Burgundy

BURGUNDY. - A historical region of France, whose name perpetuates the memory of the Burgundians (a Germanic population that moved into France around the 5th century) and of the feudal state they established there, definitively united with the French monarchy in 1497.

After 1790, B. comprises the three departments of Yonne, Côte-d'Or and Saône-et-Loire, that is, an area of 24,075 sq km, stretching from Champagne to the Jura and from the Vosges to the Rhône.

The landscape is quite varied and alternates plateau areas (from the Plateau of Langres to the Chalonnais, resting on the crystalline heights of the Morvan) cut by the valleys

(Combes) tributary to the Seine and the Saône, with plains partly won over to cultivation, partly still cluttered with ponds (Bresse) or covered with forests (liteaux). On the whole, it is an agricultural region, suited above all to the cultivation of the vine (the Burgundian vineyards climb the slope of the hills, or côtes, which from Dijon to Lyon close off to the west the trench in which the Saône flows) and of cereals (wheat and maize), which also serve for livestock raising (stable and barnyard animals). But the importance that B. had in history derives above all from its geographical position, a zone of passage from Mediterranean France (Rhône basin) to northern France (Paris basin) and from eastern France (Lorraine) to western France (Loire basin), as is indicated by the development of the communication routes and navigable canals that cross the region.

The population of B. recorded, between 1921 and 1946, the usual decline observed throughout France; in 1946 it amounted (in the three above-mentioned departments) to 1,108,365 inhabitants (46 per sq km). There are no large urban centers; the most important, which is also the historic center of the region, is Dijon (100,664 inhabitants), which is essentially an agricultural market and a communication hub. The other two departmental capitals are: Auxerre (Yonne, 24,000 inhabitants) and Mâcon (Saône-et-Loire, 21,000 inhabitants).

HISTORY OF THE DUCHY OF BURGUNDY

B. was a not well-defined territory in the Middle Ages due to the frequent changing of political boundaries; even present-day Savoy and the Aosta Valley were part of it. Christianity must have penetrated there from Lyon and Vienne, where it flourished in the 2nd century. It received its name from the Burgundians who in the 5th century settled there, establishing a kingdom which the Franks in 534 incorporated into their own. Under the Merovingian kings it had its own administration, sometimes with princes by hereditary succession. By Charles the Bald the duchy of Burgundy was created and by him conferred on his brother-in-law Richard the Justiciar (877-921) who freed it from the Normans. Subsequently the duchy, although in 1038 it became part of the Empire with which it had weak contacts, was always in the hands of persons related to the Frankish royal family and therefore closely tied to it, until in 1032 with Robert, of the Capetian family, a true dynasty begins which transmits the duchy by inheritance until 1361.

Of particular interest for the history of the Church are the two great monasteries of Cluny and Citeaux (v.) and certain figures among its dukes, who distinguished themselves particularly in the crusading expeditions. Odo called Borel (1079-1102), who protected the monks of Citeaux, recently founded in B., while opposing those of Cluny, for which he received excommunication, died in Cilicia on the Crusade; also his successors, Hugh II the Peaceful (1102-43) and Odo II (1143-82) were involved in difficulties between Cluniacs and Cistercians. Hugh III (1182-93) died as a crusader at Tyre, and his son Odo III (1193-1218) supported

King Philip Augustus in the struggle against the Albigensians. Hugh IV (1218-72), with St. Louis IX (v.), fell prisoner of the Arabs at Mansurah and from Baldwin I of Constantinople obtained the purely honorary title of king of Thessalonica. Robert II, his brother and successor (1272-1305), favored Philip the Fair against Boniface VIII. Upon the extinction, in 1361, with Philip of Rouvre, who died without heirs, of the Capetian ducal family, the duchy passed easily into the hands of John II of France, who in 1363 gave it as an appanage to his son Philip the Bold. From this moment it becomes part of the French monarchy (v. FILIPPO L'ARDITO).

