VALENCIA'S LONG AND ILLUSTRIOUS CATHOLIC HISTORY
Here is a translation of one of the Valencia backgrounders published in the Spanish service of ZENIT yesterday.
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Valencia, Spanish host to the Fifth World Encounter of Families, is an Archdiocese of which there have been
sure indications of a Christian community since the fourth century.
According to a historical review offered by the Archdocese on its site
www.archivalencia.org), that was around the time
that Saint Vincent Martyr was martyred in Valencia on January 22 of 304 or 305. He was the deacon of Saint Valerius,
Bishop of Zaragoza.
The papal Office of Liturgical Celebrations also traced the historical and Christian history of Valencia, a city
founded in 138 A.D.
The note, signed by liturgical master of ceremonies Archbishop Piero Marini, said that Vincent’s martyrdom, during the
persecutions of Emperor Diocletian, was so admirable that it became known and celebrated throughout Christendom.
Indeed, “the hymns by Aurelius Prudentius, the homilies of St. Augustine, and the accounts of the passion St. Vincent
have made him one of the most popular martyrs of the Latin Church.”
“At the end of that century (the fourth), the ecclesiastic hierarchy would have been established, dependent
originally on the Metropolitan Bishop of Tarragona,” the Archdiocesan history says.
Justinian (527-548), the first bishop of Valencia whose name is known, signed the first Valencian Council in the
ecclesiastical province which had its capital in Cartagena, to which Valencia then belonged. In the year 610,
Valencia was reassigned to the diocese of Toledo.
During the Arabian conquest of Spain, the Church hierarchy in Valencia survived to the middle of the twelfth
century, at the very least, although it was given up for extinct by the 13th century, despite the fact that
various Christian nuclei remained in the city and in surrounding towns.
“In the 13th and 14th centuries, the Church in Valencia maintained a constant evangelizing activity with
non-believers while it strengthened the faith of Christians. The epoch marked by epidemics and wars, during
the transition from the 14th century to the 15th, was illuminated by the evangelizing and peacemaking mission
of the Dominican Saint Vincent Ferrer (born in Valencia 1350, died in Vannes, Brittany 1419) not only in Valencia but
in all of Spain and Western Europe.
The first hospital for mental patients in Europe was founded in Valencia in the 15th century under the patronage of
the Blessed Mother whose image, the Virgin of the Abandoned, is the center of Marian devotion in Valencia.
In the same century, in 1437, King Alphonse V the Magnanimous bestowed on the Cathedral of Valencia the reliquary
collection of the Throne of Aragon, among whose treasures was the Holy Chalice of the Last Supper, which had been
kept at the monastery of St. John of the Rock in Huesca until 1399.
This relic is now kept in the Chapel of the Holy Chalice within the Cathedral of Valencia. On Saturday, the Holy Father
will have the opportunity to venerate the relic when he visits the Cathedral.
Valencia became a diocese in October 1238 and was elevated to Archdiocese in 1492.
“The 15th century was a true golden century for Valencia, especially under the reign of Alfonse V the Magnanimous
and the Catholic Kings Ferdinand and Isabella. The Gothic cathedral of Valencia was completed as well as
the Micalet tower, and many churches and monasteries were built. The century culminated with the creation
of the University of Valencia by Pope Alexander VI in 1501," says the Marini history.
Even then “Rome and Valencia were intimately linked” through the Borgia (Borja in Spanish) family, originally
from Aragon, which produced Alphonse Borgia, Bishop of Valencia, later Cardinal, who became elected Pope
Calixtus XIII in 1455. His grandson Rodrigo succeeded him as Bishop of Valencia and later became Pope himself
in 1492, with the name Alexander VI.
In the 16th century, another Borgia from Valencia, St. Francis Borgia (died 1572) succeeded St. Ignatius of Loyola
as Superior-General of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits).
Also in Valencia, even before the norms established by the Council of Trent, real reform had started with
the arrival of Archbishop St. Thomas of Villanueva (died 1555), “an Augustinian religious, model of
austerity and charity, who started to reform the clergy and the people themselves.”
By the 19th century, Valencia was distinguished by the activity of new religious congregations with social and
educational missions. In the 20th century, religious persecution during the Spanish Civil wAr (1931-1939) would
result in the martyrdom of numerous priests, religious and lay Catholics in the region, who were beatified by
John Paul II in March 2001.
The promotion of the family apostolate in Valencia on a firm doctrinal basis led to the creation in 1994 of
a section of the Pontifical Institute John Paul II for the Family in the city.
“This continuous defense of the family, of life, and of the wealth of activities that the family can engender
was among the reasons why John Paul II chose Valencia to host the Fifth World Encounter of Families, and so
it is hoped that this gathering of all the Church around Benedict XVI wll be, for those attending and for
the whole Church, a moment of grace and a new impulse to follow the work of Jesus Christ on earth,” Marini concludes.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/07/2006 18.14]