No name of any Bishop of Segorbe is known earlier than Proculus, who signed in the Third Council of Toledo (589). He was followed by a succession of bishop until Anterius, who attended the fifteenth (688) and the sixteenth (693). After this, there is no information of its bishops until the Arab invasion, when its church was converted into a mosque.[1]
In 1172 Pedro Ruiz de Azagra, second son of the Lord of Estella, held the city of Albarracín, and succeeded in establishing there a bishop. Pedro's refusal to recognise Aragonese sovereignty extended to his bishop, Martin, who refused to recognise the supremacy of the Bishop of Zaragoza, though ordered to do so by the pope.[2] Instead, Martin swore allegiance to the Metropolitan of Toledo. Four years later, Martin took instead the title of Bishop of Segorbe.[3] This choice of name follows the ideology of the Reconquest, according to which the bishops were simply restoring the old Christian entities only temporarily taken over by the Moors. In this way, the city of Albarracín became the seat of the bishops of Segorbe.
When Segorbe was conquered by the king James I of Aragon in 1245, the cathedral seat was relocated from Albarracín to Segorbe. There arose serious territorial disputes with the Archdiocese of Valencia which claimed rights over several churches in Segorbe. The Bishop of Valencia, Arnau of Peralta, entered the church of Segorbe by force and expelled the prelate. The controversy being referred to Rome, Rome agreed with the Bishop of Segorbe-Albarracín. In 1318 Pope John XXII raised the see of Zaragoza to an Archdiocese, with the diocese of Segorbe-Albarracín as a suffragan.[3]
In 1577, Pope Gregory XIII, at the urging of Philip II of Spain, separated Albarracín and Segorbe. The terms of the papal bull specified that Segorbe belonged to the Kingdom of Valencia and Albarracín to that of Aragón. The order was well received in Albarracín, but not in Segorbe. The new bishopric of Albarracín was proclaimed a suffragan of Zaragoza, while that of Segorbe was of Valencia.[3]
The Cathedral was elevated to the rank of minor basilica in 1985.[5] Its time-stained tower and its cloister are built on a trapezoidal ground plan. It is connected by a bridge with the old episcopal palace. The Cathedral Museum is located in the upper cloister and its adjacent rooms.[6]
^Buresi, Pascal. La frontière entre chrétienté et Islam dans la pénisule Ibérique: du Tage à la Sierra Morena (fin XIe-milieu XIIIe siècle). (2004) Editions Publibook
^Villanueva, Jaime (1804). "Restauracion de la moderna iglesia de Segorve". Viage literario á iglesias de España : Le Publica con algunas observaciones (in Spanish). Vol. 3–4. Madrid: Imprenta real. p. 19.
