Suger
Suger
Abbot of St-Denis, statesman and historian, b. probably at or near St-Denis, about 1081; d. there, 13 Jan., 1151. Towards 1091 he was offered to the monastery of St-Denis where he became a fellow-student of King Louis VI. From 1104 to 1106 he attended another monastic school, perhaps that of St-Benoît-sur-Loire near Orléans. He became secretary to Abbot Adam of St-Denis in 1106, was named provost of Berneval in Normandy towards 1107 and of Toury in Beauce in 1109. Louis IV sent him (1118) to the Court of Gelasius II at Maguelonne in Southern France, and later to that of Callistus II at Rome. During his stay at Rome (1121-22) he was elected Abbot of St-Denis, and ordained to the priesthood on his return. He attended the First General Council of the Lateran in 1123, and so favourably impressed Callistus II that eighteen months after his return to France this pope, desirous of conferring new honours (probably the cardinalate) upon him, invited him to Rome. Suger proceeded as far as Lucca, but retraced his steps upon receipt of the news of the pope’s death. Henceforth most of his time was spent at Court until 1127, when he initiated, and subsequently successfully accomplished, the reform of his monastery. He continued to remain, however, the constant advisor of Louis VI and of his successor Louis VII. During the latter’s absence on the Second Crusade he was appointed regent of the kingdom (1147-49). He had opposed the king’s departure on the ground that the powerful and turbulent vassals were a danger to the royal power, but so successful was his administration that the king, upon his return, bestowed upon him the title of “Father of the Country”. Although the crusade ended in failure, Suger equipped an army and was about to depart for the Holy Land when he died. As a statesman he sought to strengthen the royal power, to improve agriculture, commerce, and trade, and to reform the administration of justice. As abbot he not only introduced thorough-going reforms, but also completed in 1144 the new monastic church. He has left an account of the consecration of the edifice, “Libellus de consecratione eccl. S. Dionysii”, and a memoir on his own abbatical administration, “Liber de rebus in administratione sua gestis”. Of greater importance for the knowledge of the period are his “Vita Ludovici Grossi regis”, a eulogistic but reliable life of Louis the Fat, and “Historia Ludovici VII”, a history of Louis VII, which in its present form is the work of a Burgundian monk of St-Germain-des-Prés. We also possess of him some letters, official documents, and a will of the year 1137.
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The complete works of SUGER are in P. L., CLXXXVI, 1211-1468.
N. A. WEBER Transcribed by Janet Grayson
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIVCopyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, July 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Suger
abbot of St. Denis, and a leading dignitary of the Church and statesman of, France in the 12th century, was born probably in the year , and in the neighborhood of St. Omer, and was educated in the Monastery of St. Denis, where the crown-prince, Louis the Fat, was his companion. After completing his studies in 1103, he was employed by abbot Adam of St. Denis in the administration of distant possessions of the convent, and in their defense against the incursions of predatory knights. On the accession of Louis VI to the throne (1108), Suger became his counselor, and contributed greatly to the subjugation of the barons, who had thrown off all responsibility, and to the establishing of the royal authority, by which the reign of Louis VI became noted in the history of France. He was also an active participant in the dispute about investiture (see the article), which at that time agitated both Church and State, taking sides with the pope, as the policy of France demanded. He was present at the Lateran Council in 1112, which annulled the concessions made by pope Paschal II to Henry V. In 1118 he met the fugitive pope Gelasius II, and, in the name of his king, placed all the resources of France at his disposal against his Italian adversaries. He subsequently negotiated a settlement of the question of investiture, in 1121, which proved satisfactory to both France and the papacy. In 1122 he became the successor of the deceased Adam in the abbacy of St. Denis, and in 1124 he visited Rome to attend the great Lateran Council, and while there so ingratiated himself with the pope, Calixtus II, that the latter proposed to create him cardinal, a project which failed by reason of the decease of the pope. He accompanied the army in a campaign against the emperor Henry V in the same year; and he was at the same time earnestly engaged in endeavoring to induce the king to release the colonies, or lower orders in the State, from many of their pressing burdens, and to concede the right to form autonomous communes as a means of undermining the feudal system.
About 1127 Suger renounced the habits of his previous worldly life and became an ascetic; and, after having reformed himself, he undertook to enforce the Benedictine rule in all its strictness in the abbey of St. Denis. He fulfilled his spiritual functions conscientiously, and built a magnificent church while himself living in a little cell. His principal merit consists, however, in an excellent administration of the convent, in the conservation of its rights, in the artistic decoration of churches, and in the dissemination of the influences of culture throughout the surrounding wastes. His direction of the affairs of the State still continued, and, when Louis VII ascended the throne (in 1137), became even more pronounced than before. He was associated with bishop Joscelin of Soissons in the regency, and administered the government on the plan of the late king. His boldness appears in his resisting the papal interdict (in 1141) by which Innocent II sought to force a prelate into the archbishopric of Bo1urges against the expressed will of the king.’ His endeavor to restrain the king from embarking in his crusade failed; but he was appointed regent of the country during the king’s absence, in conjunction with the archbishop of Rheilms and-count Vermenidois. Aided by the pope, he subdued the rebellious nobility, and so wisely administered the finances that he was able to honor the incessant drafts of Louis, and also to erect many edifices, and still save large sums of money to the public treasury. The height of his career was reached when he succeeded in neutralizing the endeavors of Robert of Dreux, the brother of Louis VI, who had returned from the Holy Land in 1148, to seize upon the supreme authority. At the same time, he succeeded in resisting the desires for radical reform fostered by Abelard and Pierre de Bruys, while zealously endeavoring to correct the abuses from which those desires had sprung. He was further successful in a conflict with the canons of St. Genevieve, in Paris, whose convent pope Eugene III had directed him to reform in accordance with the Benedictine rule. Louis VII, on his return, in 1149, publicly thanked the regent and called him the father of his country; and Bernard of Clairvaux and a number of foreign princes wrote to him in token of their admiration and respect. He enjoyed his fame, however, during a brief season only, and died Jan. 12, 1151. His literary remains include only, sixty miscellaneous letters (in Duchesne, Scriptores, vol. 4), a report of his administration of St. Denis, and a biography of Louis VI which ranks among the superior historical productions of the Middle Ages (both in Duchesne, utsup.).
See Hist. Lit. de la France, 12:361; Bernardi, Essai Hist. sur l’Abb Suger, in Archives Lit. de l’Europe (Par. 1807), vol. 14 and 15; Carne, Etudes sur les Fondateurs de Unit Nat. en France (ibid. 1848), vol. 1; Combes, L’Abb Suger (ibid. 1853); monk Wilhelm’s (a contemporary) biography of Suger, in Guizot Coll. des Memoires, vol. 8. Herzog, Real- Encyklop. s.v.