Pope Paul III founds the first university in the Americas in Santo Domingo

Story: 1538 C.E.  |  Last updated: January 1, 1538

On October 28, 1538 C.E., Pope Paul III signed a document that would change the intellectual life of an entire hemisphere. The papal bull In Apostolatus Culmine elevated an existing Dominican seminary in Santo Domingo — on the island of Hispaniola — to the status of a full university. It was the first institution of higher learning formally chartered in the Americas, and its descendants are still teaching students today.

Key facts

• Papal bull: In Apostolatus Culmine, issued October 28, 1538 C.E., formally granted university status to the Dominican-run Studium Generale that had operated in Santo Domingo since 1518 C.E.
• Americas university primacy: Because the required pase regio — royal Spanish approval — was not instituted until 1539 C.E., one year after the university’s founding, scholars widely regard the 1538 C.E. charter as legitimate, making this institution the first university in the New World.
• Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo: The direct successor institution, renamed and granted administrative autonomy in 1961 C.E., remains the oldest continuously operating university in the Americas.

What existed before the university

The story does not begin in 1538 C.E. Two decades earlier, Dominican friars had established a Studium Generale in Santo Domingo — a seminary designed to train clergy for the rapidly expanding Spanish colonial enterprise. That institution opened in 1518 C.E. and represented the first organized higher education in the Americas, even if it lacked full university standing.

The Dominican Order brought with it a deep intellectual tradition rooted in the universities of medieval Europe. Their model in Santo Domingo was shaped directly after the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain, one of the most advanced institutions of the era. The friars did not simply transplant a European institution to foreign soil — they were working within a world where Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean had their own sophisticated knowledge systems, oral traditions, and governance structures, most of which were being actively suppressed or erased by the same colonial power that funded the university’s construction.

That tension sits at the heart of this milestone.

The founding and what it meant

When Pope Paul III issued the bull in 1538 C.E., the institution took the name Universidad de Santo Tomás de Aquino, after the Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas. Its home was the Church and Convent of the Dominicans in the colonial city of Santo Domingo — the same city that had already become the administrative capital of Spain’s American empire.

At the time, Santo Domingo was the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Americas, and it functioned as the hub through which Spanish power, goods, and ideas radiated outward. Placing a university there was a statement: the colonial project would be an intellectual and theological one, not only a military and economic one.

The university offered training in theology, philosophy, canon law, and the liberal arts. Its graduates would go on to serve the church, the colonial administration, and the emerging Creole class — a class increasingly distinct from peninsular Spaniards, and eventually central to the independence movements that swept Latin America centuries later.

The debate over primacy

Not every historian agrees that 1538 C.E. is the decisive date. The University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru, and the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico — both founded in 1551 C.E. — received royal approval from the Spanish Crown simultaneously with their papal charters. Supporters of those institutions have argued that without pase regio, the Santo Domingo charter lacked legal standing under Spanish law.

The counterargument is straightforward: the pase regio requirement did not exist in 1538 C.E. It was introduced in 1539 C.E., a full year after the bull was issued. A university cannot be held to a legal standard that did not yet exist when it was founded. Royal recognition from Charles V did eventually arrive — in 1558 C.E. — confirming what the papal charter had already established.

Most contemporary historians accept the 1538 C.E. date as the founding, though they note the complexity. The debate itself is a reminder that institutions rarely arrive with clean origin stories.

Lasting impact

The university that began as a Dominican seminary in 1518 C.E. and was elevated by papal charter in 1538 C.E. is still, in institutional terms, alive. Its successor, the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD), received administrative autonomy in 1961 C.E. and remains the oldest university in continuous operation in the hemisphere. Today it enrolls hundreds of thousands of students — many from working-class and low-income backgrounds — making it one of the most accessible public universities in the Caribbean.

More broadly, the founding in 1538 C.E. established a precedent. Within decades, universities spread across the Americas — in Mexico City, Lima, Bogotá, and beyond. By the time the first North American colleges appeared, Latin America already had a century-old tradition of higher education. The Organization of American States has recognized the UASD’s role in hemispheric educational history.

The model also traveled. Dominican friars carried educational frameworks across the Caribbean and into South America, often embedding university culture into the same convents and churches that anchored colonial towns. The link between formal learning, religious institutions, and public life in Latin America — still visible today — traces a direct line back to Santo Domingo in 1538 C.E.

Researchers studying the history of medieval university traditions have traced how European scholastic models adapted — and in some ways transformed — as they crossed the Atlantic. The Americas did not simply receive an institution; they eventually reshaped it.

Blindspots and limits

The university founded in 1538 C.E. was built by and for a colonial order. It served the church, the Crown, and the Creole elite, while the Indigenous Taíno people of Hispaniola — already devastated by disease, forced labor, and violence — had no place within it. Enslaved Africans, arriving in increasing numbers throughout the 16th century C.E. to replace the collapsing Indigenous labor force, were likewise excluded. The institution’s founding represented an intellectual expansion for some and a further consolidation of exclusion for others.

The university also did not operate continuously. It closed multiple times — during the Haitian occupation in 1801 C.E. and again in 1823 C.E., and during the U.S. military occupation of the island between 1916 C.E. and 1924 C.E. Its survival as an institution has required repeated acts of political will and reconstruction across five centuries. That durability is itself part of the story — but so is the fragility that made it necessary.

Read more

For more on this story, see: Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino — Wikipedia

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