Suger

Abbot Suger of St-Denis
A redrawing of Suger from a stained glass window found in his abbey
Personal
Born	c. 1081, likely in Chennevières-lès-Louvres[1]
Died	13 January 1151 (aged ~70) Saint-Denis
Resting place	Basilica of Saint-Denis

Suger (French: [syʒɛʁ]; Latin: Sugerius; c. 1081 – 13 January 1151) was a French abbot and statesman. He was a key advisor to King Louis VI and his son Louis VII, acting as the latter's regent during the Second Crusade. His writings remain seminal texts for early twelfth-century Capetian history, and his reconstruction of the Basilica of Saint-Denis where he was abbot was instrumental in the creation of Gothic architecture.

Suger was born into a family of minor knights c. 1081 (or 1080), landholders of Chennevières-lès-Louvres, a small village surrounding Saint-Denis in northern Parisis.^[2] This was a family of some substance and upwardly connections, and so where a more humble background is suggested is likely a literary topos, a convention of autobiographical writing. Suger was one of the younger sons in a family where many went into the church, and so he was given as an oblate to the abbey of St. Denis at age ten in 1091.^[3] He first trained at the priory of Saint-Denis de L'Estrée for about a decade, where he would have first met the future king Louis VI of France.^{[note 1]} Suger took up the oblate life relatively easily, and showed strong ability including in Latin and a firm grasp of legal matters. This ability led to him being chosen to work in the abbey archives to find documents that could protect the abbey from usurpation by Bouchard II of Montmorency.^{[note 2]} This may have been contributed to the factors that impressed the abbey's leaders enough to send him to another school in 1104 to further advance his education, though no more details of this education are given aside from the fact that it was near Fontevrault.^{[note 3]}

Suger began first with a successful career in monastic administration as he went on several missions for his abbey, which held land at several vantage points across the country. Finding favour with he abbot of Saint-Denis, Abbot Adam, Suger's political career would develop under him as in 1106 he became his secretary, though in his De Administratione, Suger appeared to minimise Abbot Adam's role.^[4] Suger found himself embroiled in great events, in the same year at the synod at Poitiers; in Spring 1107 to attend Pope Paschal II; in early-1109 where he met Louis VI again as he sat a dispute between the king and Henry I of England (gaining experience of the Norman courts system which he respected), and; in 1112 at Rome for the second Lateran council.^[5] During this time, he held administrative roles that required him to be first at Berneval in Normandy in 1108 as provost, then from mid-1109 to 1111 provost to the more important priory of Toury. The area was suffering as a result of Hugh III of Le Puiset's exploitation of revenues, a series of disputes with Hugh and failing alliances eventually led to Suger gaining experience on the battlefield.^[6] He appeared to take up this new challenge and was successful, though would go on to heavily regret this by his sixties.^[7] There is a complete gap in sources on Suger's whatabouts after he left Toury in 1112, though probably he was advancing his monastic position alongside further negotiations.

It is from 1118 when the sources start again, where Suger is deeply entrenched in royal affairs. He is chosen as the royal envoy to welcome the fleeing Pope Gelasius II (John of Gaetani) to France and arrange a meeting with Louis VI.^{[note 4]} Suger was sent to his live at the court of Gelasius at Maguelonne, and later at his successor Pope Calixtus II's court in Italy in 1121. It was on his return from in March 1122 that Suger, now 41, learned of Abbot Adam's death and that the others at the abbey had elected him to be the new abbot. Suger took pride in the fact that this happened in his absence and without his knowledge. Until 1127, he occupied himself at court mainly with the temporal affairs of the kingdom, while during the following decade he devoted himself to the reorganization and reform of St-Denis.

Suger served as the friend and counsellor to both Louis VI and Louis VII.

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In 1137, he accompanied the future king, Louis VII, into Aquitaine on the occasion of that prince's marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, and during the Second Crusade served as one of the regents of the kingdom (1147–1149). He bitterly opposed the king's divorce, having himself advised the marriage. Although he disapproved of the Second Crusade, he himself, at the time of his death, had started preaching a new crusade.

