Lima Founds a University by Royal Decree

On May 12, 1551, Emperor Charles V and Queen Juana I of Castile authorized the creation of a royal university in the viceregal capital of Lima. The initiative had emerged from general studies conducted within the Dominican convent of Nuestra Señora del Rosario starting in July 1548. Seeking imperial sanction, the municipal council of Lima dispatched Fray Tomás de San Martín and Captain Juan Jerónimo de Aliaga to Spain. Their mission secured the founding decree for what was initially known as the Royal University of the City of Kings, establishing the earliest chartered university in the Americas to maintain continuous operation down to the modern era.

Instruction formally commenced on January 2, 1553, centered upon faculties of theology and arts. Over the following decades, the institution expanded its curriculum to encompass law and medicine, while gradually reorganizing its governance. Pope Pius V bestowed pontifical status upon the institution in 1571, prompting a shift in institutional identity. On September 6, 1574, the university officially adopted the name of Mark the Evangelist as its patron saint. A subsequent decree from Viceroy Francisco Álvarez de Toledo in 1581 opened university administrative elections to both clerics and laymen, beginning a long transition toward secular institutional administration.