffered through it.
The Council decided against the student, and the distinction it drew is the substance of the object. At §36 "Pero todavia en el pleyto, que he dicho; el Consejo pronunció no haver lugar la restitucion, que pedia el ausente: porque no trataba de retener, ò recobrar derecho adquirido; sino de adquirirlo de nuevo en perjuicio de otro, que se hallaba legitimamente proveído por el Governador de la Provincia." The privilege of study protects what a man already has. It does not create a claim to what another man has lawfully been given in the meantime. The rival's position is the one the decision protects, and the rival is named on the page as a serving captain.
The second ground is an administrative one and it says something about how these grants were actually made. The same paragraph continues that the governor "no estuvo obligado à buscar, ò adivinar los titulos, meritos, y pretensiones del ausente, como lo dice un buen texto, y él lo estaba, aun quando se hallára possedor de la Encomienda, siquiera de urbanidad, de visitarle, y pedirle licencia para su partida." A governor distributing encomiendas judged the candidates in front of him and was not required to divine the merits of men who were not; the burden of being counted lay on the claimant, who owed the governor at least the courtesy of asking leave before he left.
The author then states his own opinion, and it is stricter than the authority he is disagreeing with. The same paragraph: the licence "tengo por precisa en el Beneficiado, que se quiere ausentar para ir à los Estudios, aunque Nicolas Garcia tenga lo contrario, pues esta ausencia no es repentina, y se remite al arbitrio del Prelado assi por el Derecho antiguo, como por el Santo Concilio de Trento." The reason given is a practical one rather than a doctrinal one: departure for study is planned, not sudden, so there is time to ask.
A fallback duty is then imposed, and it is the one that would have saved the claimant. The same paragraph closes: "Y quando aun en esto faltára, por lo menos pudo, y debió dexar Procurador instructo, y con papeles, y recados bastantes, que en tiempo oportuno acudiera en su nombre à hacer las diligencias, que le conviniessen, y pues esto no hizo, assi se debe imputar, si le passaron en olvido, como lo dicen algunos textos." A man with business pending across an ocean was expected to leave an instructed proctor with the papers; the loss of a claim he did nothing to protect is imputed to himself.
The contrary opinion is printed rather than suppressed, and it carries an argument about students that is worth having on the record. At §37 "Aunque no ignoro, que ay otros, y algunos DD, que dàn à entender, que aunque no dexe Procurador, el que se ausenta por causa de los Estudios, ò proceda mal, el que dexa, todavia se le debe conceder la dicha restitucion. Entre los quales Alverico dice, que siempre lo viò practicar assi, y dá por razon, que los Estudiantes se equiparan à los Soldados, y por el consiguiente deben estàr exonerados, libres, y expedidos de otros qualesquier negocios, y cuidados, por lo qual dixo bien Casiodoro, que la accion militar se llama Expedicion." The equation of students with soldiers is the strongest form of the privilege: both are absent on public business and both are to be left free of every other care. The author reports it, names the doctor who says he always saw it practised, and does not follow it.
One line on the page is not the author's, and it is marked as such. The asterisked cross-reference "Vease à Pedro Gregorio de Rescript. c.23. y 24." printed at the end of §33 is an addition by the Licenciado Francisco Ramiro de Valenzuela, the editor of this 1736 impression, who marks his insertions with asterisks throughout the volume. It is recorded here because the rest of the passage is Solórzano's and the difference matters for anyone quoting it.
What this entry establishes and what it does not. It establishes that in the standard seventeenth-century treatise on the government of Spanish America the question whether study at an approved university excused an encomendero from residence was a live one, argued in a named suit in the Council of the Indies within months of the writing; that the privilege of study was conceded both in the law of benefices and in the civil law of restitution to absentees; that the Council nonetheless refused restitution to the absent claimant on the ground that he was seeking to acquire a grant anew against a man already lawfully provided, and not to keep or recover a right he had; that a provincial governor was held not obliged to seek out the merits of candidates who were not there; that the author held a licence to depart to be required and, failing that, an instructed proctor with papers; and that doctors who equated students to soldiers and would have granted restitution anyway are named and their argument printed. It establishes nothing about what became of Don Juan Felix de Heredia or of Capitán Juan de la Peña, or about the encomienda itself, its Indians or its income: no record of the suit was consulted and no source outside this book was opened on either man. It gives no date for the suit beyond "pocos meses ha" relative to the composition of the chapter. It is not evidence that the rule was applied consistently elsewhere; it is evidence of one decision and of the doctrine the author built around it.