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The Deeds of Louis the Fat
This book presents the first English language translation of the deeds of a major figure in French history, King Louis the Fat (1108-1137), a text frequently cited in textbooks and monographs.
223 pages, Paperback
First published October 12, 1140
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About the author
Abbot Suger
13 books2 followersSuger was a French abbot, statesman, and historian. He was one of the earliest patrons of Gothic architecture, and is widely credited with popularizing the style.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 15, 2016
La main des rois est très forte; aussi, en vertu d'un droit consacré de leur office, répriment-ils l'audace des tyrans, toutes les fois qu'ils les voient provoquer des guerres, prendre plaisir à piller sans fin, à confondre les pauvres, à détruire les églises
Cet ouvrage est une biographie d'un roi de France du début du 11ème siècle, écrite par un de ses plus proches familiers, l'abbé Suger de Saint-Denis (1081-1151), peu après la mort du souverain. Suger a connu Louis depuis l'enfance, il lui voue une vive admiration et sa biographie est nettement laudative, voir édifiante. Suger a en effet été l'un de ses plus proches ministres, a rempli pour lui de nombreuses missions, était toujours au plus prêt des affaires. Son ouvrage est donc un document de premier plan.
L'essentiel du livre relate les nombreuses batailles et sièges de châteaux accomplis par le roi contre des nobles coupables de séditions, d'injustice, de rébellion, et de toutes sortes de déprédations contre l'église et les pauvres. Le souverain incarne un champion de justice qui attaque sans répit des hommes iniques et puissants. Suger voit dans le succès des affaires du roi la main de Dieu tout-puissant. La plupart de ces combats ont lieu dans les régions voisines de Paris, principalement la Normandie, alors au pouvoir du tout récent royaume normand d'Angleterre, mais aussi en Orléanais, en Seine et Marne.
Mais le théâtre des événements ne se limite pas simplement aux alentours de Paris. Suger évoque également les affaires internationales: les affaires de la jeune dynastie anglaise pour laquelle Suger nourrit une vive admiration, la récente première croisade dont certains participants ont regagné leurs terres, les tensions entre l'empereur et la papauté sur la question des investitures, la réforme grégorienne qui sera si lourde de conséquences, nous sommes plongé au cœur des éventements, et les protagonistes, sous la plume de Suger, prennent vie.
L'écriture de Suger est une narration pétillante, bien loin d'une fade chronique ennuyeuse; il sait captiver l'attention du lecteur par des péripéties alertes, un détail pathétique, un dénouement édifiant. C'est avec feu qu'il commente et prend parti, déplore les entreprises des méchants, et applaudit à leur défaite. C'est sans fard et avec une véritable joie féroce qu'il se réjouit des tortures atroces réservées aux coupables, complaisamment décrites. C'est avec une satisfaction simplement exprimée qu'il se réjouit de l'enrichissement des églises, et qu'il décrit complaisamment les pierres précieuses, les étoffes rares, les bijoux, et tous les trésors que la main du roi lui assure.
C'était bien fait: il fallait que les pillards fussent pillés à leur tour, que les bourreaux fussent soumis aux mêmes tortures, voire à des plus dures, que leurs victimes.
Cet édition de bonne qualité, si elle est pauvre en illustrations, présente néanmoins le texte latin original avec la traduction, avec un appareil critique solide et instructif. Les allégations de Suger sont comparées aux grandes chroniques de France; les dates exactes, sur lesquelles l'auteur reste parfois vague, sont précisées. J'ai beaucoup apprécié le fait d'avoir sous les yeux ces écrits d'un homme du Moyen-Âge, qui m'a mis en contact direct avec sa sensibilité, et m'a beaucoup plus touché que n'importe quel livre d'histoire.
