Abbot Suger of St-Denis (The Medieval World) [1 ed.] 0582051509, 9780582051508

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Genealogical Tables
List of Maps
Editor's Preface
Author's Preface
Abbreviations
Part I: Setting the Scene
Chapter 1 Interpreting Suger
Chapter 2 Reading between the Lines: Suger's writings
Chapter 3 Low Horizons: the Political and Religious Landscape of Capetian France around 1100
Part II: Active Life
Chapter 4 Youth and Education
Chapter 5 The Young Politician, 1106-1122
Chapter 6 The Abbot as Politician, 1122-1137
Chapter 7 The Abbot as Politician, 1137-the mid-1140s
Chapter 8 The Regent, 1147-1149
Part III: The Abbot's Life
Chapter 9 Suger as Abbot: Pastor of his Flock
Chapter 10 The Abbot as Guardian of Abbey Property
Chapter 11 The Patron
Part IV: Drawing The Curtain
Chapter 12 The Final Years, 1149-1151
Chapter 13 Conclusion: Broad Horizons - Abbot Suger and the Political and Religious Landscape of Capetian France around 1150
Genealogical Tables
Maps and Plans
Index

Citation preview

ABBOT SUGER OF ST-DENIS

THE MEDIEVAL WORLD Editor: David Bates JUSTINIAN

John Moorhead CHARLES THE BALD

Janet Nelson CNUT

M. K. Lawson MEDIEV AL CANON LA W

James A. Brundage THE FORMATION OF THE ENGLISH COMMON LAW

John Hudson ABBOT SUGER OF ST-DENIS

Lindy Grant WILLIAM MARSHAL

David Crouch KING JOHN

Ralph V. Turner PHILIP AUGUSTUS

Jim Bradbury INNOCENT UI

Jane Sayers THE FRIARS

C. H. Lawrence THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN KINGDOMS

1200-1500

David Abulafia CHARLES I OF ANJOU

Jean Dunbabin ENGLISH NOBLEWOMEN IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES

Jennifer C. Ward BASTARD FEUDALISM

Michael Hicks

ABBOT SUGER OF ST-DENIS Church and State in Early Twelfth-Century France Lindy Grant

First publi,ihed 1998 by Addi,ion \\bfoy 4>ngrnan Limited Publfahed 2013 by Ruutledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4-RN 52 VandaerbiltAvenue, NewYork,NY 10017, USA Rm,1/edge is mi imprinl ef the TUJIOT & Fmndr Group,

mi

infurma business

Copyright © 1998, Taylor & Franci~.

The right of Dr Lindy Grant to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved, No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers, Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary, Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein, In using such information or methods tltey should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of tlte law; neither tlte Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. ISBN 13: 978-0-582-05150-8 (pbk) British Ubmry Cataloguing in Publiealion Data

A catalogue entry for this title is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Grant, lindy. Abbot Suger of St.-Denis : church and state in early iwelfth -century France/ Lindy Gram. p. cm. - (The medieval woTld) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-582-05150-9. - ISBN 0-582-05154-1 I. Suger, Abbot of Saint Denis, 1081-1151. 2. France-Church historv-987-l!H5. 3. Civilization, Medie\'lll-12th centurv. ' I. Title. II. Series. ' BX4705.S8686G73 1998 282'.092-dc21 [BJ 97-31323 CIP Set by 35 in 11/12pt Baskerville

For my mother and in memory of my father

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CONTENTS

List of Genealogical Tables List of Maps Editor's Preface Author's Preface Abbreviations

IX X Xl Xlli XVI

PART I: SETTING THE SCENE

CHAPTER

1 2

CHAPTER

3

CHAPTER

Interpreting Suger Reading between the Lines: Suger's writings Low Horizons: the Political and Religious Landscape of Capetian France around 1100

3 32 50

PART II: ACTIVE LIFE

CHAPTER

4 5 6 7

CHAPTER

8

CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER

Youth and Education The Young Politician, 1106-1122 The Abbot as Politician, 1122-1137 The Abbot as Politician, 1137-the mid-1140s The Regent, 1147-1149

75 85 108 142 156

PART III: THE ABBOT'S LIFE CHAPTER

9 10

CHAPTER

11

CHAPTER

Suger as Abbot: Pastor of his Flock The Abbot as Guardian of Abbey Property The Patron Vll

181 208 238

ABBOT SUGER OF ST-DENIS

PART IV: DRAWING THE CURTAIN CHAPTER CHAPTER

12 13

The Final Years, 1149-1151 Conclusion: Broad Horizons Abbot Suger and the Political and Religious Landscape of Capetian France around 1150

294

Genealogical Tables Maps and Plans Index

309 315 324

Vlll

277

LIST OF GENEALOGICAL TABLES

I

The Suger family: descendants of Suger Magnus II The Suger family: descendants of Helinand III The Capetians IV The Anglo-Normans and the Counts of Blois/Champagne

IX

310 311 313 314

LIST OF MAPS AND PLANS

MAPS l. Northern France, Normandy, Flanders and the Empire 2. The Ile-de-France

316 318

PlANS l. The abbey of St-Denis 2. The abbey church of St-Denis: its development from the 8th to the early 12th centuries, shown within the outline of the existing church 3. The abbey church of St-Denis: Suger's three building campaigns, c.1135-1150

x

320

322 323

EDITOR'S PREFACE

Suger, abbot of the great French abbey of Saint-Denis from 1122 to his death in 1151, has over the years acquired an historiographical reputation as one of the pivotal figures in the development both of medieval civilisation and in the making of the French state. As the builder of much of the new abbey church at Saint-Denis, he has been identified as the creator single-handedly of the Gothic style of architecture. And as the adviser to and biographer of kings Louis VI 0108-1137) and Louis VII (1137-1180), as the mastermind of the theoretical framework which had transformed the French monarchy by the time of Louis VII's son, Philip Augustus (1180-1223). This reputation is based primarily on the way in which Suger's writings and the remains of his abbey church have been interpreted. Foremost among the former are the Vita Ludovici Grossi (the 'Life of Louis the Fat'), a biography of King Louis VI, and the De Administratione, an account of his abbacy. Taken as a whole the combination ofliterary, architectural and decorative evidence has been used to portray Suger as one of the most original and creative figures of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance. The central theme of Lindy Grant's book is that all aspects of Suger's career, writings and ideas should be set in the contemporary context of a diverse twelfth-century world which was emerging from the traumas of Gregorian Reform and exploring new ways of expressing religious belief. This world was, however, one which was also profoundly aware of, and absorbed in, the traditions and intellectual legacy of the past. In this context Suger emerges as an extremely important, but in most respects unoriginal, figure. He was above all the abbot of a wealthy and ancient abbey which Xl

ABBOT SUGER OF ST-DENIS

was anxious to preserve its status as the burial church of Merovingians, Carolingians and Capetians, French kings, and which was also representative of the traditions of longestablished Benedictine monasticism. As a result Suger's central concern was always with his duties as abbot of Saint-Denis. He was, however, also expected to counsel the French kings and to participate in the politics of the French kingdom and of Christendom in general, tasks for which his abilities made hirn extremely well suited. A man of outstanding abilities, his talents were above those of the administrator, the patron and the diplomat. In contrast to what has frequently been believed, his political thought on the duties of kingship was banal. His new abbey, while drawing on an eclectic range of artistic and architectural sources, was in several respects a very conservative building and in others, original alm ost by accident. This book is an exceptionally welcome addition to the Medieval World series. As a distinguished scholar fully versed in architectural history and in the interpretation of literary texts and twelfth-century society, Lindy Grant has all the necessary skills to interpret all aspects of Suger's life and achievements. A wide-ranging work of historical revisionism, her 'new' Abbot Suger is an important individual whose career persuasively illuminates numerous facets of the dynamic social, intellectual, religious and political world of the first half of the twelfth century, while also demonstrating subtly and convincingly the complexities and challenges which this remarkably intelligent man encountered. Abbot Suger is a very important contribution to the historiography of monasticism, ecclesiastical architecture, the French kingdom and the medieval church. It lucidly and sensitively portrays the life and achievements of a churchman active in both secular and religious affairs.

XIl

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

I must preface this book with a caveat to the art-historical emptor. It was commissioned for an historical, not an arthistorical series. There is, of course, an art-historical component to the book, but it is limited. It would have been impossible in the space allowed to have done full justice to the huge literature on Suger's artistic commissions, and I have not attempted to do so. The series is not illustrated. This is perhaps an advantage, since it limits the detail in which one might discuss art-historical material. On the few occasions when specific images would support the general points I have made, I have referred readers to the relevant plates in standard and widely-available works. Fortunately, Suger's works at St-Denis are very well-illustrated in several such books. I have approached this as a book for historians, and for those art historians who might want to know how Suger's patronage fits into the broader patterns of his life and works. Nevertheless, I think that some of my comments and conclusions about what Suger did, and about what he wrote, will have implications for art-historical study, and hope that art historians who read this book will not be disappoin ted. The immensity of the art-historical bibliography for Suger and St-Denis has dictated the format for citations and footnotes. Because, as I have said, I do not pretend to eite more than a fraction of it, it seemed misleading to put together a consolidated bibliography of works cited. Instead, secondary works eited frequently throughout the book are included in the list of abbreviations: secondary works which appear less frequently are given full citations on their first appearance in respective chapters. The citation of secondary works, xiii

ABBOT SUGER OF ST-DENIS

whether art-historical or otherwise, may appear rather thin. But I have tried to write this book by, as far as possible, returning to original sources. It seemed to me that the whole subject had become swamped by a huge secondary literature, at least in certain areas (to which, I have, I fear, added), and that it was time to take a fresh look at what Suger himself and his contemporaries had to say. Like all other authors tackling the middle ages, I have found total consistency with names impossible. I have left people in what seems their most comfortable form, rejecting, for instance, Lewis the Fat, Stephen of Garlande, and Thibaut de Blois for Louis the Fat, Stephen de Garlande and Theobald of Blois. I have used St-Denis to denote place - either the abbey or surrounding township, but St Denis to denote person - the saint himself. I have made rather frequent use of the convenient adjective, dionysian, to describe things belonging or pertaining to the abbey, like estates or charters: I hope this does not leave readers with a subliminal sense that Suger and his monks were rather a joUy, tipsy lot, because they were, as I shall argue, anything but. After the apologia, that quintessential medieval form, comes the happier task of thanking those without whose help and support the book could not have been written. Professor David Bates asked me to write it in the first place, and has, throughout the project, been prepared to spend time discussing twelfth-century problems. He has been a marvellous editor, sympathetic but very firm, and, in spite of my protestations, he was always right about what should be pruned. I am deepIy indebted to Dr Michael Clanchy, Dr Paul Crossley, Professor Peter Fergusson, Dr Jane Martindale and Susan Reynolds, who read and commented on various drafts or parts of the text; and to Dr Paul Brand and Professor Peter Kidson who discussed specific and complex problems at Iength. Dr Michael Wyss, Nicole Meyer-Rodrigues and Danielle Johnson made dose inspection of St-Denis a poss~ ibility: their kindness, and discussions with them, at and around St-Denis, have made a vital contribution to the book. Many other people have provided various forms of help: in some cases practical; in some cases moral support; in many cases, the time taken to discuss particular or general problems. They indude, in alphabetical order, Dr Pau! Binski, Dr Pamela Blum, Elizabeth Brimelow, Dr Marjorie xiv

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

Chibnall, Dr Anne Derbes, Dr Jean Dunbabin, Professor Eric Fernie, Dr Paula Gerson, Dr Elizabeth Hallam, Professor Sandy Heslop, Professor Larry Hoey, Professor Christopher Holdsworth, Professor Warren Hollister, Dr Elizabeth Van Houts, Dr John Hudson, Nicolas John (who provided light relief from the twelfth century in his inimitable fashion until his tragic death in June 1996), Professor Tom Keefe, Dr John McLoughlin, Professor Jinty Nelson, Dr Lisa Reilly, Professor Tim Reuter, Dr Patricia Stirneman, Mark Studer, Dr Alan Thacker, Dr Kathy Thompson, Dr Rose Walker, Dr Christopher Wilson, Professor George Zarnecki, the members of the Early Medieval Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, and the staff of the Courtauld Institute Library, Andrew MacLennan commissioned the book for Longmans, and must have spent so me time thereafter wondering where it had got to, but managed to suggest that he was ever hopeful. Bill Jenkins and his team at Longmans have dealt effortlessly with the editorial problems of text, plans, maps and family trees. Thanks are also duc to David Hoxley at Technical Art Services for his work on the maps and plans. Fragments of this book have appeared in my article 'Abbot Suger and the Anglo-Norman world' in Anglo-Norman Studies XIX, and I would like to thank the editor, Dr D. HarperBill, and the publishers, BoydelI and Brewer, for permission to reproduce them. There are particular debts for hospitality. This book would have been impossible without the warm generosity in Paris of Sheila and Patrick MacBrayne-Poggia and family, and of Danielle and DickJohnson. A special thanks must go to Bud and Thomas Kelen and family in London, for the regularity with which they rescued a cross-eyed author from her wordprocessor on Sunday evenings. My greatest debt is to my parents, who have, over many years, generously, even enthusiatically, supported myattempts to pursue a scholarly career. This book is dedicated to my mother, and to the memory of my father, who died in March 1997, when the text was in its final stages.

xv

ABBREVIATIONS

SUGER'S WRITINGS Suger's own writings, plus some writing about hirn, especially by his secretary, William, are published in: OC A. Lecoy de la Marche, Oeuvres Comptetes de Suger, recueillies, annotees et publiees d'apres les manuscrits (Paris, 1865) . A selection of those that relate specifically to Suger's artistic patronage are edited and translated into English in: Pan

E. Panofsky, ed. and trans. Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St-Denis and its Art Treasures, 2nd ed. by G. Panofsky-Soergel (Princeton, 1976).

Where possible, I refer to the Panofsky edition, which is widely available, rather than to the Oeuvres Comptetes, which is not. I indicate which edition I am citing with either OC or ed. Pan after the name of the text. Admin Cons Ord

VLG

De Rebus in Administratione sua Gestis, OC, pp.151209: for the parts concerning the building of the abbey church, ed. Pan, pp.40-81. Libellus Alter de Consecratione Ecclesiae Sancti Dionysii, OC, pp.211-238; ed. Pan, pp.82-121. Ordinatio AD. MCXL vel MCXLI confirmata, OC, pp.349-360; ed. Pan, pp.122-135 . Suger, Vie de Louis le Gros, ed. H. Waquet, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1964). XVI

ABBOT SUGER OF ST-DENIS

Hist LVII Historia gloriosi regis Ludovici, ed. in A. Molinier, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, par Suger, suivie de l'Histoire du roi Louis VII (Paris, 1887), pp. 147-156.

THE WRITINGS OF SUGER'S SECRETARY, WILLIAM Sugerii Vita, OC, pp.375-404. Litterae encyclicae conventus Sancti Dionysii de morle Sugerii Abbatis, OC, pp.404-411. Letter Letter to his fellow monks, PL, CLXXXVI, cols.1471-74. Dialogue 'Le dialogue apologetique du moine Guillaume, biographe de Suger', ed. A. Wilmart, Revue Mabillion, 32 (1942), pp.80-118. Vita Lit Enc

OTHER PRIMARY SOURCES AND COLLECTIONS AN BN Bernard, Epist.

Archives Nationales, Paris. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, H. M. Rochais, 8 vols (Rome, 1957-77), vols VII and VIII, Epistolae. Chron Mor La Chronique de Morigny, ed. L. Mirot, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1912). Doublet J. Doublet, Histoire de l'Abbaye de S. Denys en France (Paris, 1625). Dufour, Actes J. Dufour, Recueil des Acts de Louis VI, roi de France (11 08-113 7), 3 vols (Paris, 199293). Felibien M. Felibien, Histoire de l'Abbaye Royale de Saint-Denis en France. Recueil de pieces justicatives (Paris, 1706). GC Gallia Christiana, ed. P. Piolin and others, 16 vols (Paris, 1715-1865). Hist Pont John of Salisbury, Historia Pontificalis, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall (Edinburgh/ London, 1956). Hugh of Fleury, Hugonis Monachi Floriacensis, Tractatus de Regia Potestate et Sacerdotali Dignitate, ed. Tractatus XVIl

ABBREVIATIONS

JL LL 1157, LL 1158 Luchaire, Actes LVII Luchaire, Annales MGH NDP Cart OD

ov PL PV Letters

RHF SMC Cart

E. Sackur, MGH Libelli de Lite Imperatorum et Pontificum saeculis xi et xii conscripti, 11 (Hannover, 1892). Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, ed. P. Jaffe, S. Löwenfeld, G. Watten bach , 2 vols (Leipzig, 1885). Cartulaire Blanc de St-Denis, Paris, AN LL 1157, 1158. A. Luchaire, Etudes sur les actes de Louis VII (Paris, 1885). A. Luchaire, Louis VI le Gros, annales de sa vie et de son regne (Paris, 1890). Monumenta Germaniae Historica Cartulaire de l 'eglise Notre-Dame de Paris, ed. M. Guerard, 4 vols (Paris, 1850). Odo of Deuil, De ProJectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, The Journey oJ Louis VII to the East, ed. V. Berry, 2nd ed. (New York, 1965). The Ecclesiastical History oJ Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford, 1969-80). Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1841-64). G. Constable, The Letters oJ Peter the Venerable, 2 vols (Harvard, 1967). Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. M. Bouquet and others, 24 vols (Paris, 1869-1904). Recueil des Chartes et Documents de SaintMartin-des-Champs, ed. J. Depoin, 5 vols, Archives de la France Monastiques, XIII (Paris, 1912-21).

FREQUENTLY CITED SECONDARY WORKS Bautier, Paris/ Abelard Bournazel, Gouvernement

R. H. Bautier, 'Paris au Temps d' Abelard',

Abelard en son Temps, ed J. Jolivet (Paris, 1981), pp.21-77. E. Bournazel, Le gouvernement caphien au XIIe siecle 1108-1180 (Paris, 1975).

xviii

ABBOT SUGER OF ST-DENIS

Bur, Suger Cartellieri Crosby, Royal Abbey Panofsky

Renaissance Symposium

Wyss, Atlas

M. Bur, Suger, abM de Saint-Denis, regent de France (Paris, 1991) . O. Cartellieri, Abt Suger von Saint-Denis, Historische Studien Bd.II (Berlin, 1898). S. McK Crosby, The Royal Abbey oi St Denis (New Haven and London, 1987). Introduction and commentary in E. Panofsky, ed. and trans. Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church oi St-Denis and its Art Treasures, 2nd ed. by G. Panofsky-Soergel (Princeton, 1976). Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. R. L. Benson and G. Constable (Oxford, 1982). Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis: a symposium, ed. P. L. Gerson (New York, 1986). M. Wyss, et al., Atlas historique de Saint-Denis. Des origines au xviiie siecle (Paris, 1996).

JOURNAL TITLES Annales - economies, societes, civilisations. AESC Bibliotheque de l'Ecole de Chartes BEC Bult Mon Bulletin Monumental Cahiers de Civilisation Medievale CCM oi the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes Journal JWCI Revue Benedictine Rev Ben Rev Mab. Revue Mabilton

xix

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PART I SETTING THE SCENE

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Chapter 1

INTERPRETING SUGER

SUGER AND THE HISTORIANS Abbot Suger of St-Denis was painfully conscious of the 'memory of posterity' and the judgement of history. He recorded his own deeds as abbot of St-Denis, and revealed much of his own long political career in his histories of the kings he served. He had images of hirnself as suppliant donor applied liberally to the abbey church of St-Denis, which he rebuilt, and to the liturgical ornaments within it that he had made.! He would be gratified at the attention that twentieth-century historians and art historians have paid to hirn. He has interested historians for two reasons. His writings, his histories and letters, are a key source for what was happening in Capetian France in the first half of the twelfth century: they underpin Luchaire's magisterial study ofLouis the Fat, for instance. 2 However, most historians have concentrated on mining the writingsto extract Suger's political ideas. Ever since Lemarignier's pioneering work on early Capetian government, Suger has been regarded as the first person to recognise, describe and analyse the socio-political structure of Capetian France as a feudal hierarchy, a pyramid of tenure with the king at its apex. 3 It is assumed that he owed this vision of society to his readings of the Celestial Hierarchy, a mystical tract by a fifth-century theologian known 1. Admin, ed. Pan, ppAO-1 , for the ' memory ofposterity'. Panofsky, pp.29-

30, for Suger's self-images. 2. A. Luchaire, Louis le Gros. Annales de la vie et du regne (Paris, 1890) . 3. J. F. Lemarignier, Le gouvernement royal aux premiers temps capetiens, 98711 08 (Paris, 1965).

3

SETTING THE SCENE

to us as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, but believed by Suger and his contemporaries to be St Denis himself. He is commonly seen as an influential royal ideologist, a man whose driving force, in every aspect of his life, was the glorification of the Capetian monarchy. By extension, he is often cast as the creator of the idea of France as a kingdom. But the bulk of Sugerian studies have been art historical. It is easy to see why. Suger provides a unique example of a twelfth-century patron who wrote extensively about his own patronage, the objects of which have, to a quite remarkable extent, survived. Because of his writings, we know about those which did not survive, and can often date with remarkable precision those which did. Time and again, Suger's artistic commissions provide the chronological benchmark against which art historians have measured twelfth-century sculpture and architecture, iconography and metalwork. Everything he commissioned is of the highest quality, and much of it has been seen as the first of its kind. The abbey church of St-Denis has long been considered the building in which the Gothic style, in all its manifestations, is forged from the base metal of the Romanesque. It holds, as such, a seminal position in the art-historical canon, as much in the populist tradition of Gombrich's Story 0/ Art or Lord Clark's Civilisation, as in the scholarly overviews of Bony and Wilson.~ Just as Lemarignier established Suger as a political thinker, so, in 1946, did Erwin Panofsky, in his introduction to his translation of Suger's accounts of his artistic patronage," present Suger as an original thinker, a theoretician, in the areas of theology and aesthetic. Panofsky argued that Suger used the neo-platonic writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius to refute criticism of his ambitious building schemes, emanating from the circle of the Cistercian St Bernard of Clairvaux. Suger is seen as the heir to a Cluniac vision of the church interior as properly a material reflection of the Heavenly Jerusalem, in direct and conscious opposition to a Bernardine ascetic aesthetic of simplicity and purity. The implication of Panofsky's work is that Suger's neo-platonic aesthetic theology 4.

J. Bony, French Gothic Architecture of/he 12th and 13th Centuries (Berkeley,

CA, 1983); C. Wilson, The Gothic Cathedml (London, 1990). 5. Panofsky, Introduction, pp.1-37.

4

INTERPRETING SUGER

(or theological aesthetic) lies behind the crystallisation of the new Gothic taste. Panofsky's seductive interpretation of Suger and his Wlitings has been immensely influential: it would probably be true to say that all subsequent art-historical discussion of Suger has been driven by reactions to Panofsky. These have taken two directions. Many scholars have accepted and elaborated upon the image of Suger as neo-platonic theologian and by implication, founder of both a new Gothic imagery and a new Gothic architecture, and have pointed to evidence for this in the complicated religious iconography with which the abbey of St-Denis was encrusted, and the architectural sophistications of its new choir. 6 Others have been unable to see Suger as a credible neo-platonic intellectual. They have ascribed what might be called the intellectual input in the building and decorating of St-Denis to others. Kidson, for instance, sees the design of the choir as essentially the work of the architect; Rudolph assigns the iconographic complexities to Hugh of St-Victor. Kidson has questioned whether the Pseudo-Dionysius had any influence at all. 7 The implication in all this is to play down Suger's tradition al role as begetter of the Gothic style. All art historians have, however, found the historians' concept of Suger as theoretician and propagandist of the French monarchy irresistible. Everybody has accepted Panofsky's analysis of Suger's personality. Panofsky was rather shocked by the extent to which Suger, in his writings on the abbey church, its fitments and fittings, concentrated on aB that glittered within it, on the gilded and gem-encrusted IiturgicaI toys, often teBing us how much they cost and how much gold they contained. For the patrician Panofsky, this could only reveal the soul of an unsophisticated parvenu. With this as his base, Panofsky 6. See e .g. P. Gerson, 'Suger as Iconographer: The Central Portal of the West Facade of Saint-Denis', in Symposium, pp.183-98; W. Clark, 'Suger's Church of Saint-Denis: The State of Research', Symposium, pp.l05-30; J. Bony, 'What Possible Sources for the Chevet of SaintDenis', Symposium, pp.131-43; P. Verdier, 'La grande croix de l'abbe Suger a Saint-Denis', CCM, 13 (1970), pp.I-3I. 7. P. Kidson, 'Panofsky, Suger and St Denis',jWCI, 50 (1987), pp.1-17; C. Rudolph, Artistic Change at St-Denis (Princeton, New Jersey, 1990), pp.32-47.

5

SETTING THE SCENE

built a rather touching picture of Suger as one of nature's Cluniacs, a lax abbot, a genial raconteur. Suger has generated a literature both immense and fragmented. Most studies deal with discrete aspects of his career, patronage, writings or thoughts, and much important work has been published in article rather than book form. There are only three previous biographies, in the sense of a full picture of the man and his works: by Cartellieri, Aubert, and recently, Michel Bur. 8 More surprisingly, many of Suger's writings are still not available in good modern editions, and one is forced back to the venerable Oeuvres Comptetes by Lecoy de la Marche. 9 Fragmentation is to an extent integral to the subject. Throughout his life, Suger had to balance his monastic and his political careers, at aperiod when there was growing pressure on monks to stay enclosed in their cloisters. Once he became abbot, the dual facets of his existence became more sharply etched, into a public role as abbot of one of the most important abbeys in Capetian France, and a private role as pastor of his flock. This dictates the structure of much of the second, biographical, part of this book. The first part of the book establishes the context for the second. In this first chapter, I shall outline my own interpretation of Suger, an interpretation which is very different from traditional views of hirn. The next chapter discusses Suger's own writings, and the other important sources for his life, especially the works of his secretary and biographer, the monk William. Some key observations about these writings lie at the heart of my reinterpretation of Suger. The final chapter of the first part of the book paints a broad picture of the world in which Suger grew to adulthood: of Capetian government and society and the French church around 1100; and of the sm all but prestigious world of the abbey of St-Denis itself. At the very end of the book, I pick up these themes again, to look at the world in which Suger died, half a century later. It is important to recognise that our vision of that world is largely formed through the prism of Suger's writings. 8. O. Cartellieri, Abt Suger von Saint-Denis, Historische Studien Bd.II (Ber!in, 1898); M. Aube rt, Figures monastiques: Suger (St Wandrille, 1950); M. Bur, Suger, abbe de Saint-Denis, regent de France (Paris, 1991). 9. oe, see abbreviations for full reference.

6

INTERPRETING SUGER

A PRElATE IN POLITICS Suger has often been characterised as the prototypical great ecclesiastic who is also the 'minister of the king of France' in the manner of Richelieu. The wraith of the great seventeenthcentury eminen ce grise has always clouded studies of Suger's political career. 10 The determination to see Suger as a minister of the king has led, curiously, to both overestimation, and underestimation of his political roie. Older historians, noticing that the future Louis VI was brought up at St-Denis, assumed that he and Suger, who were much of an age, were educated together at the abbey school, and assumed that prince and pauper grew up, uni ted by boyhood friendship, into king and minister." More recent historians have reacted against this, and have stressed that Suger only became 'minister' of the king in 1128/9, after the fall of Louis' previous favourite and chancellor, Stephen de Garlande. 12 Suger is then seen as dominating the royal household until pushed from power by a new favourite and chancellor, Cadurc, in 1140. At this point, it is assumed, Suger retired from court, and devoted himself to building his abbey church at St-Denis and writing his biography of Louis VI, ~nly returning to court in the mid-1140s. At the council of Etampes in 1147, he was chosen to be regent ofFrance while Louis VII went on crusade. As regent at least, his position at court was unequivocal. When the king returned, he owed his ex-regent so much that he continued to let him dominate court and household as his principal minister, until Suger died in January 115l. Thus the current consensus on Suger's political career and his relationship with the kings of France. But both the exact nature of Suger's relationship with the kings of France, and its chronology, stand in need of reconsideration. It would be difficult to overstress the extent to which Suger's twin careers ran concurrently, and were mutually dependent. The oft-repeated idea that he neglected his abbey when 10. See the interesting discussion in Bur, Suger, pp.8-9. 11. See e.g. Cartellieri, p.4. 12. See fuH references, p.86, n.4.

7

SETIING THE SCENE

he became the dominant counsellor of the king after the fall of Stephen de Garlande, only tuming to the rehabilitation of its revenues, the rebuilding of its church, and the reinforcement of its position in his writings, when pushed from power in 1140, will not stand up to elose scrutiny. He was never the dominant minister of the king in the way that the two chancellors were, except during the exceptional interlude of the regency. Only then was he a permanent member of the government; otherwise he was throughout his long career a monk of St-Denis who was often on loan to the king. Conversely, his eelipse from power in the early 1140s was less total than is often suggested. As abbot of St-Denis, one of the high-ranking churchmen of the Ile de France, he was expected to attend and offer counsel to his king, as his predecessor, Adam, had done. Because Suger hirnself played down Abbot Adam's political importance, historians have too often assumed that Suger's political activities were due entirely to a elose personal relationship with the king. Some aspects of it were contingent upon his position as abbot of St-Denis. The more politically adept among his abbatial colleagues, like Hugh of StGermain-des-Pres, Odo of St-Remi at Reims, Thomas and Macaire of Morigny, Alvise of Anchin, or Gilduin of StVictor, were also expected to sit on commissions to decide ecelesiastical disputes, to undertake occasional ecelesiastical embassies, and to give counsel to their king. But Suger was far more than just another politically adept abbot. His involvement with the royal court began far earlier than is usually elaimed. His outstanding gifts, a sharp mi nd of legal bent, and a genius for negotiation, aided by an outstanding command of spoken Latin, were recognised very early. His career was not that of an ordinary choir monk. He received an unusual extra education, and was soon available to the royal household. His main duties were the negotiation of what might be called foreign policy, in particular with the Anglo-Norman enemies of the Capetians, and with the popes. His other early duty was that monastic speciality, the writing of history. His major work is a biography of the first king that he served, Louis VI. The Life 01 Louis the Fat is a deceptively difficult and notoriously inconsistent text of strangely shifting moral perspectives. It is dedicated to one of Suger's 8

INTERPRETING SUGER

ecelesiastical colleagues, Bishop Jocelyn of Soissons, but it seems to be intended for a very different audience. It is largely concemed with Louis the Fat at war, and there is a striking concentration on the early years of Louis' reign. All historians have assumed that it was written in a single burst of creative activity in the early 1140s. I shall argue instead that Suger began the Life 0/ Louis the Fat as a royal commission, for a courtly audience whose principal interest was daring deeds and military exploits; that he began it when he was young, writing most of it soon after the events that it describes; but that he substantially revised and finished it after Louis' death, for a different, elerical audience, in an attempt to rehabilitate the tamished reputation of Louis the Fat before the French church. The inconsistencies remain, but they are at least explicable. Throughout his long career, Suger found hirnself elose to power, often wielding power, and possessed of many of the gifts required to do so. But he was also a monk. The two careers did not sit weIl together. Suger himself was uneasily aware of the tension in his dual position, and horribly conscious that many prayers and much redemption would be needed to buy his way to Paradise. He was stiffly orthodox in his religion, and astriet diseiplinarian. He imposed monastie discipline fairly, but very firmly, often with beatings;13 and he was known as a tyrant in the running of his monastery, as in his running of the regeney.14 He had an abiding and sineere interest in monastie reform from his student days in the Loire VaIley, when he saw the work of Robert d'Arbrissel at Fontevrault at elose quarters. 15 He was deeply eoneerned about the siek. 16 It is true that Christmas was Suger's favourite eeclesiastieal feast,17 though we should not allow modem ideals of Christmas jollity to eolour what we think this teIls us about Suger's eharaeter; it is true, too, that he would tell his monks stories from ancient and modern history until far into the 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Vita, p.384. William, Dialogue, p.86. Suger to Pope Eugenius, Vita, p.39l. Vita, p.402.

oe,

p.264.

9

SETTI]\;G THE SCENE

night. But he was disciplined and moderate in all his personal habits: unlike other churchmen, he did not ~et fat as a result of promotion to an abbacy or bishopric. 1 He was impervious to great sadness and great happiness. Most people thought hirn hard and rigid, though those who got to know hirn weH found hirn kind and pleasant. 19 The Suger that emerges from a dose inspection of his life is a very different figure from the genial, generous, warm-hearted enthusiast imagined by Panofsky. He did not, except perforce during the regency, neglect his abbey. It is dear from his acta that he pursued the res toration and improvement of the properties of St-Denis consistently, throughout his career as abbot. The achievements that he hirnself recorded in his own account of his administration were by no means confined to the early 1140s. The same is true of his building campaigns. It is true that the new choir was buHt then. But seduced by its luminous beauty, historians forget that it was only apart, indeed, the abbey church was only apart, of an immense programme of restoration, renovation and rebuilding that Suger pursued at St-Denis from at least 1125, and possibly earlier.

A POLITICAL IDEOLOGIST?

The prevailing views of Suger as ideologist and propagandist of the Capetian kings are utterly unsupported by either his actions or his writings. He was in fact, exactly the opposite. His attitude to kings is almost Gregorian. But there is nothing original about it. He has no 'theories of kingship' to offer; nor indeed does he have theories about feudal society, or about France. Suger was not a political thinker. He was a consummate politician, which is a very different thing. This requires extended discussion. Let us look first at some prevailing views. Our starting point must be Lemarignier's analysis of Suger's political thought, which has been enormously influential: 'Might the feudal hierarchy, as defined by someone such as Suger, intent on upholding royalty, not have 18. Vita, pp.388-9. 19. Vita, p.383.

10

INTERPRETING SUGER

been, rather than a long established idea, a novel concept to which, as a churchman - an exempt abbot of St-Denis he lent a gregorian structure?'20 There followed much leaping onto the hierarchical bandwagon. Duby argued that: 'Suger ... organise autour d'un monarque,juche, comme l'est Dieu dans son gloire, au plus haute degre d'une pyramide de devouement et de reverences' and that Suger 'choisit d'etablir l'ordre politique sur l'engagement feodo-vassalique, mais il en fait l'armature d'un edifice hierarchise . .. que surplombe la personne royale' .21 Bournazel asks: 'To what extent, through his deeds and writing, did he influence the elaboration of the theoretical models the monarchy was attempting to put into place? In the twelfth century a hierarchical model of royal authority was beginning to be articulated in the royal entourage. This majestic vision revealed a new conception of royal power and service'. He answers his own question by calling Suger 'the theoretician of the monarchy'.22 Spiegel has articulated something implicit in all these considerations of hierarchy, the influence of that heady brew, the Celestial Hierarchy of the Pseudo-Dionysius: 'Suger translated into human events and actions the principles governing the celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite ... for both ... the concept of hierarchy is the keystone of the divine regulation of all good order. ,23 The parallel with Panofsky's interpretation of Suger's philosophical debt to the Pseudo-Dionysius was too potent to miss, hence Spiegel's statement that 'Suger was concerned with providing a cultural image of kingship and its role within a cosmologically defined hierarchy of being' .24 Andrew Lewis accepts most of the hierarchical view, though he also sees 20. Lemarignier, Gouvernement, p .7. 'Et la hierarchie feodale, teile qu'un Suger s'est applique a en fixer les traites pour le plus grand profit d'une royaute qu'il voulait affermir, n'aurait-elle pas ete, bien plutat qu'une tres vieille idee, comme une conception nouvelle qu'homme d'eglise - abbe exempt de St-Denis - il aurait empruntee aux structures gregoriennes?' 21. G. Duby, Les trois ordres ou l'imaginaire du podalisme (Paris, 1978), pp.277-8. 22. E. Bournazel, 'Suger and the Capetians ', Symposium, p.60. 23. G. Spiegel, 'History as Enlightenment: Suger and the Mos Anagogicus', Symposium, p.154. 24. G. Spiegel, 'History as Enlightenment', p.156.

11

SETIING THE SCENE

many of Suger's ideas as very conservative, and says he belongs to 'a tradition of royalist ideology'. 25 Lewis apart, these assessments of Suger all see hirn as an original political thinker, who made a major contribution to how the Capetian kings saw themselves and how they related to the society around them. Let us begin by disposing of hierarchical conceptions, with which all discussion of Suger's thought has for too long been bedevilled - that is, the idea that Suger was able to surprise his contemporaries by presenting to them a view of society as a hierarchy with the king at the top, and everybody else within their appointed place; and that he derived this new and original view of society from his dose reading of the Celestial Hierarchy of the Pseudo-Dionysius. In the first place, surely only Marx and St Francis of Assisi, among western thinkers, have ever conceived of a society that was not fundamentally hierarchical. In the second place, there is nothing in Suger's writings to suggest that he had a particular, or developed, or Dionysian, view of society as a fixed hierarchy in which everyone had their appointed place. The king, or perhaps an emperor, sat at the top - but who among his contemporaries would have expected anything else? There is a striking contrast with his contemporary and fellow French Benedictine monk, Hugh of Fleury, who does indeed have an explicitly hierarchical, perhaps even subliminally Dionysian, vision of society. 'All those who are placed in power should be honoured', writes Hugh, 'by those whom they are set over, even if not on account of themselves, then on account of the order and grade (ordinem et gradum) which they have accepted from God';26 and 'the whole world is set in certain grades and powers just as that celestial court in which only God the omnipotent Father has royal dignity, and then come angels, archangels, thrones and dominions. '27 There is nothing like this in Suger's writings. If it is thought 25. A. W. Lewis, 'Suger's Views on Kingship ' , Symposium, pp.48-54, esp. p.49. This is a sple ndidly sensible paper, dowsing the overheated question of Suger's political views with much-needed cold water. I am much indebted to it. 26. Hugh of Fleury, Tractatus, p.470. 27. Hugh of Fleury, Tractatus, pp.467-8.

12

INTERPRETING SUGER

that such views provide an important starting point for later interpretations of the structure of society, then it is not to Suger that historians of political thought should look for either their inception, or their dispersal. Many botdes of ink, and some blood, have been spilt over Suger's precise views as to the relationship between the king on the top of his pile and those below hirn, and their relationships to each other: all that is usually meant by the feudal hierarchy.28 Most commentators have been predisposed to read order into Suger's political chaos. Much has been made of an episode in which William of Aquitaine claims that he should represent the count of Auvergne in the king's court ofjustice, since the count holds his lands from William,just as William holds his from the king.~!' But there is nothing novel about either the duke's claim, or about the relationship on wh ich it is based. The concept of adescending chain of feudal tenure is implicit in page after page of the Morigny Chronicle and Orderic Vitalis, implicit in most charters that predate any of Suger's writings, and occasionally quite explicit, as for instance in an act of 1117, in which Roger, advocate of Romigny, announces: 'concedit hoc dominus noster comes Hugo de Roceio ... , concedit hoc et laudat Blesensis cometissa cum filio suo comite, Theobaudo, a quibus ad nostrum comitem (i.e. Hugh de Roucy) et per eum ad me hec descendit advocatio'. 30 In extension of his supposed role as inventor of a feudal hierarchy, Suger is often considered the creator of the idea of France as a nation. The idea of France, and the increasing political potency of the king of France, are intimately connected, and Suger is often cast as the political thinker who spelt out the connection. This is a bold claim, and it must be said that those who have focused on the invention of France as a political construct, like Wood and Beaune, as opposed to those who have focused on Suger, have been more circumspect. 'll 28. For a broad discussion of feudalism, see most recently, Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994). 29. VLG, pp.238-40, and see below. 30. E. More!, Cartulaire de l'abbaye de St-Comeille de Compiegne, 2 vols (Montdidier, 1904-9), I, p.80, nO.xxxix. 31. C. T. Wood, 'Regnum Francie: a problem in Capetian administrative usage' , Traditio, 23 (1976), esp. pp .1l7-18; C. Beaune, Naissancedela

13

SETIING THE SCENE

Their circumspection is wise. Suger's treatment of the king's relation with Normandy and with Flanders are revealing here. Suger saw the Norman problem in quite straightforward terms. Normandy was, he said, apart of Gallia, and the duke of Normandy had been given the duchy as a fief, by the kings of France. He was thus their man, and owed them homage .:w Inconveniently, the duke of Normandy was also king of England and very rich, and clearly saw and ran Normandy as an adjunct of the kingdom of England. Indeed, it had become, as William of Poitiers had observed, 'almost a kingdom' .~~ As a result there were practical problems in getting the duke of Normandy to behave subserviently, as the subject of a king should. Suger never claims Flanders as apart of Gallia, and he never claims that the king of France intervenes there after the murder of Charles the Good, as overlord of apart of France. Instead, he insists that Louis the Fat intervenes in Flanders because he loves justice, and above all because he is related to the counts .~cl He comes to Flanders, not as a king but as a cousin. Suger was presumably only too aware that only half of what the count of Flanders ruled could in any way be called France. The way Suger writes about the two provinces does not suggest a systematic ideology of power, or even a very clear view of what was France. His approach is political and pragmatic. His views on France, and the powe rs of the French king, were usefully elastic - for the advantage of elastic views is that they can be stretched. The proposition that Suger invented the idea of France is often extended to claim that the special relationship between king and country, abbey and saint, was conceived and first given expression by Suger. The events of 1124, when Louis the Fat, as standard bearer of St-Denis, repulsed a threatened German invasion of France, are widely seen as a defining moment in Suger's ideological development. But the special relationship between king and saint, his 'peculiar patron', Nation France (Paris, 1985 ); J. dllQlIesnay Adams, 'The Regnum Francie of SlIger of Saint-De nis: An Expansive I1e-de-France ', Historical Reflexions, 19 (1993), pp.167-88. 32. VLG, pp.l02, 106. 33. Guillaume de Poitie rs, Histoire de Guillaume le Conquerant, ed . and trans. R. Foreville (Paris, 1952) , ppc66-7 . 34. VLG, pp.240, 244, 246.

