Flowers from Mediæval History

by Minnie D. Kellogg

Early in the twelfth century, within the hospitable walls of the old Abbey of Saint Denis, a prince and a charity child grew up together; there a love, almost romantic, developed between them. When the prince became king and embarked upon a crusade he left the reins of government in the hands of his old comrade, who in the meantime had become the Abbé of Saint Denis and was, incidentally, one of the cleverest of politicians. Suger paid the royal debts (democratic good pay seems to have been an ideal with him), and called the realm to order so successfully that statesmen came from afar to study his very novel methods, for the crusades had set the people traveling. On his return the king graciously greeted his regent as “father of his country.” Suger, not to be outdone, instituted a somewhat legendary liturgy to be celebrated annually at Saint Denis commemorating the merits of Louis the Lusty (or Louis the Fat, as we call him).

Was this liturgy so different from the campaign songs we sing now? It was really more called for, since enthusiasm over the royal person is one of the legitimate tools of monarchy, and Louis VI is an early monarch who deserves credit for abetting the gradual advance of France from a feudality to a veritable kingdom.

Suger, individually, did not stand too greatly in awe of royalty, for he peremptorily ordered Louis VII to come back from the “Holy Wars” to attend to his mundane duties, and be it credited to that monarch that he graciously obeyed the old friend of his father.

Suger is the most interesting personality that comes down to us from France of the twelfth century. Though a few characteristic anecdotes are told of him, we know him most intimately as the builder of Saint Denis and the far-seeing friend of the arts and crafts. It was said that he was a good goldsmith, and his sympathy with skilled labor lends color to the statement; but however hazy our other impressions of Suger may be, we know how he loved the old Abbey of Saint Denis—“sa mère et sa nourrice.” As a churchman he loved the blessed spot to which the angels had escorted brave old Saint Denis, when, after his martyrdom, he picked up his head and walked along with them unto the place “where he now resteth by his election and the puveance of God. And there was heard so grete and swete a melody of angels that many that heard it byleuyd in oure lorde.” He loved the old building that Dagobert, the Robin Hood of French monarchs, had built so royally, almost five hundred years before his day, for the poor and lowly, and for which the pleasant Saint Eloi, patron of goldsmiths, singing as he worked, had made the wondrously beautiful old reliquary; and as a man of literary feeling, he loved the old Abbey as his Alma Mater. But the diocese had grown, and on festal days so pressing were the crowds who would touch the holy relics of Saint Denis that good people were continually being trodden underfoot by eager and other worldly worshipers. So Suger decided to enlarge the church. He did not touch the dear old choir of Saint Denis: that was consecrated to God and, too, it was tenderly hallowed to man by many human associations; but he decided to add to it a great nave.

Of course at first the crowds vigorously abetted him, humbly harnessing themselves together like beasts of burden to draw the stone from the quarry. The trumpet sounded; banners were unfurled, and the procession marched; except for the murmur of those who confessed their sins to God, silence reigned. When the concourse arrived at the holy site, the multitude burst forth into a song of praise. Their sins once disposed of, the ardor of the multitude may have flagged, for we read of the busy little Abbé leaving the cares of state to go himself to the forests in search of the big timber others had not the enthusiasm to find.

That the very earth might pay its tribute to the blessed martyr, Suger studded the new golden screen in front of the tomb of Saint Denis with gems from “every land of the world,” and then the little old Abbé conceived of a still higher tribute: he gathered skill from “every country in the world” (his world was small, it is true); he gave to these skilled craftsmen the honor of working on “the Church, his Mother”; besides, they taught in the layman’s school of architecture, which he established in the yard of the old abbey.

To the amazement of the world, in that day of serfdom, Suger voluntarily paid his workmen and paid them by the week; and with the force and intensity that was in him, he advanced architecture as much in the ten years he was rebuilding Saint Denis as others had done in a hundred. The influence of his school of architecture still lives. It was one of our earliest instances of systematic training for the laity, and those who would trace the Italian Renaissance to French and classic sources, attach especial importance to the imagiers of Saint Denis.

An immense number of statues, varying greatly in excellence, were made during the Middle Ages to decorate the churches. In our meagre records of the period, we even come across instances of peasants traveling far and spending their all to secure an especially beautiful Madonna, and we are assured of miraculous rewards, spiritual and temporal, coming to them from it. Actually, through the enthusiasm and liberality of these rude people, miracles of art have wrought their magical effect upon the imagination of generations and generations of men. These imagiers became so numerous that they formed a powerful guild in which a race of sculptors was born and bred. While Sculpture was merely the hand-maiden and scribe of Architecture, her craftsmen were called imagiers. But the imagiers became so expert that in the seventeenth century the French Academy changed the name of their order to the “Sculptor’s Guild.”