SARAGOSSA
469
SARAGOSSA
fered a long and terrible martyrdom. St. Valerius
was exiled to a place called Enet, near Barbastro,
where he died, and whence hi.s relics were translated
first to Roda, the head and arm being brought thence
to Saragossa when that city had been reconquered.
The See of Saragossa was occupied during the Gothic period by two illustrious bishops: St. Braulius (q. v.), who assisted at the Fourth, Fifth, and Si.xth Councils of Toledo; and Tajon, famous for his own writings and for having discovered at Rome the third part of St. Gregory's "Morals". From 592 to 619 the bishop was Maximus, who assisted at the Coimcils of Barcelona and Egara, and whose name, combined with that of the monk Marcus, has been used to form an alleged Marcus Maximus, the apocryphal contin- uator of Flavius Dexter. In 542, when the Franks laid seige to Saragossa to take vengeance for the wrongs of the Catholic princess, Clotilde, the besieged went forth in procession and delivered to the enemy, as the price of their raising the siege, a portion of the blood-stained stole of St. Vincent, the deacon.
Before the Saracen invasion three national coun- cils were held at Saragossa. The first, earlier than those of Toledo, in 380, when Valerius II was bi.shop, had for its object the extirpation of Priscillianism; the second, in 592, in the episcopate of Maximus, was against the Arians; the third, under Bishop Valderedus, in 691, provided that queens, when widowed, should retire to some monastery for tlieir security and for the sake of decorum. During the Saracen occupation the Catholic worship did not cease in this city; the churches of the Virgin and of St. Engratia were maintained, while that of the Saviour was turned into a mosque. Of the bishops of this unhappj' period the names are preserved of Senior, who visited St. Eulogius at Cordoba (.S-49), and of Eleca, who in 890 was driven from the city by the Moslems and took refuge at Oviedo. Pater- nus was sent by Sancho the Great to Cluny, to intro- duce the Cluniac reform into Spain in the monasteries of S. Juan de la Pcna and S. Salvador de Leyre, and was afterwards appointed Bishop of Saragossa.
Alfonso I, the Fighter, of Aragon, reconquered the city on 18 Dec, 1118, and named as bishop Pedro de Librana, whose appointment was confirmed by Gelasius II. L6pez, in his "Historia de Zaragoza", says that Librana first resided at the Church of the Pillar, and on 6 Jan., 11 19, purified the great mosque, which he dedicated to the Saviour, and there estab- lished his episcopal see. Ilcnce the controversy, which began in 1135, in the episcopate of Garcia Guerra de Majones, between the canons of the Pillar and those of St. Saviour as to the title of cathe- dral.
In 1318 the See of Saragossa was made metropoli- tan by a grant of John XXII (14 June), Pedro L6pez de Luna being bishop. For more than a century (1458-1577) princes of the royal blood occupied the Bee: Juan of Aragon, natural son of Juan II (1458); Alonso of Aragon (1478); another Juan of Aragon (1520); Fernando of Aragon, who had been the Cis- tercian Abbot of Vcruela.
In the factions which followed upon the death of King Martin, Archbishop Garcia Femdndez de Heredia was assassinated by Antonio de Luna, a partisan of the Count of Urgel (1411). In 1485 the first inquisitor-general, St. Peter Arbues, fell a martyr in the cathedral, slain by some relapsed Jews who were led by Juan de la Abadia.
The cathedral is dedicated to the Saviour, as it had been before the Mohammedan invasion. It shares its rank with the Church of Nuestra Senora del Pilar, half of the chapter residing at each of the two churches, while the dean resides six months at each alternately The building of the cathedral was begun by Pedro Tarrjao in the fourteenth century. In 1412 Benedict XIII caused a magnificent balda-
chinum to be erected, but one of its pillars fell down,
and it was reduced to its present condition. In 1490
Archbishop Alonso of Aragon raised the two lateral
naves, which had been lower, to an equal height
with the central, and added two more; Fernando of
Aragon added three other naves beyond the choir,
to counterbalance the excessive width of the building,
and thus, in 1550, was the Gothic edifice completed.
The great chancel and choir were built by order of
Archbishop Dalmau de Mury Cervell6n (1431-58).
In the chapel of S. Dominguito del Val are preserved
CuUUCH OK .S. Engracia, Sahaqossa
the relics of that saint, a boy of seven who was cruci- fied by the Jews in 1250. The fagade of the cathedral is Renaissance, and beside it rises the tower, more modern than the body of the church, having been begun in 1790.
The Church of Nuestra Senora del Pilar is beheved to have originated in a chapel built by the Apostle James. Bishop Librana found it almost in ruins and appealed to the charity of all the faithful to rebuild it. At the close of the thirteenth century four bishops again stirred up the zeal of the faithful to repair the building, which was preserved until the end of the seventeenth century. In 1681 work was commenced on the new church, the first stone being laid by Archbishop Diego de Castrillo, 25 July, 1685. This grandiose edifice, 500 ft. (about 457 Enghsh feet) in length, covers the capella angelica, where the celebrated image of the Blessed Virgin is venerated. Though the style of the building is not of the best period, attention is attracted by its exterior, its multitude of cupolas, which are reflected in the waters of the Ebro, giving it a character all its own.
Saragossa possesses many very noteworthy churches. Among them are that of St. Engratia, built on the spot where the victims of Dacian were martyred. It was destroyed in the War of Inde-
