The Colleges of San Ignacio and San Francisco Javier. Educational secularization and space conflicts with the parish of Santiago (1825-1841)

Abstract

From the perspective of historical discipline and architecture, this text aims to address a stage in the life of the Colleges of San Ignacio and San Francisco Javier de Querétaro that until now remained forgotten.  We refer to the forty years after the War of Independence, when then The Royal Colleges became under the jurisdiction of state or departmental governments, depending on the type of Republic in turn.  The first educational plans that were structured from the capital of the country, impacted on the life of the Colleges by incorporating them into a new reality resulting from the transition of the New Spain society to an ordered one under different parameters.  Slowly and gradually, the secularization process was progressing and the corporate spirit of the Colleges was weakening in the face of increasing interference from a State under construction, and which, through successive governments, national and local, intervened not  only in academic and administrative matters, but was forced to confront the ecclesiastical authorities for the occupation of those constructed spaces that had originally belonged to the former College of San Ignacio.