A travelling and constant presence in the history of the city
The Seminary from its origins to today
edited by Don Fabio Besostri
The instructions of the Council of Trent
On July 5, 1563, the Council of Trent, with the document Cum adolescentium aetas, invited dioceses to open a house to gather young men intending to become priests, to provide them with adequate spiritual and cultural formation. These houses were referred to as Seminarii, meaning "nurseries.".
Previously, the training of future priests occurred in various ways: there were schools run by the bishop or the cathedral canons; in some cases, a teacher, paid by the students themselves, gave lessons in theology and canon law, as was customary at universities; or, where there was a theology faculty, the future priests attended its courses. Young men were often taken in by a parish priest, who then presented them to the bishop as candidates for holy orders. The seminary, at least in the intentions of the Council Fathers, was intended to offer a solid, doctrinally sound, and homogeneous education to all its students, as was already the case, for example, in Jesuit colleges in Rome and elsewhere.
The Council Fathers also established the conditions for admission to seminaries: young men at least 12 years old, legitimate children, capable of reading and writing, and possessing a temperament that indicated a desire for the priestly state. The seminary was destined to become a comprehensive institution, where young men were educated with little external contact, since everything, including the school, was organised within the structure itself. The Council established a model that envisioned three pillars for priestly formation, which would remain a guiding principle until the 20th century: piety, study, and discipline.
Ippolito de Rossi and Sant’Andrea dei Reali
The Bishop of Pavia, Ippolito de Rossi, was one of the first to follow the Council's prescriptions, as the Seminary was already active in September 1564. Its first, temporary, location was near the Cathedral; in 1615, the monastery of Sant'Andrea dei Reali (between Via Cavallotti and Vicolo Stilicone), previously owned by the nuns of Santa Maria alle Caccie, was purchased. The bishop allocated the income from a dozen ecclesiastical benefices to the seminary and imposed a tax on all parishes. However, financial problems would plague the seminary for a long time, due to the meager income and the difficulty of collecting it.
The community consisted of about twenty young men, entrusted to a "maestro," the rector, who oversaw their cultural and spiritual formation, celebrated daily Holy Mass for them, guided them in their devotional practices, and took care of virtually all their needs, even accompanying them on recreational walks. Despite the presence of a theology faculty at the University, preparatory studies took place within the seminary, led by the rector and then by a small number of professors. Theological studies were soon provided by the institutes of the religious orders present in the city.
From the end of the seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth century
Over the years, the number of seminarians grew slowly: there were 24 in 1662, 27 in 1676, 46 at the end of the century, and 60 at the beginning of the eighteenth century. These numbers were always completely disproportionate to the size of the diocese, which at the time had nearly two hundred parishes and spanned three states: Spanish and later Austrian Lombardy, the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza, and Piedmont, later the Kingdom of Sardinia.
In the early 18th century, Bishop Giacomo Antonio Morigia devoted great care to the seminary, for which he issued a new regulation, containing insights that would have a lasting impact on the formation process and community life. His successors, Agostino Cusani and Francesco Pertusati, also actively engaged in their seminary: for example, Pertusati instituted the position of an internal spiritual director, whereas previously, seminarians had gone to the Barnabite Fathers of Santa Maria di Canepanova for the sacrament of Penance every month. In addition to daily Mass and monthly Confession, seminarians recited the Office of the Blessed Virgin and the litanies every day, and performed a quarter of an hour of meditation in the morning and an examination of conscience in the evening. In addition to humanistic and theological subjects, particular importance was given to the study of Gregorian chant and the sacred polyphony then in vogue.
The General Seminary at San Tommaso
«"On the eve of the Theresian-Josephine reforms," writes Professor Xenio Toscani in an in-depth study, "the Pavia seminary was growing [...] the clergy numbered nearly 80, a third of the diocesan total, and the bishops were pushing as hard as possible for priestly formation to take place in the seminary." It was precisely in 1771 that the most difficult period for the Pavia seminary began. Habsburg ecclesiastical policy aimed to closely control the life of the Church within its dominions, and this required meticulous vigilance over the formation of the clergy as well as many other aspects of clergy life and pastoral practice. Maria Theresa mandated that seminaries in Austrian Lombardy be supervised by the Royal University of Pavia, where the most famous exponents of Jansenism and Italian and European jurisdictionalism (currents of theological and political thought that advocated the complete subjugation of the Church to the sovereign and the reform of worship and pastoral practice according to Enlightenment rationalism) taught. Seminary professors were required to hold degrees from Pavia, and their teaching followed the guidelines and curricula dictated by the Pavia theological faculty. Then, in 1786, Joseph II abolished philosophical and theological courses in all Lombard seminaries and concentrated all "major" seminarians at the General Seminary, located in the former Dominican convent of St. Thomas. Even the seminarians from Pavia were obliged, for their theological training, to reside in the General Seminary, while the courses in grammar, humanities and rhetoric were hosted in the House of Ordinands, managed by the Priests of the Mission of St. Vincent de Paul, near the church of St. James and Philip.
The Napoleonic period
During this period, Bishop Bartolomeo Olivazzi, under pressure from the King of Sardinia, had to open a second seminary in Valenza (Alessandria) for the clerics of the Piedmontese part of the diocese. This seminary continued its activity until 1796, when it was requisitioned by the French military, and was finally suppressed by Napoleon in 1809.
