TARAZONA, DIOCESE OF. – A city and diocese in the province of Saragossa and Navarre in Spain.
It has an area of 4,713 sq. km. with a population of 158,967 inhabitants, all Catholic, distributed across 140 parishes, served by 263 diocesan priests and 62 religious; it has two seminaries, the conciliar of St Gaudiosus and the minor seminary; 9 male religious communities and 48 female (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 416). Since 17 July 1889 the ordinary has had the perpetual administration of Tudela, which since 1851 had been united with Pamplona.
Turiaso is mentioned by Pliny as the principal city of the Celtiberians. There are no reliable accounts of the origins of Christianity in T. Idatius in his chronicle recalls the bishop Leo in 449; in 560 T. had as bishop Gaudiosus of the Asanense monastery; later bishops mentioned are Didymus, Stephen who attended the Third Council of Toledo, Floridus who took part in that of Gundemar in 611, Elpisius who attended the Fourth and Fifth Councils of Toledo, and finally Nepotianus who was the last bishop of the Visigothic period. When Alfonso I “the Battler” reconquered T. in 1119, Michael Cornelius reconstituted the episcopal see; he was succeeded by Juan Frontin, García Frontin and García II Frontin, counsellor to James the Conqueror; later Miguel Jiménez de Urrea (1309-16); and at this time T. and its cathedral suffered in the war between Peter IV the Ceremonious and Peter the Cruel of Castile. More recently, Msgr G. Castellón y Salas (1815-35) and Msgr J. Goma y Tomás, later cardinal of Toledo (d. 1940). Until 1318 T. was a suffragan of Tarragona; from that year it passed under the metropolitan jurisdiction of Saragossa.
The cathedral was begun in the 13th century and completed in the 16th, and thus exhibits various styles; the north portal is Renaissance, the interior is inspired by the See of Saragossa; in the ambulatory are the alabaster tombs of Bishop P. Calvillo and his brother the cardinal. The chapel in honour of SS Peter and Paul is domed (1532). The adjoining cloister is from the 15th century, but its Gothic forms were defaced in the 18th. Near the cathedral, in the former Palace of the Kings of Aragon, is the exchequer (14th-15th century). The ancient cathedral was in the church of Santa Maria Maddalena. The patron saint of the diocese is St Prudence (2 April).
Among other churches are those of St Francis from the 13th century, St Michael from the 16th with Romanesque remains, and La Merced from the 17th. Notable is the “romeria” of Moncayo where every year on 2 July a typical popular procession takes place.
13 km south of T. stands the monastery of Veruela, founded by Peter of Arles in 1146, with buildings from the 12th-15th centuries for the Cistercians; the unfinished cloister is from the 14th century. The buildings now belong to the eastern Castile province of the Society of Jesus (v. Lamperez, *El monasterio de Veruela*, in *Bol. de la r. Acad. de la hist.*, 73 [1918], pp. 509-14; R. del Arco, *El Monasterio de S. Maria de Veruela* [Saragossa 1923]; Cottineau, II, cols. 3349-50). 40 km from T. lies Ágreda with notable churches. That of Ntra. Sra. de la Peña is Romanesque, with two equal naves; the church of St Michael is from the late 15th century with a Romanesque bell tower; that of Ntra. Sra. de las Milagros is from the 16th and contains a polychrome statue of the Blessed Virgin from the 14th century; the church of St John is from the 15th; that of Ntra. Sra. de Magaña has three naves with ribbed vaulting. In the territory of the diocese, namely at Cascante, was born the López y Vicuña (v.), foundress of the Daughters of Mary Immaculate, beatified by Pope Pius XII on 13 February 1950 (AAS, 42 [1950], pp. 207-208, 237-42, 264-66).