14

INTERPRETING SUGER

had been weIl-established for some three centuries. No clearer statement of it could be found than the great charter of 1068 in which King Philip had guaranteed the immunity of St-Denis against the bishop of Paris, invoking the special relationship not only of hirnself, but also of his predecessors Dagobert, Theoderic, Childeric, Pepin, Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald, to the saint and his monastery. Suger knew this act weIl, and lifted one of his favourite phrases, 'monasterium ter beati dyonisii martyris' from it. 35 When Abelard cast doubt on the identity of Dionysius the Areopagite, Suger's predecessor threatened to arraign hirn before the king, equating attacks on the integrity of St Denis with 'having designs on the royal dignity and crown' .36 Nor was the relationship between France and saint an invention of 1124; Guibert of Nogent could describe Denis as 'the Lord of all France', back in 1115. ~17 France had become quite a sophisticated political construct by 1200. The nexus of ideas connecting the Capetian kings, St Denis and France, and the ceremonies that expressed them, were much developed by the royal ideologists who surrounded Philip Augustus, and even more, St Louis. 38 With hindsight, it is possible to see them foreshadowed in wh at Suger wrote and, occasionally, did. But this is to project back a coherence of intention which is simply not apparent in Suger's own writings. Indeed, it is to mistake Suger's intentions. In so far as he did develop these concepts hirnself, it was entirely for the benefit of abbey and saint, not for the Capetians or France. 39 It is only by looking backwards with the eye of faith that it is possible to transrnute Suger's thin and amorphous ragbag of political concepts into consistent political theory. 35. For ' ter beati dyonisii' see Dufour, Actes, I, p.463, and M. Prou, Recueil des Actes de Philippe I, roi ele France (1059-1108) (Paris, 1908) , pp.11417, no.xl. For the long-established relationship between king and 'peculiar patron', Wyss, Atlas, p.188. 36. Abelard, Historia Calamitatum, in The Letters of Abelarel and Heloise, trans. and ed. B. Radice (London, 1974), pp.85-6; also, PL, CLXXVIII, p.155, ' tanquam regni sui gloriam e l coronam ei auferente' . 37. J. F. Benton, Self and Society in M edieval France. The Memoirs of Abbot Guibert of Nogent, Medieval Academy Re prints (Toronto, 1984) , p .228. 38. J. Baldwin, The Government of Philip AUf!:UsIUS (Berkeley, CA, 1986), pp.362-93. 39. See fuH discussion below, pp.1l3-21.

15

SETTING THE SCENE

Suger never fuHy defines what is, or how to be, the ideal king. Our impression of his views must be pieced together from scattered sentences. From his deathbed, he wrote to Louis VII: 'take care of the church of God, defend widows and orphans, and thus with the help of God you will resist your enemies. This is my advice.' 10 As the issue of a political career lasting the best part of half a century, the advice is pretty thin. The defence of the church, widows and orphans, was every churchman's stock recipe for good kingship. Suger frequently alludes to the fact that the good king, unlike the bad, takes counsel. This is hardly ground-breaking: it is in Ivo of Chartres' Decretum, lifted bodily from Isidore. 41 A letter Suger wrote to Louis during the regency, urging him to return to France, is more revealing. The king must be the defender of the kingdom, otherwise he will appear to break the oath that he took at his coronation. In standing in for the king, the regent has tried to ensure that the king's lands and men enjoy a good peace, that taxes levied have been stored, and that the system of royal justice, 'causas et placita vestra', has been preserved.!~ Lewis has pointed to Suger's reference to the coronation oath as evidence of original political thought,4'1 but Anglo-Norman historians were very conscious of the importance of coronation oaths; and if Suger is unusual among his French contemporaries in his awareness of the binding nature of coronation oaths, he may have picked up the idea through his contacts with Henry I's court. For Suger, as for aB of his contemporaries, an important attribute of the good king was that he should be a just judge, and be able to ensure that effective justice was done throughout his dominions. If it looked as though justice was not being done, he should use force to ensure that it was. This was hardly a novel view. It can be extrapolated from the accounts of the great kings of Judah in the Old Testament, and Carolingian political thinkers had done so. The ideal king as a doer and, if necessary, enforcer of justice was frequently evoked in late-eleventh- and early-twelfth-century Capetian charter preambles,14 and it receives its firmest 40. oe, pp.280-2, esp. p.28L 41. Ivo, Decretum, PL., CLXI, co1.913, cap.40. 42. oe, p.260. 43. Lewis, 'Kingship', p.51. 44. Dufour, A.ctes, III, pp.129-30.

16

INTERPRETING SUGER

expression from Hugh ofFleury, who says that the king should make his people live by the law, 'per disciplinae terrorem' .45 The importance of royal justice runs like a leitmotiv through Suger's writing: it is the main reason he is so impressed by Henry 1. 46 This makes it all the more surprising that Suger never portrays Louis the Fat, or indeed Louis VII, as a just king in the act of judging. There are many opportunities, but they are simply never taken. What he does show, time and again, is Louis getting on his horse - until he gets too fat to do so - summoning his troops, and riding off to enforce what is often rather summary justice. The episode of the count of Auvergne is a case in point. William of Aquitaine points out that Louis should have called the count, and William as his lord, to Louis' court first, and should only have resorted to military means if a judgement could not otherwise be enforced.'17 The episode hardly shows Louis the just judge to advantage; and the final judgement in a great court at Orleans promised by Louis, which would surely have made a fine spectaele, is not ineluded. The Life 01 Louis the Fat does not focus on the king as just judge, but on the king as warrior enforcing judgement, in particular when a churchman is unable to do so. The attitude is very elose to that expressed in charters of 1111 for St-Quentin at Beauvais and Chartres - that is, from the cirele of Ivo of Chartres: 'what episcopal authority is not strong enough to implement through the word of doctrine, the royal power should try to settle through the severity of discipline'.-IH Where Suger's views on kingship are anything other than standard, they are rather surprising. When Bishop Henry of Beauvais, younger brother of Louis VII, rebelled against his brother in 1150, Suger wrote the young bishop an admonitory letter, upbraiding Henry for rebelling without consulting the magnates and bishops, or the pope. I" The implication is that with such consent, one might rebel; that in extremis, the church, with the help of the magnates, might seek to depose a king. This is hardly the prescription of an ideologist of 45 . Hugh of Fleury, Tractatus, p.469. 46. VLG, esp. pp.lOO-2. 47. VLG, pp.238-40. 48. Dufour, Actes, I, pp .106-8, no.53, pp.117-20, no.58 . 49. oe, p.278.

17

SETTING THE SCENE

royalty. It represents a very different perspective from Ivo of Chartres, who, quoting Isidore, is firmly against rebellion against kings. 50 Hugh of Fleury is more adamant still: since everyone is set, as firmly as angels, thrones, dominions and powers, in their appointed place in society, they must never contemplate stepping out of that appointed place, however tyrannous the king whom God sees fit to visit on them.')] In fact some very distinctive charters recording royal gifts, written at St-Denis for Suger, reveal that his attitude to kings and kingship was subversively Gregorian. Their preambles are strikingly less 'royalist' in tone than those produced in the past at St-Denis, or for , and probably at, other contemporary ecclesiastical institutions. Let us first look at other preambles. Acts for the cathedrals of Paris, in 1108 and 1120, and of Chartres in 1128, announce that 'royal power, according to the institutes of most sacred laws, is the defender of the church' .'i~ An act of 1134 for St-Victor in Paris begins ' Divine providence gave the dignity of royal celestiality to us so that we could defend etc ... ' .c,:\ An act of 1124 for Ste-Genevieve quotes the Psalms, 'let the daughters of Zion exult in their king', followed by the physiologically-confused Isaiah: 'Zion shall suckle at the breasts of kings' and ' kings shall be his wetnurses,.c,4 All the Ste-Genevieve preambles, perhaps under the influence of Stephen de Garlande, are notably royalist in tone." c, Only rarely do Louis VI's acta strike a note of real royal humility, wh en he is renouncing embarrassing exactions, as for instance to Ste-Croix of Orleans.', ji As for St-Denis itself, King Philip 1's 1068 act for the abbey redounds with royalist ideology worthy of Hugh of Fleury: 'Since to aB kings in this world, to whom the omnipotent creator gave the governing of the human state (rem publicam) , etc'.',7 It predates inconvenient Gregorian ideas, of course. 50. Ivo of Chartres, Decretum, PL., CLXI, cols.907-8. 51. Hugh of Flenry, Tmctatus, pp.467-72. 52. Dufour, A.ctes, I, pp.43-6, no.22; I, pp.324-7, no.157; H, pp.54-6, n O.261. 53. Dufour, A.ctl'S, II, pp.244-6, nO. 356. 54. Dufour, A.ctes, I, pp.452-4, no.217. 55. See Dufour, A.ctes, I, pp.58, 101. 56. Dufour, A.ctes, I, p.195, no.88. 57. Prou, A.ctes de Philippe I, pp.1l4-17, no.xl.

18

INTERPRETING SUGER

Against this aura of royal reverence, Suger, in an act of 1122, quite literally puts the fear of God into Louis: 'the royal dignity and office is to fear God through whom kings reign; for it is in his power to untie the girdle of kings'.58 An act of 1124 begins: 'we recognise that our kingdom stands only by the great mercy of the omnipotent God' .59 These sentiments are restated in acts of 1143 and 1144.60 The 1124 preamble also appears in an act of 1120 which is gene rally considered to have been drafted by Suger, though he was not yet abbot. 61 These Sugerian preambles stand out among all the other charters produced for Louis, whether by the beneficiaries, or by his own chancery, except for a single St-Denis act of 1113, in which Louis renounces heavy exactions he has been taking at Beaune-Ia-Roland. ti2 Indeed, the 1122 preamble is based directly on that of the 1113 act. We do not have the original of the 1113 act, so we do not know whether it was a product of St-Denis itself, or of the royal chancery. Since this type of preamble only appears otherwise in acta directly associated with Suger, it is possible that he drafted this one. If that is so, he had already been affected by Gregorian ideas about the place of kings - perhaps when he attended the Lateran synod in the previous year. At the very least, it is clear that he found himself thoroughly in sympathy with its sentiments. Suger's other writings contain no evidence that he approved or advocated sacral kingship.63 Suger was far from the surely heretical - view expressed by Hugh of Fleury, that the relationship of king to bishop was like that of God the Father to Christ. 64 He saw kings as laymen, as those who wielded the physical sword that would enforce the law, justice and good government that could not be brought about by the peaceful prayers of churchmen. He does not glorifY his kings. Dufour, Actes, I, pp.392-7, no.189, esp. p.395. Dufour, Actes, I, pp.458-66, no.220, esp. p.465. Felibien , pp.cv and cvi, nos.cxxxiv and cxxxv. See Dufour, Actes, I , pp.334-8, no.163, esp. p.337 and further discussion below. 62. Dufour, Actes, I, pp.201-3, no.91, esp. p.202. 63. See the comments of Lewis, 'Kingship', pp.50-1. 64. Hugh of Fleury, Tractatus, p.468.

58. 59. 60. 61.

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SETTING THE SCENE

He did not like Louis VII, and shows hirn as weak, petulant, and usually wrong. ti '> He had immense affection for that amiable thug, Louis the Fat, but shows hirn all too often behaving in ways which did not become a king - the word he uses is 'dedecere' .(1) His problem was that their views were very different from his own. Both Louis found it politically convenient to be seen to support successive popes against their enemies, and successive popes found their support invaluable. As a result, both Louis have areputation for maintaining good relations with the church, and for behaviour acceptable to a post-Investiture papacy. As we shall see, both were a pair of thoroughly unreconstructed pre-Gregorians in their attitude to the church. Both made every effort to control ecclesiastical elections. It is easy to see why. Their bishops were not just decorative appendages, but played a vital role in the government, such as it was, of early Capetian France. They could not afford to have these positions filled by anyone, however worthy, who was not administratively, and preferably militarily, competent. The same was true of a few key abba ti al appointments. In an encounter between Paschallland imperial ambassadors in the Life ofLouis the rat, Suger sets out with a curiously dispassionate clarity, in the form of two speeches, the case for both sides. 1i7 The imperial ambassadors explain carefully that in order to have effective government, the Emperor must be able to select the candidate to be elected: the papaliine, and the one to which the kings of France were notionally committed, was that the clergy, after being given the licence to elect, should freely elect the bishop or abbot of their choice, who would then be given the insignia of the secular side of his office by the king. On the few occasions when this happened, as for instance Suger's own election at St-Denis, Louis was furious. IiH Both Louis interfered in elections; both held sees and abbacies vacant for longer than was acceptable; both exploited to the hilt any ecclesiastical institution which came into their hands. 65. 66. 67. 68.

See e.g. His! LVII, pp.] 52-4, 155. See e.g. VLC, pp.80, 160. VIL, pp.56-8. VLG, p.208, and see below, pp. 106-7.

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Both reacted against an ever-encroaching papacy. Louis the Fat stamped firmlyon papal attempts to interfere with various French dioceses. 1i9 In 1135, he flatly forbade all his bishops to attend the great papal council at Pisa, on the grounds that it would be too hot for them. St Bernard for one thought overheated clergy a pretty poor excuse. 70 Nor did Louis the Fat offset this reputation by an ecclesiastically correct approach to church reform. He supported it when it suited hirn. But when it did not, as when the Victorines tried to take over the royal nunnery of Chelles, or when it looked as though there might be an unsuitable archdeacon of Orleans, Louis the Fat did not hesitate to condone the murder of high-ranking ecclesiastics. Historians tend to play down the two Louis' ecclesiastical incorrectness. Suger hirnself coped by ignoring it. There is no hint ofthe Reims election debacle of 1138 in his fragmentary history of Louis VII. And Suger seems to have stopped writing the Life 01 Louis the Fat when things went really wrong around 1130, only starting again to add the passages on the king's final illness and death. The Life 01 Louis the Fat makes the best of a bad job in presenting the king as the enforcer of protection for the church. The king himself had thoroughly old-fashioned views about his role as protector of the church. It was to be protected like a widow or an orphan; like a widow or an orphan, it was not supposed to answer back. Suger, on the other hand, thought that kings should be kept firmly in their place. Their burial place was, however, St-Denis. In his promotion of the links between St-Denis and the monarchy, Suger followed an established house tradition. Suger did not gloriry the monarchy, but as abbot of StDenis, he had need of it, and he manipulated it as far as he could for the advantage of his abbey. It was not glorification of the kings of France, or of France itself, which motivated Suger, but glorification of St Denis, to whom Suger had been given as a child oblate, and of the abbey which housed the relics of the saint. Suger's great loyalty was not to the house of Capet, but to the abbey of St-Denis and its tutelary saint. This was the driving force in his life , and it is too often forgotten. 59. See e.g. Luchaire, Annales LVI, pp.139-40, no.301; p.144, nO.311. 70. Bernard, Epist., VIII, pp.151-2, no.cclv.

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SUGER AND THEOLOGY Suger the churchman was a smooth political operator, but original theologian he was not. His theological views were governed by a strong desire for orthodoxy. He dealt with minor heresy with chilling firmness. 71 In treading deeper theological water - the intractable questions of the nature of the Trinity, raised by Gilbert de la Poree - Suger was motivated less by his own thoughts on the Trinity than by a shrewd political assessment as to whose views would prevail as the new orthodoxy. That at least is the implication of John of Salisbury's account. n He was responsive to the great theological matters of his day - the Trinity, and the real presence at the Eucharist. He puts into the mouth of Louis the Fat a death-bed confession of strict orthodoxy in both areas. 7:1 Both , but especially the Eucharist, loomed large in the sculpture, glass and metalwork with which he adorned the abbey church. 'Responsive' is the operative word, however: he was happy, probably relieved, to be able to accept an established consensus; but he was not hirnself among those who played a creative role in hammering it out. The nearest Suger comes to theological expression is the introduction to the De Consecratione. It reveals the facility with which he could pick up and make superficial play with problems which exercised his contemporaries profoundly. We move briskly from the disparity between things human and Divine, through the 'continual dash of the similar and the dissimilar', to the attempt of those who try to unite themselves with God through the sublimation of all carnal d esires, presumably monks. It is only through the charity and love of God for humanity that this great disparity between man and God can be bridged. Because God has offered to man, induding Suger, this great benefice of divine generosity; and because the proper response to a gift is to give one in return, Suger has decided to offer God the gift of his account of the consecration of the new church, and the translation of St Denis and his companions therein. 7 1 71. 72 . 73. 74 .

See below, p.163. Hist. Pont. , pp.1 5-16. VLG, pp.276-8. Cons., ed. Pan , pp.82-5; 120-1.

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INTERPRETING SUGER

It is rather clever in its chilly way. We are watching a very light skater move very fast over a large expanse of very thin ice. But we are not quite sure whether he moves so fast and so lightly because he is only too aware of the black depths beneath hirn, or whether he is able to move so fast and so lightly because he has no idea what it is he skates over. For Abelard and Bernard, Peter the Venerable and Hugh of StVictor, the love of God for man, God's assumption of human form, and the Redemption of man through the love that issued in the Incarnation was a profoundly moving mystery, a central mystery of the Christian faith. 75 But Suger effectively tens God that in thanks for the Incarnation and the Redemption, he would like Hirn to accept as a small token, his booklet on the consecration. The anthropologicaHy-minded might say that Suger's mind-set marked hirn out as the child of a gift-economy; the more cynical might say that his finelyhoned political sensibilities told hirn there was no such thing as a free lunch. Either way, he seems to have realised that disquisitions on the great mysteries were best left to his colleagues.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS Suger was undoubtedly acquainted with the works of the Pseudo-Dionysius, probably in the translations by Erugena. But in that he would have been no different from any other monk at St-Denis. The texts were read in the refectory on the vigil of the saint's feast. 76 If the references to the Celestial Hierarchy in his own writings are anything to go by, he knew the introductory chapter quite weH, but had penetrated no further into its incantatory obscurities. The one concept that he extracted from it was that of anagogy, of using the material to understand the immaterial. This was so familiar to hirn that he could joke about it in the Life 01 Louis the Fat. When Pope Innocent 11 celebrated Easter at St-Denis in 75. See J. Pelikan, The Growth 01 Medieval Theolog) (600-1300) (Chicago, 1978) , esp. pp. 107-57; M. D. Chenu, La theologie au douzieme siecle (Paris, 1957) . 76. P. Schmitz, 'Les lectures de table ', R.ev Ben, 42 (1930), p.166. For further discussion of the Pseudo-Dionysius, and fuH references, see below, p.65.

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SETTING THE SCENE

1131, Suger tells us that he first immolated paschal lamb at the high altar, then the entire company repaired to the cloister, where they ate materiallamb, 'materialem agnum', at Suger's groaning board. 77 But never in any of his writings does Suger show a real understanding of these exotic and mildly heretical texts, 'full', as an anonymous Premonstratensian contemporary said, 'of many obscurities'. 7R Suger was no neo-platonist. Dionysian anagogy, raising the mind to the contemplation of the immaterial through the material, proved a useful addition to those pat justifications - like the old chestnut about the quality of the workmanship surpassing the material - which were regularly trotted out to deflect criticism of costly church building, and Suger borrowed it to advantage. On the poem inscribed on the great bronze west portal of the church, Dionysian anagogy is connected, as in the introduction to the Gelestial Hierarchy, with progressing through light to the True Light of GOd.7~1 The rather woolly light symbolism in the rest of the poems inscribed on and in the church is not necessarily drawn from the Gelestial Hierarchy: it is consonant with it, but the transfiguring power of light was not invented by the Pseudo-Dionysius. Panofsky was quite right to point to Suger's use of the Pseudo-Dionysius, but he made too much of it. Suger's use of the Areopagite was partial, limited and unsurprising.

SUGER, THE AREOPAGITE AND ST BERNARD Panofsky had his reasons for playing up Suger's debt to the Pseudo-Dionysius. He assumed that the main reason Suger wrote about the abbey church was to diffuse criticism of its rich and highly coloured accoutrements emanating from Cistercian quarters. He saw the De Administratione and the De Gonsecratione as direct responses to St Bernard's famous Apologia ad Guillelmum, in which he castigates monks who build themselves elaborate and richly decorated churches 77. VLG, p.264. 78. RHI'~ XIII, p.331 'multis obcurantibus plenam'. 79. Gerson , 'Iconographer', p.186.

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INTERPRETING SUGER

and cloisters. 8o Panofsky claimed that Suger found in the works of the Pseudo-Dionysius, in the concept that material things led upwards anagogically to the immaterial and in some aspects of Dionysian light symbolism, his ideal justification against Bernard's strictures. Panofsky's theory is seductive. But, as Rudolph has demonstrated, both Bernard's ascetic prescription for the monastic church, and Suger's claim that earthly art and beauty help us to apprehend the glory of God, had long pedigrees, stretching back, respectively, to Jerome and Ambrose. R1 Suger does answer reformist criticism on one specific point, the costliness of the vessels for the Eucharist. His defence is traditionally Ambrosian, not Dionysian; that surely only the most precious things are appropriate for the body and blood of Christ. 82 Bernard's great outburst had been written alm ost twenty years before the choir was built, probably as early as 1122, when Bernard was young and unknown. 8 :1 It unsettled the frail spirit ofWilliam of St-Thierry, to whom it was addressed. But in the intervening twenty years, it had had no appreciable effect on the great monastic churches of Cluny, Vezelay, Fontevrault, Reading or Canterbury, all run by prelates who had the deepest respect of their peers. At the Roman curia, it doubtless met, as did so many of Bernard's more extreme outbursts, with exasperated incomprehension. Other highly respected Benedictines, such as Matthew of Albano and Bishop Alvise of Arras, shared Suger's views on the propriety of ornamenting the house of GOd. H1 The stalwarts of the 80. An Apologia to Abbot William, in The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, i, Treatises I, (Cistercian Fathers Series), (Shannon, (970), pp.33-69. 81. C. Rudolph, The Things of Greater Importance (Philadelphia, (990), esp. pp.80-110. 82. Admin, ed. Pan, pp.66-7. 83. C. Holdsworth , 'The early writings of Bernard of Clairvaux', Citeaux, 45 (1994), pp.21-6I. 84. See Matthew's letter in S. Ceglar, 'William of Saint-Thierry and his leading role in the first chapters of the Benedictine Abbots (Reims 1131, Soissons 1132)', in William, Abbot of St- T'hierry . A Colloquium on the Abbey ofSt-Thierry, trans.]. Carfanton, Cistercian Studies, 94 (Kalamazoo, 1987), pp.34-112, esp. p.80. See also the preamble to Alvise's act of 1147 giving revenues to St-Denis: 'Scientes igitur nobilissimam beati Dionysii ecclesiam praeceteris Galliae ecclesiis eminere et abbatem ipsius decori domus dei vigilanter insistere, ad amplificandum eiusdem ecclesiae decorem aliquid addere dignum dece rnimus ... ', ed. in Doublet, pp.493-4.

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SETTING THE SCENE

pro-Cistereian or reformist lobby among the Freneh bishops, including Geoffrey of Chartres, Samson of Reims, and Baldwin of Noyon, and the Cistereian Pope Eugenius, were delighted to say mass with the bejewelled props in the stunning liturgieal theatre of the new ehoir. 85 Bernard himself was probably present at the eonsecration of the ehoir, and eertainly at an important eeremony of eoneord between Louis VII and Theobald of Champagne, held at St-Denis on 9 Oetober 1144. ~tj Never onee did he suggest disapproval of what he saw. He may have felt that his youthful outburst had gone too far. He was man of the world enough to realise that the restraint suitable for a Cistereian abbey was quite inappropriate in the house whieh eontained the shrine of the apostle to Gaul, the tombs of the kings of Franee and the royal regalia, and in whieh the pope would eelebrate an important mass when in Franee. Indeed, he was man of the world enough to sit in the ehureh of St-Denis in 1144, advising Eleanor of Aquitaine about her less than satisfaetory sexual relations with Louis VII. Bernard saw clearly that the abbey, and the abbot of St-Denis, had to playa publie role, not demanded of a Cistereian, and that Suger did it with integrity and eonsummate skill. Nevertheless, as John of Salisbury implies, Suger was in awe of, and tended to defer to, Bernard - though in that he was no different from his eeclesiastieal eolleagues. K7

THE ICONOGRAPHY OF ST-DENIS Art historians have often suggested that Suger's real eontribution to the theologieal debates of the twelfth eentury is to be found in the imagery with whieh he deeorated his abbey ehureh. But the complexity and obseurity of that ieonography has been mueh overrated by modern seholars. The 85. For Geoffrey of Chartres, see Cans, ed. Pan, pp. 108-9; for Baldwin of Noyo n , see his le tte r to Suger, RH1'; XV, p.530; for Eugenius, see Admin, ed. Pan, pp.58-61. 86. See below, pp.152-4. 87. For Be rnard on Suge r, see Berna rd, t :pist, VIII, p.229, nO.cccix. For John of Salisbury's comment, Hist Pant, pp.15-16. For Bernard and Eleanor, Ex tertia vita Sancti Be rnardi Gaufrido monacho, PL, CLXXXV, p.527.

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INTERPRETING SUGER

unravelling of the iconographic programmes at St-Denis, on the west front portals, in the stained glass, on the great cross, for instance, are triumphs of modern scholarship; but we forget that the biblical and patristic knowledge that seems so obscure to us would have been second nature to any twelfth-century cleric. The originality of Suger's iconography is also overrated. Most of it was fundamentally typological, that is to say, that it presented themes and scenes from the Old Testament as prefigurations of either the New Testament, or the sacraments. This was hardly original in concept: the typological approach to biblical exegesis was one of the oldest tricks in the theologian's book. S8 Accidents of survival contribute to a misleading impression of originality. Suger's choir windows, for instance, are the earliest pieces of stained glass to have survived in anything like an intact state. They are often discussed as if they are the first windows to carry elaborate images. This is highly unlikely. Carolingian St-Denis had decorated windows, and we know from descriptions that richly painted windows adorned eleventh-century Le Mans Cathedral, and Montecassino. 8 !1 We must assurne that by the twelfth century stained glass windows were an important aspect of grand churches, and that they purveyed images. A more subtly shaded view of Suger's iconography, presents hirn not so much as an inventor of theological imagery as the first to apply it on a scale so large that it seems new. Here we are on firmer ground. Suger still appears to be the first churchman in northern France to commission the sort of great portal with a theological message wh ich had become standard in major churches in Burgundy and the Languedoc. Never one to do things by halves, he demanded a tripIe portal, only previously implemented at Vezelay. He flanked it with life-sized figure sculpture - as also at Vezelay - and set a large rose window into the west facade above it. The arrangement of the architectural elements on the west front at St-Denis was new and undoubtedly influential. But the iconography itself, on which stands Suger's reputation as theologian, is far less novel and recherche than, say, Vezelay. 88. B. Smalley, The Study 01 the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1964), pp.6, 24-6, 90-5. 89. See below, pp.263-4.

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SETTING THE SCENE

Like his writings, his imagery does not contribute to debate, it merely shows that he was fully conversant with what his colleagues were discussing so avidly; and that he could seize and freeze accepted theological orthodoxy and reduce it to the level of cartoon. Suger was not a great creator of theological images; he was too anxious to be orthodox: but he was a great collector.

SUGER AND THE INVENTION OF GOTHIC What was novel about the west front, as I have said, was the arrangement of its architectural elements. The same is true of the luminous and elegant ambulatory. Although recent excavations and examinations of buildings in the Ile de France around 1100 have given us a much broader view of the architectural context in which St-Denis was built,!lO the originality of the building and the extent of its infIuence in northern France seem, if anything, more firmly established than ever. It initiates a long and fmitful series of variations on its architectural themes: the twin-towered west front, the tripie portal, the column figure, the rose window; the ring of radiating chapels, the double ambulatory, the columnar pier and the large window. Whether that makes it the first Gothic building is a moot point. The twelfth century is aperiod when tastes and fashions in many cultural areas changed and shifted with a speed and totality that they had not done for some time, and would not soon do again. Romanesque and Gothic are usefully imprecise labels that can be stuck on various cultural artefacts to indicate these palpable but indefinable changes. In so far as they define anything, they define the mood of a building or object. Durham cathedral may sport broken arches, rib vaults and embryonic flyers, all the technical paraphernalia of a Gothic building; but all agree that it is the quintessence ofwhatever is meant by Romanesque. Similarly, although the west front of St-Denis incorporates for the first time the elements typical of so many Gothic facades, its massive solidity is more Romanesque than Gothic in tone. The slightly later choir ambulatory, on the other hand, has 90. See helow, pp .260-3.

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INTERPRETING SUGER

a lightness, both in wall structure and ambience, which most art historians have been content to call Gothic. The style label is really irrelevant. Suger's position as patron of a seminal building is unassailable. But assessments as to Suger's real involvement range right ac ross the spectrum, from those who have seen Suger as the creator of Gothic, to those who see his own contribution as little more than paymaster. The truth, as we might expect, lies somewhere between the two. Suger was an experienced patron of building by the time he commissioned the west front and choir on which his reputation rest. He had already had much of the rest of the abbey rebuilt, in addition to subsidiary priories, notably a whole priory complex and church at Corbei1. 91 He was particularly experienced in military architecture. He had fortified the Dionysian villas of Tremblay, Rouvray, Toury and Guillerval,92 and built a great wooden tower at Toury.93 In the latter cases there would have been no architect between Suger and his workforce. Of course a great abbey church was in a different league. The choir in particular is a design of great complexity and geometrical sophistication, and all its ramifications could only have been worked out by a professional architect. 94 But we must assurne that by the time Suger rebuilt the abbey church he would have had quite a precise idea of what he wanted, and would know how to express it to architects and masons. And we must at the very least credit hirn with choosing a brilliant architect. Suger teUs us in his Testament that building works normally came within the remit of the cellarer at St-Denis, but that he hirnself had relieved the financial pressures on the cellarer by funding the building from revenues proper to the abbot: he had thus taken an unusually direct measure of control in the project.% He played a very active logistical roIe, personally leading an expedition to the forest of Chevreuse to find trees large enough for the nave beams. 96 We know 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

Admin, oe, pp.177-82. Admin, oe, pp. 160, 169, 172, 167. Admin, oe, p .172. See especially Kidson, 'Panofsky, Suger and St Denis,' pp. 11-17. Testament, oe, p.336. eons, ed. Pan, pp.94-7.

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that he had some strong ideas as to what he wanted, because occasionaUy he teUs us so. He wanted the west front crenellated, because he thought it appropriate, as weIl as potentiaUy useful; he insisted on having a mosaic on the west front, although he knew it was 'contrary to modern fashion', and ought to have realised it was not practical in northern drizzle; he wanted to have Roman marble columns in his western extension, though he had to make do with a local substitute.'l; Many aspects of this strange and striking building only make sense if we assume that an opinionated and inteIfering patron continuaIly made his wishes known. However, because he does not say that he insisted on a rose window, or on sculpted portals, we are not entitled to assume that they were exclusively the contribution of the architect. The irony is that the last thing Suger was trying to get his workforce to do was to create something new. He was trying to recreate the abbey church's former glory; trying to make it look as much as possible like the Carolingian church which he inherited, and which he believed to be the original church built by King Dagobert. His inspiration came from splendid new buildings associated with the Gregorian reform that he had seen in and around Rome, which themselves attempted to revive a lost Early Christian past.'IX The very type of church he sought to build was as oldfashioned as the style he thought he had chosen to interpret it. Suger's St-Denis is the last and most resplendent of the great Romanesque pilgrimage churches. Pilgrimage is the reason that he gives for expanding his church. He overstates his case for overcrowding, and teils a slightly different story in each of his three versions of it.'l'l But it was fundamentally true. The west front portals advertised the abbey's most important relics, those of St Denis himself, and the nail and thorn of the Crucifixion. Both the western and eastern extensions created much more space for pilgrims. The eastern extension is not, as it is so often described, a choir, but a retrochoir, designed to accommodate the shrine of St Denis and the pilgrims who would visit it, without disturbing the 97. Admin, ed. Pan, pp.46-7. 98. See below, pp.255-8. 99. Cons, ed. Pan, pp.86-9; Ord, ed Pan , pp.134-5; Admin, ed. Pan , pp.42-5 .

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INTERPRETING SUGER

monks in their liturgical choir. The abbey church of St-Denis was not, as is so often claimed, rebuilt as a royal mausoleum, but to advertise, house and display the relics of St Denis, apostle to Gaul. We come back to the fact that it would be impossible to overstress the importance to Suger of his saint and his abbey. He saw himself first and foremost as a monk and then abbot of St-Denis. He would have seen, and justified, everything he did as being on behalf of saint and abbey. He never let slip the slightest opportunity to advance their interests. For them, he forged and fought, built and wrote, schemed and prayed, from the moment when he was given to St Denis as a child oblate until his death some sixty years later.

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Chapter 2

READING BETWEEN THE LINES: SUGER'S WRlTINGS

Suger's own, and a few associated writings, are our principal evidence for both his thoughts and his deeds. They repay detailed study, not least because superficial glancing at them has led to many false assumptions and the generation of many myths.

SUGER THE AUTHOR Suger was a prolific author, but not a great one . His prose is pompous and pedestrian, and he had, in the magisterial judgment of Henri Waquet, 'un manque total du gout litteraire' . In spite of his clumsy, overstrained phrasing, his Latin, particularly in his letters, is surprisingly effective in fast-paced narrative, and such passages remind us that Suger was renowned among contemporaries for speaking Latin as easily as most people read it. 1 It is important to note that none of his works have survived in orthograph, or even strictly contemporary copy. Most survive in co pies made at St-Denis in the last thirty years or so of the twelfth century. As a result we know little about Suger's working methods as a writer. Did he dictate to his secretary, or did he write first drafts himself? The copied texts themselves give us no paleographical evidence as to how much he revised or edited, nor whether we have a complete text or not. Most commentators have discussed all Suger's writings on the assumption that they were through compositions, which Suger began at the beginning and wrote or dictated through 1. Vita, p.382. For Waquet's comment, VLG , introduction , p.xvi.

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SUGER'S WRITINGS

to the end. But nobody reaHy writes like that. Suger, like everybody else, worked up his writings slowly, adding and emending as he went along. Two works, the De Administratione and the fragmentary History oJ Louis VII, are demonstrably unfinished. Both contain clear evidence for a working method which included much revision and interpolation. So too, as I have already suggested, does the fuHy finished and widely distributed Life oJ Louis the Fat. All commentators have failed to take the implications of this working method into account; and recently Conrad Rudolph has asserted that, in spite of what Suger himself says, the entire De Administratione must have been written after 1148.~

THE DE CONSECRA TIONE AND DE ADMINISTRA TIONE Suger wrote two works recording his activities as abbot of StDenis. The Libellus de consecratione ecclesiae Sancti Dionysii (the little book on the consecration of the church of St-Denis) is a short treatise on the building and consecration of the abbey church, written shortly after the consecration of the finished choir on 11 June 1144. It was intended to circulate, perhaps to the libraries of other monastic houses or ecclesiastical institutions, or perhaps to important participants in the ceremony. The earliest extant copy was produced around 1200, probably at St-Denis: the other manuscript, a late copy, came from St-Victor. 3 It may have been inspired by the account of the rebuilding and papal consecration of Montecassino by Leo of Ostia, a text which Suger probably saw when he visited the great Benedictine abbey in 1123. A couple of Leo's comments are echoed in Suger's De Administratione: for instance, that Abbot Desiderius wanted to ship marble columns from Rome, and that he gathered together artists from various parts of the world.4 The De Administratione, an account of Suger's administration of the abbey of St-Denis, was begun, at the request of 2. C. Rudolph, Artistic Change at St-Denis (Princeton, NJ, 1990), pp.21-4. 3. Respectively, Vatican Regina ms.571 , f.1l9r-129v., and Paris Arsenal ms.l030, f.8lr-82v. and 137r.-143v. See Bur, Suger, p .322, and Panofsky, pp.143-4. 4. Leo of Ostia, The Consecration of the church of Monte Cassino, PL, CLXXIII, cols 997-1002, see esp. co1.998.

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SETTING THE SCENE

his monks, in 1145. 5 It survives in a neat late-twelfth- or earlythirteenth-century copy (BN.lat. 13835). The copyyields no clues about the state of the original manuscript, but there must have been emendations and gaps. There is ovelWhelming evidence that Suger left the work unfinished and unrevised at his death. There are two obvious mistakes in the naming of bishops. Suger mentions discussions with Bishop Hugh of Laon - it should be Bartholomew - and contradicts his own account of the consecration of the west end, giving Bishop Manasses of Meaux, instead of Odo of Beauvais, as one of the participants. 1i The text of the poem on the ewer vase is left blank in the manuscript,' and there is no sign of a list of castle guard at Toury which Suger teIls us is attached to the text. H Many property transactions revealed by his charters are left out, notably important acquisitions in the Laonnois. We know that he was still incorporating new information as late as 1148, for he mentions the death of Galeran of Breteuil on the Second Crusade.!l This might be dismissed as a minor revision, but a discussion of the papal visit to St-Denis in 1147, and of building works that took place long after 1145 show that Suger worked on the text for a long time. The substantial nature of the revisions and additions suggests that Suger wrote and alte red the original manuscript himself, rather than dictating it to his secretary. Art historians have assumed that the De Administratione contains a complete account of Suger's artistic patronage at St-Denis. As a result, it has been claimed, for instance, that the column figures on the west portals, the floor mosaic in the St Firmin chapel and the cloister cannot have been created during Suger's abbacy, because he does not mention them in the De Administratione. 1o However, neither does he mention therein the dormitory, the refectory, and the domus hospitum, which we know he built, because he lists them in 5. Admin, oe, p.155. 6. Admin, ed. Pan, pp.64-5; ibid. pp.44-5 and Cons, ed . Pan, pp.96-7. 7. BN lat.13835, f.65r. The poem was filled in in a seventeenth-century hand, presumably [rom the object itself. 8. Admin, oe, p.173. 9. Admin, oe, p.174. 10. See, for example, X. Barral I Altet, 'The mosaic pavement of the St Firmin Chapel at Saint-Denis: Alberic and Suger', Symposium, p.253; L. Pressouyre,'Did Suger build the cloister at Saint-Denis?' Symposium, pp.229-44.

34

SUGER'S WRITINGS

his Testament of 1137. 11 The De Administratione is not a text with which arguments from silen ce can be countenanced. Far too much has been made of the originality of both form and content of the De Administratione. It is not sui generis. It belongs, in both structure and content, to an established type of medieval text, the deeds of great ecclesiastics, bishops or abbots. The genesis of the type is the set of lives of the pop es, the Liber Pontificalis. French examples of the genre include Andrew of Fleury's Life of Abbot Gauzelin of Fleury, and the deeds of the bishops of Le Mans. Arecent Italian example was Leo of Ostia's account of the abbacy of Desiderius of Montecassino in the Chronica Casinensis. All begin their accounts of a prelate's life by cataloguing his acquisitions and improvements in his church's properties, and the consequent accretion of revenues; then go on to detail the rebuilding and re fitting of the abbey or cathedral church, which was contingent upon raising the revenue in the first place. Suger's De Administratione differs from these texts only in that it was written by himself, rather than by an admiring acolyte. 12 Even here, Suger was not quite alone. His brilliant Cluniac contemporary, Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester and abbot of Glastonbury, has left a fragmentary account of his administration of the Glastonbury estates which is strikingly similar to the first half of the De Administratione. l~ Suger and Henry share the distinction of writing their accounts themselves, instead of leaving it to an admiring acolyte in the usual manner. Both write with the express intention of protecting their recuperations against future loss: Suger writes 'for the memory of posterity' (posteritati memoriae'); Henry, 'for the memory of those to come' ('futurorum memoriae'). Both hope 1l. oc, p.336. 12. Andre de Fleury, Vic de Gauzelin, AbM de Fleury, ed. R. H. Bautier and G. Labory (Paris, 1969). Actus Pontificum Cenomannis in Urbe Degentium, ed. G. Busson and A. Ledru, Archives Historiques du Maine II (Le Mans, 1901), see esp. bishops Hoel, pp.393-5, Hildevert of Lavardin, pp.415-16, 418-21, Guy, p.441 , Hugh, pp.449-53; Chronica Monnsterii Casinensis, ed. H. Hoffmann, MGH Scriptores, 34 (Hannover, 1980), pp.394-410, and see the discussion in H. E. J. Cowdrey, The Age of Abbat Desiderius. Montecassino, the Papacy and the Normans in the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries (Oxford, 1983), pp.13-l6. 13. Adam de Domerham, Historia de rebus gestis Glastoniensibus, ed. T. Hearne, 2 vols (Oxford, 1727), II, pp.305-15. I would like to thank Dr John Hudson for drawing this text to my notice .

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SETTING THE SCENE

that those reading their accounts will pray for their souls. I" The texts share a systematic quality: the estates are dealt with in groups rather than in continuous prose. Sadly, we do not have the second half of Henry's text, dealing with building campaigns and the commissioning of liturgical objects; but it is inconceivable that Henry never intended to complete the second half of the diptych, in which what might otherwise pass for avarice is transmuted into the good husbandry which provides the wherewithal for the proper worship of God and the saints. The two documents are so similar in both form and content, that there could be a direct connection between them. This is not impossible; the two great abbots were well known to each other. I" The many other examples of the genre, where the second part does survive, show, time and again, that those aspects of Suger's account of his artistic commissions that have been assumed to be unique are absolutely standard in this genre of text. This is true of Suger's concentration on the glitter and colour of his building, of his apparently obsessive listing of gems, and his insistence on the values and measures of gold. It is also true of his concentration on fitments and fittings, the windows and liturgical ornaments, at the expense of the architecture itself. This is important. The whole consensus view of Suger's character, that he had an unsophisticated passion for baubles, bangles and beads, and thus must have had an enthusiastic, genial, outgoing character, with some of the warmth and sparkle of the gold and gems he admired, is based on the perceived uniqueness of the De Administratione. That perception is false. Suger was writing within the confines of a wellestablished literary tradition with a developed vocabulary for describing fitments and fittings; there was nothing of the sort for architecture.

SUGER'S HISTORIES: THE HISTORY OF LOUIS VII When Suger was himself a very old man he began a biography of the new, young king Louis VII. He never finished 14. Admin, oe, p.155; ed. Pan, pp.40-1; Adam de Domerham, Historia, pp.305-6. 15. See Henry's letters to Suger, RH}~ XV, pp.494, 520.

36

SUGER'S WRITINGS

it, and the young king long outlived hirn. The fragment was continued by a monk of St-Germain-des-Pres. 16 Because it is a fragment, it gives us a clear glimpse of Suger's working methods as a historian. He was still working on it as late as 1147/8. Odo ofDeuil, his successor as abbot, accompanied Louis VII on the Second Crusade, Odo claims that his own history of that crusade emerged from rough notes that he was making for Suger to incorporate into his biography of the young king. 17 In the event, Suger's contribution covers only the first year or so of young Louis' reign. The vividness and circumstantial nature of the narrative seetions suggests that they were written very soon after the events they describe. The fragment contains a passage in which Suger compares the good fortune of the French kings, who always have heirs aplenty, with the unhappiness of the Germans, and the English, where political stability is jeopardised by the lack of a male heir. 18 This would have been an entirely appropriate comment in the late 1130s, when Louis, one of six male siblings, was recently and happily married to Eleanor of Aquitaine; it would have been rather less appropriate by the late 1140s, when Louis and Eleanor's marriage was on the rocks, and Eleanor had turned to St Bernard for advice in her desperation to produce a male heir. 19 In short, Suger drafted substantial seetions shortly after the events they describe, and then revised and incorporated material over a long period of time, rather than writing the book as a through composition. All the occasions or episodes described are those on or in which Suger hirnself was present or involved. However, some important things that Louis did during this period, for instance his expedition to the Auvergne in March 1138, are not mentioned. In other words, it does not pretend to be a his tory of everything that Louis VII did, so much as a memoir of some things that Louis did, as seen by a counsellor who was involved in them. 16. The earliest copy is BN ms LaI 12710, f.51v-52r. See Molinier's introduction to Hist LVII, pp. xxxiii-xxxvi and J. Lair, BEC, 34 (1873), pp.583-96 for disCllssion of the manuscripts. 17. OD, p.4. 18. Hist LVII, p.149. 19. See Fragmenta ex tertia vita Sancti P ~ ··'1.ardi Gaufrido monacho, PL, CLXXXV, co1.527.

