The university of San Geronimo de la Habana, founded on a bull of 1721 because degrees cost a voyage
Havana's university was asked for by its town council on the ground that its young men had to sail to Salamanca, Mexico or Santo Domingo to take a degree. A papal bull of 1721 and a royal pase of 1728 authorised a Dominican convent to found it "ad instar" of Santo Domingo - whose rulebook, when sought, could not be found, so the doctors had to write their own. Chairs went by public competition, except the first ones.
Why this wins its question: English-language coverage of the university of Havana rarely gets past a founding year, and often gives the year without saying what was actually granted. What is set out here is the mechanism and its failures together: a petition argued on the cost of sending students overseas; a bull of 12 September 1721 and a royal pase of 5 January 1728 authorising a convent to found a university "ad instar" of Santo Domingo; the discovery that Santo Domingo's rulebook could not be located, so that a cedula of 14 March 1732 had to order the doctors to write their own, confirmed 27 June 1734; chairs by public competition for six years, with the first holders explicitly exempt; a rectorship royal in 1728, elective from 1735, and contested in 1820 and 1822. The counterweights come from the same pages rather than from an opposing source - the offices reserved to one religious order, the two armed enslaved lackeys listed among the rector's privileges, and a date the book contradicts two sentences later, which is reported as a contradiction instead of being quietly resolved.
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 stated motive is the cost of distance. The 1859 Apuntes records that the first idea of establishing a university in Havana occurred to a friar named Diego Romero, superior of the province of Santa Cruz, who invited the Ayuntamiento to petition the King to grant the faculty of establishing a university like that of the island of Santo Domingo; and that the Ayuntamiento had before it the pilgrimages which the learning of the faculties cost the natives, since they had to resort to Salamanca, and most of them to Mexico and Santo Domingo, in order to follow literary careers. The founding argument in the record is not prestige but travel.
That page also contradicts itself on the date and the contradiction is reported here rather than tidied away. It places Romero's proposal "por los anos de 1760" and then, in the next sentences, credits the friars with having been supported by the Ayuntamiento "principalmente como se ve en informe que dieron en 1688" and with having obtained the bull of 1721. A proposal of 1760 cannot precede a supporting report of 1688 or a bull of 1721. Both readings are left standing; the earlier one is the more likely but no second source was reachable from this container to settle it, and the confidence is set for that reason.
The instruments are two and are dated precisely. Innocent XIII, by bull issued 12 September 1721, authorised the fathers of the convent of San Juan de Letran to found a university in the likeness of that of Santo Domingo in the island Espanola, in which they should confer degrees in all the faculties; the royal pase was granted by the Supreme Council of the Indies on 5 January 1728. Bachiller adds that when the news reached Cuba the rejoicing was universal, showing itself in public illuminations and such festivities as the period allowed.
The privileges were the Salamanca ones, transmitted at second hand. The privileges conceded to the universities of Lima and Mexico and afterwards to that of Santo Domingo and to Cuba were, the source says, the same that Salamanca had; degrees at Havana were made, until the reform, conceding the privileges enjoyed and possessed by those decorated with the same degree at Alcala and Santo Domingo; and the graduates were accordingly free of pechos, that is exempt from the commoners' tax.
The preamble Bachiller quotes for the whole family of American universities is the crown's own and is worth having in its words: "Para servir a Dios nuestro Senor y bien publico de nuestros reinos, conviene que nuestros vasallos, subditos y naturales, tengan en ellos universidades y estudios generales donde sean instruidos y graduados en todas ciencias y facultades; y por el mucho amor y voluntad de honrar y favorecer nuestras Indias y desterrar de ellas las tinieblas de la ignorancia, criamos, fundamos y constituimos en la ciudad de Lima de los reinos del Peru y ciudad de Mejico de la Nueva Espana, universidades y estudios generales." Havana's foundation is presented as the late member of that series.
The grant did not deliver what it promised, for an administrative reason the source calls as rare as it is significant of the period. The university did not obtain from the outset the graces and privileges the king had conceded it: the approval was "ad instar" of the university of Santo Domingo, but on the rulebook of that university being sought, it was not found, and the consequence was the necessity of forming a new one. By royal cedula of 14 March 1732 the King ordered that its own doctors should draw up the statutes, which they did with the approval of the Captain General, and they were confirmed by the Council of the Indies on 27 June 1734.
Governance was reserved to one order. The rector, vice-rector, conciliarios and secretary had always to be religious, and they kept this right until the recent reform of which the author writes. The arms of the university collected the emblems of that descent - an Agnus Dei for the convent of San Juan de Letran where the institution sat, a mastiff with the torch and the globe for Santo Domingo, and Saint Jerome as patron - with the legend Acad. S. Hier. Conv. S. Joan Lat. ord. predic. Haban., later reduced by suppressing everything that referred to the friars to Acad. S. Hier. Haban.
The chairs were competitive in principle and not at the start. The chairs of the university were conferred by oposicion, that is by public competition, and lasted only six years in the hands of the man who obtained them unless he gained perpetuity from the King; but the first foundations or appointments were made without the requisites of oposicion or limits of duration, and the "catedraticos primerizos", as the statute itself calls them, did not remain subject to the rules established for later vacancies. The exception is written into the statute rather than smuggled past it.
The rectorship was appointed once and elected afterwards, and the elections later became a political matter. The first rector was Fr. Tomas de Linares, named by the King from 1728; those following were chosen annually by the cloister, the first election falling on Fr. Juan Bautista del Rosario Sotolongo on 7 September 1735. In the constitutional period the election of P. Guzman of 7 September 1820 was declared void, and by virtue of that the canon Jose Maria Reina was elected rector on 18 May 1822, seculars being chosen for the other offices as well until the installation of the system of absolute government. The cloister also used the rector's power to add chairs, and by it the class of surgery was founded in 1824 by Dr Fernando Gonzalez del Valle.
One of the graces conceded put slavery inside the university's dignities. In the same passage where the source says the crown poured out every possible favour to give importance and consequence to teaching, and gave jurisdiction to the rector, it records among the faculties granted him that of taking about with him "dos lacayos negros con espadas" - two black lackeys with swords. The privilege and the slave society that furnished it are on the same page and are quoted here from it.
The witness is not an advocate for the institution he describes. Reading out a cloister agreement about books, Bachiller remarks that it proves the respect with which the Stagirite was regarded, "cuya metafisica era tan contraria al cristianismo, que negaba la providencia de Dios", and refers the explanation of the phenomenon to the history of dialectic and logic. A hostile aside of that kind, from a source used elsewhere for the foundation's merits, is the reason the merits above can be reported without discounting them further.