TARAZONA, DIOCESE of. — 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 Catholics, distributed among 140 parishes served by 263 diocesan and 62 regular priests; it has two seminaries, the conciliar seminary of S. Gaudioso and the minor seminary; 9 male and 48 female religious communities (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 416). Since 17 July 1889 the Ordinary has had perpetual administration of Tudela, which since 1851 had been united to Pamplona.
Turiaso is mentioned by Pliny as the principal city of the Celtiberians. There is no reliable information concerning the origins of Christianity in T. In his chronicle, Idatius mentions Bishop Leo in 449; in 560 T. had as its bishop Gaudioso of the Asanense monastery; then there are records of Didymus, Stefano, who attended the Third Council of Toledo, Floridius, who took part in the Council of Gundemar in 611, Elpisius, who attended the Fourth and Fifth Councils of Toledo, and finally Nepotianus, the last bishop of the Visigothic period. When Alfonso I «el Batallador» reconquered T. in 1119, Michele Cornel re-established the episcopal see; he was succeeded by Juan Frontin, García Frontin, and García II Frontin, counsellor to James the Conqueror; later came Miguel Jiménez de Urrea (1309–16); and during this period T. and its Cathedral suffered because of the war between Pedro IV the Ceremonious and Pietro the Cruel of Castile. In more recent times, mention should be made of Mons. G. Castellon y Salas (1815–35) and Mons. J. Goma y Tomas, later Cardinal of Toledo (d. 1940). Until 1318 T. was a suffragan of Tarragona; from that year it came under the metropolitan see of Saragossa.
The Cathedral was begun in the 13th century and completed in the 16th, and consequently displays several styles; the northern portal is Renaissance, while the interior is inspired by the See of Saragossa; in the ambulatory are the alabaster tombs of Bishop P. Calvillo and his brother, a cardinal. The chapel in honour of ss. Peter and Paul has a dome (1532). The adjoining cloister dates from the 15th century, but its Gothic forms were disfigured in the 18th century. Near the Cathedral, in the ancient Palace of the kings of Aragon, is the episcopal residence (14th–15th centuries). The ancient Cathedral stood in the church of the Magdalene. The patron of the diocese is s. Prudentius (2 April).
Among the other churches are those of S. Francis, from the 13th century; S. Michael, from the 16th century, with Romanesque remains; and La Merced, from the 17th century. Noteworthy is the «romeria» of Moncayo, where the customary popular procession takes place every year on 2 July. Thirteen kilometres south of T. lies the monastery of Veruela, founded by Pietro d’Arles in 1146, with buildings dating from the 12th–15th centuries for the Cistercians; the unfinished cloister dates 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 [Saragozza 1923]; Cottineau, II, cols. 3349–50). Forty kilometres from T. lies Agreda, with noteworthy churches. That of N. S. de la Peña is Romanesque, with two equal naves; the church of S. Michael dates from the end of the 15th century and has a Romanesque bell tower; that of N. S. de las Milagros dates from the 16th century and contains a polychrome statue of the b. Virgin from the 14th century; the church of S. John dates from the 15th century; that of N. S. de Magafia has three naves with ogival vaults. In the territory of the diocese, namely at Cascante, was born the b. Lopez 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).