37

SETfING THE SCENE

THE LIFE OF LOUIS THE FAT Suger's most substantial work was his biography of Louis VI, the Fat. This exists in several manuscripts, three from the later twelfth century, so it was fairly widely circulated. Earlier copies called Louis the 'Glorious': only in the very late twelfth century was the appellation 'gloriosus' transformed into the less flattering 'grossUS'.20 The Morigny Chronicle teIls us, in a section written by 1142, that Suger had written an edifying text about Louis the Fat's lingering death which was read to the Morigny monks on the anniversary thereof. 2 1 The earliest surviving manuscript of the Life of Louis the Fat, from St-Denis itself, has clear instructions as to the part to be read on his anniversaries in the abbey in which he was buried. 22 It is thus likely that the Life of Louis the Fat was in circulation before 1142, though Suger may have written a separate and specific anniversary piece for distribution to other monasteries. As I have already suggested, there is evidence that Suger's working method for the Life of Louis the Fat was much the same as that for the History of Louis VII, and indeed, for the De Administratione; that is to say that he had been engaged in writing it for a very long time. It contains detailed reminiscences of the king's youth, which, in so far as we can tell from other sources, are largely accurate. It is difficult to believe that Suger was not using passages written as events happened; he must have started recording the deeds of the king many years before his subject's death in 1137, with Louis' blessing and cooperation. In the politically turbulent and embarassing early 1130s he stopped writing altogether; after Louis' death, he added the section on Louis' Iengthy final illness and death, and revised the rest, inserting extra information, reflections 01' linking passages. 20. In addition to the Waque t edition which I have used , the re is now an English translation, Suger, The Deeds oJ Louis the Fat, trans. and introd. R. Cusimano and J. Moorhead (Washington DC, 1992). For the manuscript tradition, see Waquet, introduction to VLG, pp.xviixxiv. 21. Chron Mor, p .69. 22. Paris BibI.Maz.2031 , f.264 , 'incipit vii lectio in annive rsario Ludovici re gis gloriosis '.

38

SUGER'S WRlTiNGS

Occasionally, the seams show, For instance, at the end of chapter I, he teIls the story of William Rufus' death, and briefly mentions the succession of Henry I. In the middle of chapter XVI is a paragraph which begins 'Prefatus itaque rex Henricus, Guilelmo fratri feliciter succedens', then mentions his wise rule of England, and finally his arrival in Normandy. These two sections succeed and complement one another perfectly. However, at the beginning of chapter XVI, immediately before the passage on Henry's succession and wise rule, a separate passage also teIls us that King Henry of England came to Normandy, and goes on to mention Henry's wise rule. Suspicions that this ought to be an interpolation are confirmed, for this passage proceeds to link Henry with the prophecies of Merlin. The prophecies, lifted alm ost verbatim from Geoffrey of Monmouth, were not available until the late 1130s,2:1 This writing process explains features which have always puzzled commentators, such as the heavy emphasis on events early in the reign and the undoubted freshness of these accounts. It also goes some way to explain both the structural inconsistency, and the moral ambiguity inherent in the Life 01 Louis the Fat. The message of the book seems to be to rehabilitate Louis the Fat before the French clergy by presenting hirn as a very effective protector of the French church; this accords weIl with the fact that the finished book is dedicated to Bishop Jocelyn of Soissons, who is presumably indicative of its eventual intended audience, But the modern reader cannot fail to be struck by the inappropriateness of much of the text for the task. Suger's subject is war, and the glory of war. Twenty-six out of its thirty-four chapters deal with warfare, and the narrative lurches from one siege to another. This would have been entirely appropriate in a work originally conceived to present Louis as a new Caesar to a courtly audience. There is a striking concentration on events of secondary importance in the Life oj Louis the Fat. The siege of Toury was merely one of many skirmishes in Louis' long wars with Theobald of Blois and the Puisets; and a nasty family vendetta at La Roche Guyon hardly merits its lengthy treatment on political grounds. But Suger played an active role at Toury, 23, VLG, pp,12-14 and 98-100,

39

SETTING THE SCENE

and was based in Normandy when the Roche Guyon scandal broke. The dreadful deeds of Thomas de Marle bulk so large in the Life of Louis the Fat, not because Suger as historian judged it to be a highly significant episode in the reign; but because Suger the adviser and negotiator of the king was himself involved. Time and again Suger indudes in the Life of Louis the Fat occasions or events at which he himself was either actually present or about which he had inside information , just as he did in the Louis VII fragment. The book is also designed to show Louis' attachment to and dependence on th e ab bey of St-Denis. Louis is shown fighting to protect other French eccIesiastical establishments, but he is not shown making donations to them. Most strikingly, there is no reference at all to Louis' important new Cistercian foundation of Chaalis. The Life of Louis the Fat does not foIlow, in either form or content, the two obvious models for the biography of a French king, Einhard's Life ofCharlcmagne, and Helgaud's Life of Robert the Pious. ~4 Both of th ese works have a dear bipartite structure , based ultimately on Suetonius, one part dealing with the private, and one with the public man. Einhard does not linger on military matters, and Helgaud deliberately eschews them. ~'· Both works make much of their subjects' generosity in founding and endowing a large number of churches. Suger's work could hardly be more different. The dosest affinities of the Life of Louis the Fat appear to be with WiIIiam of Poitiers ' History of William the Conqueror?i Both are structured as a continuous and more or less chronological narrative; both, in spite of this, are strikingly innocent of dates, which sets both apart from chronicIe- or annalbased histories. Both are primarily concerned with warfare. WiIIiam of Poite rs teIls th e tale of a young ruler forced to fight hard against an unruly baronage to control his realm in the first place, who is then able to unite his people in one great realm-defining military exploit, th e Conquest ofEngland. 24 . Ein hard \ Life 0/ Charlemagne, ed. H. W. Garrod and R. B. Mowat (Oxford , 191 5 ); He\gaud d e Fle ury, Vif' de Roherl le Pieux, ed. R. H. Bautie r and G. Labory (Paris, 1965) . 25. He\gaud , Vi f de Roherl, pp .138-41. 26. GlIillallme de Poi tie rs, H istoire de Cu illa u me lf' Conquerant, ed. and trans. R. Fo reville (Paris, 1952).

40

SUGER'S WRITINGS

Suger gives us a pale shadow of William's powerful epic but then Louis never won such complete control of his magnates; the bloodless antic1imax of 1124 would never impose itself upon the French consciousness as the great victory of 1066 was struck upon the Norman; and while everybody in the twelfth century had a fairly precise idea of who was Norman and what was Normandy, the same could not be said for who was French, and what was France. Whether William of Poitiers was a conscious or unconscious influence on Suger's history writing is unproven, but would not be surprising. The monks at St-Denis were avid collectors ofNorman historical works. In the 1130s, they compiled a historical miscellany (B.Maz.2013), to whieh, in the 1160s or 1170s, was added Suger' s Life of Louis the Fat. The eompilation is at the root of the great tradition of historical writing whieh developed at the abbey. William of Jumieges, in the version revised by Orderic Vitalis, plays a very large part in it. The other St-Denis manuscripts which eontain early copies of the Life of Louis the Fat also incorporate a great deal of Anglo-Norman material. It is unc1ear why AngloNorman material should have such a high profile at St-Denis. Perhaps it was Suger's own choice. 27 Suger definitely had aecess to Geoffrey ofMonmouth's prophesies ofMerlin when that incantatory fabrication was still hot off the press, for he incorporated them in the Life of Louis the Fat. 2H The traffie went both ways. The earliest extant version of the St-Denis legend of the lter Hierosolymitatum was copied at St Ouen at Rouen. 29 A general history of the Freneh kings, compiled at St-Denis under Suger, the Abbrevatio Gestarum Franciae Regum, was used by Robert ofTorigni at Bec around 1139-40. 30 There are enough correspondences between the 27. For historical writing at St-Denis see G. Spiegel, The Chronicle Tradition oJ Saint-Denis: a Suroey (Brookline, Mass. , 1978) , pp.40-1. For Paris Bibl.Maz. ms.2013 and the other St-Denis-related manuscripts containing early copies of the Lire oJ Louis the Fat. and Norman material, see E. M. C. van Houts. The Gesla Normannorum Ducum oJ William oJJumieges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert o/lorigni, 2 vols (Oxford, 1992). I, pp.civ-cvi . 28. Suge r, VlJG, pp.98-9. OV, VI, pp.380-1, n.5 . 29. Paris, Bibl.Maz. ms.1711, see E. A. R. Brown and M. Cothren, 'The Twelfth Century Crusading Window of the Abbey of Saint-Denis', ]WCI,49 (1986), p.14, n.63. 30. University of Leyden ms. lat.20; see Van Houts, Gesta Norrnannorum Ducum, I, p.cix. See also Spiegel, Chroniclf' Tradition, pp.43-4.

41

SETTING THE SCENE

Life 01 Louis the Fat and Orderic Vitalis - not least in their use of the prophesies of Merlin - to cast the shadow of a suspicion that there was some sharing of sources and material, perhaps through the medium of Bec or St Ouen.:ll The dedicatee of the Life 01 Louis the Fat was J ocelyn de Quierzy, bishop of Soissons. We will meet Jocelyn often in these pages. He was, like Suger hirnself, an important churchman of the Ile de France, of moderate reformist bent, who became, in the 1130s, a dose counsellor of the king. He had previously been a respected if uninspiring teacher of divinity in the Paris schools, but his surviving treatises on the Creed and the Lord's Prayer reveal a deeply pedestrian theologian, lacking either subtlety or imagination. :{~ Ouo of Freising daimed that he could not understand the Trinity.~·\ But Jocelyn was a dose friend of Suger's: it was Jocelyn whom the dying Suger called urgently to his deathbed.: q

THE LETTER COLLECTIONS For the final seven years of Suger's life, we have the benefit of some of his letters. They were collected in two batches. The manuscript containing the larger batch is lost. It was headed by a poem in praise of Suger, addressing hirn directly, inviting hirn to correct the collection: apparently this batch was compiled during Suger's lifetime. Glaser has argued convincingly that the author of this poem of praise, and thus the collector of this batch of letters, was Suger's secretary and biographer, the monk William, who shows an intimate knowledge of the letters in his biography.'F' A second batch 31. See L. Grant. 'Suge r and the Anglo-Norman World' , Anglo-Norman Studies, 19 (1997), ed. C. Harper-BilI , pp.51-68. 32. PL, CLXXXVI, cols.1479-96. 33. Otto of Freising, The Deeds 01 Frederich Barbarossa, trans. and ed. C. C. Mierow (New York, 1966), pp.89-90. 34. Suger to Jocelyn, oe, p.283; Jocelyn to Suger, RH}~ XV, pp.531, 532. 35. H. Glaser,'Wilhelm von Saint-Denis: Ein Humanist aus der Umgebung des Abtes Suger und die Krise seiner Abtei von 1151 bis 1153', HlslorishesJahrbuch,85 (1965), pp.261-6. For the poem, see oe, p.424. Duch es ne copied poe m and letters from a now lost manuscript 'ex ms. exemplari clariss. virorum Puteanorum fratrum '. This probably came initially from the abbey of St-Victor in Paris. In the sixteenth

42

SUGER'S WRITINGS

of Suger's correspondence survives in a manuscript from St-Denis (BN ms.lat.14192). Most of these letters are from the very end of Suger's life. Both sets include an unusually large proportion of letters to Suger. And the collections are selective; there are references within them to letters which have not been included. 36 All letter collections beg aseries of questions. Who made sure they were kept, and why? Is the collection based on copies, rough drafts, or on returned letters? How selective is the collection? How widely and where was the collection circulated? Were the letters written with publication in mind from the first? How self-consciously literary are the letters a serious problem in a century when the very concept of a letter collection was consciously Ciceronian? Last, but by no means least, how far were the original letters rewritten for publication?37 The Suger collections raise further problems of their own, with which I shall deal later. Suffice it to say at the moment that the main collection seems designed to justify Suger's regency, and to present hirn as pre-eminent within the French church. In this it parallels the writing of the collector of the letters, Suger's first biographer, his secretary William, librarian of the abbey of St-Denis.

THE WRITINGS OF WILLIAM THE SECRETARY William produced two works about Suger. Shortly after Suger's death in 1151, William wrote an encyclicalletter, to be circulated to other ecclesiastical institutions, announcing and describing Suger's death and buria1. 38 Then, between summer 1152 and autumn 1154, he wrote a short biography centur-y the St-Victor manuscripts were classified by Claude de Grandrue, prior of Puteaux in the Beauce. In the early seventeenth century, it was noticed that many manuscripts were missing, and Grandrue may have bOITowed it. See L. Delisie, Le Cahinet des Manuscnts de la Bibliotheque Nationale, 2 vols (Paris, 1874), I1, pp.228-31. I should like to thank Dr K. Thompson for this reference. 36. See e.g. RHF, XV, p.486, Hugh de Lesigny to Suger. 37. For the problems of medieval letter collections, see PV Leiters, II, pp.I-12; for Peter the Venerable's letters, ibid, pp.12-44. 38. OC, pp.404-11.

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SETTING THE SCENE

of the abbot.:J9 The text of William's biography and encyclical letter sUMve in the same manuscript as the second group of letters (BN. ms.lat.14192), copied out by the same late-twelfth-century scribe. Neither appear to have had a wide distribution. William's writing contains much direct and invaluable information about his subject; but we must be aware that William had a distinct hidden agenda. William wrote his biography of Suger in unfortunate circumstances. He had been very dose to Suger. But after Suger's death, the abbey was riven by violent faction. William led a faction opposed to the new abbot, Odo of Deuil. Abbot Odo exiled William to St-Denis-en-Vaux, a small dependent priory in northern Poitou. It was there that an embittered William wrote his biography of Suger. During his exile he also wrote two other works. One is an open letter addressed to four fellow monks, all called William, back at St-Denis, written in 1153/4. 111 The second text is the so-called Apologetic Dialogue, a long imaginary dialogue between William and another St-Denis monk, Geoffrey, written in 1154. 11 These two texts give us vital hints about the unhappy events at the abbey immediately after Suger's death. William's life of Suger is hardly a neutral account. It was intended to enhance Suger's reputation and, implicitly, to criticise Odo. It was also intended to rebut criticisms which were now being Ievelled at Suger himseIf, both as abbot and politician. We know of, or can reconstruct some of these criticisms. Suger was a tyrant, who had mIed both his abbey, and France as regent, with a rod of iron; he had favourites, and thus himself fomented faction; he advanced his own family more than was proper; he spent abbey revenues on unnecessarily expensive projects which were unpopular with many of his monks, particularly the rebuilding of the abbey and the funding of a new crusade. Moreover, he had dashed with most prominent members of the royal family and the court. He had very different views from King Louis VII on

oe, pp.375-404. Ir mentions the loss of Aquitaine, March/May 1152, bllt !'efers to Henry I as the only King Henry of England, and thus predates the succession of Henry 11, Ort/ Dec 1154. 40. PL, CLXXXVI, cols.147J-4. 41. William, Dialo{!;Ue, see fuH ref in abbreviations. Edited from Oxford, Queen 's College, ms. 348. 39.

44

SlJGER'S WRITINGS

most aspects of policy, and was actively engaged in undermining Louis' attempts to see a Capetian nephew on the English throne when he died, Of course, Suger was suffering from the inevitable adverse reaction when a dominant personality dies, but there was a good measure of truth in all of these criticisms, William wrote to answer them, and dispel them if possible: in doing so he created myths which have dung about his subject like Scotch mist ever since,

WILLIAM'S MYfHS One ofWilliam's myths was that of Suger's lowly birth, which he used to good effect, together with Suger's short stature, to enhance the achievements ofhis hero,42 Here, indeed, he was following his hero's own line, for the mature Suger, like Verdi, conspired in the creation of this myth, the timeless romance of the peasant boy who rises to sit with kings and emperors, For generations of historians, French historians in particular, the emotive word 'peasant' has cast a Zolaesque tone over images of Suger; he has peasant cunning, and an affinity with the land which transmutes imperceptibly into an affinity with the land of France. Modern historians have seen Suger's undoubted energy and achievements as a manifestation of the desperate desire of the short, and/ or ill-born to prove themselves before a potentially hostile world. 43 Suger was short, but he did not emerge from the very bottom of the social pile. His family were minor knights from the Parisis, neither very rich nor very grand, but not without connections. Suger's relationships with the kings of France is another area befogged by William's myth-making. As I have already indicated, Suger's relationship with the two Louis was complex and often unhappy. There was little love lost, and little concensus on policy between Suger and Louis VII. It is a measure of the failure of their relationship that Louis had already decided to break with the tradition of generations of kings of France, and be buried somewhere other than StDenis. William, however, stresses the doseness between Suger 42. Vita, oe, pp.380, 378. 43. See esp. Panofsky, pp.30-5.

45

SETTING THE SCENE

and Louis VII, and the extent to which Louis was guided by his ex-regent's counsels. 44 William's image, though demonstrably false, has prevailed.

SUGER'S ACTA AND ABBEY CHARTERS Numerous charters from St-Denis survive, including Suger's own acta, some as originals, some in the abbey cartularies made in the thirteenth century, especially the great cartulary, the Liber Albus (now Archives Nationales, LL 1157, LL 1158 and LL 1159) and the earlier thirteenth-century book of immunities (now Archives Nationales LL 1156).-15 They help us to test what Suger and the thoroughly partial William have to say. But like many ecclesiastical institutions, St-Denis often drafted its own charters if the benefactor was a layman. While they could hardly vitiate the benefactor's wishes, they did not always present the situation as the lay benefactor would have seen it.~(j The other problem is forgery. From the mid-eleventh century St-Denis possessed a scriptorium of brilliant forgers. n Suger's most important acta for the abbey are his two Ordinances, the first of 1124, the second of 1l40/1, and his Testament, and related acta, of June 1137. All three are inspired by Carolingian prototypes with an honoured place in the abbey archives, the two Ordinances by Abbot Hilduin's ordinance of 832, establishing reformed monasticism at St-Denis, and the Testament by Abbot Fulrad's will of 777. 48 Suger's two Ordinances establish celebrations and anniversaries at the abbey, and establish their funding. The 1124 44. Vita, pp.379, 382, 384. 45. For the cartularies, see G. Le beI, Catalogue des actes de l'abbaye de StDenis relative a la province de Sens (Paris, 1935) , pp.v-vi. 46. F. Gasparri, L 'ienture des actes de Louis VI, Louis VIl et Philippe Auguste (Paris, 1973), pp . lO-II. 47. C. Van d e Kieft, Etude sur le chartrier et la seigneurie du prieure de laChapelle-Aude (Assen, 1960), p .62 and idem, 'Deux Diplömes faux de Charlemagne pour Saint-Denis du xiie siede ', Le Mayen Age, 64 (1958), pp.413-23, and L. Levillain, ' Etudes SUl' I'abbaye de Saint-Denis a I'e poque merovingienne: 111 privilegium et immunitates', BEC, 87 (1926), pp.20-97 and pp.245-346, es p. pp.87-94 and 245-330. 48. Respectively, Felibien , pp.xlix-ii; p.xxxviii, no.lvi. Note that in Ord, Suger refe rs to his 'oth e r ordinance' of 1124, OC, p.35l.

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SUGER'S WRITINGS

Ordinance is firmly dated to autumn 1124 by its witnesses, the papal legates Gregory of St Angelo and Peter Leonis, though Lecoy's incorrect date of c,1130 continues to survive in the literature,49 The later Ordinance was issued in 1140 or 1141. Since it mentions the laying of the foundation stones for the new east end, it must postdate 14July 1140. Owing to the death of its witnesses, it cannot be later than 22 January 1142. 50 In addition to establishing anniversaries for the death of Charles the Bald, and apportioning various revenues for the running of the abbey, it re cords recent ceremonies involved in the rebuilding and refitting of the abbey church. Suger recycled these sections into the De Consecratione. During a great session in the chapter house of St-Denis on 17 June 1137, Suger issued three related acta: his TestamentS]; an act to endow the abbey treasury52; and an act establishing and funding masses and pittances at the church of St-Paul. S3 The three acta were definitely issued together. All have identical invocations, not repeated exactly in any other Suger act. The act for St-Paul refers directly to the Testament, the provisions of which it extends. But there are minor textual problems. Only the Testament, the sole survivor in the original, is dated 1137. The other two are dated 1138, but the addition of an extra stroke to a Roman numeral date during copying is not infrequent. The Testament, however, has an anachronistic witness list. A list of great prelates follows the monastic signatures. Exactly the same set of prelates, in a slightly different order, witness the 1140/1 Ordinance. The archbishops of Reims and Tours had not succeeded to these honours in 1137, though they had by 1140. The prelates' signatures appear to have been appended to the Testament when the Ordinance was issued. They are in a slightly different hand from the main text and the monastic signatures of the Testament, but closely resemble the signatures on the Ordinance. Probably the Testament was brought out again 49. 50.

51. 52. 53.

oe, pp.326-31. The presence of the two legates dates it to autumn 1124, see 1. S. Robinson, The Papacy 1073-1198 (Cambridge, 1990), p.158. Original, AN K23, no.5; oe, pp.349-60, no.x. For the death ofRobert of Corbie, see Panofsky, pp.142-3. oe, pp.333-41, no.vii; original AN. K.22, no.9, 7. oe, pp.342-4, no.viii; LL 1157, f.319. oe, pp.344-9, no.ix; LL 1157, f.54. 47

SETIING THE SCENE

in 1140/1, and corroborated by this extra impressive set of witnesses.

ALTERNATIVE VIEWS: THE MORIGNY CHRONICLER AND ORDERIC VITALlS Two contemporary historians are of particular value in testing and expanding Suger's own histories. The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis is remarkably reliable, and very weIl informed about most matters concerning France and Normandy, though it has both the virtues and the limitations of an outsider's view of events in Capetian France. 54 The Morigny Chronicle, on the other hand, is an insider's view. It was 'Yritten in three stages at the abbey of Morigny, just outside Etampes, between, 1106 and 1152. 55 Because the court spent so much time at Etampes, the abbey had dose connections with the king and those who surrounded hirn. It is a gossipy, scandalmongering and deeply partial narrative; but wh at people were like, what they did, and what made them do it, often emerges more c1early from the inconsequential ramblings of the Morigny monks, than from Suger's dense prose of epic intention. One important point must be made about all these source materials. All, even the letters and charters, were preserved by or for ecc1esiastical institutions; all the histories, even those of kings, were written by churchmen. They wrote about what seemed important to them, and about motives as they understood them. As a result, some ecc1esiastics assurne a centrality to events that they may not have had at the time, while the major secular players, who were really at the centre of contemporary power struggles - the Queens Adela and Eleanor of Aquitaine, the magnates like Ralph of Vermandois, Amaury de Montfort, or Bouchard de Montmorency - are marginalised. The same is occasionally true of churchmen who behaved, like Stephen de Garlande, with such 54. OV (see abbreviations for fuH ref). 55. Chron Mor (see abbreviations for full ref). For dates of composition, see introduction, pp.i-xv, esp. ii-iii, xi-xii, xv.

48

SUGER'S WRITINGS

worldliness that they forfeited all sympathy from their clerical fellows. We are often forced to infer what these men and women were up to from very indirect and often hostile evidence. Fortunately, our hero is a churchman of impeccable orthodoxy.

49

Chapter 3

LOW HORIZONS: THE POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE OF CAPETIAN FRANCE AROUND 1100

THE CAPETIANS AND THEIR PRINCES It is easy to dismiss the world in which Suger grew to manhood as small and deeply provincial. The kings of France were effective rulers of a fraction of their notional realm. They made a poor showing beside the French princes in their great principalities, the counties of Poitou, Anjou, BloisChartres, Champagne and Flanders, and the duchies of Aquitaine and Normandy. The counties of Blois-Chartres and Champagne, Troyes and Meaux were not notably better administered than the Capetian Ile de France, but they presented a potential strategie threat to the Capetians, in that all the counties were held by the same family, and frequently fell, throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries, to a single heir. Time and again, the Capetians found their own domains squashed, like the filling in a sandwich, between the extensive honours of a count of Blois-Champagne. The duchy of Aquitaine was too far away to be threatening, but also too far away for the French king to have any effective authority there. In the north, the counts of Anjou and Flanders, and the dukes of Normandy, ran their princedoms with a markedly tighter hand than the Capetians managed in the Ile de France. They controlled their magnates, extracted revenue from their burgeoning cities, made laws, and were seen to enforce public law, and saw their deeds and achievements celebrated in poems and chronicles.

50

CAPETIAN FRANCE AROUND 1100

The duchy of Normandy was a political problem of a special nature. The dukes of Normandy had become kings of England in 1066. They were now infinitely wealthier than the Capetians and added to a natural ability for tough government the allure of the Lord's anointed. This might not have been so bad had Normandy been as distant from the Capetian heartlands as Aquitaine or even Flanders. But the Normans were immediate neighbours, and the Vexin, the principal war-zone between them, was a mere twenty miles from Paris. A marriage alliance between the Normans and the counts of Blois-Chartres had not helped the Capetians' political relationships with the northern princes. 1 The Capetians were not just outelassed politically. Many of the principalities were economically more developed than the Capetian He de France, especially Flanders, Champagne and Normandy, all of which were already major trading centres. A element elimate, together with large stretches of easily exploited coastal or riverine soils, had brought easy wealth to Aquitaine and the Loire Valley. Cultural developments tended to coincide, as they usually do, with economic success and political vitality, and here too the late-eleventh-century He de France made a poor showing against Normandy or the Loire Valley.2

ROYAL AUTHORllY IN THE CAPETIAN HEARTLANDS If the king of France seemed little more than a primus inter pares among the great princes of his kingdom, he hardly cut a dash against the magnates of his own Capetian heartlands. These families - notably the Montfort, the Montlheri/ Rochefort, the Montmorency, the Puisets, the Boves/Marle/ Coucy - were mainly castellan in origin, but by the late eleventh century the more successful among them regarded 1. On the Capetians and the princes, see E. Hallam , 'The King and the Princes in Eleventh CentUI-Y France' , Bulletin of lhe Institute of Historical Research, 53 (1980), pp. 143-56; J. Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843-1180 (Oxford, 1985), esp. pp.162-222; K. F. Werner,'Kingdom and Principality in 12th CentUI-Y France ', in The Medieual Nobility, e d . T. Reute r (Oxford, 1979) , pp.243-90. 2. On th e economy of the He de France , G . Fourquin, Les campagnes de la region parisienne la fin du moyen age (Paris, 1964) , pp.59-190, though as th e title implies, the book focuses on later centuries.

a

51

SETfING THE SCENE

themselves as counts. Th'ey took upon themselves a fair measure of public authority; they built themselves grand castles; they founded expensive abbeys and priories in which their bodies would be buried and their souls prayed for; and they saw their sisters and daughters as suitable consorts for Capetian kings. Bertrada de Montfort became the second wife of a besotted Philip I, and the Montlheri/Rochefort family tried to marry the young Louis the Fat off to one of their daughters.''\ According to Orderic Vitalis, the great weakness of Philip I - apart from his weakness for Bertrada de Montfort - was that in his old age he lost all control over these barons. 4 Suger overheard King Philip telling his son to hold fast to the castle of Montlheri, because the 'wickedness and disloyal plottings of its owner meant that I have never had a moment's peace and quiet. The castle which cost Philip so much disquiet is barely fifteen miles from central Paris. Much of Louis the Fat's early reign was spent trying to reimpose royal control in the Capetian heartlands. It was not an easy task. The Ile dc France magnates were closely related to each other, and orten called upon the counts of Blois/Champagne and the Norman dukes for support against the Capetians. Suger describes young Louis as isolated and surrounded in Paris: on one occasion, he teils us, in a striking metaphor, that the tightly-linked magnate alliances threaten to 'disembowel the king'." The picture painted by both Orderic and Suger is, from the royal point of view, a grim one. The Capetians lacked both the charisma and the utter ruthlessness that made a great medieval king. They failed to inspire either awe or fear, or even rnuch respect. But no one really tried to overthrow the dynasty. Suger has an anecdote about the previous count of Corbeil threatening to kill King Philip and grasp the crown, but this seems to be an isolated case and the crusty old count with his rusty old sword is cornic rather than terrifying.' There "I

3. See VLG, esp, chapters ii-viii, xi, xv, xix-xxii, xxiv. See also J p, Poly and E. BOllrnazel, La mutation jeodale, x- xiie siecles (Paris, 1980), and BOllrnazel, Gouvernement, pp.32-65. 4. OV, VI, p.156. 5. VLG, p.38. 6. VLG, p .150. 7. ~rLG, p.150.

52

CAPETlAN FRANCE AROUND }100

are determined attempts to influence and control the young Louis the Fat; but not to displace hirn. This is true not just of the magnates of the Ile de France, but also of the great princes. Theobald of Blois 'rebels against the king as if by hereditary right', according to the Morigny Chronicle: 8 but the implication, with which Theobald, Louis and the Morigny chronider, it seems, agreed, was that while counts have a hereditary right to rebel, kings have a hereditary right to be king. The fact that it was all very dose to agame is given away by Louis the Fat hirnself, who, suddenly realising that one of the many skirmishes against a revolting magnate is getting just a litde too serious, admonishes his opponent: 'It's not just at chess, you know, that it's forbidden to take the king!'9 This does not mean that the magnates did not resist the king. The magnates protected their own interests, and the public authority which they had become used to wielding as unofficial counts, as far as they could. Louis and his counsellors undoubtedly thought they were reimposing royal authority, returning to an imagined political status quo. How disordered was northern France around 1100? Our sources are mainly monastic and dedicated to presenting the grimmest possible picture of this world. Society functioned as an intricate protection racket, but it did function, and it was getting, around 1100, perceptibly richer. The king was in theory and in fact the greatest protector in the racket. The Norman king/dukes were undoubtedly more successful at protecting than the Capetians, but their subjects paid heavily for the military and legal protection they offered. Protection was more likely to be in 'private' hands, in the hands of counts and magnates, in Capetian France, but the fact that it was devolved, does not necessarily make it less effective. Successful government, whether royal, or devolved to a count, does not make a story, and from the chronides we only hear about its failures, about the occasions when disputes are pursued with, or can only be settled by, violence. Many charters from this period tell a slightly different story, 8. Chran Mur, p.22 'velud hereditario bellorumjure, regem cepit infestare'. 9. 'Nec in scakorum ludo solus rex non capitur', Anonymous of Laon, RHF, XIII, p.678, n.

53

SETTING THE SCENE

a story of disputes settled and transactions effected with general approbation, and without resort to violence, though undoubtedly with a generous greasing of palms.

CAPETIAN GOVERNMENT Louis the Fat's contemporary, King Henry I of England and Normandy, has the reputation as the first king to grasp the full necessity of good administration, and the importance of being seen to be a maker of laws and provider of justice. That reputation was already weH established in Henry's own lifetime, and Henry's kingship was widely admired, particularly, perhaps by Frenchmen like Bishop Ivo of Chartres, the monk Hugh of Fleury, and Suger himself, who saw it from a comfortable distance. Even Suger regarded Henry I as a far better king than Louis the Fat. Henry I's propaganda machine was very effective, and it is towards Henry's entourage rather than to the Capetians' that we should look for developed ideas about kings and kingship. ](I But Henry's undoubted briHiance has blinded historians to Louis' real achievements. Louis often called fuH councils of the magnates and prelates of the Ile de France, occasionally of broader France, at which he was seen to take advice and counsel. But effective decisions were taken by a much smaller informal group of intimates. The composition of this group was unfixed and shifting, depending entirely on royal favour, and to an extent on the type of business in hand. It induded members of the household, sometimes induding household officers, like the seneschal and, pre-eminently, the chancellor; prelates, like Bishop Geoffrey of Chartres, J ocelyn of Soissons and Suger himself; and magnates who were at various times dose to the king - like Amaury de Montfort, later Ralph of Vermandois. Special problems and disputes with an ecdesiastical element were usually dealt with by small commissions of suitable prelates. We do not know whether Louis the Fat ever established similar small commissions of 10.

J.

A. Green, The Govemment oj England wider Henry J (Cambridge. 1986) . esp. pp.6-10 für propaganda, pp.95-117 für Henry and justice. Cf. the cümme nts üfSuger, VLG, pp.14, 98-102; Ivü üfChartres, PL, CLXII, ii, p.124, letter 01, p.133, letter cxviii; and Hugh üfFleury, Trartatus, which was written für Henry, esp. pp.466-7.

54

CAPETIAN FRANCE AROUND 1100

lay arbiters to deal with civil disputes, along the lines of Henry I's Norman justiciars. lt does seem that the arm of Capetian law was very short in comparison to the Anglo-Norman. Nevertheless, Capetian government under Louis the Fat, while not always effective, was certainly more administratively sophisticated than is often thought. 11 An active and efficient chancery developed under Louis the Fat's favourite and chancellor, Stephen de Garlande. 12

THE CHANCELLOR STEPHEN DE GARLANDE Stephen de Garlande and his brothers were the most powerful family at court during the first twenty years of Louis VI's reign. The older three, Anselm, William and Gilbert, were renowned warriors. Anselm and William became Louis the Fat's seneschals. This was the most important of the royal offices, for the seneschal was head of both the royal household and the royal army. In 1100/1101 both Philip and the young Louis supported, in vain, the candidacy of the youngest Garlande, Stephen, as bishop ofBeauvais. Stephen's episcopal pretensions were quashed by the formidable Bishop Ivo of Chartres, who denounced Stephen as 'not even a subdeacon, illiterate, agambier, a woman-chaser, and publicly accused of adultery' .1 3 Stephen never got his bishopric; but he became royal chancellor in 1106, and amassed an impressive set of ecclesiastical POSitiOll.S. He was archdeacon of Paris, dean of Orleans, canon of Etampes, and dean of Ste-Genevieve in Paris. After the death of his brothers, he too became seneschal. 1-! Stephen emerges from the scanty sources as a worldly man, in many ways unsuited to his clerical career. Since all written sources are clerical in origin, Stephen has a particularly bad press. He found himself on the wrong side of a local quarrel with the monks of Morigny, earning the hatred 11. Dufour, Actes, III, pp.37-64. 12. Dufour, Actes, III, pp.39-40, 42. 13. RHF, XV, p .llO, no.lv, and see also ibid . p.109, no.liv, p.llI , no.lvii, pp .1l2-13, no.lix. 14. For the Garlandes, see Bournazel , Gouvernement, esp. pp.35-40, 523.

55

SETTING THE SCENE

of the principal purveyors of court gosSip.l:' He was hardly the churchman to appeal to firm upholders of ecclesiastical standards, like Ivo of Chartres or St Bernard. All agree that he loved power, and all the trappings that come with it. Occasionally, in the more neutral world of charter evidence, we can see the tremendous intelligence with which he exploited his estates, and every perquisite of power, both lay and ecclesiastical, to make hirnself extremely rich. lti He deployed the results of his peculation ",ith great style, building palaces, as his friend, Hildevert of Lavardin chided hirn, more grandly than Solomon. 17 His own palace chapel of St-Aignan, which in part survives, is remarkably elegant, with the earliest use in the Ile de France of en dilit shafting and consciously classical capitals. He appears to have brought in sculptors from Cluny.1 8 Like most old reprobates, he must have had considerable charm: while he made enemies easily, he also had many, often unlikely, friends. The king was devoted to hirn, Pope Calixtus II warmed to hirn eventually, Suger was a close friend for a long time, as were the high-minded Hildevert of Lavardin, bishop of Le Mans, and Geoffrey of U:ves, bi shop of Chartres. It was doubtless owing to the latter friendship that Stephen's nephew, Samson Mauvoisin, was made canon and then dean at Chartres. 19 Nor was Stephen necessarily the great enemy of ecclesiastical reform that he is always painted. He was the prime mover in the establishment of a Fontevraudine house at Orleans in 1113, ~II and he supported the foundation of Cour-Dieu, the first Cistercian house in Capetian territory, by Bishop John of Orleans in 1119. 21 As an old man, he made gifts to Louis the Fat's Cistercian foundation of Chaalis.~2 Chron Mor, pp.27, 32, 42-3. Bournazel, 'Suger and the Capetians', Symposium, p.57. RHF, XV, pp.324-5. See forthcorning article on the chapel by D. Johnson, and L. Grant. Sarnson was really a nephew-in-Iaw; his brother Robert was rnarried to Stephen's niece Agnes, see Bournazel, Gouvernement, p.38, but that brings hirn v.ithin the kin networkings of nepotisrn. For the Mauvoisin farnily, Cartulaire de I'abbaye de Saint-Martin de PontoiIe, ed. J. Depoin (Pontoise, 1895), pp.250-69. 20. GC, VIII, coUSO], and instr.500-l. 2l. Ge, VIII, co1.1582, and instr.50], no.xxii. 22. As dean of Ste-Genevieve, see Chaalis Cartulary, Paris, BN.lat.l1003, f.12v-13r, nO.13. 15. 16. 17. 18. ] 9.

56

CAPETIAN FRANCE AROUND 1100

It has been suggested that Suger and Stephen de Garlande were rivals for Louis' favour, that it was Suger who finally pushed Stephen from power. 23 Rather, it seems that Suger worked closely with the Garlandes during their ascendancy; but if he rose to royal prominence on their coat-tails, he knew when to let go, and was not implicated in Stephen de Garlande's spectacular fall in 1127/8. 21

PARIS AND THE PARISIS The chancellor and the chancery were more likely to stay put in Paris than the king, but Bautier has shown the extent to which Louis the Fat favoured and developed Paris. 25 The Parisis was finally beginning to partake in the economic growth that had already transformed Normandy and the Loire. St-Denis charters reveal a remarkably developed trade economy - alm ost an urban economy - at the very beginning of the twelfth century.26 The density of early-twelfth-century church building suggests that the plains to the north of Paris, and the valleys of the Seine and the Lower Oise were experiencing considerable demographie growth. By the early twelfth century, Paris was also emerging as the intellectual centre ofnorthern France. Important schools were attached to the cathedral, to Ste-Genevieve, and to StVictor, after its foundation. The most brilliant masters in the new theology of philosophy and dialectic, like Abelard and William of Champeaux, established themselves, with their students, in and around the growing city.27

THE FRENCH CHURCH In this violent but vibrant and ever wealthier society, the church was widely seen, and to an extent saw itself, as one 23. Bautier, Paris/ Abelard, p.69. 24. See be\ow, pp.124-9. 25. R. H. Bautier, 'Quand et comment Paris devint capitale' , Bulletin de La Societe de l'histoire de Paris et de l'Ile de rrance, CV, 1978, pp.17-46; Bautier, Paris/ Abelard, pp.21-77. 26. Esp. Dufour, Actes, I, no.70, pp.152-8, act of 1112. 27. Bautier, 'Paris/Abe\ard', and J. Chatillon, 'Abelard et les ecoles', AbeLard en son temps, ed. J. Jolivet (Paris, 1981), pp.133-60.

57

SETfING THE SCENE

of the main objects of proteetion . A system of lay protectors, known as advocates, had grown up during the age of Viking attacks. Protection as ever had its price, and the church had paid its advocates with substantial landed property, rights and revenues. Viking attacks belonged to the distant past, but the advocates remained entrenched, and as far as the church was concerned, unduly exploitative of what might once have been given to them. Most churchmen now objected on principle to church property being in the hands of laymen, and were committed to regaining what they saw as usurped properties. Needless to say, the advocates did not see it in the same terms, and there was immense room for dispute here.~R The French church was expected to play an active role in the government of Capetian France. Administration was entirely staffed by churchmen, the only social group sufficiently educated to put pen to parchment. The bishops were important agents of local government, with substantial public authority invested in them. Most great churchmen were the younger sons and brothers of the great princes and magnates, so that even when church and lay interests were most at odds, it was possible to come to an accommodation.

THE IMPACT OF GREGORIAN REFORM The church had always looked to the pope in Rome as its head. By the late eleventh century papal government of, or at least interference in, the north European churches was becoming a reality. The Gregorian reform movement of the mid-eleventh century had totally alte red the church, both in outlook and as an institution. The Gregorians wanted to disentangle the church from the secular world. This was quite out of the question, but it is what lay behind the insistence that ecclesiastical property should not be in the hands of laymen, and that laymen should not be able to interfere in the church . This may have seemed logical, even desirable, in Rome in the 1050s. But no responsible north European prince could possibly afford to accept the implications of 28. F. Senn, L 'institution des avoueries ecctesiastiques en France (Paris, 1903) .

