In the 14th and 15th centuries, royal attention focused on the area. Berry was made a
duchy for John (d. 1416), third son of King John II, whose sepulchral monuments grace
the cathedral, and passed to his daughter Marie (d. 1434). Charles VII during the darkest
days of the Hundred Years’ War established his royal government south of the Loire and
became known as le roi de Bourges from his residence in the town. It also became the
center of the financial dealings of Jacques Cœur, whose house still stands there. The
Estates met in Bourges in 1422, as they had in 1316 and 1317, and in 1438 the city was
host to an ecclesiastical assembly that resulted in the proclamation of the Pragmatic
Sanction defining the “Gallican liberties” of an autonomous French church.
Louis XI was born near Bourges and established a university there in 1463. His
daughter, St. Jeanne of France (of Valois), lame and repudiated by her husband, Louis
XII, in 1499, resided in Bourges as duchess of Berry and there founded her order of the
Annonciade. After 1500, the town resumed its role as a local center.
R.Thomas McDonald
Bourges has preserved two major medieval monuments: the cathedral of Saint-Étienne
and the house of Jacques Cœur. The cathedral is one of the most audacious designs of the
12th century, the culmination of half a century of experimentation. The first builder-
designer, who worked from 1195 to 1214, conceived this mighty, five-aisled building as a
Bourges, Saint-Étienne, inner aisle and
nave. Photograph: Clarence Ward
Collection. Courtesy of Oberlin
College.
The Encyclopedia 267