La bula in apostolatus culmine del papa Paulo III en virtud de la cual fué erigida y fundada la Universidad de Santo Domingo, primada de América

The argument of this book is that the first university of America was established in Santo Domingo for the Dominican Order in 1538.In that year, the contention runs, a bull was issued by Pope Paul III authorizing the order to establish general studies in this early American center.The bull, it is further claimed, undoubtedly had the royal pase or general sanction of the Council of the Indies.Later this picture was confused by the Jesuits who, in the introduction to this document by Julio Ortega y Frier, are repeatedly accused of machinations and fraud in their attempts to supplant the Dominicans in the control of degree giving in Espanola.The bull In Apostolatus Culmine is printed in Latin, Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese, and consumes all but twenty-four pages of the text.Notwithstanding this prodigality of space, there is no clean-cut narration of the provenance of this document.That is unhappily left to inference.It appears to be a reproduction of a copy of the bull certi fied by the Bishop of Venezuela in 1716.A note to the Latin text implies that there is a copy in the Vatican Archives and in Hernaez, by which the editor probably means Francisco Xavier Hernaez, Coleccion de bulas, breves, y otros documentos relativos a la iglesia de America y Filipinas (2 vols., Brussels, 1879).It would have been infinitely better to have been specific and clear on this crucial point if the sponsors of the publication are going to insist-as I would not-that the primacy they seek to establish is of any especial significance.If I did not know the facts involved from other sources, I could not gather them from this publication.The contention that the Council of the Indies authorized the passing of this document to America is based on conjecture.Although the pase regio cannot be found, the guess is that there was one but that it cannot be located in the Archives of the Indies because the archives of the Council of the Indies were at that time in such a state of confusion that the Spanish authorities had to inquire from American recipients what cedulas and decrees they had in their possession in 1538.This establish

Humanities · Philosophy · Religious and Theological Studies