Abbot Suger and the Sacramental Splendour of St Denis.
“What has gold to do in the sanctuary?” St Bernard of Clairvaux.
Unlike the claustral, ascetic Bernard of Clairvaux, head of the Abbey of Cluny, Suger, abbot of Abbey of St Denis between 1122 and his death in 1151, strikes us as more secular, energetic, and firmly imbricated within the administrative systems and structures of power in early medieval France. When Suger met a problem he had no hesitation in going right to the top, seeking advice of popes and kings; one of these – Louis VI, “le gros”- was on friendly terms with this remarkable churchman. Though Suger’s power was still limited in the political sphere, he had complete dominion over St Denis, the Parisian church which contained the tombs of the French kings. In re-conceptualising and re-building St Denis, Suger “adviser of the Crown and the greatest political power in France,” earned the respect and praise of his previous enemy, the Abbot of Clairvaux, “the mentor of the Holy See and the greatest spiritual force in Europe.”1 But far from turning St Denis into a monastic retreat separate from the secular world, Suger made the church a place where things were rendered unto both Caesar and God: beautiful possessions like Suger’s famous porphyry Eagle Vase, now in the Louvre. So Suger placed his relics, “vessels of gold or precious stone adorned with pearls and gems, golden candelabra and altar panels, sculpture and stained glass, mosaic and enamel works, lustrous vestments and tapesteries,” in the upper choir of this most magnificent of Gothic cathedrals.2
1These descriptions are Erwin Panofsky’s in his “Abbot Suger of St Denis” in Meaning in the Visual Arts, Penguin, 1977, orig pub 1955), 139-180, 150.
2Ibid, 153-154.
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