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, detaching from the diocese of Chartres the archdeaconries of B. and of Vendôme and the southern part of the archdeaconry of Châteaudun; subsequently it 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 a suffragan of Paris. It has 295 parishes with 229 diocesan priests and 311 regulars; over an area of 6,581 sq km, it has a population of 242,419 inhabitants, of whom 169,693 are Catholics (1948). Patron of the diocese: 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 remodelled, especially after the damage suffered from the Huguenots in 1568, and 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 its 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 of Vendôme, founded in 1092 by Geoffrey Martel, count of Anjou; also Benedictine were the abbeys of Notre-Dame of Pontlevoy and of St-Laumer; of the latter, situated in the city of B. itself, there remains the church consecrated in the year 1186 with 13th-century alterations. Among the much-frequented sanctuaries in the diocese are remembered Notre-Dame de Villethieu at St-Armand, Notre-Dame-des-Blanches at Pontlevoy and St-Genouf at Selles-sur-Cher. From B. come the blessed Charles of B. (1364) and the bishop Louis of B. (1566).
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Enrico Josi