[1] But in 1767, King Charles III of Spain expelled the Jesuits from the Spanish Empire in an effort to gain control of the wealth held by their missions.

[1] In 1794 Archbishop Baltazar Jaime Martinez de Compañón reestablished the seminary, staffed by diocesan priests.

Fernando Caycedo y Flórez, the archbishop at the time, proposed to the new national government the reestablishment of the "Ordinands' College.

[1] The seminary operated independently until 1838, when the government merged it with the National College of St. Bartholomew (Spanish: Colegio Nacional de San Bartolomé).

[1] Archbishop Manuel José Mosquera y Arboleda, who had been appointed only three years before the merger, began campaigning for the Bogotá seminary to be reestablished as an independent institution.

[1] He efforts succeeded on 21 April 1840, when Congress passed a decree separating the Theological Seminary of Bogotá from the National College of St. Bartholomew.

[1] However, in 1850 Colombian President José Hilario López expelled the Jesuits as part of his anti-clerical campaign,[2] making it necessary to reunify the two seminaries.

[1] Archbishop Herrán also decided to divide the minor and major departments of the seminary, putting the Jesuits back in charge of the former, as they had returned to Colombia in 1858.

[1] It reopened in 1878, still with Herrera as rector, but at different locations: first in the house where Colombian military and political leader Francisco de Paula Santander had died, and next in the former convent of "La Enseñanza (English: The Teaching).

[1] In 1885 the seminary's work was again interrupted as the government seized the building for military purposes and used it as a base for staff of the National Army reserves.

[1] In 1960 Archbishop Luis Concha Córdoba entrusted the administration of the seminary to the Society of Saint-Sulpice, a religious order headquartered in France.

[1] A larger emphasis was placed on getting to know the people that a future priest will serve, and concern about social causes became more prominent.

[3] In 1943, Archbishop Ismael Perdomo Borrero commenced the construction of the new building of the Major Seminary of Bogotá, designed by architect José Maria Montoya Valenzuela.

[3] The building, a four-story red brick Romanesque edifice, was completed in 1946 in the Chico neighborhood of Bogotá, in the eastern hills of the city.