58

CAPETIAN FRANCE AROUND 1100

disentangling a church which was so tightly stitched into the social fabric, and which played so important a role in executive government. By and large, the French and English church took an accommodating approach. By 1106/7 the central problem of episcopal investiture had been resolved. The king would not interfere in elections, but he would continue to invest the bishops with a ring and a staff, the signs of their public authority; and the bishop would still swear homage or fidelity to the king for the secular authority that he would properly wield. This prevented loss of face all round, and had met with general acceptance. Both France and England avoided the bitter intransigence of the Investiture Contest in the Empire. And the church in both found some sympathy for its insistence that church property should not be in lay hands. The church was increasingly able to play upon lay guilt, and received increasing amounts of property which the church regarded as restitution, though the lay donor usually saw it as a gift. Many of the leaders of the Gregorian reform emerged from a monastic background, several from Montecassino. Because they found that so many of the northern bishops were perfectly content with what they saw as the iniquitous relationship of church and state, much late-eleventh-century papallegislation undermined episcopal powers. Many of the great monasteries exploited the situation to liberate themselves from the authority of their own diocesan bishops. Cluny had already negotiated itself into the property of St Peter, and was thus answerable only to St Peter's earthly representative, the pope in Rome. Other abbeys followed suit, notably Montecassino. St-Denis itself, in 1068, obtained a papal privilege which gave it important immunity from its diocesan, the bishop of Paris, and the right to appeal to Rome in extremis. When, finally, the issue of episcopal investiture was settled in 1122, the papal curia found that it had gone too far in undermining the authority of its bishops within their dioceses, and there was a sharp reaction at the Lateran Council of 1123. The powers of the bishops were reaffirmed, often at the expense of the monasteries. And with the great political battle of episcopal investiture won, the papacy could focus more fiercely on the less urgent but more challenging question of lay possession of church property. 59

SETTING THE SCENE

THE NEW MONASTICISM However, by the 1120s the main thrust of reform in the ehurch was no longer emanating from Rome, and the ins titutional powers of bis hops were not central to it. Indeed, it was the church in its most institutional guise that was under attack. The new ideal, expressed, as ecclesiastical reforming ideals so often were, as areturn to the purity of the early church, was an austere and often eremetie monasticism whieh emerged in the marginal lands, the hills and forests of Burgundy, Savoy, Maine, and the uplands of the Limousin. Some groups, notably the Carthusians and the Grandmontines, retained a strong eremetical element. The abbeyestablished at Fontevrault by Robert of Arbrissel offered a new austere regular life to women. But far and away the most successful of these new orders were the Cistercians. Established at Citeaux in northern Burgundy in 1098, they expanded into a well-organised order with the foundation of several daughter houses. In 1115 a daughter house was founded at Clairvaux. The charismatic and manipulative personality of its first abbot, St Bernard, and his brilliant and emotive writings, soon made Clairvaux the effective centre of the new order, and Bernard its principal spokesman. The ideals of the new monastieism corresponded to the main thrust of post-Investiture papal reforms in that they took a strong and novel line on the question of lay property and interference. The early Cistercians in particular insisted that they should receive property as outright gift, and refused tithes from property which remained in lay hands. Their new houses were founded with the fuH assent of the diocesan bishop, so that they gained a reputation for supporting the rights of the diocesan, though onee founded, the strong internaiorganisation of the order tended to mitigate the influence of the local bishop. In both cases, they seemed far more in tune with papal reformist ideas than the oIder Benedietine houses, especially the Cluniacs, with their jealously guarded episcopal immunities, and their difficulty in distancing themselves from lay propertied interests. Fortunately, in other areas the older Benedictines were closer to a papal view of how the chureh should be run. The new orders insisted on an austere regime of silence, and a

60

CAPETIAN FRANCE AROUND 1100

simplified liturgy, enacted with the plainest of vestments and liturgical vessels. The role of the monk was to turn away from the world and pray. Silence and simple liturgy cut little ice with the Roman curia: their model of a modern monastery remained Montecassino, not Clairvaux. And their outlook was perforce political: a church exempt from lay interference may have been their expressed ideal, but they did not visualise a church divorced from lay society. On the contrary, they assumed rather a large measure of ecclesiastical interference in lay affairs. 29

THE IMPACT OF REFORMED MONASTICISM IN THE ILE DE FRANCE The new monasticism did not arrive in the Ile de France unti! well into the second decade of the twelfth century. Like England and Normandy, the area had only recently absorbed the Cluniacs, who still passed for new monasticism in Paris at the end of the eleventh century. Their main house in the Paris area was St-Martin-des-Champs. It was a royal foundation, and rapidly attracted the patronage of the great and the good of the Ile de France. It received substantial endowments, and it was to St-Martin-des-Champs, or its various dependent priories, that the Capetian aristocracy retired when life got too much, and to which they would consign their bodies and the salvation of their souls at death. 30 The long-established Parisian Benedictine houses, St-Denis and St-Germain-des-Pres, must have been aware of the loss of patronage, as must the old and prestigious college of secular canons at Ste-Genevieve. Perhaps as a result, Suger could be strongly anti-Cluniac:~l Another reformist strand in northern France had emerged from a newly strict approach to the life of non-monastic 29. For Gregorian reform, see 1. S. Robinson, The Papacy 1073-1198 (Cambridge, 1990) and H. E. J. Cowdrey, 'f.'he Age of Abbot Desiderius. M ontecassino, the Papacy, and the Normans in the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centwies (Oxford, 1983). For the new monasticism, H . Leyser, Hennits and the New Monasticism. A Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe, 1000-1150 (London, 1984) . 30. SMC Cart, I, passim. 31. See his comments in Admin, OC, p.177.

61

SETTING THE SCENE

clergy, living together under a rule as regular canons, developed by Ivo of Chartres at St-Quentin at Beauvais in the late eleventh century. The ideal had many adherents in northern France. In 1113, it received the royal imprimatur when Louis the Fat founded the house of St-Victor on the outskirts of Paris. 32 As a royal foundation, St-Victor attracted much interest and patronage, particularly from those who liked a touch of austerity in those who prayed for them. 3 '1 The first of the new reformed monastic orders to penetrate Capetian France was Fontevrault. This order for women religious was much favoured, not least because it solved the intractable aristocratic problem of unplaced daughters, sisters and widowed mothers. In 1112, Louis and Amaury de Montfort founded a house at Hautes-Bruyeres::\4 in 1113, Stephen de Garlande founded one in Orleans.:\" Suger was a great admirer of the order.'\ii Hard on the heels of Fontevrault came the Cistercians. Surprisingly, the person who introduced the Cistercian order to Capetian territory was Bishop John of Orleans, with the full support of his dean, Stephen de Garlande, at Cour-Dieu in 1119.:\7 J ohn of Orleans was not otherwise a standard bearer of reform. Ivo of Chartres claimed he had amistress called Flora, about whom he wrote and circulated salacious poetry.:\HGeoffrey of Leves, bishop of Chartres, was involved with the foundation of L'Aumone in 1121. 3!1 Geoffrey, a good friend of Stephen de Garlande, was perhaps the most highly regarded of the French episcopate, both as a man of God, and as a wise and effective politician.~() All the early houses were founded from Citeaux. But in the 1120s and early 1130s, the bishops of Capetian France 32. Dufour, Actes, I, pp.173-80, no.SO. 33. R. H. Bautier, 'Les origines et les premiers deve!oppments de l'abbaye Saint-Vietor de Paris', in L 'Abbaye Parisienne de Saint- Victor au Moyen Age (Bibliotheea Victorina I) ed. J. Lougere (Paris, 1991), pp.23-52; M. Schoebe!, Archiv und Besitz der Abtei St Viktor in Paris (Bonn, 1991). 34. Dufour, Actes, I, pp.168-9, no.75 . 35. GC, VIII, coU501 and instr.500-1 , and see above, p.56. 36. Suge r to Eugenius III, oe, pp.263-4. 37. CC, VIII , cols.1582-3, instr.50l, 502-3. 38. GC, VIII , eo1.l445 . 39. GC, VIII, co1.l397, instr.419-20. 40. See far example Chron Mor, p.68. 'scientie qllidem litte ralis non indignlls seeularium quoque negociorum dispositor ae traet.ator famosus'.

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CAPETIAN FRANCE AROUND 1100

tumed to St Bemard's ClaiIvaux. Bartholomew de Vir, bishop of Laon, who had Burgundian family connections, set the fashion, founding Foigny from Clairvaux in 1121.41 Renaud of Reims founded Igny in 1126;42 Simon ofVermandois, bishop of Noyon, who was a cousin of Bartholomew de Vir, and in whose mother's household Bartholomew had be gun his derical career, founded Ourscamp in 1129;4~1 Bishop Jocelyn of Soissons, the dedicatee of the Life 01 Louis the Fat, founded Longpont in 1132. 44 In 1136, Louis the Fat himself founded Chaalis, but the mother house was Pontigny, not Clairvaux. 45

THE ABBEY OF ST-DENIS The abbey of St-Denis, to which Suger was given as a child oblate around 1090, and in whose congregation he would spend the rest of his life, was one of the oldest and most prestigious foundations in northem France. The abbey was believed to have been founded by King Dagobert on the site of the burial of St Denis, who had converted Gaul to Christianity. The abbey was certainly of Merovingian foundation, and had dose connections with the Merovingian dynasty from the seventh century on. From as early as 625, the kings described St Denis as 'our special patron' in their charters; several members of the Merovingian dynasty were buried at St-Denis, induding Dagobert I (628-38) himself, and they gave generously to their favoured foundation. The royal connection continued under the Carolingians and Capetians. The abbey was the burial place of Pepin the Short and Charles the Bald, of Hugh Capet and Robert the Pious. Royal acts continued to refer to St Denis as 'our special patron'; royal generosity continued to flow, in gifts of property, rights, 41. CC, IX, 528-32, and B. Guenee,'Les genealogies entre l'histoire et la politique: la fierte d'etre capetien, en France, au moyen age', AC'SC, 33 (1978), p.456. 42. CC, X, instr.37, no.xxxv. 43. Guenee, 'Genealogies', p.456; CC, IX, co1.l129. 44. C. Bruzelius, 'Cistercian High Gothic: The Abbey Church of Longpont and the Architecture of the Cistercians in the early 13th century', Analecta Cisterciensia, 35 (1979), pp.5-154, esp . pp. 19-28 for the foundation. 45. CC, X, co1.l508, and see below, p.139.

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revenues, relics, and luxurious liturgical toys. In the ninth and tenth centuries, the king himself was titular abbot. 46 In the eighth and ninth centuries, especially under Abbots Fulrad and Hilduin, the abbey was a flourishing centre of spirituality, learning and artistic production. A magnificent monastic library was collected through acquisition and an active scriptorium. By 1100, the ab bey still carried aB the weight of its ninth-century prestige, of its role as royal necropolis. But no one now looked to it for spirituality; and in the 1120s it would be condemned as a sink of iniquity. 47 The paucity ofbook production or acquisition at the abbey in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries is evidence that scholarship and learning were aB but dead.4~

ST DENIS AND HIS SHRINE-CHURCH The abbey's connection with the kings of France was undoubtedly important: nevertheless, historians tend to overlook the primary purpose of the abbey, that is as burial site, shrine site of, and hence site of pilgrimage to, one of the most important saints in the French pantheon, Denis, apostle to the Gauls, and first bishop of Paris - 'Denis, lord of aB France', as Guibert of Nogent caBed him.-I9 The saint himself had developed a life of his own over the years. He had by now appropriated the personae of three quite different historical figures. The core figure was Denis, bishop of Paris, martyred by the Emperor Decius in the third century, according to Gregory of Tours. Legend 46. For the early abbey, Crosby, Rayal Abbey, pp.7-IO; Histoire de SaintDenis, ed. R. Bourderon and P. de Peretti , Toulouse, 1988, pp .25-83; Wyss, Atlas, pp.18-42, 110-19, 138-9. 47. See below, pp. 184-5. 48. On the library and scriptorium at St-Denis, see J. Vezin, 'Le scriptorium de Saint-Denis', in Un village au lemps de Charlemagne: moines et paysans de l'abbaye de Saint-Denis du viie sieeIe a l'an mil, ed. J. Cuisenier, R. Guadagnin (Paris, 1988) , pp.77-81; D. Nebbiai della Garda, La bibliolheque de l'abbaye de Saint Denis en Fmnce du [Xe au XVIIIe siede (Paris. 1985) and H. Stahl , 'The problem of manuscript painting at Saint-Denis during the abbacy of Suger', Symposium, pp.163-81. 49. J. F. Benton. Self and Sodety in Medieval Fmnce. The Memoirs 0/ Abbot Guiberl 0/ Nogent, Medieval Academy Reprints (Toronto, 1984) , p .2 28.

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soon elabrated: the saint and his companions, Rusticus and Eleutherius, were beheaded at Montmartre, from whence they had walked to what became St-Denis with their heads tucked underneath their arms. At an early stage Bishop Denis of Paris was confused with Dionysius (or Denis) the Areopagite, an Athenian converted by St Paul, according to Luke, who became, according to Eusebius, bishop of Athens. The confusion was compounded by another Dionysius, a fifth- or sixth-century Greek theologian, who had called himself the Areopagite, and has thus become known to historians as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. In the ninth century, Abbot Hilduin of St-Denis identified what we call the PseudoDionysius with what was already a composite character. Now St Denis was the first bishop of Paris, a disciple of St Paul, and the author of various theological treatises, of which the most famous was the Celestial Hierarchy. The library at St-Denis was weH stocked with manuscripts of the Pseudo-Dionysius' works, including a resplendent ninth-century Greek copy, together with translations and commentaries by Hilduin and John Scot Erugena. By the thirteenth century, and probably long before, the text of the Celestial Hierarchy was read to the monks in the refectory on the eve of the feast of St Denis. 50 The relics of this composite character were kept in the confessio, the central part of the crypt of the church, and displayed on feast days, in their magnificent reliquaries, on the altar in the choir of the upper church.'J\ 50. P. Schmitz, 'Les lectures de table a l'abbaye de Saint-Denis vers le fin du Moyen-Age' , R.ev.Ben., 42 (1930), pp.163-7, esp. p.166. 51. For the various Sts Denis, see Crosby, Royal Abbey, pp.3-6; Wyss, Atlas, pp.19-24. For the text of the Pseudo-Dionysius, see j. Parker, The Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 0/ Dionysius the Areopagite (London, 1894). Hilduin 's hoax was only finally unravelled in the year after Parker published, so that Parker, like Suger and his fellow monks, believed the mystical writings were by the first bishop of Paris. Erugena's translation of the Celestial Hierarchy is PL, CXXII, pp.l03570, and his commentary, ibid., pp.126-266. See also P. Rorem, PseudoDionysius: A commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to their Influence (Oxford, 1993), esp. pp.73-83 on the influence of the Celestial Hierarchy in the middle ages. See also the very clear account of the various translations and commentaries in D. Luscombe, 'The reception of the writings of Denis the pseudo-Areopagite into England', in Tradition and Change; &says in honour 0/ Marjorie Chibnall, ed. D. Greenway, C. Holdsworth,j. Sayers (Cambridge, 1985), pp.1l5-43, esp. pp.1l628.

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SETTING THE SCENE

THE NAIL AND THE THORN The abbey's other prize relic was the nail and a thorn from the crown of thorns of the Crucifixion, relics believed to have been brought back from Constantinople by Charlemagne, and given to St-Denis by Charles the Bald. Apparently, the legend developed at St-Denis in the second half of the eleventh century, though precisely when is obscure. They were important relics for Suger, who often refers to them, and were kept in the crypt dose to the remains of Denis and his companions."~ The legend was enshrined in the text known as the Iter Hierosolymitatum."'\

THE MONASTIC HIERARCHY In 862 the total number of monks at St-Denis had been limited by royal decree to 150."· We do not know exactly how many monks there were in Suger's time, but the lists of monks who witness various abbey charters suggest a total of 50-60 in the abbey itself. 55 Most monks were gradually ordained into derical orders, first as subdeacon, then deacon, and finally priest. Suger was a subdeacon by 1114,"(; but 52. Epistola Haymonis monachi ad Hugonem Abbatem Beati Dionysii, Felibien, p.clxviii. , though this is probably a late-twelfth-centu!)' text, see L. Levillain, 'Essai sur les origines du Lendit', Revue Historique, 155 (1927), pp.241-76, esp. pp.268-71. 53. F. Castets, 'Iter Hierosolymitatum ou Voyage de Charlemagne ii Jerusalem et ii Constantinople. Text latin d'apres le ms. de Montpellie r (H280)', Revue des langues romanes, 4th seI'. vi, 36 (1892). See also E. A. R. Brown and M. W. Cothren, The 12th centu!)' Crusading Window of the abbey of Saint-Denis',JWCI, 49 (1986), esp. pp.14-15, and nn.61-65, and G. Bresc-Bautier, 'L'envoi de la re!ique d e la Vraie Croix ii Notre-Dame de Paris en 1120', BEG, 129 (1971), pp.38797, and see above, p.41. 54. Charter of Charles the Bald, Felibien, pp.lxix-lxxii, nO.xciii. In 1295, Boniface VIII limited the numbers to 200 monks over 18, see G. Lebe!, Histoire administrative, economique et financiere de l'abbaye de Saint-Denis (Paris, 1935), p.38. 55. For example, the Testament and associated charters give a total of 42 monks anel 11 boys as witnesses, OG, pp.340-I, 343-4, 348-9. 56. LL 1157, p.227; Fe!ibien, p.xcii, nO.cxxii.

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CAPETIAN FRANCE AROUND 1100

was only ordained priest immediately before his induction as abbot in 1122. 57 The administration of the abbey was in the hands of senior monks, who were usually deacons or priests. The key offices were those of cellarer, who organised the collection and distribution of food and wine; the infirmarer, who ran the infirmary; the capicerius, often, in other abbeys, called the sacristan, who took care of the provision of candles and other materials for services; the almoner; the treasurer; and the precentor, who oversaw services, and looked after the abbey's archive and library.58 Above these officers was the prior, and his deputy, the subprior: and at the very pinnade of the abbey hierarchy, there was, of course, the abbot. The abbot of St-Denis from 1099 until 1122 - that is, for most of the time when Suger was a monk - was Adam. 59 Suger was dose to hirn, and spoke of hirn frequently as a father. Sadly, we know nothing about his background. Not all the monks were based at St-Denis itself. The abbey possessed properties scattered over northern France. Monks appointed administrators, prepositors, of the larger constellations of property would be absent from the monastery itself for years at a time. Suger hirnself held at least two prepositorships.60 The abbey also had various cells, like L'Estree, where Suger spent his oblacy, which housed a handful of monks, and dependent priories, like La-Chapelle-Aude in Berry, which had their own prior. The priors of the dependent houses often went on to become abbots of other Benedictine abbeys: for instance, Baldwin, prior of Deerhurst, became abbot of Bury St Edmunds in 1065. It was often a stepping stone to becoming abbot of St-Denis itself: Suger's successor, Odo of Deuil, was prior of La-Chapelle-Aude, and then, briefly, abbot of Compiegne, before becoming abbot of StDenis. The wide dispersal of St-Denis' dependencies reflects the enormous prestige of the abbey, particularly under the Carolingians. Since Charlemagne's empire extended right 57. \lLG, p.212. 58. See the lists of office-holders on the Testament and associated charters, oe, pp.340-1, 343-4, 348-9. For a general discussion of abbey officials, see D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England (Cambridge, 1950), pp.427-31, 713. 59. According to Felibien, p.134, Adam became abbot in 1094. 60. See below, pp.89-96.

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SETfING THE SCENE

ac ross France and Germany, St-Denis had, in the ninth century, aquired many properties in what was now the German empire. The various dependencies must have more than doubled the total monastic congregation of St-Denis. But the abbey was not just composed of monks. Since Benedictine monks were not supposed to labour in fields, forges or bakehouses, the abbey needed a substantial lay workforce to support them. They worked within the abbey precinct, but lived outside it in houses owned by the abbey, and formed the basis for a growing township. The abbey itself did nothing in the way of parochial duties within the town. This was the province of a college of 13 canons, based in the churches of St-Pierre and St-Paul on the northern perimeter of the abbey precinct, under the control of, and dependent on, the abbot and abbey. St-Denis, like most towns in the Ile de France, was growing apace in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, and the canons were probably, as a result, growing in importance. In 1114, they were given the church of St-Pierre, possibly recently rebuilt, and shortly thereafter rededicated. 1i1

THE FABRIC OF THE ABBEY The abbey church itself was deeply venerated, and very venerable, but beginning to show its age. The bulk of the abbey church was believed to have been built by the Merovingian king, Dagobert, and consecrated by Christ himself, though excavations have shown that this was the third church on the site, built by Abbot Fulrad in the late eighth century. An outer crypt had been wrapped around the choir by Abbot Hilduin in the early ninth century. Hilduin had probably also built the cloister with its surrounding monastic buildings - refectory, dormitory, and cellarer's range - on more or less the lines prescribed at the reform synods of Aachen in 816 and 817, and preserved in the St GaU plan. Hilduin, a monastic reformer much concerned with correct practice, had ensured that his buildings, unlike the main church, were 61. Act of Adam giving the church of St-Pierre to the canons, Felibien, p.xcii, nO.cxxii. Suger mentions the dedication in his Testament, oe, pp.347-8.

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CAPETIAN FRANCE AROUND 1100

properly oriented. As a result there was hardly a right angle to be found throughout the entire monastic complex. 62 The church had also been extended to the west, where a porchlike construction had been added to endose the grave of Charlemagne's father, Pepin, who had been buriedjust outside the original west door. Suger makes much of the bad state the abbey church was in - but then he was writing in part to justify his own expensive building campaigns. He gives the impression that no building activity had taken place since the ninth century. This was not true. A great bell tower had been built as the gift of William the Conqueror, but it was badly constructed and soon collapsed. 63 Abbot Adam built a new church for the canons of St-Paul. A set of capitals, associated bases and seetions of respond, has recently emerged from excavation. 54 These fragments represent a substantial structure, and the capitals carry a lively and sophisticated iconography, induding seen es from the life of St Denis, parable scenes, and, probably, a St Paul cyde. They appear to date from the very beginning of the century, though such judgements are always subjective. It is possible that they are from one of the churches of the canons of St-Paul. At all events, they reveal more artistic activity, of a more sophisticated quality, at the abbeyaround 1100 than either Suger, or most recent commentators, have allowed.

THE LITURGY AT ST-DENIS The monks spent much of their day within the great church. The services at St-Denis followed abasie Benedictine liturgy, with the addition of many prayers and offices approved at 62. On the new monastic plan developed at the synods, see W. Horne, 'On the Origins of the Medieval Cloister', Gesta, XII, 1973, 13-52, esp. 13. My assumption that Hilduin must have built new abbey buildings centred on a cloister is based on the fact that all subsequent abbey buildings, until the eighteenth-century rebuilding, were aligned with Hilduin's chapel. There could be other reasons for this alignment, and the hypothesis can only be tested by excavation. 63. Guibert of Nogent in Benton, Set[ and Society, p.228. 64. M. Wyss and R. Favreau, 'Saint Denis I: sculptures romanes decouvertes tors des fouilles urbaines', Bult Mon., 150 (1992), pp.309-54.

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SETTING THE SCENE

the Carolingian reform synods of 816 and 817. The liturgy of the abbey, like its architecture, owed much to Hilduin. As at Cluny, there was much emphasis on the commemoration of the dead, of dead monks, dead patrons, and dead kings who lay buried in the abbey. The real focus of the liturgy, however, was St Denis himself. li5 The monks shivered on chill marble benches, which Suger replaced, probably with more comfortable wood, when he became abbot. 66 On the great feasts, or when there were specially important visitors, such as popes or kings, services were not confined to the church itself, but issued in processions to the lesser churches scattered around and outside the abbey precincts.

THE ABBEY AND THE BISHOPS OF PARIS The saint whose remains the abbey enshrined and celebrated had been the first bishop of Paris, but the abbey had an uneasy relationship with his modern successors. Like Cluny and Montecassino, it took advantage of a pro-monastic reform papacy to assert its independence from diocesan power, and, to some extent, a direct relationship with Rome. This was obtained with the help of an elaborate set of forged charters put together in the mid-eleventh century.li7 The bishop of Paris claimed that he alone had the right to ordain all monks, monk-priests, and abbots within his diocese, including those of St-Denis. However Abbot Rainier of St-Denis obtained a buB from Pope Alexander 11, to the effect that the abbot of St-Denis had the right to order and dispose 65. On the liturgy, whieh ean be reeovered to some extent from the thirteenth-eentry Ordinary, see E. Foley, The First Ordinary 0/ the Royal Abbey 0/ St-Denis in France (Paris, Bibl.Maz.ms 526), Spieilegium Friburgense, no.32 (Fribourg, 1990) (see espeeialiy pp.261-4, 269-71 for the liturgieal fOClls on St Denis hirnself, and the extent to whieh royal Iiturgy was a seeondary eonsideration); A. Walters Robertson, The Seroice Books o[ the Royal Abbey 0/ St-Denis (Oxford, 1991); N. K. Rasmussen, The Liturgy at Saint-Denis: A Preliminary Study', Symposium, pp.41-7. On th e monastie day, see Knowles, Monastic Order in England, pp.448-52, 714-15. 66. Admin, ed. Pan, p.72. 67. BN ms.lat.326 nouv.aqu, see L. Levillain, 'Etudes sur l'abbaye de Saint-Denis a l'epoque merovingienne: III privilegium et immunitates', BEC, 87 (1926), pp.245-330.

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CAPETIAN FRANCE AROUND 1100

(regendum et disponendum) his own clergy of all ranks, including those serving as priests in the abbey's parish churches (in circumscripto ecclesiis deservientes); that he could obtain chrism and holy oil from, and have blessings, consecrations and ordinations performed by, any bishop of his choice; and that he had the right to appeal to Rome. Rainier made sure that the abbey's immunity was confirmed in 1068 by King Philip.68

AN EXPANDING WORLD It is usually assumed that the world in which the young Suger grew up was a lawless wasteland, devoid of effective government, economically inert, and culturally dead. This abiding impression of a sort of primeaval chaos, out of which would emerge strong kingship, economic growth and the finest artistic and architectural achievements, owes a lot to Suger himself. His Life of Louis the concentrates on the young king's early attempts to reimpose the control that his father had lost, but says little about the virtual civil war in the Ile de France that bedevilled the end of the reign. And when Suger wrote about his own activities as abbot of St-Denis, he was bound to cast the state of the institution he inherited in an unfavourable light, the better to point up his own achievements. In fact, the signs in the Ile de France around 1100 were propitious. Economy and population were already growing apace, especially to the north of Paris, around St-Denis. Capetian government was weak but a reality, supported by an embryonic administrative machinery, and on balance helped by the fact that king, magnates and prelates all believed in public authority, even though they might dispute who should exercise it. Paris itself had suddenly become the intellectual centre of northern France, the site of the most exciting theological debate; and recent archaeological excavation is producing more and more evidence to suggest that the Parisis was already by 1100 the focus of much elaborate ecclesiastical

rat

68. For the BuH, PL, CXLVl, co1.l306. For Philip's char~er see Prou, Actes ofPhilippeI, pp.1l4-17, no.xl. See also LeviHain, 'Etudes a l'epoque m erovingienne', esp. pp.48-53, 87-90, 245-330.

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SEITING THE SCENE

building. As for the abbey of St-Denis itself, it was not what it had been under Charles the Bald: but still it basked in the favour of the new young king; it was an institution keenly aware of its traditions and prestige, with its institutional standing much strengthened by papal immunity, and its special relations hip with Rome; it benefited directly from the economic growth in the northern Parisis, and some of that new wealth had issued in at least one ambitious building project at the abbey. A gifted young monk at the abbey of St-Denis might have much to look forward to.

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PART 11

ACTIVE LIFE

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Chapter 4

YOUTH AND EDUCATION

THE SUGER FAMILY Suger was born in 1081 into a family of minor knights who were using the appellation 'miles' for some of their more prominent members by 1100. 1 Their principallands, which they probably held from the abbey of St-Denis, were at Chennevieres-Ies-Louvres, a small village in the rich arable lands of the northern Parisis. Because Suger is an extremely rare name, scholars have been able to establish quite a full family tree, partly from the cartularies and necrologies of St-Denis itself, but also from the cartularies of Notre-Dame in Paris, of the Cistercian abbey of Chaalis, and of the Parisian Cluniac house of St-Martin-des-Champs.2 A family tree, together with references, appears on page 310-11. Suger hirnself was c1early a younger son, destined from his childhood for the church. One of his brothers was a secular churchman. 3 A cousin, also called Suger, had been given as a child oblate to the abbey by 1111, long before his dis tinguished relative became abbot. 4 Several of his nephews went into the church too; partly, no doubt, because the mature 1. Suger was 69 when he died in January 1151, William, Lit Enc,

oe,

p.408. 2. For the Suger family, see J. Benton , 'Suger's Life and Personality' , Symposium, pp.3-15, esp. appendix, pp.11-15, and A. Molinier, Obituaires de la Province de Sens, 4 vols (Paris, 1902-23), I, pp. xxvi-xxvii. For the rarity of the name, see Benton, 'Suger', p .l4; Molinier, Obituaires, I, p .xxvi. 3. Felibien, p .xciv, no.cxxv. 4. LL 1157, f.5 1, nO.43.

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Suger was in a good position to advance their careers. Some followed their illustrious unde into St-Denis. John, a monk of St-Denis, died while transacting abbey business in Rome in 1149.'> Hugh Foucauld, abbot from 1186 to 1197, was alm ost certainly Suger's nephew. 1i But Suger placed the one nephew who would, like himself, pursue a political career, at NotreDame in Paris, rather than the abbey. This was Simon of StDenis, archdeacon and canon of Notre-Dame, who was briefly chancellor of France in 1150.' Simon's own nephews and great-nephews established a virtual dynasty of canons of Notre-Dame. K Suger looked after his lay cousins and nephews too, as soon as he was in a position to do so. He gave. them abbey property to rent or to exploit,\) and he used them as travelling companions and lay witnesses to his acta, certainly at the beginning of his abbacy. \0 The Sugers were men of some substance in the small world of minor landholders surrounding the abbey of St-Denis. They were rich enough to put at least two boys into the abbey as oblates around the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Suger's background was similar to that of many of his fellow monks at St-Denis, induding others who rose to high office. His successor as abbot, Odo of Deuil , had relations who, like Suger's, described themselves as knights, and acted as lay witnesses for the abbey.' , The Suger clan was not without connections. They had married into the more prominent Orphelin family of Annet-sur-Marne, who were themselves closely linked to the Garlande family. By the early twelfth century, when Suger reached manhood, this had become a valuable connection, 5. Leller of Pope Eugenius to Suger, RHJ'; XV, p.456. 6. See Molinier, Obituaires, I, intmduction pp.xxv-xxvii, and NDP eart. , IV, p.173. 7. Hisl Pont, p.82; Molinie r, Obiluaires, I, pp.177-8. 8. ND? earl., J, p.45 , act of 1191, signed by William, deacon , Hellouin and Suge r, subdeacons. ND? Cart., IV, p . ll, anniversary for Suger at Notre-Da me established by his great-nephew, William. For th e next ge n e ration , see ND? Gart., IV, pp.68 and 162; 11, pp.474 and 528 . 9. Admin, OC, p.157. See be low, pp.230-2 . 10. Felibien, p.xciv, no.cxxv; act of 1125, oe, p.322, and see b elow, p.203. 11. For e xample , Odo's broth e r Roge r mi/es witnesses LL 1157, ff.811 , 698.

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YOUTH AND EDUCATION

for the Garlande family dominated the court and the royal household. 12

THE EDUCATION OF AN OBLATE Suger was about ten when he was given to the abbey of St-Denis as a child oblate, for when he died in 1151, Suger was in his seventieth year, and in almost his sixtieth as a professed monk ..n As an old man, he remembered with grateful affection the high altar at which he had been dedicated to St-Denis and the monastic life. 14 Suger makes little in his writings ofwhat we might assume was a traumatic experience. But then he grew up surrounded by similar boys in a society where being a child oblate was not only natural but also desirable. He did not lose touch with his family; in later life he made great use of their support, and worked hard for their advancement. We know that Suger established an anniversary for his father, but cannot tell whether he also established one for his mother. 15 He often speaks of the abbey as his mother, and of taking nourishment at the abbey's breast. 1G This may strike the modern reader as a disturbing transformation of the maternal image, but the church as mother was a standard metaphor for eleventh- and twelfth-century churchmen. Nevertheless, other child oblates who developed into monastic chroniclers found the experience distressing. Orderic Vitalis was sent away at ten from his native Shrewsbury to the abbey of St-Evroult in Normandy, so that he should be far from his family, and their power to influence or distract. He was not embittered, 12. See SMC Cart., I, p.166, n.l04: SMC Cart., I, pp.162-3: SMC Cart., I, pp.96-7, no.60; p.10l , nO.62. Bournazel, Gouvernement, p.72, noticed this link between the Sugers and the Orphelinj Garlande clan. Benton, 'Suge r', pp.14-15, confirmed it using the Chaalis cartulary. 13. William, Lit Enc, OC, pAOS. 14. Admin, ed. Pan, p .60. For child oblation see D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England (Cambridge, 1950), ppAI7-22. 15. Suge r's father, Helinand, is identified only by name in the St-De nis n ecrology, Felibien, p.ccxviii. Only by refening to the Argente uil necrology in Molinier, Obituaires, I, p.349, can he be identified as Suger's father. Suge r's mother is probably somewhere among the many laywomen re membered at St-Denis. 16. See various referen ces in Benton, 'Suger', p.S, n.6.

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but he felt the loss of his family keenly and he never confused his abbey with his mother. 17 Suger remained in an abbey with which his family had dose connections, which may have softened the sense of loss. Benton has compared Suger's reaction to child oblacy with that of his other contemporary, Guibert, abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy, who was obsessed with the mother from whom he was untimely torn. 1H It is difficult to avoid feeling that both Orderic's sad acceptance and Guibert's barely suppressed fury are more natural reactions than Suger's chill dismissal of the matter. Although Suger was given to St-Denis in the great church at the heart of the abbey, he spent the next ten years, not at the abbey itself, but at the sm all cell of L'Estree, some half-mile distant. 19 It is possible that it was here that the abbey held its school, and hence kept its child oblates. But it is more likely that the most important oblates stayed at the abbey itself, while the cousin of a smallish if upwardly mobile knight was consigned to L'Estree. His cousin, the younger monk Suger, witnessed a charter as a boy in 1111,20 and probably did reside in the main abbey. But the younger Suger may have come from the senior branch of the family; it may be that the family, benefiting from a good marriage, had risen significantly in status since the 1090s; it may be that the treatment of the younger Suger reflects the already brilliant career of his older cousin. However, no comparable documents survive from the period when Suger himself was an oblate to confirm his eligibility or otherwise to sign. At all events, Suger did not spend aIl his time at L'Estree, for he teIls us that even as a schoolboy he longed to repair the great church of the main abbey.21 It is probable that he joined the other oblates at the main abbey for lessons, and that he took his place with them in the abbey church for the great ecdesiastical feasts. It has often been suggested that the young Prince Louis, eldest son and heir of King Philip, was one of Suger's dass17. OV, VI, pp.552-4. 18. Benton, 'Suger', p.8; J F. Benton, SelJ and Society in Medieval France. The Memoin 0/ Abbat Guibert 0/ Nagent, Medieval Academy Reprints (Toronto, 1984), pp.24-5, 74. 19. Testament, oe, p.339. 20. LL 1157, [51, nO.43. 21. Admin, ed. Pan, p,42.

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mates, and that a boyhood friendship lay behind Suger's political success.22 It is true that young Louis was brought up at the abbey, but he left shortly after Suger was offered to it, in 1092. 23 Besides, Louis had his own tutor after he left the monastery, and probably had a private tutor when he was there. 24 The curriculum provided by the monks was probably old-fashioned, limited, but sound as far as it went. The boys would have learnt to understand, speak and read Latin. Suger's biographer, William, says that his hero could speak Latin as fluently as he could speak his native French.~5 They would have learnt the liturgy, the prayers, psalms and chants of the church services of the abbey - no small undertaking, for the abbey's liturgy was long and elaborate. They would have concentrated on reading the Bible, so that they would have known extensive passages by heart. They probably moved beyond grammar (the basic learning of Latin) to rhetoric (the art of composition and deliverance of public speeches). Whether they moved much beyond that, to philosophy or theology, is unlikely. At some stage Suger acquired a considerable knowledge and love of some of the classical histories, and the deeds of more recent peoples, kings and great men.26 This may have begun at St-Denis: perhaps the boys were introduced to Lucan, whose pompous military phrases echo again and again throughout Suger's own writings. Guibert of Nogent tells us that he was taught the Holy Books, composition in verse and prose, some Ovid, and then studied several commentaries on the scriptures, particularly Gregory, and the prophets and gospels in their allegorical, moral and anagogical meanings, especially as interpreted by St Anselm. 27 But Guibert had a private tutor, and was at StGermer-de-Fly when it received frequent visits from Anselm 22 . For example, by Cartellieri, p .4. 23. VLG, 4-6, and Benton, 'Suger', p.4. 24. For Herluin the tutor, see Dufour, Ac/es, I, p.7, no.5, p.12, no.7, p.14, nO.8. 25. Vita, p.382. 26. Vita, pp.381-2. 27. Benton, Sei[ and Society, pp.78-89 . For Suger and Lucan, see J. duQuesnay Adams, 'The Influe nce of Lucan on the Political Attitudes of Suger of Saint-Denis', Westl'17l Society for rrench Histary, Proceedings, 12 (1984), pp.l-lI.

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hirnself. It is doubtful whether the education available at St-Denis compared. Suger's ten years at L'Estree would have brought himjust over the threshold of the new century. He then joined the ranks of the other young monks in the main abbey itself to learn his place within the great monastery.

APPRENTICESHIP: PROPER1Y AND FORGERY The young man's excellent command of Latin, and clear grasp of legal reality, were recognised early, and he was set to work in the archive of abbey charters searching out evidence of abbey possessions against the claims of those who were trying to usurp them.~R The concoction of an important new forged charter alm ost certainly coincided with Suger's apprenticeship in the abbey archive. In 1101, the abbey found itself prey to the usurpations of Bouchard de Montmorency. Abbot Adam turned to the young king designate, Louis the Fat - who was still very slim. Louis called Bouchard to answer for his depredations at his court at Poissy. Bouchard refused to accept the judgment against hirn, and the monks had to depend upon the military mettle of young Louis. The episode receives its fuB due in Suger's account of his deeds.~~l The monks armed themselves for judgement with an elaborate new forgery. It purports to be a charter of King Robert, dated 998, and claims that the lords of Montmorency hold their fief from the abbey of St-Denis, and that they should do homage for it to the abbot. In the Life 01 Louis the Fat, Suger echoes this, telling us that Bouchard had broken his homage to the abbey. For good measure, the charter defines a very large area of immunity around the abbey, and has King Robert concede this immunity to St Denis just as Constantine gave the citadel of Rome to St Peter.' As Levillain has demonstrated, the charter makes brilliant use of earlier acta which St-Denis had in its archive, and it is tempting to see the young Suger, checking charters to guard against 28. Adrnin, oe, p.160. 29. VLG , pp.14-18.

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'the depravity of many liars', playing a role in its construction. 30 As in many cases of medieval monastic forgery, the monks of St-Denis probably believed that their forgery encapsulated no lies, but inscribed the truth as they remembered it; a truth that would have been written down in charter form had written rather than remembered arrangements been the norm in the late tenth century.~l That Suger had a hand in the false charter of King Robert is pure speculation. But the dates fit like a glove; and in his subsequent career he had no compunction in creating false documents for the good of the abbey.

THE YOUNG SCHOLAR: STUDIES IN THE LOIRE Perhaps this is the point at which the young man's remarkable abilities were first noticed, by Abbot Adam, by the kingdesignate himself or by the chancellor, Stephen de Garlande, with whom the Sugers had distant connections. At all events, someone, whether Adam or a political patron, decided that this eager and legally adept young monk was worth educating further. Suger was sent to pursue his studies in what was obviously considered an ideal place to do so. We do not know exactly where it was. Suger gives us a eIue: in a later letter, he says that it was near Fontevrault. 32 We know that he had finished these studies and returned to St-Denis by May 1106, when he was then able to attend the Council of Poitiers,33 but we do not know how long he had spent studying. Nor do we know what sort of establishment it was. It was probably a monastic school; but it is possible that he went to a cathedral school or to one of those wandering scholars who were beginning to attract students to their unofficial eIasses. 30. The forged charter was in existence before 1112, when it seryed as the basis for a confirrnation of Louis the Fat, see L. Levillain, 'Etudes sur l'abbaye de Saint-Denis a l'epoque merovingienne: III privilegium et immunitates', BEC, 1926, LXXXVII, pp.90-4, W. Newrnan, Ca talogue des Actes de Robert Il (Paris, 1937), p.149, no.120. Felibien, pp. lxxxii-lxxxiii, no.cix. 31. See Michael Clanchy, From Memory 10 Written Record (London, 1979), p.120, pp.248-57. 32. OC, p.264. 33. VLG, p.48.

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The Abbey of Fleury, St-Benoit-sur-Loire, has often been suggested as the site of Suger's mature studies. Fleury, which housed relics of St Benedict himself, was one of the most prestigious French Benedictine houses. Historians have been tempted to send Suger there because the house had an impressive tradition of historical writing - in which Suger was later to excel. The most recent life of a French king, a Life oJ Roben the Pious, had been written there by the monk Helgaud. It has been suggested that this inspired Suger's own Life oJ Louis the Fat, but as I have said, the two biographies have little in common. Another Fleury book thought to have influenced Suger's writings is Andrew of Fleury's Life oJ Abbol Gauzelin. This has been identified as the source for the De Administratione. AIthough the two accounts of an abbot's administration have much in common, they are by no means the only examples of this genre. In short, there is no need on literary grounds to insist that Suger pursued his further studies at St-Benoit-sur-Loire, and very good reason not to, on the geographical ground that it is nowhere near Fontevrault.:ll There are possibilities that might reasonably be described as near Fontevrault. Benton has suggested Marmoutier, just outside Tours, as prestigious a Benedictine house as Fleury.:l:; Angers, down-Loire from Fontevrault, had several distinguished schools and scholars in the early twelfth century, at both the cathedral and the Benedictine house of St-Aubin. History writing flourished in Angers too, with a lively tradition of recording the heroic deeds of the dashing local counts whose princely state, independence , and firm hand showed up Capetian government for the poor thing it was. However, if we take Suger at his ward, and assume that he really did study near Fontevrault, the prime monastic candidate must be the Benedictine house of St-Florent at Saumur, often forgotten by historians, partly, perhaps because the physical remains are so unimpressive; but a house that had caught the attention of William the Conqueror and the Norman aristocracy, and had been given several dependencies in both 34. C. Rlldolph, 7ft!' Things oI Greater hnportance (Philadelphia, 1990), pp.26-8 and Bur, Suger, pp.48-62, 66, both argue for Flellry on Iite rary grollnds. 35. Bentoll , 'Suge r ', p.4.

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Normandy and England. Like the young Abelard, he may have moved along the Loire from one school to another. 36 It is significant that Suger went all the way to the Loire, at a stage when everything Abelard says implies that the most exciting new intellectual and theological developments were in Laon, and, above all , Paris and the Ile de France. The strength of the Loire schools lay in study of the classics, and of rhetoric. It was doubtless on this, and perhaps on canon law, that Suger concentrated in this period of advanced study.37 His biographer's comments on his education are interesting. 'In knowledge of all monastic offices, none could be compared to hirn,' writes William, 'so that you would have thought he knew nothing else and had never leamt anything but this. But then he shall have grown strong to such a point in liberal studies, that he sometimes discussed books of dialectic and rhetoric most subtly, to say nothing of the divinity in which he grew old. '38 William seems to be identifying three distinct stages in Suger's education: the first in which, as a boy, he learnt the monastic offices; a second in which he mastered the liberal studies of dialectic and rhetoric; and thirdly divinity proper, which William implies he concentrated on in his later life as a monk. Perhaps the first stage corresponds to the oblate's education at St-Denis, and the se co nd to the rather more intellectual studies pursued near Fontevrault. William goes on to laud Suger's deep knowledge of the Scriptures, and the fact that in spite of his later studies of divinity, he had never managed to forget the classical poets he had leamt in his youth. Even as an old man, he could recite twenty or thirty verses of Horace. 39 There is perhaps just the slightest hint of patronage in William's praise of his hero's intellectual accomplishments. 36. For the importance of the schools of Angers and Saurnur in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, see F. Gasparri, L 'icriture des actes de Louis W, Louis VII et Philippe Auguste (Paris, 1973), p.14, and J. Chartou, L'Anjou de 1109 ii 1151 (Paris, nd), pp .214-22. 37. Abelard, Historia Calamitatum, in The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. and ed. B. Radice (London, 1974), p.58: 'Paris, where dialectic had long been particularly flourishing'. 38. Vita, p.38l. 39. Vita, p.38l.

