In the 18th century. the archbishops of Valencia, especially Mr. Andrés Mayoral (1738-1769) and Mr. Francisco Fabián y Fuero offered the great resources of the Church at the service of an Enlightenment of the clergy and the people under the sign of the Catholic religion.

Thus, educational institutions were created, public works were promoted and most of the beautiful and spacious parish churches of the baroque and neoclassical style were built that welcomed the growing population of the Valencian towns and cities. These new temples, whose peculiar bell towers characterize our landscape, were decorated by magnificent painters and sculptors from the school of the Real Academia de San Carlos (Saint Charles Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Valencia).

Signs of this cultural and religious renewal were the total remodelling of the cathedrals of Valencia and Segorbe, hiding their original Gothic structure, and the foundation of the Diocesan Seminars of Valencia, Segorbe and Orihuela. Religious life suffered severely from the expulsion of the Jesuits, but benefited from the cultural and educational work of other orders such as the Piarists and the Oratorians of Saint Philip Neri.

Between the 17th and 18th centuries the sacred drama of the “Mystery of Elche”, reached its maximum splendor, based on a representation in the 13th century Valencian, which staged the transition and the Assumption into heaven of the Virgin Mary. This outstanding musical and scenographic composition transmitted in the memory of the people, is celebrated every year on August 14 and 15 in the Elche basilica of Santa María and has been declared a World Heritage Site.

The same happened with the celebration of the Corpus Christi festivity that began to have its external manifestation in cities such as Morella, Xàtiva and Valencia during the 14th century, preserving in the last one the triumphant carriages or “Rocas” (Rocks), the dances, the sacred representations or “misteris”, the biblical characters and the professional and social unions, as when this procession showed the richness and diversity of these cities in their past. Not surprisingly, the festivities of “The Virgin of August” and “Corpus” manifest the two devotions that centre the religiosity of the Christians of Valencia: The Virgin Mary and the Eucharist.