ÁVILA, Diocese of. - In Spain, suffragan of Valladolid (1851), with its seat at Á. (Abila, Abela, Abula), a city of Old Castile, on high ground, on a tributary of the Douro 120 km. from Madrid. It is the capital of an extensive province (8047 sq. km.). In the persecution of Diocletian it had three martyrs: Vincent, Sabina and Cristeta. The installation of Priscillian there by his partisans is the first certain notice of the see. It disappeared at the beginning of the 8th century and was restored at the end of the 11th. Innocent II fixed the limits of the diocese on 19 March 1738. The bishops took an active part in the political and religious events of Castile. Á. reached its greatest prosperity in the 15th-16th centuries. It had eminent bishops: Alfonso Fernández de Madrigal, "El Tostado," Fernando de Talavera, O. S. Hieronymi (1485-93), Diego de Alava (1548-59), who attended the Council of Trent. The city had many parishes, 10 male and 7 female convents. Among the latter is famous the monastery of St. Joseph, where the reform of St. Teresa of Jesus (v.) began, and among the former the convent of St. Thomas of the Dominicans, a university from 1550. Among the numerous convents of the diocese (outside Á.) there still exists the one founded by St. Peter of Alcántara (v.) in Arenas de S. Pedro. One of the protomartyrs of Japan belonged to the diocese: St. Peter Baptist (d. 1597), canonized by Pius IX in 1862.
The diocese has an area of 9,760 sq. km., 295,893 inhabitants, all Catholics; 393 parishes; 289 diocesan priests and 67 regulars.
The Cathedral, built by the masters Alvaro Garcia de Estella, Eruchel and Matteo (11th-12th centuries), is in Romanesque style, with later transformations and additions; there are other Romanesque churches in the city. The church (convent) of St. Thomas is in Gothic style (end of the 15th century). The seminary founded in 1578, enlarged in 1850, possesses a rich library. The diocese possesses an art museum, but the archive was transferred to Madrid (1869).
Bibliography7 works
Giovanni Meseguer.
THE UNIVERSITY OF ÁVILA (1550-1807). - The origins of the University of Á. are connected with those of the convent of St. Thomas, where the Dominicans established chairs of philosophy and theology in 1504, under the patronage of Queen Isabella. The Emperor Charles V granted the Studium the privileges of the University of Salamanca. The apostolic nuncio Giovanni Poggio raised it, in 1550, to the rank of university, and Gregory XIII, at the request of Philip II, he ratified its work with the bull In apostolatus culmine of 4 April 1576 (Bullarium Ord. Praed., V, 344 ff.).
Subsequently the Studium also had the faculties of arts, medicine and law. But its principal activity always remained theology. Among its most illustrious masters are to be remembered the fathers Domingo Báñez and Pietro Ibáñez, spiritual directors of St. Teresa.
Innocent X, with the constitution Exponi nobis of 10 March 1645 (Bull. Ord. Praed., VI, 152), sanctioned its statutes. But, in 1807, the liberal government suppressed it, together with other secondary universities (menores).
Bibliography5 works
Igino Cecchetti