Students and Society in Early Modern Spain
Richard L. Kagan
Chapter Six
Recruitment to Office
[88] When the letrado hierarchy was still in its infancy, that is, during the reign of the Catholic kings, chroniclers tell us that the rulers were able to make letrado appointments themselves. According to one account, Ferdinand and Isabel carried with them a little book in which they jotted down the names of persons qualified for office whom they happened to meet in their travels. When a vacancy occurred, they had only to consult this book to find the right man. (1) However romanticized, this picture of Ferdinand and Isabel making their appointments directly, without the formal help of intermediaries, suggests that the rulers themselves were able to set the standards through which letrados would gain access to royal office. These were relatively straightforward. Office-holders were required to be at least twenty-six years of age (twenty-five was the legal age of majority), to have studied jurisprudence for the requisite number of years at a recognized university, and, after 1505, to be versed in the laws of the realm. (2) Before assuming their posts, officials were to be examined by the Royal Council, but it is questionable whether these examinations were always carried out.
In many instances these educational criteria took precedence over those of geography, racial background, and social rank. Despite protests from Castilians, "foreigners" from the Crown of Aragón were known to have assumed important places in Castilian government, and even qualifled conversos -- notably Doctors Micer Alfonso de la Caballería and Cabrero, both members of the Royal Council -- gained access to letrado posts. (3) Furthermore, it was possible for a letrado of lowly origin to assume important posts in the royal government. The councillors Pedro de Oropesa, Palacios-Rubios, and Toribio Gómez de Santiago came from "peasant stock," although most of the royal councillors belonged to Castile's large noble but often poor and landless hidalgo class. (4) Doctor [89] Galíndez de Carvajal, a royal councillor himself, wrote that the Catholic kings appointed "skilled, prudent persons even though they were of the middle classes," (5) while Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, writing in the mid-sixteenth century, said: "The Catholic Kings placed the administration of justice and public affairs into the hands of letrados, people mid-way between the great and the small... whose profession was the law." (6) Apparently, technical skills and individual merit in the era of the Catholic kings determined nomination to letrado posts more than family tradition or distinguished birth.
With employment therefore resting largely upon a university education in jurisprudence, the burden of training the crown's letrados fell directly upon Castile's leading universities: Salamanca and Valladolid. Graduates from these institutions dominated the magistracy, and from time to time professors left their university chairs for the more lucrative and honored places offered by the crown. Lorenzo Galíndez de Carvajal, who left his professorship at Salamanca in 1504 for a place on the Royal Council of Castile, is a case in point. (7)
Among the new graduates employed by the crown, those from the Colegio Mayor de San Bartolomé at Salamanca attracted special attention. Noted for its high academic standards, rigid discipline, and a tradition of training civil and ecclesiastical officials, this small college provided Ferdinand and Isabel with no fewer than eight royal councillors, six bishops, and numerous lesser officials. (8) With this outstanding record, it is little wonder that a contemporary proverb stated: "all the world is filled with the sons of San Bartolomé." (9)
After the deaths of the Catholic kings and their immediate successor, the Cardinal-Regent Cisneros, Castile's direct, personal methods of appointment gradually disappeared. The rapid expansion of the Spanish dominions and the size of royal government rendered the old procedures obsolete. Charles V was always on the move, frequently far away from Castile, and the business of letrado appointments fell to the president of the Royal Council of Castile and the royal secretary, Francisco de los Cobos. Together they gathered the necessary information and prepared short memoranda or consultas which outlined the merits of prospective candidates for offices. From these consultas the monarch made the final choice. After the death of Cobos in 1547, the presidents of the Royal [90] Council were obliged to prepare the consultas alone, although during much of the reign of Philip II, Mateo Vázquez, one of the king's favored secretaries, frequently intervened in this work. (10)
Although the basic criteria of recruitment set by the Catholic kings were never formally altered during the reigns of Charles V and his son, they narrowed as the letrado officials who gained control of appointments sought to recruit men of backgrounds similar to their own. This quest for homogeneity, so typical of sixteenth-century Castilian life, tended to sacrifice appointments made solely upon individual merits and skills without regard to birth, blood, or social origin; indeed, in the long run, this quest gradually undermined the ideals set by the Catholic kings.
One of the first results of this contraction was a "Castilianization" of letrado government in Castile. Following the disruptive series of revolts known as the Comunero risings (1520-21), disturbances which were themselves partially directed against the presence of Flemish officials at the Castilian court of Charles V, "foreigners" from Spain's eastern kingdoms and other parts of the empire were excluded from the central government of Castile. (11) Completed by the 1540s, this policy of territorial segregation remained in effect over the following centuries, helping to promote mutual suspicion and distrust within the kingdom of Spain, particularly in the years leading up to the revolts of Catalonia and Portugal in 1640.
