page_title: Alcalá de Henares
section_title: Cathedral
hierarchical_section_title: Alcalá de Henares / Cathedral
caption_attribution_description: Portada occidental de la Catedral de Alcalá de Henares recortada de su fondo.
context_page_description: Alcalá de Henares is a Spanish city in the Community of Madrid. Straddling the Henares River, it is located 35 kilometres to the northeast of the centre of Madrid. As of 2018, it has a population of 193,751, making it the region's third-most populated municipality.
  Predated by earlier settlements on the left bank of the Henares, the city has its origins in the Complutum settlement founded in Roman times on the right bank of the river, that became a bishopric seat in the 5th century. One of the several Muslim citadels in the Middle Mark of al-Andalus was established on the left bank, while, after the Christian conquest culminated circa 1118, the bulk of the urban nucleus returned to the right bank. For much of the late middle-ages and the early modern period before becoming part of the province of Madrid, Alcalá de Henares was a seigneurial estate of the archbishop of Toledo.
  Its historical centre is one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.
  The city has a long university tradition. Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros founded the Complutense University in Alcalá de Henares in the late 15th century. The city currently hosts the University of Alcalá.
context_section_description: Aside from the buildings associated with the university, one of the city's most important and historic building is the Cathedral-Magistral of Saints Justus and Pastor, known formally in Spanish as the Santa e Insigne Catedral-Magistral de los Santos Justo y Pastor or more familiarly as the Catedral de los Santos Niños. Constructed between 1497 and 1514, the cathedral houses the remains of Saints Justus and Pastor, two Christian schoolboys martyred near the city during the persecutions of the Roman Emperor Diocletian at the beginning of the 4th century.
  In 414 a chapel was erected at the site of Justus and Pastor's martyrdom, and was converted into a cathedral during the period of Visigoth control of Hispania; bishops from Alcalá were present at the Councils of Toledo beginning in the 7th century. In 1053 the old city of Alcalá (Alcalá la Vieja) was conquered by  Ferdinand the Great, only to be recaptured the following year by the Moorish armies then warring for control of the Iberian Peninsula, who destroyed the cathedral as an act of retaliation. At that time the relics of Saints Justus and Pastor were taken to Huesca for safekeeping until after the reconquest of Alcalá in 1118. Although a church was rebuilt on the site in 1122, Pope Urban II, under the influence of his friend Raymond de Sauvetât, the Archbishop of Toledo, decided not to restore the Diocese of Alcalá at that time. Instead, de Sauvetât was able to secure the incorporation of Alcalá into his own archiepiscopal territories through a donation from King  Alfonso VII in 1129.
  The church was rebuilt again some three hundred years later by a subsequent archbishop of Toledo, Alfonso Carrillo de Acuña, who elevated it to the status of a collegiate church. It was finally reconstructed in its present Isabelline Gothic style under Cardinal Cisneros (1495–1517), the founder of the university. A tower was added between 1528 and 1582, achieving its modern appearance in 1618. The processional cloister and the Chapel of Saint Peter were incorporated into the building in the 17th century.
  The building was declared a national monument in 1904. Nevertheless, it was burned during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), and practically all of its contents were destroyed with the exception of a few minor relics and choir seats.
  It was not until 1991 that the Diocese of Alcalá was finally restored, being separated from the Archdiocese of Madrid, at which time the building was granted its present status of cathedral-magistral. (Although the title "magistral" was originally granted by Cardinal Cisneros, the building was still technically only a collegiate church, and not yet a cathedral within the ecclesiastical meaning of the term.)
  The Cathedral of Alcalá is notable as one of only two churches in the world to be granted the special title "magistral" (along with St. Peter's Church in Leuven, Belgium). The title reflects its former status as a collegiate church, and derives from the requirement that all of the canons of the cathedral must possess the academic distinction of Doctor of Theology in order to serve there.
  In addition to that of Saints Justus and Pastor, the cathedral also houses the tomb of renowned 17th-century Spanish sculptor Gregorio Fernández.
caption: The western façade of the Cathedral of the Santos Niños in a "florid" or "Isabelline Gothic" style
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