Scots College (Rome)

The Pontifical Scots College (Italian: Il Pontificio Collegio Scozzese) in Rome is the main seminary for the training of men for the priesthood from the dioceses of the Catholic Church in Scotland. It was established, in response to the religious persecution which began with the Scottish Reformation Parliament and ended only with Catholic Emancipation in 1829, by a bull of Pope Clement VIII on 5 December 1600.

History

Beginnings

In the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland in the sixteenth century, Catholicism in Scotland had declined into small pockets in certain parts of the country, and in those places where there were still Catholic noblemen or gentry. Exiled Catholic clergy attempted to recover and reform the extant Scottish ecclesiastical institutions abroad, and or establish new ones, in accordance with the decrees of the Council of Trent (1545–63), which established the training of diocesan priests within seminaries. Petitioning began for such a Scots institution to be established in the central location of Rome where there already had been an existing Scots Hospice from 1475.

The Scots College was established by Pope Clement VIII on 5 December 1600, when it was assigned the revenue of the old Scots' hospice. It was placed under the authority of a Cardinal protector, the first of whom was Camillo Borghese. At first the college was sited in a little house in the present Via del Tritone, opposite the church of Santa Maria di Costantinopoli. The college opened in 1602 with only eleven students, but at first was not constituted solely for the training of priests to return to Scotland as missionaries. In 1604 it was transferred to Via Felice, now called Via delle Quattro Fontane.