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 HUESCA

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HUET

and Jolm I, and the proclamation of the coming of age of Henry III. Here, too, were buried Alfonso VII, Sancho III, and many infantes and infantas, and the monastery was often visited by, and received gifts from, the kings and queens.

The characteristic peculiarity, however, which made this monastery famous was its abbess's exercise, for some centuries, of the vere nullhia ecclesiastical jurisdiction, until, in 1S7.3, all exempt jurisdictions were abolished by the Bull "Qua; diversa". The ab- besses of Huelgas, in consequence of this privilege, issued faculties to hear confessions, to say Mass, and to preach; they nominated parish-priests, appointed chaplains, granted letters dimissory, took cognizance of first instance in all causes, ecclesiastical, criminal, and relating to l)enefices, imposed censures through their ecclesiastical judges, confirmed the abbesses of their subject houses, drew up constitutions, visited monasteries — in a word, they possessed a full ecclesi- astical jurisdiction. Don Amancio Rodriguez, who has made a special study of Huelgas, assures us that there never was any pontifical Bull in which these rights were specifically granted; but there certainly was the tacit consent of the popes, without which the practical exercise of the jurisdiction would never have been possible imder the eyes of the bishops of Burgos and the papal nuncio. Besides, not only the nuncio, but the Roman Curia confirmed the abbess's decisions on appeal and rejected appeals imduly made, in order that the abbess might deal with the cases as in first instance. The origin of this privilege, then, must be sought in the king's intervention in the affairs of the Church, in the protection accorded by the abbots of Citeaux and by the Roman pontiffs, and in the fact that several infantas were nuns in the monastery. The royal fountlation fell somewhat into decay in the time of Charles I, liut afterwards recovered some of its ancient splendour, chiefly in the beginning of the seventeenth century, when Dona Ana de Austria, natural daughter of Don John of Austria, brother of Philip II, became its abbess in perpetuity. From the time of the secularization of church property {Leyes de Desamortizacion) its support and conserva- tion has been the care of the .sovereigns of Spain.

Writers of moral theology usually treat of the extraordinary jurisdiction of the Abbess of Huelgas. See also Florez, Es- par'ia sagrada, XXVII; Manrique, Annates Cistercienaea, III; MtTNiz, Medula Cisterciense, V; C.4lvo, Apuntes historicoa aobre el celebre Monasterio de las Huelgaa; Agapito y Revilla, El Real Monasterio de taa Huelgas de Burgos: Rodriguez Lopez, El Real Monasterio de laa Huelgaa de Burgoa y el Hospital del Rey — a recent and excellent work, issued under the auspices of the Real Academia de la Historia.

R.unoN Ruiz Am.^do.

Huesca, Diocese of (Oscensis), embraces parts of the province of Huesca in north-eastern Spain, seven parishes in the Broto valley and three within the limits of the .\rchdiocese of Saragossa, one parish being situ- ated in the city of Saragossa itself. Its date of origin cannot be definitely ascertained; the earliest evidence of its existence is the signature of Gabinius, Bishop of Huesca, to the decrees of the council held at Toledo in 589. Isidore of Seville, WTiting in the seventh century, (De viris illustr., c. xxxiv) mentions the presence of El- pidius. Bishop of Huesca, at an earlier council, but this is not considered authoritative. After 589 we next hear of the diocese through a synod held there in 598 which ordered annual diocesan conferences and enacted various disciplinary measures. The Moorish invasion of 710 rapidly worked toward Huesca; when the city was taken in 713 the bishop fled, and the diocese was directed from .Aragon. In 1063 the see was moved to Jaca, where it remained till 1096 when Huesca was re- taken and the original see restored by Pedro I. The history of the Diocese of Huesca is from this time on closely associated with that of the present Diocese of Barbastro, which in 1571 was erected out of part of Huesca and, though formally joined with it again in VII.— 33

1851, has ever since been administered by a vicar Apostolic. From 1848 to 1851 the See of Huesca was vacant. The present bishop is the Right Rev. Mari- ano Supervia y Lostali'.

The episcopal city of Huesca was long a centre for education and art. Ancient Osca was the seat of the famous school of Sertorius. After the failure of his pla,ns at Perpignan, Pedro IV in 1354 established a university at Huesca, which was maintained by a tax laid on the city's food, and which pursued a steady if not a brilliant existence until it was eclipsed by "the great college at Saragossa. The church of St. Peter at Huesca, erected between 1100-1241, isoneof theoldest Romanesque structures in the Peninsula, and the Gothic cathedral which dates from the fifteenth cen- tury is one of the architectural landmarks of northern Spain. It contains a magnificent high altar of ala- baster carved to represent the Passion. About the present Huesca is a double line of ancient walls. In the immediate neighbourhood are several old monas- teries, that of Monti-Arajon containing in its crj^it the tomb of Alfonso I. The institute for secondary edu- cation occupies the building formerly devoted to the old university, and in one of its vaults is the famous " Bell of Huesca", said to have been constructed from the heads of insurgent nobles who were executed by King Ramiro II. The Diocese of Huesca comprises 181 parishes and 15 subsidiary parishes, with 240 priests and 50 churches and chapels. It has a Catho- lic population of 87,659.

•Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1895); Street, Gothic Arclutecture of Spain (Derby, 1869); BucHBERGER, Kirchl. Handlexikon, s. v.; Anji. Pont. Cuth., 1909. s. v.; Ann. Eccles., 1909, s. v.; Werner, Orliis Terr. Calk. (Freiburg, 1886). STANLEY J. QuiNN.

Huet, Pierre-Daniel, a distinguished savant and celebrated French bishop; b. 8 February, 1630, at Caen (Normandy), where his father, a convert from Calvinism, was sheriff; d. at Paris, 26 January, 1721. He was left an orphan at an early age. Wliile quite young he displayed a great zeal for study, especially for Latin poetry, geometry, and mathe- matics. After finishing his humanities, he attended lectures in law and acquired a very solid knowledge of it, as his letters testify. He became a passionate admirer of Descartes's philosophy, and when the Protestant minister at Caen, Samuel Bochart, the Oriental scholar, published his " Geographic sacree ", he was powerfully attracted to Biblical studies. Forthwith he began to learn Greek and Hebrew, and formed a friendship with Bochart, who assisted him in liis studies. When this savant was called to Sweden by Queen Cliristina (1652), he brought young Huet with him. They did not remain there" long, but Huet discovered at Stockholm some fragments of a manuscript of Origen, which inspired him with the idea of publishing the exegetical works of the great Alexandrian Doctor. He gave himself up entirely to this labour for fifteen years and hardly ever left Caen, except for a month or two annually, when he went to Paris to study and to renew his acquaintance with memljers of the learned societies. By his letters, his Latin poems, and his visits he kept up a friendship with Rapin, Chapelain, Labbe, Cos.sart, Conrart, Pellisson, Vossius, Francius, and Cuyper. Queen Christina, who had become a Cath- olic and resigned her crown, tried in vain to get him to come to Rome, or to undertake the education of her successor, Charles Gustavus. He could not be induced to leave Caen, where he had founded an Academy of Science and was devoting himself to chemistry, astronomy, and anatomy, in addition to studying Arabic and Syriac and engaging in con- troversy with his old master, Bochart.

In 1670, however, Louis XIV called him to the Court to assist in the education of his son, the Dau- phin, with the title of assistant-tutor, Bossuet being