During the pontificate of Pope Gregory XIII, the papal diplomat António Possevino SJ stayed and worked in Košice from September to December 1583.

It was he that stressed in a letter to Pope Gregory XIII, about the urgent need to set up a seminary in Košice, to form Catholic priests.

[2] Benedikt Kisdy, the bishop of Eger canonically established the University of Košice on February 26, 1657 in Jasov and entrusted it to the care and administration of the Jesuit order.

Emperor Leopold I with his Bulla aurea (Golden Bull) confirmed this university on August 7, 1660 in Graz.

The founding charter for the establishment of the Seminary was issued by Bishop Thomas Pálfy on June 4, 1664 in Košice.

St Ladislaus became the patron saint of the seminary, which became known as the Kisdyanum - by his benefactor, Bishop Benedikt Kisdy.

Pope Pius VII confirmed the splitting of the diocese of Eger on August 9, 1804 in the bull: In Universi gregis Dominica cura.

At the beginning of the 1811/12 academic school year, the seminary building was blessed by the first bishop of the Košice Diocese, Msgr.

Most seminarians, wanting to remain Slovaks, left Košice and continued studying theology in various other diocesan seminaries in Slovakia.

Due to war conditions, Bishop Joseph Čársky set up the Seminary in September 1945.

The seminarians could complete their exams only on the basis of the decisions of the state authorities, to enroll in separate organized courses.

At the end of the school year, as a call to false reports, everyone in the seminary including the superiors, professors, and seminarians were locked by police force into the seminary chapel, and the police examined the entire building in search of weapons hidden in the building.

On July 10, 1950 Bishop Joseph Čársky was notified by the Slovak Seizure Office for Ecclesiastical Affairs, that St Charles Borromeo Seminary in Košice is to be liquidated, and its superiors will be issued to spiritual administration in the diocese.

By government decree 112/1950 on July 26, 1950, after 159 years of forming seminarians into priests, the Seminary was definitely liquidated.

Many young men from all over Slovakia, wanting to become priests did not give up hope and every year applied to the Seminary in Bratislava, though many times with no avail.

The young Alojz Tkáč was finally accepted on his fourth application to the seminary and enrolled there into the 1953/54 academic school year.

[8] After the fall of communism in 1989, following the Act on the Mitigation of certain property injustices, the Diocese of Košice on January 23, 1992 once again became the owner of the seminary building.

Alojz Tkáč for the first time publicly expressed his intention to renew St Charles Borromeo Seminary in Košice.

The glorious opening of St Charles Borromeo Seminary in Košice took place on October 4, 1994 with the pontifical Te Deum Holy Mass celebrated by Metropolitan Archbishop Msgr.

The following year in 1995, the Holy See and Pope John Paul II planned a papal visit of the new Ecclesiastical Province of Košice.

On July 2, 1995, Pope John Paul II celebrated an open-air Papal Holy Mass at the Košice Airport with 400,000 people present.

John Paul II resided a short while in the St Charles Borromeo Seminary, walked the renewed hallways, prayed in the St Charles Borromeo Seminary Chapel, and rested in one of the guest rooms.

The left part depicts half of the coat of arms of the Košice archdiocese to whom the seminary belongs.

The right part depicts the attributes of the patron saint of the seminary - St Charles Borromeo.

The Archdiocese of Košice coat of arms is a gold St Andrew's cross on a blue background.

The attributes of St Charles Borromeo are a silver cardinal's hat on a red background, which symbolizes the cardinalate.

Top-center of the coat of arms is the Book of the Gospels with the Greek letters Alpha and Omega, symbolizing Jesus Christ.