Abbot Suger of St-Denis: Church and State in Early Twelfth-Century France

by Lindy Grant

Abbot Suger (c.1081-1151) was a pivotal figure in the France of his day. Active in both religious and political affairs, he has numerous claims, in a variety of fields, on the modern reader. He was abbot (from 1122) of one of Europe's most important monasteries, at a time when Gregorian reform and the new monasticism were having an immense impact on the medieval church. He was also a politician and diplomat of international importance, in the service of both Louis VI and his son Louis VII, for whom he acted as Regent during the king's absence on the Second Crusade.
Lindy Grant's comprehensive study of this multifaceted figure is a major event. Derived from a fresh reading of the primary sources, it is the first full biography of Suger in English. It provides a much-needed corrective to many of the current ideas about him. Based on the fragmented modern literature (itself usually written from an art-historical angle), these have tended to set Suger in artificial isolation, and as a result to exaggerate both his role as a doer and his originality as a thinker. While saluting his energy in all these many fields, Lindy Grant - by seeing him whole, and setting him firmly in the full historical context of the twelfth century - shows how far he was in fact a man of his times rather than a man ahead of them. In doing so, she presents a uniquely vivid picture of the interaction of church and state in Capetian France.

Genres: History, Medieval, France

338 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1998

About the author

A specialist in Capetian France, Lindy M. Grant is professor of medieval history at the University of Reading.

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad biography of Abbot Suger. Suger was the abbot of Saint-Denis, the royal monastery a bit north of Paris, in the first half of the twelfth century and he's frequently given credit for being the 'inventor' / first patron of Gothic architecture through his renovation of the abbey church during his time as abbot. He's also deeply associated with the Capetian monarchy, and many have attributed to him their underlying political ideology that would start to emerge in full-flower after Suger's death in the reign of Philip II Augustus. Lindy Grant reevaluates this perception of Suger, suggesting that his patronage and political ideology were not particularly unique for his time. Instead, Grant's Suger should be remembered for his capable administration and give for political negotiations rather than for his more abstract or intellectual contributions.

It's probably a rather fair reevaluation. Historians tend to get pretty excited around Abbot Suger, insinuating that he pretty much invented High Medieval France, and a lot of that could very well be rooted in the fact that the sources written by Suger himself are some of the best ones that survive from the time. However, I do think that Grant is a little bit unfair to the abbot. Her refutations about Suger's political thought and theological thought are fairly cursory and almost all of her arguments are somewhat undermined by her decision to almost never quote her sources. This is especially detrimental since so much of the argument hinges on Suger's words themselves, and what impact they had. There's also an occasional sense that Grant just didn't like Suger all that much. The more straight-forward biographical parts are well done, though, and it works well as a possible counterbalance to other works on Suger by Erwin Panofsky and Conrad Rudolph.

[Tom]

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