by Mgr Hermann Giguère*
* Retired full professor of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Sciences of Laval University and Superior General of the Seminary of Quebec.
Translated from French: Source: Pastorale Québec, Vol. 100, no. 7, 25 April 1988.
Seminaries are intimately linked to the evolution of the pastoral needs of the Church. Their history closely follows the ups and downs of the Church in different countries. It is even more marked by the image that one has of the pastor within the community. Born from a crisis of the clergy¹ at the time of the Reformation, seminaries were slowly established during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and then, during the Age of Enlightenment, the new institution gradually became rigid. The nineteenth century, after the revolutionary turmoil in France, made it the obligatory path for access to Holy Orders. Another crisis of the clergy, faced with the challenges of the modern world, brought about a rebalancing under Leo XIII and Pius X. From this emerged a seminary that was revised by Pius XI in 1931, particularly with regard to studies in Deus Scientiarum Dominus. Many of today’s priests experienced this model. Since Vatican II, the adaptation of seminaries has completely transformed them.
I – The Work of the Council of Trent
a) The origins
The formation of candidates for the exercise of ordained ministries has never been absent from the concerns of the Church. Groups of clergy gathered around bishops had produced good results in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, but at the dawn of the Renaissance, the decline of the clergy was such that several bishops and priests desired a more institutionalised approach to the formation of future ministers. Several attempts aimed at reforming already ordained clergy had emerged in Italy, in particular, during the sixteenth century: Pietro Caraffa, Bishop of Chieti, Gaetano da Thiene, Anthony Mary Zaccaria and Philip Neri opened new paths with the Theatines, the Barnabites and the Roman Oratory.
The Council of Trent extended these attempts by expanding its work to include the formation of candidates. In doing so, it addressed one of the roots of the decline. A “seminarium” had to be created in every diocese. This Latin word, commonly used, designated a place where young shoots were prepared and then transplanted elsewhere. This orientation can already be found in the foundation of the German College in Rome in 1553 by Cardinal Morone and Ignatius of Loyola. This college would receive, Ignatius wrote, “young men chosen, endowed with happy dispositions from whom one might hope that they would advance in virtue”. For Ignatius, it was “the most effective human means, and perhaps the only one, to sustain religion in countries where it is tending towards its ruin and to restore it where it has entirely fallen.”²
If I have quoted this letter, it is because it already indicates the spirit behind the creation of seminaries by the Council of Trent. Other influences were added to that of Ignatius. It is sufficient here to note, in 1556, the synodal legislation of Cardinal Pole, legate in England, which recommended “the erection of seminaries”, and above all the work of Matteo Giberti (1495–1545), Bishop of Verona, who had revived the “School of Acolytes of Verona” and whose entire reform work inspired the Council to such an extent that it was said that “the decrees of the Council adopted for the universal Church most of his institutions”.³
b) The decree of 15 July 1563
It was during one of the final sessions of the Council of Trent, the twenty-third, on 15 July 1563, that seminaries were created in the decree on the reform of the clergy, in Chapter XVIII, which begins with the words “Cum adolescentium aetas”. “Even if the Council had done nothing else but establish seminaries,” writes Mgr Cristiani, “it would have accomplished in the Church the most necessary and most beneficial work.”⁴
In this decree of 15 July 1563, the Council made the foundation of a seminary for the formation of the local clergy obligatory for each diocese. Where this was not possible, it provided either for the foundation of interdiocesan or regional seminaries under the responsibility of the bishops involved, or for sending candidates from the diocese to a well-established seminary which, in that case, remained under the direct responsibility of the local bishop.
The Council then sketched the profile of candidates, “preferably children of poor families”, without excluding the wealthy, provided that they covered the financial costs, since the latter, under the benefice system, were already provided with financial resources. An initiation into the humanities would be given in minor seminaries, and in major seminaries a formation for the ecclesiastical state, the homilies of the Saints and everything that would appear suitable for the administration of the sacraments, especially for the ministry of confessions, and finally the forms of rites and ceremonies.
