Chairs of indigenous languages in the universities of the Indies (from 1580)
From 1580 the crown ordered salaried, competitively filled chairs of the lengua general at the universities of Lima and Mexico and in every city with an audiencia, and forbade bishops in the Indies to ordain any priest who did not hold a certificate from the professor of that language. The motive stated in the law is the teaching of Christian doctrine. The same code records the arrangement failing at Quito.
Why this wins its question: General accounts of language in Spanish America run to a single argument, about Castilian being imposed. The legislation runs the other way and is almost never quoted: state-salaried chairs of the lengua general at Lima and Mexico and at every audiencia from 1580, filled by public competition at four hundred ducados a year, and a rule that no bishop in the Indies ordain a priest without a certificate from the professor of the indigenous language. Those clauses are transcribed here from a digitised printing of the code, with the marginal monarch, place and date for each — and beside them the law's own stated motive, which is conversion, and the law that records the Quito chair producing "ningun buen efecto".
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 rule is Recopilación libro I, título 22 "De las Universidades", ley xxxxvj, headed "Que en las Universidades de Lima y México y Ciudades donde hubiere Audiencias Reales haya Cátedras de la lengua de los Indios", with the marginal provenance "D. Felipe II en Badajoz á 19 de Septiembre, y 23 de Octubre de 1580. Y en Burgos á 14 de Septiembre de 1592. D. Felipe III en Madrid á 24 de Enero de 1614" — a provision issued and reissued across three dates and two reigns.
The reason the law gives is instrumental and is stated first: "LA inteligencia de la lengua general de los Indios es el medio mas necesario para la explicacion y enseñanza de la Doctrina Christiana, y que los Curas y Sacerdotes les administren los Santos Sacramentos." The chairs exist for the clergy and for conversion, not for the indigenous population and not for the languages' own sake.
What was ordered was specific and funded. The universities of Lima and Mexico were to have a chair of the lengua general at the salary their statutes allowed; in all places where there were audiencias and chancillerías chairs were to be instituted anew and given by competition; priests were to have taken the course before going out to the doctrinas — "para que primero que los Sacerdotes salgan á las Doctrinas, hayan cursado en ellas" — and the professor was to be paid four hundred ducados a year from the penas de Cámara, or, where there were none, from the royal treasury.
The requirement had teeth at the point of ordination. Ley lvj, "D. Felipe II en Badajoz á 19 de Septiembre de 1580", charges the archbishops and bishops of the Indies, the sede-vacante chapters and the prelates of the religious orders not to ordain as priests, nor license for ordination, any cleric or religious "que no sepa la lengua general de los Indios de su Provincia", and who does not carry "fe, y certificacion de el Catedrático, que leyere la Cátedra, de que ha cursado en lo que se debe enseñar en ella, por lo ménos un curso entero" — and this even where the candidate has the ability and sufficiency in the faculty that the Church and the sacred canons require.
The law recognised that there was no single language to teach. Ley xxxxviiij, "D. Felipe IIII en el Pardo á 7 de Febrero de 1627", orders the viceroy to found and institute in the university of Mexico City a chair "en que se lean y enseñen públicamente las lenguas de que los Indios mas generalmente en aquella Provincia usan", filled by competition and open only to clerics or to religious of the Society of Jesus; and since those religious do not stand against others in competition, the viceroy is to name a person apart to examine them.
The teaching also ran outside the universities. Ley lj, "D. Felipe II en Madrid á 22 de Febrero de 1580. Y en S. Lorenzo á 11 de Octubre de 1583", grants that the religious of the Society of Jesus may read freely in their college of the Ciudad de los Reyes, at all hours, "Gramática, Retórica, y la lengua de los Indios, y las demas lenguas que quisieren" — with the qualification, in the same law, that students there do not gain university course credit and are not graduated in those studies.
The language condition followed a cleric into his parish. In the título on the Religiosos Doctrineros, ley vij declares that religious once examined and approved for a doctrina need not be examined again by successive prelates — except where cause supervenes, and among the causes it names "falta del idioma", lack of the language, and the case of a man who moves to another doctrina "en que haya y se hable otra lengua", where fresh examination is held to be just.
The code records the policy failing in a named place. Ley lv, "D. Felipe II en Toledo á 12 de Junio de 1591", recites that chairs of the language of the Indians having been ordered founded in the principal cities of the Indies, the one at San Francisco de Quito was given to the Dominicans, who read it in their convent by order of the royal Audiencia; the Audiencia then had it moved to the cathedral, "y de ello no resultó ningun buen efecto, ántes muchos inconvenientes", and the crown restores the chair to the convent and orders the Audiencia not to go against it in any form.
Neighbouring laws show the same títulos funding a conventional European curriculum in the same breath: ley liiij, "D. Felipe II en Madrid á 21 de Enero de 1591", founds a chair of Latin grammar in the Dominican convent at Santiago de Chile at four hundred and fifty pesos of gold a year, "para que la juventud de él pueda aprender Latinidad". The indigenous-language chairs were an addition to that curriculum, not a replacement of it.
What this evidence cannot show is stated here rather than glossed over. The Recopilación is the law as codified, not a record of practice: the pages read give no roll of professors, no attendance, and no measure of how far the ordination rule was enforced. The one practical outcome they report — the Quito chair — is a failure. Any stronger claim about the reach of these chairs needs archival evidence not consulted here.