Parallel with the drive against territorial "foreigners" was that against "foreigners" of religion and blood. The reign of Charles V brought the century-old persecution of conversos to a head, and this problem mingled with fears of Lutheran infiltration in Spain. First those whose forefathers were brought before the inquisition were excluded from official posts, (12) then a movement to ban from public office anyone of converso lineage, by guilt of ancestry alone, gathered strength. Despite opposition, Spain's cathedrals, beginning with Toledo's ruling of 1547, barred conversos from their offices. (13) In secular posts, custom rather than statutes had the same effect. (14) Though individuals of questionable lineage, or those who had managed to hide that fact, still received appointments from time to time, by the end of the century such officials were few and regarded [91] with suspicion and distrust. In 1590, for example, Philip's secretary, Mateo Vázquez, reviewing a consulta on openings in the Royal Council, advised: "It is a pity that Agustín Alvarez is not considered to be pure of blood because... I consider him the best of all possible candidates." (15) Needless to say, Alvarez did not receive the post.
The triumph of limpieza de sangre within the royal administration was only one manifestation of the general contraction in the criteria of appointment. Educational requirements faced a new, more stringent interpretation as well. As more and more letrados clamored for office, standards were raised, turning most of the applicants away. There were, of course, exceptions and oversights as the following petition, read in the Cortes of 1548, suggests: "We beg Your Majesty to enforce the laws which stipulate that no letrado shall receive an office unless he has studied ten years in a university, because, by not enforcing it, the nation suffers when young men of little experience and letters hold important posts of justice." (16) And though it may be true that a few letrados entered government posts with less than the required training, especially in the lesser temporal offices of justice, most evidence suggests that the standards for recruitment were on the rise. During the reign of the Catholic kings, for example, bachilleres, that is, students holding a first degree, were fairly common in important letrado posts, (17) but in the course of the following century they disappeared; advanced graduates, licentiates, and doctors, enjoyed a monopoly. (18) Such a change was indicative of a "professionalization" of letrado government that was introduced largely at the initiative of the letrados themselves. Those in high office made sure that the king appointed only the advanced and supposedly competent students from the swelling crowd of university graduates. And, consequently, as men with these qualifications reached positions with a say in the distribution of office, they made certain that new recruits were of backgrounds similar to their own.
Such considerations led to a preference for university instructors. Throughout the Middle Ages professors of law in Castile had served as legal advisors for the crown, but after the development of the letrado hierarchy, they were at a premium. More and more professors, lured by the lucrative offices offered by the crown, abandoned the universities. During the reign of Charles V ex-professors constituted approximately one-fifth of the letrados named to the Royal Council of Castile and the [92] chancillería of Valladolid, and by the reign of Philip II they accounted for as many as 40 percent of the men elected to the plazas de asiento of Castile. (19)
On a par with the professors were the graduates of the colegios mayores.
These communities, famous for their rigid purity of blood statutes and
high academic standing, must have been an ideal source for royal officials,
and their reputation was enhanced by the large number of university instructors
included among their members. Such credentials assured the colegiales of
a high place on the monarchy's list of preferred graduates, and former
members of the colegios mayores, already in government offices, provided
an extra push (Table 4). Those in important positions
served as living examples of the high-caliber officials the colleges could
produce, and, in addition, they openly praised their almae matres while
actively favoring fellow colegiales in the distribution of office. An incident
of this nature took place in 1543 when Pablo de Talavera, a member of the
Colegio Mayor de Santa Cruz (Valladolid), accepted the see of the Puebla
de los Angeles in the New World. He was said to have received this appointment
when he was still a student "by his own merits and the favor of our colegial,
don Sebastian Ramírez, Bishop of Cuenca, who had much influence
in the business of the Indies." (20) The
College of Santa Cruz had another influential graduate -- Toribio Alfonso
Mogrovejo, Archbishop of Lima. His letter in 1589 to his old college reads:
"...please inform me... about the appointments which the college receives
and employ me in your service for that will give me great satisfaction
as a son of that Holy House whose prosperity I much desire. Licentiates
Salinas and Carillo who have come to these regions and about whom I received
letters from the college, I have accommodated with visitations in this
archbishopric worth 500 pesos apiece." (21)
This service, however, was not rendered without strings. Mogrovejo went
on to thank the college for admitting his relative, the Licentiate Villagómez,
to a scholarship.