Moreover, the bishop was charged with meeting the financial needs of this new institution by drawing the necessary income from all the benefices of the diocese. He also established two councils to assist the bishop, one for formation and the other for temporal administration. Thus, according to the beautiful expression of the Council, there would be “a perpetual seminary of ministers of God”.
c) The consequences
The consequences of this decree were not long in making themselves felt. In April 1564, Pius IV decreed the foundation of the Roman Seminary, which opened its doors in February 1565 and still exists today. Cardinal Charles Borromeo, in Milan, entrusted his vicar general, from November 1564 onwards, with opening a diocesan seminary, initially entrusted to the Jesuits and then, because of complaints from the local clergy, subsequently placed in the hands of the Oblates of Saint Ambrose, founded by Saint Charles in 1578. Cardinal Borromeo, having returned to Milan, would write for it a precise and detailed set of regulations. He would add to it a seminary with 150 places for late vocations, a pro-seminary with 60 places for the formation of village parish priests, two minor seminaries of 40 places each for the humanities, and the Helvetic College for seminarians from Switzerland, part of which was, at that time, covered by the Diocese of Milan.⁵
In Portugal, the Archbishop of Braga, Bartholomew of the Martyrs (1514–1599), “the first bishop of Christendom”, established his seminary a few months after the end of the Council. His influence would be comparable to that of Saint Charles Borromeo, with whom he had formed a friendship, and his Stimulus Pastorum would enjoy an exceptional influence among the circles of French clergy reformers in the seventeenth century.⁶
In Germany, we should note the foundations of seminaries at Eichstätt (1564), Münster (1610) and Prague (1631). For England and Ireland, where persecution was taking place, candidates for pastoral ministry were trained on the continent at the English College of Douai and in the Irish colleges of Paris, Louvain and Salamanca. France, stifled by the Wars of Religion and the League, failed to set itself in motion. Apart from a few attempts, such as that of Cardinal de Lorraine at Reims, it was necessary to wait for the reception of the decrees of the Council of Trent by the Assembly of the Clergy in 1614, for Bérulle, Vincent de Paul, Olier and Jean Eudes to establish a model of seminary that would have a considerable influence afterwards in France, Canada, England and Ireland, and then in the United States.
This flourishing of seminaries contributed over the years to permeating the clergy with a new spirit, in keeping with the logic of the Tridentine reform. Candidates were instilled with a sense of their dignity and of their responsibility towards the people of God. The pastoral charge was closely linked to their function. This explains the Council’s insistence on the residence of bishops in their dioceses and of parish priests in their parishes. The future priest saw himself in his role of authority at the service of a complex organism, the hierarchical Church, with which he was united. What was expected of him was to ensure the functioning of institutions, to maintain his authority, and to preserve the observance of ecclesiastical rules by the faithful.⁷ This logic of the clericalisation of the priestly body deeply marked the formation of ordained ministers, and “it must also be recognised that, like every historical achievement, this coherent model, which was able to function for centuries, constructed Catholicism as it is. Its weaknesses are the price paid for its qualities.”⁸
The vicissitudes and adaptations of the Tridentine models up to Vatican II will now hold our attention.
2 – The French Model
In France, pastoral reform encountered difficulties: the material ruins accumulated by the Wars of Religion, the League and the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648); the political obstacles created by the Parliament, imbued with Gallicanism and refusing the official ratification of the decrees of the Council of Trent; the moral obstacles such as ignorance, misconduct, inertia, and above all the omnipresent reign of the benefice system and even the accumulation of benefices.
a) Isolated attempts
In such a situation, a few isolated initiatives emerged, such as those of the Council of Bordeaux convened in 1624 by François de Souris, whose Acts (never approved by Rome) contained a chapter on seminaries, Chapter XV,⁹ or those of François de La Rochefoucauld,¹⁰ Bishop of Clermont (1585–1612), then of Senlis (1612–1622), who organised retreats for ordinands and even composed a treatise entitled De la perfection de l’état ecclésiastique. One could also mention François de la Fayette, Bishop of Geneva-Annecy (1602–1622), and Adrien Bourdoise (1584–1655), parish priest of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet in Paris.¹¹ The most fruitful attempts came from Saint Vincent de Paul (1581–1660), Monsieur Olier (1608–1657) and Saint Jean Eudes (1601–1680).
