Seminary of San Carlos and San Ambrosio. Institution of higher studies of the Catholic Church that was located in the Historic Center of Havana. It is currently located on the Monumental Highway in the municipality of Guanabacoa. The original construction has been considered by specialists and architects as one of the most important of the colonial period, not only because some of the most prestigious Cuban intellectuals were educated here, but also because its architecture introduces novel elements for its time.
The Colegio de San Ambrosio was founded in 1689 by Bishop Diego Evelio de Compostela, in a house next to his own, on the street called Compostela in honor of the bishop, and in which twelve poor boys would study as initial enrollment, among whom the religious vocation was awakened, in order to promote later the priestly career.
In times of the bishopric of Gerónimo Valdés, the school of San Ambrosio would add the Chairs of Morals, Philosophy and Canons and soon after it would be called Colegio Seminario de San Carlos y San Ambrosio, in honor of King Carlos III of Spain, who in 1777 granted it the title of Conciliar, making it equal to the Spanish seminaries.
The building was not then what it is today, but a similar construction, begun in 1700 by members of the Society of Jesus and finally completed in 1767, shortly before they were expelled from the empire. The following bishop, the famous Juan José Díaz de Espada, in addition to adding certain constructive reforms to the seminary, instructed the formation of the chairs of Chemistry and Botany, and a Physics cabinet.
During the bishopric of Diaz de Espada, the college achieved such scientific renown that not even the university could compete in terms of the advanced knowledge of the time. In the opinion of Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, this was the most brilliant period of the Seminary.
Current building of the Seminary of St. Charles and St. Ambrose.
With time, the secularization of education in Cuba caused the university to cease to be the Royal and Pontifical University of San Geronimo de La Habana, a faithful copy of the University of Santo Domingo, model of the first universities of the New World, according to Bachiller y Morales, with the tangled Logic and the bad notions of Physics of the 17th century scholasticism.
Once the university became a center of modern sciences, the college of San Carlos would return to being exclusively a religious seminary. According to Leuchsenring, when Monsignor Manuel Arteaga occupied the cardinal’s chair, he arranged for the Seminary to change its name to El Buen Pastor and was transferred shortly after to a place outside Havana. The building would become dependencies of the Archbishopric for several years, but eventually it would return to be the Conciliar Seminary of San Carlos and San Ambrosio.