Сұлпициандық қоғам: тарих және әлеуметтік рөлі

Society of apostolic life

Sulpician priests contributed to the parish community during the day, but at night they would return to their institutions. Jean Jacques Olier attempted to control diverse social groups by having laymen of the community give reports on family life, poverty, and disorder. The Sulpicians were very strict in regards to women and sexuality to the extent that they were eventually banned from the seminary unless it was for short visits in the external area with appropriate attire. The Sulpicians accepted aspirants to the company as long as they were priests and had permission from their bishop. They retained ownership of individual property and were free to dispose their wealth. In the 18th century they attracted the sons of the nobility, as well as candidates from the common class, and produced a large number of the French bishops.

The Sulpicians played a major role in the founding of the Canadian city of Montreal, where they engaged in missionary activities, trained priests and constructed the Saint Sulpice Seminary. The Société Notre Dame de Montréal, of which Jean Jacques Olier was an active founder, was granted the land of Montreal from the Company of One Hundred Associates, which owned New France, with the aim of converting the indigenous population and providing schools and hospitals for both them and the colonists. The Jesuits served as missionaries for the small colony until 1657 when Olier sent four priests from the Saint Sulpice seminary in Paris to form the first parish. In 1663, France decided to substitute direct royal administration over New France for that hitherto exercised by the Company of One Hundred Associates, and in the same year the Société Notre Dame de Montréal ceded its possessions to the Seminaire de Saint Sulpice. Just as in Paris, the Montreal Sulpicians had important civil responsibilities. Most notably, they acted as seigneurs for the island of Montreal. The Sulpicians served as missionaries, judges, explorers, schoolteachers, social workers, supervisors of convents, almsmen, canal builders, urban planners, colonization agents, and entrepreneurs. Despite their large role in society and their influence in shaping early Montreal, each night they would all return to the Saint Sulpice Seminary. The administration of the Séminaire de Montreal was modeled on that of the Séminaire de Paris, in which the company was run by the superior, the four man Consulting Council, and the Assembly of Twelve Assistants. According to the rules of the seminary in 1764, the superior, during his five year renewable term, was to act like a father and was to be respected. The seminary kept careful records of all employees including birthday, place of birth, marital status, and salary. Female employees posed a particular problem since although a cheap source of labour, their presence in a male religious community was problematic. The superior of the Séminaire de Montréal was inherently also the Island of Montreal's seigneur. In the case of M. Vachon de Belmont, who was responsible for the mission of La Montagne, sixth superior of the Montreal Sulpicians, the master designer of the fort and Sulpicians' residential château, and who was independently wealthy, was very well educated and had trained as draughtsman and architect, M. Belmont had a more than passing interest in military strategy and architecture. M. Belmont's military strategy stamp is also evident in the implementation of the Sault au Récollet's :fr:Fort Lorette and the seigneurie Lac de Deux Montagnes' fort. François Dollier de Casson and Brehan de Gallinée explored the region of the Great Lakes (1669), of which they made a map. In 1676 the mission of La Montagne was opened on the site of the present Séminaire de Montréal, where M. Belmont built a fort (1685). Alcohol traffic, major loss of mission housing by fire in 1694, and other factors necessitated the move of the first mission to one on the edge of the rivière des Prairies, near the Sault au Récollet rapids, in north end Montreal island. In 1717, the Compagnie de Saint Sulpice de Paris was granted. a concession (~10.5 miles of frontage, ~9 miles deep) named seigneurie du Lac des Deux Montagnes. In 1721, the Sulpicians moved the Sault au Récollet mission to two villages on seigneurie Lac des Deux Montagnes territory; a first village to the west, which was their former hunting grounds and came to be called Kanesatake, was assigned to the Mohawks, and, later, a village to the east was assigned to the Algonquins and the Nipissings.

