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The Seminary of the Wisdom Incarnate (Latin: Seminarium Incarnatæ Sapientiæ, Hungarian: A Megtestesült Bölcsességről nevezett Papnevelő Intézet) is the Roman Catholic seminary of the Archdiocese of Alba Iulia. It is situated inside the Alba Iulia fortress, in the historical upper town, based in the building of the former Trinitarian monastery.

Description
Though de iure not an interdiocesan seminary, the Seminary of the Wisdom Incarnate is currently de facto the primary place of formation for the priests of the Archdiocese of Alba Iulia, and the dioceses of Satu Mare, Oradea and Timișoara, the areas obtained by Romania from Hungary after World War I. As the majority of the four dioceses’ Roman Catholics are ethnic Hungarians, the seminary functions in Hungarian language.

It is one of the two Roman Catholic seminaries in Romania, the other being Saint Joseph’s Seminary in Iași.

Beginnings
The Council of Trent decreed that every diocese set up a seminary for the formation of its priests. At the time Transylvania was under Protestant rule, so it wasn’t until the early 18th century that with it’s attachment to the Habsburg Monarchy, Catholicism could begin to flourish again, and the reforms of the Council be put into effect in the Diocese of Transylvania. Bishop Zsigmond Antal Sztoyka founded Transylvania’s first seminary in 1753, with the name Seminarium Incarnatæ Sapientiæ, in Gyulafehérvár.

The seminary functioned at first at the bishop’s residence, then in 1758 a new building was erected for the seminary, which soon proved to be too small. In 1778 the seminary moved into a building left behind by the recently suppressed Jesuits. In 1783 Emperor Joseph II moved the seminary to Kolozsvár, though this only lasted until his death. Bishop Ignác Batthyány acquired in 1792 the monastery of the Trinitarians in Gyulafehérvár, along with its church building. In the latter he installed Transylvania’s first astronomical observatory and a library, now known as Batthyaneum after him, while the monastery became the seminary’s new seat. The building was expanded in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In the twentieth century
The areas of Hungary which at the end of World War I became part of Romania, comprised parts of the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Csanád, Szatmár and Nagyvárad, and the entire Diocese of Transylvania, along with it’s episcopal see, Gyulafehérvár, and its seminary. In 1919 the new authorities forbade the seminary’s professors from leaving their residence and accepting visitors for a while. Based on the Holy See’s 1929 concordat with Romania, the acquired territory of the Csanád diocese became the Diocese of Timișoara, those of Szatmár and Nagyvárad were merged, and the Diocese of Transylvania’s name was changed to Alba Iulia.

The Second Vienna Award split the territory of the Alba Iulia Diocese’s territory between Romania and Hungary. Bishop Áron Márton, while choosing to personally remain at his historical see, left on the Romanian side, decided to move the seminary across the border, to Kolozsvár. The diocesan seminary operated there between 1940 and 1944. In the autumn of 1944 the seminarians and their superiors fled from the arriving Soviet army to Zirc, and an emergency ordination of five graduates took place in a prison in Veszprém, by the arrested József Mindszenty. In 1945 the seminary returned to Alba Iulia.

After Romania was proclaimed a Communist People’s Republic in 1947, the new government unilaterally broke up the concordat and took severe measures against the Catholic Church. While the Romanian Greek Catholic Church was eliminated altogether, the Roman Catholic dioceses of Satu Mare–Oradea and Timișoara were forced to merge into the Diocese of Alba Iulia, and all the seminaries in Romania, including the one in Iași, were closed, except for the one in Alba Iulia. While Bishop Áron Márton was under arrest, the Seminary operated between 1951 and 1955 with state-approved priests as superiors, inclined to reject the Holy See’s authority, and seminarians from all over Romania. After 1955 the seminary in Iași could be opened again for Romanian-speaking seminarians from Moldavia and Wallachia, while the Alba Iulia seminary continued with students from the North-West of the country.

State authorities nationalised the Batthyaneum Library in 1949 against the Church’s disapproval, and passages to the conjoined seminary building were shut down; the seminary’s chapel, however, is still a room technically situated in the library building, though isolated from the rest of it, and only accessible from the seminary. After decades of lawsuits and still ongoing, the Library remains to this day the property of the Romanian state, accessible only with authorisation from the Ministry of Culture.

In the 1970’s an entirely new building was planned for the seminary, but set back by the Communist state authorities, so neighbouring buildings in the Church’s property were renovated to become the seminarians’ new dormitories, while the main building still hosts the chapel, the classrooms and the refectory.

Although the Dioceses of Satu Mare, Oradea and Timișoara have since been formally reconstituted, they presently have no seminaries of their own, and their candidates to the priesthood continue to study in Alba Iulia.