Though Suger was openly against^[8] Louis VII's intention announced in 1145 to lead a crusade to rescue the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a council in February 1147 elected Suger to be a regent.^{[note 5]} One of the reasons Suger was opposed to the crusade were the issues present in France at the time: Louis VII wrote shortly after setting out to ensure protection of Gisors, and only six weeks after his expedition, asking for money, asking Suger to use some from his own resources if necessary.^{[note 6]}

He urged the king to destroy the feudal bandits, was responsible for the royal tactics in dealing with the communal movements, and endeavoured to regularize the administration of justice. He left his abbey, which possessed considerable property, enriched and embellished by the construction of a new church built in the nascent Gothic style. Suger wrote extensively on the construction of the abbey in Liber de Rebus in Administratione sua Gestis, Libellus Alter de Consecratione Ecclesiae Sancti Dionysii, and Ordinatio.

After the regency, Louis VII and his contemporaries still consulted Suger on matters ecclesiastical and political, and he was asked to defend in a number of cases at court. At this point, Suger was also being assigned cases to work on lone which would otherwise be given to an episcopal commission to deal with lone; Louis VII also gave to Suger the task of resolving two episcopal elections, at which point Suger practically continued to hold the same level of control over the church of France as he would have had as regent.^[9] Following the failure of the Second Crusade and letters from the Jerusalem and Pope Eugenius, Suger proposed a new crusade at a convention in Laon in 1150, with the support of Louis and St Bernard. The aim was to have a crusade run by the French church to do what the secular powers failed to do, led by Suger.^[10] Support for this fell apart from many churchmen, including the Pope losing belief in the pursuit and advising the king to remain in France to settle local issues. The matter troubled Suger to his final year of his life, at which point he nominated an (unnamed) nobleman to take his stead in battle, though it ultimately did not materialise as the idea was likely shelved by that point.^[11]

Suger's final year continued to be busy for him, as he was instructed by the pope to reform Saint Corneille at Compiègne. Odo of Deuil's appointment as abbot had the backing of Louis VII and Suger, though after the two left, it was met with violent resistance by the canons (as was the case at Sainte-Geneviève).

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  Suger in the Tree of Jesse window at St-Denis.
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  The Annunciation pane of the Infancy Window, showing Suger, the patron, at the feet of the Virgin.
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  A painting by Simon Vouet of Suger (1633), held at the Musée d'Arts de Nantes.
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  A marble statue by Jean-Baptiste Stouf (1836). Today, it stands in front of the ruins of Saint-Bertin Abbey, Saint-Omer.^[12]
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  A neoclassical sculpture by Denis Foyatier (1835) in the Palace of Versailles.

Today, a French street is named after Suger, and two schools bear his name (Lycée Suger  [fr] in Saint-Denis, and École secondaire Suger in Vaucresson).

Abbot Suger, friend and confidant of the French Kings Louis VI and Louis VII, decided in about 1137 to rebuild the great Church of Saint-Denis, the burial church of the French monarchs.^{[citation needed]}

Suger began with the West front, reconstructing the original Carolingian façade with its single door. He designed the façade of Saint-Denis to be an echo of the Roman Arch of Constantine with its three-part division and three large portals to ease the problem of congestion. The rose window above the West portal is the earliest-known such example, although Romanesque circular windows preceded it in general form.^{[citation needed]}

At the completion of the west front in 1140, Abbot Suger moved on to the reconstruction of the eastern end, leaving the Carolingian nave in use. He designed a choir (chancel) that would be suffused with light.^{[note 7][note 8]} To achieve his aims, his masons drew on the several new features which evolved or had been introduced to Romanesque architecture, the pointed arch, the ribbed vault, the ambulatory with radiating chapels, the clustered columns supporting ribs springing in different directions and the flying buttresses which enabled the insertion of large clerestory windows.^{[citation needed]}

The new structure was finished and dedicated on 11 June 1144,^[13] in the presence of the King. The Abbey of Saint-Denis thus became the prototype for further building in the royal domain of northern France. It is often cited as the first building in the Gothic style. A hundred years later, the old nave of Saint-Denis was rebuilt in the Gothic style, gaining, in its transepts, two spectacular rose windows.^[14]

Suger was also a patron of art. Among the liturgical vessels he commissioned are a gilt eagle, the King Roger decanter, a gold chalice and a sardonyx ewer.^{[citation needed]} A chalice once owned by Suger is now in the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Eleanor of Aquitaine vase which he received that was subsequently offered to the saints at his abbey is now held in the Louvre in Paris, believed to be the only existing artefact of Eleanor's to exist today.

The vases de Suger series of commissioned vases

Chalice of Suger, with on onyx cup of the 2nd or 1st century BC.