Cet ouvrage est une biographie d'un roi de France du début du 11ème siècle, écrite par un de ses plus proches familiers, l'abbé Suger de Saint-Denis (1081-1151), peu après la mort du souverain. Suger a connu Louis depuis l'enfance, il lui voue une vive admiration et sa biographie est nettement laudative, voir édifiante. Suger a en effet été l'un de ses plus proches ministres, a rempli pour lui de nombreuses missions, était toujours au plus prêt des affaires. Son ouvrage est donc un document de premier plan.
L'essentiel du livre relate les nombreuses batailles et sièges de châteaux accomplis par le roi contre des nobles coupables de séditions, d'injustice, de rébellion, et de toutes sortes de déprédations contre l'église et les pauvres. Le souverain incarne un champion de justice qui attaque sans répit des hommes iniques et puissants. Suger voit dans le succès des affaires du roi la main de Dieu tout-puissant. La plupart de ces combats ont lieu dans les régions voisines de Paris, principalement la Normandie, alors au pouvoir du tout récent royaume normand d'Angleterre, mais aussi en Orléanais, en Seine et Marne.
Mais le théâtre des événements ne se limite pas simplement aux alentours de Paris. Suger évoque également les affaires internationales: les affaires de la jeune dynastie anglaise pour laquelle Suger nourrit une vive admiration, la récente première croisade dont certains participants ont regagné leurs terres, les tensions entre l'empereur et la papauté sur la question des investitures, la réforme grégorienne qui sera si lourde de conséquences, nous sommes plongé au cœur des éventements, et les protagonistes, sous la plume de Suger, prennent vie.
L'écriture de Suger est une narration pétillante, bien loin d'une fade chronique ennuyeuse; il sait captiver l'attention du lecteur par des péripéties alertes, un détail pathétique, un dénouement édifiant. C'est avec feu qu'il commente et prend parti, déplore les entreprises des méchants, et applaudit à leur défaite. C'est sans fard et avec une véritable joie féroce qu'il se réjouit des tortures atroces réservées aux coupables, complaisamment décrites. C'est avec une satisfaction simplement exprimée qu'il se réjouit de l'enrichissement des églises, et qu'il décrit complaisamment les pierres précieuses, les étoffes rares, les bijoux, et tous les trésors que la main du roi lui assure.
C'était bien fait: il fallait que les pillards fussent pillés à leur tour, que les bourreaux fussent soumis aux mêmes tortures, voire à des plus dures, que leurs victimes.
Cet édition de bonne qualité, si elle est pauvre en illustrations, présente néanmoins le texte latin original avec la traduction, avec un appareil critique solide et instructif. Les allégations de Suger sont comparées aux grandes chroniques de France; les dates exactes, sur lesquelles l'auteur reste parfois vague, sont précisées. J'ai beaucoup apprécié le fait d'avoir sous les yeux ces écrits d'un homme du Moyen-Âge, qui m'a mis en contact direct avec sa sensibilité, et m'a beaucoup plus touché que n'importe quel livre d'histoire.
April 22, 2009
As the translators emphasize, Abbot Suger wrote the Deeds rather than Life of Louis: this difference supposedly accounts for the absence of much of what might interest us, although it says more about what counts as a "deed." There's nothing, or virtually nothing, about Louis's wife and children (so we see a distinction, I think, between private "life" and public "deeds," even with a family as public as that of a King), nothing about his interests--apart from war-making--and thus nothing about, say, whether he read, or what he ate [although the evidence is: too much and too often (135)]. The contrasts with, say, Asser's Life of Alfred are startling.
