SIGÜENZA, DIOCESE OF. - A city and diocese of Spain, suffragan of Toledo, situated in the civil provinces of Guadalajara and Soria, and a small part in those of Saragossa and Segovia. It is the Segontia of the Celtiberians.
The patron saint of the diocese is St. Librada. The diocese has an area of 9,814 sq. km., 175,000 inhabitants all Catholic, distributed in 476 parishes, 245 diocesan priests and 33 regulars, a seminary, 3 male religious communities and 22 female (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 401).
The first known bishop is Protogene, who took part in the famous Third Council of Toledo in 589, at which the total conversion of Spain took place in the presence of King Recared. The names of the Arian bishops converted at that time are known; it therefore seems that Protogene and a large part of his diocese were already Catholic long before the Council. As happened in most Spanish dioceses during the Saracen domination, so too that of Sigüenza suffered greatly, so that the names of only a few bishops are known from the 8th to the 11th centuries. But when the city was conquered in 1124 by Catholic arms, it took on new life, King Alfonso VIII having granted the prelates governing the city dominion over II.
The cathedral, dedicated to the Assumption, was begun in 1124, that is, in the year of the expulsion of the Moors, and precisely on the site of the ancient one. The apse and the crossing belong to the 12th century, the lower naves to the 13th, and the upper to the 15th. In all, it is a fine example of the Romanesque-Gothic transitional period. It contains the monumental tombs of Cardinal Carrillo de Albornoz (d. 1434), of Martín Vázquez, known as El Doncel (d. 1486), and of Monsignor Fernando de Arce, Bishop of the Canaries (d. 1521). The archives are very rich. The seminary was erected in 1651. - See pl. XXXIX.