and
frequented by the choristers. His ideal was a clergy after his own
image--pious, zealous, and attached to their duties. Many other
saintly personages were labouring towards the same end, but Olier set
to work in very original fashion. Adrien de Bourdoise alone took the
same view as he did of ecclesiastical reform. What was truly novel in
the idea of these two founders was to try and effect the improvement
of the secular clergy by means of institutions for priests mixing
with the world and combining the cure of souls with the training of
students for the Church.

Olier and Bourdoise accordingly, while carrying on the work of reform,
and becoming heads of religious congregations, remained parish priests
of St. Sulpice and Saint-Nicholas du Chardonnet. The seminary had its
origin in the assembling together of the priests into communities, and
these communities became schools of clericalism, homes in which
young men destined for the Church were piously trained for it.
What facilitated the creation of these establishments and made them
innocuous to the state was that they had no resident tutors. All the
theological tutors were at the Sorbonne, and the young men from St.
Sulpice and St. Nicholas, who were studying theology, went there for
their lectures. Thus the system of teaching remained national and
common to all. The seclusion of the seminary only applied to the
moral discipline and religious duties. This was the equivalent of the
practice now prevalent among the boarding-schools which send their
pupils to the Lycee. There was only one course of theology in Paris,
and that was the official one at the Faculty. The work in the interior
of the seminary was confined to repetitions and lectures. It is true
that this rule soon became obsolete. I have heard it said by old
students of St. Sulpice that towards the end of last century they went
very little to the Sorbonne, that the general opinion was that there
was little to be learnt there, and that the private lessons in
the seminary quite took the place of the official lecture. This
organisation was very similar, as may be seen, to that which now
obtains in the Normal School and regulates its relations with the
Sorbonne. Subsequent to the Concordat the whole of the education of
the seminaries was given within the walls. Napoleon did not think it
worth while to revive the monopoly of the Theological Faculty. This
could only have been effected by obtaining from the Court of