[260] Much of this volume is based upon the statistical analysis of the information contained in the matriculation registers of Castile's universities. Available primarily in manuscript (see below), these registers list the name, town, and diocese of university students and, in a few instances, their ages as well. In addition, they indicate in which faculty each student was enrolled, sometimes by year of study. Furthermore, by the simple addition of the number of students in each faculty, it is possible to determine the total student population of each university at any one time.

The information contained in these registers, however, has many flaws. For example, it is impossible to determine whether the town listed alongside each student's name was his birthplace or merely the commuity in which he was currently residing. Advanced students in many cases appear to have listed the university town itself as their place of origin, and others may have done so as well, but it would be difficult, if not impossible, to know how many students did this. Consequently, one is forced to accept the geographical information provided in the matriculation registers at face value, while recognizing its possible distortions.

There are similar difficulties in dealing with the ages listed for students in the matriculation registers. The students may have lied about their age, but there is no way of checking this except by tracing each student in the baptismal registers of his home town: an exhausting effort, even on the basis of a small sample, and one which would be very difficult to complete. Another problem connected with the age of students is that of determining the average age at which they first matriculated. This calculation is complicated by the fact that every student's age was rounded off to whole numbers. This practice is understandable, but it does tend to distort slightly the mean age of each beginning class.

Still another problem in dealing with the matriculation registers involves that of determining the total student population of each university. There were students who failed to matriculate, matriculants who were never students, and other students who matriculated twice (see pp. 166-67). [261] Moreover, in one year university authorities may have made certain that every student matriculated, while in others they may have been more lax. This would cause figures for university matriculations to fluctuate, even though the actual student population may have remained steady. There is no way of knowing, however, whether such inconsistencies ever took place or the extent to which the matriculation books are distorted or incorrect. One is obliged, therefore, to accept these registers as they are, albeit, of course, with caution.

Despite these problems, historians of Spain are fortunate in that so many matriculation registers have survived. Those employed in this study are listed below.
 
 

University	Archive	Years
Alcalá de Henares	AHN: Univs., libs. 431 ff.	c. 1550-1834a
Avila	Convento de Santo Tomás (Avila)	17th & 18th centuries
Baeza	Instituto de Enseñanza Secondaria (Baeza)	c. 1560-c. 1820
Granada	AUG	only fragments, 17th & 18th centuries
Irache	AGN: Instrucción Publica	17th & 18th centuries
Oñate	AUV: libs. 313-25	1640-1845
Osuna	Instituto de Enseñanza Secondaria (Osuna)	1598-1810
Salamanca	AUS: libs. 268-539	1546-1835b
Santiago de Compostela	AUSC: leg. 65; libs. A 227 ff.	c. 1650-19th century
Seville	AUSA: libs. 478-515	1546-1840
Sigüenza	AHN: Univs. libs. 1283-87 f.	fragments: 17th & 18th centuries
Toledo	AHP: Toledo	fragments; 18th & early 19th century
Valladolid	AUV: libs 32-86	1567-1865

^a In that year, Alcalá became the Universidad Central de Madrid. Subsequent matriculation registers are stored in the archive of that university located in the Calle de San Bernardo, Madrid.
^b Subsequent matriculation registers for Salamanca are in the archive of the university rectory.
Note: The matriculation registers of the University of Oviedo were destroyed by aerial bombing during the Spanish Civil War, but they were previously summarized in F. Canella y Secades, Historia de la Universidad de Oviedo (Oviedo, 1903), app. XIV. Montells y Nadal, Universidad de Granada, vol. II, has done the same for this university's registers, many of which were destroyed in an archival fire.