delivery of his lesssons; but being moved by his discourses, he threw off the effeminate ornaments by which his head was covered, and instantly set about the reform of his manners.
To establish them most conformably to the spirit of religion and society, in the extensive possessions which had recently been annexed to the crown of Castille, was the ardent wish of the monarchs of Spain. With this view, the emperor Charles, and his august mother, lent a favourable ear to the representations of friar Tomas De San Martin, first provincial of the order of Saint Domingo in Peru, and afterward bishop of Chuquisaca, who, in the name of the city of Lima, and conformably to the instruction with which he had been furnished on his departure for Spain in 1550, in company with the licentiate Gasca, solicited the foundation of a general seminary of learning, with privileges, franchises, and exemptions, similar to those enjoyed by the celebrated university of Salamanca. The apartments of the principal convent belonging to his order were to be assigned to this establishment.
The royal schedule of approbation reached Lima in 1553; but as there was not any aid, beside that of three hundred and fifty piastres in gold which the order had set aside as the basis of the establishment, the project of a general instruction in all the sciences, could not be carried into effect by the reverend priors who were successively rectors of the school. The annual allowance of four hundred piastres, settled on the foundation in 1557, by the then viceroy, the Marquis of Canete, did not suffice to arouse it from the languid state in which it had continued, the sum being too small to correspond with the various objects for which it was destined. The epoch of the stability of the academy may be dated in 1571, when the rectorship
