Bloy, Léon (1846-1917). French writer of prose fiction, journalist, and diarist. A precursor of the late 19th-c. Catholic Revival [see Catholicism in Twentieth-Century France], Bloy was the first to combine with any degree of success the dual functions of the Catholic writer as creative artist and defender of an absolute faith. For some, his ironic and satirical journalism is the best part of his production. Bloy himself preferred his autobiographical novels Le Désespéré (1887) and La Femme pauvre (1897), his multi-volume Journal, transpositions of the frustrations of his own poverty and passions into the redeeming language of Crucifixion and Apocalypse, and his prophetic tomes on reparatory suffering and the imminent advent of the Holy Spirit (Le Salut par les Juifs, 1892; Celle qui pleure, 1908, on the penitential cult of La Salette).
[Jennifer Birkett]
