HRADEC KRÁLOVÉ (KÖNIGGRÄTZ). - Diocese and city in Czechoslovakia, suffragan of Prague.
The diocese covers an area of 13,090 sq. km., with a population of 1,294,702 inhabitants, of whom 913,606 are Catholic. It comprises 477 parishes, served by 612 diocesan priests and 50 regular clergy, one seminary, 10 male religious communities and 71 female (1949).
The diocese was erected by Pope Alexander VII on 10 November 1604; its first bishop was the Benedictine Matěj Ferdinand Sobek von Bilenberg, who in 1668 was promoted Archbishop of Prague. Bishop Tadeáš von Trauttmansdorff (1795–1811) later became Archbishop of Olomouc and a cardinal; likewise Bishop Karel Kaspar (1920–31), who was later Archbishop of Prague, was also a cardinal.
The most notable sacred building in the diocese is the 14th-century Gothic cathedral, restored in 1864; then the likewise Gothic church of St Barbara in Kutná Hora. Within the diocese is remembered the Benedictine abbey of St Václav in Broumov; occupied by the Hussites, it was restored in 1674 (Cottineau, I, p. 479).