Séminaire de Québec
Coordinates: 46°48′52.75″N 71°12′20.52″W / 46.8146528°N 71.2057000°W
The Seminary of Quebec (French: Séminaire de Québec) is a Roman Catholic community of priests in Quebec City founded by Bishop François de Laval, the first bishop of New France in 1663.
The Séminaire de Québec is a Society of diocesan priests founded on March 26, 1663 by Bishop François de Laval, first bishop of New France, in order to sustain the mission of the Church in North America. In 1665, he joined this community to that of the Seminary of Foreign Missions of Paris under the name of the Seminary of Foreign Missions of Quebec, from which is derived the acronym SME, still in use today.
The first role of the Séminaire de Québec was to prepare young men for ordination and ministry in parishes and missions as far away as Louisiana. The Seminary was thus founded together with the Major Seminary, where future priests received their training.
In 1668, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's top minister, initiated an attempt to impose French language and culture on local aboriginal people. Bishop de Laval therefore opened the Seminary to local aboriginal people as well as children of settlers with studious dispositions and a desire to enter the priesthood. This was the beginning of the Petit Séminaire de Québec (the Minor Seminary).
Until the English conquest in 1760, the Minor Seminary was a boarding school for students. Classes were held at the Jesuit College on the site of the present City Hall. When the Jesuits were suppressed after the Conquest, the directors of the Seminary took over. The Minor Seminary became a full-fledged teaching institution, a college, open to all boys interested in studying. In 1852, the high quality of teaching was recognized in a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria, leading to the founding of Université Laval, the first Catholic French-language university in North America. Université Laval and the Minor Seminary no longer have any legal ties with the Quebec Seminary. The Seminary spun off Université Laval into its own corporation in 1970 and the same was done with the Minor Seminary in 1987.
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