Bordeaux, Archdiocese of

BORDEAUX, ARCHDIOCESE OF. - A city of southwestern France, it rises on both banks of the Garonne, near the beginning of the great Gironde estuary, 95 km from the Atlantic. It is a great commercial emporium, especially for its famous wines, but it is also a port of primary importance for trade with the colonies. It has 260,000 inhabitants. The boundaries of the archdiocese, delimited by the bull of Pius VII of 3 Dec. 1801, correspond to those of the department of the Gironde (the largest of the French departments). It has an area of 97,403 sq. km, a population of 858,381 inhabitants, of whom 830,000 are Catholics. It comprises 514 parishes and has at its disposal 546 secular priests and 150 regulars (1949).

The archbishop also bears, by decree of the S. Congregazione concistoriale of 20 Nov. 1937, from 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 of the diocese: St. Andrew the Apostle.

Before the Roman conquest, ancient Burdigala, a name that is still an enigma, was only the capital of a Celtic group, that of the Bituriges Vivisci mentioned by Strabo and by Pliny. The Romans, appreciating its geographical position at the crossing of three great natural routes, made of it an emporium that prospered rapidly. Destroyed by the barbarians in 276, B. was later girded with mighty walls, and under the shelter of its fortifications it acquired, in a short time, great renown for its schools and for its rhetoricians. There were born, in the 4th century, the poet Ausonius and the celebrated bishop of Nola, St. Paulinus.

It is not known by whom and in what era Christianity was spread there. The most ancient bishop known is Orientalis, who took part, in 314, in the Council of Arles, and was probably the first bishop of B. Among his successors history recalls the names of Delphinus (380-404), Amandus (404-10), Severinus (410) and others down to Leontius I (520), whose epitaph was composed by Fortunatus, and Leontius II (542-64), of old Gallo-Roman stock, very well known as a builder of churches. To him would be due the organization of parish life in the city of B. and in the suburb of St-Seurin. The episcopal list has numerous 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 appear at B. before a council presided over by Delphinus, and were declared in it heretics and Manichaeans. In 1075 a new council condemned Berengar's error concerning the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In 1624, a council presided over by Cardinal Archbishop François de Sourdis, treated the question of the discipline and morals of the clergy and issued regulations clearly inspired by the doctrine of St. Charles Borromeo.

The region of B., 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, with peace came prosperity as well, which not even foreign dominations could interrupt. The English sovereigns made B. their capital on French soil until the conquest by the Valois in 1451. In 1099, returning from the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II consecrated the beautiful cathedral of St. Andrew. The elevation to the pontificate of one of its archbishops, Bertrand de Got, elected in Perugia on 5 June 1305 under the name of Clement V, made it possible to resolve the controversy between the archbishops of B. and of Bourges over the primatial right of Aquitaine: it was divided between the two sees as in the time of Diocletian, when two provinces were 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.

It is undoubtedly due to the work carried out by the archbishops that the diocese remained faithfully under the obedience of Rome during the great Western Schism. One of them, Cardinal François Hugocioni (1389-1412), carried out notable activity at the Council of Pisa (1409-10) and contributed effectively to the election of Alexander V. Cardinal François d'Escolbeau de Sourdis (1599-1628) labored much for reform and to this end introduced into the diocese numerous religious Orders: the Capuchins in 1601, the Minims in 1608, the Carthusians in 1609, the Discalced Carmelites in 1616. He further approved the formation of the Carmelites of St. Joseph and of the Assumption (1601 and 1608), of the Daughters of Our Lady and of the Ursulines (1606). In 1615 he blessed the marriage between Louis XIII and Anne of Austria in the cathedral of St. Andrew, where those of King Louis VII with Eleanor of Aquitaine had already been celebrated, in 1137. Archbishop Champion de Cicé (1791-1802) withdrew during the French Revolution to London, and was afterwards transferred to the archbishopric of Aix. As elsewhere, at B. too in this period ruins were sown, convents and churches closed, priests, monks and nuns imprisoned: 54 priests were condemned to death, 12 to detention. The Napoleonic concordat carried out a work of pacification. Among the more recent archbishops, we 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. Mommolin, abbot of Fleury-sur-Loire (7th century), died, is perhaps the most ancient of the diocese; nor did many others flourish, among which those of St-Vincent-de-Bourg (around the 9th century), of St-Pierre-de-Verteuil, of which the beautiful Romanesque church remains, of St-Pierre-de-l'Isle (a little later), of La-Sauve-Majeure, of which two important Cartularies have been preserved for us, the Cistercian abbey of Notre-Dame de Boulieu (1141) and the Premonstratensian abbey of Plaineselve (12th century).

Antonio Soirat

ART

Witnesses of the Roman era are the remains of an amphitheater, and numerous marbles now in the city's Lapidary Museum. To the Romanesque period date back, with important parts of their constructions, the churches of St-Seurin and Ste-Croix. In St-Seurin (Severinus) the crypt and the facade, from the 11th century, are still Romanesque; the construction was continued in the 12th-13th century (in part with even English influences, not rare, for historical reasons, in the city). Ste-Croix dates, as it appears today, to the 11th century with Romanesque sculptures on the facade; it was continued in Gothic style in the 13th century. The Cathedral too, dedicated to St. Andrew, preserves some part from the 12th century while its essential core, the nave, is in southern Gothic style of the 13th century. Work was also done there in a later period, especially at the time of Pope Clement V (Bertrand de Got), a native of B., in the early 1300s. 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) near the church of St-Michel; St-Michel itself (14th-16th century) contains rich sculptures and is a work, along with that of St-Eloi, of pure late Gothic style. Finally, the Gothic chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la Rose in St-Seurin displays Avignon and Burgundian influences. Baroque churches, built more or less under Italian influence, are those of St-Michel de Plessy, of Notre Dame (work of Pierre Michel), of St-Paul and of St-Brun; in the latter is preserved an Annunciation by Pietro and Gian Lorenzo Bernini and a portrait of Card. De Sourdis by Gian Lorenzo himself. Decisive for the general appearance of the city and its squares in the field of civil architecture of the 18th century, the Hôtel de la Ville (architects Etienne and Laclotte), the Prefecture (Victor Louis), the Grand Théâtre (by the same) and the Bourse (by J.-J. Gabriel) excel. - See Pl. CXI.

Bernardo Degenhart