It's also illustrative to compare the Deeds of Louis to that of another young King, contemporary to Louis, who tried to bring (his own) peace to his disunified realm, namely, Arthur, as written by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Arthur handily defeats each of his enemies, and never has to fight anyone twice; Louis scrambles from place to place throughout his reign, killing his vassals' men and having his killed in turn, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, and only very rarely, and only at times of weakness, negotiating a peace; at least he doesn't fall, as Chrétien's Erec does, to idleness (61). The differences can be blamed on the difference between Norman Kingship in England (which I believed attained a monopoly on legitimate violence quickly) and the French Capetian Kings, who only began to attain a monopoly on legitimate violence during Louis's reign. Note, then, that throwing down tyrants is among Louis's duties. We would expect the King to be the sole possible tyrant of France, but this would mean mistaking the feebleness of a medieval French King for the grandeur of Louis XIV. What does Louis actually accomplish? Toward the end of his reign, he's able to take a host from Paris to Clermont-Ferrand without being accosted and to impress the Aquitaine Duke so much that he gives his daughter, Eleanor, to Louis's son in marriage; earlier, he assembled a host to meet the German emperor, who decides that invading France would be too much trouble. Louis's greatest victories, then, are when he intimidates rather than kills (131-32).
But Louis does kill a lot. We learn a lot about medieval juridical violence: the troops of a rebellious lord surrender to Louis, who has their right hands chopped off and makes them return "carrying their fists in their fists" (136); I lost track of how many people he blinds and castrates; and the punishments he inflicts on the murderers of Charles the Good in Bourges are terrible (cf. The Murder of Charles the Good ): the chief conspirator is hanged with a dog, which angrily bites off the conspirator's face and covers him in its shit (141). Here's an example of what Suger admires:
Also notable: still more evidence of Le Goff's errors on the sociology of missile weapons; we get a sense of how minimally well someone has to behave to earn Suger's admiration: Pope Paschal visits the church of St. Martin of Tours and doesn't walk off with all its gold: what a model of good behavior! You want a cookie? (48); we see Louis's great enemy Hugh of Crécy escape by disguising himself at times as a jongleur and at times as a prostitute (67: man or woman?); Abbot Suger hates the Germans (e.g., "they gnashed their teeth violently as Germans do" (50), and we might cf. Suger on the wily Emperor Henry V to Odo of Deuil on the wily Emperor Manuel Komnenos), but admires the Normans (e.g., 70); he is not of the party of Anacletus II, née Peter Leo, but he says nothing (146-51) about his Jewish ancestry (see The Jewish Pope ), which suggests that Anacletus's lineage wasn't common knowledge; we see an antipope, Burdinus, made to ride through Rome on a camel wearing bloody undressed goatskins (121); anyone interested in the investiture crisis will love Suger's terror when he's elected Abbot of St. Denis without Louis's knowledge (125): he had condemned the HRE repeatedly for curtailing the independence of the church, and now, finding his own church independent, he's nearly crushed between his ideals and the political reality; he admires the crusaders no more than he does any other knight (e.g., 104), which is to say, he apparently doesn't believe that any special grace accrues to those who go to fight in the Holy Land: note how he speaks of Flanders being "baptized" after Louis avenges the murder of Charles the Good; we've a record of Philip's death-by-demonic-pig (149-50; for more on this, see Michel Pastoureau); we see Suger cite Merlin's prophecy as truth (69); and, most astonishing for me, we see that the Jews of Paris traditionally (from when? for what purpose?) presented New Popes with a Torah scroll: "and even members of that blind synagogue of the Jews of Paris came forward and offered him the scroll of the Law beneath a veil" (148)
To be praised for its lively translation, deep notes, and a very thorough map.
It's also illustrative to compare the Deeds of Louis to that of another young King, contemporary to Louis, who tried to bring (his own) peace to his disunified realm, namely, Arthur, as written by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Arthur handily defeats each of his enemies, and never has to fight anyone twice; Louis scrambles from place to place throughout his reign, killing his vassals' men and having his killed in turn, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, and only very rarely, and only at times of weakness, negotiating a peace; at least he doesn't fall, as Chrétien's Erec does, to idleness (61). The differences can be blamed on the difference between Norman Kingship in England (which I believed attained a monopoly on legitimate violence quickly) and the French Capetian Kings, who only began to attain a monopoly on legitimate violence during Louis's reign. Note, then, that throwing down tyrants is among Louis's duties. We would expect the King to be the sole possible tyrant of France, but this would mean mistaking the feebleness of a medieval French King for the grandeur of Louis XIV. What does Louis actually accomplish? Toward the end of his reign, he's able to take a host from Paris to Clermont-Ferrand without being accosted and to impress the Aquitaine Duke so much that he gives his daughter, Eleanor, to Louis's son in marriage; earlier, he assembled a host to meet the German emperor, who decides that invading France would be too much trouble. Louis's greatest victories, then, are when he intimidates rather than kills (131-32).
