Back in 1785, Bishop Juan Ramos de Lora, a Franciscan clergyman from Seville, opened a Catholic seminary in Mérida, a remote village in the Andes mountains of what is now Venezuela, under Spanish rule by then. Once the seminary opened, he gathered and collected many books for its library. It was initially composed of some salvaged antique books which dated back centuries, as far as the Conquista times. It also included many "oeuvres" from his personal collection and some more from the collaborations and donations of priest friends, ministers and other prominent figures from his episcopate. Hence, the library's first books were comprehensive in canon law, civil law, medicine, philosophy and literature. Regarding the seminary, just a few years after it was founded, local authorities started lobbying to seek the grant of the Spanish government to establish it as a university. The university charter was granted in 1806, but due to the bellicose period in the region it was only validated in 1810 thus the seminary became known as the "Real Universidad de San Buenaventura de Mérida" (Saint Bonaventure Royal University of Mérida), short before the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence. The library slowly but steadily followed the evolution of its sheltering University.