Collegiate Church of Santiago

This architectural ensemble is a religious and educational foundation constituted by the natural son of Diego de Benavides y de la CuevaVI Count of Santisteban del Puerto, Don Mendo de BenavidesIt was built in 1634 in one of the villas of the paternal county. The architectural ensemble consists of a church and a large cloister with teaching functions. The work on the church buildingThe character is sober and elegantly proportioned, began in 1642, when Don Mendo was Bishop of Cartagena.who commissioned them from Juan de Aranda Salazar, who had been maestro mayor of the cathedrals of Cordoba and Granada, and at that time was the maestro mayor of the cathedral of Jaén. Although Don Mendo died two years later, without seeing the church completed, which was not finished until 1648, he established that there should be a major chaplain, twenty-four chaplaincies, 12 major and 12 minor, some of them teaching canon law, grammar and moral doctrine, and others integrated into a chapel of music with organist and minstrels.
In 1692, the chapel was elevated to a collegiate church. with the dignity of Secular Abbot and twelve canons, by bull of Pope Innocent XII, which made it the fifth most important church in the diocese of Jaén. The reforms and additions after this date seek to adapt the architectural typology of the church to this new dignity, particularly the construction, at the back of the church, of a cloister, with a double gallery of semicircular arches on Tuscan columns dating from 1716, works promoted by the house of Santisteban.