 He focused on studying philosophy and theology, but when his father died in 1785, he abandoned his career in the priesthood, for which he felt no strong vocation.Rejecting his mother's proposal of sending him to study in Spain at the University of Salamanca and Alcalá de Henares, alongside his cousin Manuel Belgrano, he enrolled in jurisprudence studies in the University of Chuquisaca, in the Upper Peru (modern Bolivia).There, he learned about the ongoing French Revolution, and the new ideas of the Age of Enlightenment.