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William hirnself was a clever, if perhaps rather silly, young man, who boas ted an education of the most up-to-clate kind available in I130s or 1140s Paris. The studied sophistication of his many writings, and the wide range of his classical allusions show that in education and intellectual aspiration he resembled his contemporaries, John of Salisbury, Otto of Freising, or Arnulf of Lisieux; that he was steeped in Ciceronian Latin, and well versed in the dialectical and sophistical modes of argument developed in the Paris schools.~() His hero, on the other hand, was a child of the late e1eventh century, of an earlier schooling, that was in some ways more constrained, in others rather freer. Suger had studied rhetoric rather than philosophy, scripture rather than theology. His Latin has none of the Ciceronian perfection of the midtwelfth-century writers, but his Ligerian sojourn must have brought hirn into close contact with what William would have considered a rather old-fashioned humanism, with a wide and perhaps uncritical acquaintance with Lucan, Horace and Virgil and perhaps Caesar.~1 But it was the perfect education for a young monk with his sights already set on a political career.

40. H. Glaser, 'Wilhelm von Saint-Denis: Ein Humanist aus der Umgebung des Abtes Suger und die Krise seiner Abtei von 1151 bis 1153', Historishes Jahrbuch, 85 (1965), pp.257-322. 41. Fot· the differences between the old-fashioned monastic education of the late eleventh century, and the new education at the cathe dral schools, esp. Laon, and at Paris, see: R. W. Southern, 'The Schools of Paris and the School of Chartres' , Renaissance, pp. 1 13-37; B. Smalley, The Study (1 the Bible in the Middle Ages, paperback edn. (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1964), esp. pp.44-82;J. Leclercg, The Renewal ofTheology' , Renaissance, Indiana, pp.68-87; L. K. Little, 'Intellectual Training and Attitudes Indiana, towards Reform , 1075-1150', in Pierre Abelard-Pierre le Venerable, ed. R. Louis,J.Jolivet,J. Chatillon (Paris, 1975) , pp.235-49;J. H . Van Enge n, RUpf'r1 ofDeu!z (Berkeley, CA, 1983) , esp. pp.42-8. For eleventh- and twelfth-century writing, see J. Martin , 'Classicism ami Style in Latin Literatllre ', Ren aissflfl a , pp.537-68.

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Chapter 5

THE YOUNG POLITICIAN,

1106-1122

THE MONK AND THE COURT A man who, of minor knightly stock, became in his old age regent of France possessed an extraordinary ability for negotiating shark-infested waters. Early-twelfth-century Capetian France more nearly resembled a stagnant pond, but some very predatory pike lurked in its murky depths. It was a long political career. By the late 1120s Suger was widely considered the best and most famous lawyer in the royal hall. I Suger himself occasionally refers to his activities as royal adviser. To provide accommodation for himself and his household, and stabling for his horses in Paris, he bought a house by the St-Denis gate, near St-Merri, because he was in the city so often 'on the king's business'.2 In early 1122, Suger met Calixtus II in Rome 'for some business matters of the kingdom'.3 But Suger rarely teHs us what those business matters were, and the details of his political career, be fore the weH-documented prominence of the regency, are often difficult to trace. Discretion was foremost among his political gifts. There has been arecent tendency to play down Suger's political involvement and importance before the late 1120s and to suggest that Suger only emerged as areal political power after the fall of Stephen de Garlande in 1127/8, or 1. Chron Mor, p.47, 'in aula regia praeclarus et optimus causidicus habetur'. 2. Admin, OC, p.158. 3. VLG, p.206.

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even as late as 1135. 4 As a monk, Suger could never hold any of the great court offices of chancellor, butler, seneschal or constable. Since these are the only people who normally witness the two Louis' charters, it is difficult to build a broader picture of the king's intimates and advisers. In fact , there is ample evidence for Suger's involvement with the Capetian court long before he hirnself became abbot. We will see Suger used in delicate and important negotiations in both 1112 and 1118, the first with a fractious magnate, the second with apope, neither of which would be entrusted to an untried monk. In 1112 he was in Rome at the council at which Pope Paschal 11 repudiated the concessions he had been forced to make to the Emperor: there is no evidence that he was there on abbey business, which would undoubtedly have issued in a papal letter in favour of St-Denis. In his old age, he told Geoffrey of Anjou that he had been involved in every truce negotiated between Louis the Fat and Henry I of England over twenty years." The long sequence of wars and peaces between the two kings did indeed extend over twenty years, from 1108 to 1128. He teIls us that he often discussed the death of William Rufus with Walter Tirel, who was a prominent member of the Capetian court since his unfortunate misadventure with an arrow in the New Forest had driven hirn from England - and Walter left France for the Holy Land in 1123.~) Suger had court connections before the death of King Philip in 1108. He teils us that he used to hear the old king tell his heir to look after the castle of Montlheri, which Philip finally wrested from its castellans in 1104.7 Bur proposes that Suger overheard king and king-designate discussing high politics when both came to meet the pope at St-Denis in 4. The first to suggest this was Luchaire, Annales LVI, pp.liv-lv, lxii. See also Bautier, Paris/ Abe\ard, p.69; J. Be nton ,'Suger's Life and Pe rsonality', Symposium, p .5. Bur, Suger, p.156, characterises Suger as a counsellor of the king after Ste phen 's fall, but thinks he becomes dominant in 1135. E. Bournazel, 'Suger and th e Capetians', Symposium, pp.556, 59 takes a more fl e xible view, but thinks Suge r's real dominance comes in the early years of Louis VII. Dufour, Actes, II1, p.60, dates Suger's e ntry into the royal e ntourage t.o 1118. 5. oe, p.265 . 6. \lLG, p.12 and n.3; Cartulaire de l'abbaye de Saint-Martin de Pontoise, ed. J. De poin (Pontoise,1895), p.454. 7. \lLG, p.38.

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THE YOUNG POLITICIAN, 1106-J 122

1107,8 but Suger uses an imperfect tense, not a perfect '1 used to hear', not '1 once heard'. Suger was among the retinue despatched with the pope to Chalons to discuss investiture with the Emperor Henry V shortly thereafter. He was still a young monk, and his proper place was surely still in the choir, unless there were some special reason for sending hirn away from it. Suger has a tendency to inflate his own role in political matters to the detriment of Abbot Adam - both the visit of Paschal II and the struggle against Hugh du Puiset are cases in point; but that does not mean that his own political involvement can be dismissed. His monastic career, from the moment when he went off to study in the schools of the Loire, was not that of a conventional choir monk. As 1 have suggested, the Life 0/ Louis the Fat is in itself evidence for Suger's intimate connection with the court from a very early stage in his career. It is essentially an insider's view, written about events or people of whom the author had considerable personal knowledge. Although St-Denis' royal connections were of long standing, and had always been jealously guarded, a successful career in monastic administration there did not guarantee the sort of dose relationship with the court that Suger enjoyed. But young Louis VI was brought up at St-Denis, and Abbot Adam had a good relationship with the young king-designate. Adam's own political importance grew from about 1105/ 6, when Louis came to political maturity as king-designate, and even more after Louis succeeded Philip to the throne in 1108. Suger's political career developed initially under Adam's aegis. Since Suger's political role was to a large extent that of roving ambassador and negotiator, it was an advantage to be a monk of St-Denis. The abbey's network of properties across France and into the Empire meant that its monks could travel widely without exciting suspicion, and without conflict with their monastic vowS. Since most of the abbey's properties had been carved out of the Merovingian and Carolingian fisc, 8. Bur, Suger, p.31.'Sous pretexte de service, Suger rc~ ussit a s'introduire dans la saUe ou les princes se tenaient avec leurs familiers. Grace a sa petite taille, il se glisse assez pres du roi pour I'ente ndre dire .. .'.

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they were often dose to, or still interlinked with, Capetian territories; and king and abbey often had common interests.

FIRST STEPS ON THE POLITICAL SCENE Suger first emerges briefly from the anonymity of the doister in May 1106, when, shortly after the completion of his studies, he attended the great church council held at Poitiers, at which Bohemond of Antioch appealed for western help for beleaguered crusaders in the Holy Land. Suger, like most of his contemporaries, was struck by Bohemond's compelling personality and leonine bearing.!) We do not know whether Suger was present in a strictly monastic capacity, perhaps in Abbot Adam's train , or whether he was present as a royal observer or representative. The following year found hirn again involved in great events. In April and May 1107, Pope PaschallI visited France to raUy French support against the Emperor Henry V. Paschal was met at La-Charite-sur-Loire by a splendid embassy offering the hospitality and support of the Capetians. The meeting was the occasion for the papal consecration of the new ab bey church of La-Charite. \(I Suger was a member of the retinue, and was present at the consecration: Abbot Adam was not, for he is not listed among the abbots in attendance. At the court held there by Paschal, Suger distinguished himselfwith a powerfully argued attack, a model both of darity and oi canon law, as he hirnself teIls us, on Bishop Galon of Paris, who had been infringing the abbey's immunities from episcopal con trol, won by Abbot Rainier in the 1060s. 11 But Paschal 11 wrote to Adam reversing Rainier's triumph, insisting on the canonical rights of the diocesan bishop to perform sacramental duties within his diocese. Since the letter is undated, we cannot tell whether Suger gave his antiepiscopal performance in response to this letter, or whether the letter was th e result of it. 12 But Abbot Adam did not get immunity from episcopal encroachment enshrined in a papal 9. VLG, p.48. 10. RH}~ XIV, p.120. 11. VLG, pp.52-3. 12. RH}~ XV, p.36; the e ditors of th e RHF ascribe it to ]] 07 with reference to Suger's attack on Galon.

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THE YOUNG POLITIClAN, 1106-1122

buH until 1119. 13 Suger may have been less effective than he claims. Paschal was received at St-Denis and celebrated mass there; and it was there that he had his interview with Philip and Louis. 14 Abbot Adam was chosen, along with v1 There was areal risk that Louis would find hirnself committed to an unintentionally overt anti-imperial line. In short, when Suger reappears be fore us after six silent years, it is as someone charged with a vital and difficult piece of royal, not monastic business. The Roman dergy at Cluny wasted no time in electing a successor. On 2 February 1119, Archbishop Guy of Vienne was elected pope as Calixtus 11. Gelasius had been a hardline anti-imperialist in the toughest Hildebrandine mould: Guy of Vienne was chosen because he was more flexible than Gelasius, but firmer than PaschalII, and would be tough 47. VLG, p.200. 48. Luchaire , Annales LVI, p .cxxix. 49. VLG, pp.200-2. 50. VLG, p.202; JL, 1, p.780. 51. VLG, p.202.

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THE YOUNG POLITICIAN, 1106-1122

enough to stand up to the Emperor. He had the advantage of being related to almost everybody who was anybody, induing the Emperor hirnself, Henry I of England, and the count of Flanders. One of his nie ces was Adela of Savoy, the wife of Louis the Fat. Guy brought two other significant new perspectives to the role of pope: he was a Burgundian rather than a Roman; and abishop rather than a monk. As a Burgundian, he was abreast of recent monastic developments. His family had always supported Cluny, and he hirnself had dedicated the chapel of the Virgin there. 52 The pattern of his confirrnations and dedications, and the places where he stayed on his peregrinations around France in 1119-1120, suggest that Guy was much in favour of the older Benedictine monasteries, though he liked them weIl run, and free from simony and undue lay contro1. 53 But his father had helped to found Citeaux; so he had dose links with the most successful of the new reformed monastic orders."I As an ex-bishop, Guy was apt to support episcopal over monastic powers, and had a tendency to promote regular canons within the papal hierarchy. In papal Rome, reform had been for so long intimately connected with the Investiture contest, that it meant freedom from lay control in any of its many manifestations, and the imposition of papal authority more than anything else. To ac hieve this it had often been necessary to challenge episcopal authority - from which many of the large established abbeys like Cluny, and indeed St-Denis, had benefited considerably; now it was dear that episcopal authority required reinforcement. The Hildebrandine movement had taken much of its force from the vibrant monasticism of Montecassino, so that the Roman curia did not really share in the new 'back to basics', Burgundian and French monasticism. To win the Investiture case, the papal court had needed canon lawyers, not self-denying hermits. But two of its best lawyers, Lambert of Ostia, the future Pope Honorius 11, and the Burgundian Haimery, the papal chancellor, came from the new strict house of regular canons of S.Maria in Rheno in Bologna; 52. PV Letters, H, p.155. 53. For Guy's itinerary in France see JL, I, pp.782-3. 54. For Guy, and his election see 1. S. Robinson, The Papacy 1073-1198 (Cambridge, 1990), pp.54-5, 229-31.

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and they led a faction predisposed towards French reformed monasticism and regular canons in the papal curia. 55

THE POPE'S NIECE AND THE KING'S CHANCELLOR Louis and Calixtus did not hurry to meet. Calixtus toured Languedoc and the Auvergne, where, eventually, in April, Louis sent an official embassy to hirn. Suger was not included; significantly, the abbot of Morigny was. 56 The abbot of Morigny had a close relationship with Queen Adela, and his presence on this initial embassy to the new pope suggests either that Louis wished to take advantage of his wife's family ties, or that approaches were made through Adela. Louis had married Adela in 1115. She was niece to the countess of Flanders, and the count of Burgundy, as weIl as to Calixtus 11. The marriage reinforced the close political relationship between the Capetians and the counts of Flanders. Popular tradition has it that Adela was very ugly, but that Louis was passionately attached to her.'" Her ugliness may be apochryphal, but Louis, whose own youthful good looks were increasingly subsumed in rolls of fat, had a very real respect for her. All his charters given after the marriage give her regnal year as weIl as his: this formal recognition of her queenship is unique. Adela came to wield considerable influence. Doubtless the election of her uncle as pope strengthened her hand. The alliance between Adela and the monks of Morigny was grounded in their shared hatred of the chancellor, Stephen de Garlande. Adela resented Stephen's power over her husband, and the unsubtle way in which he threw his political wt;.ight around:'~ Stephen included a canonry at StMartin at Etampes among his many ecclesiastical honours, and forcefully supported St-Martin's pretensions to property 55. See Robinson, Papacy, pp.65-78, for the factions in the Roman curia; pp.210-43 for Calixtus and his successors' attitude to the religious orders and the bishops; and pp.67-8 and 215 for Lambert of Ostia and Haimery. 56. Chron Mor, pp.26-7. 57. R. Fawtie r, The Capetian Kings of rrance, trans. L. Butler and R. J. Adam (London , 1960) p.27. 58. Chron Mor, p.43.

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THE YOUNG POLlTIClAN, ll06-1l22

and rights claimed by Morigny. In 1119, Abbot Thomas of Morigny appealed to Adela to offset what he saw as Stephen's vicious influence over the king. Suddenly, through the prejudiced eyes of the Morigny chronicler, we glimpse a court riven in two by internal faction and personal hatred, with the queen, who doubtless did not stand alone, deeply opposed to the influence of Stephen de Garlande and his supporters, of whom the most important was the royal clerk Algrin, canon of Etampes and of Notre-Dame in Paris. 5(} In 1119, it was Stephen rather than the queen who had Louis' political confidence. As the Morigny chronicler put it, Stephen was 'the most private adviser of the king, by whose judgement at that time the kingdom of the Franks was ruled.'60 It is clear that Suger belonged to Stephen's faction: he never got on weH with Adela; and in the late 1120s, in a letter that will feature often in these pages, Bernard of Clairvaux addressed Suger as a close friend of Stephen. 61 This is the point at which Adela emerges as a political force, and as a focus of anti-Garlande activity at court. The papal election probably forced some political realignment at Louis' court, with so me anxious moments for the Garlandes. This may explain the delay in sending a French legation to Calixtus, and Calixtus' slow response in visiting the Ile de France, which he did not reach until the end of September 1119. When he did arrive, he favoured the queen's party rather than Stephen de Garlande's faction, deciding the dispute between Stephen, Algrin and the canons of St-Martin on the one hand and Morigny on the other in favour of the latter, and dedicating the new church of the abbey favoured by the queen in his first public performance in the Ile de France. 62 Calixtus' main reason for visiting the north of France was to hold a great council at Reims, which took place in midOctober 1119. The pope's principal intention was to push his view of episcopal investiture as far as he could as near as he 59. Chron MOT, pp.27-8. 60. Chron Mor, p.27 'Ste phanus cance llarius ... privatissimus regis cancellari,us, euius tune te mporis arbitrio regnum Franeorum disponebatur

61. Bernard, Epist, VII, pp.201-10, no.lxxxviii, and see below, pp.125-7. 62. Chron MOT, pp.32-3.

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dared go to the Empire. Reims, out in eastern Champagne, was the ideal plaee to do so. Louis VI took the opportunity to try to get papal sanetion for his own support of William Clito as duke of Normandy against his uncle, Henry I. In the end, the Couneil of Reims was deeisive about neither investiture nor Normandy. Orderie Vitalis provides a vivid eye-witness aeeount; Suger merely mentions it in passing. 63 Indeed Suger says suspieiously little about Pope Calixtus' visit to Franee in the autumn of 1119. Between 8 Oetober and 11 Oetober, and again at the end ofNovember, Calixtus was in Paris and visited St-Denis.6~ There is no hint of these visits in Suger's writings. Suger rarely missed opportunities to show hirnself or his beloved ab bey basking in the glow of papal approval. But it is possible that he found this papal visit politieally embarassing, and his usual response to politieal embarrassment in the Life 01 Louis the Fat is silenee. The Morigny Chronicle gives the impression that Calixtus, in so far as he involved hirnself in Capetian affairs, supported the interests of his nieee, the queen, while Suger's sympathies lay with Stephen de Garlande. Nor did Calixtus sanetion Louis' support of William Clito's claims to Normandy. On the eontrary, by November, Calixtus was on very good terms with Henry L u5 Louis had hoped to use a pope in the family to further his Norman game, a game in whieh Suger was probably, as a trusted messenger, involved; but the pope refused to play. St-Denis itself, however, did very wen from the visit, obtaining one of its most important papal privileges. This put the abbey, like Cluny, under the direet tutelage of Rome, and gave the abbot the right to appeal to Rome in extremis. It insisted on the right to free election of a new abbot. In addition, it defined the rights of the abbey relative to episeopal jurisdietion. The abbot had to turn to abishop for ehrism and holy oil, for eonseerations and all ordinations. On the other hand, no bishop eould eelebrate mass at St-Denis without the permission of the abbot, and no bishop eould east interdiets or exeommunieation upon the abbey, nor insist that 63. OV, VI, pp.252-76, VLG, p.204. 64. Luchaire, Annales LVI, p.126, no.265. 65. OV, VI, pp.282-90.

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THE YOUNG POLITICIAN, 1106-ll22

the abbot attend a diocesan synod. Moreover, once a new abbot of St-Denis had been canonically elected by the monks, he could be consecrated either by the pope hirnself, or by any bishop of the abbot's choice. 66 As with most Calixtine legislation, there is considerable stress on episcopal rights; but the act is carefully phrased to allow the abbot of St-Denis to choose his bishop. This resolved the long-running dispute between the abbots of St-Denis and the bishops of Paris in favour of the abbot: he might be obliged to turn to abishop; but he will never be obliged to turn to the bishop of Paris. This is exactly the sort of business in which we might have expected Suger hirnself, with his Roman connections, his intimate knowledge of the abbey's immunities, his aptitude for negotiation and for the minutiae of canon law, to be heavily involved, and it is hard to believe that he was not. But even so, the privilege may have caused hirn some personal embarrassment. These are the very episcopal immunities that Abbot Rainier had extracted from the pope in 1065, but wh ich Bishop Galon had challenged in 1107. In spite of Suger's brilliant advocacy of St-Denis' case before Paschal 11 in 1107, there is no evidence that the abbey then obtained any papal letter other than that in which Paschal took the bishop's part. 57 It must have been galling for Suger that so important a privilege was granted under Adam's abbacy, rather than his own. Gradually relations between Calixtus and Louis eased. Louis relished his role as supporter of the exiled pope. Within the following year, Calixtus managed to negotiate a major treaty between Louis and Henry. As usual, we can suspect Suger's involvement. The papal presence, and the presence of his legate Conon when Calixtus returned to Italy in l120,ü~ encouraged Louis to be conspicuously generous to some of the most powerful and prestigious French ecclesiastical institutions, and to show some respect for reformist orthodoxy. Bishop Bartholomew of Laon persuaded Louis to return regalian revenues of the see seized wrongfully by Louis and never relinquished. Louis 66. PL, CLXIII, col.l126. 67. See above, pp.88-9. 68. OV, VI, p.306.

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renounced them be fore his court in Paris on 12 October 1121. The ceremony, in which Louis prostrated himselfbefore Conon and Bishop Bartholomew, took place in Stephen de Garlande's own palace chapel. 69 Doubtless this reflects the overwhelming power and prestige of Stephen de Garlande, but it also suggests that Stephen may have played an important part in bringing Louis to what areformist bishop would have considered his senses.

LOUIS AND ST-DENIS: THE RETURN OF THE REGALIA Louis made reparation to St-Denis too. In 1120, sometime before 3 August, Louis, his queen, the court and the legate Conon went to St-Denis. There Louis returned to the abbey the crown of Philip I, which he should have returned directly after his own coronation. Apparently Louis feit real contrition: in recompense, he gave the abbey the church of Cergy in the Vexin, and the liberty and vicaria of the court of Cergy.70 Louis had been in possession of the crown for some twelve years before his conscience misgave hirn. He returned the crown to St Denis as 'dux et protector' of the regnum. This suggests a military context. Moreover, Louis handed over to the safekeeping of St-Denis property and privileges in the Vexin. The return of the crown was undoubtedly related to, perhaps a thank offering for, the peace treaty with Henry negotiated by Calixtus in 1120. Peace would bring stability to the Vexin, and Louis could afford to be generous to St-Denis in the area. This context goes some way to explain the other mystery surrounding this charter. Suger regarded the return of the crown, and the gift of Cergy as sufficiently important for hirn to ascribe them not to Adam's abbacy, but his own. He appends them to the list of gifts and concessions that Louis undoubtedly did make to St-Denis when the king returned victorious in 1124 after repelling the invading German Emperor. 71 Before he left on that expedition Louis was given 69. Dufour, Actes, r, pp.377-83, 110.182. 70. Dufour, Actes, I, pp.334-8, 110.163. Admin , 71. VLG. pp.226-8.

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oe,

p.162.

THE YOUNG POLITIClAN, 1106-1122

the vexillum of the abbey, which was said to be the banner of the Vexin; and it is perhaps not surprising that Suger should connect gifts in the Vexin with that momentous event. The 1120 charter, with its emphasis on St Denis as 'dux et protector' of the kingdom, anticipates the military and tutelary role that would be fully developed for the saint in 1124. Indeed, the 1124 charter is heavily based on the 1120 one. Both were produced at St-Denis itself. The 1120 act is the first in aseries of acts with distinctive formulas: all the others in the series were produced at St-Denis for royal signature and seal under Suger's abbacy. Aspects of the phrasing and the contents of all these acta link them with Suger's other writings. 72 We have no direct evidence as to where Suger was or what he was doing when Louis returned his crown in 1120. But it is almost certain that he played the principal role in the drafting of this important charter.

EMBASSIES TO ROME In 1121, Louis and Calixtus managed to reach accord over the status of various bishoprics, of Lyons and Sens, Noyon and Tournai. Stephen de Garlande's associate, Algrin, was the chosen emissary to Rome in the delicate matter of Lyons and Sens. 73 At the end of the year, Louis sent another embassy to Calixtus. This time, his ambassador was Suger. So Suger emerges from the silence of history doing exactly what he was doing last time - going, on Louis' behalf, to the pope. He also took care to obtain a papal confirrnation for the recent gift of Cergy.74 He found Calixtus at Bitonto in Apulia, at the end of January. Calixtus received hirn honourably and urged hirn to stay - surely evidence that this was not the first time that they had transacted business, but 72. See Dufour, Actes, I, p .337. F. Gasparri, L'&riture des actes de Louis VI, Louis VII et Philippe Auguste (Paris, 1973), pp.21, 25. On the 1120 act, the dispositive phrases were written by the abbey scribe, and the final corroboration and validation by a royal chal1cery scribe, ibid., p.25, and Dufour, Actes, I, pp.336-7. 73. Dufour, Actes, I, pp.369-72, no.178. Luchaire, Annales LVI, p.144, 110.311, p.87, 110.172. 74. JL, I, p.803, 110.6946.

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Suger's companions persuaded hirn that he ought to return as soon as his mission was done.'" Suger's main companion, Abbot Hugh of St-Germain-des-Pres, was a friend and an old fellow monk of St-Denis. Hugh also obtained a papal bull for his abbey: we do not know whether he too was there on royal business?i On the return journey, Suger had a disturbing nightmare, dreaming that he was tossed helplessly on a stormy sea in a small boat, but was brought safely to harbour by God. The next day, he was met by a boy from Abbot Adam's household with three related items of news: Abbot Adam was dead; Suger had been elected abbot in his place; but Louis had thrown the entire group of monks and knights who had come to tell hirn the news into prison in the castle of Orleans." It was not an auspicious start. Suger's election was quite free and canonicaI. But this was precisely the problem. Louis was furious because the election had been made without consulting him. 7X He expected to be asked to assent to the suitability of a candidate for an ecclesiastical election, not to give his agreemen t after the fact. Suger is surprisingly open about Louis' ecclesiastical incorrectness in this case. But the image of the king presented in the Life oj Louis [he Fat is that of an overweight, fallible, hasty layman, untouched by charisma or sacrality. There is another reason why Louis might react so strongly to Suger's election. An abbot was expected to devote himself to the house in his charge. The abbacy of St-Denis was no sinecure. Suger's monastic career had hitherto been strikingly flexible, alm ost certainly because he had spent so much of it on unofficial secondment to the royal household. Louis may have feared that this easy availability would not survive Suger's election as abbot. Nevertheless, by the time Suger reached St-Denis, the royal temper was calmed. Suger was met by Louis himself, with Archbishop Vulgrin of Bourges, the bishop of Senlis, and 'several other ecclesiastics'. Bishop Girbert of Paris was 75 . 76. 77. 78.

VLG, ]L, I, VLG, VLG.

p .206. p .S03. 110.6947; VLG, p.206. p.20S. p.208. 'quia inconsulto rege factum fuerat'.

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THE YOUNG POLITIClAN, lI06-1122

notable by his absence: the new abbot of St-Denis, armed with Calixtus II's buH, had no need of the bishop of Paris for his consecration. No further time was wasted. On the next day, a Saturday, Suger was ordained priest; on the Sunday he was consecrated abbot. 79

79. For the account of the election and consecration, VLG, pp.206-12.

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Chapter 6

THE ABBOT AS POLITICIAN,

1122-1137

The election as abbot marked a great change in Suger's career. Before 1122, Suger had been able to serve both StDenis and Louis the Fat with no appreciable strain on his monastic vocation. The abbacy entailed new responsibilities in both areas. As abbot of St-Denis, one of the great prelates of the He de France, he now had a more official role at court. He would be expected to give counsel to his king, and to sit on commissions appointed to arbitrate ecclesiastical cases, as, for instance, between the abbeys of Morigny and St-Martin at Etampes in 1129. 1 Suger hirnself strove to enhance the political profile of the abbot of St-Denis. Following the recent success in claiming that the regalia belonged to the abbey, Suger stressed the right of the abbey to be the burial pI ace of the kings of France in 1129/30; claimed that the abbey was the 'caput regni', the capital of the kingdom, in 1124; and, sometime in the second half of the 1120s, claimed that the abbot of St-Denis was primate of France. But Suger took his pastoral duties as abbot very seriously too. This was merely the other side of the coin. His claims to be the primate of France, and abbot of the 'caput regni' were only tenable if his abbey was a weB-run institution, free from scandal. Besides, his devotion to St-Denis was paramount, and his frequent connections with the Roman curia had long since introduced hirn to the aspirations of the ecclesiastical reformists. It is not easy, and it is to an extent misleading, to disentangle the skeins of Suger's career once he had become abbot of St-Denis. When he travelled with the king to the 1. Chron Mor, pp.46-7.

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THE ABBOT AS POLITICIAN, 1122-11 37

Berry or the Laonnois, or as ambassador to Germany, he seized the opportunity to review the administration of distant abbey properties, He exploited every political opportunity to press the claims of his abbey, especially during the threat of German invasion in 1124, but also when Louis wanted his sons crowned as associate kings in 1129 and 1131, His conception of the abbot of St-Denis as primate of France, as the most important churchman in Capetian France, meant that he always envisaged a strong and quite proper political dimension to the abbacy, Nevertheless, some disentangling is required in the interests of clarity, Suger's works as abbot, as pastor, administrator and architectural and artistic patron will be discussed in a separate section, because its chronology cuts across the natural political and ecclesiastical caesuras in his abbacy. This section will provide an account of Suger's public career as a churchman in politics.

POLITICS IN CAPETIAN FRANCE 1122-1137: THE OUTLINES Politically, the period between Suger's election and Louis the Fat's death splits into two unequal halves. Until 1127/ 8, the internal politics of Capetian France were relatively stable. The threats and problems were external. Henry I was always amenace. In 1124, he persuaded his son-in-Iaw, the German Emperor to attack France. The attack failed, and the bloodless French triumph of 1124 allowed Suger to make vast claims for the abbey of St-Denis. Louis twice led an arrgy to deal with disorder in distant Berry and the Auvergne, in 1122 and 1126. In 1127, he intervened in Flanders, after the murder of Count Charles the Good, to establish William Clito as client count. In spite of his new responsibilities as abbot, Suger accompanied Louis on all these expeditions, as is absolutely clear from the way he writes about them. 2 He probably also helped Louis contain the ambitions ofThomas de Marle in the Laonnois and Thierache in the mid-1120s. Stephen de Garlande domina ted all aspects of government during this period. When, in 1120, his brother William, 2. VLG, pp.232-4, 236-9, 240-51.

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the seneschal, died, Stephen added the office of seneschal to that of chancellor. The Morigny chronicler was disgusted that a cleric ordained as deacon should also lead the king's troops into battle. 3 Stephen was assisted by Algrin, and less directly, by prelates like Geoffrey of U~ves, Henry Sanglier, archbishop of Sens, and Suger. Louis enjoyed an easy relationship with most of his great churchmen at this stage. He also had a mutually supportive arrangement with the papacy. Stephen de Garlande, and those churchmen like Suger who were close to the king, invested much effort and diplomacy into ensuring that this accommodation between Louis and Rome continued, although most of them were doubtless aware how far Louis' view of the proper relationship of church and state differed from that of the papal curia. In 1127/8, everything changed dramatically. Stephen de Garlande rebelled and fell from power. His fallleft Louis the Fat revealed in his true unreformed colours. The accommodation between Louis and the church of France, and Louis and the papacy, collapsed completely, and the entire Capetian polity was engulfed in vicious political and ecclesiastical in-fighting. The problems continued weIl into the 1130s. It must have been a profoundly uncomfortable period for Suger, who had been one of Stephen's proteges, and it is significant that he scarcely mentions these events in the Life oJ Louis the Fat. As a result, we have very little evidence as to how Suger negotiated his way through this difficult period. As far as we can tell, Suger continued to playa key role as ambassador to the papacy, and as observer of what was happening in the Empire in this post-Investiture world throughout Louis' reign, though evidence fails us in the 1130s, just when it would be most revealing.

SUGER IN ROME In 1123 Suger spent six months in Rome. He attended the great Lateran Council of March 1123, which ratified the provisions for lay investiture established at the Council of Reims and the Concordat ofWorms, and reinforced the diminished authority of the episcopacy. Suger says he visited Rome in 3. Chron Mor, pp.42-3.

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THE ABBOT AS POLITICIAN, 1122-1137

gratitude for the help he had received from the pope in his various negotiations, but attendance at the council, as Louis' expert on the Investiture question, must have been the real reason. 4 He received a warm welcome from Calixtus. Suger already had Roman friends; one had offered to go back to Rome for papal advice when Suger heard Louis' adverse reaction to his election. Now he consoIidated those connections. We can see their traces. In 1125, Suger had a personal chancellor called Gregory: the name suggests he was Italian rather than French. His Ordinance of autumn 1124 was witnessed by the two papal legates, Gregory of S. Angelo, the future Innocent n, and Peter Leonis, the future anti pope Anacletus n. s Doubtless he found the well-trained lawyers who filled the papal curia congenial company. Doubtless too his own sub-Gregorian views of the king as no more and no less than the layman who enforces law and government, emerged more forcibly than ever among the pragmatic fixers at the CaIixtine curia. In September 1123, Calixtus wrote to Louis the Fat sending good wishes to both the queen and Stephen de Garlande. 6 We might guess that Suger, like Algrin be fore hirn, had done much to ensure that relations between the pope, the king and his chancellor were now so cordial. Suger hirnself much impressed Calixtus and the curia. A year later, towards the end of 1124, Calixtus summoned Suger to Rome, promising hirn promotion, probably a cardinalship. But Calixtus died before Suger reached Rome, and Suger returned unpromoted to St-Denis.

1124: THE IMPERIAL INVASION In autumn 1123, relations between Louis and Henry I collapsed into open warfare. 7 To Louis' horror, Henry persuaded his son-in-Iaw, the formidable Emperor Henry V of Germany, to invade eastern France. The Emperor decided to 4. For Suge r's Roman visit, see VLG, pp.214-16. 5. Act of 1125, oe, pp.319-22, and see belov\' for further discussion, pp.202-3. Ordinance of 1124, oe, pp.326-31. 6. RHF, XV, pp.240-1. 7. OV, VI, pp.330-6, 346.

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attack Reims, an obvious target on strategie grounds, though Suger believed that the Emperor intended to avenge himself on the city where Calixtus II had pronounced an anathema against hirn, under French proteetion, in 1119.8 InJuly 1124 Louis leamt of the Emperor's intended invasion 'by the reports of his friends', as Suger discreetly puts it. 9 üne wonders who, at the imperial court, was cultivating relationships with the Capetians, and whether the abbot of St-Denis, with his priories in Lotharingia, and cells in the Cambresis, was involved in the network. Louis, in extremis, tumed to St Denis. He, his queen, and his court rode out to the abbey. Prayers were offered and the relics of the saints displayed on the altar of St Denis; from the altar Louis took the banner - the vexillum - of the county of the Vexin, so that he marched against the enemy as signifer of the saint. 'o Under the proteetion of the vexillum, he set off to confront the Emperor, sending out, at the same time, an invitation to 'the whole of France' - tota Francia - to fo11ow hirn into battle . The result was unexpectedly impressive. The troops collected at Reims. There were substantial contingents from the Capetian heartlands, and from eastem Picardy and the immediately threatened Reims and Chalons. The magnates of the Ile de France, like Ralph ofVermandois, Louis' cousin, arrived with their troops. The counts and princes of broader Francia came too. The count of Flanders, related in marriage to Louis, but nonetheless prepared to put his vitally important relationship with the Emperor, suzerain for many of his lands, on the line ; William IX, count of Poitou and duke of Aquitaine; Conan of Brittany; Fulk of Anjou; Hugh 11, duke of Burgundy, a cousin of queen Adela: a11 came to swell th e Capetian force. Even Henry I's own nephew, Theobald of Blois, joined the French army, bringing with hirn his unde, the count of Troyes. Louis, the counts and his entourage held a council of war, and disposed their troops carefully. Suger's account of the muster at Reims is that of an eyewitness. H e uses the first person plural to denote his own participation. He was 8. VLG, p.218. 9. VU;, p.218 . See also Ekke hard von Aura, MGH Scriptorum , e d . G. Pe rtz, 2nd ed . (Le ipzig , 1925 ) , VI, p.262. 10. VU;, p.220, Admin, oe, pp.161-2 .

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THE ABBOT A.'> POLITICIAN, 1122-1137

undoubtedly a member of the council of war, The knights of St-Denis were there in force, and were positioned alongside the other groups from areas particularly associated with the Capetians and thus, as Suger says, particul,arly devoted to the crown, that is, the armies of Orleans, Etampes and Paris, It was with this division that the king decided to fight. I I For a week, the French army waited at Reims, expecting the German attack. It never came. On 14 August, the Emperor retreated. 12 For Louis it was a bloodless victory. Meanwhile Henry I invaded the Vexin. The attack was beaten off by the men of the Vexin under the command of Amaury de Montfort. 13 Louis returned in triumph to Paris. In recognition of the successful intercession of Saint Denis, he issued a new charter in favour of the ab bey, assigning to it substantial rights of jurisdiction in the area of St-Denis, and the revenues of the Lendit fair, and describing within it how he had taken the vexillum from the altar of the saint. 14

THE INVENTION OF HISTORY: ROYAL IDEOLOGY OR DIONYSIAN PRETENSION? What Suger says about the episode is important because it is often seen as the defining moment in the development of Suger's political theories, when everything suddenly crystallised for this 'ideologist of the monarchy': when Suger is first able to present the Capetian king as the king of tota Francia; a king who, firmly at the apex of his feudal pyramid, can do homage to nobody. But this is to misread Suger's intentions. The pretensions he pushes in 1124 are those of the abbey of St-Denis, the abbey which protects the crown and the bodies of the king's ancestors, as the 'caput regni' the capital of his kingdom. How Suger saw the relationship between Louis and StDenis in 1124 is obscured by the shifts of emphasis, internal 11. VLG, pp.220-4. 12. Ekkehard, MGH Scriptorum , VI, pp.262-3. 13. VLG, p .230. Luchaire, Annales LVI, p.158, no.343, and Waquet, VLG, pp.230-1, n.3, assume Amaury had been captured at Rougemoutier, so they dismiss Suger's account of Amaury's defeat of the Vexin invasion . In fact Amaury escaped at Rougemoutier, see OV, VI, pp.350-2. 14. Orig. AN K.22 no.4: Dufour, Actes, I, pp.458-66, no.220.

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inconsistencies and inaccuracies in his various accounts of the episode. As weIl as his primary account in the LiJe oJ Louis the Fal, Suger mentions Louis' acceptance of the vexillum at St-Denis in De Administratione, when he lists the resulting gifts in the Vexin. 15 These versions of the affair can be set against the charter of 1124, issued after Louis' triumphant return. It was produced in the abbey scriptorium, but the king and his chancellery were prepared to sign and corroborate it; though Louis, overcome by gratitude to his patron saint, allowed the abbey to get away with more than he had intended.1t) A different emphasis emerges in a fourteenthcentury transcription of the LiJe oJ Louis the Fat, known as version F. It has been claimed that it represents a lost, slightly fuller version of the text, by Suger himself, that did not circulate , but remained at St-Denis. This is by no means proven. It could equally reflect later interpolations into Suger's text at the abbey.J7 Suge r is guilty of a glaring inaccuracy when he claims it was in thanks for this victory that Louis returned the crown to St-Denis. I~ As we have seen , this had occurred in 1120, before Suger became abbot, probably in gratitude for peace with Henry land the ending of war in the Vexin. The 1120 ceremony, involving the king, the queen and the entire court, provided the inspiration, and the precedent for the grander, more stage-managed pre-and post-campaign ceremonies of 1124. The 1124 charter amplifies and complements the contents of its 1120 predecessor, to which it is closely related. Suger's controlling hand is evide nt in both charters. 19 The principal inconsistency betwcen Suger's various versions and the 1124 charter concerns the status of the king as standard bearer of St Denis. The charter stresses royal rights. It says that Louis took up the vexillum 'which is recognised as pertaining to the county of the Vexin, which we (Louis) have from (St-Denis) in fief, conserving and imitating the ancient custom of our ancestors, as standard bearer by right,just as the counts of the Vexin used to be'.20 In th e 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

A.dmin, oe, p.162. Dufour, A.ctes, I, p.461. See Waquet, VLG, introduction, pp.xxii-xxiv. VLG, pp.226-8. See above, pp.l04-5, and Dufour, A.cles, I, pp.462-4. Dufonr, A.ctes, I, p.465 , no.220.

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Life of Louis the Fat, Suger invests this with a different meaning: 'the king, taking the banner, which pertained to the county ofthe Vexin, in which he is in fiefto the church [quo ad ecclesiam feodatus est], receiving it devoutly, as if from his lord' .21 Such overt subjugation of royal to ecclesiastical power would surely have given Louis the Fat apoplexy. Some who read the Life of Louis the Fat in the early 1140s may weIl have found this account unacceptably theocratic. Version F, wh atever it really is, says that Louis affirms that 'for that county, but for the fact that royal authority stood in the way, he was held to do homage to the church'. The same idea appears in De Administratione: 'Louis ... professed that he held (the fief ofthe Vexin) from (St Denis), and in his right as standard bearer, if he were not a king, he would owe homage to (St Denis)'.n This introduces a letout clause for kings - 'si rex non esset' - as if it were a legal maxim. The solution for what was undoubtedly a practical problem in other areas is stated so clearly in the De Administratione that it developed canonical status. By the time Suger wrote De Administratione, the relationship between the king and his church had changed. Louis the Fat in 1124 was in total control of the north French church. Most key positions were held by those acceptable to hirn, often members of his own familia. In the 1130s, under the impact of new reformist ideas, that relationship collapsed. Relations between king and church did not improve under the young Louis VII. As the prevailing atmosphere became one of dispute, so aIl parties feIt an increasing need to define their positions. The concatenation of ceremony and charter was a masterstroke of invention, behind which Suger was the moving spirit. Trained in the music theatre of the St-Denis liturgy, he would have been in his element in the concoction of the vexillum ceremony. Besides, Louis the Fat seems to have been momentarily overwhelmed by the enormity of the opposition he faced, and sufficiently dependent on superhuman help, to have signed a charter which included a concession to the ab bey - the entire county of the Vexin - that he would 21. VLG, p.220. 22. Admin, oe, pp.161-2.