Alberto Ghinato

ART

Twice in the course of history the art of Burgundy rose to European importance: during the period of the highest flourishing of the Cluniac and Cistercian Orders, that is, respectively, in the Romanesque and late-Romanesque periods, and during the duchy of Philip the Bold (1363-1404) and his successors, when, after Philip's marriage to Margaret of Flanders (1384), the political union of the two countries brought about a very lively cultural exchange and made Dijon the artistic center of France.

In the Romanesque and late-Romanesque art of Burgundy, architecture and sculpture were of preponderant importance: the former followed, in comparison with the other regions of France, entirely its own paths, deriving its vaulted basilicas and its wall systems, which recall those of the Roman arches, especially from classical art. Two earlier phases of the same monument and other churches of lesser importance, such as St. Benignus in Dijon and St. Philibert in Tournus, precede the definitive construction of the church of the abbey of Cluny. But a true and proper Burgundian school manifests itself only in the last construction of the church of Cluny (vaulted and with five naves, of a size little inferior to the ancient basilica of St. Peter, with five bell towers; begun in 1089; the choir was consecrated by Urban II in 1095; completed in 1125, it was largely destroyed during the French Revolution); this school develops and asserts itself in the constructions derived from the Cluniac model, such as the churches of Paray-le-Monial, Beaune, Autun (beginning of the 12th century), La Charité-sur-Loire, Langres (second half of the 12th century). Another type, perhaps with Eastern influences, arose at Vézelay, in the church of the Madeleine, at Ancy-le-Duc, at Avallon. While the churches of the centers of the Cistercian reform, Clairvaux and Cîteaux, are not preserved, their type is reflected in those of Fontenay and Pontigny, as well as in certain Italian abbey churches (Casamari, Fossanova, etc.).

In sculpture the classical influences are quite weak, in comparison with the impassioned liveliness of its original slender forms. The oldest current nevertheless remains still somewhat heavy; for example, the capitals of the choir of Cluny and of Ancy-le-Duc, the portals of Charlieu (1094), and Mâcon. Then sculpture became exceptionally animated, and, subsequently, stylized, as the portals and capitals at Autun and at Vézelay demonstrate (c. 1120-30, under the influence of the destroyed portal of the church of Cluny of the third phase), at Paray-le-Monial (second half of the 12th century) and at Avallon. Cîteaux was also the center of a most flourishing miniature painting, especially under the abbot Stephen Harding; a large part of the codices is found today in the library of Dijon, and especially famous is the so-called "Harding Bible" of 1109.

Preponderant importance, in the second period of the art of Burgundy, that is, at the end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th, was had by painting and sculpture. The court painters of Philip the Bold were Jean d'Arbois (1373-75), Jean de Beaumetz (d. 1397), Jean Malouel (d. 1415), Henri Bellechose (d. c. 1440), of most of whom paintings are found in the Louvre; most famous of all was Melchior Broederlam (v.), he too, like almost all the others, a Fleming.

Of the old construction of the charterhouse of Champmol, founded by Philip, there is preserved (besides the altar of Jacques de Baerze and of Broederlam in the museum of Dijon) the portal with the sculptures of Jean de Marville and Claus Sluter (1390-97). Sluter (v.), present in 1385 at Dijon, became in 1398 the successor of Jean de Marville (d. 1404) as "valet de chambre"; he is a sculptor of the highest importance for the so-called "courtly-international style": he executed the celebrated Well of Moses (Champmol, commissioned in 1395) and began the tombs of Philip the Bold and of John the Fearless, now in the museum of Dijon, the first completed in 1411 by Claus de Werve (d. 1439) and the other in 1469 by Jean de la Huerta and Antoine le Moiturier. From Cîteaux comes another of these famous tombs of Burgundy, that of Philip Pot (d. 1494), now in the Louvre. For the subsequent periods let it suffice to mention the late-Gothic church of Brou (beginning of the 16th century) and the elements derived from the Italian Renaissance that assert themselves in the churches of St. Michael in Dijon, of N.-Dame in Bourg, and in the portal of Tonnerre. The same development from the late Gothic to the Renaissance can be observed in secular architecture, and especially in the beautiful castles of Ancy-le-Franc, Tanlay, St-Fargeau, Sully, etc. - See Pl. CXIII.

Bernardo Degenhart