The church, which was later granted in perpetuity to the Society of Jesus, contains the tombs of King Ferdinand IV and his son Alfonso XI.

The Royal Collegiate Church of Saint Hippolytus was part of a monastery founded by King Alfonso XI of Castile in 1343 to commemorate the victory of the Christian troops in the Battle of Salado, fought in 1340.

[2] Work on the construction of the church progressed very slowly and only the apse and the crossing had been completed during the reigns of Alfonso XI and of his son and successor, King Peter I.

In September 1312, a few days after his death in Jaén the remains of King Ferdinand IV were transferred to the city of Córdoba[4] and on the 13th of the same month, interred in a chapel at the Mosque-Cathedral although originally he was to be buried either at the Cathedral of Toledo near his father Sancho IV or in the Cathedral of Seville next to his paternal grandfather Alfonso X and his great-grandfather Ferdinand III.

[7] In 1371, when the Royal Chapel at the Mosque-Cathedral in Córdoba had been completed, Alfonso's son, Henry II, ordered that this father's remains were to be interred there next to King Fernando IV.