unless it was for short visits in the external area with appropriate attire. The Sulpicians accepted aspirants to the company as long as they were priests and had permission from their bishop. The Sulpicians would thus recruit wealthy individuals since Sulpicians did not take vows of poverty. They retained ownership of individual property and were free to dispose their wealth. The Sulpicians soon came to be known for the revival of the parish life, reform of seminary life, and the revitalization of spirituality. In the 18th century they attracted the sons of the nobility, as well as candidates from the common class, and produced a large number of the French bishops. The Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice was closed during the French Revolution, and its teachers and students scattered to avoid persecution. That Revolution also led to the secularization of the University of Paris. When France stabilized, theology courses were offered exclusively in seminaries, and the Sulpicians resumed their educational mission. Sulpician seminaries earned and maintained reputations for solid academic teaching and high moral tone. The Society spread from France to Canada, the United States and to several other foreign countries, including eventually to Vietnam and French Africa, where French Sulpician seminaries are found even today. In Canada New France The Sulpicians played a major role in the founding of the Canadian city of Montreal, where they engaged in missionary activities, trained priests and constructed the Saint-Sulpice Seminary. The Société Notre-Dame de Montréal, of which Jean-Jacques Olier was an active founder, was granted the land of Montreal from the Company of One Hundred Associates, which owned New France, with the aim of converting the indigenous population and providing schools and hospitals for both them and the colonists. The Jesuits served as missionaries for the small colony until 1657 when Jean-Jacques Olier sent four priests from the Saint-Sulpice seminary in Paris to form the first parish. In 1663, France decided to substitute direct royal administration over New France for that hitherto exercised by the Company of One Hundred Associates, and in the same year the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal ceded its possessions to the Seminaire de Saint-Sulpice. Just as in Paris, the Montreal Sulpicians had important civil responsibilities. Most notably, they acted as seigneurs for the island of Montreal. The Sulpicians served as missionaries, judges, explorers, schoolteachers, social workers, supervisors of convents, almsmen, canal builders, urban planners, colonization agents, and entrepreneurs. Despite their