Family, Solidarity, and Power. How the Jesuit Expulsion Affected the Royal Seminar and Colegio Mayor of San Bartolomé of Santa Fe de Bogota (1742-1792)

• In Event: Ruling the Territory: The Multiple Spaces of Power of Colonial New Granada (1600-1800)

Abstract

The expulsion of the Jesuit order from the Indies in 1767 is the pivotal axis of the analysis proposed in this paper. Its main objectives are not only getting to know how one of the major educative institutions of the viceroyalty of New Granada –the Royal Seminary and Colegio Mayor of San Bartolomé- survived the expulsion of the religious order that founded it, and even thrived after the Jesuits were expulsed from Santa Fe, but also how this particular situation affected the society of the capital of the viceroyalty of New Granada and the elites that had trusted the education of their offspring to the Colegio Mayor since its foundation.
With the purpose of creating a social genealogy of its students and understanding which were the relationships and networks that tied them not only with the Seminar but also with the rest of the society outside the Colegio Mayor, a thorough prosopographical analysis of the students has been done. Growing from three interconnected perspectives -institutional, familiar and relational- this analysis provides a new perspective of the people that were part of one of the main educational institutions of the viceroyalty during a crucial period of its story, especially because the time frame of the study has been expanded not only to the twenty five years prior to the expulsion of the Jesuits, but also to the twenty five years that followed it with the purpose of widening the scope of the analysis. This paper thus constitutes a new approach to the study of this educational institution, which analysis has been until now only approached from an educational perspective, and an effort to enlightening the role played by the Colegio Mayor as one of the more significant institutions of factual power in the viceroyalty.

Author

• Juana Marin Leoz, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana