Moonlightballroom

The shaping of modern seminary institutions was a literal final result of Roman Catholic reforms of the Counter-Reformation after the Council of Trent.  This reform asserted on the enrichment of the training of clergy by means of creating seminaries as live-in establishments which would be under the unquestioning control of ranking clergy.  The founding of minor seminaries to educate young boys for the priesthood followed this original movement.  A seminary pattern named the Tridentine was that of a live in monastic community where lifestyle and entreaty were closely monitored and disciplined as a way to reclaiming pre-Reformation maltreatments among the clergy.  The seminaries were very much in contrast to the more open and free life styles of the universities.   There was a much greater emphasis was laid on personalized discipline as well as the learning of philosophy to prepare for Systematic Theology.  Protestant social reformers of the day despised this approach path.Other Christian designations, including contemporary American Judaism, have since taken on and altered the Tridentine pattern of the seminary.  These seminaries are more open than the Tridentine and often do not contain the Catholic insistence on the required study of doctrine and the necessity to reside on campus within the Christian residential area of the seminary.