The powerful presidents of the Royal Council of Castile also extended their favor to colegio mayor graduates. The Marquis of Mondéjar, neither a colegial nor a letrado, supposedly advised Philip II to appoint colegiales, (22) and Cardinal Espinosa maintained close ties with his old College of Cuenca in Salamanca, which sent him lists of colegiales available for office. (23) Espinosa's affection for the colegios mayores was also put [94] into practice; during his presidency, eleven of the sixteen letrados named to the Royal Council and nearly one-half of the letrados named to the tribunals at Granada and Valladolid -- stepping stones to the higher councils -- were colegiales. Shortly after his death, an anonymous author, commenting upon favoritism in royal appointments, reported that "it also appears that when former colegiales become councillors or presidents, they are inclined to favor colegiales in the appointments to office they make." (24) A 1585 consulta of the president of the Council of the indies illustrates this author's words. In this memo, Hernando de Vega y Fonseca, a graduate of San Bartolomé, tells the king that "...it would be very good for your Royal Service if colegiales wish to serve in those regions [the Indies] because they are commonly well-born, virtuous, and letrados; they would govern well and even for the places in this council [of the Indies] they would be most appropriate." (25)
A glance at the number of colegiales reaching offices influential in the recruitment of new crown officials helps to explain the advantage they held over ordinary graduates. Six of the fourteen presidents of the Royal Council of Castile who served under Charles V and Philip II were former colegiales, and over one-half of the presidents of the Indies were of similar backgrounds. (26) Moreover, the presidencies of the chancillerías of Granada and Valladolid, key offices in appointments, since their reports were usually the bases for promotions to the upper councils, were also monopolized by colegiales mayores; eighteen of the twenty-eight officials to oc-cupy these two offices during the sixteenth century were of this background. (27)
Thus through a mixture of merit and achievement, past example and patronage, members of the colegios mayores continually moved from the universities into government posts. By the close of the sixteenth century, their representation in the important plazas de asiento was routine (see Table 4).
Under the later Habsburgs the recruitment practices initiated by the council presidents of the sixteenth century remained more or less the same. Dissatisfied with the quality of the consultas which the overworked presidents of Castile prepared and with the apparent short-comings of many of the letrado officials he had himself appointed, Philip II in 1588 organized a new council, the Real Cámara de Castilla, to handle the work of royal patronage, both clerical and lay. (28) Appointments in Castile remained [95] under the Cámara's jurisdiction until the eighteenth century, when its work was centralized in the office of the Secretary for Grace and Justice. Previously, the Cámara, composed of the president and the most senior members of the council of Castile, had jealously guarded its prerogatives, and under the pressure of work, its membership grew from an original complement of four to seven or eight. It remained, however, the preserve of the senior letrado officials in Castile, men who had spent their lives in the service of the crown. With this experience their competence over the business of appointments developed rapidly; meanwhile, the influence of the royal secretaries and other court officials in the business of patronage declined, while the king's dependency upon the Cámara to make just and meritous appointments increased. The camaristas were, of course, expected to be above corruption of any form, but such expectations were never realized; ties of blood and fraternity proved too strong for even the most senior and devoted of the crown's servants to overcome. In spite of these shortcomings, the Cámara, virtually independent in its judgments, contributed a greater degree of continuity and uniformity to the selection of letrado officials than the council presidents and the royal secretaries of the past. This "bureaucratization" of appointment procedures fixed the type of individual nominated to office, and in this manner the second century of Habsburg rule created a civil service with a common blood, background, and, above all, education.
It would be superfluous to discuss the continuing importance of the requirements of age, purity of blood, and territorial origin for appointments to letrado offices; they each remained in force. The letrado hierarchy also remained a hidalgo hierarchy, even though the average social rank of its members was on the rise. Letrados of "peasant stock" disappeared, and those from the other end of the social scale were more numerous, (29) but on the whole the letrado hierarchy remained just that -- the one sector of royal government dominated by families who owed their wealth and importance to the study of law. By the opening of the seventeenth century many of these families had a history of letrado officials which dated back to Ferdinand and Isabel. In the course of time they had intermarried time and time again, and sons of these alliances followed letrado careers. In this manner great letrado dynasties gradually emerged, among them the Arce y Otalora, Blanco de Salcedo, Corral y Arellano, Camporredondo y Rio, Manso de Zúñiga, Marquez de Prado, Queipo de Llano, Quiroga, Ronquillo y Briceño, Santos de San Pedro, and Trejo y Paniagua. Often in control of the Cámara and the Royal Councils, officials from this core of families were anxious for the appointment of new [96] letrados from their own caste. Under these circumstances, family connections and services became essential criteria in appointments, contributing to the formation of a restricted social class from which the letrado hierarchy drew a majority of its new recruits.
