The Colegio de San Nicolás Obispo (Pátzcuaro 1540, Valladolid 1580)
A bishop's college in Michoacán whose royal patent of 1543 states in the crown's own words that it took the sons of legitimate Spaniards, mestizos, and some Indians "por ser Lenguas" so that its students might learn grammar with them and the Indians learn Castilian. Read here from the 1766 printing made by the college itself: free tuition, lectures owed to the Indians who had built the fabric, a rector its own students elected — and a footnote admitting Indians were not ordained for a century.
Why this wins its question: English-language coverage of San Nicolás is a line in a university timeline: founded 1540, ancestor of the Universidad Michoacana. It never quotes the 1543 royal patent, which names mestizos and "algunos Indios, por ser Lenguas" among those the college was to take, and it never reports the clause making the Indians who came for literacy the language teachers of the future ministers. This object prints both from the page, and then prints, from the same book, the three facts that cut against the story: the free lectures were owed to the Indians because their labour built the fabric, the students' election of their rector was abolished, and the college's own historian records that no Indian was ordained in the first century. It also resolves a confusion the printed record created — two colleges of the same title, one at Pátzcuaro and one at Santa Fe de México — by quoting the correction and the page corrected.
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 foundation, in the words of the college's own eighteenth-century historian. Quiroga founded "en su Ciudad de Michoacan en el Barrio de Pascaro" a college under a secular presbyter who was to be Rector of the convictores and Lector of Grammar, admitting "mozos Españoles, y limpios, que no baxassen de 20 años, à instruirse en Latinidad, y materias morales por espacio de quatro años, para que sin demora considerable fuessen utiles à la Iglesia". Pátzcuaro was then the cathedral city of Michoacán and the barrio is the college's first site.
The clause that makes the college unusual, and it is printed as part of the founder's design rather than as a later gloss: Quiroga "llevaba tambien en esta obra el designio de que los Indios agregandose à dicho Colegio con el fin de enseñarse à leer, y escribir, enseñassen à los Colegiales, que avian de ser sus Ministros, su lengua, y aprendiessen la nuestra." The instruction runs in both directions in the same sentence: the Indians who came for literacy were to be the language teachers of the men who would be sent to minister to them.
The crown says the same thing in its own document, and widens it. The royal patent transcribed in the 1766 volume — "Dada en la Ciudad de Barcelona à primero dia del mes de Mayo de mil y quinientos quarenta y tres años. YO EL REY" — recites that Quiroga has begun in the city of Michoacán a hospital for the sick poor "assi Españoles, è Indios", and a college "donde los hijos de los Españoles legitimos, y Mestizos, y algunos Indios, por ser Lenguas, para que puedan mexor aprovechar con ellos deprendan Grammatica, y juntamente con ella los Indios hablar nuestra lengua Castellana, cosa mui util, y necessaria", and accepts the patronazgo of both for the crown in perpetuity. Mestizos and some Indians are named in the royal text; the narrative on the earlier page says Spaniards "y limpios" over twenty. The two statements in the same book do not agree, and neither is suppressed here.
What the college cost and who paid. The colegiales wore a purple bonete to distinguish them from other students; "se enseñassen de valde todas las facultades"; and lectures were to be read "à los Indios de Patzquaro, y de los Barrios, por haver contribuido con su trabajo personal à la fabrica del Colegio" — free instruction owed to the Indians of the town and its barrios because their own labour had built the building. The benefit and the labour that paid for it are stated in one sentence of the same page.
The endowment. The first clause of Quiroga's testamentary memoria is the one declaring the college's foundation; he left it the estancia of Xaripitío with two other haciendas, "que era de lo que hasta entonces se avia sustentado su Illma. en el Obispado", and wrote in his testament that if the college perished "se perderia mucho en ello en lo de Dios, y bien, y servicio de la Iglesia, y Obispado, y doctrina de los Naturales espiritual, y moral". A footnote on the same page records that in 1631 the college sold that hacienda to Juan Díaz Betancur.
Self-government, and its loss recorded by the same source that praises it. Quiroga left the patronato of the hospitals to the Rector jointly with the cathedral chapter, ordained that the colegiales elect their own Rector, and wanted the rectors of both college and hospitals to be its own alumni. Moreno's footnote then states that the students' election "ha sido abolido por los fundamentos mismos", that the University of Mexico likewise stopped students electing their masters, and that "de tiempo immemorial à esta parte, ha quedado esta eleccion privativa del Cabildo de la Iglesia".
