BLOIS, DIOCESE OF. - The chief town 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, detaching from the diocese of Chartres the archdeaconries of Blois 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 from the diocese of Le Mans. The diocese, suppressed during the French Revolution, was united with Orléans by the Concordat and then re-established in 1823. It is a suffragan of Paris. It comprises 295 parishes with 229 diocesan priests and 311 regular clergy; over an area of 6,581 sq. km, it has a population of 242,419, of whom 169,693 are Catholic (1948). The patron saint of the diocese is St. Louis, King of France.
The ancient collegiate church of St. Solenne, Bishop of Chartres, was chosen as the cathedral; built in the 12th century but much altered, especially after damage suffered from 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 Poictevini, who reused the ancient materials for the new building, adding to the surviving apse openings for the ambulatory.
The church of St. Saturninus was rebuilt in the 15th century; the Jesuit college and its adjoining church are the work of S. Martellange (1624) of the same order. Numerous were the abbeys in the territory of the diocese; the most notable was the Benedictine abbey of the Trinity at Vendôme, founded in 1032 by Geoffrey Martel, Count of Anjou; also Benedictine were the abbeys of Notre-Dame at Pontlevoy and of St. Laumer; of the latter, located in the same city of Blois, the church remains, consecrated in 1186 with 13th-century alterations. Among the shrines much frequented in the diocese are Notre-Dame de Villethou at St-Armand, Notre-Dame-des-Blanches at Pontlevoy, and St. Genouf at Selles-sur-Cher. From Blois are the Blessed Charles of Blois (1364) and the bishop Louis of Blois (1566).
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