But Louis does kill a lot. We learn a lot about medieval juridical violence: the troops of a rebellious lord surrender to Louis, who has their right hands chopped off and makes them return "carrying their fists in their fists" (136); I lost track of how many people he blinds and castrates; and the punishments he inflicts on the murderers of Charles the Good in Bourges are terrible (cf. The Murder of Charles the Good ): the chief conspirator is hanged with a dog, which angrily bites off the conspirator's face and covers him in its shit (141). Here's an example of what Suger admires:
Attacking them with swords, they piously slaughtered the impious, mutilated the limbs of some, disemboweled others with great pleasure, and piled even greater cruelty upon them, considering it too kind. No one should doubt that the hand of God sped so swift a revenge when both the living and dead were thrown through the windows. Bristling with countless arrows like hedgehogs, their bodies stopped short in the air, vibrating on the sharp points of lances as if the ground itself rejected them [note, this an allusion to lore about Judas's suicide, a point our translators missed:]. The French hit upon the following unusual revenge for William's unusual deed. When alive he had lacked a brain, and now that he was dead he lacked a heart, for they ripped it from his entrails and impaled it on a stake, swollen as it was with fraud and evil. (80)
Also notable: still more evidence of Le Goff's errors on the sociology of missile weapons; we get a sense of how minimally well someone has to behave to earn Suger's admiration: Pope Paschal visits the church of St. Martin of Tours and doesn't walk off with all its gold: what a model of good behavior! You want a cookie? (48); we see Louis's great enemy Hugh of Crécy escape by disguising himself at times as a jongleur and at times as a prostitute (67: man or woman?); Abbot Suger hates the Germans (e.g., "they gnashed their teeth violently as Germans do" (50), and we might cf. Suger on the wily Emperor Henry V to Odo of Deuil on the wily Emperor Manuel Komnenos), but admires the Normans (e.g., 70); he is not of the party of Anacletus II, née Peter Leo, but he says nothing (146-51) about his Jewish ancestry (see The Jewish Pope ), which suggests that Anacletus's lineage wasn't common knowledge; we see an antipope, Burdinus, made to ride through Rome on a camel wearing bloody undressed goatskins (121); anyone interested in the investiture crisis will love Suger's terror when he's elected Abbot of St. Denis without Louis's knowledge (125): he had condemned the HRE repeatedly for curtailing the independence of the church, and now, finding his own church independent, he's nearly crushed between his ideals and the political reality; he admires the crusaders no more than he does any other knight (e.g., 104), which is to say, he apparently doesn't believe that any special grace accrues to those who go to fight in the Holy Land: note how he speaks of Flanders being "baptized" after Louis avenges the murder of Charles the Good; we've a record of Philip's death-by-demonic-pig (149-50; for more on this, see Michel Pastoureau); we see Suger cite Merlin's prophecy as truth (69); and, most astonishing for me, we see that the Jews of Paris traditionally (from when? for what purpose?) presented New Popes with a Torah scroll: "and even members of that blind synagogue of the Jews of Paris came forward and offered him the scroll of the Law beneath a veil" (148)
To be praised for its lively translation, deep notes, and a very thorough map.
December 22, 2015
The Deeds of Louis the Fat
Suger
Read it in Paperback at 223 pages including, notes, appendix, biblio, etc.