The consultas of the Cámara clearly reflect this development. (30) The importance of family ties, especially those concerned with the services and offices of relatives, past and present, grew considerably in the short biographies about each candidate these memos contained. The same family names appear again and again in the consultas, consequently, in the offices, suggesting the growing consolidation of the letrado class, but the lack of precise knowledge about family ties among the leading letrado officials does not allow more than a few examples of how certain clans managed to occupy a wide variety of offices. One was the Santos de San Pedro family which had at least nine members in important offices in the seventeenth century alone. Among them were two councillors of Castile, one of the indies, two of the Military Orders, two who served on the chancillería of Valladolid, two bishops, and another who acquired a canonry in the cathedral of León. Four other Santos de San Pedro presumably would have received similar appointments had they not died while still at university. (31)
Rivaling the Santos de San Pedro were the Ronquillo y Briceño. Antonio Ronquillo, son of an alderman in Arevalo, was an oidor on the Royal Council of Castile in the time of Philip IV. Pedro de Ronquillo y Briceflo, either the son or nephew of Antonio, occupied a number of audiencia posts before being named to the Royal Council. He eventually became the second Count of Grasnedo, while his brother, Antonio, oidor on the Supreme Council of the Inquisition, married the third Countess of Francos. She was the daughter of Gerónimo Miguel Ramos de Mançano, a councillor of Castile, and granddaughter of the first Count of Francos, Francisco Ramos de Mançano, who had been a member of the Royal Council of Castile as well. This alliance created a vast letrado clan whose members regularly appeared thereafter in important government posts. (32)
But these are only two of the many families and clans spread throughout the letrado hierarchy. To discover all of the links and connections that existed among the letrado families and that were so important to appointments, the structure of court factions, and policymaking itself would be an immense undertaking, one that would require a detailed prosopography of the leading letrados in Castile. Without this kind of information, merely to list those families who seem to have captured a particularly large [97] or wide variety of offices would give a distorted, perhaps inaccurate and certainly incomplete picture of the whole. Nevertheless, it would be correct to assume that family ties in the course of the seventeenth century played an increasingly important, indeed, crucial, role in the distribution of letrado offices.
Family ties, however, never superseded a university background in jurisprudence as the primary requisite for letrado posts. If the monarch, as he did on occasion, saw fit to appoint an official who lacked the necessary academic credentials, the Cámara usually reacted with a strong protest. Such an incident occurred in 1611 when Philip III named Licentiate Luis Pardo de Lago to an office in the audiencia of Seville. (33) The ostensible reason for this appointment was Pardo's forthcoming marriage to an important woman at court. But Pardo had never been recommended by the Cámara, which argued that the concession of letrado office via the "marriage road" set a very bad precedent; it would dissuade the nation's youth from attending universities and colleges when it became apparent that other means to obtain valued letrado posts existed. In subsequent incidents of this nature, the Cámara's arguments remained unchanged. (34) Its members were not inherently opposed to allowing considerations such as marriage and family ties to influence their appointments, but as officials with defined duties they resented the king's ability to ignore their care-fully prepared consultas at will. The camaristas were experienced professionals, intent on making appointments according to plan and equally intent on keeping the educational requirements for office intact. In this way they could limit the number of applicants and also have a weapon to use against the king's occasional caprice. Accordingly, the consultas of the seventeenth century continued to place a heavy emphasis on the academic credentials of potential office-holders, including those referring to senior positions where other considerations might be expected to carry more weight. The result was that even candidates from the most influential letrado clans were obliged to have the necessary university background.
This was unmistakable. Notwithstanding the rise of new universities Since the time of the Catholic kings, graduates from Salamanca and Valladolid, and to a lesser degree, from Cisneros's University of Alcalá de Henares, commanded the greatest respect, almost to the total exclusion of graduates from other institutions. (35) Though existing appointment records are incomplete, it would appear that as many as 90 percent of Castile's [98] plazas de asiento went to graduates of these three universities, and even this figure could be raised slightly if one included those who attended but did not graduate from these institutions. So lop-sided was the distribution of office that the Count-Duke of Olivares, a patron of the College of Santa Maria de Jesús in Seville, asked Philip IV in 1622 and again in 1628 to remind the Cámara to recommend graduates from that college for corregimientos and plazas de asiento in Castile. (36)
Alcalá, Salamanca, and Valladolid owed their success primarily to a reputation for excellence which none of the other universities could match. Also in their favor was the sheer weight of numbers. Together Salamanca and Valladolid produced more advanced graduates in civil law than all of the other universities combined, although in canon law this was not the case. (37) But tradition also worked in favor of the major universities; the officials influential in appointments were graduates of Alcalá, Salamanca, and Valladolid, and they selected new officials for the same reasons. Under these circumstances it was difficult for graduates from other institutions to compete.
As in the sixteenth century, the graduates most in demand were those in university teaching posts. Instructors from Alcalá, Salamanca, and Valladolid accounted for at least one-half and probably more of the appointments made to the two chancillerías between 1599 and 1700. (38) instructors from other universities no doubt represented a proportion of the remaining officials, but owing to a shortage of faculty lists for these institutions it is impossible to know exactly how many.
