BORDEAUX, ARCHDIOCESE of. — City of south-western France, situated on both banks of the Garonne, near the beginning of the great Gironde estuary, 95 km. from the Atlantic. It is a major commercial centre, especially on account of its famous wines, but it is also a port of primary importance for traffic with the colonies. It has 260,000 inhabitants. The boundaries of the archdiocese, defined by the bull of Pius VII of 3 December 1801, correspond to those of the department of Gironde (the largest of the French departments). It has an area of 97,403 sq. km. and a population of 858,381, of whom 830,000 are Catholics. It comprises 514 parishes and has 546 secular priests and 150 religious priests (1949).
By decree of the S. Congregation of the Consistory of 20 November 1937, the archbishop has also borne, since 1937, the title of bishop of Bazas, a diocese suppressed by the concordat. The suffragan dioceses are: Agen, Poitiers, La Rochelle, Angoulême, Périgueux and Luçon. Patron saint of the diocese: St Andrew the Apostle.
Before the Roman conquest, ancient Burdigala, a name that remains an enigma to this day, was merely the capital of a Celtic tribe, that of the Bituriges Vicini mentioned by Strabo and Pliny. Appreciating its geographical position at the intersection of three great natural routes, the Romans made it a commercial centre, which rapidly prospered. Destroyed by the barbarians in 276, B. was later surrounded by powerful walls, and under the protection of its fortifications it soon acquired great renown for its schools and rhetoricians. The poet Ausonius and the celebrated bishop of Nola, St Paulinus, were born there in the 4th century.
It is not known by whom or at what time Christianity was introduced there. The oldest known bishop is Orientalis, who took part in the Council of Arles in 314 and was probably the first bishop of B. Among his successors, history records the names of Delphinus (380-404), Amandus (404-10), Severinus (410), and others up to Leontius I (520), whose epitaph was composed by Fortunatus, and Leontius II (542-64), of ancient Gallo-Roman lineage, who was well known as a church builder. He is said to have organized parish life in the city of B. and in the suburb of St-Seurin. The episcopal list contains numerous gaps and becomes regular only after 1000. Numerous councils attest to the importance of this archdiocese. In 384 the bishop of Avila and several of his followers were summoned to appear at B. before a council presided over by Delphinus, and were there declared heretics and Manichaeans. In 1075 a new council condemned Berengarius’s error concerning the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In 1624, a council presided over by Cardinal Archbishop Francesco de Sourdis dealt with the discipline and morals of the clergy and issued regulations clearly inspired by the teaching of St Charles Borromeo.
The region of B., which in the 5th century had suffered the persecution of Euric, king of the Visigoths, endured the devastation of the Saracens and Normans in the 8th and 9th centuries. Finally, in the 11th century, peace brought prosperity as well, which even foreign dominations could not interrupt. The English sovereigns made B. their capital on French soil until the conquest by the Valois in 1451. In 1099, on his return from the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II consecrated the beautiful cathedral of St Andrew. The elevation to the papacy of one of its archbishops, Bertrando di Got, elected at Perugia on 5 June 1305 under the name Clement V, made it possible to resolve the dispute between the archbishops of B. and Bourges over the primatial right of Aquitaine: it was divided between the two sees, as in the time of Diocletian, when two provinces had been established in Aquitaine. In 1441, through the intervention of Archbishop Pey Berland, Pope Eugene IV founded the University of B., whose first chancellor was the archbishop himself.
Without doubt, it was owing to the work carried out by the archbishops that the diocese remained faithfully obedient to Rome during the great Western Schism. One of them, Cardinal Francesco Hugocioni (1389-1412), was notably active at the Council of Pisa (1409-10) and contributed effectively to the election of Alexander V. Cardinal Francesco d'Escolbeau de Sourdis (1599-1628) worked assiduously for reform and for this purpose introduced numerous religious Orders into the diocese: the Capuchins in 1601, the Minims in 1608, the Carthusians in 1609, and the Discalced Carmelites in 1616. He also approved the establishment of the Carmelite communities of St Joseph and of the Assumption (1601 and 1608), the Daughters of Our Lady and the Ursulines (1606). In 1615 he blessed the marriage of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria in the cathedral of St Andrew, where, in 1137, the marriage of King Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine had already been celebrated. Archbishop Champion da Cicé (1791-1802) withdrew to London during the French Revolution and was subsequently transferred to the archbishopric of Aix. As elsewhere, so too at B. during this period, devastation was sown, convents and churches were closed, and priests, monks and religious women were imprisoned: 54 priests were condemned to death and 12 to detention. The Napoleonic concordat brought about a work of pacification. Among the more recent archbishops, we may recall Cardinal Luigi Lefebvre de Cheverus (1826-36) and Cardinal Augusto Donnet (1837-1882), who left indelible traces of their wise administration.
The Benedictine abbey of Ste-Croix, where St Mommolin, abbot of Fleury-sur-Loire (7th century), died, is perhaps the oldest in the diocese; nor were many others lacking, among them those of St-Vincent-de-Bourg (around the 9th century), St-Pierre-de-Verteuil, whose beautiful Romanesque church remains, St-Pierre-de-l'Isle (somewhat later), La-Sauve-Majeure, of which two important Cartularies have been preserved, the Cistercian abbey of Notre-Dame de Boulieu (1141), and the Premonstratensian abbey of Plaineselve (12th century).
while its essential core, the nave, is in the southern Gothic style of the 13th century. Work continued there in later periods as well, especially during the time of Pope Clement V (Bertrand de Got), a native of B., in the early 14th century. Famous as a characteristic monument of the late Gothic style (style flamboyant) is the «Pey-Berland» bell tower, near St-André, and the other one (from the 15th century) beside the church of St-Michel; St-Michel itself (14th–16th centuries) contains rich sculptures and is, like St-Eloi, a work in the pure late Gothic style. Finally, the Gothic chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la Rose in St-Seurin displays Avignonese and Burgundian influences. Baroque churches, built more or less under Italian influence, are those of St-Michel de Plessy, Notre Dame (the work of Pierre Michel), St-Paul and St-Brun; the latter preserves an Annunciation by Pietro and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, as well as a portrait of Cardinal De Sourdis by Gian Lorenzo himself. Decisive for the general appearance of the city and its squares in the field of 18th-century civil architecture are the Hôtel de la Ville (architects Etienne and Laclotte), the Prefecture (Victor Louis), the Grand Théâtre (by the same architect) and the Bourse (by J.-J. Gabriel). – Vedi Tav. CXI.