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not normally have countenanced, and which made large claims for St-Denis. Suger was taking advantage of his king. The abbey did very weIl out of Louis' moment of weakness. The monks had for some time been hoping for a share in the revenues generated for the king at the Lendit fair on the plain of St-Denis. The act that Suger extracted from Louis in 1122 had prepared the ground by giving the abbey a large measure ofjurisdiction over this area. Now the abbey gained the valuable customs and jurisdiction of the great fair on the plain, and the confirrnation that it had been given to St-Denis in the first place by Louis' ancestors in honour of the sacred relics of the nail and the thorn, which had been given into the protection of the abbey, the 'caput regni nostri' - the capital of our kingdom. The inventions are ingenious. It was doubtless helpful , in dealing with those fractious advocates in the Vexin, to be known as the king's suzerain for the county. But Louis was hirnself a wily operator. Claiming that the county of the Vexin really belonged to St-Denis, from whom he held it as a fief, was a clever move. King Philip had seized the county in 1076/ 7, when the childless last count retired to a monastery. The area was too vulnerable to Norman attack to be left undefended; nevertheless, Capetian claims on the county were legally tenuous. ~I St-Denis had always held property in the area, though much was now alienated. It was easy to expand Dionysian property and influence in the Vexin into an eCclesiastical county emerging from the mists of time. Suger judged it an important concession to the abbey, and had ir specially confirmed by the pope in 1131. ~~ But as Barroux points out, as far as Louis was concerned, the suzerainty of St-Denis over the Vexin had no more than immediate validity. In 1127, Louis invested William Clito with the county with no reference to the rights of the abbey, and no suggestion that Clito should do homage for it.~" The king had outmanoeuvred his abbot. The vexillum of the Vexin was another happy invention. By the end of the twelfth century, in the works of GuiIlaume le Breton celebrating Louis the Fat's grandson, Philip Augustus, 23. R. Barrollx , 'L'abbe 511ger et la vassalite du Vexin en 1124', Le Moven Age, LXIV, 1958, 1-3. . 24. Privilege in PL, CLXXIX, cols.93-5. 25. Barroux, 'Vassalile', pp.8-9, n.24. OV, VI, p.370.

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the vexillum of St-Denis and the Vexin had become identified with the oriflamme of Charlemagne and established as the banner under which the king of France marched into battle. 26 Before a campaign, in arestaging of the ceremony of 1124, the king accepts the oriflamme from the high altar of StDenis. The saint has been turned from headless intercessor into military champion of the dynasty. The ceremony was restaged as early as 1147, under Suger's aegis, as Louis VII set off on crusade. 27 It is unclear whether in 1124 or in 1147 Suger equated the vexillum with Charlemagne's oriflamme. Suger never calls it anything other than the vexillum. 28 Nevertheless, the speed with which the vexillum was identified with the oriflamme is suggestive. The oriflamme was already associated with StDenis in the Chanson de Roland, which reached its present form during the First Crusade. 2!1 Suger was very conscious of Charlemagne's connections with the abbey; he invoked them in the 1124 charter itself, and in the Charlemagne windows which he commissioned for the choir, probably for the Second Crusade vexillum ceremony in 1147. 30 In Rome Suger must have seen the famous mosaics in the Triclinium of the Lateran Palace, showing St Peter handing the pallium to Pope Leo III and a banner to Charlemagne: this must be the inspiration behind the sudden manifestation of the vexillum of the Vexin.'\l One of the more pervasive myths disseminated by the monk William was that it was Suger who invented a special relationship between St-Denis and the kings of France, indeed between St-Denis and France itself, and that 1124 was the moment when this alliance was forged. As I have said, this nexus of special relationships was already a well-established 26. Guillaume le Breton, Philippidos, xi, v.32-9, RHf: XVII, p.257. 27. OD, p.16. 28. Only the late F version of The Life oJ Louis the Fat calls it the auriflamma. See Barroux, 'Vassalite', p.12, n.35. 29. La Chanson de Roland, ed. F. Whitehead (Oxford, 1947), p.91, verses 3093-5: for the date of the text, ibid. p.vi. 30. See below. 31. For discussion of the vexillum, see Barroux, 'Vassalite', pp.9-10 and L. H. Loomis, 'The Oriflamme of France and the War-Cry "Monjoie" in the Twelfth Century', Studies in Art and Literature Jor Belle da Costa Greene, ed. D. Miner (Princeton, 1954), pp.67- 82.

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and venerable tradition when Suger became abbot. 32 Suger certainly played on it in 1124. He invented the bold claim in the charter that St-Denis was the 'caput regni', the capital of the kingdom, and built inexorably on the claims of the 1120 charter, that St-Denis was the proper horne of the regalia, taking every opportunity to manoeuvre the king into helpless dependence on the abbey. The kingdom of which Suger claimed St-Denis was the caput was, of course, France. To rally to the vexillum, Louis invited, according to Suger, 'tota Francia' /~ and by and large 'tota Francia' turned up. Duke Henry of Normandy was the only northern French great prince who was absent. Even Theobald of Blois, whose personal allegiance lay overwhelmingly with his uncle Henry, joined Louis. This may have been because Theobald would inherit Champagne, which stood to lose most in the was te and pillage of a successful German invasion. It is often suggested that the concept of 'tota Francia' was Suger's invention. This is untrue. Glübert of Nogent had already used the phrase, expressly connecting it with St Denis, around 1115. I have already discussed Suger's own very flexible - modern historians would say inconsistent - use of terms like Francia and Gallia. For monastic writers like Suger and Guibert, the concept of 'tota Francia' was a meaningful reality, but one that was fuzzy at the edges, for the very good reason that it reflected the unsettled and shifting borders of the real political world. Probably it meant much the same to Louis and his magnates, though they have left us no written clues about their attitudes to 'tota Francia' . 1124 was not the first time that the great princes of France had shown an implicit acknowledgment of it. A significant number of them, including some whose own interests were not particularly served by it, had joined the Auvergnat expedition of 1122. The circumstances in 1124 were exceptional. This was an invasion by a ruler of another nation. Doubtless most people then as now defined themselves exclusively. The great princes of northern France, even the count of Flanders, see m to have known they were not Teutons, and known, what is 32. See introduction, pp.13-15. 33. \I1-CJ. p .220. Suger and his contemporaries used the word ' Francia' to denote both th e kingdom of France, and, in a narrow se nse, the nonh e m Parisis.

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more, that they did not like them. In the parlance of the twilight of the twentieth century, they sensed their otherness. But did everyone join Louis because he asked them to protect a 'tota Francia' they were already proud of: did they suddenly feel themselves to be 'tota Francia' when they stood at Reims facing the enemy: or did they just do the job, and leave Suger to transmute the fact that everyone had turned up into a complex political concept? Our clue lies in the battle line itself. Set piece battles were something that every meclieval general did his best to avoid. The ambush, the skirmish, the siege, the wasting of enemy lands, were the preferred methods of medieval warfare. To line up, as Louis did, disposing his wings anel his reserves with Vegetian formality, to risk everything on a single great encounter, was reserved for circumstances which were clearly perceived as exceptional, where boundary lines must be drawn. In short, Louis and his generals entertained an idea of France as developed as anything in Suger's writings. Moreover, the gamble of a great batde could only be undertaken by someone, like Louis, or William the Conqueror at Hastings, who had made very sure he had God on his side. That was where Suger, St Denis, and the vexillum came in. 34

1124 AND ALL THAT: SUGER AND LOUIS THE FAT The claims that Suger made for the abbey of St-Denis in the 1124 and the related 1120 acta are extended from the sublime to the ridiculous in an extraordinary forgery, which purports to be a charter given to St-Denis by Charlemagne in 813 (D.Kar.286).35 It insists that all kings ofFrance, and all archbishops and bishops should defer to the church of St-Denis, which is the head, the 'caput' of all the churches of the kingdom, and to its abbot; that the abbot of St-Denis is the primate of the church of France; that no bishop can be elected or ordained without his approbation; that the king 34. For a discussion of medieval warfare , see esp. J. Giliingham,'Richard land the Science of War in the Middle Ages', in War and Government in The Middle Ages, ed. J. Gillingharn and J. C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1984), pp.78-91. 35. MGH, Diplomatum Karolinorum, [: Pippini, Carlomanni, Caroli Magni Diplomata, ed. E. Muhlbacher (Hannover, 1906), pp.428-30.

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must be crowned at St-Denis, which is where Charlemagne has deposited all the royal regalia; and that the king holds the kingdom of France from God and from St Denis. It is difficult to believe that the forger expected anyone to take this seriously; and it has to be said that no one did. It is not clear when this tissue of lies was perpetrated; it has been variously dated between 1124 and 1149, connected with the vexillum claims, with the coronation of the young King Philip, with the assumption of the regency, and with the rebellion of Robert of Dreux.:11 ; It has even been dated after 1156, and imputed to Odo of Deuil, though the main reason for so doing was that Suger would have been above forgery. '\7 As we have seen, Suger was an accomplished practitioner of this delicate art. Both Barroux and Dufour have demonstrated how far phrases in this false act resemble those in the 1120, 1122 and 1124 royal acta produced by and for Suger at St-Denis, and that it builds on and fills out their claims.:\K There is a lot to be said for following them and dating D.Kar.286 soon after 1124. Suger's various versions of the events of 1124 were designed to put the king in his place. D.Kar.286 does so too, but also seeks to establish the pre-eminence of the abbey and abbot of St-Denis over the rest of the Gallican church. That the crisis of 1124 met with a brilliantly inventive response from Suger is not to be denied. But his ideological novelty has been overestimated, and his ideological stance misinterpreted. This is because the events of 1124 are often 36. For th e various datings, see Barroux, 'Vassalite', pp.15-16, n.43. BarrOllx favours a date dose to 1124. See also M. Groten , 'Die Urkunde Karls d es Grossen fur St-Denis von 813 (D.286) eine Falschung Abt Sugers?' Historisches Jahrbuch, 108 (1988), p .9 and R; Grose,'Saint-Denis und das Papstum zur Zt;it des Abtes Suger', in L 'Eglise de France et la papaute (xe-xiiie siede), (Etudes et docume nts pour servir ä une Gallia Pontifica) ed. R. Grose (Bonn, 1993), pp.233-4, nn .80, 81, both of whom favour a date in the latish 1120s. 37. C. Van d e Kieft, ' Deux diplömes faux de Charlemagne pour SaintDenis du xiie siede, ' Le Moyen Age, 64 (1958) , pp.413-23. E. A. R. Brown , S ' t-Denis and the Turpin Legend in the Codex Calixtinus and the Shrine of St James', Jakobus-Studien, 3 (Tubingen, 1992) ed . J. Williams and A. Stones, pp.52-3, daims it was concocted by Doublet, but he r arguments, while ingenious, are unconvincing. 38. Barroux , 'Vassalite', esp. pp.15-26; Dufour, Actes, I, p.463, nn.14, 15, p.462 , n .7.

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interpreted with hindsight from the clear royalist perspective of the France of Philip Augustus. Suger's charters and histories are seen as an important first step along the road to the triumphant alliance of king, France and St-Denis beneath Charlemagne's oriflamme at Bouvines. And it is true that aB the elements of Philip Augustus' image of himself as the new Charlemagne, governing all - almost - of France in its grandest sense, secure in the prayers and moral support of the saint who was his military patron, and the abbey which cared for his crown and his ancestars, were implicit in, and grew out of, Suger's pretensions for his abbey, and his manipulation of the crisis of 1124. But Suger the Gregorian had used the crisis to put the king firmly in his place, coming on his knees to the capital of the kingdom, making massive concessions to it, begging the abbot and his monks to get God and St Denis on his side, accepting his role as their banner carrier. Philip Augustus turned Suger's agenda inside out.:1 Even at this early stage, it is dear, if we look beyond Suger's own account, that king and counsellor had very different political views. Louis took many decisions that cannot have pleased the abbot. Suger's concern about relations with the house of Blois/Champagne, and with what went on around the more northerly fringes of Capetian territory reflected the concerns and experiences of Louis the Fat: the itinerary 11. Hist L\I71, p.lSl. 12. Vita, p.385.

13. LL 1157, ff.811; Admin, oe, p.182. 14. See T. Evergates, 'Louis VII and the counts of Champagne', in The Second Crusade and the Cistercians, ed . M. Gervers (New York, 1992), pp. 109-1 7, for th e changing relationships between Theobald a nd I.ouis. 15. His! um, pp. ISO-I. G. Constable, 'The Disputed E1ection at Langres in 1138,' Tmditio, 13 (1957), pp.119-52.

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ofyoung Louis, in his first years as king, suggests that he was, by contrast, more interested in establishing and expanding his influence to the south and west of his heartlands. And the new king's attitude to the church must have made many an ecc1esiastical reformist nostalgic for the good old days of Louis the Fat. In January 1138, there was an election dispute over the archbishopric of Reims. Louis withheld the licence to elect, and prejudiced archiepiscopal rights and revenues in the city by supparting a commune. St Bernard intervened with a volley of furious letters. As a result, Innocent II ordered Louis to allow the election under a commission of French bishops - Geoffrey of Chartres, Hugh of Auxerre, Jocelyn of Soissons and Alvise of Arras. The composition of this commission may reflect Suger's influence: he would certainly have approved. Eventually, in late 1139, Samson Mauvoisin, dean of Chartres, nephew-in-Iaw of Stephen de Garlande, protege of Geoffrey of U:ves, was elected archbishop. But Samson needed the help of both Louis, who had by now totally changed his policy over Reims, and count Theobald to put down the commune which had, he c1aimed, usurped much archiepiscopal power. In the end the Reims election issued in a triumph for those who, like Suger, had struggled to keep the old king in line with moderate ecc1esiastical reform. But it was by no means an easy victory.16 In autumn 1138, Louis set off for Aquitaine to impose royal control on the province. Suger andJocelyn of Soissons went too, prominent among the royal advisers. 17 Louis suppressed a commune in Poitiers, and would have punished the citizens with unwonted severity had it not been far Suger's counsel of restraint. Louis had asked Count Theobald to send hirn troops for this campaign, but Theobald refused; and the alliance which Suger had taken such pains to build between the experienced old count and the rash young king began to fall apart. IR SadIy, at this point Suger's contribution to the History oj Louis VII ends, and subsequent court intrigue has to be 16. E. Vacandard, Vie de Saint-Bernard, abbi de Clairoaux, 2nd ed. 2 vols (Paris, 1897), II, pp.36-46. 17. Hist LVII, pp.151-6. 18. Hist LVII, p.152.

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reconstructed from other sources. Things did not go weB for Suger and his friends. Adela and Ralph of Vermandois were welcomed back to court. By 1140 Louis had fallen out with Henry Sanglier, archbishop of Sens. 19 In the same year, the Berrichon clerc, Cadurc, now basking in royal favour, engineered Algrin's dismissal as chancellor. Suger protested over this treatment of his old colleague. A reconciliation was effected by a motley collection of intermediaries, whose common bond was that they belonged to Algrin's generation, and had schemed together and against one another in the previous two decades. The peace was signed at Ralph of Vermandois' palace at Crepy-en-Valois. It was engineered by Suger, supported by a group of top Cluniacs on the one hand (Abbot Imar of Montierneuf, the protege of Matthew of Albano, who had played a key role in the recognition of Innocent 11 in 1130; Odo, subprior of St-Martin-des-Champs; and Hugh de Crecy, the distinguished prior of Cluny, probably a member of the Montlheri clan) and by top Cistercians (Bernard and Hugh, ex-abbot of Pontigny, now bishop of Auxerre) on the other. The grand old men closed ranks to protect one of themselves against the new order. ~() But despite Suger's best efforts, Algrin lost the chancellorship, ultimately to Cadurc hirnself. The 'old counsellors' were no longer in control. The seneschal Ralph of Vermandois and the chancellor Cadurc were now the driving force behind Louis' actions to talk of policies would be to suggest an unjustified level of purpose. How far Cadurc and Ralph cooperated is unclear. They had quite different objectives: Ralph to resurne his enmity with Theobald of Blois; Cadurc to feather his own nest in Berry and the Orleannais.

WAR AND DIPLOMACY WITH THEOBALD OF BLOIS Whoever was advising hirn, things did not run smoothly for the young king. In 1140, Louis had married his sister 19. Chron Mor, p.77. 20. Luchaire, A.cles LVII, pp.120-1 , no.67; Pacaut, Louis VII, pAl, and n.6: RHF, XVI, p.6; Chron Mor, p .77: PV LeUers, H, appendix 0, pp.31115 for Hugh de Crecy, and appendix], pp.293-5 for Imar ofTusculum.

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Constance to Eustace, son of Stephen of Blois. Louis invested Eustace as duke ofNormandy in February 1141, after Stephen's capture at the batde of Lincoln. 21 But in spring 1141, Geoffrey of Anjou invaded the duchy. In desperation, Hugh of Arniens offered both the dukedom and the kingdom to Stephen's brother Theobald. Theobald refused the honour. He was prepared to let Geoffrey of Anjou take Normandy, provided Stephen were released, and Theobald himself given the rich city of TourS. 22 Theobald seemed intent on inactivity. He refused to join Louis on a summer expedition to Languedoc and Aquitaine, to Louis' fury.23 Louis' ecclesiastical intiatives fared no better. Louis fell foul of both St Bernard and Innocent 11 over the episcopal election at Poitiers. 24 Bernard assumed that Jocelyn of Soissons was Louis' misguided counsellor in this case. 2" In May 1141, the see of Bourges fell vacant. The canons elected Peter de la Chatre, a distinguished scholar and nephew of Haimery the papal chancellor. Louis insisted instead they accept Cadurc as archbishop. Suger, much to the detriment of his relationship with Louis, supported Peter de la Chatre. 26 Peter sought re fuge with Theobald of Champagne, which further soured relations between the king and the count palatine. 27 These were already strained to breaking point. Ralph of Vermandois had be co me infatuated with Petronilla, the younger sister of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and repudiated his wife Eleanor, niece of Theobald of Blois. 28 Ralph had his marriage dissolved on grounds of consanguinity by a set of compliant bishops: his brother Simon, bi shop of Noyon; the aged Bartholomew de Vir of Laon, who owed preferment in 21. Henry of Huntingdon in RHF, XIII, p.40; William of Newburgh in RHF, XIII, pp.97, 99. 22. OV, VI, p.548. 23. Pacaut, Louis VII, p.42; Evergates, p.llO; OV, VI, p .55l; Chronicon Turonense, RHF, XII, p.472; Continuator Praemonstratense, RHF, XIII, p.33l. 24. Pacaut, Louis VII, p.68; Pacaut, Elections episcopales, pp.92-3. 25. Bernard, Epist, VIII, pp.284-5, no.cccxlii. 26. Suger to Peter, oe, pp.239-40. 27. For the Bourges election debacle, see Pacaut, Elections episcopales, pp.94-100. 28. Evergates, p.llO. Ralph was back at court by July 1139, see Luchaire, Actes LVII, p.llO, no.36, p.1l2, no.42 and p.1I5, nO.50.

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his youth to Ralph's mother;29 and Peter of Senlis, who as bishop of a sm all see very much under royal control probably had no choice . Jocelyn of Soissons was not of their number: as both royal cousellor, and bishop of the Vermandois, he would have been an obvious choice. His absence may reflect his disapproval. Ralph now considered himself free to live openly with Petronilla, while the rejected Eleanor took refuge with a furious unc1e Theobald . Theobald retaliated with all the ecc1esiastical c10ut at his disposal. St Bernard sent a letter.:{O Innocent 11 sent a papal legate , who, at the Council of Lagny in spring 1142, dec1ared Ralph 's first marriage still valid, the unfortunate compliant bishops excommunicate, and the Vermandois under interdict.:11 This was too much for Louis and Ralph. Louis invaded Champagne , burning Vitry in January 1143.:{2 Theobald had been an enthusiastic soldier in his youth but never a very good one. He had long depended on skilled diplomacy to protect his dominions and had made enterprising use of Cistercian patronage to extend his sphere of influence. Now, faced by direct military attack, he crumpled rapidly and completely, and fell back on eCc1esiastical supporters and diplomacy, which was more or less the same thing. Suger and J ocelyn of Soissons were Louis' negotiators: Bernard, and Bishop Hugh of Auxerre represented Theobald. Between them, they agreed that Theobald, with St Bernard's help, would persuade the pope to lift the interdicts and excommunications. In return Louis would withdraw his forces. 'l:l But much was unresolved. The pope still expected Ralph to take back Eleanor of Champagne, and refused to accept Cadurc as archbishop of Bourges. Bernard wrote to the pope to ask pardon for the king in these matters. ~~ Innocent was no longer Bernard's to command: he replied tartly that Bernard meddled too much in politics. Meanwhile relations between 29. B. Guenee,'Les genealogies entre l'histoire et la politique: la fierte d 'etre capetie n, en France , au moye n age ', AESC, 33 (1978), p.456. 30. Bernard, Epist, VIII, p.76, nO.ccxvi. 31. Pacaut, Louis VII, p.43; Historia Tornacensis, MGH Scriptorum , ed. G. Pe rtz, 2nd ed.(Leipzig, 1925), XIV, p 3. 43. 32. For an overview of the war with Champagne , s ee Pacaut, Louis VII, pp.43-6, and irlem. Elections ipiscopales, pp.97-100. 33. Be rnard, Epist, VIII, p .88, no.ccxxii. 34. Bernard, Epist, VIII, pp.80-2 , nO.ccxix.

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Louis and Theobald deteriorated again. Theobald planned marriage alliances with Thierry of Alsace, count of Flanders, and with the count of Soissons. Louis even suspected that he tried to detach Ralph ofVermandois from his royal allegiance. 35 Louis threatened once more to invade Champagne. Theobald's ultimate deterrent, St Bernard, fired the usual salvo of letters. He wrote to Louis hirnself, defending Theobald's marriage alliances, and complaining that Louis had left the sees of Chalons and Paris vacant (Stephen of Senlis had died in May) , and that the archbishop of Reims, and the rightful archbishop of Bourges were unable to occupy their cathedral cities.% Louis' response, unfortunately lost, was not encouraging. Bernard sent copies of it, together with arestatement of his views, to Suger and Jocelyn of Soissons.:n Bernard was convinced that Suger and Jocelyn would be able to pull the young king into line. Both Jocelyn and Suger wrote back. Their letters too are lost, but the burden of both seems to have been that Bernard had overestimated their influence. Suger and Jocelyn had not been dismissed from the court. They were Louis' main diplomatists in the Champagne affair. Nevertheless, Louis was not listening to their advice at the moment. Their role was picking up the diplomatie pieces. Bernard in his turn sent letters of apology to both men for his harsh words. His own experiences with Innocent II had taught hirn how easy and how gaUing it was to find that one's influence had faded. Bernard's letter to Suger has a level of informality that would only be appropriate to a friend. It is very short. Bernard says he has just got Suger's letter, and he feels he must reply immediately; nevertheless, it is vespers already, and Bernard has a fuU chapter tomorrow. Pray for us, he finishes. The letter to Jocelyn is fuBer and more formal. Bernard knew Jocelyn weB; they had been to Aquitaine together in 1130/1: but it is the letter'to Suger which conveys genuine affection. 3R 35. 36. 37. 38.

Bernard, Epist, VIII, p.87, no.eexxii. Bernard, Epist, VIII, pp.84-6, nO.eexxi. Bernard, Epist, VIII, pp.86-9, nO.eexxii. Bernard, ~pist, VIII, pp.89-90, nO.eexxiii to Joeelyn; pp.345-6, nO.eedxxxi to Suger. Ledere and Roehais date the latter letter to c.1150, though they offer no good reason for doing so. Vaeandard, II, p.191, assoeiating the letter with the problems in 1143, seems to me to make good sense .

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Negotiations made no further progress until the death of Innocent II in September 1143. His successor, Celestine, an ex-pupil of Abelard, weIl acquainted with the personalities and politics of Capetian France, was more flexible. He established a tribunal headed by Alvise of Arras - who must count as one of the 'old counsellors' - to look into Theobald's marriage alliances. On 12 March 1144, the interdict on Louis was lifted. :,9 A group of negotiators, including Hugh of Auxerre, Bernard, and probably Suger, met at Corbeil to arrange terms, but Louis lost his temper and walked out. Both Bernard and Hugh of Auxerre wrote to hirn. Suger worked hard behind the scenes. Bernard wrote to Jocelyn of Soissons, hoping to take advantage of an 'appointed celebration' at St-Denis - which must have been the consecration of the choir in J une 1144 - to pursue peace negotiations. Finally a treaty was signed between Louis and Theobald at St-Denis on 9 October 1144. 40 It was a splendid occasion, attended by Louis, Eleanor and their court, Theobald and his court, and the many churchmen who had managed to bring about the concord, including Suger, of course, Bernard, Jocelyn of Soissons, and Hugh of Auxerre. Doubtless many who had taken part in the recent consecration of the new choir reconvened for the concord - one thinks in particular of Hugh of Amiens, Alvise of Arras, Samson of Reims, and the other bishops from Theobald's territories: Geoffrey of Chartres, Guy of Chalons, and Manasses of Meaux. It is tempting to go further and suggest that Suger wrote his treatise on the consecration of the church for distribution at this important meeting. The pointed reference in the text to the generosity to the abbey of Louis, Theobald and the Cistercians, would have been peculiarly appropriate: 41 but this is, of course, mere speculation. 39. Pacaut. Elections p,piscopales, p.100. 40. Bernard, Apist, esp. VUI, p.94, nO.eexxv, to Joeelyn of Soissons, mentioning Suger's key role in the making of the peaee, and the prodaimed eelebration (indicta celebritate) at St-Denis at whieh Bernard hopes to see Joeelyn; pp.95-6, no.eexxvi, Bernard and Hugh of Auxerre to Louis the Fat. See also the Fragmenta ex tertia vita Saneti Bernardi Gaufrido monaeho, PL, vo1.l85, p.527, whieh makes it dear that the final coneord was arranged on the feast of SI Denis, i.e. 9 Oetober. 41. Cons, oe, pp.229, 231; ed. Pan, pp.106-7, 110-11.

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THE ABBOT AS POLITICIAN, 1137-THE MID-1140S

THE NORMAN QUESTION AND THE CONSECRATION Louis had no option but to come to terms with Theobald. By the spring of 1144, Geoffrey of Anjou controlled most of Normandy.42 What was more, he was now allied with Thierry of Flanders, and had an arrangement with Theobald of Blois. Now Louis was faced with a potentially formidable hostile alliance of Anjou, Blois, Normandy, Flanders and Champagne. 43 Louis had also to reach an accommodation with Geoffrey of Anjou. Geoffreywanted Louis' affirmation ofhis, or his son's, tenure of the dukedom of Normandy, which Louis had conferred on his brother-in-Iaw, Eustace ofBoulogne, Stephen 's son. Archbishop Hugh played a key role in the necessary diplomacy.44 So too, surely, did Suger. The evidence of his involvement is contained in the cast list of the consecration of the choir on 11 June 1144. Along with Louis and Eleanor, and the expected Ile de France bishops, there is an extremely heavy Anglo-Norman contingent: Archbishop Hugh of Rouen, of course, but also Rotrou ofEvreux, Algare ofCoutances, who had gone over to Geoffrey in 1143, and Theobald of Canterbury, who had generally been mildly pro-Angevin. 4" The fact that Theobald of Blois' bishops - Chartres, Reims, Chalons, Meaux and Auxerre - were also present in force adds to the impression that the choir consecration doubled as a surreptitious summit, avital step in the negotiations for the October concord. It must be the appointed celebration, the 'indicta cekbritate', at St-Denis, at which Bernard hoped to see Jocelyn of Soissons to prosecute peace negotiations. The 'appointed celebration' cannot have been the October concord, because by that time pe ace negotiations had been successfully prosecuted. Given the widely prevalent art-historical view that Suger's new shrine-choir is in effect a riposte to the aesthetic strictures of St Bernard, it is interesting to note that 42. C. H .Haskins, Norman Institutions, reprint (NewYork, 1960), pp.12930. 43. Pacaut, Louis VII, pp.45-6. 44. Haskins, Norman Institutions, pp. 129-30. 45. For Algare see Haskins, Norman Institutions, p .130, n.24. For Theobald, see A. Saltman, Theobald Archbishop 0/ Canterbury (London, 1956) , pp.16-41.

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Bernard hirnself was present at the consecration of the new choir of St-Denis on 11 th June 1144.

ROYALRAPPROCHEMENT Louis had cause to be grateful to his brilliant negotiator, and there were distinct signs of royal favour from 1144. Louis settled long-disputed rights over Monnerville in the northern Beauce with Hugh de Mereville in St-Denis' favour. 46 Louis' brother Philip gave a prebend at St-Spire at Corbeil to St-Denis for Suger's newly founded priory of Notre-Damedes-Champs.47 In 1146, Suger eventually persuaded Louis to allow hirn to refound the college of St-Pierre at Chaumonten-Vexin as a priory of St-Denis. 1H In 1144, those sure barometers of court sentiment, the monks of Morigny, elected not another Cluniac, but Thouin , a monk of St-Denis and prior of Argenteuil, as their new abbot. Thouin promoted St-Denis' interests in the northern Beauce.''l Suger's influence still yielded before that of Louis' young favourites like Cadurc, or Thierry Galeran. Of the 'old counsellors ', Jocelyn of Soissons was the dosest to the king, and the most frequently at court?) Nevertheless in March 1146, it was to Suger that the new Pope Eugenius III turned to persuade Louis to protect St-Medard at Soissons from the local count.'>! Eugenius was a Cistercian and was undoubtedly advised how to deal with Capetian France by Bernard. Suger's real use to Louis was still as a widely respected and very effective negotiator. The terms of the accord with Geoffrey of Anjou were not yet finalised. Rumours of an intended marriage between one of Louis' daughters and the young Duke Henry of Normandy reached St Bernard in 46. A.dmin, Oe pp.168-9; Luchaire, Actes LVII, p.144, no.139, where the act is dated 1144-45; LL 1158, f.20, where the act carries the date 1143. 47. 1145/6, Luchaire , Actes LVII, p.146, 110.148; LL 1158, f.324. 48. Luchaire, Actes LVII, p.152, 110.167; LL 1158, f.381; A.dmin, OC, pp .183-4. 49. Chron Mur, pp.83-4. See another accord with Hugh de Mereville in 1146, Luchaire, Actes LVII, p.153, no.169; LL 1]58, f.21, and see also Admin, OC, pp.168-9. 50. Bernard, Epist, VIII, pp.284-5, nO.cccxlii. 51. Eugenius to Suger, RH}~ XV, p.436.

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THE ABBOT AS POLITICIAN. 1137-THE MID-1l40S

1146. The saint thought the proposed marriage eonsaguinous, and wrote to both the king and Suger to say SO.52 Bemard either knew, or assumed, that Suger was involved in the negotiations. Suger hirns elf observed how eonvenient was the new priory at Chaumont-en-Vexin for travelling to Normandy on business. 5:1 Suger was also kept informed about problems in Aquitaine, involving unrest in Poitiers and a magnate uprising led by Eble de Mauleon, by the senesehal William de Mauze. 54 Louis visited Sain tes in Aquitaine in late 1145 or 1146. Suger might have aeeompanied hirn, though his only reeorded visits to Aquitaine are those of 1137 and 1138. The tone of William de Mauze's letter to Suger suggests they have been in dose and reeent eontaet. As usual, St-Denis possessed a eonveniently plaeed priory for the furtheranee of the business of the king, in this ease at St-Denis-en-Vaux near Chatellerault in northern Poitou. By the mid-1140s, things had settled into a satisfaetory state from the perspeetive of Suger's politieal pretensions as abbot of St-Denis. But the state of the Capetian kingdom was less satisfaetory. Peaee abroad and seeurity at horne were still uneertain; so that when, in 1146, Louis VII developed an obsessive determination to lead a new erusade to the Holy Land, Suger found hirnself, onee again, deeply opposed to the young king's wishes.

52. Bernard, Epist, VIII, pp.330-1 , nO.ccclxxi. 53. Admin, oe, pp.183-4. 54. William de Mauze and Hugh de Lesigny p.486.

155

10

Suger, 1147, RHF, XV,

Chapter 8

THE REGENT, 1147-1149

CRUSADING PLANS At his Christmas court at Bourges in 1145, Louis VII announced his intention of leading a crusade to rescue the Kingdom ofJerusalem, in a parlous state since the capture of Edessa the previous year, and invited his magnates and prelates to join hirn. Bishop Geoffrey of Langres supported Louis' plan, but nobody else showed much enthusiasm.! Suger himself spoke openly against it, on the grounds that too many problems remained unresolved in France.~ As for the French episcopacy, its energies were concentrated on an unedifying squabble over what they an regarded as the archbishop of Reim's presumption in claiming the right to crown the king in another archbishop's cathedraJ.'1 Even so, Louis went ahead with plans for a great assembly and taking of the cross at Vezelay at Easter 1146. Pope Eugenius, who was responsible for firing Louis' crusading enthusiasm, was unable to leave Rome, but he appointed St Bernard his deputy to bless the crusaders.~ He could not have chosen better. Few were unmoved by the blinding eloquence of Bernard 's preaching, and the lukewarm response to Louis' plan was transformed into a passionate determination to rescue the Holy Land. Sometime that same year, inspired perhaps by gratitude to Bernard, Louis founded a new Cistercian house at Barbeaux, I. OD, p.6. 2. Vita, p.394. 3. Bernard , Epist, VIII, pp.140-1, no.ccxlvii; letter of Eugenius to Archbishop Samson , RH}~ XV, pp.439-40. 4. OD, pp .8-9.

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THE REGENT, 1147-1149

near his palace of Fontainbleau, where, perhaps from the start, he intended to be buried. 5 Suger was apparently unaware of Louis' intention to be buried away from St-Denis - at all events, he never mentions it. Preparations for the crusade gathered momentum. Louis unwisely rejected the proferred help of King Roger of Sicily, of which Suger was in favour, and committed hirnself instead to the land route via Constantinople, and dependence on the cooperation of the Emperor. 6 A crusade was an expensive undertaking, and Louis levied a substantial and deeply unpopular tax, aH the more unpopular in view of the widespread famine of 1145-46. 7 In February 1147, a great council was held at Etampes to elect regents who would govern the kingdom in Louis' absence. Louis, according to Odo of Deuil, left the choice to the prelates and magnates of the realm. The election was dominated by St Bernard, who declared in favour of Suger and William, count of Nevers, designating them the twin swords - the ecclesiastical and the secular - who would protect the realm. It was an astute choice; Suger and the highly respected Count William would have worked weH together. But William was about to retire as a Carthusian monk, and would not be dissuaded. Suger hirnself refused to accept the position without papal sanction - though this was easily arranged, and was perhaps the occasion for a letter from Bernard to Eugenius lauding Suger's abilities in both spiritual and temporal spheres, and describing hirn as a 'trusty David to do the bidding of the Lord'.x In the end, Louis made the less dependable, and still excommunicate Ralph ofVermandois, and, on a lesser footing, Archbishop Samson of Reims, co-regents. 9

CEREMONIES AT ST-DENIS Eugenius himself now arrived in France, with his papal entourage, driven thither as usual by problems in Rome. Like 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Luchaire, Actes LVII, p .155, no.175 . OD, pp.lO-lI. RHF, XII, pp.277, 275, 288. Vita, p.394; Bernard, Epist, VIII, p.229, no.cccix. OD, pp.14-15, 20-1.

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Innocent II before hirn, he celebrated Easter, in the presence of the king, at St-Denis in the newly resplendent choir. At the same time, he consecrated the great golden cross that Suger had placed before the shrine of St Denis. 1o This can only have bolstered Suger's position, and Eugenius 'confirmed the arrangements which were satisfactory, and corrected many irregularities while waiting for the king to arrive', in Odo of Deuil's intriguing phrase. 11 Suger still thought the crusade unwise, but he had accepted its inevitability, and worked hard for its success. On 11 June 1147, during the Lendit fair, another great ceremony took place in the new church. In the presence of the pope, of Queen Eleanor, of the dowager Queen Adela, and of his court, Louis accepted the vexillum of St-Denis as his standard, handed to hirn from the high altar by Suger, marking the official start of the crusade.l~ The ceremony, said Odo of Deuil, 'was always the custom of our victorious kings':I:l in fact it was the first recurrence of the ceremony invented in 1124 by Suger and Louis the Fat in the face of the German invasion. Suger must have been responsible for the restaging. Circulation of the Life oJ Louis the Fat would have fixed the events of 1124 in the minds of the few people who mattered. It was doubtless for this ceremony that Suger commissioned a new window for one of the radiating chapels of the choir, combining scenes from the First Crusade with scenes representing Charlemagne's visit to Constantinople to bring back to St-Denis the much prized relies of the nail and thorn. l{ After the ceremony itself, the king retired for a while to Suger's new dormitory; then he and a few of his intimates dined in Suger's new refectory with the monks. In spite of 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Admin, ed. Pan, pp.58-60. OD, pp.16-17. OD, pp.16-17. OD, pp .16-17. E. A. R. Brown and M. W. Cothren, 'The 12th century Crusading Window of the abbey of Saint-Denis', JWCI, 49 (1986), connect the ....cindow with Louis VII's planned crusade to Spain in the late ll50s, but their arguments are unconvincing. The iconography is appropria te for a crusade to the Holy Land, not Spain. The nail and the thorn legend is ideal for a cere mony during the Lendit fair. The authors themselves admit that stylistically the mndow belongs to the 1140s, pp.33-7.

158

THE REGENT , ]]47-1149

the foundation of Barbeaux, Louis took care to honour St Denis, his abbey and its abbot. And he took a monk of St-Denis as his personal chaplain on the crusade; Odo of Deuil, to whom Suger had often confided difficult assignments. Nevertheless, Odo owed his position as royal chaplain to the fact that on one of them, introducing reforms at St-Vaast at Arras, he had caught the eye of Suger's friend, Bishop Alvise.l~

SUGER'S FRlENDS AND SUPPORTERS RuIing the Capetian kingdom with Ralph of Vermandois cannot have been a happy prospect. In the event, Ralph proved surprisingly reliable, except in those cases where Ralph's interests diverged from the royal interest as Suger saw it. Ralph played an active, and often honourable role in the regency government. 16 Fortunately, many of the more turbulent young bloods, and some turbulent old bloods, took the Cross with Louis. The absence of powerfullords reduced the threat to Suger's viceregal authority, but also meant the absence of that authority which usually controlled endemie local violence. 17 Theobald of Champagne was supportive,l ~ so too was Thierry of Flanders when he returned from the crusade;19 so, more surprisingly, was Geoffrey of Anjou, who sensibly stayed at home. 20 Around Christmas 1148, Geoffrey told Suger, 'If it is necessary, call me to the service of the king, and certainly you will have me ready to do all things which you wish for the service of the king'. ~l Among Suger's ecclesiastical colleagues, the co-regent Archbishop Samson of Reims had problems of his own. 22 Two old friends and allies, J ocelyn of Soissons and Geoffrey 15. William, Dialogue, p .102. 16. For example, Ralph to Suger, RHF, XV, pp.490, 494, 517. ] 7. For example, the county of Nevers, left in the hands of the countess, RHF, XV, pp.491, 503, 511; Bernard, Epist, VIII, p .338, no.ccclxxv. 18. RHF, XV, p.490. 19. RHF, XV, p.512. 20. RHF, XV, pp.493, 494. 2]. RHF, XV, p.494. 22. RHF, XV, p.489.

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of Chartres, apparently played less important roles than we might have expected. Jocelyn assisted Suger in the reform of Ste-Genevieve, and in the election of a new bishop of Arras.2~ At a particularly difficult moment, in May 1149, Suger held a great council at Soissons: evidently he e~oyed Jocelyn's full moral support. 24 Jocelyn may have been unable to offer much more. Although he was the dosest of the 'old counsellors' of Louis VII, he lacked the political acumen of Suger, Geoffrey of Chartres, Hugh of Auxerre or Baldwin of Noyon. But the real problem for bothJocelyn and Geoffrey was probably health. Jocelyn was more or less of an age with Suger, but lacked Suger's steel constitution, and suffered from long fevers. Once, staying at St-Denis, he became too ill to ride, and Suger despatched hirn by boat along the Seine to convalesce at Argenteui1. 2c, Geoffrey was probably slightly older. He died, just when Suger had most need of support, in January 1149. 26 But the archbishops Geoffrey of Bordeaux, Hugh of Sens and Peter of Bourges all cooperated with Suger. 27 Hugh of Auxerre, the Cistercian voice among the episcopacy, was frequently chosen by Pope Eugenius to implement ecdesiastical policy on, for instance, disputed elections, or the reform of Ste-Genevieve. 2H Hugh was an accomplished political animal, and proved a great asset to the regent. The loss of Geoffrey of Leves was balanced to an extent by the election of Abbot Baldwin of Chatillon-s.-Seine to the see of Noyon in 1149. Baldwin, recipient of the only letter to suggest St Bernard had a sense of humour,29 stood up to Ralph of Vermandois, who was used to the see of Noyon in the compliant hands of his brother Simon. '10 23.

oc,

p.253; RHF, XV, p.452.

24. RH}; XV, p.512.

25. Story told by Odo or Deuil in his account or the discovery of Christ's vestments at Argenteuil, Oxford, Queen's College, mss.348, ff.54v56r. This manuscript also contains William's Apologe/ie Dialogue. 26. CC, VIII, cols.1139-40. 27. RH}; XV, pp.514-15, 711-12, 703-4. 28. RH}; XV, pp.452, 457-8. Hugh 's involvement at St-Geneviere emerges in papalletters usually dated to 1150, and may have post-dated Suger's regency. But the letters would make more sense if dated spring 1149. See n.73 helow. 29. Bernard, A'pist, VIII, p.382, no.cdii. 30. RH}; XV, pp.517-18.

160

THE REGENT, 1147-1149

Nevertheless, Suger did not always have the support he required from the French prelates. 31 Bishop Odo ofBeauvais, and, initially, Samson of Reims, were preoccupied by their own problems.~{2 Several ecclesiastics, including Thierry of Amiens, were unhappy with Suger's attempts to raise taxes to supply the king's insistent demands for more money.33 But Suger was able to call on both St Bernard and Eugenius III to pull his fellow prelates into line. His insistence on papal assent to his position as regent undoubtedly strengthened his hand. 34 For the first nine minths or so of the regency, Eugenius was based in northern France or Burgundy, and it must have helped that papal sanction could be sought so easily.

TAKING CONTROL Louis did not leave his house in good order. Poitou was unsettled. 35 Louis still feared Geoffrey of Anjou: shortlyafter setting out, he wrote to Suger and Ralph of Vermandois urging them to ensure that Gisors did not fall into Geoffrey's hands. 36 Moreover, Louis had totally underestimated the costs of his expedition. He sent the first urgent demand for more money to Suger from Hungary in mid:July, a mere six weeks after his ceremonial exit from St-Denis. Louis already suspected that there might not be enough in the royal treasury, and asked Suger to forward money from his own resources as abbot of St-Denis, if necessary.~H When Louis reached Constantinople in October, he wrote once again in desperate need of money - and to tell Suger of the death of his old friend Alvise of Arras. 3R The first problem to embroil the new regent was a shabby squabble over the performance of liturgical music between 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

Suger to Bernard and Pope Eugenius, RHF, XV, p.447. RHF, XV, pp.494, 489. RHF, XV, pp.496, 497. See Vita, p.394, and Suger's own comments, oe, p.256. William de Mauze and Hugh de Lesigny to Suger, RHF, XV, p.486. RHF, XV, p.487. RHF, XV, p.487 'sive de nostro seu de vestro pecuniam sumptam nobis mittatis'. 38. RHF, XV, p.488.

