Greetings from old Castile!
Let’s go back to the thirteenth century, and the Iberian peninsula. The Roman empire had collapsed a few hundred years before; Visigoths had invaded from the north and established kingdoms; the Almohads had invaded from the south; it was a time of political uncertainty, with no peace; but also intellectual ferment.
Intellectual ferment because universities were being founded across Europe. Universitas – the Latin term – meant a single community, and that’s what made them special. They were sanctioned (mostly) by the Pope, and their members were accountable to the university authorities, not to civil authorities. This was a big deal – it gave freedoms to learn and think, as well as to misbehave and irritate the townsfolk.
And universities were springing up all over the place (the date in this list is when they were chartered, or gained their papal bull):
- Bologna, 1158, with origins from 1088, and still going strong
- Paris, 1200, with origins from 1045
- Oxford, 1248, but origins from 1096
- Hilandar, 1198, closed late 1300s, now the Mount Athos monastery
- Vicenza, 1204–1209
- Cambridge, 1231, started 1209 by refugees from Oxford
- Palencia, 1212–1264, and we’ll come back to this
- Salamanca, 1218, with origins to 1134
- Padua, 1222, founded by refugees from Bologna
- Naples, 1224, the first university founded by a monarch, not by the Pope
- Toulouse, 1229, founded to stamp out heresy
- Orléans, 1235, teaching law that Paris was forbidden to teach
- Siena, 1240.
The Kingdom of Castile – at that time a junior associate of the Kingdom of Leon – was keen to grow and develop. And in 1241 King Alfonso VIII founded the University of Valladolid; his successor Sancho IV granted the university the tax take from the local region, giving it financial security. And in 1346 Pope Clement VI granted a papal bull.
One account of the foundation of Valladolid has it that scholars leaving Palencia founded the university. It seems that competition closed Palencia: Salamanca had a more successful university, and was nearby, and funds were in short supply. No doubt some of the scholars of Palencia did go to Valladolid after it was founded. At this distance in time, and without documentary evidence, it is mostly conjecture. What is clear is that Valladolid thrived, and Palencia closed. And now Valladolid has a campus in Palencia – the wheel has turned full circle.
As the Spanish state developed, and as it began to extract wealth from the lands it conquered in the Americas, its universities thrived. Valladolid expanded, with new faculties, and new buildings. The building on the postcard dates from 1716–18, when the university was embarking on a programme of enlarging its estate.
It’s a grand façade. The statue framed at the top is of wisdom stepping over ignorance. On the four Corinthian columns are statues of the kings who helped develop the university: Alfonso VIII, Juan I, Enrique III and Felipe II. (It seems harsh that Sancho IV didn’t get a statue, but maybe by then local taxes were small beer compared to silver from South America). The statutes on the balustrade represent, allegorically, the early eighteenth century curriculum: rhetoric, geometry, theology, canonic science, legal science, and wisdom.
But the buildings reflected a glory that was fading. Spain’s universities had not modernized; student numbers fell. Efforts to reform were stalled by the conservative responses to radical and revolutionary thinking and action in France: universities were places for reaction. Post-Napoleon, and as industrialisation spread, Spain’s universities slowly regained their vigour. Valladolid’s student numbers grew.
Valladolid the city was firmly nationalist leading up to the Spanish civil war of 1936-1939, and although Valladolid was bombed early in the war, the city itself was far from most of the fighting. After Franco’s death and the restoration of democracy to Spain in 1975, a process of reconstruction took place: new statutes were agreed in 1985. Campuses of Valladolid were established in other Spanish cities – for example Burgos gained a faculty of law in 1985, and in 1994 became a university in its own right. (This appears to be a Spanish model of university expansion, which has the benefit of clear academic oversight early on.) You can read the university’s history on its webpages here – it’s been a useful source in compiling this account.
Notable alumni of Valladolid include:
- Trinidad Arroyo – first female ophthalmologist in Spain
- Manuel Belgrano – hero of Argentinian independence, designed of the Argentine flag and the general after whom the ill-fated warship was named
- Joaquín González – doctor, one of the drafters of the post-independence Philippines constitution in the late nineteenth century
- Turibius of Mogrovejo – humane and reformist archbishop of Lima, from the time of Spain’s colonization of South America, made a saint in 1726
And here is a jigsaw of the card for you.
