TUY, Diocese of. - City and diocese in the westernmost part of Spain; suffragan of the metropolitan see of St. James of Compostela.
It has an area of 1,895 sq km with a population of 350,125 inhabitants, of whom 349,875 are Catholics, distributed in 267 parishes, served by 282 diocesan priests and 94 regulars; it has a seminary, 12 male religious communities and 39 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 437).
It is the ancient Iberian Tude, mentioned by Strabo, Ptolemy and Pomponius Mela. The diocese was founded in the 6th century, its first bishop being a certain Anila; it was destroyed in the Mohammedan invasion, its capital razed to the ground and its inhabitants scattered. When the city was restored in 890 by King Ordoño, some bishops of Tuy are again found, though they must have had their residence elsewhere, since T. was the theater of continuous wars and invasions such as that of the Normans in 1022.
The cathedral, dedicated to Mary Most Holy Assumed, was begun in the 11th century in the style of Compostela, but later underwent the influence of the ogival style and was much restored. It has a west portal of the 14th century and a Romanesque one to the north; in the interior are numerous tombs of the bishops of the 14th-15th centuries; the adjoining cloister recalls that of the abbey of Fontfroide, near Barbona. The titular is the Assumption; St. Epitacius is also celebrated, whom legend would make a disciple of the apostle St. James. Other churches are that of St. Bartholomew, Romanesque; of St. Francis, neo-classical, with remains of the primitive one in the ogival style; and in Portuguese Baroque the chapel of St. Pedro Telino (18th century); while the church of St. Dominic, with a neo-classical facade and a cloister adorned with bas-reliefs, is of the 14th century. The Seminary was founded in 1850 in the ancient convent of the Franciscans.
Within the territory of the diocese is situated the city of Vigo, the most important Spanish port on the Atlantic. It was an ancient Iberian port; called Vicus by the Romans. The collegiate church of St. Mary is in neo-classical style (1814-16). Two km south of the city rises Mount St. Tecla, so called from a chapel dedicated to the saint, a place of pilgrimage on the Monday before the Ascension. - See plate LXV.