Graduates of the colegios mayores also maintained their strong positions in the plazas de asiento (see Table 4). They were aided in this by their continuing success in the competitions for university teaching posts, (39) but, as in the past, other considerations were at work to allow these small communities to produce so many university instructors and, consequently, letrado officials for the crown. The case of Licentiate Egas Vanegas de Girón, graduate of the College of Cuenca, later alcalde de crimen in Valladolid, is instructive. In 1589 Mateo Vázquez requested the president of Valladolid's chancillería to prepare a report on Girón, who was then alcalde. Vázquez commented that Girón could not "construe two phrases of Cicero" and that he had heard other things about the alcalde's lack of "qualities," but he wanted to know about Girón's work as a magistrate. The president answered: "I do not believe he knows much [99] about letters." (40) Girón apparently tried to make up for his scholarly shortcomings through hard work, but he still could not merit a recommendation. Nevertheless, he was promoted to the Council of the Military Orders in 1600.
A 1645 report by the Bishop of Salamanca on the university of that city gives some further hints about the actual academic qualifications of some colegiales. (41) One licentiate from the college of San Bartolomé, according to the bishop, "has studied very little and has almost never attended lectures." The following year this student, don Carlos de Vargas y Heraso, son of the head groom of the royal princess, was appointed oidor in Seville. Another "mediocre student without any luster" from San Bartolomé, don Pedro Gamarra, became alcalde de hijosdalgo in Valladolid in 1649, while a student of "few qualifications and letters," don Gabriel Meléndez, also a member of San Bartolomé, was subsequently appointed alcalde in the audiencia of Seville in 1656. He was the son of the governor of la Florida, a fact not unrelated to his appointment. Although many colegiales merited promotions to office in terms of talent, others, like the above, were eased into important positions through a variety of questionable means.
Past example and the prestige of former graduates bolstered the reputation of qualified and unqualified colegiales alike. The seventeenth century in Castile marked an age in which family, confraternity, college, and faction were every bit as important to one's identity (let alone qualifications for office) as the person himself. Reputation, therefore, was largely a product of time, the past weighed heavily on the present and under these conditions the colegios mayores could not fail to reap considerable rewards. In their correspondence with the Royal Council, seldom did they neglect to refer to the string of councillors, magistrates, bishops, and other officials they had produced in the past. (42) The glories of yesterday implied superiority today, and to a monarchy which looked more to the past than the future for inspiration, this technique brought about satisfactory results.
The influence and help afforded by old graduates was more direct. Once in office, former colegiales generally kept in close touch with their old community, informing them of their promotions and offering aid if ever it was required. (43) A number of graduates served as court agents for their colleges, attempting to influence appointments, law-suits, and other business in which the colleges had a stake. (44) Considering the fact that the [100] presidents of the royal councils and tribunals, as well as the councillors themselves, were colegiales mayores more often than not, (45) the University of Salamanca was probably correct when it complained to Charles II that "the judges of Your Council... are partisans, ... solicitors and agents for the Colleges." (46)
Little wonder then that the Cámara de Castilla in 1608 could inform Philip III that "when a colegial wins a professorship his qualifications are outstanding." (47) A few days later, the Cámara in a similar vein noted "that the colleges are filled with subjects worthy of appointment because of their qualifications, studies, letters, and exemplary lives and customs." (48) A list of eight colegiales available for office followed and, even though none had been specifically proposed in the consulta, two received offices immediately. Support of this nature continued throughout the century, with the Cámara acting to protect the interests of younger colegiales whenever their positions on the ladder of promotion were threatened by the king. Just such an incident occurred in 1679 when Charles II challenged the Cámara on its decision to favor two inexperienced students resident in the colegios mayores for a vacant position of alcalde de crimen in Valladolid ahead of Diego de Vaquerizo, an experienced alcalde de hijosdalgo in the same tribunal. Adopting a defensive tone, the Cámara replied: "We have always taken into consideration the manner and circumstances under which some subjects entered ministerial positions and upon occasion we have proposed to Your Majesty others who have excelled in academic titles, professorships, and literary skill within their colleges and universities. To the latter we give preference." (49)
In part, the Cámara's open support of the colegios mayores dated from the time when the councillors of Castile received the right to appoint university instructors at Alcalá, Salamanca, and Valladolid. This task first came to the council in 1623 after corruption in the elections through which students elected their instructors had become intolerable, although it was handed back to the students nine years later, since the council had shown itself equally corrupt, openly distributing university chairs to relatives, friends, and fellow colegiales. (50) The following years brought an extended debate on the best means to appoint instructors; in the meantime, the power of appointment shifted back and forth between the students and the Council of Castile. The latter, controlled by colegio mayor graduates [101] and partisans, in alliance with the colleges themselves, fought persistently to keep the vote away from the students; if the councillors could control appointments to teaching posts, they could also control entrance to important letrado offices. Relatives and protégés could therefore be guaranteed a secure career. The outcome of these debates was the permanent return of the power to appoint university instructors to the Royal Council in 1641, and by this act colegio mayor domination of university teaching posts and, consequently, of the plazas de asiento was assured. The colegio mayor "faction," perhaps the best term to describe those who exercised influence on behalf of these communities, had emerged victorious, and this victory was to have important results for the subsequent history of the colegios mayores as well as the Castilian government and society itself.
