Colegio de San Gregorio

Façade of the Collegium, traditionally attributed to Gil de Siloé and workshop

The Colegio de San Gregorio is a historical building in Valladolid, Spain, currently housing the National Museum of Sculpture. It is one of the best examples of architecture in the period of the Catholic Monarchs in Spain (late 15th-early 16th centuries), and was founded as a Theology College for the Dominican order.

History

In 1577 due to the beneficence of Spaniard Juan Solano, O.P., former bishop of Cusco, Peru, The College of San Gregorio served as a model for the transformation of the Dominican studium at Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome into the College of St. Thomas, forerunner of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum.^[1]

The Valladolid debate (1550–1551) concerned the treatment of natives of the New World. It consisted of two opposing views about the colonization of the Americas. Dominican friar and Bishop of Chiapas Bartolomé de las Casas argued that the Amerindians were free men in the natural order and deserved the same treatment as others, according to Catholic theology. Opposing him was scholar Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who insisted that "in order to uproot crimes that offend nature" the Indians should be punished and therefore reducing them to slavery or serfdom was in accordance with Catholic theology and natural law. This is the origin of modern human rights theories.

It now holds the National Museum of Sculpture, with many pieces of the times of the Counter-Reformation.

Gallery

See also

• Isabelline Gothic

Coordinates: 41°39′26″N 4°43′24″W / 41.65722°N 4.72333°W / 41.65722; -4.72333

Notes