The output claim, with the discount it needs. An información of 1576 preserved in the college's archive records ten concordant witnesses, two of them Jesuits, deposing that more than two hundred priests had by then come out of the college, "que instruidos en las lenguas del Reyno, avian predicado, y propagado maravillosamente nuestra Fè"; that a comparable number had entered the religious orders; and that sons of the college held prebends and dignities in all the churches of the kingdom. Confidence is held at 0.7 because Moreno states the purpose of that información in the same sentence — it was made "à fin de conseguir del Rey, cierta merced" — so the witnesses were testifying to obtain a favour, and a further deposition in the same file puts only forty colegiales in the house.
The exclusion, printed in the college's own book. Moreno's footnote states that in the first century after the reduction of the kingdom "no huvo exemplar de que se ordenassen los Indios, ò por ser Neophytos, ò por otros inconvenientes que se pulsaron en esta materia"; that the Mexican Council does not declare them apt for the priesthood; and that Torquemada, writing near the end of that century and treating the point in book 17, chapters 11 to 13, "cita mas que uno, ù otro exemplar, y esto con bastante temor". The same note records that Quiroga's successor Antonio Morales ordained as presbyter "al Rey de Michoacàn, D. Pablo, siendo este el primer Clerigo Indio de que se halla mencion". Confidence sits at 0.7: the note is written to argue that Quiroga foresaw Indians would one day study, and that reading of his motive is the author's.
One named student. A footnote lists among the college's alumni "D. Antonio Vitzimengari, y Mendoza, hijo del ultimo Rey de Michoacàn, Caltzontzi", godson at baptism of Antonio de Mendoza, first viceroy of New Spain, "quien lo embiò aqui con recomendaciones grandes para su educacion, è instruccion"; a disciple of fray Alonso de la Vera Cruz, "mui instruido en las lenguas Hebrèa, Griega, Latina, Castellana, y Michoacanense", afterwards Governor of Tzintzuntzan. The page says how the son was educated and does not say how the father's kingship ended; nothing about that is asserted here.
The move and the merger. When the cathedral was translated from Pátzcuaro to Valladolid the college followed it, the patronato having stayed with the chapter; the provisor Alonso Ruiz then sought its union with a college founded in the pueblo of Guayangareo by the Franciscan fray Juan de San Miguel, and with the consent of the Franciscan provincial and of the bishop fray Juan de Medina Rincón "se celebrò la union del Colegio de San Miguel de esta dicha Ciudad, con el de San Nicolàs Obispo de la de Patzquaro en 10 de Octubre de 1580 años, quatro meses despues de la translacion de la Iglesia". Moreno notes that Guayangareo "en la lengua del Pais, quiere decir, loma chata".
What Quiroga meant to be taught, and what was taught instead. By his disposition nothing was to be read in the college but Grammar, Moral Theology and the penitential canons he had himself compiled — canons which, Moreno writes "con gran sentimiento nuestro", had not survived to 1766. A chair of Philosophy was founded at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Sebastián Gutiérrez de Robles, canónigo magistral and a son of the college, acting as executor of Br. Juan de Beurço, and chairs of Scholastic and of Moral Theology were founded afterwards from the college's own funds.
A warning about the name, checked against the page it corrects. There were two Colegios de San Nicolás in Quiroga's foundations, and the crown's chronicler ran them together. Moreno's footnote says that Gil González Dávila "mescla, y confunde tales cosas en punto de este Colegio, que haze fuerza que un hombre medianamente juicioso no advierta las inconsequencias de sus escritos", specifically that on his page 95 he makes Alonso de la Mota the founder of this college and of the hospitals while confessing elsewhere that they were Quiroga's, and that on page 112 he puts the foundation of San Nicolás at Valladolid. Read on the 1649 sheets themselves, page 95 does carry the list "Fundô el Hospital de S. Fé de Mexico. Otro con el mismo titulo en Mechoacan. Otro en Santa Fé del Rio; el Hospital de Pasquaro. Fundó en Valladolid el Colegio de S. Nicolas" inside the life of a bishop of Puebla who died in 1625 — so the correction can be verified against the printed page it names. This college is the Pátzcuaro foundation; the college of the same title for Indian boys stood at Santa Fe de México.
The witness is an interested one and says so on its title page. The 1766 Fragmentos was written by Juan Joseph Moreno while Rector of the Colegio Primitivo de San Nicolás and printed at the college's charge; it is the house history of the institution it describes. That is why no claim here about the college's fruits carries a confidence above 0.8, and why the two passages that tell against the house — the abolished election and the century without indigenous ordinations — are quoted at length rather than summarised.