Exploiting their friends on the Royal Council, colegiales moved regularly into teaching positions and official posts. Promotion was almost automatic, and it was common knowledge that the son or nephew of a government official who obtained a beca (a scholarship in a college) would have a secure political future. But becas were few, while the colleges controlled elections to their ranks giving them the power to bargain So it was even common among those councillors and officials who were not party to the colleges to back colegiales for professorships and jobs, since this support might improve the chances of their sons in the competition for becas. Conversely, the colleges could not afford to be too independent of the council which possessed the keys to promotion. This mutual dependency grew stronger and stronger. The council and the Cámara moved colegiales into jobs in order to acquire becas, hence future jobs for their families and friends. (51) But inasmuch as admission to the valued letrado posts was regulated largely by colegio mayor membership and professorships, letrados also needed close connections with families influential at court or with officials high in the letrado hierarchy to obtain promotions. Those who lacked the necessary ties of family and college found themselves hard-pressed to secure either a beca, a teaching post, or an important job. In the course of the seventeenth century this intricate web of obligations was perhaps the most significant contribution toward the consolidation of the families and clans in control of letrado government, indeed, toward the consolidation of a "nobility of the robe" in Castile. At the same time it transformed the colegios mayores, communities designed io harbor the university's academic elite, into institutions which catered for an elite of power and wealth who were more interested in future jobs than in scholarly excellence and the university routine.
The close links between the Royal Council and the colleges attracted both the attention and the criticism of contemporaries. One of the first to consider the impact of these ties was the Count-Duke of Olivares. He [102] recognized that the colegio mayor monopoly served only to dampen the zeal of ordinary students for study and that this in turn was damaging not only to the universities but the monarchy as well, since it tended to reduce the number of graduates who were qualified to enter government office. (52) Yet it was an anonymous author, writing in the early eighteenth century, who best elucidated the nature of these ties. He claimed that ever since the colegiales had gained control of the Royal Council, "they have regularly offered professorships, and, consequently, offices to men from their own colleges who were also their sons, relatives, countrymen, or friends and from this has resulted a situation in which the councils and tribunals as well as bishoprics, canonries, and other letrado offices are filled with Colegiales Mayores." (53) He added that "the councillors need the colegiales so that the latter can give becas to their sons, relatives, and friends, while the colegiales need the former for their posts." Although slightly exaggerating the extent of colegio mayor control, this author outlined the means by which the ordinary university student, the manteista, was excluded from the important positions in the letrado hierarchy.
As long as the colegios mayores preserved their close ties with the Royal Council, criticism of their power and influence continued unabated. Then, toward the middle of the eighteenth century, a movement to abolish the colegios mayores gathered strength. Influential critics such as Francisco Pérez Bayer, tutor to the royal infantes, subsequently exposed the colleges' close connections with the officials of the letrado hierarchy, but no author described this situation more clearly and succinctly than Melchor de Macanaz, fiscal of the Royal Council of Castile in the reign of Philip V. He wrote that
... all the officials in the Councils and the Chanceries make their posts not only perpetual but also hereditary in their house and family. The method of it is this. ln the three leading universities of Spain there are six colegios mayors where the young enter to study. Those who enter are the sons, nephews, brothers, and cousins of officials. The student who applies himself manages after several years to get a lectureship. For every one who succeeds, twenty fail and obtain posts outside. As many as enter the university, therefore, leave with an official post in the Audiencias or Chanceries, and from there they go on to the councils. There is no instance of anyone, however ignorant he may be, being refused an official post. (54)Furthermore, these same family ties aided those colegiales who were interested in ecclesiastical careers, since the Cámara mantained the right to appoint a wide range of ecclesiastical offices, including those of the episcopacy itself. In practice, the camaristas extended their criteria of appointment to the church with only a minimum of changes, allowing the [104] colegiales mayores to capture nearly 40 percent of the Castilian sees in the seventeenth century (Table 5), while the remaining appointees were primarily law graduates from Alcalá, Salamanca, and Valladolid. (55) The inquisition, although outside the Cámara's patronage and jurisdiction was headed by generals who were colegiales as often as not and by a Supreme Council that was often under colegio mayor control. (56) Consequently, college graduates were able to obtain magisterial positions in the Holy Office without difficulty. (57)
[105] The remainder of this book is an attempt to assess how the evolution of the letrado hierarchy, superimposed on the ups and downs of early education, the economy, and other aspects of Castilian life, affected the evolution of Castile's universities in the years between 1500 and 1808. This survey intends to present on the one hand a picture of university life and on the other, an investigation into the wider problem of the relationship between education and social change. This is a huge topic; consequently, it is perhaps best to begin with the colegios mayores, a small sector of the academic world but the part that was linked most directly with the world of office and honor and whose history was crucial to that of the universities themselves.