On April 29, 1764, the Séminaire de Saint Sulpice de Paris executed an act of donation giving all Canadian property to the Séminaire de Montréal making possible the survival of the Sulpicians to become British subjects, loyal to the Crown. In the wake of the Conquest of 1760, the Séminaire de Montreal thus became independent from the Séminaire de Saint Sulpice de Paris. After lengthy negotiations, in 1840 the British Crown recognized the possessions of the Sulpicians, the status of which had been ambiguous since the Conquest, while also providing for the gradual termination of the seigneurial regime. This enabled the Sulpicians to keep their holdings and continue their work, while allowing landowners who so desired to make a single final payment (commutation) and be relieved of all future seigneurial dues. Inauguration in 1825 of the Lachine Canal opened up markets to the United States' interior via the Erie Canal (opened in 1822), which in turn provided the impetus for the rapid sudden development of North America's largest industrial park in the area known as Pointe Saint Charles, named after Charles le Moyne. A large part of Pointe Saint Charles was occupied by the Sulpicians' Saint Gabriel Farm established in 1659 and named after the first superior, Gabriel de Queylus. At the request of Bishop Ignace Bourget, in 1840 the Sulpicians took over the diocesan school of theology, creating the famous Grand Séminaire de Montréal. Since 1857 it has been located on Sherbrooke Street near Atwater Avenue. This operation enabled the Montreal Sulpicians to expand their primary work, the education of priests. They have trained innumerable priests and bishops, Canadian and American, down to the
Canadian Sulpicians may be found operating in seminaries in Montreal and Edmonton. In 1972 the Canadian Province established a Provincial Delegation for Latin America, based in Bogotá, Colombia. In Latin America, the Society functions in Brazil (Brasilia and Londrina) and Colombia (Cali, Cucuta and Manizales). They have also served in Fukuoka, Japan since 1933. Purchasing the One Mile Tavern then on the edge of the city, they dedicated the house to the Blessed Virgin. In October they opened classes with five students whom they had brought from France, and thereby established the first enduring community of the Society in the nation. In March, 1792 three more priests arrived, Abbé Chicoisneau, Abbé John Baptist Mary David, and Abbé Benedict Joseph Flaget. Two seminarians arrived with them, Stephen T. Badin and another named Barret. They were joined in June of that same year by the Abbés Ambrose Maréchal, Gabriel Richard and Francis Ciquard. Many of these early priests were sent as missionaries to remote areas of the United States and its territories. Flaget and David founded the Catholic Seminary of St. Thomas, at Bardstown, Kentucky. It was the first seminary west of the Appalachians. Their St. Thomas Catholic Church, built there in 1816, is the oldest surviving brick church in Kentucky. In 1796, Louis William Valentine Dubourg arrived and became the president of Georgetown University. In that same period, for a brief time they also staffed St. Joseph Seminary, serving the Archdiocese of New York (1896–1906). The Sulpicians who staffed that institution chose to leave the Society and become part of the archdiocese. Among their number was Francis Gigot. In 1898, at the invitation of the Archbishop of San Francisco, Patrick William Riordan, the Sulpicians founded what was, until 2017, their primary institution on the West Coast, Saint Patrick Seminary, Menlo Park, California. From the 1920s until about 1971, the Society operated St. Edward Seminary in Kenmore, Washington. The grounds now form Saint Edward State Park and Bastyr University. For a brief period in the 1990s, the Sulpicians were also involved in teaching at St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, the college seminary for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. In 1917, the construction of the Sulpician Seminary began in Washington, D. C., next to The Catholic University of America. The seminary, which became an independent institution in 1924, changed its name to Theological College in 1940. It has graduated over 1,500 priests, including 45 bishops and four cardinals. American Sulpicians gained a reputation for forward thinking at certain points of their history, to the suspicion and dissatisfaction of more conservative members of the hierarchy. They were on the cutting edge of Vatican II thinking and thus gained both friends and enemies. A constant in the Sulpician seminaries has been an emphasis on personal spiritual direction and on collegial governance. In 1989, U. S. Sulpicians began a collaborative approach to priestly formation with the bishops of Zambia. the American Province has several seminary placements in Zambia and a number of new Zambian Sulpicians and Candidates.

Source: https://sulpc. org/devenir formateur/