LLEIDA, Diocese of. - In Spain, in the province of the same name. The first reports we have of this diocese (Ilerda) date from the 6th century, and the first bishop was a certain Peter; it is not known, however, what limits it embraced. At present it has an area of 7,848 sq km, with 222,707 inhabitants, of whom 222,667 are Catholics (1949), served by 261 diocesan priests and 2 regulars; a conciliar seminary and a minor seminary, 9 male religious communities and 44 female ones. It is a suffragan of Tarragona. The patron of the diocese is St. John the Baptist.
Its boundaries are the dioceses of Barbastro and Urgel to the north, Solsona and Urgel to the east, Tarragona, Tortosa and Huesca to the south, Saragossa to the northwest. Of its 261 parishes, 129 are in the civil province of Huesca, 2 in that of Saragossa, the others in the province of the same name. After the Mohammedan invasion of the 8th century, its bishops went wandering in the regions near the Pyrenees, and thus came to be called "Pallarienses" or "Ripacurcienses", until 957, when the cathedral of Roda was consecrated by Archbishop Aimerico of Narbonne, where Bishop Odesindo and his immediate successors fixed their see. By virtue of a bull of Urban II of 1099, confirmed by another of Paschal II in 1100, this see was transferred to Barbastro, whose church, in the following year, that is, after the complete conquest of the city by King Peter I of Aragon, was consecrated by Bishop Poncio. When the Saracens were finally driven out of L. in 1149 through the efforts of Count Raymond Berengar of Barcelona, the episcopal see returned definitively to its original place; nevertheless many bishops later styled themselves "Ilerdenses et Rotenses". The ancient cathedral was erected in 1203 through the efforts of the Aragonese king Peter and Count Ermengardo II of Urgel, who held the city in condominium, under Bishop G. de Camporells, and was consecrated in 1279 by G. de Moncada. Its style is Romanesque-Gothic, very elegant, principally the transept, the facade and the cloister. Unfortunately, in 1707, during the war for the succession to the Spanish crown, it was converted into a fortress and much disfigured, serving until our own times as a barracks; but in 1918 the government declared it a national monument, restoring it thereafter. The new cathedral, begun in 1761 and consecrated in 1781, stands in the lower part of the city, in neoclassical style, and is dedicated, like the old one, to the Virgin Assumed. The archive is very rich. This diocese suffered greatly in the revolution of 1956: the cathedral and very many other churches were burned, the bishop and half the clergy killed; at present so much ruin is being repaired.