AVILA, DIOCESE OF. — In Spain, a suffragan of Valladolid (1851), with its see at Avila (Abila, Abela, Abula), a city in Old Castile, situated at a high elevation on a tributary of the Duero, 120 km from Madrid. It is the capital of a large province (8,047 sq km). During the persecution of Diocletian, it had three martyrs: Vincent, Sabina, and Cristeta. The installation of Priscillian by his partisans is the first certain record 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 boundaries of the diocese on 19 March 1138. The bishops took an active part in the political and religious events of Castile. Avila reached its greatest prosperity in the 15th–16th centuries. It had eminent bishops: Alfonso Fernández de Madrid, “El Tostado,” Fernando de Talavera, O.S.H. (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 these, the monastery of St. Joseph is famous as the place where the reform of St. Teresa of Jesus (v.) began, and the convent of St. Thomas of the Dominicans, which became a university in 1550. Among the numerous convents in the diocese (outside Avila), that founded by St. Alcantara (v.) at Arenas de San Pedro still exists. One of the protomartyrs of Japan, St. Peter Baptist (d. 1597), canonized by Pius IX in 1862, was from this diocese.
The diocese has an area of 9,760 sq km, 295,893 inhabitants, all Catholic; 393 parishes; 289 diocesan priests and 67 religious.
The cathedral, built by the masters Álvaro García de Estella, Eruchel, and Mateo (11th–12th centuries), is in the Romanesque style, with later transformations and additions; there are other Romanesque churches in the city. The church (convent) of St. Thomas is Gothic (late 15th century). The seminary, founded in 1578 and enlarged in 1850, possesses a rich library. The diocese has an art museum, but the archives were transferred to Madrid in 1869.
The University of Avila (1550–1807). — The origins of the University of Avila are connected with those of the convent of St. Thomas, where the Dominicans established, in 1504 under the patronage of Queen Isabella, chairs of philosophy and theology. The Emperor Charles V recognized the privileges of the University of Salamanca at the Studium. The apostolic nuncio Giovanni Poggio elevated it to the status of a university in 1550, and Gregory XIII
Avila — Cathedral begun in 1150 by the master Eruchel.