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This work is the first history of the Royal and Pontifical University of San Marcos in Lima, the oldest university on the American continent. In the first part of the text, a brief biography of the author is given: Fray Antonio de la Calancha. This Augustinian of the Viceroyalty of Peru is famous for his work Corónica moralizada del Orden de San Agustín en el Perú, a text that initiated a genre of its own in Peruvian literature and created a narrative model that marked the cultural world of the colonial period (p. 7).

Fray Calancha had at his disposal a large amount of information from the university archives, with which he described the social, economic, administrative and academic aspects of the institution: festivities and celebrations of the degrees, elections of authorities, the functioning of the chairs, the conditions for scholarships, the rigorousness of the examinations and descriptions of the university buildings. He also prepared lists of the graduates: archbishops, bishops, doctors, professors, judges and inquisitors associated with the university.

The second part of the text presents Cristina Flórez’s transcription of Antonio de la Calancha’s work. According to Flórez, she has opted to keep the transcription faithful to the copy made by an amanuensis of the copy of Calancha’s work that arrived in Seville. This manuscript is reproduced in the third and final part of the book, the documentary appendix.