RenEU - Ecclesiastical Curia

Ecclesiastical Curia

Main front of the Ecclesiastical Curia, formerly the University of Granada

Portal attributed to Juan de Marquina, a follower of Siloé

At the command of Charles V, the University of Granada was built in 1526, when Don Gaspar de Ávalos was the city’s archbishop

In 1526, Emperor Charles V instituted the prestigious Imperial College of Santa Cruz de la Fe and the so-called 'Literary University', the origin of today's University of Granada and one of the first universities in Europe. For both of them, a new building was planned with a large number of lecture halls for the teaching of theology, philosophy, logic, rhetoric and grammar, law and jurisprudence, and medicine. It was during the reign of Charles III, in 1769, that the building's function was changed. The University was moved to other buildings in the city, such as today's Faculty of Law, and the edifice was then occupied by the Ecclesiastical Curia. Built between 1527 and 1545, its external appearance retains Plateresque influences owing to Sebastián de Alcántara, the designer of its beautiful windows with composite columns, and to Juan de Marquina, responsible for the portal. Inside, the rooms are distributed around a large central courtyard with three storeys rising above it. The first two have galleries supported on white marble Doric columns, with circles in the spandrels and the arms of the Archbishop of Ávalos on the springers. On the lower third storey are segmental arches on Tuscan columns and a cornice with gargoyles in the form of monsters. The main staircase rises on rampant vaults with wooden ceilings. Opposite the entrance to the courtyard was the main lecture theatre, and on its left was the chapel, with a timber ceiling and a frieze of grotesques. Besides its intrinsic value, the Ecclesiastical Curia has a painting collection, archive and library of great importance.

This was once the University, founded with the same faculties and prerogatives as those of Bologna and Salamanca. Created alongside it were two Colleges for the instruction of young Moriscos, Santa Cruz and San Miguel, as a further means of assimilating the native social minority, in this case through education. The University itself was in fact built with the intention of "dispelling the darkness of the infidels", as can be read on its façade. Its strategic location and the Renaissance classicism of its architectural forms, even though the Moorish carpentry typical of the city was used for ceilings in the interior, denote a firm intention to equip the city with the most modern architecture and institutions. This was henceforth to make Granada into one of the country's leading university cities, whose effects on the intellectual development of the non-Castilian social minorities bore outstanding fruit in the 16th century in the University's celebrated professor of Latin, Juan Latino, originally a black slave, and the Morisco Miguel de Castillo, the author of the controversial Lead Books of Sacromonte.

Texts: Legends over the windows of the façade: "Ad fugandas infidelium tenebras hec domus literaria fundata est. Christianissimi Karoli Semper augusti Hispaniarum regis mandato. Labore et industria Ill. Dni. Gasparis davalos ar. Granate. Anno a natali Dni. Ntri. Ihu.Xpi. MDXXXII" ("To dispel the darkness of the infidels, this University was founded by order of the most Christian Charles, always august, king of the realms of Spain, and with the work and industry of the most illustrious and reverend Señor Don Gaspar Dávalos, Archbishop of Granada, in the year 1532 since the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ") GÓMEZ MORENO GONZÁLEZ, Manuel, Guía de Granada, 1892.