'Seminarium Puerorum: The Seminary of the Diocese of Malta 1703 - 1803'
Author: Francis Bonnici
Publisher: Kite Group / 2025
Pages: 449
It came as an absolute surprise to me to get to know that in the library of the Archbishop's Seminary there still exists a box and a list of books left by the Maltese hero Dun Mikiel Xerri, killed by the French for 'treachery', as a donation to the Seminary Library.
I never saw this box and never even knew it existed in the long years I spent at the seminary and later.
This is one of the surprises to be found in this book with a rather pedantic title - the history of the Seminary of Malta in the hundred years from 1703 to 1803.
Then you read the book and you find out the Seminary had quite a turbulent early history.
The book traces the history of the Seminary through seven bishoprics until the invasion by Napoleon and the French in 1798 and the end of the French occupation in 1803.
At the beginning, there was.... nothing, no seminary at all.
The Council of Trent had taken as a model the Council of London's example of the seminary for the formation of future priests.
But although Bishop Tomas Gargallo (1578 - 1614) had written in his Ad Limina report that he had set up a seminary in Malta, his successor, Bishop Balthazar Cagliares (1615 - 1633) preferred sending priests to the Jesuits to be trained.
Nor did Bishop Juan Balaguer Camarasa (1635 - 1663) nor Bishop Luca Bueno (1664 - 1668), nor Bishop Lorenzo Astoria (1670 - 1678) nor Bishop Michele Gerolamo Molina (1678 - 1682) manage to set up a seminary.
It was only after Blessed Pope Innocent XI wrote the Apostolic Letter Sacrosancti Apostolatus in 1684 that Bishop Davide Cocco Palmerio (1684 - 1711) set up at long last Malta's first Seminary with six students, including one from Gozo, in the house of Signor Ferdinand Fiott in Mdina.
The problem in those years was to find the necessary funding. Bishop Cocco Palmerio wanted the excess of Saura Hospital to pass on to the seminary.
Other funds had been allocated to the College of the Jesuits but when the bishop asked for them they were denied to him and a long drawn-out querelle ensued
It was only when the French came in, towards the end of this book that a more permanent solution was found, talking the mass of unsaid Masses and crunching them together that a more permanent solution was found.
As the parishes in Malta increased from 30 to 36, eleven years after the opening of the Seminaru the first visit by Bishop Giacomo Canaves revealed that some of the students had already been ordained and others were coming in. Eight were admitted in January 1715.
But when Bishop Gore Mancini visited the Seminary in December 1722 it was clear the situation had regressed.
The bishop planned to move the Seminary to Valletta where he had his house so that he could keep a better eye on them. The sudden move took place on Friday 23 July 1723.
This move proved to be highly unpopular and as soon as Bishop Gore Mancini was dead, his successor, Bishop Paolo Alpheran de Bussan, following heated arguments against the move to Valletta, and after one of the Canons, Rev. Peter Cassar, had offered his own very good house, ordered the Seminary to move back.
At that time the cathedral especially the apse, destroyed in the 1695 earthquake, was being rebuilt and Bishop Alpheran de Bussan with help from Grand Master Manoel de Vilhena and others enabled the building of the Baroque Seminary across the square from the bishop's residence and the cathedral. The building was donated as a permanent gift to the cathedral.
The number of seminarians exploded, year after year, including Gaetano Mannarino who went on to lead the Revolt of the Priests on 8th September 1775. Grand Master Ximenes did not keep the promises he made to the rebel leaders, cut off the heads of four and threw Don Gaetano in prison from where he was freed, old and frail, by Napoleon many years later.
The quality of priests had deteriorated and the crisis came to a head with the Ximenes crisis which also led to Bishop Pellerano spending some time in exile.
An effort was made by the church to reform itself and this was done through the Motu Proprio 'Ea semper' by Pope Pius VI in 1777.
Bishop Pellerano at the end resigned and the King of Naples, Ferdinand IV, chose the Neapolian Conventual friar Vincenzo Labini.
This bishop saw the last years of the Order, lived through the French occupation most of the time shut and under siege in Valletta where, as he told the Pope later, the church could do nothing, and saw the first years of British rule.
After this book the author gave us a sequel - from 1838 to 1938 whih will be reviewed later.
In the long pontificate of Labini the church and the seminary had their share of internal crises.
There was the case of a seminarian who became a canon even before ordination and had to juggle the two together.
We meet Mikiel Anton Vassalli, first as a student and then as a rebel.
Three priests - Michelangelo Lauron, Nicholai Vella and Vincent Buhagiar - signed a request that a seminary is opened in Gozo.
And there was a huge controversy when Bishop Labini tried to siphon funds from the very rich Fondo Cumbo.
And George Grognet, later to build the Most dome, but still a seminarian at the time, was studying in Tusculum without the bishop's permission.