Bourges Cathedral: A High Gothic Cathedral in France
Site at a Glance
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- 4.7
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- Medium
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page17 sections
History
Bourges Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral dedicated to Saint Stephen in Bourges, France. Rebuilt in the High Gothic style from 1195, it replaced a Romanesque cathedral and became the seat of the Archdiocese of Bourges, whose jurisdiction includes Cher and Indre. The building expressed the authority of both the French monarchy and the archbishopric at a time when Bourges stood at the southern limit of Capetian power.
Early Christian and Romanesque foundations
Christian worship was established at the site by about the third century, when Avaricum contained one of the earliest Christian communities in Gaul. Earlier buildings associated with the location included monumental crypts attributed to Saint Ursin, Saint Palais, and Raoul de Bourges. Saint Ursin was traditionally regarded as the first bishop of Bourges and an early evangelizer of the city.
Archbishop Gauzlin built a Romanesque cathedral between 1013 and 1030. Around 1100, Bourges became a royal city within the royal domain. Its archbishop held the title of Primate of Aquitaine, giving the cathedral an important ecclesiastical and political position. From about 1150, Archbishop Pierre de La Châtre enlarged the existing building with two Romanesque side aisles and planned a new western front. In 1181 and 1182, Philip Augustus authorized construction over sections of the former city fortifications.
The Gothic rebuilding
In 1195, Archbishop Henri de Sully made a donation to the cathedral chapter that initiated a complete rebuilding in the Gothic style. Gothic architecture was a medieval building tradition marked by pointed arches, ribbed vaults, large windows, and external supports. The project was intended to replace the smaller Romanesque cathedral and to display the standing of Bourges within the French kingdom.
Construction began in 1195. Henri de Sully died in 1199, and his successor, Guillaume de Dangeon, continued the work and helped shape its religious imagery until his death in 1209. Donations from worshippers and pilgrims increased after Guillaume’s death and later canonization. Builders first constructed the lower church over the former ramparts, then raised the eastern end and choir. The old nave remained in use until the new choir was substantially complete around 1214.
After an interruption of about ten years, a second campaign began in 1225. It completed the main structural work of the nave and western façade around 1230, while most of the nave was finished by about 1235. The cathedral was sufficiently complete in 1225 to host a large council condemning Catharism, a medieval Christian dualist movement that the Catholic Church declared heretical.
Archbishop Guillaume de Brosse consecrated the cathedral on 13 May 1324. Work continued after the ceremony. Cracks in the south tower led to the insertion of a massive supporting pier in 1313 and 1314, while the Grand Housteau, the large central section of the western façade above the portals, was constructed. The south tower remained without bells because of its instability and became known as the Deaf Tower.
Towers, damage, and religious change
The north tower was completed in the late fifteenth century but soon developed serious structural problems. It collapsed on 31 December 1506 and was rebuilt between 1508 and 1542. Donations and dispensations allowing contributors to eat butter during Lent helped finance the work, giving the rebuilt structure the name Butter Tower.
The collapse also prompted reconstruction of the upper central western façade in the Flamboyant Gothic style, a later Gothic form distinguished by elaborate, flame-like tracery. A former spire was removed in 1539 and replaced in 1543 and 1544. A roof fire in 1549 damaged the north aisles, windows, and organ. Henry II of France paid for the repairs.
During the French Wars of Religion, a conflict between Catholics and Protestants that divided France in the sixteenth century, Protestant forces led by Gabriel de Lorges, Count of Montmorency, seized Bourges on 27 May 1562. They looted the cathedral treasury, overturned statues, and damaged relief sculpture. A plan to blow up the building was abandoned after some attackers proposed converting it into a Protestant church.
A new organ was installed in 1667. During the eighteenth century, the choir was substantially remodelled to meet changing Roman Catholic practices. The medieval altar and stone rood screen were removed, many medieval windows were replaced with white grisaille glass, and a wrought-iron choir screen was installed in 1760. Grisaille glass is largely monochrome or pale glass designed to admit light with limited coloured or figural decoration. A new marble altar was consecrated in 1767.
