BLOIS, DIOCESE of. – Capital city of the department of Loir-et-Cher on the Loire, 178 km southwest of Paris. The diocese was erected by Pope Innocent XII on 25 June 1697, separating from the diocese of Chartres the archdeaconries of B. and Vendôme and the southern part of the archdeaconry of Châteaudun; it later also received the southern part of the archdeaconry of Romorantin, taken from Bourges, and thirty-five parishes of the diocese of Mans. The diocese, suppressed by the French Revolution, was united to Orléans by the concordat and then re-established in 1823. It is suffragan to Paris. It has 295 parishes with 229 diocesan priests and 311 regular priests; over an area of 6581 sq. km., it has a population of 242,419 inhabitants, of whom 169,693 are Catholics (1948). The patron of the diocese is St Luigi, king of France.
The ancient collegiate church of St Solenne, bishop of Chartres, was chosen as the cathedral; built in the 12th century but remodelled, especially after the damage inflicted by the Huguenots in 1568, it was completed in 1609. Largely ruined in 1678, it was rebuilt through the munificence of Louis XIV by the architect Poletcevin, who used the ancient materials for the new building, adding openings for the ambulatory to the surviving apse.
The church of St-Saturnin was rebuilt in the 15th century; the Jesuit college and the adjoining church are the work of S. Martellange (1624), of the same Society. There were numerous abbeys in the territory of the diocese; the most notable was the Benedictine abbey of the Trinité at Vendôme, founded in 1092 by Geoffrey Martel, count of Anjou; the abbeys of Notre-Dame at Pontlevoy and of St-Laumer were also Benedictine. Of the latter, situated in the same city of B., the church remains, consecrated in 1186 and remodelled in the 13th century. Among the much-frequented shrines in the diocese are Notre-Dame de Villethieu at St-Armand, Notre-Dame-des-Blanches at Pontlevoy, and St-Genouf at Selles-sur-Cher. The blessed Carlo di B. (1364) and the bishop Luigi di B. (1566) were from B.