Note 3 — ANDA’S MEMORIAL, 1768

In note 2 (pp. 44–47), Pardo de Tavera gives a sketch of the history of the “secular university” of Manila. The royal decree founding it (dated May 16, 1714) states as its purpose, “that persons born there may have the comfort of being enabled to fit themselves for obtaining the prebends;” accordingly, three chairs were established at Manila, for instruction in canon and civil law and Roman law. The first incumbents (appointed in 1715) were Julian de Velasco, Francisco Fernandez Thoribio, and Manuel de Osio y Ocampo. The institution was opened on June 9, 1718, and included also the chairs of medicine and mathematics, professors for these being appointed by the governor—who, finding that this enterprise was opposed by the religious orders, especially by the Dominicans and Jesuits, ordered that a building for its use should be erected near his palace; but lack of funds stopped this work in 1721. When the chairs became vacant in 1726, a competitive examination was held to fill them, at which only five men with the degree of bachelor of law were present. The lectures were but thinly attended, five or six students only being the usual audience; the royal decree suggested that these be reënforced by students from San José and Santo Tomás, but these colleges discouraged such attendance, and it availed naught. In 1726, the Jesuit Murillo Velarde was appointed to the chair of canon law, and then the Jesuits offered San José college to the new professors (at first, the lectures in the royal foundation had been given in a private house, because the archbishop declined to let them be given in the archiepiscopal seminary); this aroused the jealousy of the Dominicans. Finally a compromise was made between them, by agreeing that in each of the two universities there should be a chair of canon law in charge of a religious, and one of civil law in charge of a layman. The king, learning of this controversy and the ineffectiveness of his foundation, decreed (July 26, 1730) that it should be closed, thus saving to the treasury the annual cost of 2,000 pesos. Pardo de Tavera remarks that the name of “university,” given to it in Manila, does not appear in the royal decree of 1714, which simply established the three chairs mentioned. See also the account of “the college seminary of San Phelipe,” in VOL. XLV of this series, pp. 187–207, and some allusions to it in VOL. XLIV, pp. 145, 178; Velasco and Toribio were imprisoned by Bustamante at one time (VOL. XLIV, pp. 152, 155, 159.)

In reality, we must go back to the royal foundation in 1702, which was encroached on by Cardinal Tournon and the abbot Sidoti (1704–07); see San Antonio’s full account of this in VOL. XXVIII, pp. 117–122. Pardo de Tavera gives an outline of this account in his note 3 (pp. 48–50), and adds: “The power of the friars caused the organization of the seminary to be delayed until, toward the end of the past century, thanks to Señor Sancho de Santa Justa y Rufina, the seminary of San Carlos was created; it was installed in the former house of the expelled members of the Society of Jesus.” ↑