A more voluminous writer on politics than any of the foregoing appeared in the person of Antonio de León Pinelo, who dealt with the legal and governmental affairs of the Spanish dependencies. The circumstances of his early life are still obscure. An article on him in the _Mercurio peruano_ throws no light on the date or the place of his birth, and other available sources offer very little definite information; but it is inferred from statements in his life of Santo Toribio that his childhood and youth were passed in Lima, and that, with his younger brothers, Juan and Diego, he studied at the University of San Marcos. Having completed his studies at the university, he went to Spain; there his talents and learning were recognized, and he was appointed _Relator_ of the Council of the Indies. In 1624 he published a discourse on the importance, the form, and the arrangement of a collection of the laws of the Indies, and under the authority of the Council of the Indies he compiled two volumes of these laws. In accomplishing this task he encountered the notorious confusion and contradictions prevailing in the body of laws and decrees issued for the government of Spain’s possessions in America. [Sidenote: Pinelo’s works] The project to publish these two volumes met apparently insurmountable obstacles, but, in accordance with a previous plan, the compiler formed an abridgement of their contents, which was called _Política de las Indias_. Three other works appear to have been drawn largely from the original compilation. These were _Bulario índico_, _Tratado de las confirmaciones reales_, and _Historia del supremo concejo de las Indias_. Pinelo’s bibliography of authors who had written on the Indies was entitled _Biblioteca oriental y occidental_, and was published in Madrid in 1629. It was reprinted in three folio volumes in 1737 under the direction of the minister Andrés Gonzales de Barcia.[194] [Sidenote: _Del oficio y potestad_] Antonio de León Pinelo mentions Gutierre Velásquez Altamirano, who was a professor of law in the University of San Marcos while Pinelo was a student there. Later Altamirano was appointed oidor of the audiencia of Guatemala, but died in Madrid before assuming the duties of his office. As a native of Lima, and as a student of law, he very naturally became interested in the government of the colonies, and wrote a work entitled _Del oficio y potestad del vicario del príncipe, y gobierno universal de las Indias_, which was apparently never published. [Sidenote: Diego de León Pinelo] [Sidenote: Oppression of the Indians]