El Colegio de los verdes de la Universidad de Alcalá de Henares. Historia, Constituciones y Pedagogía (1586-1843)

Abstract

This work is, in essence, the institutional study of a university foundation carried out in Alcalá de Henares, “city of knowledge”, by a woman, Catalina Suárez de Mendoza y Cisneros. It is an approach to the Colegio Menor de Santa Catalina Mártir or de los Verdes of the University of Alcalá, a school that had its founder present for four centuries, being one of the few university collegiate institutions that survived the closure of the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso and the University of Alcalá itself. The writing of the work has been approached from different points of view, historical, biographical, social, educational, economic, legislative, architectural and patrimonial, which are complementary, convergent and mutually influential, and which, in our opinion, are supported by each other and confer importance and significance both to the founder and to the university collegiate institution itself of which this woman was the architect in her time. The chronological interval begins with the foundation of the College in 1586. Although it was at the beginning of the following century, in 1612, when its first Constitutions were drawn up and its teaching “style”, its “collegiate pedagogy” was refined, consolidating itself as a teaching institution, with a long history until its definitive disappearance in 1843.