Aquitaine, William V, joined together to select Geoffrey II, an Aquitanian Frank, as archbishop. This represented a new ecumenical rôle for the archbishop spanning both regions. The reigns of William VIII and William IX (1052–1127), were noted for the splendid development of Romanesque architecture in Bordeaux. Parts of the churches of Sainte-Croix and Saint-Seurin belong to that time, and the Cathedral of Saint-André was begun in 1096. During the Middle Ages, a struggle between the metropolitan sees of Bordeaux 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 purports to date the existence of the primacy of Bourges from the ninth century, is not authentic. As the capital of the Roman province Aquitania prima, Bourges at an early date vaguely aspired to pre-eminence over the provinces of Aquitania secunda and Aquitania tertia and thus over Bordeaux and it was about 1073 that these aspirations were more formally asserted; between 1112 and 1126 the papacy acknowledged them, and in 1146, Pope Eugenius 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 Aquitaine, imposed upon the Archbishop of Bordeaux the duty of assisting, 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 Archbishops of Bourges came to Bordeaux, found the doors of the churches closed against them and answered with excommunication the solemn protests made by the Bordeaux clergy against their visits. Aquitaine was lost to France by the annulment of the marriage between Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine (that earlier took place in the Cathedral of Bordeaux in 1137), and Bordeaux became the capital of the English possessions in France. Thereupon the struggle between the metropolitans 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, notably: Guillaume Amanieu (1207–26), on whom King Henry III conferred the title of seneschal and guardian of all his lands beyond the sea, and