Seville, Archdiocese of

SIVIGLIA, ARCIDIOCESI di. – Archdiocese and capital of the province of the same name in Andalusia (Spain). Within its territory of 27,716 sq. km., the archdiocese includes the civil provinces of S. and Huelva, as well as part of those of Cadiz, Cordova, and Malaga. It has a population of 1,752,000 inhabitants, of whom 1,751,840 are Catholics, distributed among 320 parishes served by 451 diocesan priests and 325 religious priests; it has two seminaries, 65 male and 216 female religious communities (Ann. Pont. 1953, pp. 403–404).

It is ancient Hispalia in the Baetican province. In S., throughout the Visigothic period, there were venerated St. Felix the deacon, commemorated on 2 May in the sixth-century Marble Calendar of Carmona and in that of Cordova of 961, and SS. Justa and Rufina, who, provoked by the pagans during the festivals of the Adonia (17–19 July), broke in S. the image of the Phoenician goddess Salambo and were martyred (F. Cumont, Les Syriens en Espagne et les Adonies à Seville, in Syria, 8 [1927], pp. 330–41). The Passio (BHL,

there was also an intense oratorical activity, especially in Genoa, where he lived for a long time.

One fundamental work remains from him, namely Bibliotheca sancta... ex praecipuis catholicae Ecclesiae auctoribus collecta et in octo libris digesta (Venice 1566; frequently reprinted); it biblical introduction (v.) conducted with a genuine critical sense. In it S. discusses the number, division, and authority of the Sacred Books (book I), the various writings and writers mentioned in the Bible (book II), hermeneutics (book III: De aut: exponendi sacra volumina, also reprinted separately, Cologne 1577), Catholic exegetes (book IV), and the exegetical authority of those who had commented on the Old and New Testament

4569) places their martyrdom on 19 July, as does the Hieronymian Martyrology, which, however, names only Justa; the Mozarabic calendars, on the other hand, place it on 17 July. Their relics are mentioned in inscriptions, one of which dates from 662 (J. Vives, Inscrip. crist. de la España romana y visigoda, Barcelona 1942, nos. 333 and 306).

The first known bishop is Marcellus (third century), attested by the Catalogo emilianense (ms. R. II, 18 of the Escorial); Sabinus was present at the national Council of Hiberis in the year 900 (PL 84, 301); he later had himself represented at the Council of Arles in 314. In 441 Bishop Sabinus II was expelled from the see by a faction supported by the Suevic king Rechila, and a certain Epiphanius was elected in his place (Idacius, Chron., ad ann. 441); Sabinus II was unable to return to the see until 461 (Idacius, loc. cit., in España Sagrada, IV, Madrid 1756, p. 426); Sallustius is named in a document of 30 November 520 (Jaffé-Wattenbach, no. 786) as vicar of Pope Hormisdas; Zeno, given as Sallustius’s predecessor at the end of the fifth century and as vicar of Pope Simplicius (ibid., no. 590), was not bishop of S., but of Merida in Lusitania (v. J. Vives, Inscrip., cit., no. 363, commentary, at the end). The see was metropolitan when, in 589, the prelate St. Leander celebrated the first provincial council and was designated in a public document as metropolitan of the province of Baetica (PL 84, 358), a title subsequently given to all his successors beginning with his brother St. Isidore (d. 636), who celebrated the second provincial council in 610 and probably also a third, of which only one canon is preserved in the Pseudo-Isidorian collection (Decretales Pseudoisidorianae, ed. P. Hinschius, Leipzig 1863, p. 396). During the government of the two holy brothers, the see of S. (569–636) was spiritually the true capital of Spain; St. Leander was responsible for the conversion of the Visigothic people, solemnly proclaimed at the Third Council of Toledo in 589 (St. Isidore, De viris ill., 57); St. Isidore (v.) completed his work, gave the Visigothic Church valuable disciplinary laws at the Fourth Council of Toledo, organized canonical legislation in the Collectio Hispana, infused great vitality into the episcopal schools, and produced a literary output that made him the teacher not only of Spain but of all medieval Europe. The disciples trained at his school extended his influence to the most important Churches of the peninsula, such as Toledo and Saragossa. Thanks to these two prelates of S., the Church of Spain remained united with Rome and received the pontifical orientation undefiled. St. Isidore was also a teacher of monks, and his Rule for a long time rivaled that of St. Benedict for hegemony in the monasteries of the peninsula, until in the eleventh century the Rule of the abbot of Monte Cassino definitively triumphed following the Gregorian reform.