Upon the death of Joseph II (1790) the General Seminary was closed, and Bishop Giuseppe Bertieri, who succeeded Olivazzi in 1792, thanks to his good relations with the Viennese court, was able to reopen the ancient site of Sant'Andrea dei Reali; but it was the Austrian troops who requisitioned the Seminary again in 1795 and used it as a barracks and warehouse. The Napoleonic wars and the political upheavals that followed worsened the situation: the seminaries in Lombardy, including the one in Pavia, remained closed for about ten years. The seminarians boarded with some families and went to lessons in the teachers' homes.
The eventful nineteenth century and the arrival at Pusterla
The situation improved under the episcopate of Paolo Lamberto D'Allegre, appointed Bishop of Pavia in 1805: the Seminary regained its old location, which nevertheless showed all its inadequacy and antiquity, and the bishop's efforts to obtain (unsuccessfully) first the former German-Hungarian College (now the Cairoli College), and then the former Lateran Canonry, at San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, were ineffective. D'Allegre, however, reorganized theological studies and issued new regulations for the Seminary, but he found himself faced with a very difficult economic situation, with the dismemberment of the Diocese (which went from 188 to 71 parishes) and the confiscation by the Cisalpine and Napoleonic states of ecclesiastical revenues not intended for priests in charge of souls, precisely those that constituted the bulk of the Seminary's income. This resulted in a steady decline in the number of seminarians and priestly ordinations (for example, 14 priestly ordinations between 1813 and 1816, compared to 55 deaths). Bishop D'Allegre, however, cared so deeply about his seminary that he named it heir to two-thirds of his estate. The donation allowed his successor, Luigi Tosi, to significantly change the situation: thanks to good relations with Vienna, where ecclesiastical policy had changed in the meantime, Tosi was able to obtain the former Lateran Canons' House, which for forty years was the ideal home for the seminary: located in the city but decentralized, with a spacious and bright building surrounded by extensive gardens, it housed a growing number of students, not only seminarians but also external students, up to 100. Tosi revised the Regulations, enriching the curriculum and increasing the number of teachers for both the humanities and philosophy and theology courses; he obtained from the government the assignment of numerous vacant benefices to increase the institution's assets, and left, upon his death (1845), a third of his assets to the Seminary.
Unfortunately, only three years after his death, a new difficult period began: in 1848, while the episcopal see was still vacant, Austrian troops retook possession of the building and transformed it into a military hospital. The seminarians of Pavia were affected by the general climate and, in some cases, actively participated in the Risorgimento uprisings of 1848, later suffering reprisals when the Austrians returned to the city. In 1850, the new bishop, Angiolo Ramazzotti, arrived in Pavia. He was a Milanese, having studied law in Pavia between 1819 and 1823. He was a prominent figure for his apostolic zeal, and was responsible for the founding of the Institute of Foreign Missions (now PIME). The seminary was requisitioned again in 1854-1856 to be used as a cholera hospital, while the seminarians were housed in Palazzo Botta. But in 1851, the bishop had taken direct charge and completely revamped the teaching staff to eliminate any Jansenist influence. He moved the gymnasium founded by Tosi into the bishop's palace to make it more accessible to the city's youth, and established a Bishop's College to serve as a minor seminary and a breeding ground for priestly vocations. His appointment as Patriarch of Venice in 1858 limited the scope of his innovations, and the seminary suffered a new occupation in 1859, first by Austrian troops, then French, and finally Piedmontese. Teachers and students were accommodated, amidst a thousand inconveniences, in the bishop's palace. But above all, it was the cultural climate that created a difficult situation for the life of the Seminary, drastically reducing the number of its students (down to about thirty) coinciding with a very long vacancy of the seat, which lasted until 1871. It was thanks to Vincenzo Gandini, already a professor and rector of the Seminary since the time of Tosi, vicar capitular and patient negotiator, that the Seminary finally found its home. Gandini managed to sell the San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro building to the military and subsequently purchase the former Pusterla monastery. The building was in a state of serious disrepair and in need of extensive restoration. Seminarians were only allowed to enter in 1867; a few years later, in 1871, it also welcomed Bishop Lucido Maria Parocchi, who had been prevented from taking possession of his seat by the turbulent political events of the time. Parocchi, however, was not merely a guest: his constant presence allowed him to get to know his clerics individually, to carefully monitor their cultural and spiritual formation, and laid the foundation for the work of his successor, Agostino Gaetano Riboldi, elected bishop of Pavia in 1877, who gave the seminary not only new regulations but also a completely innovative educational approach. Some of the diocese's most brilliant minds taught at the seminary, one name above all: Pietro Maffi, who later became Archbishop of Pisa. Numerous professors became bishops or otherwise became prominent figures in the Italian cultural scene (Rodolfo Maiocchi, Anastasio Rossi, Giovanni Cazzani, Ferdinando Rodolfi, Francesco Magani). Riboldi's influence on the Diocese and the Seminary remained evident until the period following the Second Vatican Council, reinterpreted from time to time by the rectors who succeeded one another during this period, such as Antonio Poma, Luigi Maverna, and Paolo Magnani. Each of them was able to maintain a distinctly "Pavia" style of priestly formation while at the same time integrating the demands for renewal that emerged from the ongoing and necessary engagement with the evolution of culture and society.