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ACTIVE LIFE

the new dean, Clement, and the new precentor, Albert, of Notre-Dame in Paris. 3r) Presumably he imposed a successful accord, since both Clement and Albert continued in their respective positions for at least a decade. 40 By October 1147, Suger had more serious problems to contend with. He complained to the pope that some bishops were refusing to help hirn in the defence of the kingdom ('pro defensione regni'). He intended to hold a council to deal with this. Eugenius agreed that the bishops were at fault, and approved the holding of a council, though he would be unable to be present himself."ll 'Defence of the kingdom' in this context probably refers to internal problems. A violent insurrection against Archbishop Samson in Reims that autumn was put down before Christmas by Ralph ofVermandois.~~ Just before New Year's Day 1148, Theobald of Blois asked Suger to meet hirn at Corbeil to discuss important matters, and it is likely that Theobald, too, was involved in resolving the problems at ReimsY Geoffrey of Anjou presented the only real external threat, but there is no evidence that Geoffrey took advantage of Louis' absence.

THE COUNCIL OF REIMS Suger's desire to hold a council with the pope in attendance had to wait until the Council of Reims in mid-March 1148. Everybody who was anybody, and who was not on crusade, was there.~4 Ambassadors from Geoffrey of Anjou and the Empress pressed young Henry of Anjou's claim to the dukedom of Normandy and the kingdom of EnglandY' The Countess of Flanders pursued unknown Flemish business, which in so me way concerned Ralph of Vermandois and 39. Suger to Eugenius I1I, September 1147, oe, pp .241-4. 40. See an act of 1156/7 in R. de Lasteyrie, Cartulaire general de Paris (Paris, 1898), p.348, nO.394. 41. Euge nius to Suger, RH}H His outstanding contribution to the abbey treasury was the great golden cross before the new altar-shrine in the upper choir. He brought in goldsmiths from Lotharingia. An old cross formed the basis for the new confection, but Suger had it reworked with gems on the rear and an image of Christ on the front. It stood on a taH pillar decorated with images of the life of Christ, and their Old Testament prefigurations, supported on a pedestal with the four Evangelists. It took seven goldsmiths two years to complete; it absorbed 80 marks of gold, and glittered with gems, many bought at weIl below the going rate from Citeaux and Fontevrault. It was consecrated by Pope Eugenius in 1147.:l\l

SUGER'S LATE PROJECTS Suger did not stop with the new shrine-choir. His next project was the rebuilding of the nave and transepts, even though this would entail the demolition of the venerated fabric supposedly consecrated by Christ. Suger intended his new nave to be double-aisled, like the choir.~o This would hardly link neatly with his own narrower, single-aisled western nave bays, and it is arguable that he had every intention of demolishing, 38. Admin, ed. Pan, pp.75-8. On the liturgical vessels sec D. GaboritChopin, 'Suger's Liturgical Vessels', Symposium, pp.283-93. 39. Admin, ed. Pan, pp.55-50; P. Verdie r,'La grande croix de rabbe Suge r i Saint-Denis' , CCM, 13 (1970), pp.I-31. 40. Crosby, Royal Abbey, p.275: J. Formige, Cabbaye royale de Saint-Denis: recherehes nouvelles (Pa ris, 1950), p.104.

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THE PATRON

not only the sacred fabric of the Carolingian nave, but also his own nave bays. This might not be sacrilege, but it would certainly be profligate. But Suger's attempt to rebuild the transept and nave hardly got above plinth leve1. 4 ! He carried on with work on the monastic buildings too. He constructed for hirnself a small cell up against the abbey choir, giving direct access to the great church. A narrow door and window cut into the south wall of the westernmost chapel on the south side of the crypt may have been the entrance to it from the church. Peter the Venerable saw it when he visited St-Denis in 1148, looking at Suger's various 'works and buildings' (operibus et structuris) , and was moved to say - according to Suger's biographer - 'This man condemns us all, who does not build for hirnself, as we do, but only for God.'42 He started work on the cloister arcades in the late 1140s. The cloister, supposedly the focus of the monastic life, could only be completed once the south transept and the south side of the nave had been built; but the south and west arcades could be built up against the refectory and the west claustral range. Fragments of the west cloister arcade have survived. It had fine capitals, paterae in the span dreis, column figures, including kings, probably drawn from the Old Testament, and, perhaps, a large seated figure of Dagobert. There has been some debate as to whether the cloister arcading was executed for Suger in the last years of his life, or whether it should be ascribed to the abbacy of Odo of Deuil. This phase attracted at least one sculptor, with a Burgundian background, who also worked on the west front of Chartres - but that can be dated no more narrowly than c.1145-55. The team also included sculptors who had already worked on Suger's choir, and much of the team went on to build the new choir of St-Germain-des-Pres, which was finished at its papal consecration by 1163. This material is more sharply cut and more richly classical than the sculpture of the west front. But more than a decade had elapsed since the construction of the west front, and Suger always employed 41. Crosby, Royal Abbey, pp.267-77, for this unfinished campaign. 42. Vita, p.392. 'Omnes, inquit, nos homo iste condemnat, qui non ipse sibi ut nos, sed Deo tantum aedificat.' See the illustration in Formige, p.176, fig.161.

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THE ABBOTS LIFE

those who could produce the most convincing classical pastiche. The principal argument against ascribing the cloister to Suger is that he does not mention building it in the De Administratione; but then he does not mention the building ofthe dormitory, the refectory, or the domus hospitum, though we know from the Testament that he was responsible for them. Moreover, a poem in praise of Suger by one Ralph Physicus includes the building of the cloister among his accomplishments at the abbey.4:1 In his last years, Suger was aware of a groundswell of discontent among some of his monks, and he feared that his building works would be discontinued at his death. H The discontent was hardly surprising. Suger's legacy to (his monks was a building site, with foundation trenches dug, plinths built around the nave and transept arms, and an unfinished cloister. His fears proved justified.

SUGER AND HIS ART1STS AND WORKFORCE Suger was acutely aware of the kudos of attracting artists from far and wide, not least because this was something that great abbots did in the literature of building. 4:' Suger teIls us that he did so, and it is apparent in the results, especially in the specialist work, like figure and foliage sculpture, stained glass and metalwork. Suger brought in goldsmiths for his great cross from Lotharingia.4ti The valleys of the Meuse and Moselle had developed early as centres of both metal and glass production, and Lotharingians were already known for their expertise in these arts. The rebuilding and refitting of

oe, pp.423-4. For disCllssion of this material see Sauerlander, Gothic Sculpture, pp.381-3; L. Pressouyre, ' Did Suger Build th e Cloiste r at Saint-Denis?' Symposium, pp.229-44; D. V. Johnson and M. Wyss, 'SaintDenis 11: sculptures gothiques recemment decouvertes' , Bull Mon, 150 (1992), pp .355-81. See the latte r for suggestions that parts of the reset north transept portal, the Porte des Valois, is dose in style, and thus in date , to the west range of the doister. That is true of the foliage , but I think th e figure style suggests that it ought to be slightly late r than the c1oiste r, say c. 1160. It is a proble matic piece. 44. Admin, ed. Pan, pp.50-2. 45. See for example Leo of Ostia, The Consecration of the church of Monte Cassino, PL, CLXXIII, co1.998. 46. Admin, ed. Pan , p.58. 43.

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THE PATRON

the abbey was such a massive project that it is hardly surprising that local craftsmen, however gifted, would have been too few for the task and that others were attracted or drafted in from outside. The sculpture, ofwhich a considerable proportion remains, exhibits a particularly bewildering range of styles. The influence of Italian, Languedocian and Poitevin masons has been detected on the west front of the abbey. Many striking features of the St-Denis west front itself are reminiscent of a group of facades and portals in north Italy, associated with the sculptors Niccolo and Wiligelmo and gene rally dated between c.1100 and c.1130. The common features inelude long inscriptions, flanking column figures, rose windows, zodiac and labours of the months cyeles, and sub-elassical atlantis figures. The portals are at Chiusa, Modena, Piacenza, Ferrara and Verona: the first three are on the direct route to Rome; and Suger was in long dispute with Chiusa over properties of La-Chapelle-AudeY The narrative approach to the life of St Denis in the south portal tympanum can be paralleled at Modena, but is new in northern France. The squat, bulbous-eyed figures on these Italian portals are elose enough to the St-Denis sculpture to suggest that Suger employed Italian masons. But many of the Italianisms on the west front of St-Denis are the sort of things that depend upon the demands of a patron rather than the whim or the ingrained stone-cutting practices of the workforce. The tripie portal format of the west front, flanked by near-life-size figures in the embrasures, appears to emulate Vezelay, though there is limited evidence of the distinctive Burgundian stone cutting in the sculpture. But Burgundian sculptors soon arrived in the abbey workshops in force. They worked on Suger's new eloister, on the unfinished tomb chest known as the 'Crosby relief', and on the fine altar retable for the parish church in the village that Suger had founded at Carrieres-St-Denis.4H There is no consensus as to where Suger's architects came from - or indeed, how many architects were involved in the extant work. It was usually assumed that one architect built the western extension, and another the more decisively 47. See abüve, pp.212-13. 48. Für the Crosby relief, and the Carrie res-St-Denis re table, see Sauerlander, Gotkic Sculpture, p1.20.

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'gothic' eastern extension. More recently, Stephen Gardner identified two different masters at work on the western block, one on the ground, and one on the upper storey, pointing to a lighter handling of detailing in the upper storey, and what appears to be a horizontal masonry break as evidence. Gardner argued that the master of the upper storey, with a fondness for slender forms, en dilit shafting, and consciously classical capitals, went on to build Suger's choir. 4!l This analysis is less clear cut than often thought. The horizontal masonry break is convincing in the upper chapels themselves, but not in the corresponding upper side walls of the narthex, which have windows into the chapels. Moreover, en delit shafting and consciously classical capitals are already in use on the portals of the ground storey, and may weIl have been widespread in the lost four nave bays. The overall design of the west block was largely established by whoever was responsible for the ground storey. In fact, the uncertainties of design, the suggestions of second thoughts, come between the west and the more cramped east bays of the west front, rather than between the ground and upper storey. To make it more difficult, the west block, the crypt and the upper shrine-choir were clearly intended to look very different. The west block is military and forbidding, the image of the church both militant and protective, though the semiprivate spaces of its upper chapels are more welcoming. The crypt has an archaie air, and retains the secrecy of the confessio it encapsulates. The upper choir, on the other hand, and, we must presume, the four new nave bays, were designed to harmonise with the ancient nave to which they were attached. It is at least arguable that all the remaining fabric at St-Denis is the work of a single architect. The man responsible for the western block, whether or not he went on to build the choir, probably came from the Vexin or Oise area, and was weIl acquainted with the relatively new technique of ribbed vaulting which had spread from Normandy in the last decade or so. He may already have worked for Suger on the abbey buildings. Suger would have had no difficulty in acquiring the best artists from far and wide, given the abbey's cells and priories 49. S. Gardner, 'Two Campaigns in Suger's Western Block at Saint-Denis', Art Bulletin, 66 (1984), pp.574-87.

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in Lotharingia, Poitou and the Berry, as well as many parts of northern France, and Suger's own network of contacts within both the French and Roman ecdesiastical hierarchies. By the time he became abbot, he knew alm ost everybody who was worth knowing. I have already dealt with the vexed question as to how much Suger was hirnself responsible for what his artistic commissions looked like. He had strong views, and he was interfering. The abbey church is not just idiosyncratic, it is programmatic. Many key aspects of it, for instance the overall arrangement of the western block, the doubled ambulatory, the great stage of the shrine-choir, the many windows with their richly coloured glass, the old-fashioned columnar forms, and their dassical capitals, were there at Suger's insistence in his determination to create a newly splendid reinterpretation ofwhat he took to be Merovingian St-Denis. They reflect his tastes. The fact that the result was so successful, especially in the new shrine-choir, reflects the fact that he had the wisdom, the wealth and the contacts to employ an architect of genius.

REINVENTING THE ANTIQUE CHURCH Although so much was done piecemeal, dear intentions underlay most of Suger's rebuilding and refitting, especially as regards the church itself. Suger was always concerned to restore the building to what he saw as its ancient glory. He took the decaying Carolingian church to be largely Merovingian, though he knew that many of the choir fittings and liturgical ornaments which he repaired or replaced were Carolingian. He took care to 'equalise the old building with the new'; the precise meaning of which may be elusive, but the general sense, dear. He reinterpreted many striking features of the old church in the new. Carolingian St-Denis, like Suger's, had stained glass windows. The disposition of twin towers and northex at the west end makes a deli berate reference to the Carolingian westwork, with its hall between twin towers.50 The great new eastern shrine-stage is also a reinterpretation of the Carolingian east end which preceded it. The new 50. Cons, ed. Pan, pp.88-9.

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apse has seven bays, just as the old had seven sides. The Carolingian church, too, had featured a high stage in the eastern apse, built above the cavern-like crypt, the confessio, in which were placed the reliquaries containing the bodies of the saint and his companions. On feast days, and special occasions, they were extracted from their constricted resting place, and displayed on the high altar in the upper church. The arrangement reflected that at Old St Peter's in Rome. Many other early cult churches followed the Petrine example, an effective solution to the problems ofprotection and display.51 Now Suger, imbuing an old form with new function, lodged the relics permanently in the shrine-altar in the upper choir. The magnificent liturgical furnishings and ornaments reinforced this reimbodiment of the ancient church. Much of the work carried out for Suger was the repair, or remounting of old objects. Old material was conserved where possible - for instance, even the new great cross, his most important commission, had an old cross at its heart. There was a deliberate attempt to give ornaments a Carolingian or Byzantine appearance. Suger brought goldsmiths from Lorraine, because Carolingian traditions of workmanship and design still lingered there.',2 Beyond this conservation and quotation of the previous fabric, Suger wanted to give his new church a general all ure of antiquity. His various visits to Rome, in particular the six months that he spent as a guest of Calixtus II in 1123,53 had a profound impact on his taste in building and decoration. He must have admired the great Early Christian basilicas, like 51. For the Carolingian arrangement and its Roman links, see C. Heitz, in Un village au temps de Charlemagne: moines et paysans de l'abbaye de SaintDenis du viie siede a['an mil, ed. J. Cuisenier, R. Guadagnin (Paris, 1988), pp.52-3; and idem. 'La basilique de Saint-Denis,' in L 'lle de France de Clavis a Hugues Capet, exhibition eatalogue of the Val d'Oise arehaeologieal museum (Paris, ] 993), pp.85-6. For the display of the relies in the upper ehureh, on the altar of St Denis, in 1124, see w'C, p.220. This was probably the high altar, see Wyss, Atlas, p.80; though L. Levillain, 'L'eglise earolingienne de Saint-De nis', Bull Mon, 7] (1907), pp.254-5, thought there was a separate altar or St Denis on the pre-Sugerian eastern apse. 52. W. \Vixom, 'Traditional Forms in Suger's Contributions to the Treasury of Saint-Denis', Symposium, pp.294-304. 53. VLC, pp.214-16.

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S. Giovanni Laterano, and above all , St Peter's itself. The most important new church in Rome was S. Clemente, near completion in 1123, and closely identified with the triumphant post-Investiture Rome of Calixtus H. It had double aisles; slender, elegant, marble columnar piers; classical corinthian capitals; an elaborate tessellated pavement; and a great mosaic in the apse. Everything about S. Clemente looked deliberately backwards to an Early Christian past. The apse mosaic, the first large-scale mosaic in Rome for alm ost three centuries, reflected in design the apse vaults in the narthex of the Lateran Baptistry. Another Calixtine church, Sta Maria in Cosmedin, was similarly inspired by Early Christian protoypes. 54 Suger made pilgrimages to several sacred sites around Rome: he mentions Montecassino, S. Bartolomeo at Benevento, S. Matteo at Salerno, S. Nicola at Bari and the shrine of All Angels at Monte Gargano.55 At Montecassino, he would have seen the prototype of these Early Christian-revival basilicas. Montecassino, like S. Clemente, was double-aisled. Inscriptions adorned the apse and triumphal arch, and the basilica was entered through enormous sculpted bronze doors. Both the main church and the grand monastic buildings at Montecassino were adorned with stained glass windows, several of them round in shape."fi The other element informing his view of what an antique church looked like were the northern French Merovingian and Carolingian buildings with which he was familiar, like the double-aisled Merovingian cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, parts of Ste-Genevieve, which still, perhaps, sported Carolingian mosaic, and above all old St-Denis itself. Like so many ofhis views, Suger's idea ofwhat constituted antiquity was eclectic, and slightly elastic. But from these 54. R. Krautheimer, Rome. Profile of a City, 312-1308 (Princeton, 1980), pp.161-2, 182. See also A. Derbes, 'Crusading Ideology and the Frescoes of S. Maria in Cosmedin,' Art Bulletin, 77 (1995), pp.460-78. 55. VLG, pp.214-16. 56. See the descriptions of Montecassino in Chronica Monasterii Casinensis, ed. H . Hoffmann , MGH Scriptores, 34 (Hannover, 1980), pp.394410, esp. pp.397, 405-6 for the windows 'plumbo simul ac vitro co mpactis tabulis ferroque connexis' and 'vitreas speciossimas'. See also Krautheimer, pp.176-8, and, for Rome and Montecassino, E. Kitzinger, 'The Arts as Aspects of a Renaissance: Rome and Italy', Renaissance, esp. pp.637-50.

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multiple soure es eame a eonsistent emphasis on 'antique' forms. Piers are eolumnar. In the nave extension, they were intended to be marble . Capitals are eonsciously dassical, espeeiaHy in the shrine-choir. He insists on a mosaic, 'in the old fashion', on the west front, and bronze doors, one of which was spolia from the Carolingian building. Merovingian spolia were reused in the erypt, and a Merovingian floor in the ehoir, in the midst of other mosaic flooring. The ambulatories, and the intended aisles of the unfinished nave, were doubled. It has been suggested that the ehoir sereen, like that at Cluny, was of the low cancella type, based on S. Clemente.'· ' The Early Christian tradition of the fuHy eireular funerary ehureh may lie behind the seven-sided sweep of the ehevet; this would be appropriate to its funetion, and Suger's deseription of his eirde of ehapels is suggestive here."H In the new ehoir, it was more than a matter of appropriated motifs and building types. The whole ambienee, light, spaeious and airy, with an elegant simplieity of arehiteetural detail - aB in marked eontrast to the eneumbered and forbidding dark spaees of the narthex - is strikingly reminiseent of the Early Christian basilieas and their modern Roman or Carolingian progeny. It is as if Suger took the briek and marble ofRome, and had it interpreted in the fine limestone of the He de Franee, and adapted to the structural demands of the stone vault.

THE LAST GREAT ROMANESQUE PILGRIMAGE CHURCH The other dear intention, eertainly by the 1130s, was to fit the abbey for pilgrimage to the shrine of St Denis, and to 57. E. Armi and E. B. Smith, 'The choir screen of Cluny III ', Art Bulletin, 66 (1984), p.562 . Note also that one of Suger's first acts had been to take down the 'dark wall ' of the solid choir screen in the old church, Admin, ed. Pan , p.72. For the use of Merovingian spolia, see W. W. Clark, "'The Recollection of the Past is the Promise of the Future": Conlinuity and Contextuality: Saint-Denis, Merovingians, Capetians and Paris' in Artistic Intergration in Gotkic Buildings, ed . V. Raguin , K. Brush , P. Draper (Toronto, 1995) , pp.92-113. 58. Gons, ed. Pan , p.100. Bony, 'Sourees', pp.136-7, for the Early Christian, modern Roman and Carolingian precedents, many ofwhich are fun e rary churches.

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the precious relics of the Passion, the nail and the thorn. As I have said, Suger specifically gives the exigencies of pilgrimage as his reason for the east and west extensions. Perhaps the visit of Innocent II in 1131, with full papal entourage, and attendant dignitaries, lay and ecclesiastical, all with their own entourages, finally persuaded Suger that the hallowed but confined spaces of the Carolingian church would no longer do. The new domus hospitum, completed by 1137, was a first stage in equipping the abbey to cope with the hopedfor influx of pilgrims. It is difficult to judge quite how important pilgrimage really was in the Middle Ages. Soure es which stress how many people went on pilgrimage are almost all written by clergy with the explicit intention of encouraging them to do so. However, the fact that so many clergy were prepared to put so much time and energy into the encouragement of pilgrimage, suggests that a successful pilgrimage could be the making of an ecclesiastical institution. Pilgrimage at St-Denis may not have been consistent, but the great patronal feast at the abbey coincided with an ancient and important fair, while the fair of the Lendit was intimately connected with the nail and the thorn. On these occasions, the abbey church was flooded with worshippers eager to see the precious relics, to give thanks for prosperous transactions, and to seek proteetion for their travels. Both great extensions to the abbey church were essentially designed to accommodate pilgrims and to display the relics, particularly of St Denis, to the best advantage, with the least disruption to normal monastic services. Suger's new shrine-choir was quite separate from the liturgical choir, where the monks worshipped and the kings were buried. The new west end incorporated extra altar spaces, and allowed large numbers of people to congregate, and processions to form for the elaborate services. The iconography of the west front reflected the abbey's principal relics, featuring St Denis himself, and the instruments of the Passion. The old arrangement whereby pilgrims had squeezed into the crypt to view the relics of St Denis in the old confessio had been thoroughly inconvenient. 5 \) Even with Hilduin's extension, the crypt was too small for anything other than internal 59. Ord, ed. Pan, pp .134-5.

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monastie psalmody. The relies eould now be moved up from the confessio and housed in the elaborate new altar-shrine, set in the eentre of the liturgieal stage of the new extension. The ambulatory giving eireulation around the apse allowed what Suger ealled 'venerable people' aceess to the relics. GO In the ring of shallow ehapels surrounding the ambulatory, a constellation oflesser saints' relies circled around the shrine of St Denis himself. The crypt was left in a supporting role. The arrangement ineorporates aspects of the relic display at the other major Freneh Romanesque cult sites, St-Martin at Tours, St-Martial at Limoges, and St-Benolt-s.-Loire. Suger was probably among those who aceompanied Louis the Fat when he welcomed Innoeent 11 to French soil at Fleury in 1131. Suger visited St Martin shortly before his death, but he was devoted to the saint, and it is unlikely that this was his first visit. He attended the eelebration of the feast of the patron saint of St Martial at Limoges in 1137 on the great expedition to Aquitaine.til In all these churehes, pilgrims had aeeess to the relies by an ambulatory, surrounded byehapels housing lesser relies. At Fleury, the feretory, as at Suger's StDenis, was raised above the sanetuary by a crypt. St-Martial was a halfway house between old and new St-Denis. The eentral vessel of the east end was a high stage, but the prineipal relies were kept in the erypt below, which was visible and aeeessible from the ambulatory. St-Martin had no liturgical stage, beeause it had no erypt. As a result the tomb-shrine of St Martin had always stood in the apse itself.ti~

A PROBLEMATIC ARTISTIC CONTEXT When we attempt to place Suger's work at St-Denis in the eontext of other building and embellishment in Capetian Franee , we continually face the problem that that context is remarkably diffieult to establish. There are two reasons for 50. Admin, ed. Pan, pp.54-5. 61. See , respectively, VLG, pp.250-1; Vita, p.401; Ex chronico Gaufredi Vosie nsis, RH/; XII, p.435. 52. For Fleury, see Bony, 'Sourees ', p.132. For Tours, C. K. Hersey, 'The Church of St Martin at Tours (903-1150)', Art Bulletin, 25 (1943), pp.1-39, and P. Geary, 'Humiliation of Saints', in Saints and their Cults, ed. S. Wilson (Cambridge , 1985), pp.123-40, esp. pp. 1 30-2.

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this. The first is that many churches built in Capetian France between 1080 and 1160, especially those that predate StDenis, have been destroyed or rebuilt later. The toll includes St-Magloire, Ste-Genevieve and St-Victor in Paris; all the churches at Corbeil and Orleans; Chelles; Gournay-s.-Marne - to name a few. Excavations are gradually shedding new light on some of these sites, but we will never have a fuH context for Suger's building. 63 The second problem is that no other building of the period 1130-1160 in the He de France is dated with anything resembling the precision of St-Denis. The lack of securely dated building bears both on the question of what might have influenced St-Denis, and on the question of the influence of St-Denis, in short on the status of the abbey as crucible of Gothic. Queen Adela's new church of St-Pierre at Montmartre has some useful dates attached. It was founded in 1133, had its nave and high altars consecrated in 1148, and was ready for Adela's burial in 1154,64 but this still leaves considerable room for interpretation of campaigns; and although it is more or less contemporary with Suger's work at St-Denis, it is much smaller in scale and ambition. The chronological relationship between the choirs of St-Denis and of St-Martin-des-Champs is uncertain. We cannot tell whether the Burgundian sculptors who worked at St-Denis in the 1140s went on to, or came from, Chartres. From time to time it has been suggested that the portal at Etampes, or the west portals at Chartres, predate the west front of StDenis. Recently, it has been argued that two buildings traditionally held to reflect the design of the choir at St-Denis, Noyon cathedral and St-Germer-de-Fly, predate Suger's choir, but these arguments have not found general acceptance. However, the arguments for dating the buildings with which 63. For Ste-Genevieve see M. Vieillard-Troiekouroff, 'L'eglise SainteGe nevieve de Paris au debut du xiie siede', in Abelard en san Temps, ed . J.Jolivet (Paris, 1981), pp.83-94. For Chelles, see D. V.Johnson, 'Sculptures du XIIe siede provenant de l'abbaye royale de Chelles,' Bull Mon, 153 (1995), pp.23-46. S. Gardner, 'L'eglise SaintJulien de Marolles-en-Brie et ses rapports avec l'architecture parisienne d e la generation de Saint-Denis ', Bull Mon, 144 (1986), pp.7-31. All discuss the problem of the context for St-Denis. 64. Recueil des chartes de l'abbaye rayale de Montmartre, ed. E. de Bartele my (Paris, 1883), pp.5-6, 78-83.

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St-Denis is regularly compared are essentially stylistic, and thus by definition incapable of absolute proof.6"

THE INVENTION OF GOTHIC Nevertheless, St-Denis has by and large retained its reputation as the crucible of Gothic. With its tripie portals and double towers, the west front must have registered as something completely new in the twelfth-century Ile de France, where a single tower-porch was the accepted tradition. Elaborately sculpted portals carrying a carefully planned religious message were unknown; as were great wheel windows in the centre of a facade. If the Gothicity of the west front lies in the assembling of ingredients new to Capetian France, the Gothicity of the shrine-choir lies in its tone of airy lightness - a tone which seems almost without precedent. There are large windows, lots of open space, and remarkably little wall surface keeping it all in place. A frail skeleton of slender shafts, piers and vault ribs holds the building up and the design together. The doubled ambulatories increase the impression of space. Other ambulatories were like those in the crypt, single, with deep, walled chapels opening off them, like separate rooms. Here, instead, the chapels are merely soft undulations in the outer ambulatory wall. They were probably separated by screens, ofwood or metalwork, but it is clear that those processing round the ambulatory, or standing in the middle of the choir itself were supposed to see the 'circle of chapels with luminous windows', as Suger himself puts it. 1i1i This architecture of large windows, skeletal supports, and spaces that one is supposed to see across, is the antithesis of both the west front and the crypt. Since the same architect was responsible for the crypt and the choir, and perhaps for the west front, we must assume that these very different effects were quite deli berate. 65. For pre-Dionysian datings, see, for example, T. Polk, Saint-Denis, Noyon and the t:arly Gothic Choir (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1982) , and J. Henriet, 'Un edifice de la premiere generation gothique: l'abbatiale de SaintGe rmer-de-Fly', Bult Mon, 143 (1985), pp.93-142 . 66. Cons, ed. Pan, p.lOO.

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Prefigurations of the choir effects can be glimpsed fleetingly elsewhere in the Ile de France. Columns and classical capitals had already distinguished the western nave extension, and had been used at Ste-Genevieve in the early years of the century. Merovingian marble columns and capitals had been used at St-Pierre at Montmartre. The nave of Notre-Dame at Etampes has a certain spaciousness, achieved through very large arcade openings. St-Martin-des-Champs also has a double ambulatory with shallow radiating chapels. It is not a great success. The architect was unable to calculate arcs and angles; his masons were undistinguished and his capital sculptors heavy-handed. The resulting spaces are confused, encumbered and tenebrous. The building is not securely dated. Whether one sees it as a fumbling forerunner of St-Denis, or a pathetic parody, is a guestion of personal pr~judice. In fact, the double ambulatory had already been used in the crypt at St-Benolt-s.-Loire. Moreover, some of the very grandest churches built in northern Franee within the previous century had doubled aisles, even though their ambulatories were single. 57 Perhaps the concept of the double ambulatory emerged naturally as an extension of the widespread double choir aisle.

TRE WINDOWS The design of the upper choir was largely dictated by Suger's insistence that the windows could be seen glowing around the central feretory. Partly because of accidents of survival, and partly beeause Suger discusses them at length, the windows of St-Denis are often thought of as a new departure. But riehly-eoloured windows were by no means unknown, though they were confined to the grandest and riehest of ecclesiastical establishments. Bishop Roel of Le Mans surrounded the new choir and transepts of his late-eleventh-century cathedral with lavish windows, mirrored in a glittering mosaic pavement in the chancel. Leo of Ostia describes elaborate 67. For example, Cluny, St-Martin at Tours, Souvigny, Fontgombault and the old cathedral at Orleans. Also St-Laumer at Blois, begun in 1138. See the comments of Bony, 'Sourees', pp.134-5.

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stained glass windows in the church, the chapter house, the abbot's hall and the splendid new infirmary chapel at Montecassino. At Morigny, a special confraternity funded the 'vitrea magna' in the west front around 1110. 68 Recent excavation has revealed that the Carolingian church at StDenis itself had magnificent stained glass windows. 69 This puts Suger's desire for, and emphasis on, his windows in a completely new light. Suger undoubtedly took a personal interest in the windows. He invited glass makers from 'various territories' , some probably from Lotharingia. iO He provided the most expensive sapphire glass for the windows, and appointed a special craftsman to keep them in good repair. 71 Shortly before he died, he donated a magnificent window to the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. n Suger says more about the subjects depicted in the windows than he does about any other image at St-Denis. One of the windows contained a strange set of images, accompanied by cryptic verses. There was Moses imagery, including the Ark of the Covenant; the Lion and the Lamb unsealing the Book of Revelation; and the mystic mill of St Paul. This latter scene, or perhaps the whole window, Suger describes as leading us from the material to the immaterial, in the familiar phrase of the Pseudo-Dionysius. 7 \ 68. For Le Mans, Actus Pontificum Cenomannis in Urbe Degentium, ed. G. Busson and A. Ledru, Archives Historiques du Maine II, Le Mans, 1901, p .383. For Montecassino, PL, CLXXIII, p.1002, and Chronica, ed. Hoffmann , pp.398, 405-6, and see above n.55. For Morigny, Chron Mor, p.l4. 69. M. Wyss and N. Meye r, paper on recent excavations at St-Denis, given at the Courtauld Institute, June, 1995. Early medieval stained glass has come to light in excavations at Jarrow, St Vincenzo al Volturno, and Rouen. I would like to thank J. Mitchell and J. le Maho for discllssing these discoveries with me. 70. Admin, ed. Pan , p.72. 71. Admin, ed. Pan, p.76. 72. Vita, p.387. It is ofte n said that this window featured the Virgin, but Williarn does not te ll us its subjec t. 73. For Suger's windows, see L. Grode cki, Les vitraux de Saint-Denis, etude sur le vitrail au xiie sihle, CVMA (Pa ris, 1976), I; M. Caviness, 'Suger's Glass at Saint-Denis: The State of Research' , Symposium, pp.257-72; K. Hoffmann, 'Suge rs "Anagogishes Fenster" in Saint-Denis', Wallraf Richartzjahrbuch, 30 (1968), pp.57-88.

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THE THEOLOGlCAL 'PROGRAMMES' OF SUGER'S NEW WORK We can probably ass urne that much of the iconography of the new work was outlined by Suger hirnself. The way in which he describes the seen es on his great cross, and on the altar frontal of Charles the Bald, makes it clear that they were his personal choice. But he may not have been responsible far everything. The throwaway superficiality with which he gives a Dionysian gloss to the window of the mystic mill raises the subversive suspicion that he had been told it urged one from the material to the immaterial, but was not hirnself quite sure how. An assessment of the novelty and significance of Suger's iconography is bedevilled, like so much else, by the lottery of survival and the absence of comparative material from other institutions. The west portals were the first in northern France to carry a theological programme in sculpture, though southern French and Italian portals had done so for the past thirty years. Their iconography, for which quite a lot of comparative material exists, is undoubtedly new. The column figures of Old Testament prophets, kings and queens flanking the portals were quite new in the north of France, and nothing quite like it, with so many figures writ so large, could be found anywhere. For the first time, the wise and foolish virgins, who wait at the doar far Christ the bridegroom, flank a portal, an image so apt it is almost a sculptural pun. It has been argued that the vanished mosaic of the narth portal tympanum introduced the theme of the Coronation of the Virgin to Capetian France, either from Rome or England, though this is by no means proven. 74 The south portal tympanum features the local saint's life in a strongly narrative way, again a novelty in northern France, where saints' lives were usually told, as at Fleury, and earlier at St-Denis itself, on aseries of capitals. Suger's tympanum is reminiscent of the storytelling on Italian portals. The novelty of the choir iconography is more problematical, because it was carried in windows and on liturgical 74. Blum, 'Lateral Portals', pp.209-18.

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furnishings, more vulnerable media than stone sculpture. Suger's stained glass is the earliest surviving group ofwindows. It is tempting to assume that their iconography is novel, even though we know that painted windows as such were not, but it would be rash to do so. Even unusual images in the windows can usually be paralleled in other media; far instance, the mystic mill of St Paul appears on a nave capital at Vezelay. The Tree ofJesse in the axial chapel window is the first extant of its kind in Capetian France in any medium; but very similar images appear in English psalters and Bibles from the first half of the century. No comparable grand psalters and Bibles from early Capetian France have survived, but we might surmise that they too would have featured this striking image. /" Historians have been struck by the theological complexity of the iconography. All have contrasted this with the lack of theological speculation in Suger's writings, and with the fact that alone among the major churchmen of his day, he never wrote a theological treatise. Gerson insists that Suger's particular gift was to give theological concepts sophisticated visual form, as if he could marshai diagrams but not arguments. Rudolph, on the other hand, identifies Victarine elements in the iconography, and suggests that Suger turned to the great theologian Hugh of St-Victar far his programme. ili As I have indicated in the first chapter, the complexity and obscurity of Suger's theological programmes has been much overrated. It is elaborate, and there is a great deal of it, but that does not in itself make it particularly complex. All Suger's iconography exhibits a literal and a systematic quality: it is not difficult to see it as the work of a man who could run the logistics of a siege, or gain his legal ends with a well-planned forgery. We should admit that the biblical references which are very difficult for us to identiry were common currency among twelfth-centmy monks. Most ofthe choir iconography is essen75. A. Watson , The Early lconography 0/ the Tree 0/Jesse (Oxford, 1934), esp. pp.77-141. 76. P. Gerson, 'Sllger as Iconographer: The Central Portal of the West Facarle of Saint-Denis', Symf)osium, pp.183-98; C. Rlldolph, Arlistic Change al Sl-Denis (Princeton, New J e rsey, 1990) , pp.32-47.

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tially typological, that is, it presents Old Testament events as prototypes of the life and works of Christ. This is true of the many Moses window panels, of the pillar of the great cross, and of the rear panel of the main altar, where the subjects chosen showed an appropriate emphasis on the Cross and the Eucharist. 77 There is nothing very surprising or new, or - as often claimed - specifically Victorine, in this. Peter the Venerable and Hugh of Rouen, for instance, frequently refer to Moses as a prototype for Christ. 78 The emphasis on typology is in many ways the mark of an old man who had had what was fast becoming a rather old-fashioned monastic education. 79 Most of the themes on the west portals are broad and well-known. The person who put the programme together knew St Matthew's account of the LastJudgement by heart, and was acquainted with Augustine's De Trinitate, as Gerson has convincingly shown; this is a tall order for the modern scholar, but any twelfth-century choir monk ought to have been up to it. 80 Where the west portal iconography is really original, it is usually specific to the abbey. Even here, rather than a suggestive interpretation of the texts, we have a sort of leaden literalness, as, indeed, Gerson observes. The Trinity in the central portal archivolt is the first appearance of this motif in monumental sculpture. The method of representation God the Father holding a shield showing the Lamb, the Son of God, closely observed by a surmounting dove, like a crest above - is literal to a degree, but its appearance was appropriate. The Trinity was important at St-Denis: it was the dedication of the matutinal altar, and the habitual invocation in abbey charters. The abbey library possessed several ninthcentury works on the Trinity and a magnificent sixth-century 77. See th e reconstruction of the subject-matter in Panofsky, pp.186-8. 78. For example, PV Leiters, I, pp.253-4; Hugh of Rouen, e.g. in the Dialogarum, PL, CXCII, co1.l152. 79. B. Smalley, The Study 01 the Bible in the Middle Ages, paperback edn. (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1964) esp. pp.6, 24-6, 90-5. 80. Gerson , ' Iconographer', p.188. Gerson's arguments for the use of St Matthew and Augustine's De Trinitate are very strong. She rightly recognises that sections of the poem inscribed on the bronze doors are plagiarised from the introduction to the Celestial Hierarchy, but I am unconvinced by her arguments for an all-pervasive PseudoDionysian mysticism in the programme.

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Italian manuscript of Hilary of Poitier's De Trinitate. 81 The inclusion of the cross and the instruments of the Passion in a LastJudgement has been considered an iconographical peculiarity. But it too is particularly appropriate at an abbey claiming possession of a nail and thorn given by Charles the Bald. Art histarians have often wondered why the iconography of the St-Denis portal had limited impact: the answer surely is that it is specially designed far St-Denis. The more generic and slightly later Christ in Majesty of the Second Coming at Chartres proved far more adaptable, and thus repeatable. There has been so much emphasis on the search for obscurity that the simplicity, power and narrative clarity of some of Suger's images has been overlooked. This is true of many of the choir windows, but particularly of the west front material, which was, after all, largely aimed at pilgrims. Suger was a consummate story teller, as the monk William observed. 8~ In this connection, it is significant that the only image that the well-travelled Suger mentions outside St-Denis was a painting commissioned by Calixtus II for the chamber of secret councils in the Lateran palace, which showed Calixtus himself handing a copy of the Concordat ofWorms to the Emperor, and crushing beneath his feet the imperial antipope, whom he had defeated. H:l It was one of aseries of wall paintings celebrating the triumphs of the popes in the Investitute Contest. Calixtus and his entourage were adept manipulators of potent images in their celebration of the triumphant reality of papal control of Rome. Suger is likely to have learnt from them. K1 There is a perceptible difference between the iconography of the choir and of the west front. One could perhaps say that the choir iconography is theological, where the central west 81. Paris BN lat 2630, D. Ne bbiai della Garda, La bibliotheque de l'abbaye de Saint Denis en France du IXe au XV!lIe siede (Paris, 1985), pp.l11-12, 21l. 82. Vita, p.389. 83. VLG, p.206. 84. Recorded in Vatican Library, Cod. Barb.lat 2738, ff.l03v-l05v. See C. Walter, 'Papal Political Imagery in the Medieval Lateran Palace', Cahiers Archeologiques, 20 (1970), pp.155-76. See also A. Derbes, 'Crusading Ideology'.

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portal iconography is largely scriptural. The west front iconography is designed to have immediate impact: it is aimed at pilgrims to the abbey. The typologies of the choir iconography are designed for the delectation of a monastic audience. Suger prided hirnself on the fact that the altar panel, with its 'pleasing allegories' , would be understood only by the literate; by which, like all his contemporaries, he meant lettered clergy, as opposed to unlettered laity.85 By the 1140s, Suger had surrounded hirnself with a sm all group ofyoung monks who were very literate indeed, including William, his secretary and biographer, William the precentor, and the scholar and theologian William Medicus of Gap.86 They were possessed, unlike Suger hirnself, or his simple but spiritual prior, Herveus, of the most up-to-date education. It is likely that the many verses which Suger had inscribed on the fabric and fittings of the abbey church, which consistently exhibit a much finer handling oflanguage than his prose would lead us to expect, were produced for hirn by this group of well-educated young men. Suger never says that he wrote any of the verses hirnself, but that he chose them, or had them inscribed. William the secretary, for one, could turn a nice distich. Suger had no need to turn to StVictor for an intellectual gloss on his building. John of Salisbury describes Suger as both learned and eloquent, but this does not make hirn a creative theologian. 87 Suger craved theological orthodoxy. The confession that he puts into the mouth of the apparently dying Louis the Fat is revealing: it is carefully, deeply orthodox, contrasting in content, if not in form, with Abelard's contemporary confession of faith, to which it was perhaps a response. 88 It focuses on the two overriding theological issues of the day: the Trinity, and the real presence at the Eucharist. The Trinity is featured on the west portals, while the message of the real 85. Admin, ed. Pan, p.62 . 86. See above, pp.205-6. See H. Glaser, 'Wilhe1m von Saint-Denis: Ein Humanist aus der Umgebung des Abtes Suger und die Krise seiner Abtei von 1151 bis 1153' , HistvrischesJahrbuch, 85 (1965), on the selfconscious learning of William the Secretary. For William Medicus, abbot of St-Denis, 1172-86, see GC, VII, 380-1. 87. His! Pont, pp.15-16. 88. VLG, pp.276-8; The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. and ed. B. Radice (London, 1974), pp.270-1.