1. See Galíndez de Carvajal, "Anales Breves del Reinado de los Reyes Cathólicos," CODOIN, 18: 229, 235. I have outlined the procedures through which letrado officials were appointed in greater detail in Kagan, "Education and the State," chap. IV.
2. Neuva Recopilación, Lib. III, tit. ix, ley 2; Cortes de Toro, 1505, ley 2.
3. See Kamen, Spanish Inquisition, pp. 19-20. Galíndez de Carvajal, "informe que... dio al Emperador Carlos V...," CODOIN, 1: 124.
4. See ibid., pp. 122-27; Torrenaz, Los Consejos del Rey Durante La Edad Media (Madrid, 1884), 1: 199ff; and AGS: NC, leg. 1.
5. Galindez de Carvajal, "Anales Breves...," p. 229.
6. Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Guerra de Granada, ed. Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 21 (Madrid, 1852), p. 70.
7. See Esperabé Artega, Historia Pragmática é Interna de la Universidad de Salamanca (Salamanca, 1914), 1: 356-361. For more about Galíndez de Carvajal, see Beltrán de Heredia Cartulario de la Universidad de Salamanca (Salamanca, 1971), 3: 283-96.
8. See AGS: NC. leg. 1 and Roxas y Contreras, Historia del Colegio Viejo de San Bartolomé (3 vols., Madrid, 1766), vol. 1, which lists San Bartolomé's students and the offices they held.
9. Cited in Reynier, La Vie Universitaire dans l'Ancienne Espagne (Paris, 1902), p. 182.
10. See Kagan, "Education and the State," chap. IV and Escudero, Secretarios, vol. 1, pp. 187-93.
11. One of the leading proponents of this policy was the president of the chancillería of Valladolid, Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa, Bishop of Málaga, who advised the new monarch to fill the posts of each of his kingdoms with natives of the region, "Castile for the Castilians, those of Aragon for the Aragonese, those of Flanders for the Flemish, and those of Germany for the Germans, because this conforms with reason..." (Olmedo, Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa 1459-1537 [Madrid, 1944], p. 118).
12. See Kamen, Spanish Inquisition, pp. 120-21.
13. Ibid., p. 123. Also useful is A.A. Sicroff, Les Controverses des Statuts "Pureté de Sang" en Espagne du XVe au XVIIe Siècle (Paris, 1960).
14. "Purity of blood" became a vital qualification for office, as the following exerpt from a consulta of Cardinal Tavera, president of the Royal Council (1534-39), to Charles V suggests: "It is essential to have Old Christians as Councillors of the Indies because conversos will not give good counsel" (AGS: EE, leg. 13, folio 43).
15. BM: Add. 28,263, folio 544.
16. Cortes de Valladolid, 1548, pet. 38.
17. For lists of these officials see AGS: NC, leg. 1; CMC, 1a época, leg. 1587. Between 1480 and 1517 there were at least 18 bachilleres who served on the Royal Council of Castile and the chancillerías of Granada and Valladolid.
18. In 1529 a Bachiller Miranda appeared as an alcalde de crimen on the chancillería of Valladolid for five months, probably in the absence of another magistrate. Two years later Miranda was officially named to this post, but on this occasion he was listed as a licentiate; ACV: Libros de Acuerdos.
19. I arrived at these estimates by matching my own lists of tribunal and counciliar magistrates in Habsburg Spain (Kagan, "Education and the State," chap. V) with published lists of instructors at the universities of Salamanca (Esperabé Artega, Universidad de Salamanca, vol. 2) and Valladolid (Alcocer Martínez, Historia de la Universidad de Valladolid [6 vols., Madrid, 1918-31], vol. 3). Since similar lists of instructors for Castile's other universities are generally not available; these estimates may well be too low.
22. Roxas y Contreras, Colegio Viejo, 2: 319.
23. BM: Add. 28,352, folios 61-62.
24. AGS: DC, leg. 5-106, "Memorial para el Rey Don Felipe II..."
25. AGI: IG, leg. 741, ramo 1, no. 6, consulta of 4.V.1585.
26. See Kagan, "Education and the State," p. 131.
28. The only appointments outside its jurisdiction were those of the inquisition, which were handled by the Inquisitor General, offices within the estates of the Military Orders which belonged to the Council of the Military Orders, certain financial charges that were filled by the president of the Council of Finance, military offices which were the work of the Council of War, and posts in the New World which remained the prerogative of the president and Council, and later of the Cámara, of the Indies.
29. Títulos in the letrado hierarchy included Baltasar de la Cueva y Enríquez, councillor of the Indies; Antonio de Aragón y Córdoba, Alonso de Aguilar y Córdoba, and Carlos de Borja, all of whom served on the Council of the Military Orders; and Gerónimo de Portacarrero y Nozama and Antonio de Sarmiento y Luna, members of the Royal Council of Castile. In order, their titles are listed on p. 86.