Revolution, restoration, and heritage protection
During the French Revolution, public worship ceased and the cathedral was temporarily converted into a Temple of Reason. Much of the treasury was confiscated, valuable reliquaries were melted down, and ten of the twelve bells were melted to make cannon.
After the Sainte-Chapelle of Bourges was destroyed in 1757, the tomb effigy of Jean, Duke of Berry, and stained-glass panels made for that chapel were transferred to the cathedral crypt. The cathedral returned to Catholic use in the nineteenth century and underwent major restoration between 1829 and 1847. The work introduced additions whose historical basis was sometimes uncertain, including pinnacles and balustrades on buttresses and arches. Antoine-Nicolas Bailly directed a comprehensive restoration, while the ironworker Pierre Boulanger made the choir grilles.
Bourges Cathedral was classified as a French historic monument in 1862 and inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1992. The UNESCO designation identifies places judged to possess outstanding cultural value under internationally defined criteria. The cathedral was included as an example of Gothic architectural development and as a symbol of Christianity’s power in medieval France. It also lies within Bourges’ protected historic centre, designated in 1965.
Modern conservation has addressed the building’s fabric and furnishings in successive campaigns. The lower church’s rood screen and astronomical clock were restored in 1994 and 1995, while stained glass was cleaned and protected with additional glazing and murals in the Chapel of Saint John the Baptist were restored. Further work between 2001 and 2018 affected portals, coverings, the supporting pier, and the Chapel of Étampes. The north door was restored in 2008, the western and central doors in 2010 and 2011, and roofing work was completed between 2010 and 2013.
Remains
Plan, elevation, and structure
Bourges Cathedral is a large basilican building organized into five longitudinal vessels, with two side aisles on each side and a double ambulatory around the choir. An ambulatory is a passage that allows movement around the choir or apse. This arrangement creates a continuous interior perspective from the western façade toward the eastern end. The stepped elevation rises from the outer aisle to the central nave, with heights of about 9.5 metres, 21.3 metres, and 37.15 metres respectively. The central nave is about 15 metres wide, the interior width is approximately 41 metres, and the building covers about 5,900 square metres. Its external length is about 125 metres, compared with 117.95 metres internally.
The central nave is covered by sexpartite rib vaults, each divided into six sections and supported by alternating strong and weak piers. The strong piers have five attached colonnettes and the weak piers four. Their principal diameters are approximately 1.61 and 1.40 metres, and the largest piers rise about 17 metres. The central nave has three levels: a high arcade, a triforium, and an upper clerestory. A triforium is a narrow passage or arcade above the main arcade, while a clerestory is the upper windowed level. The inner aisle follows a similar arrangement, and windows in the upper parts of the vessels bring light through the unified interior.
The building’s main stone is Bathonian limestone brought from quarries at Vallenay, Bruère, La Celle, and Charly, about 45 kilometres away along routes that followed Roman roads. Fine Charly limestone was used especially for sculpture. Local Jurassic limestone from Bourges appears mainly in sheltered interiors, the lower church, and the vault webs, while hard vacuolar limestone from near Saint-Florent-sur-Cher was used for large foundation blocks and buttresses.
Iron tie-rods and chains were built into the masonry to resist tensions in the upper structure. Some run between individual blocks, while others encircle areas including the triforium and roof space. The roof framework is partly medieval. Timber from the choir and part of the western nave was felled between 1230 and 1267, with most of it dating from the 1250s. The framework was modified in 1835, extensively restored under Paul Boeswillwald in 1882, and globally restored during roofing work in the 2010s.
The eastern end and lower church
Chevet and chapels
The chevet, the eastern end of a church, forms a stepped apse surrounded by five radiating chapels. Six converging flying buttresses rise over the lower levels. A flying buttress is an exterior arched support that transfers the outward pressure of vaults to a pier beyond the main wall. Pointed chapel roofs, double pinnacles, balustrade pinnacles, paired lancets, and small six-lobed rose windows further divide the exterior.
