Welcome to Saint Vincent Archabbey

By Jerome Oetgen, author of "An American Abbot; Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B., 1809-1887" and a forthcoming "History of Saint Vincent."
In these early days it was divided into two main components: the "seminary" where young men, beginning at about the age of eighteen, studied philosophy and theology in preparation for the priesthood, and the "Latin School," modeled on the European gymnasium, where boys as young as ten and as old as eighteen studied Latin, the humanities, mathematics, and the fine arts. Some of these boys would go on to the seminary to continue studying for the priesthood. Others, however, were preparing to enter business or the professions.
Wimmer sometimes called the Latin School a "minor seminary," as in the following letter which he wrote to Munich in 1852 detailing the curriculum and some of the aspects of life in the school:
"In our minor seminary the instructions in Latin are the same as in Germany, but English is the main branch for the Germans and German the most important for the English-speaking boys. Some of these beginners, who already show signs of a beard are declining mensa, mensae or conjugating amo, amas. Greek is taken less thoroughly. The students are graded in different branches according to their progress, but receive instructions in common in penmanship, drawing, and music. One priest is the director of the school and has two clerics as prefects: one for the ecclesiastical, the other for the commercial students. They rise at 4:30 and retire at 8:30. They take care of their own apartment and in this way we follow the motto 'Help Yourself.' "Their meals are the same as ours. This arrangements causes difficulties because our diet differs from theirs at home. At times they show this disposition openly. On abstinence days they hate the 'Bavarian Dumplings' which they call 'metaphysics.' Our terms are 60 dollars for board and tuition and five dollars for laundry. Generally, however, they pay less and several orphans are kept entirely free."
This Latin School was the forerunner of the modern college, but in many ways it was much nearer to the monastery school of the Middle Ages than to the undergraduate institution of today. Students, both "ecclesiastical" and "commercial," lived in the same building as the monks, though in separate quarters. They followed a modified monastic schedule, which included not only classes and study periods but also set times for prayer and manual labor. They were taught religion, the liberal arts, languages and fine arts. And the monks took an active role in not only their intellectual but also their spiritual, emotional, and physical development.
Wimmer himself emphasized again and again the education of the "whole person." "My heart is in this work," he wrote to the Bavarian Mission Society, upon which he depended for funds. "I will not spare expense to teach the students first the necessary, then the useful, and finally the beautiful things, as long as they contribute to their refinement." And again he wrote:
"Art must go hand in hand with religion, to give the exercises of religion that external splendor, dignity, and sublimity which makes them more meaningful to sensuous man who cannot enter deeply enough into their inner spirit and therefore does not feel attracted to them . . . It is the duty of monasteries to foster, to promote, and to spread art, especially religious art . . . I am fully convinced that a monastic school which does not promote the fine arts as well as science and religion is very incomplete, and that, in the beginning, the want of scientific learning is more excusable than neglect of the arts."
Indeed the fine arts were a major part of the earliest curriculum at Saint Vincent. Students studied art and music quite thoroughly, and Saint Vincent, like Benedictine communities before it, became an important cultural center. But the chief goal of Wimmer and the Benedictines at Saint Vincent was still the education of priests, and as the years passed, bishops from all over America began to send students to the monastery at Saint Vincent to prepare for Holy Orders.

Saint Vincent College: The Early Years