King Louis VI the Fat, of France, of the House Capet reigned from 1108 till his death in 1137. He's from the cast of the early Capet's widely considered ineffectual rulers by many historians. Their home Demesne was too small to leverage the man power and money required to keep his many vassals in check and a series of bad decisions by his forbearers led to the rise of the Conqueror and consolidation of the kingdom of the English into Norman hands creating a very large and powerful Norman presence in the west. While Louis wasn't as affective at turning the wheel of fate against Henry I and the Normans he was able to wrestle control of the Il de France from a series of robber barons (non-loyal vassals) thus growing and securing the royal lands for future Capet's.
The deeds tell his accomplishments in reigning in these vassals, his tremendous devotional acts towards the church, his arguments with King Henry I, etc. as espoused by Suger. Suger at the time of writing these was the Abbot of St. Dennis and was very close with Louis and the administration of the realm. Suger is a competent writer and can really catch the moment:
"And he was not alone in paying the penalty of a long standing excommunication when he and many others, about sixty, were engulfed by the flames. They tumbled down from the tower and became stuck on the points of the standing lances. With arrows flying into them, they breathed their last and carried off their miserable souls in sorrow to hell."
The Deeds are full of this kind of stuff and it's always horrifying to read firsthand how people so devotedly religious could commit such heinous acts of violence, but the 12th century certainly had some interesting dichotomies. There is a wealth of information here and it's interesting to see what composed a deed worth remembering and what a good King is supposed to do, keep the peace at any cost. I think Karl's review goes into much more detail about what constitutes a deed and is worth reading (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) his synopsis.
Highly suggested for the target demographic.
Suger
Read it in Paperback at 223 pages including, notes, appendix, biblio, etc.
King Louis VI the Fat, of France, of the House Capet reigned from 1108 till his death in 1137. He's from the cast of the early Capet's widely considered ineffectual rulers by many historians. Their home Demesne was too small to leverage the man power and money required to keep his many vassals in check and a series of bad decisions by his forbearers led to the rise of the Conqueror and consolidation of the kingdom of the English into Norman hands creating a very large and powerful Norman presence in the west. While Louis wasn't as affective at turning the wheel of fate against Henry I and the Normans he was able to wrestle control of the Il de France from a series of robber barons (non-loyal vassals) thus growing and securing the royal lands for future Capet's.
The deeds tell his accomplishments in reigning in these vassals, his tremendous devotional acts towards the church, his arguments with King Henry I, etc. as espoused by Suger. Suger at the time of writing these was the Abbot of St. Dennis and was very close with Louis and the administration of the realm. Suger is a competent writer and can really catch the moment:
"And he was not alone in paying the penalty of a long standing excommunication when he and many others, about sixty, were engulfed by the flames. They tumbled down from the tower and became stuck on the points of the standing lances. With arrows flying into them, they breathed their last and carried off their miserable souls in sorrow to hell."
The Deeds are full of this kind of stuff and it's always horrifying to read firsthand how people so devotedly religious could commit such heinous acts of violence, but the 12th century certainly had some interesting dichotomies. There is a wealth of information here and it's interesting to see what composed a deed worth remembering and what a good King is supposed to do, keep the peace at any cost. I think Karl's review goes into much more detail about what constitutes a deed and is worth reading (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) his synopsis.
Highly suggested for the target demographic.
January 25, 2023
my favorite part is when suger lies all of the time for fun
September 21, 2025
Oblężenia, walki, podstępy, okrutne tortury. Jednym słowem - dzieje się. Dlaczego tego nie ma po polsku!!!
May 17, 2016
The text itself is a medium-level medieval text. It is very much the product of its time, and is interesting as such, but it lacks the special sparkle of an Einhard, a Henry of Huntingdon or a Matthew Paris. The forward to the book is also fairly minimalist. Louis the Fat, as the translators note, wasn't a particularly noteworthy king, so his details aren't necessarily already in a reader's mind. The book itself is more an account of his military deeds rather than a biography. Again, this is pointed out by the translators. So why not fill in some of those details in the forward? Still, I enjoy this sort of thing, and if this one isn't going onto the top shelf of my medieval bookcase, it isn't flying out the window either.
May 23, 2023
propaganda
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