b) Vincent de Paul
The first began in 1633 with the famous Tuesday Conferences at Saint-Lazare, which Olier, Bossuet and a significant number of bishops attended. In 1635, he founded a kind of minor seminary, the College of the Bons-Enfants, and in 1642 he opened a major seminary at Saint-Lazare and transferred the young seminarians to another house which he called the Saint-Charles Seminary. The Lazarists, founded by Saint Vincent de Paul, would be in charge of 53 major seminaries and 9 minor seminaries.
c) Monsieur Olier
That same year, Monsieur Olier established, for his part, a major seminary in his parish of Saint-Sulpice, which at that time depended on the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and which, like the abbey, was directly attached to the Holy See. The Saint-Sulpice Seminary addressed itself to candidates from all of France. From the beginning, its influence was very extensive, and it is rightly that Monsieur Olier is considered the founder of the French seminaries. Having moved in 1645 to the Rue du Vieux Colombier, it received at that time candidates from around 20 dioceses of France.
In 1651, Monsieur Olier presented to the Assembly of the Clergy his famous “Project and Idea of the Seminaries of My Lords the Bishops for their Clergy”. In it, M. Olier described his conception of a diocesan major seminary: “on the one hand, he gathers under the single institution of the seminary the various notions which this word had covered until then”, and on the other hand, he “conceives” the seminary according to the ministry of the bishop.
“The superior of the seminary is the Bishop, who contains within himself the fullness of the spirit and of the grace spread and extended throughout the clergy as in his members and ministers; it is he alone who can and must give it his spirit and his life.”¹²
Olier’s companions multiplied; they soon numbered 70 to assist him in his task and were unable to satisfy the requests arriving from bishops for foundations outside Paris. The Society of the Priests of Saint-Sulpice was born. The illustrious M. Tronson (+1700) would leave, through his works, an indelible mark on the model of French seminaries. The Sulpician seminary, however, retained a certain cultured and aristocratic character.¹³ On the eve of the French Revolution, there would exist around twenty of them.
d) Jean Eudes
Saint Jean Eudes spent about twenty years (from 1623 to 1643) among the priests of the Oratory founded by Bérulle. With the first nucleus of the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, commonly called the Eudists, he founded the seminary of Caen in 1643, followed by those of Coutances, Lisieux and Rouen. His model was intermediate between that of Vincent de Paul and that of Olier. Above all, he advocated “a school of piety and an academy of holiness”. He retained a concern for the apostolate of the masses. In 1789 there would be 18 Eudist seminaries in France.¹⁴
e) In New France
In 1663, by establishing a seminary on 26 March, Bishop de Laval connected himself directly with these French efforts, particularly those of Saint Jean Eudes. The model established in New France did not differ substantially from the one that was then going to flourish in France.
The essence of the French model lies in the presence of a formative community. The directors of the seminary, under the vigilance of the bishop, the true superior of the seminary, formed a team which, through its life, its example and its teaching, gave the seminary its tone and formed candidates in the ecclesiastical spirit almost by osmosis. Without following all the directives of the Society of Saint-Sulpice concerning the concrete organisation of this team of formators, the Vincentian and Eudist seminaries, as well as the one directed by the priests of the Seminary of Quebec in New France, relied on this orientation which was, in fact, an adaptation of the Tridentine ideal, without, moreover, in any way renouncing the internal logic of the Tridentine institution which I highlighted above.
3 – A Heritage Buffeted
a) The eighteenth century
In the history of spirituality, the eighteenth century was a century of stagnation, without any great creative impulse, in which a somewhat dried-up religion dominated. The major seminaries did not escape this exhaustion of the Catholic reform. Nevertheless, the general improvement in the moral and spiritual level of the clergy remains remarkable. “There is no doubt that the establishment in France and the multiplication of seminaries had rapidly beneficial effects.”¹⁵ At the time of the French Revolution, the clergy had gained among the Christian people an esteem which it had never possessed since the Patristic period. Seminaries truly played an undeniable role in these achievements.
