Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 2.djvu/753

 BORDEAUX

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BORDEAUX

Archbishops of Hourges, coming to Bordeaux, found the doors of the churches closed against them, and answered with excommunication the solemn protests which the Bordeaux clergy made against their visits. Aquitaine was lost to France by the annulment of that marriage between Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine which was celebrated in the Cathedral of Bordeaux in the year 1137, and Bordeaux became the capital of the English possessions in France. Thereupon the struggle between the Sees of Bordeaux and Bourges assumed a political character, the King of France necessarily upholding the claims of Bourges. Most of the archbishops were conspicuous as agents of English policy in Aquitaine, notable amongst them being Guillaume Amanieu (1207-26), on whom King Henrj' III of England conferred the title of seneschal and guardian of all his lands be- yond the sea, and who took part in Spain in the wars against the Saracens; Gerard de Mallemort (1227-60), a generous founder of monasteries, who acted as mediator between St. Louis and Henry III, and de- fended Gascony against the tyranny of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. During the episcopate of Gerard de Mallemort t!ie old Romanesque church of Saint-Andr^ was transformed into a Gothic cathe- dral. Pope Clement V (1305-14) was unfavourable to the claims of Bourges. He w-as a native of Villan- draut near Bazas, where he had built a beautiful collegiate church, was Archbishop of Bordeaux from 1300 to 1305, and political adviser to Philip the Fair. When he became pope, in spite of his French .sympathies, his heart was set upon the formal emanci- pation of Bordeaux from Bourges. Blessed Pierre Berland, or Peyberland as tradition calls him (1430- 57), was an Archbishop of Bordeaux, illustrious for his intelligence and holiness, founder of the L-niversity of Bordeaux and of the College of St. Raphael for poor students, who, after helping the English to defend Bordeaux against the troops of Charles VII, received Dunois into his episcopal city and sur- rendered it to France. It was during his episcopate that the beautiful campanile known as the Pey Berland Tower was added to the cathedral.

The rich and powerful chapters of Saint-Andr^ and Saint-Seurin subsisted in the Middle Ages as a vestige of that duaUty which was already noticeable in Merovingian Bordeaux. Between the two there were frequent and very animated conflicts. The ar- tistic feeling of the canons in the thirteenth century is attested by the Gothic portal of Saint-Seurin which is still extant. At the end of the fourteenth century Canon Vital de Carle established the great Hospital of Saint-Andrd, which he placed under the protection of the municipality; and it was through the exertions of the chapter of Saint- Andr6 that the first city library of Bordeaux was founded, towards the year 1402. During the Middle Ages Bordeaux was a great monastic city, with its Car- melite, Franciscan, and Dominican convents, founded respectively in 1217, 1227, and 12.30. In 1214 an important council was held in Bordeaux against usurers, highwaymen, and heretics. When, after the Hundred Years' War, Bordeaux again became French, Louis XI flattered its citizens by joining the con- fraternity of Notre-Dame de Montuzet, a religious association formed of all the mariners of the Gironde, by heaping favours on the church of Saint-Michel, the tower of which, built in the period between 1473 and 1492, was higher than the Pey Berland, and by furthering the canonization of its former archbishop, Pierre Berland.

Among the Archbishops of Bordeaux, in the iiMHlcrn epoch, may be mentioned: Charles de liiamont (1530-44), who during its earliest years h> Iprd the College of Guyenne (founded in 1533)
 * irMl introduced into Bordeaux the art of the Ren-

aissance; Frangois de Sourdis (1599-1628), who had

great political influence during the minority of Louis XIII, caused the marshes in the neighbour- hood of Bordeaux to be filled in, erected there a magnificent Carthusian monastery, welcomed to Bordeaux many congregations devoted to ecclesias- tical reform, approved (1606) the teaching order of the Filles de Notre-Dame, founded by Blessed Jeanne de Lestonnac, and befriended the College of the Madeleine founded by the Jesuits in opposition to the College of Guyenne which, during the sixteenth century, was open to Protestant influences; Car- dinal de Cheverus (1826-36), who during the cholera epidemic had tlie sign Maixon de. Secotirs (House of Refuge) put over his palace, of whom M. JuUian said that no prelate in the history of the diocese had come nearer the ideal of sanctity, and during whose episcopate Therf'se de Laraourus, the "Good Mother", considered by Cardinal Cheverus a saint worthy of the early day.s of the Church, opened for repentant women the Maison de la Mis^ricorde; Cardinal Donnet (1837-82), who re-established the old provincial councils interrupted for 224 years.

The Old Bishopric of Bazas. — According to Greg- ory of Tours, Bazas had a bishop at the time of the Vandal invasion in the fifth century. The dedica- tion of the cathedral to St. John the Baptist is ex- plained in an account given by the same historian, that a lady of Bazas, whom certain hagiographers of the nineteenth century believe to have been St. Veronica, brought from Palestine a relic of St. John the Baptist at the time of that saint's death. For two hundred and fifty years prior to 1057, the Bisliop of Bazas bore the title of Bishop of Aire, Dax, Bayonne, Oloron, and Lescar. Urban II (1088-99) preached the crusade at Bazas.

Places of Ecclesiastical Interest in the Archdiocese. — The town of La R^ole (from Regula, rule) owes its origin, and even its name, to a Benedictine mon- astery founded in 777, destroyed by the Northmen, and rebuilt in 977 by Sancho of Gascony and his brother. Bishop Gombald. It was there that Abbo, Abbot of Fleury, who came to reform the monastery in 1004, was assassinated. The town of Saint-Emilion is likewise indebted for its origin to the hermit of that name, a native of Vannes, who died in 767 after having founded in these parts an abbey which the Augustinians occupied after the year 1110. The Abbey of Saint-Romain at Blaye in which, it is said, the remains of Roland, nephew of Charlemagne, were once preserved, was founded on the spot where, in the fourth century, St. Romanus, the recluse, died in the arms of St. Martin. The Bene- dictine monastery of the Grande Sauve entre Deux Mers was founded in 1080 by St. Gerard of Corbie. The Abbey of Notre Dame at Guitres had for abbot, between 1624 and 1637, Peiresc the celebrated numismatist, one of the greatest scholars of the seventeenth century (1580-1637).

The most important pilgrimage is that of Notre Dame of Verdelais, founded in 1390 by Isabella, Countess of Foix, when her mule stumbled over a buried statue of the Blessed Virgin.

Statistics. — In 1900 the religious orders for men were represented in the Archdiocese of Bordeaux as follows: Augustinians, Jesuits, Franciscans, Lazarists, Carmelites, and Fathers of the Holy Ghost at Bor- deaux; Olivetans at Soulac; Dominicans at Arcachon; Redemptorists at Coutras; Marists at Notre Dame de Verdelais and several houses of Marianists. In 1900 the congregations for women peculiar to the diocese were, in addition to those mentioned above: Sis- ters of Charity of the Holy Agony, a teaching and nursing order founded in 1849, with the mother- house at Bordeaux; Sisters of the Christian Doc- trine, founded in 1814, with the mother-house at Bordeaux; Sisters of the Holy Family, founded in 1820 by the Abb6 Noailles. The last-named con-