Irish College in Toulouse

Irish College in Toulouse(1618-1793), was a seminary like other Irish Colleges in Continental Europe set up to train priests during the Penal Laws prevented the training of priests in Ireland. Established in 1618 and given royal assent as 'le séminaire royal de Sainte Anne' in 1659, and in 1660 was formally linked to the University of Toulouse.[1] As it was in his Diocese, the College was under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Toulouse, who visited the college in 1669, on accounts of bad behaviour by the students. The Irish College in Toulouse, was a setup sister college of the Irish College in Bordeaux to the pressure of numbers,[2] like Bordeaux it was also supported by Anne of Austria, it followed the Bordeaux statues until it was constituted with its own statues.[3] It only obtained its own fully separate statues from Archbishop Charles Antoine de La Roche-Aymon sanctioned by Pope Benedict XIV in 1754.[4] It was closed in 1793 like the other Irish Colleges in French-controlled areas, following the French Revolution, its property was sold by the French Government later in 1805 the remaining interests were transferred to the Irish College in Paris.