Chapels occupy spaces between the lateral buttresses and around the chevet. There are five in the apse, six along the eastern outer ambulatory, six on the south side, and four on the north side. The Chapel of Saint John the Baptist, built between 1467 and 1479, contains murals and fifteenth-century stained glass. The Chapel of Saint Anne has a 1532 window by Jean Lécuyer showing the donor’s family presented to Saint Anne.
The Chapel of Jacques Coeur was built in 1448 on the north side of the outer ambulatory. It contains an Annunciation window made in 1453 and sculptural fragments from a tomb designed by François Mansart for Charles de L’Aubespine. Jacques Coeur was a wealthy fifteenth-century merchant and financier from Bourges who donated to the cathedral and established the chapel. The Chapel of Notre-Dame-la-Blanche contains fifteenth-century sculptures of Jean de Berry and Jeanne de Boulogne, attributed to Jean de Cambrai and dating from about 1403. Their heads and hands were damaged during the Revolution and restored in the nineteenth century.
Lower church and crypt
The lower church, often called the crypt although it functions structurally as a foundation church, was built between the former Roman rampart and the new chevet. It overcame a difference in ground level of about six metres and was completed around 1200. Massive pillars support seven arcades, while a wall about three metres thick and lancet windows reinforce the lower structure. Its pillars are approximately 3.6 metres high and 2.1 metres in diameter.
The lower church connects with a Romanesque cruciform crypt. A full-scale architectural drawing of the western rose window is engraved on its floor, apparently in connection with the work of the medieval builders. The space contains stained glass formerly installed in the Sainte-Chapelle of Bourges, including panels made between 1391 and 1397. It also contains the tomb of Jean, Duke of Berry, with a sculpted figure of the duke and a bear at his feet. The principal sculptural work dates from 1422 to 1428 and is attributed to Jean de Cambrai. The original ensemble included forty marble and alabaster mourners, most of which are now dispersed among museums.
Western façade and portals
Portals and sculpture
The western façade is about 55 metres wide, extending to 73.45 metres when the massive supporting pier is included. Five double-door portals correspond to the five vessels. From left to right, their subjects are Guillaume de Dangeon, the Virgin Mary, the Last Judgment, Saint Stephen, and Saint Ursin.
The central portal has a tympanum, the sculpted field above a doorway, depicting the Last Judgment. Christ separates the saved from the damned, while angels carry the instruments of the Passion. Damage inflicted in the sixteenth century was partly repaired in the nineteenth century by Théophile Caudron. The portal to the right shows the life and martyrdom of Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr and the cathedral’s dedicatee.
The far-right portal presents the life of Saint Ursin, including his consecration of the cathedral and the baptism of the Roman senator Leocadus and his son Ludre. Caudron made its present central statue of Saint Ursin in 1845 after the original was destroyed. The north portal tympana were remade in the sixteenth century after the north tower collapsed. One shows scenes from the life of the Virgin. The far-left portal, dedicated to William of Donjeon, has an openwork gable, a central ornamental spire, and archivolts containing angels playing musical instruments.
The lower arcade of the western portals contains sixty-four thirteenth-century bas-reliefs illustrating examples of divine intervention drawn from biblical commentaries. The spandrels contain a cycle from Genesis, extending from Creation to God’s covenant with Noah. Parts of this sculpture were defaced in 1562.
Grand Housteau and towers
The Grand Housteau occupies the large central section of the western façade between the towers. Rebuilt in the early sixteenth century in the Flamboyant Gothic style, it contains six large lancets, two oculi, a large rose window, and a pointed gable with a smaller blind rose. An oculus is a small circular window. The main rose window dates from about 1392 and has geometric designs surrounding a dove representing the Holy Spirit.
The north tower rises approximately 65 metres and is the taller completed tower. Its Flamboyant Gothic pinnacles and crockets are joined by copies of thirteenth-century statues placed in niches. A large bronze pelican crowns its lantern. The original sixteenth-century pelican is preserved inside the cathedral, while a copper copy was placed on the tower in 1995.