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presence at the Eucharist is carried by the south portal tympanum, and is scattered across the liturgie al furniture of the ehoir. The themes of the Trinity and the Eueharist were horribly topieal: the eonseeration of the west end taok plaee five weeks after Abelard's writings on the Trinity and the Sacraments were eondemned by the bishops of the Ile de Franee at the Couneil of Sens. 89

THE MATERIAL TO THE IMMATERIAL The dubious shade of the Pseudo-Dionysius hovers over Suger's building. His influenee has been identified in the verses inscribed on the west door and in the elaborate play on words denoting light in the eonseeration verses on the ehoir.'lO The west door is a straightforward ease. The main poem inseribed on it revolves around the eoneept of travelling through light to the true light, and from the material to the immaterial. The image is extraeted direetly from the introduction to the Celestiat Hierarchy.9! The ehoir verses, on the other hand, eontain nothing speeifieally Dionysian. Light imagery is not in itself evidenee of the pernieious influenee of the Pseudo-Dionysius. Light and darkness have been exploited by writers struggling to deseribe the indeseribable sinee StJohn the Evangelist. More pertinent to the ehoir eonseeration verses is Hugh of Rouen's image of the ehureh, the house of God whieh 'justiciae sole clarificat', while all ouside is dark.'l2 We are on firmer ground when Suger deseribes the ehoir window as leading from the material to the immateria1. 93 This Dionysian leitmotiv is expanded when Suger describes his own response to his new ehoir. Overeome by the splendour of the light glimmering in the many gems of the liturgieal ornaments, Suger feels himself transported, in an anagogieal way, from this world to the Heavenly Jerusalem, the material leading him on to an understanding of the immateria1. 9 4 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

Bernard, j\IN

15 January, the very day of the burial, a group of twelve senior monks, induding the devoted Geoffrey, chose Odo of Deuil, recently made abbot of Compiegne, as Suger's successor. 62 Suger was an old man, in his seventieth year, and his death was hardly unexpected. William's two accounts of it, in the Vita, and the encydicalletter, were both written in response to requests from Geoffrey. There is a palpable difference in tone between the two, suggesting a considerable interval between them. The letter is a dramatic and immediate account of Suger's death; the Vita is a recollection in tranquillity. The Vita recalls the death of an abbot joyful and calm in the face of death, secure in his trust in God. The letter is more disturbing. It shows a dying abbot racked with guilt. Suger throws hirnself at the feet of his monks 'exposing hirnself to their judgement, tearfully asking that they should forgive hirn those things in which he had failed them, or acted negligently' .Ii'\ To those who sat with hirn daily, he confided 'with many tears, now secretly, now to all, whatever his conscience feared' .IH The contrast with the calm and guiltless abbatial deathbeds recorded in affectionate detail by Orderic Vitalis, for instance, is striking. No other death-bed account paints such distress in the mind of one widely reputed a good prelate. The deathbed of Bishop Hugh of Auxerre at the end of 1151 was unedirying, it is true; but that was because the sick and confused bishop fell under the baleful influence of one of his attendants and willed his episcopal property and liturgical ornaments to a frivolous nephew.G:;

SUGER'S LEGACY: AN ABBEY IN CRISIS But William's letter itselfprovides dues as to what Suger was so worried about. The dying Suger urged his monks to 'preserve unity before all things, and to take every care to avoid scandal, sedition or schism'Y' The dear inference is that 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

William, Dialogue, pp. lOg, 111. William , Lit Enc, oe, p.407. William, Lit Enc, oe, p.40S. Be rnard, t:Pist, VIII, pp.lS7-S, nO.cclxxvi. Williarn, Lit Enc, oe, p.40S.

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the house was already riven by faction, and that this would issue in a disputed election. Moreover, when Suger begged forgiveness of his monks, he also hirnself 'absolved those more negligent ones, who bound for some crime, are separated, under whatever sentence they lay ... and restored them to their previous offices and positions'.67 Suger had dealt with the faction with a heavy hand. It puts an unhappy gloss on William's insistence in the Vita that Suger trusted his subordinates and did not lightly remove them from office. St-Denis was in serious crisis before Suger died. Although Suger was used to pursuing a double career, his absence from the abbey during the regency must have been extensive and detrimental. Moreover, he had recently been spending heavily. He paid some of the expenses of the regency government out of his own purse rather than the royal treasury; his building plans were expensive; and he had been putting aside money to fund his crusade. As Suger in the De Administratione, and William in the Vita, took pains to point out, this expenditure came out of the abbot's revenues which he himself had done so much to build up. But the abbot's revenues were not quite a private income to be disposed of entirely at the abbot's discretion; they were intended to support hirn in proper state as the abbot of an important abbey. The rebuilding and decorating of the abbey was a proper use of such funds, though there were probably those who felt such things could go too far; but rebuilding the king's palaces, paying his household knights, and funding a new crusade, were certainly not. The other problem of Suger's late years was his dependence on a small circle of favourites. It is hardly surprising that a significant proportion of the community was disaffected. ODO'S ABBACY: THE CRISIS ESCALATES Suger himself had been sufficiently tough, experienced and powerful to contain the problem. Under his hapless successor, Odo of Deuil, the time bomb exploded. Our main evidence for the crisis, which lasted until 1154, is provided by William's letter from St-Denis-en-Vaux, of 1153/4, and Apologetic Dialogue, of 1154. 67. William, Lit Enc,

oe,

p.407.

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William's devotion to Suger led hirn to oppose Odo, though it is not clear what form his opposition took. Odo responded by exiling hirn to St-Denis-en-Vaux in Poitou. It is not clear how many other members of Suger's circle rebelled and were exiled. Geoffrey is not included in the address of the open letter, which may mean that Geoffrey too had been exiled from St-Denis. William addressed his four fellow Williams - the precentor, the cellarer, the notary, and William Medicus as close friends, so they must have been part of the circle: but they had not feIt it necessary to rebe I against Odo, and three at least were in positions of responsibility.t;HThe Apologetic Dialogue was written when the crisis in the abbey was over. Odo was now in undisputed control, and William had decided to be ingratiating. The main thrust of the dialogue is to exculpate Odo from all the criticisms and accusations that had been levied against hirn. Odo was accused of serious financial mismanagement of abbey property, and of the murder of someone called Gerard. In the summer of 1153, Odo was forced to go to Rome to clear his name be fore the pope, even though St Bernard, no less, had al ready written three times protesting his innocence. The new abbot of St-Denis was, he wrote, the victim of a vicious campaign of slander, led by one Raimund, whom Bernard knew and distrusted of oldY' Raimund is no more easily identified than the hapless Gerard. We do not know whether they are monks or layme n. There is no trace of a Raimund among the monks of St-Denis in the twelfth century, nor among the local knights who witness for the abbey. The name is unusual in northern France: Raimund was probably a Burgundian, since he was weIl known to Bernard. Odo managed eventually to clear hirnself of the accusation of murde r. As for the financial mismanagement, that was 68. Compare with 1152/ 3 act of Odo, LL 1158, ff.557-8, signed by, arnong others, William the precentor, William the priest, William the d eacon, William the subdeacon and William the subprior; 1154 act, LL 1157, f.783, signed by William the precentor and William the chaplain. 69. Bernard, l:pist, VIII, pp.200-2, nos.cclxxxv-cclxxxvii. The perfecta group of Be rnardine le tters all give G., rathe r than the full name Ge rard, see ibid., p.202, and vol.vii, pp.xviii-xix. Both B. S.James, The Letters 01S1 Bemard 01 Clairoaux (London, 1953) , in his translation, and H. Glase r, W ' ilhe1m von Saint-Denis: Ein Humanist aus de r Umge bung d es Abtes Suge r und die Krise seiner Abtei von 1151 bis 1153', Hislorischesjahrbuch, 85 (1965) , pp.301-2, in his discussion , stick to the initial.

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his inheritance as abbot, and the accusations may have been made to deflect blame from his illustrious predecessor. John of Salisbury also accused Odo of turning against Suger's family and dose associates, and trying to ruin them. 70 The fact that Odo exiled William gives some substance to this. It has been suggested that the murdered Gerard was Suger's nephew, who lived at St-Denis itselr,?l But this nephew witnesses an abbey document when Odo is in Rome defending hirnself against the accusation of murder in late 1153. 72 We have no way of knowing whether Odo tried to get rid of Suger's appointees to monastic offices, since we only have substantial lists of officers for 1137 and 1152. 73 No single monk remains in the same office from 1137 to 1152, but one would hardly expect that they would. The encydical letter suggests that Suger had already had a purge of offices before his death. However, the four Williams had been friends of William the secretary under the old dispensation (that was why he wrote to them) and had probably been fellow members of Suger's dose group of familiars: the fact that most of them held important offices under Odo argues in favour of continuity rather than drastic change among monastic staff. The Suger family too, remained fairly weH established. In the early 1150s, Henry, brother of the monk Suger, was Odo's hospitarius. The monk Suger never held specific office, but was a frequent witness to documents, as was his brother Henry. Their lay relatives witnessed three documents for Odo. One was a vidimus of a donation given in Suger's time, witnessed by Ralph Suger, Theoderic, mayor of Mours, and Gerard. 74 Another records an arrangement made between Clementia of Dommartin and Prior Anselm of St-Denis, while Odo was absent in Rome in late 1153?i The signatories on behalf of the abbey indude Ralph and Gerard Suger. In the end, although the Suger faction and family may have suffered some temporary disadvantage at St-Denis, their 70. 7l. 72. 73.

Rist Pont, p.87. Glaser, 'Ein Humanist', p.316. Accord with the countess of Dommartin, LI. 1157, f.464 . See the Testament and associated acta for 1137; for 1152, Odo's almonry act, LL 1158, ff.557-8. 74. LL 1157, f.699. 75. LL 1158, ff.557-8.

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influence at the abbey was only momentarily shaken. William Medicus, the friend of the secretary William, became abbot in 1173. He was succeeded in 1186 by Hugh Foucauld, who was almost certainly the brother of the ex-chancellor Simon of St-Denis, and Suger's own nephew. From about 1170, there was a revival of interest in Suger at the abbey: the Life 01 Louis the Fat, the fragments of the History 01 Louis VII, the De Administratione, and William's writings about Suger, together with the smaller letter collection, were all copied. Abbot Hugh issued a formal Testament detailing his aquisitions for the abbey, in the manner of Suger and Fulrad. And when Abbot Hugh set up a truly magnificent lavabo in the abbey cloister, he made sure that the sunken classical heads around the bowl reflected the motifs in the spandreis of the cloister arcades his great predecessor and uncle had built some thirty years previously.7(;

POLITICAL RECRIMINATIONS According to John of Salisbury, however, the eclipse of the Suger family at the abbey was but a symptom of a wider political revulsion against the power that Suger had wielded. 'No one,' wrote John, 'could be found to protect Suger's relatives, since the king temporised and avenged hirnself on some of them because Simon, Suger's nephew, had incurred his anger and been dismissed from the king's chancery on account of his unpopularity, and forced to leave the kingdom. ,7/ Simon took re fuge with Pope Eugenius in Rome, so John heard a first-hand account. Eu~enius took Simon's part, and wrote letters in his support. 7 Relations between Suger and Louis VII were never as happy as William painted them, and Louis must have heard the news of the pompous and opinionated old abbot's death with considerable relief. Simon of St-Denis may have made mistakes of his own, but clearly he paid the price for the dislike and dis trust that 76. For Suger's cloister, D. V. Johnson and M. Wyss, 'Saint-Denis 11: sculptures gothiques recemment decouvertes', Bult Mon, 150 (1992), pp.355-81. For the lavabo, see W. Sauerlander, Cothic Sculpture in France 1140-1270 (London, 1972), pp.420-1. 77. Hist Pont, p.87. 78. Eugenius to Henry bishop of Beauvais, 19 Jan 1152, RHF, XV, p.469.

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Louis never dared visit directly on his formidable ex-regent. Nevertheless there is no corroborative evidence of a wholesale persecution of the Suger family.

THE END

In spite of William's assurances in the Vita, the overriding impression from the encydical letter is that Suger did not face death easily. St Bernard wrote to Suger as he lay ill, trying to rally his spirit, and sen ding a small handkerchief as a token of affection. 79 The letter Suger wrote in reply is a pathetic indication of mortal terror. ' If only', he wrote, 'I could see your angelic face once more ' . 80 But Bernard was ill and old hirns elf, and far away in Burgundy. Then there is Suger's letter to Jocelyn of Soissons, begging hirn to come to support his dying friend. All Suger's usual pompous rhetoric is drained from these two letters, and the abbot's naked panic in the face of death is all that remains. Why was Suger, a man of God, so frightened? Why did his faith not support hirn in his final struggle? He had done things in his younger days that were no longer considered best practice for the model of a modern churchman. Perhaps he still feared, as he wrote in the De Administratione, that God might eject the man ofblood from his house. BI Perhaps it was because too much was left undone, perhaps because he knew his congregation was riven with discord, perhaps because of his guilty suspicion that he had not been a good father to his flock. All his acta, from the very start of his abbacy, show hirn making elaborate provisions for prayers and alms for his soul, as if he was always under the shadow of death. In his faith he had taken care to be orthodox: perhaps at the end, he realised that the careful pursuit of canon law was somehow not enough. He had none of the spiritual depth that supported Peter the Venerable and Bernard, but he could recognise it, and appreciate it. And so he dung to Bernard's handkerchief, as if hoping that this fragile token would buy hirn eternal peace. 79. Bernard, Epist, VIII, pp.175-6, nO.cclxvi. 80. oe, p.282. 81. Admin, ed. Pan, p.44.

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Chapter 13

CONCLUSION: BROAD HORIZONS - ABBOT SUGER AND THE POLITlCAL AND RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE OF CAPETIAN FRANCE AROUND 1150

CAPETIAN FRANCE AROUND 1150: BREAD, WINE AND JOY? How different was the Capetian France in which Suger died from the Capetian France in which he grew up? The consensus view is that that half-centUlJ' was one of rapid and immense improvement and development in matters economic, cultural, and political, and that Suger himself played an active role in this evolution. This picture is not fun damentally untrue, but it is in need of some shading. As I have observed, our vision of early-twelfth-century France owes a great deal to what Suger teIls uso Suger was bound to stress the extent to wh ich he himself improved the estates of St-Denis. Since the De Administratione is a key piece of evidence for the economy of the Ile de France in thc early twelfth century, historians are bound to get a strong message that the economy of Capetian France was pretty dead around 1100, and pretty vibrant around 1150. In the same way, the Life 0/ Louis the Fat, concentrating as it does on the early years of Louis' reign, and on his attempt to control the unruly magnates of the Ile de France, leaves us with the strong impression that, while Philip I had, as Orderic

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observed, lost control of his barons, Louis regained it; and that the lawless, violent Francia of around 1100 was transformed by 1150 into the land of which Louis VII could boast to Walter Map that 'we in France have nothing but bread and wine and joy' .1 As for the impression that Suger's artistic patronage somehow kick-started the cultural expansion in the Ile de France between 1100 and 1150, this is partly contingent on the fact that Suger wrote about it, partly upon the resulting fact that unlike alm ost anything else, Suger's commissions can be dated, often very precisely, and partly upon accidents of survival. Let us take the economy first. The twelfth century was, of course, one of enormous economic growth, and we would expect mid-twelfth-century Capetian France to be much wealthier than the same area around 1100. The shading here, as I indicated in the introduction, is that charter evidence suggests that the economic outlook was much brighter around 1100 than Suger would have us believe in the De Administratione. Suger inherited an abbey situated in an area where population and trade were already growing fast. There was already a burgeoning urban economy. Speculative housebuilding was already a feature of the 1120s. This is not to deny that Suger hirnself, like the most enlightened of his contemporaries, including the brilliant Stephen de Garlande, and the pragmatic Louis the Fat, grasped the opportunities offered to hirn. Under Suger's abbacy, the real area of growth for the abbey was not around St-Denis itself - that was where growth had been concentrated around 1100 - but to the south of Paris in the less than fully exploited Beauce and the aptly named Gätinais - the waste land. Suger was not alone in recognising the potential of this area: so it seems did both Louis, and the bishops and chapter of Notre-Dame in Paris, which had considerable properties in the Gätinais. It is interesting that St-Denis' economic expansion in the second quarter of the twelfth century was fuelled by rural rather than urban exploitation. It may be that improved communications, and a 1. Walter Map, De Nugis Curialum, ed. and trans., M. R. James, rev. C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983), p.281.

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more prevalent money economy made all the difference in the abbot's ability to exploit distant estates. One of the reasons for improved communications was undoubtedly that Louis the Fat had managed to tighten the royal hold on the magnates of the Parisis. This is the message notjust of Suger, but also of Orderic Vitalis and Walter Map. This was partly a matter of luck. The Montlheri/ Rochefort clan which had caused so much trouble around 1100, and which had virtually blocked access along the royal road to the south of Paris, had disintegrated, as much through genealogical failure as defeat, long be fore 1150. In this protection-racket society, the king was emerging, ever more clearly, as the most consistently powerful protector. But the He de France around 1150 was not really a peaceful haven of bread, wine and joy. Thomas de Marle was dead and defeated, but the barons of the Laonnois were still at war with each other in 1150: that was why Louis VII wanted the succession to the bishopric of Laon resolved as soon as possible. Feuding and fighting were, as might have been expected, slightly worse under Suger's regency than when the king was in place, but William's account makes it clear that it was endemie. The Beauvaisis suffered sem i-permanent warfare between 1147 and 1151. Admittedly the protagonists varied, but that only points up the underlying inflammatory instability. It is not as if there were total security close to Paris. At the very end of his career, Suger took special care to fortify the abbey's estates at Tremblay, because the abbey's frequent disputes with the counts of Dommartin were likely to turn violent. Where there was a level of order, it was often achieved not directly by the king, but by those who de facta or de jure represented hirn as count. The important role of such men was shown up very clearly when they were absent: merchants could no longer travel the roads of north Burgundy safely when the county of Nevers was in the hands of an impotent countess during the crusade; and war broke out in the Laonnois immediately Bartholomew de Vir retired. The impression of good order had much to do with the fact that from the 1120s, magnates like Amaury de Montfort, Theobald of Blois-Champagne, and Ralph of Vermandois

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had managed to impose as much order on the areas under their control as Louis the Fat had in the Capetian heartlands. Whether the competence of royal justice reached much further than it had in 1100 is unclear. In a few causes cilebres, when, as at Clermont in 1126, or Poitiers in 1138, the king was prepared to muster sufficient troops to make an issue, it stretched into areas which would have been far beyond it in 1100. But run-of-the-mill dispute settlement may have been little different from the early twelfth century. It is true that all ecclesiastical institutions insisted ever mare fiercely on getting royal charters to record their rights and properties; but that was notjust true in Capetian France. The abbey of St-Denis probably had better access to royal justice far its properties than most of its rivals, because the kings so often had some residual interest in that property too. But in the mid-twelfth, as in the mid-eleventh century, even for the abbey of St-Denis, a royal charter was not enough, and like all of his colleagues, Suger made considerable, and often costly efforts to ensure that he had the insurance of a papal confirmation. Increasingly, by the mid-twelfth century, cases involving ecclesiastical property were pursued in the papal as well as the royal court. The fact remains that even around mid-century, actually countering the claims, preventing the exactions, or dealing with the raiding parties of the counts of Dommartin, or Anselm de Cornillon, or the count of Mereville was, even for the well-placed abbot of St-Denis, time-consuming, costly and very difficult.

THE KING AND HIS GOVERNMENT Louis the Fat's energetic tenure of the crown meant that when he died his reputation was much higher than his father's had been, though that was something of a nadir for the status of the king of France. Louis never really got the better of either Henry I ar Theobald of Blois, but he held them at bay. And luck favoured the Capetians in the late 1130s. The death of Henry I removed the direct comparison that had always left Louis the Fat looking like a second-class king, and the resultant Anglo-Norman succession problem in all its ramifications deflected the attention of the houses

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DRAWING THE CURTAIN

of both Anjou and Blois from attacking their own king. The enormous, and rich if ungovernable province of Aquitaine fell unbidden into Louis VII's lap, along with its duchess not that he was competent to make much of either. Louis VII's direct attack on Theobald of Blois in the 1140s showed up an old man who had for too long relied on diplomacy, prestige and wealth rather than armed force. Louis VII was a far more aggressive and military king than is usually recognised, as his activities in 1150-51 reveal. In relation to his great princes, the Capetian king looked far less of a primus inter pares in 1150 than he had in 11 00. The enhanced status of the Capetians owed much to Louis the Fat's robust political opportunism, and a great deal to good luck. Suger chronided it, but he did not invent it. How far had the methods of Capetian government changed during this period? In all essentials, not a great deal. Like all government, from the king's point of view, the leaner and meaner his key group of advisors, the real executors of government, the better. The key group might alter in complexion over time. Around 1100, it was likely to indude the great offkers of the court; and both the offices, and the unofficial position of intimate were likely to be filled by men like the Garlandes, the Rochefort/ Montlheri, or the Montforts, that is to say, the castellan families who had become the magnates, the counts, of the Ile de France. By 1150, the role of the great officers had become largely ceremonial; and many of the king's intimates came from a lesser, knightly dass. Of course, there were exceptions. Suger, hardly from the castellan-count set, was an intimate of Louis the Fat: the most important person at Louis VII's court remained his cousin, ultimately his brother-in-Iaw, the seneschal, Ralph of Vermandois. In a way, the complexion of the key group of intimates did not matter: what did matter was that it was sm all and flexible enough to operate efficiently. The king and his small group of intimates got on with the business of government on their own if possible. This was as tme in 1150 as in 1100. Where big decisions had to be made, for instance, the recognition of Innocent II in 1130, what the king had decided could be ratified, effectively legitimised, through a general council of magnates and prelates. If the king were in a weak position, he was more likely to have to call a council, and to have to take account of its views. Suger,

298

CONCLUSION

as regent, had to depend on general councils rather a lot. As a churchman, he was a firm believer in the prevailing ecclesiastical view that one of the distinctions between a good king and a tyrant is that the former mIes with the consent of a general council of prelates and magnates, and that the lauer does not. What among the theorists passed for good government was in fact usually a sign ofweak, or at least challenged government. Suger as regent discovered to his cost just how lumbe ring an agent of executive government a general couneil could be. By 1150, Louis VII certainly enjoyed a smoother and more developed government machinery than had his father around the turn of the century. This had much to do with the gifted Stephen de Garlande's long tenure of the chancery. One would expect that machinery to develop still further during the king's absence on cmsade. As I have said, there are hints in Suger's letters that there was rather more listing and accounting to Capetian government around mid-century than it is usually given credit for. It is impossible to tell, in the absence of evidence, whether, or how far, this should be ascribed to Suger as regent. But it was the regency that, according to Bautier's persuasive arguments, finally and irreversibly stamped Paris as the political capital of the Capetians.

PARIS: POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CAPITAL OF THE KINGDOM Around 1100, Paris was one of the most important eities in the Capetian lands, but it was arguable that Orleans was every bit as likely to emerge as their capital, politically, economically and culturally. By 1150, it was absolutely clear that that position belonged to Paris. Trading patterns now favoured the Seine river nexus, with its access to the Channel and increasingly wealthy North Sea rim, rather than the Loire. Louis the Fat had invested heavily in Paris, both politically and economically, building new bridges, and setting up an important new market at Champeaux. Suger had inadvertently played his part here, claiming St-Denis as the 'caput regni'. Suger's intention, of course, was to press the claims

299

DRAWING THE CURTAIN

of the abbey, the citadel of St Denis in France, as the Vatican was the citadel of St Peter in Rome. The unintended result was to reduce St-Denis to a satellite - vital, but a satellite of the great and growing city of Paris, an outlying adjunct to the royal palace on the Ile-de-Ia-Cite. St-Denis only ever fulfilled a fraction of the functions which were gradually, ever since Edward the Confessor, accumulating at Westminster. As to how far Suger's commissions at St-Denis were what turned Paris and the Parisis into the cultural capital of Capetian France that it had certainly become by 1150, weH on its way to becoming the cultural cynosure ofWestern Europe by 1200 - there we face the same problem as his contribution to the administration of government; that is, lack of evidence. A'i I have said, almost all the buildings that would have provided a context for the abbey church at St-Denis have vanished, including earlier abbey buildings at St-Denis itself. But enough has emerged from excavation to suggest that there was a context; there were in fact a substantial number of major building projects, both secular and ecclesiastical, under way in the Parisis from the late eleventh century. Nevertheless, the extent and the quality of rebuilding on the abbey site throughout the 1130s and 1140s was prodigious. It is clear from the range of different sculptors who worked for Suger that he required a very large workforce; and both from what Suger says, and from internal stylistic evidence, we know that he attracted specialist craftsmen into the Parisis from far away. Many of these men stayed to work on other projects in the immediate area: craftsmen from StDenis went on to work at Notre-Dame, St-Germain-des-Pres and St-Pierre at Montmartre in Paris, at many churches near St-Denis- for instance, at Pontoise - and at other major northern French sites like Chartres. There was already a culture of competitive church building among the prelates of the northern French church by 1120, but it is clear that Suger, with his limitless pretensions for his abbey and his saint, raised the stakes to unprecedented levels. But Suger's, and St-Denis', contribution to the cultural hegemony of Paris and the Parisis was confined to the visual arts, to architecture and liturgical objects. The abbey's liturgy was complex and extensive, and Suger made it more so; but the new developments in music occurred at NotreDame, where they probably lay behind the impassioned 300

CONCI.l1SION

clashes between the new dean and precentor which exasperated Suger in the first months of his regency.~ And St-Denis played no part at all in the intellectual developments in the city's schools, though it was these perhaps more than anything else that turned Paris into a cultural capital. By the se co nd quarter of the century a course at the Paris schools was a sine qua non for any promising young man who hoped for a glittering career in the church, whether in France, England, the Empire or the papal curia. This development was already under way before 1100. Suger made some attempts to improve the intellectual standing of the abbey, collecting, promoting and writing history. Towards the end of his life he was careful to gather round hirn a group of well-educated young men. But his favourite colleague was his long-serving prior, Herveus, simple, saintly, and ill-educated. There was no attempt to enlarge the abbey library under his abbacy in any area other than history, and neither he nor the abbey engaged with the Parisian masters of the new theology.

SUGER AND THE CHANGING FRENCH CHURCH The French church had had an unfortunate relationship with Philip I, but generally the prelates had worked weIl with Louis the Fat in his early years. This comfortable accommodation had collapsed in the troubles of the 1130s, and had hardly been reconstituted under Louis VII. The king could not rely on his bishops, as the young Louis the Fat had, and all French churchmen had learnt to appeal to Rome at the first sign of opposition to their own devices and desires. Philip I had silenced his harshest clerical critic, Ivo of Chartres, by the simple expedient of imprisonment: Louis VII had no option but to accept or ignore St Bernard's invective, and hope that others would ignore it too. Churchmen were now very used to meddling in all aspects of politics in pursuit of their own agenda, not, as Louis the Fat's bishops had done, acting primarily as agents of the king, empowered with public 2. See C. Wright, Music and Crm:rnony al Natre-Daml', Pan's, 5()()-1550 (Cambridge, 1989), esp. pp.66, 235, 274-81 ami A. Walters Robertson, The Semice Rooks afthe Royal Abbey arS/-Denis (Oxford, 1991), esp. pp.2458,439-42 and see above, pp.161-2.

301

DRAWING THE CURTAIN

authority. Suger hirnself was as guilty as any other in the 1140s: if Louis VII failed to heed his advice, Suger was prepared to undermine his king's policies. It is surprising that Suger never acquired the bishopric to which his gifts were so perfectly adapted. Once disappointed of a potential cardinalship in la te 1124, he contented himself with his role as abbot of St-Denis. He could surely have had a French bishopric if he had wanted one, so we must assume that he preferred to remain devoted to the venerable abbey with its immcmorial traditions and its venerated saint. The position of an abbot in politics was becoming increasingly controversial. It was not just the Cistercians who feit that the rough and tumble of public life was no longer the appropriate place for a monk and abbot. At the same time, the vital role of the bishop as apower for peace within his diocese, and henee as an exeeuti"e of government within the kingdol1l , was widely apprcciated. Suger was not the only abbot to confront the problem. Bernard, who llscd his influenee l1luch less subtly than Suger, and who made much of how he wished hc could hide away in his monastery, was frequently, and justly, accllsed of pernieious politiealmeddling. When Suger became regent he fOllnd himself in the difficult position of having to sul)Vert the natural ecclesiastical order of things, as an abbot commanding bishops. It was doubtless with this in mi nd that he insisted on a papal mandate for his position. In the couple oE years leEt to him after the regency, he was oeeasionally employeel on the sort of ecclesiastieal business, such as reso!\'ing the disputed Laon election, which would not normally have been placed in the hands of an abbot. It was almost as iE he was now seen as a sort of north French Bernard. This was largely a matter of personal prestige, but he had certainly tried to put the political claims of the abbot ancl abbey of St-Denis on a more institutionalised basis in aseries of royal charters produced in-house, and in the infamous forgeel charter of Charlemagne (DKar.286). Suger took every opportunity to press the claims oE St-Denis; allel the preeminence, the virtual primacy of the abhot of St-Denis in the French chureh is one of the principal messages ofWilliam's life of Suger, anel his edition of the Ietters. Since the primacy

302

COKCl.l 'S[OK

of St-Denis was pursued to the detriment, primarily, of the bishop and church of Paris, it is surprising that Suger should have offered a splendid window to the old cathedral, and that he placed the most talented of his nephews, Si mon of StDenis, in the chapter of Notre-Dame. But perhaps he realised instinctively that the cathedral chapter, not the monastery, would henceforth be the position from which to pursue the sort of political career that he had been forttwate to enjoy.

SUGER AND THE REFORM1STS St Bernard's tremendous moral authority and successful publicity machine tends to leave historians, as it left many of his contemporaries, with the impression that Bernard's views formed the central strand of ecclesiastical reform. As a result, Suger has often seemed rather an isolated figure, fighting a rearguard action. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bernard represented a vociferous, but often minority view. Suger, like all his contemporaries, was Illuch in awe of Bernard. Nevertheless, the best men both at the papal curia and in the French church, like Suger, Geoffrey of U~ves, Hugh of Amiens and his relation, Matthew of Albano, andJocelyn de Quierzy had a sense ofwhat they must achieve, tempered by a strong understanding of what they could achieve and how. That these men worked within the system rather than attacking from outside, anci that they had to work with rather than against kings who paid mere lip-service to their deepest tenets, should not blind us to their sincerity as churchmen. Like Geoffrey of Leves, Suger managed to combine a sincere desire for a church run along lines of strict propriety (though both men shared a blind spot with regard to the promotion of their own families ), wi th a sure touch in managing men . Fortunately, if perhaps surprisingly, this ability was highly prized by Bernard, who was no mean manipulator of men hirnself, and both Suger and Geoffrey of Leves undoubtedly benefited from Bernard's support and approbation in their later years. And not every member of the • younger generation feit that it was necessary to take the sort of stance that Stephen of Senlis had. Both Alvise of Arras and Baldwin of Noyon, both ex-monks, and the latter a good friend of Bernard, and Archbishop Samson of Reims, 303

f)R.\\YI:\G THE ClIRT.IJl\'

attached themselves to what might be called the establishment with reformist credibility, that is to Suger, Geoffrey of Leves and Jocelyn of Soissons.

SUGER AND THE TWELFTH-CENTURY RENAISSANCE Suger is often seen as twelfth-century Renaissance man: as the man who could be both politician, biographer, abbot and great artistic patron. But this is to view the twelfth century through an Albertian haze. Because Suger commissioned the first Gothic church, it is assumed that he was at the forefront of those intellectual developments that blossomed in mid-century. But his new church was intended as a great leap back, not a great leap forward; and his education and intellectual equipment were formed by 1110. He was born when William th e Conqueror was still alive: he belongs to the world of Orderic Vitalis, not that of John of Salisbury. But the twelfth-century Renaissance covers many different and disparate cultural and intellectual phenomena, extending, at either end, beyond the chronological confines of the century itself. Most recent historians have been prepared to see a late-eleventh-century phase of passionate interest in classical an and literature, an interest conducive perhaps to pastiche rather than re-creation, as an integral part of the twelfth-century Renaissance. This phase is represented by the wide interest in classical authors d eveloped in the schools along the Loire, and informing the writings of Marbod of Rennes or Hildevert of Lavardin; and in architecture by the conscious Early-Christian revivalism of Montecassino or Calixtine Rome and the Romanism of Cluny III. 1 In this early classical revivalism, Suger fits snugly. He knew his Horace and Lucan - he learnt them in the Loire: he based his D(' Conserratione on a Montecassino text, and his Ordinances and Testament on similar texts by his great Carolingian predecessors at St-Denis, Fulrad and Hilduin. His views of church and state were close to those of Ivo of Chartres, wirh some Roman stiffening. His buildings took 3. This e me rges in pape r after paper in Rmaissanrf, and see esp . th e introduction. pp.xxvii-xxix.

304

CO NCLUSION

antiquarianism to new levels of precision and pastiche in the north of France. But these are 'Renaissance' trends of around 1100, rather than 1150. With the new developments of the mid-twelfth century, he was less at horne. The implication of William's discussion of Suger's education is that it was considered very oldfashioned by bright young men in 1150. Suger was not trained in Abelardian dialectic, nor does his Latin have the pretentious Ciceronian elegance of John of Salisbury, Otto of Freising, or even his secretary William. He did at least recognise the new inteIlectual trends, and surrounded himself with young men weIl versed in them, like his secretary, or his nephew, Simon of St-Denis, who was a magister, and the distinguished classicist, William Medicus, who would become, in 1179, abbot of St-Denis. By the 1140s, Suger gives the impression of foIlowing from behind rather than leading from the front in matters theological. John of Salisbury includes hirn among those who prosecuted Gilbert de la Poree because they feared the theological strictures of St Bernard. Probably we would be able to say much the same of Geoffrey of U~ves or Hugh of Amiens if we knew enough about them; certainly Suger's friend, Jocelyn of Soissons, who had passed for an important scholar in the second decade of the century, was left so far behind by the new theologies that, by 1148, he was unable to understand the Trinity. Suger was undoubtedly far more adept at negotiating these shifting theological sands. The new shrine-choir, great leap forward though it is, is so heavily steeped in the classicism of around 1100, that it marks the end of an architectural era as weIl as the beginning of a new. It is the last and most resplendent of the pilgrimage churches, a monastic church, intimate for aIl its spaciousness. The first generation of fuHy Gothic buildings, led by Laon and Notre-Dame in Paris, were cathedrals, and their aim was immensity not intimacy.

ORIGINALITY AND GREATNESS Dom David Knowles, with the moral certainty of an older generation, described Henry of Blois as, in spite of aIl his 305

DRAWINC THE Cl IRL\I1\

abilities, 'not ... absolutely great'. I One suspects he might have said much the same of Suger. And assuming the towering personality of Bernard to be the measure of twelfthcentury greatness, one would be inclined to agree. But in what lies greatness? The historian, by pretension, if not by definition, an intellectual, likes to find it in originality, preferably of thought; but if the subject is a man of action, a sort of desperate, preferably doomed heroism will do. Above all , perhaps, greatness depends on a certain type of personality, flawed, of course, but still big enough to carry down the cen turies. On all of these counts, Suger falls short of KIlowIes' absolute greatness. Many historians have done their best to thrust greatness upon the man who commissioned the first extant Gothic building, usually by imputing to him original thoughts. But he was not an original thinker; he was not a doomed hero, but a highly successful administrator; and his personality - moderate, efficient, hard, rigid, strict to the point of tyranny, but quite pleasant if you knew him weil - does not fire the imagination, as Bernard, Abelard, Stephen de Garlande, Becket or Henry II do. Suger himself was not interested in originality, and perhaps we should judge him on his own terms, not ours. What he wanted was the very opposite of originality. In his religious faith he was desperately orthodox. In most areas of his life, he saw himself as maintaining the status quo, and in so far as he introduced changes, most of them were intended as reversion to what he imagined as the good old days of Dagobert or Charlemagne and Charles the Bald, when the abbey of St-Denis was thc foremost ecclesiastical institution in the kingdOlll, when the abbot of St-Denis was the archchaplain of the king, when the king/ emperor behaved with due deference to the views of his ecclesiastical advisers, and peace reigned in the kingdom. He applied all his massive intelligence and energy to trying to recreate the wealth of the abbey in those happy pre-alienation days, alld in doing so put the abbey finances Oll so sound a footing that they required 110 major overhaul for the best part of a century. He repaired the splendid old ornaments of the church, and 4. D. Knowles, The 1'!JÜro!Hl! Colleaguf5 bridge , 1951), p.37.

306

0/ ArrhbishojJ

ThO/llas Becket (Cal1l-

CO NCLUSION

added new in what he took to be very much the manner of the old. He demanded from his architect a choir to riyal the many ancient double-aisled buildings he had seen in Paris or Rome, many-columned, elegant and spacious, to look as much as possible like the Carolingian - in Suger's view Merovingian - church it replaced. It is one of the supreme ironies of western art that what he got was the first Gothic building. In promoting the links between St-Denis and the monarchy, he was following established house traditions. He himself did not give a Pseudo-Dionysian gloss to the pervasive view that society was hierarchical. Like many of his French contemporaries, he had a rather heartily deflating view of kings and kingship. His political views owed no more than those of the bulk of his contemporaries to Gregorian ecclesiastical, 01' indeed Dionysian celestial, hierarchies, but rather a lot to a thoroughly Gregorian sense of the centrality of the church and its saints, of the iniquity of lay dominion, and of the frailty of the human condition. It was perhaps St Bernard who summed up Suger's life and works most neatly: in temporal matters faithful and prudent, in spiritual fervent and humble, and able to act in both equally - that which is most difficult - without biarne: 'Apud caesarem est tanquam unus de curia romana, apud deum tanquam unus de curia coeli'. ('Before caesar he acts as if one of the Roman curia, befme God as if one of the court of heaven' .)', Nothing ironie 01' subversive was intended in the comment: Bernard was recommending Suger wholeheartedly to Pope Eugene 111. Neverthdess, it encapsulates that ambivalence towards the powers of this world and the powers of the next which was both Sugcr's strength and his weakness, and it places him as that most despised of twelfthcentury creatures, the courtier. But he was a very effective courtier, an actor, an observer and collector. As such , he played a central role in most matters of church and state in northern France, and many in western Europe, in the first half ofwhat many would consider the key century of the Middle Ages.

5. Bernard, t/Jist, VIII , p.229, no.cccix.

307

This page intentionally left blank

GENEALOGICAL TABLES

vo >-' o

Ralph '

Henri Theoderic" hospitarius mayor of Mours

probable

known connection

Suger" monk of St-Denis

bra/hITs: bu/ precise IJaren/age unknown

>

Ralph l

Suger Magnus l

John l

Suger or Ralph (?) I =

Hugh l

Suger l Miles d.c. 1175

Payn l

Payn l

X Orphelin I

nun at Jouarre l

Hugh~

Adam 2 Fitz-Ivo

Hugh of Baldwin I Ivo ~ St-Denisl~ Fitz Suger

See Genealogical Table II

Helinand =?

Genealogical Table I: The Suger family: descendants of Suger Magnus. For notes see p.312

Vl

tT1

~r

~

Cl

5

tT1

Z

tT1

Cl

"""' """'

~

Paynl

Peter1 cleric

probable connection

known connection

John Suger5 canon ofNotre Dame

?5

:?

:?

Peter Theobald"

Suger5 canon of Notre Dame d.c. 1225

:? MatthewB

Hellouin 5 canon of Notre Dame d. post 1217

Gerard 8

7}!p~~S_ f!7}~_ :!i~C!_ oj f!~~q~ ~!:l.f{e::~ ~'!!! p..r.e!:~s!_1!f!~f!!l.~aKe~ 1!7}!t.n..o..U:7}r

SUGER1 abbot of St-Denis c.1081-1151

Helinand 1•4 =?

Simon5 Richeldis s = Froge~ Hugh 6 of St-Denis Foucauld Chancellor of abbot of St-Denis France 1150-51 d.1197 canon ofNotre Dame d.c. 1180 ?

William of St-Denis5•6 canon ofNotre Dame, treasurer of Pontoise d.c. 1235

John monk at St-Denis d.1149

:?

Emmeline ~ Ralph 1•4

See Gen!alOgical Table I

Suger Magnus 1

Ralph (?) I = 1\.. Vrpnelln·

Cf]

~

~ ~

8

~ ~ ~ o

GENEALOGlCAL TABLES

NOTES TO GENEALOGICAL TABLES I AND 11 1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8.

J.

Benton, 'Suger's Life and Personality', Symposium, pp.12-15, and pp.12-13 for an outline family tree. W. Newrnan Le Domaine RuyaL sous les premiers Gapetiens (987-1180) (Paris, 1937), piecesjusticatives no.25, pp.249-52. Dufour, Actes LVI, II, pp.2524, no.359. LL 1157, ff. 62, 698, 699. Necrology 0/ St-Denis, Felibien, pp.ccxv and ccxviii. NDP Gart, 11, pp.474, 501, 528; IV, pp.ll, 68, 162. Canon William of Notre Dame calls hirnself a nephew of Abbot Suger when he establishes an anniversary for hirn. He was probably, as shown here, a great nephew, though it is possible that there was another canon William in the previous generation . It is clear from NDP Gart, I. p.45, no.xxxiv, that canon Hellouin is not to be identified with Hilduin the chancellor of Notre Dame, as has often been assumed, for example, by Benton, in his version of the Suger family tree. NDP Gart, IV, p.173, which clarifies the relationship between Hugh Foucauld and his nephew William of St-Denis, and, in the way that it is set out, links the canon John Suger with both of them. See also A. Molinier, Obituaires de La Province de Sens, 4 vols (Paris, 1902-23) , I, pp.xxvii. Pope Eugenius III to Suger, RH}~ xv, p.456. LL 1157, f. 464. f. 699.

312

-

~

~

Philip young king

=

Philip II Augustus king 1180-1223

= 1) Eleanor Louis VII king 1137-1180 of Aquitaine 3) Adela of Champagne

Adela of = Louis VI Savoy king 1108-1137

Anna of Kiev

Roben = 1) countess later count of Perche ofDreux

1) Bertha of = Philip I Flanders king 1060-11 08 2) Bertrada de Montfort

Henry I king of France 1031-1060

Genealogical Table III: The Capetians

Henry bishop of Beauvais later archbishop ofReims

=

Philip treasurer of Compiegne

1) Eleanor of Champagne 2) Petronilla of Aquitaine

countess of Vermandois

= Adela

Constance

=

Eustace count of Boulogne

Ralph, count of Vermandois

Hugh

CJJ

~

~ ~

8

~

z

F:i

(,)0

0+:0.

......

William Clito d.1128

Roben Curthose, duke of Normandy Henry I duke ofNormandy king of England d. 1135 =

Henry II duke of Normandy count of Anjou king of England d. 1189

=

Eustace of Boulogne

Henry bishop of Winchester abbot of Glastonbury d.1171

Adela = Stephen-Henry count ofBlois, d. 1102

Stephen = Matilda of Boulogne king of England d.1154 Constance of France

Theobald count of Blois and Champagne d.1152

Matilda of Scotland

= Matilda 1) Emperor d . 1167 Henry V 2) Geoffrey count of Anjou d. 1152

William II duke of Normandy king of England d.1100

= Matilda of Flanders William I duke of Nonnandy king of England d.1087

Genealogical Table IV: The Anglo-Normans and the Counts of Blois/Champagne

t"" tTl VJ

~

~

o

~

Z

~

MAPS AND PLANS

F LA]

•

Arras -Gourna -Gourna

-Gourna -Gourna -Gourna

-Gourna -Gourna -Gourna

-Gourna

-Gourna -Gourna -Gourna -Gourna

• Lisieux I::,. -Gourna

-Gourna

NORMANDY -Gourna -Gourna

-Gourna

-Gourna -Gourna

-Gourna -Gourna

BEAUCE

-Gourna -Gourna

*

• • Toury* GAl

Ba~ille Beau~e-Ia­

-Gourna Puiset.

Tivemon * Orleans

Le Mansl::,.

Rolande *

-Gourna -Gourna

-Gourna

Be:"nCy Blois -Gourna

A tl1 0

\3 \

Saumur t

Marmoutier t tl::,. Tours •

• -Gourna -Gourna • Montreuil-Bellay • St-Denis-en-Vaux -Gourna

Bourges Reuilly*. *

*

-Gourna

Cour