Spanish Peru, 1532–1560: A Social History

IV PROFESSIONALS

IV PROFESSIONALS IN 1537 the versatile Bachiller Garci Diaz Arias. later bishop of Quito. was serving Francisco Pizarro as chaplain. legal adviser. and private secretary.} In performing the three tasks at once. Bachiller Diaz showed the close relationship between the three main groups comprising Spanish Peru's profeSSional class: churchmen. men with degrees in law and medicine. and notary-secretaries. The professionals were a single group. yet twice dMded. On the one hand. the clergy stood as a body distinct from the rest; on the other hand. law. medicine. and the church were each divided into an upper stratum of university men with diplomas . and a lower stratum with a grammar-school education or less. whose skills were learned through direct practice or apprenticeship. At both the upper and lower levels. many basic common traits crossed the lines of the disciplines. The priests and friars who held degrees in law or theology. and were ambitious to occupy bishoprics or benefices. had a great deal In common with the titled lawyers and physicians. They came from the same kinds of backgrounds. local hidalgo or substantial middle class. and even their training was so Similar that a transfer from one field to the other was always possible. Licenciado Pedro de 1a Gasca spent most of his life in administrative positions. including the governorship of Peru. Yet he was an ordained priest. and finally received a bishopric. The cormection of physicians with the other two groups was more tenuous. but it existed; physicians too had a mainly formalistic education. and laymen in Peru. following an old tradition. invited all three types of professionals into councils ofwar and peace. On the lower levels. social similarities were just as pro55 Copyrighted Material 56 SPANISH PERU nounced. though training varied more. Ordinary priests. untitled attorneys. notaries. and surgeons all emerged from the same strata of Spanish society. being connected with families of artisans. small merchants. or. occasionally. petty hidalgos. Practical surgeons. however. were rather a different group. falling. in popular conception and often in fact. completely out of the professional group and into the class of artisans through their collateral trade of barbering and their tendency. as a group. to be illiterate. The horizontal split among the professional people was reflected in their regional origin. Though both the upper and lower professionals diverged from the standard patterns for the Spanish Peruvian population as a whole. they varied in different ways. Ordinarily. in Peru. Andalusia was the best represented of the great regiOns of Spain. with Extremadura second. In its contribution of notaries and ordinary priests. AndalUSia was. according to a sampling. even stronger than usual. while Extremadura. as one of Spain's most backward areas. fell far below. contributing hardly more than a tenth of the notaries (though when it came to priests. Extremadura recovered its normal position). While the lower levels of the professional group were strongly Andalusian. the striking feature about the upper levels is the number who came from the north of Spain. In most regional groupings. Old Castile was in third place. In a sampling of the origins of titled lawyers and doctors. Old Castile rose to first place among the regions. and New Castile and Leon had a larger proportion than usual. This fact Is apparently to be explained by the presence in the north of the University of Salamanca and the royal court. usually at Valladolid or Madrid. Like their lay colleagues. over half of the churchmen with degrees seem to have come from the north (see Appendix Tables). Lay and clerical. titled and untitled. the whole professional group was united by its thoroughgoing formalism and legalism. An attorney or notary could move from a secular court into an ecclesiastical court and hardly notice the difference . Chapter meetings in monasteries and cathedrals followed the same procedures as the meetings of muniCipal councils. All professionals wrote their books. treatises. Copyrighted Material PROFESSIONALS 57 ordinances. and protests. when they were of any length. in the same capitular style: not even the chroniclers could divest themselves of the eternal Item Ecclesiastics began to move into Peru in the early. militruy stages of the conquest. Not long after the founding of each Spanish city. it acquired a church manned by one or more secular priests. and one or two monasteries: reports from the early years more often express surprise at the number of clerics in Peru than complain of their absence. Everything...