Santo Domingo Convent

Officially, this complex is called the Convent of the Most Holy Rosary. Santo Domingo Convent is the familiar name used in Lima, connected with Saint Dominic de Guzmán. This Spanish preacher founded the Order of Preachers, whose members came to be called Dominicans. The basilica remains an active church, a community of brothers lives in the convent, and some of the cloisters are open as a museum.

In fifteen ninety-four, fifteen-year-old Martin de Porres asked to be admitted here. He earned money as a barber-surgeon’s apprentice and helped support his family, but he wanted to join the order. His father was a Spanish nobleman; his mother, Ana Velázquez, was a freed enslaved woman of African descent from Panama. The rules in force at the time did not allow descendants of Africans and Indigenous people to become full members of religious orders.

The prior agreed to accept Martin as a donado. This was the term for a person given shelter, food, and the right to wear a religious habit in exchange for service work, but not allowed to take vows on the same terms as the brothers. Martin washed rooms, laundered clothes, and worked in the kitchen. His barber-surgeon’s skills were soon needed in the convent infirmary, which served a community of nearly three hundred people.

Martin did not stop at the convent infirmary. He treated the poor at the gate, went out into the streets of Lima to see the sick, brought homeless people into the convent, and put them up in his own cell so that he could feed and bandage them. People came here specifically to see him, regardless of origin or status. Nine years later, the community council allowed Martin to take vows. In sixteen oh three, the former donado became a brother without holy orders: a full member of the order, though not a priest. He was put in charge of the convent infirmary.

Martin lived here until his death in sixteen thirty-nine. Even the viceroy came to the convent physician for advice, and the archbishop, city officials, and many residents of Lima gathered for the funeral. In nineteen sixty-two, the Catholic Church canonized Martin de Porres.

His original cell by the infirmary cloister was destroyed in the earthquake of seventeen forty-six. His bed and personal belongings are displayed in the present-day Chapel of Saint Martin de Porres. In the basilica, at the Altar of the Peruvian Saints, a reliquary containing his remains stands beneath an image of Martin. The place where he was accepted as a servant without the right to take vows now keeps his body in a church altar.