Church of St. John the Evangelist (Bicorp)

Medieval Bicorp had a mosque which was consecrated in 1525, when Muslims were forced to become new Christians or Muslim converts to Christianity known as moriscos. It belonged to the parish of Navarrés until 1535, when it was set up as a Morisco rectory, with the towns of Benedriz and Quesa as annexes. Unlike the current devotion to St. John the Evangelist, in 1574 the church was documented as being devoted to St. John the Baptist (the same Yanna that Anna takes its name from), a saint and a festival that both the Old Christians and the Moriscos of La Canal celebrated on 24 June.

This mosque was located on a different site to that of the church; probably on Calle de San Roque, opposite the entrance to Calle Larga, isolated in relation to the neighbouring houses. The mosque survived as a half-ruined plot until 1695, when it was sold to a neighbour for redevelopment. The Moorish chapel had been replaced in around 1579 with a church with a new layout that stood on the plot of the current one, and it was inherited by the 17th-century re-settlers. In around 1700 it became too small for them and in 1734 work began to build a baroque church which, damaged by the Montesa earthquake of 1748, was not completed until the 1790s. However, the rains of 1818 demolished a large part of the vault, making it necessary to undertake a second reconstruction project, completed in 1833. It was also partially rebuilt in the years 1960-1961 after the vault collapsed.

The current result is a hall nave with seven side chapels between the buttresses, which house nine neo-baroque altars and statuettes from the post-war period which replaced those destroyed in 1936: the umpteenth catastrophe that has befallen the church. The façade of the building is the product of the modern refurbishment and has no elements of artistic interest. It has a lintel door, with a niche for the saint and oculus. At the foot of the church, looking straight ahead at the façade on the left-hand side, stands a bell tower with three levels separated by mouldings, with a terrace and recently created pyramids.

Despite the changes, the doors of 1828 are preserved and the bell tower houses two bells produced in 1829 by Vicente and José Rosa, from Chella, which were named St. John the Evangelist and St. Joseph – Hail Mary. The current patron saint of the church, as previously mentioned, is St. John the Evangelist, although the canonical patronage of Bicorp is held by the Holy Cross of the Lord (Santa Cruz del Señor), thanks to the relic of the True Cross of Christ (La Vera Cruz de Cristo) which is kept and venerated in the parish.