JACA, Diocese of. - An Aragonese diocese, situated in the civil provinces of Saragossa and Huesca and bordering on the French dioceses of Bayonne and Tarbes-Lourdes. It is a suffragan of Saragossa. Little information is available about this church in the early Middle Ages.
The Cathedral was erected in the 11th century by King Ramiro I of Aragon, but ordinarily the diocese was united with that of Huesca until 1572, when, at the request of King Philip II, it was separated from it by Pope St. Pius V and established as an independent jurisdiction. It was the first Cathedral to adopt the Roman rite in place of the Visigothic; a Council was held there in 1663. The style of the building is Romanesque, sober but elegant; in the 15th century its vaults were rebuilt, and so too was the cloister, which has unfortunately lost its original appearance. The plan of the Cathedral consists of three naves, besides that of the transept, and three semicircular apses. The choir, which, as in the other Spanish cathedrals, stood in the center of the church, was transferred to the vicinity of the high altar in 1919. The temple was dedicated in 1662, and its liturgical commemoration is renewed on 12 December; its patron is St. Peter the Apostle, but the patron of the diocese is St. Orosia, whose body is venerated in the said Cathedral. In 1785 the vicariate of Valldoncella, consisting of 48 villages, until then belonging to Pamplona, was aggregated to this diocese; thus today the territorial extent of J. is 5,391 sq km; the population is 78,258 inhabitants, almost all Catholics, with 154 parishes, served by 200 diocesan priests and 28 regulars with 4 male and 18 female religious communities. The Seminary, founded in 1851, destroyed by a fire, has recently been rebuilt; likewise many churches destroyed in the civil war of 1936. The principal sanctuary is S. Juan de la Peña, cradle of the Aragonese reconquest. - See plate XXXVI.