30. These can be found in the AHN: Cons., legs. 13489, 13494, 13500-01, 13515-18, 13529, 51708.
31. I have drawn this information from the student registers of the Colegios Mayores of Arzobispo, Oviedo, San Ildefonso, and Santa Cruz; cf. chap. VI, note 23.
32. The above is taken from the student registers of the Colegio Mayor de Oviedo (BNM Ms. 940, esp. nos. 297,305).
33. AHN: Cons., leg. 13500, consulta of l3.VIII.1611.
34. For example, see AHN: Cons. leg. 13500, consultas of 11.VI.1652, 4.XII.1662, 9.VIII.1670 leg. 13515, no. 113; leg. 13517, nos. 20, 45; leg. 13529, consulta of 17.X.1663; leg. 51708, consultas of 11.XI.1675, 18.I.1678.
35. Among 103 oidores appointed to the chancillería of Valladolid between 1588 and 1633, only seven can be positively identified as graduates from other universities and four of these had taken a first degree either at Alcalá, Salamanca, or Valladolid (AHN: Cons. leg. 13529). At Granada, only nine of the 94 oidores apointed during these years graduated from other Universities (AHN: Cons. legs. 13515-18).
36. See AHN: Cons. leg. 4422, consulta of 22.XII.1622; leg. 13490, consulta of 21.VIII.1628. I would like to thank Dr. Charles Jago for bringing the consulta of 1622 to my attention.
38. This figure was reached by matching names of professors on the law faculties of the universities with those of letrados serving on the royal chancillerías. For the professors, see Alcocer Martínez, Universidad de Valladolid, vol. 2, and Esperabé Artega, Universidad de Salamanca, vol. 2. The lists of chancillería officials, drawn from the AHN: Cons., Libros de Plazas, are my own.
40. BM: Add. 28,349, folio 225.
41. AUS: Ms. 1925, folio 144, "Memoria de los Colegiales, 4.II.1645."
42. See, for example, AHN: Cons., leg. 7138, "Memorial de los Cuatro Colegios Mayores de Salamanca al Rey Felipe IV," 17.X.1636 and in this same legajo a similar memorial directed to Philip V. See also BUS: Ms. 2266, folio 4, a letter of the colleges of 8.IV.1659.
43. Examples of these letters can be found in the AHN: Univs., leg. 232.
44. The most clearcut admission of such services took place in 1 628 at a time when the Colleges were threatened by possible reforms. The College of Santa Cruz wrote to that of San Ildefonso advocating a plan in which "our colegiales in Madrid..." would contact San Ildefonso's representatives, "making use of the colegiales we have on the councils." Cf. AHN: Univs., leg. 232, no. 32. In this same legajo, see also nos. 23, 27-29.
45. See Table 4 and Kagan, "Education and the State," p. 142.
46. AHN: Cons. leg. 7138, letter of 28.IV.1694.
47. AHN: Cons. leg. 13529, consulta of I.IX.l608.
48. AHN: Cons. leg. 13529, consulta of 6.IX.1608.
49. AHN: Cons. leg. 13529, consulta of 2.VIII.1679.
50. For details of these maneuverings, see Kagan, "Education and the State," pp. 246-50.
51. On this point see Sala Balust, Constituciones, 1:35-40. Francisco Pérez Bayer, Por Libertad de la Literatura Española (Palacio Real de Madrid, Mss. 27-28) also describes this mutual dependency and its results.
53. BNM: Ms. 18,055, folio 131v, "Papal Curioso en punto de Colegios."
54. Cited in H. Kamen, The War of Succession in Spain, 1700-1715 (London, 1968), p. 41.
55. As Professor Curtis Noel has demonstrated, these three universities gave to the church 66 percent of its bishops between 1700 and 1725, 62 percent between 1759 and 1765, but only 50 percent in the closing decades of the century (see "Campomanes and the Secular Clergy in Spain, 1760-1780: 'Enlightenment vs. Tradition'," Ph.D. dissertation [Princeton University, 1969]). The declining representation of the graduates of these universities among the episcopacy after 1765 is best attributed to the suppression of the colegios mayores which had provided, in certain epochs, nearly one-half of Castile's bishops.
56. Cf Table 4 and AHN: Inq. lib. 323, "Relacion del personel y sus servicios en las diferentes tribunales del lnquisición, 1666-67." Meanwhile, between 1516 and 1600, four of eleven Generales of the Inquisition were colegiales, and in the seventeenth century, six of fourteen. See M. Alcocer Martínez, "El Consejo Real de Castilla," Revista Histórica 5 (1925): 67-73.
57. Colegiales, however, frequently refused appointments to the local tribunals of the inquisition, preferring instead to hold either ecclesiastical or secular charges before assuming a position within the Holy Office, usually in the Supreme Council itself. This explains why in 1666-67 only 9 of the 37 inquisitors on Spain's tribunals were colegiales, whereas they represented about 45 percent of the members of the Supreme Council.