The successors of Leander and Isidore up to the Arab invasion (711) are known chiefly from the Catalogo emilianense and the subscriptions to the Councils of Toledo. Bishop Bracarius, in the second half of the seventh century, was not the author of De ecclesiasticis dogmatibus, as has been claimed (J. Madoz, in Razón y Fe, 122 [1941], pp. 237–39; Epistolario di Alvaro de Cordoba, ed. Madoz, Madrid 1947, p. 168, n. 15). Oppas, the last bishop of this period, by betraying the cause of King don Rodrigo, contributed to the ruin of the Visigothic monarchy and to the triumph of the invading Arabs. S. was subjugated by Mūsā b. Nuṣajr in 712 and, after a Christian uprising that was quickly suppressed, endured Arab domination for five centuries under a regime of toleration, with all the difficulties that characterize the history of the Mozarabic Christians, while perfectly preserving its ancient organization. Within the city there remained the metropolitan church of St. Vincent and of Rubina (according to the testimony of Ibn al-Qūṭijjah: Iftisīb, 11) and that of SS. Justa and Rufina; they could be repaired but not enlarged, and worship had to be confined to the interior, without any external manifestation. Probably in 825 the two brothers Adolphus and John, natives of S., were martyred in Cordova (Martyrology of Usuard on 27 September), and in 856 their sister Aurea, a nun in the monastery of Cutechara after the death of her brothers (v. St. Eulogius of Cordova, Memoriale Sanctorum, III, 17), likewise fell victim to the persecution of ‘Abd ar-

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SIVIGLIA, ARCIDIOCESI di – Detail of the Courtyard of the Alcazar.

Raḥmān II and his son Muḥammad (853–59), which was the consequence of a militant proselytism led by St. Eulogius, martyred in 859. And since Christians voluntarily offered themselves for martyrdom, the Council of Cordova of 852, presided over by Recafredo, metropolitan of S., and convoked by 'Abd ar-Raḥmān himself, prohibited such conduct (v. EULOGIA, op. cit., II, 16), though without great effect: Alvaro de Cordova places this bishop among the persecutors of the Christians (v. Vita Eulogii, n. 7). Another prelate of S., named Juan, apostatized at the end of the eleventh century amid torments and justified his conduct by declaring that what matters for a Christian is not the lips but the conscience; that against his will he had denied with his tongue, and since he was faithful to Christ in his heart, one should not attend to what the lips manifested to men (v. UGO DI FARFA. Vittore, Ad archiep. Hispalensem, in España Sagrada, IX, 3rd ed., Madrid 1860, pp. 434–38). Of the other prelates of S. during the Mozarabic period, it is enough to recall Nonnito, successor to Oppas Teudula at the beginning of the ninth century, who wrote against Adoptionism, and another Giovanni known from the correspondence of Alvaro de Cordova (Epp., III and VI; ed. cit.). The last known was Clemente (c. 1144), who had to flee from his see as soon as he was elected, upon the arrival of the Almohads, who were fanatical persecutors of Christians until 1248, when the king of Castile, Ferdinand III the Saint, reconquered S., the most important city of Muslim Spain. The first archbishop of the new succession was the infante don Filippo, the king’s son. One of the most notable figures of this period in the ecclesiastical history of S. was Rodrigo de Santaella, a trusted man of the prelates of S. from 1491 to 1509, recognized as the founder both of the present Seminary (1505) and of the civil University (1508), both established by bulls of Julius II. After the city had been reconquered by King St. Ferdinand, the clergy were trained at the studium generale founded near the Cathedral by Alfonso the Wise; but this institution disappeared in the fifteenth century, and then the two prelates Diego Urtado de Mendoza and his brother Diego de Deza gave everything

(from K. Hielscher, La Spagna sconcertata, barismo DTT, pl. 11)