Note 163 — Chapter VI · Six of the Lesser Great Cathedrals: Bourges, Beauvais, Troyes, Tours, Lyons, Le Mans (continued 2)
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In the XV century the dukes of Bourbon filled their capital of Moulins with art treasures, and Souvigny’s abbatial, close by, was their necropolis. The present choir of Moulins Cathedral, originally the chapel of their palace, was begun by Agnes of Burgundy, daughter of Jean sans Peur, and finished by her sons, Jean II de Bourbon and Pierre II sire de Beaujeu, who in 1475 wedded the daughter of Louis XI and governed France with his wife during the minority of Charles VIII. Jeanne of France and her husband are portrayed on the folding doors of the splendid triptych (1488-1503), by some unknown French primitif now in the sacristy of Moulins Cathedral, and again in one of the three windows—warm in color and with fine, clear portrait work—in the square east wall of the chevet, glass that belongs to the transition from Gothic to Renaissance as the XV century merged in the XVI. Fifteenth-century windows are comparatively rare, so the twelve possessed by Moulins’ chief church are precious. Cardinal Charles de Bourbon, who beautified Lyons Cathedral, also appears in the Bourbon dukes’ window with his two brothers. The nave of Moulins Cathedral, in black-and-white Volvic stone, is a modern rendering by Lassus and Millet of the Primary Gothic of the region.
Souvigny was a Cluniac priory, in which died the two great Cluny abbots, St. Majolus (d. 994), who brought to France the noted William of Volpiano, the organizer of the Romanesque renaissance of architecture, and St. Odilo (d. 1049). In 1095 Urban II stayed in Souvigny, and so did Paschal II in 1106. The XII-century church was largely reconstructed in the late-Gothic day when the prior Dom Geoffrey Chollet wished to house fittingly the splendid new Bourbon tombs. That of Louis II (comrade in arms of Dugueselin) has been attributed without proof to Jean de Cambrai, who made the Berry tomb at Bourges. M. Guigue has ably assigned to Jacques Morel the tomb of Charles I and Agnes of Burgundy. The Bourbon line, direct in descent from St. Louis, mounted the French throne with Henry IV.
Congrès Archéologique, 1913, p. 1, Chanoine Joseph Clémat; p. 182, Doshoulières; J. Locquin, Nevers et Moulins (Collection, Villes d’art célèbres), (Paris, II. Laurens); H. Aucouturier, Moulins (1914); R. de Quirielle, Guide archéologique dans Moulins (1893); Abbé Requin, “Jacques Morel et son neveu Antoine le Moiturier,” in Revue des Soc. des Beaux-Arts des Départements (Paris, 1890); L. Courajod, “Jacques Morel, sculpteur bourguignon,” in Gazelle archéol, 1885, p. 236; A. J. de H. Bushnell, Storied Windows (New York, 1914); L. du Broe de Segange, Hist. et description de la cathédrale de Moulins (Paris, 1885), vol. 2, Inventaire des richesses d’art de la France; L. Desrosiers, La cathédrale de Moulins, ancienne collégiale (Moulins, 1871); H. Faure, Histoire de Moulins (Moulins, 1900), 2 vols.; G. Depeyre, Les ducs de Bourbon (Toulouse, Privat, 1897).