The secular clergy numbered about 440 priests; the cathedral chapter 5 prelates and 3 canons. The secular clergy are educated in the seminary, which has 15 professors and 160 students when founded in 1582, closed in 1862; reopened in 1872, and had but two students, but their number gradually increased. At Brest there was a petit seminaire, which was closed in 1830; the seminary at Białystok was closed in 1842. The clergy always exerted a beneficial influence upon popular education. At the beginning of the nineteenth century twenty-five parochial elementary schools were in operation at Vilnius; schools and colleges were conducted by the Jesuits, Uniat Basilians, Piarists and other religious orders. The monastic libraries were centres of culture; as late as the seventeenth century there were 101 monasteries in Lithuania. The library of the Missionaries of Vilnius contained 8284 volumes; that of the Piarists, 7000; that of the Bernardines, 4142. The University of Vilnius possessed 20,000 volumes of theology, part of which were given to the Catholic Theological Academy of St. Petersburg, to the University of Kiev (Ukraine) and to the Public Library of Vilnius.