One of his first actions was to establish a major seminary in the new bishop's palace, called the Séminaire Saint-Jacques, which he established in 1825. He placed a trusted associate, Ignace Bourget, in charge of the new facility. Its goal was to provide a well-trained clergy for the diocese. Lartigue and Bourget shared a strong belief in that supreme authority of the papacy in the life of the Catholic Church. Lartigue had been influenced in this by the writings of the French Abbé Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais, whose "Essai sur l’indifférence en matière de religion" (Paris, 1817) he had read at the time of his trip to Europe. Thus the school became a center of ultramontanism decades before this position was proclaimed an essential element of Catholic belief at the First Vatican Council. In this, he came into conflict with his own Sulpician community, as well as various sectors of the Catholic population. He was shaken by the condemnation of Pope Gregory XVI of Lamennais' teachings in the 1830s.