The south tower reaches approximately 53 metres. Its supporting pier, added in 1314, contains a stairway, a small prison formerly operated by the cathedral chapter, and an upper room used as the architect’s office. Plans of the bays and western rose window are engraved on the stone floor. The cathedral has seven bells, one of them fixed, while six ringing bells are housed in the north tower. The largest is the 6.08-ton Guillaume-Etienne bell, which measures 2.13 metres in diameter and was cast in 1841 and 1842.
Side walls, Romanesque sculpture, and stained glass
Flying buttresses along the north and south walls rise above the lower aisles to support the upper walls and allow large clerestory windows. Heavy pinnacles add weight to the buttresses. Later chapels occupy many spaces between them, while some bays retain visible remains of the earlier Romanesque cathedral.
Romanesque carved portals dating from about 1160 to 1170 were reused in the north and south doors. The south porch contains six Romanesque column-statues dating from about 1150 to 1160, installed there in the thirteenth century. Traces of their original paint survive. The north porch contains further column-statues and sculpture of the Virgin and Child, the Magi, the Annunciation, and the Visitation.
The cathedral contains stained glass dating from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Surviving thirteenth-century windows, especially those in the apse ambulatory, present biblical and saintly cycles, the Apocalypse, the Last Judgment, the Passion, and parables. The Joseph window includes barrel-makers and carpenters whose guilds funded it, while a Lazarus window shows stonemasons at work.
The apse windows form a semicircle. The central window shows the Virgin and Child and Saint Stephen holding a model of the cathedral. Nineteen prophets appear on the north side, and nineteen apostles and disciples on the south. Most upper nave and aisle windows use grisaille glass to maximize light, while small rose windows contain figures of bishops, cardinals, and the Elders of the Apocalypse.
Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century chapel windows show stronger Renaissance influence through greater realism and the use of perspective. They include the Annunciation window in the Chapel of Jacques Coeur, a sixteen-scene window on the life of Joan of Arc installed in 1517, the Apostles window of 1473 and 1474 in the Chapel of Notre-Dame de Sales, and the 1533 Saint Anne window by Jean Lécuyer. Lower chapel sections were replaced in the nineteenth century after alterations made for Baroque furnishings.
Choir furnishings, clock, and organ
Rood screen and astronomical clock
Fragments and reconstructions of the thirteenth-century rood screen are displayed in the lower church. A rood screen is a barrier separating the choir from the nave and traditionally associated with an image of the Crucifixion. The screen separated the two areas until the eighteenth century, was damaged in 1562, and was destroyed during the eighteenth-century remodelling. A Neo-Gothic wrought-iron screen installed in 1855 now surrounds the choir.
The astronomical clock was designed by the canon and mathematician Jean Fusoris and constructed by the locksmith André Cassart in 1424. Its painted case resembles a small belfry and contains two dials. The upper dial, made in the nineteenth century, shows the time; the lower shows the hour, lunar phase and age, and zodiacal position. Bells sound every quarter-hour and play the first four notes of the Salve Regina on the hour. The original mechanism is displayed in the cathedral, while a replica was installed after a fire and restoration in 1986.
Two meridians were installed in 1757. The horizontal meridian is a brass line set into the nave pavement and extending toward the north aisle. At noon, two openings in a window on the south side project sunlight onto it. A vertical meridian is represented by a cord hanging from the vault at the seventh bay and operates when the sun is too low for the horizontal line.
Organ
The cathedral organ has medieval predecessors and has been rebuilt or modified repeatedly. A new instrument was begun in 1663, with a case made by Bernard Perette in 1665. Later work took place in 1741, 1859 and 1860, 1924, 1933, and 1952 to 1955. A major reconstruction directed by Marie-Claire Alain and carried out by Daniel Kern between 1982 and 1985 incorporated historical elements. The present organ has four keyboards, more than 2,500 pipes, fifty stops, and mechanical transmission.
The organ originally stood beneath the west rose window and was destroyed when the adjacent north tower collapsed in 1506. It was damaged again by the roof fire of 1549 and later became unusable after wartime damage to the western glazing exposed it to the elements. Restoration and rehabilitation followed in the twentieth century.
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