The Colegio de Santa Cruz' in Tlatelolco, Mexico was the first european school of higher learning in the Americas. Built by the Franciscan order on the site of an Aztec school for the children of nobles, (Calmecac) it was inaugurated on january 6th 1536, however it had been a functining school since August 8 1533. The original purpose of the colegio was to educate an indigenous priesthood and so pupils were selected form the most prestigious families of the Aztec ruling class. They were taught in Náhuatl, Spanish and Latin and also learned the basics of Greek as well as crafts such as illumination, bookbinding and european art. Among the teachers were notables cholars and grammarians such as Andrés de Olmos, Alonso de Molina and Bernardino de Sahagún all of whom have made important contributions to the study of both the Classical Nahuatl language and the ethnography and anthropology of Mesoamerica. When recollecting historical and ethnographical information for the elaboration of the Florentine Codex, Sahagún used his trilingual students to elicit information from the aztec elders and to transcribe it in Spanish and Nahuatl and to illuminate the manuscripts.
