ARCHDIOCESE OF BORDEAUX
Bordeaux is a city in southwestern France, situated on both banks of the Garonne River near the beginning of the great estuary of the Gironde, 95 km from the Atlantic. It is a major commercial emporium, particularly renowned for its famous wines, and also an important port for trade with the colonies. It has 260,000 inhabitants. The boundaries of the archdiocese, as defined by the bull of Pius VII of 3 December 1801, correspond to those of the department of the Gironde (the largest of the French departments). It covers an area of 97,403 sq km and has a population of 858,381, of whom 830,000 are Catholic. It comprises 514 parishes, served by 546 diocesan priests and 150 regular clergy (1949).
The archbishop also holds, by decree of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation of 20 November 1937, the title of Bishop of Bazas, a diocese suppressed under the Concordat. The suffragan dioceses are: Agen, Poitiers, La Rochelle, Angoulême, Périgueux, and Luçon. The patron saint of the diocese is St Andrew the Apostle.
Before the Roman conquest, the ancient Burdigala—whose name remains an enigma—was merely the capital of a Celtic group, the Bituriges Vivisci, mentioned by Strabo and Pliny. The Romans, appreciating its geographical position at the intersection of three great natural routes, made it a thriving emporium. Destroyed by the barbarians in 276, Bordeaux was later surrounded by mighty walls, and under their protection it soon acquired great renown for its schools and rhetoricians. In the 4th century, the poet Ausonius and the celebrated bishop of Nola, St Paulinus, were born there.
It is unknown by whom and when Christianity was first preached in Bordeaux. The earliest known bishop is Orientalis, who took part in the Council of Arles in 314 and was probably the first bishop of Bordeaux. 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 old Gallo-Roman stock, well known as a builder of churches. To him is attributed the organization of parochial life in the city of Bordeaux and in the suburb of St-Seurin. The episcopal list contains many gaps and becomes regular only after the year 1000. Numerous councils attest to the importance of this archdiocese. In 384, the bishop of Avila and several of his followers were summoned to Bordeaux before a council presided over by Delphinus and were declared heretics and Manichaeans. In 1075, a new council condemned the error of Berengarius concerning the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In 1624, a council presided over by Cardinal Archbishop François de Sourdis addressed the question of clerical discipline and morals and issued regulations clearly inspired by the teaching of St Charles Borromeo.
The region of Bordeaux, which in the 5th century had suffered the persecution of Euric, king of the Visigoths, endured in the 8th and 9th centuries the devastations of the Saracens and the Normans. In the 11th century, finally, peace brought prosperity, which even foreign domination could not interrupt. The English kings made Bordeaux 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 fine cathedral of St Andrew. The elevation to the papacy of one of its archbishops, Bertrand de Got, elected at Perugia on 5 June 1305 as Clement V, enabled the dispute between the archbishops of Bordeaux and Bourges over the primatial rights of Aquitaine to be resolved: these rights were divided between the two sees as in the time of Diocletian, when two provinces were established in Aquitaine. In 1441, at the instance of Archbishop Pey Berland, Pope Eugenius IV founded the University of Bordeaux, whose first chancellor was the archbishop himself.
Undoubtedly, it was through the work of the archbishops that the diocese remained faithfully obedient to Rome during the Great Western Schism. One of them, Cardinal Francesco Hugocioni (1389–1412), played a notable part in the Council of Pisa (1409–10) and contributed effectively to the election of Alexander V. Cardinal François d’Escoubleau de Sourdis (1599–1628) worked energetically for reform and introduced into the diocese numerous religious orders: the Capuchins in 1601, the Minims in 1608, the Carthusians in 1609, and the Discalced Carmelites in 1616. He also approved the formation of the Carmelite nuns 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 de Cicé (1791–1802) withdrew to London during the French Revolution and was later transferred to the archdiocese of Aix. As elsewhere, Bordeaux suffered ruin during this period: convents and churches were closed, priests, monks, and nuns were imprisoned; 54 priests were condemned to death and 12 to imprisonment. The Napoleonic Concordat brought pacification. Among more recent archbishops, we may recall Cardinal Louis Lefebvre de Cheverus (1826–36) and Cardinal Auguste Donnet (1837–1882), who left indelible traces of their wise administration.
The Benedictine abbey of Ste-Croix, where St Mommolus, abbot of Fleury-sur-Loire, died (7th century), is perhaps the oldest in the diocese; many others flourished, including those of St-Vincent-de-Bourg (about the 9th century), St-Pierre-de-Verteuil, of which the fine Romanesque church remains, St-Pierre-de-l’Isle (a little later), La-Sauve-Majeure, whose two important cartularies have been preserved, the Cistercian abbey of Notre-Dame de Bouliac (1141), and the Premonstratensian abbey of Plassac (12th century).
Art. – Roman-era remains include the ruins of an amphitheatre and numerous marbles now housed in the city’s Lapidary Museum. Dating from the Romanesque period, with important parts of their structures still extant, are the churches of St-Seurin and Ste-Croix. In St-Seurin (St-Severin), the crypt and façade remain Romanesque, from the 11th century; construction continued in the 12th–13th centuries (partly under English influences, not uncommon in the city for historical reasons). Ste-Croix, as it appears today, dates from the 11th century with Romanesque sculptures on the façade; it was completed in Gothic style in the 13th century.
The Cathedral, dedicated to St Andrew, preserves some parts from the 12th century, while its essential core, the nave, is in the Southern Gothic style of the 13th century. Work continued there in later periods, especially during the time of Pope Clement V (Bertrand de Got), a native of Bordeaux, in the early 1300s. Famous as a characteristic monument of late Gothic style (flamboyant style) is the bell tower “Pey-Berland,” near St-André, and another (from the 15th century) beside the church of St-Michel; St-Michel itself (c. 1300–1400) contains rich sculpture and, together with that of St-Eloi, is a work of pure late Gothic style. Finally, the Gothic chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la-Rose in St-Seurin shows Avignonese and Burgundian influences.
Baroque churches, built more or less under Italian influence, include those of St-Michel de Flessy, Notre-Dame (a work of Pierre Michel), St-Paul, and St-Brun; in the latter is preserved an Annunciation by Pietro and Gian Lorenzo Bernini and a portrait of Cardinal de Sourdis by the same Gian Lorenzo. 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 Étienne and Lodotte), the Prefecture (Victor Louis), the Grand Théâtre (by the same), and the Bourse (by J.-J. Gabriel). – See Pl. CXI.