Suger's Eagle, with a 2nd-century porphyry vase.

Eleanor of Aquitaine vase, a rock crystal vase from 6th- or 7th-century Persian vessel.

Aiguière aux oiseaux ("Ewer with birds") with a 10th- or 11th-century Egyptian rock-crystal vessel.

Sardonyx ewer (Aiguière en Sardoine), with a vase possibly from 7th-century Byzantium.

Suger wrote several works, which are regarded for their accuracy and detail. Of these, two record his activities as abbot of St-Denis. The Libellus Alter de Consecratione Ecclesiae Sancti Dionysii (Other Little Book on the Consecration of Saint-Denis) is a short treatise on the building and consecration of the abbey church.^[15] The Liber De Rebus in Administratione sua Gestis (Book on Events under his Administration) is an unfinished account of his administration of the abbey, which he started on request of his monks in 1145.^[16] In these texts, he treats of the improvements he had made to St Denis, describes the treasure of the church, and gives an account of the rebuilding. Unlike other medieval texts recording the deeds of religious figures, Suger’s are written by himself.^[17]

Of his histories, Vie de Louis le Gros (Life of Louis the Fat) is his most substantial and widely circulated. It is a panegyric chronological narrative of king Louis VI, primarily concerned with warfare, but also his dependence on the Saint-Denis abbey.^[18] Historia gloriosi regis Ludovici (The Illustrious King Louis) is the other demonstrably unfinished work of Suger, accounting for the first year of Louis VII’s reign.^[19] Written in Suger’s final years, it (like his other history) covers in great detail events where Suger was himself present or involved in.

Suger’s secretary, William, himself produced two works on Suger: the first, a letter shortly after his death announcing the death; the other a short biography (Sugerii Vita; The Life of Suger) authored between summer 1152 and autumn 1154.^{[20][note 9]} A collection of Suger’s letters exist in Saint Denis, mostly from near the end of his life, though its provenance is unknown.^[21] Suger's works served to imbue the monks of St Denis with a taste for history and called forth a long series of quasi-official chronicles.^[22]

Suger is considered the forerunner of (French) Gothic architecture, where in its history he falls in the Early Gothic (Gothique primitif) period concentrated in the Île-de-France region of France. This new genre is seen as the progression of Romanesque architecture, though few of the key elements that define the Gothic tradition were particularly new as they were inspired by these very Romanesque elements, especially those of Normandy and Burgundy.^[23] The key element that sets aside Gothic architecture from its predecessor is "the novelty of the spiritual message that was to be conveyed" using its "novel and anti-Romanesque" elements.^[24]

Scholars tend to attribute Suger's influences on his ideas of symbolism and manner of symbolic thought to interpretations of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and the derivates of John Scotus Eriugena, as well as; those from the school of Chartres.^{[note 10]} Where Erwin Panofsky made the claim that this theology of Pseudo-Dionysius influenced the architectural style of the abbey of St. Denis, it was questioned by later scholars who have argued against such a simplistic link between philosophy and architectural form.^{[note 11]} Though Suger did not leave any explicitly theological writings, his work on Saint Denis was inspired by his own set of religious ideas influenced by a range of new or renewed theological themes in the wider context of twelfth-century France. The influence of the cosmology of the Chartres school, which resulted from interpretations of Plato and the Bible, created a speculative system which emphasised mathematics, particularly geometry, and the aesthetic outcomes that arise from the convergence of the two.^{[25][note 12]}

Art historians paint Gothic architecture as Suger's own creation, though some question this: Similarly the assumption by 19th century French authors that Suger was the "designer" of St Denis (and hence the "inventor" of Gothic architecture) has been almost entirely discounted by more recent scholars. Instead he is generally seen as having been a bold and imaginative patron who encouraged the work of an innovative (but now unknown) master mason.^[26][27] It is difficult to contextualise St-Denis to other buildings of the time and place, due to the fact that many churches in Capetian France between 1080 and 1160 were destroyed and/or rebuilt later,^[28] combined with the fact that no other building of this period enjoyed the level of precision and detail of Suger's accounts of St-Denis. Thus, the Gothic style can be seen as a multiplicity of trends in the architecture of this period, some occasionally intersecting with others: Jean Bony describes it as "a happy accident of history; it would have been infinitely more normal if the Gothic had never appeared."^[29][30]

• Gothic cathedrals and churches