CAMBRAI, ARCHDIOCESE OF. — Located on the left bank of the Scheldt, Cambrai was, together with Tournai and Bavay, the capital of the country of the Nervii. Conquered by the Romans, who called it Cameracum, it fell into the power of the Franks in 445, and later of the Normans, who devastated it in 880. Subsequently included in the county of Hainaut, it became a free commune starting in 1076. Louis XI occupied it in 1477; thereafter it was part of the Spanish Netherlands. In this city, in 1508, the famous League of Cambrai was formed between Pope Julius II, France, and the Empire against Venice. A few years later, in 1529, the Peace of Cambrai was signed there by Louise of Savoy on behalf of her son Francis I, and by Margaret of Austria on behalf of her nephew Charles V. In the Peace of Nijmegen of 1677, Cambrai was definitively annexed to France by Louis XIV.
The first evangelization of this region seems to date back to St. Vedastus, who around the year 500 founded a bishopric at Arras, which was transferred to Cambrai toward the end of the 6th century. In 1093, Arras and Cambrai formed two separate sees. The diocese of Cambrai then extended as far as Antwerp. Among the six known bishops of Cambrai are counted 11 saints and 1 blessed. Other notable bishops of the diocese include Robert II of Geneva (the antipope Clement VII of the Great Western Schism); Fénelon (1695–1715), known as the Swan of Cambrai; Cardinals d'Estrées, de la Trémoille, and Dubois.
By the bull *Super universas* of 12 May 1559, Cambrai was elevated to a metropolitan see with Arras, Tournai, Namur, and St-Omer as suffragans; the Concordat of 1801 reduced it to a simple suffragan of Paris; in 1841 it became a metropolitan see again, with Arras as its suffragan, to which Lille was added in 1913, along with the arrondissements of Lille, Hazebrouck, and Dunkirk. The city of Cambrai, except for its ramparts—among which are the castle of Selles and the Gate of the Holy Sepulchre (13th–14th centuries)—has preserved few monuments from the past.
The archdiocese is divided into four deaneries: Cambrai with its own deaneries, Douai with 7, Valenciennes with 8, and Avesnes with 12. The patron saint of the diocese is St. Stephen. It has 873,109 inhabitants.