Unfortunately, with time, “the environment would become increasingly artificial; the admirable Tridentine formula of formation in the orders and through the orders would remain a dead letter and be misunderstood…. Liturgical, catechetical and pastoral initiation would be reduced to a few catechisms or chapel ceremonies. A devalued notion of clerical status would enter into customs.”¹⁶ According to the words of H. Peltier: “one repeats, one rehearses, one no longer invents.”¹⁷
b) The nineteenth century¹⁸
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the French Revolution, Josephinism, which attempted to control seminaries in Austria, Holland and northern Italy, and the philosophical spirit of the Enlightenment placed the very network of seminaries in danger. At Louvain, the central seminary was even burnt down and razed. This tendency to interfere continued in the German states. Bavaria, in the Concordat of 1817, recognised the right of bishops to establish seminaries, but in the other states the conflict continued. It became acute in Prussia in 1873. Bishops were required to have the academic programme approved by the state and to present candidates for ecclesiastical offices to a state examination. Faced with their refusal, several seminaries were closed: Trier, Strasbourg and Gnesen-Posen.
In France, the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801 brought about a revival that was misleading in certain respects.¹⁹ Seminaries were reopened and candidates flocked to them. From 1805 to 1810, ten seminaries were entrusted to the Sulpicians, and in 1830 all dioceses in France had a major seminary directed by Sulpicians, Lazarists or even diocesan priests. There were also 144 minor seminaries.
In Canada, the Major Seminary of Quebec attained the rank of Faculty of Theology when Laval University was founded in 1852. In Montreal, the Sulpicians opened a theology seminary in 1840 and a philosophy seminary in 1847. These were followed, as the establishment of dioceses progressed in the country, by the seminary of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Ottawa, that of the Eudists in Halifax and that of Toronto. In the Province of Quebec, ecclesiastics (as future priests were called at the time) received their formation by working as prefects of studies and teachers in classical colleges. They received on-site instruction in dogma, moral theology, canon law and the administration of the sacraments. In 1895, the Provincial Council of Montreal requested that they no longer be entrusted with teaching and that they spend three years of residence in the major seminary before ordination. This situation continued into the twentieth century until the beginning of the 1930s.
In the United States, the nineteenth century saw the spread of the French model of seminaries through the work of the Sulpicians and the Lazarists. M. Emery, superior of Saint-Sulpice, sent M. Fagot and three other Sulpicians to found Saint Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore in 1791. The Lazarists, for their part, opened a seminary in St Louis in 1816. Foundations multiplied: Boston (1829), New York (1832), Milwaukee (1846).
c) The twentieth century
As the renewed network of seminaries in Europe and America expanded, adaptations became increasingly numerous. Tridentine legislation remained in force, but concrete implementations became more diverse. Leo XIII and then Pius X approved several accommodations with regard to it. One essential thing remained: the seminary continued its mission in the spirit of Trent.
The results were particularly evident in the Quebec clergy at the beginning of the twentieth century. “The major seminaries where the future priest learns his profession provide a moral formation which makes him energetic and oriented towards concrete action” and an abstract, disembodied and somewhat dry intellectual formation which turns him away from theological reflection; the teaching of moral theology, entirely centred on casuistry (the art of the confessor), ignored ethical reflection (the theory of virtues). Above all, these institutions tended to standardise behaviours and attitudes and to shape examples conforming to the accepted model of the priest.”²⁰ In Quebec, the situation changed little until 1965.
The evolution of seminaries after Vatican II attempted, as after Trent, to reflect an image of the priest arising from the Council’s vision. The decree Optatam totius, promulgated on 28 October 1965, took over from that of 15 July 1563. It was followed by work redefining the formation of future priests, which placed emphasis on the formation programme. On 6 January 1970, Rome published fundamental norms for the formation of future priests under the title Ratio fundamentalis institutionis sacerdotalis. This was followed by adapted norms presented by each Episcopal Conference. Those governing French-speaking Canada were approved for six years in October 1971; then, following a careful revision, a new text was presented by the French-speaking bishops in 1982 and approved for ten years by Rome on 19 December 1983.
