artists; many of the traditional rituals and customs of Holy Week still observed in Seville, including the display of venerated images, date from this time. At the heart of the Semana Santa (Holy Week) processions are the religious brotherhoods (Hermandades y Cofradías de Penitencia), associations of Catholic laypersons organised to perform public acts of religious observance, in this case acts related to the Passion and death of Jesus Christ and done as a public penance. The hermandades and cofradías (brotherhoods and confraternities) organise the processions during which members precede the pasos dressed in penitential robes, and, with a few exceptions, hoods. The pasos at the centre of each procession are images or sets of images placed atop a movable float of wood. If a brotherhood has three pasos, the first one would be a sculpted scene of the Passion, or an allegorical scene, known as a misterio (mystery); the second an image of Christ; and the third an image of the Virgin Mary, known as a dolorosa. The Seminary School of the University of Navigators (Colegio Seminario de la Universidad de Mareantes) was founded in 1681 by the Spanish Crown during the reign of Charles II to "...house, bring up and educate orphaned and abandoned boys for service in the navy and fleets of the Indies". The crown commissioned the building of the Palace of San Telmo (Palacio de San Telmo), named after St. Telmo, the patron saint of sailors, as its seat. This was designed in an exuberant Spanish baroque style by the local architect Leonardo de Figueroa and Matías and Antonio Matías, his son and grandson. This emblem of Seville's civil architecture of the period has since been used for various purposes. It was the residence of the Dukes of Montpensier in the 19th century. During most of the 20th century it was the provincial Seminary, and finally, since 1989, it has been home to the Presidency of the Andalusian Autonomous Government (Junta de Andalucía). In May 1700, at the beginning of the century of enlightenment and scientific discovery, the Royal Society of Philosophy and Medicine of Seville was founded in Seville, the first of its kind in Spain. Seville lost much of its economic and political importance after 1717, however, when the new Bourbon administration ordered the transfer of the Casa de Contratación from Seville to Cadiz, whose harbour was better suited to transatlantic trade. The Guadalquivir