SUGER. – Abbot of the abbey of St-Denis in Paris, born at St-Denis or Argenteuil in 1081, died at St-Denis on 13 January 1151.
He entered the priory of St-Denis de l'Estrée in 1091, where he remained for ten years and studied together with the son of King Philip I, Prince Louis (later Louis VI); in 1106 he represented his abbot at the Council of Poitiers; on 9 March 1107 he met Paschal II at La Charité-sur-Loire, where the Pope consecrated the church; in the same year his abbot sent him as provost to Berneval, and then in 1109 to Toury-en-Beauce, one of the great estates of the abbey; Louis VI made him his envoy to Gelasius at Maguelone on 15 November 1118 and to Calixtus II in February 1119 at Cluny and in January 1122 at Bitonto. Upon the death of Abbot Adam he was named his successor and, retiring to St-Denis, was immediately ordained priest on 11 March 1122 and the following day was blessed as abbot. His first concern was the reform of the abbey from the worldly spirit that had penetrated II. At the same time he continued to be an advisor to Louis VI and VII, and in the absence of the latter, which he deplored, for the Second Crusade, he was named regent of the kingdom (1147–49). The regency was so successful that Louis VII, upon his return, conferred upon him the title of “Father of the Nation.” Death overtook him as he was about to depart on a new crusade, which he himself had gathered.
He left various works important for the history of the period: *Vita Ludovici Grossi regis* and *Historia Ludovici VII* (which in its present form is the work of a monk of St-Germain-des-Prés), both of them too laudatory and lacking in information regarding the more questionable episodes of the two kings. Besides these, there survive several letters and political documents and a lengthy testament of 1137.
Suger, besides his work of reform in the monastery (which he described in his *Liber de rebus in administratione sua gestis*), is famous for the reconstruction of the abbey church, a decisive work for the introduction and triumph of the Gothic style, and for other works and interventions on behalf of the monastery. He indeed restored the nearby churches and chapels, especially the church of St Paul, and increased their revenues; he obtained from Louis VI, who had been educated there, confirmation of the ancient privileges; and he built eighty new houses around the monastery. From the end of the 11th century a legend had circulated that the Redeemer himself, assisted by Sts Peter, Paul, and Denis, had consecrated the church of St-Denis (J. Leclercq, *La consécration légendaire de la basilique de St-Denis et la question des indulgences*, in *Rev. Mabillon*, 1943, pp. 74–84). Around 1130 he began the restoration of the Carolingian nave, and around 1135 the reconstruction of the doors and the front part of the old basilica, which had been completed in 775 by Abbot Fulrad (L. Levillain, *L'église carolingienne de St-Denis*, in *Bull. monumental*, 1907, pp. 211–
which took place on 11 June 1144, adding the ceremony of the laying of the first stone of the foundations of the new choir. The basilica of St-Denis then served as a model for the cathedrals of Cambrai, Laon, Notre-Dame of Paris, Noyon, and Senlis. Damaged by lightning, Pierre de Montreuil began its reconstruction in 1230, which was completed in 1280. Catherine de’ Medici added the chapel of the Valois. The excavations carried out in the years 1938–39 and from 1946 to 1953 brought to light part of the foundations of large blocks of the Carolingian basilica completed in 775 by Abbot Fulrad, the apse with its passage to the crypt; Formigé moreover identified a plan of the Holy Sepulchre traced on a stone, which is a copy of that executed by the Franciscan Bernardino Amico in 1515–16; it is known that the canons of St-Denis called the Franciscans in 1605 to serve the basilica.