In Its Corporate Capacity: The Seminary of Montreal as a Business Institution, 1816-1876

Since the 1660s, the Seminary of Montreal -- a French, male religious community -- had been an integral part of the merchant, seigneurial, and clerical elite that dominated Montreal. Its significance in pre-industrial society was strengthened by its role as seigneur of Montreal Island and titular parish priest. The Seminary survived the British conquest, but came under increasing attack in the early nineteenth century from industrial producers and large capitalists landlords who resented the Seminary's seigneurial expropriations. By the 1830s, anticlerical elements in the peasantry and other popular classes had joined in the attack.