Seminaries
The Scottish Parliament met in Edinburgh in 1560 and passed what Catholics call the Penal Laws. These forbade the celebration of Mass in Scotland, making Priests prohibited from being in Scotland at all. Further laws of a similar nature were enacted over the next 150 years.
Why did this happen? New ideas about Christianity had been sweeping across Europe. These were at odds with the beliefs held for the previous 1500 years and this led to confrontation. In those days, Kings and Queens, and Rulers generally, were members of the Catholic Church and such disputes inevitably involved them. Moreover, they saw them as threatening the unity of their country. They ended up taking sides and attempting to decide for their subjects whether they would follow the New or the Old Religion, as they came to be called.
The Monarch's word was law, and there were severe punishments for those who followed the 'wrong' religion, including the death penalty. The result, in Scotland, was that the Old Religion went 'underground'. These laws forbade the celebration of the Mass in Scotland and priests were prohibited from being in Scotland at all. So, Mass could only be celebrated in secret, Priests couldn’t stay in the same place for long. Church matters had to be conducted with great secrecy.
The Council of Trent (1542-62) which had been convened by the Pope to help the Church respond to the upheaval of the Reformation, had, among other measures, decreed that there should be specialized institutes established for the proper training of Priests, which had not existed before. There had been no standardized and little professional formation of the clergy.
This was considered to be one of the weak points contributing to the failure of the Church to take part in the battle of the new ideas. The Penal Laws made it unthinkable, at least at first, to have these establishments anywhere in Scotland, and so we looked to friendly parts of Europe to give us a home for these seminaries, as they were called. In time Scots Colleges were to be found in Rome, as well as France, Bavaria and Spain.