Conclusion
The Tridentine seminary evolved while remaining fixed on its goal: to form competent, devoted pastors adapted to the needs of their time. The history of seminaries begins with a model suited to a certain conception of the Church. The pastor was prepared for his role within a closed environment. Transplanted into the world, the newly ordained priest would always have to remember that he was the standard-bearer of a group into which he had been incorporated: the clergy.
This model underwent numerous adaptations in different periods and different countries. At the end of the nineteenth century, one witnessed a diversification which did not call the model into question. The slow reconciliation with the world, crowned at Vatican II, ultimately led to giving priority, for the formation of future priests, to a formation programme (Ratio) which became the heart of the institution inherited from the Council of Trent. The seminary opens itself to the world and to Christian communities. More than an institution, it is a time of formation, and its necessity is therefore all the more evident.
References for the article by Hermann Giguère
- The article by Hervé LEGRAND, “Crises du clergé: hier et aujourd’hui. Essais de lecture ecclésiologique” in Lumière et Vie, no. 167 (1984), pp. 90–106, presents a framework of interpretation which can be applied, with due proportion, to seminaries.
- CRISTIANI, L., L’église à l’époque du Concile de Trente, vol. XVII of Histoire de l’église depuis les origines jusqu’à nos jours, under the direction of Fiche and Martin, Bloud & Guay, Paris, 1948, p. 141.
- CHARUE, A.M., Le clergé diocésain tel qu’un évêque le voit et le souhaite, Desclée, 1960, 2nd edition, p. 18.
- Cristiani, loc. cit., p. 205.
- MOLS, Roger, “Saint Charles Borromée, pionnier de la pastorale moderne”, in Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 791 (1957), pp. 600–622 and 715–747.
- See BROUTIN, P., La réforme pastorale en France au XVIIe siècle, Volume II, (Bibliothèque de théologie, Series III, “Théologie morale”), Desclée & Cie, Paris, 1956, pp. 315–530.
- See CONCAR, Y., “Sur deux aspects du travail apostolique: le prêtre chef de peuple et apôtre” in Sacerdoce et Laïcat devant leurs tâches d’évangélisation, Cerf, Paris, 1962, pp. 208–209.
- VÉNARD, Marc, “Le Concile de Trente: aboutissement et point de départ” in Lumière et Vie, no. 167 (1984), p. 56.
- See BROUTIN, loc. cit., pp. 33–53.
- See BROUTIN, loc. cit., pp. 73–89.
- See BROUTIN, loc. cit., pp. 111–127.
- NOYÉ, Irénée, “Le projet de M. Olier pour les séminaires diocésains (1651)” in La tradition sacerdotale, (Bibliothèque de la Faculté catholique de théologie de Lyon, 7), Éditions Xavier Mappus, Le Puy, 1959, p. 221. The text of M. Olier is preceded by an introduction and a study by Mgr Marc LALLIER, pp. 191–211.
- See BROUTIN, op. cit., p. 190.
- GEORGES, Émile, La Congrégation de Jésus et Marie dite des Eudistes, Éditions Librairie catholique Emmanuel Vitte, Paris, p. 100.
- PIERRARD, P., Le prêtre français du Concile de Trente à nos jours, (Bibliothèque d’Histoire du Christianisme, no. 8), Desclée, p. 42.
- See BROUTIN, loc. cit., p. 190.
- ROULIER, Fernand, “Le prêtre en France après le Concile de Trente”, in Le ministère sacerdotal. Un dossier théologique, Faculty of Theology of Lyon, Lyon, 1970, p. 123.
- The article by A. Viéban on seminaries in The Catholic Encyclopedia, pp. 694–703, provides numerous details, particularly concerning the United States and Canada.
- See P. PIERRARD, in La vie quotidienne du prêtre français au XIXe siècle 1801–1903, Hachette, Paris, pp. 10–105, and the descriptions concerning the Concordat priest.
- HAMELIN, J. and GAGNON, N., Le XXe siècle, vol. I, 189 (1910), vol. 3 of Histoire du catholicisme québécoisdirected by Nive VOISINE, Boréal Express, Montréal, 1984, pp. 134–135.
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