The most famous school in all Spain shared the fortunes of the monarchy. In the days of Luis de Leon there were 70 professors and 10,000 students, and the 52 printing-offices and 84 bookshops employed 3600 men. In the year 1552 there were still no fewer than 6328 undergraduates. Women competed equally with men for the honours of the learned. Among the most illustrious members of the university were Beatriz Galendo, surnamed the Latin, the daughter of a professor, and the teacher and friend of Isabel the Catholic; Alvara de Alba, the author of a mathematical treatise, and Cecilia Morillas, the wife of a Portuguese, Dom Antonio Sobrino, and the mother of several learned doctors, who consulted her on the most difficult points in the humanities, in philosophy, and theology. Salamanca remained to the last a stronghold of Catholic orthodoxy. The only one of its professors who ever advanced heretical opinions--Pedro de Osuna--recanted in good time, and assisted with the rest of the university at the solemn burning of his books and the purification of the class-rooms in which he had taught. At the end of the eighteenth century the number of students had fallen to 2000. To-day it may be estimated at 1200 students, all drawn (excepting those of the Irish college) from the surrounding provinces. The nineteen professors are worse paid than an English ledger-clerk, and no book or pamphlet has issued from the university press (if such exists) for many years past.
The colleges were classified as Escuelas Mayores and Escuelas Menores. The college to which the name university is specially applied seems to have been built between 1415 and 1433 by Alfonso Rodriguez Carpintero, though the shield of the anti-pope Benedict XIII. (Pedro de Luna) over the door leading to the cathedral, dating from about 1380, leads one to suppose that part of the building was already standing at that date. For a long time, however, the cloisters of the cathedral were used as class-rooms. The present edifice has little about it to suggest the Gothic era. Restored by Fernando and Isabel, it ranks indeed as one of the earliest and finest specimens of plateresque architecture. Over the double entrance of the main façade are two rudely executed busts of the Catholic sovereigns, clasping the same sceptre, and enclosed in one medallion. Around this is inscribed the legend: ‘οί βασιλεῖς τῇ ἐγκυκλοπαιδείᾳ, αὕτη βασιλεῦσί’ (‘the Kings to the University, the University to the Kings’). The panels into which the three stages of this beautiful façade are divided are filled with escutcheons, medallions, foliage, scrolls, and grotesques, all admirably executed in the creamy stone, which gives so beautiful an appearance to the buildings of Salamanca. This fine work is ascribed to Enrique de Egas, and said to have cost 30,000 ducats. It is surmounted by a parapet of elaborate pierced work, and two pinnacles, which we could perhaps have spared.
