BOOK
682
BORDEAXTX
triumph of the Refonnation, most of them depicting
tlie sufferings of the martyrs.
The convocation of the Enghsh Cliurch ordered in 1571 that copies of the "Book of Martyrs" should be kept for public inspection in all cathedrals and in the houses of church dignitaries. The book was also exposed in many parish churches. The pas- sionate intensity of the style, the ^•ivid and pictur- esque dialogues made it very popular among Puritan and Low Church families down to the nineteenth century. Even the fantastically partisan church history of the earlier portion of the book, with its grotesque stories of popes and monks and its motley succession of witnesses to the truth (including the Albigenses, Grosseteste. Dante, anu Savonarola) was accepted amongst simple folk and must have con- tributed much to anti-Catholic prejudices in England. When Foxe treats of his own times his work is of greater value as it contains many documents and is largely based on the reports of eyewitnesses; but he sometimes dishonestly mutilates his documents and is quite untrustworthy in his treatment of evi- dence. He was criticized in his own day by Catholics such as Harpsfield and Father Parsons and by practically all serious ecclesiastical historians.
The most careful examination of his methods is to be found in M.MTLAND. Essam on the Reformation in Enpland (1849), and in Gairdner, Hislori/ of the English Church from the ascent lion of Henry VIII to the Death of Mary (1903); Lee in Diet, of Nat. Biog. Gerard, John Fore and His Book of Marturs (Catholic Truth Society, London), includes the opinions of a number of Foxe's critics. See also Wood. Athenae Oxon.; Fuller. Worthies and Church History; Tanner, BiW. Bnt.; Nichols, Narratives of the Reforrruttion.
F. F. Urquhart.
Book of Sentences. See Lombard, Peter.
Book of the Dead. See Immortality; Egypt.
Books, Carlovi.»jgian. See Caroline Books.
Books, Liturgical. See Liturgical Books.
Books, Sibylline. See Siby-lline Books.
Bordeaux (Burdigala), Archdiocese of, com- prises the entire department of the Gironde and was established conformably to the Ckincordat of 1802 by combining the ancient Diocese of Bordeaux (diminished by the cession of Born to the Bishopric of Aire) with the greater part of the suppressed Diocese of Bazas. Constituted by the same Con- cordat metropolitan to the Bishoprics of Angouleme, Poitiers, and La Rochelle, the See of Bordeaux received in 1822, as additional suffragans, those of Agen, withdrawn from the metropolitan jurisdiction of Toulouse, and the newly re-established P^rigueux and Lugon; and still later,"in 1850. the three colonial Bishoprics of Fort-de-France (Martinique), Basse- Terre (Guadeloupe), and Saint-Denis (Reunion).
The Old Diocese of Bordeaux. — According to old Limousin legends which date back to the beginning of the eleventh centurj', Bordeaux was evangelized in the first century by St. Martial (Martialis), who replaced a temple to the unknowii god, which he destroyed, with one dedicated to St. Stephen. The same legends represent St. Martial as having brought to the Soulac coast St. Veronica, who is still es- pecially venerated in the church of Notre-Dame de Fin des Terres at Soulac; as having cured Sigebert, the paralytic husband of the pious Benedicta, and made him Bishop of Bordeaux; as addressing beau- tiful Latin letters to the people of Bordeaux, to which city he is said to have left the pastoral staff which has been treasured as a relic by the Chapter of Saint-Seurin (For this cycle of legends see Limoges). The first Bishop of Bordeaux known to history, Ori- entalis, is mentioned at the Council of Aries, in 314. By the close of the fourth century Christianity had made such progress in Bordeaux that a synod was held there (385-386) for the purpose of adopting measures against the Priscillianists, whose heresy had
caused popular disturbances. This was during the
episcopate of Delphinus (380-404), who attended the
Council of Saragossa in 380 and maintained cor-
respondence with St. Ambrose and with St. Paulinus
of Nola. At the beginning of the fifth century a
mysterious personage who, according to St. Gregory
of Tours, came from the East, appeared at Bordeaux.
This was St. Seurin (or Severinus), in whose favour
Bishop Amand abdicated the see from 410 to 42(),
resuming it after Seurin's death and occupying it
until 432. In the sixth century Bordeaux had an
illustrious bishop in the person of Leontius II (542-
564), a man of great influence who used his wealth
in building churches and clearing lands and whom
the poet Fortunatus calls patrice caput. During this
Merovingian period tlie cathedral church, founded in
the fourth century, occupied the same site that it
does to-day, back to back against the ramparts of
the ancient city. The Faubourg Saint-Seurin out-
side the city was a great centre of popular devotion,
with its three large basilicas of St. Stephen, St.
Seurin, and St. Martin surrounding a large necrop-
olis from which a certain number of sarcophagi are
still preserved. This faubourg was like a holy city;
and the cemetery of St. Seurin was full of tombs of
the Merovingian period around which the popular
imagination of later ages was to create legends.
In the high noon of the Middle Ages it used to be
told how Christ Himself had consecrated this ceme-
tery and that Charlemagne, ha\nng fought the
Saracens near Bordeaux, had visited it and laid
Roland's wonderful horn Olivant on the altar of
Saint-Seurin.
Dessus I'autel de Saint Seurin le baron, II met I'oliphant plein d'or et de mangons — says the "Chan.son de Roland". Many tombs passed for those of Charlemagne's gallant knights, and others were honoured as the resting-places of Veronica and Benedicta. At the other extremity of the city, the Benedictines filled in the marshes of I'Eau-Bourde and founded there the monasterj- of Sainte-Croix. While thus surrounded by evidences of Christian conquest, the academic Bordeaux of the Merovingian period continued to cherish the memorj- of its former school of eloquence, whose chief glories had been the poet .\usonius (310-395) and St. Paulinus (353-431), who had been a rhetorician at Bordeaux and died Bishop of Nola. The reigns of William VIII and William IX, Dukes of Aquitaine (1052-1127), were noted for the splendid development of Roman- esque architecture in Bordeaux. Parts of the churches of Sainte-Croix and Saint-Seurin belong to that time, and the Cathedral of Saint-Andi6 was begun in 1096.
In the Middle Ages, a struggle between the Sees of Bordeau.x and Bourges was brought about by the claims of the latter to the primacy of Aquitaine. This question has been closely investigated by modern scholars, and it has been ascertained that a certain letter from Nicholas I to Rodolfus, which would date the existence of the primacy of Bourges from the ninth centurj', is not authentic. As the capital of Aquitania prima, Bourges at an early date vaguely aspired to pre-eminence over the provinces of Aquitania secunda and tertia, and thence over Bordeaux. It was about 1073 that these aspirations were more formally asserted; between 1112 and 1126 the papacy acknowledged them, and in 1146 Eu- genius III confirmed the primacy of Pierre de la Chatre, Archbishop of Bourges, over Bordeaux. In 1232, Gregory IX gave the'^Archbishop of Bourges, as patriarch, "the right to visit the province of Aqui- taine, imposed upon the Archbishop of Bordeaux the duty of as.sisting, at least once, at the councils held by his "brother" of Bourges, and decided that appeals might be made from the former to the latter. Occasionally, however, as in 1240 and 1284, the
