A certain amount of
instruction, talent, and disposition for magisterial work was required
of the pupils, and those who already had positions as teachers could
assist at the two months' course without detriment to their salaries.
The fall of the constitutional government in Spain, brought about by
French intervention and the reaction that followed, extinguished the
light that had just begun to shine, and this unfortunate island was
again plunged into the intellectual darkness of the middle ages.
Persecution became fiercer than ever, and the citizens most
distinguished for their learning and liberal ideas had to seek safety
in emigration.
For the next twenty years the education of the youth of Puerto Rico
was entirely in the hands of the clergy. With the legacies left to
the Church by Bishop Arizmendi and other pious defuncts, Bishop Pedro
Gutierrez de Cos founded the Conciliar Seminary in 1831, and appointed
as Rector Friar Angel de la Concepcion Vazquez, a Puerto Rican by
birth, educated in the Franciscan Convent of Caracas.
In the same year there came to Puerto Rico, as prebendary of the
cathedral, an ex-professor of experimental physics in the University
of Galicia, whose name was Rufo Fernandez. He founded a cabinet of
physics and a chemical laboratory, and invited the youth of the
capital to attend the lectures on these two sciences which he gave
gratis.
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