Suger

Abbot Suger of St-Denis
A redrawing of Suger from a stained glass window found in his abbey.
Personal life
Born	c. 1080/1, possibly in Chennevières-lès-Louvres
Died	13 January 1151 (aged ~70) Saint-Denis
Resting place	Basilica of Saint-Denis

This article is about the French abbot. For the Guatemalan physicist, see Eduardo Suger.

Not to be confused with Sugar.

Suger (French: [syʒɛʁ]; Template:Lang-la; c. 1081 – 13 January 1151) was a French abbot and statesman. He was abbot of the Basilica of Saint-Denis, and a key advisor to king Louis VI and his son Louis VII, acting as his regent during the Second Crusade. His supervision of the rebuilding of the Basilica of Saint-Denis where he was abbot, was instrumental in the creation of Gothic architecture.

Early Life

Suger's family origins are unknown. Several times in his writings he suggests that his was a humble background, though this may just be a topos or convention of autobiographical writing. In 1091, at the age of ten, Suger was given as an oblate to the abbey of St. Denis, where he began his education. He trained at the priory of Saint-Denis de l'Estrée, and there first met the future king Louis VI of France. From 1104 to 1106, Suger attended another school, perhaps that attached to the abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire. In 1106 he became secretary to the abbot of Saint-Denis. In the following year he became provost of Berneval in Normandy, and in 1109 of Toury. In 1118, Louis VI sent Suger to the court of Pope Gelasius II at Maguelonne (at Montpellier, Gulf of Lyon), and he lived from 1121 to 1122 at the court of Gelasius's successor, Calixtus II. On his return from Maguelonne, Suger became abbot of St-Denis. 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.

Court Life and Influence

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

Suger and Louis VII

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.

Abbot Suger's chalice

Suger, the Regent

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.

Contribution to the Arts

Gothic ambulatory at Saint-Denis

Abbey of Saint-Denis

Further information: Gothic architecture and Basilica of St Denis

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.

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.

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. 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.

The new structure was finished and dedicated on 11 June 1144, 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.

Suger's Collections

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. 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.

Historiography

Suger's Writing

Suger wrote several works, which 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. 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. 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.

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 concernred with warfare, but also his dependence on the Saint-Denis abbey. 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. 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. A collection of Suger’s letters exist in Saint Denis, mostly from near the end of his life, though its provenance is unknown. 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.

Modern historiography

In the 1940s, the prominent art-historian Erwin Panofsky claimed that the theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite influenced the architectural style of the abbey of St. Denis, though later scholars have argued against such a simplistic link between philosophy and architectural form. 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.

Citations

Bibliography

Contemporary Works

• Suger. "Liber De Rebus in Administratione sua Gestis." In Abbot Suger, on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art Treasures, edited, translated, and annotated by Erwin Panofsky and Gerda Panofsky-Soergel, 40–81. 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
• ———. "Libellus Alter de Consecratione Ecclesiae Sancti Dionysii." In Abbot Suger, on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art Treasures, edited, translated, and annotated by Erwin Panofsky and Gerda Panofsky-Soergel, 82–121. 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
• ———. "Ordinatio AD. MCXL vel MCXLI confirmata." In Abbot Suger, on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art Treasures, edited, translated, and annotated by Erwin Panofsky and Gerda Panofsky-Soergel, 122–37. 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
• ———. The Deeds of Louis the Fat [Vie de Louis le Gros]. Translated by Richard C. Cusimano and John Moorhead. Washington D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992.
• ———. "The Illustrious King Louis [VII], Son of Louis [VI] [Historia gloriosi regis Ludovici]." In Selected Works of Abbot Suger of Saint Denis, translated by Richard C. Cusimano and Eric Whitmore, 127–83. Washington D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018.
• Willelmus. "The Life of Suger [Sugerii Vita]." In Selected Works of Abbot Suger of Saint Denis, translated by Richard C. Cusimano and Eric Whitmore, 184–216. Washington D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018.
• Oeuvres complètes de Suger; recueillies, annotées et publiées d'après les manuscrits (in French, available at Gallica BNF ). Edited by Albert Lecoy de La Marche. Paris, 1867.

Books

• Grant, Lindy. Abbot Suger of St-Denis: Church and State in Early Twelfth-Century France. Essex: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998.
• Gerson, Paula Lieber. Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis: a Symposium (available at Met OCLC ). New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986.
• von Simson, Otto. The Gothic Cathedral: Origins of Gothic Architecture and the Medieval Concept of Order. 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.

Journal Articles

• Kidson, Peter. "Panofsky, Suger and St Denis." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987) 1–17. JSTOR.
• Inglis, Erik. "Remembering and Forgetting Suger at Saint-Denis, 1151–1534: An Abbot’s Reputation between Memory and History." Gesta 54, no. 2 (September 2015) 219–43. JSTOR.

Websites

• Hunt, Patrick. "Abbé Suger and a Medieval Theory of Light in Stained Glass: Lux, Lumen, Illumination". Philolog. Stanford University, January 26, 2006. Archived from the original on 17 March 2016.

See also

• Gothic cathedrals and churches