St Denis Abbey Church

St. Denis, France
The Abbey of St. Denis is situated in a small municipality (now a suburb) of the same name, about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) north of Paris. Its thirty-sixth abbot, Suger (1081 1151), commissioned the present church from about 1140. It is a milestone in the history of architecture because, like Durham Cathedral in England, it has in it the seeds of a new way of building for Europe: the highly inventive structural system that we know as the Gothic. In particular, Sugers choir at St. Denis, the first application of pointed arches in a major building, marks one aspect of the transition from the Romanesque style, which was quite hobbled by the use of round-headed arches; that is, the transition from wall architecture to framed architecture. Denis, first bishop of Lutetia, and his missionary companions were martyred in 258, and buried at St. Denis. When the persecutions ended in the fourth century, a small chapel was built that became a popular shrine for pilgrims by the end of the sixth century. The Merovingian king Dagobert founded a Benedictine monastery there in 630, replacing the chapel with a large basilica and enriching the new royal abbey. He also bestowed many rights and privileges on the little town, not least the honor of building his tomb. Eventually, the abbey was to house seventy royal sepulchers. Charlemagne, king of the Franks, commissioned a new church in 750 and much of the earlier building was subsumed. Systemic reforms were introduced by Abbot Hilduin (815 830; ca. 831 840) during his second term of office, and the Abbey of St. Denis, because of the relics it held, grew in significance and prosperity. In about 1127 Suger assumed the position of abbot, to which he had been elected in Rome five years earlier. Between 1123 and 1127, as adviser to Louis VI (reigned 1108 1137), he was engrossed in affairs of state but soon after he set out to thoroughly reform his monastery, first of all establishing a more rigorous discipline for the monks and dealing with its financial problems. Then he turned to the building. The old abbey church had been completed in 775, and by the middle of the twelfth century it had become dilapidated; from 1135 Abbot Suger initiated an extensive renovation program. His motives have been widely discussed by historians; it is clear that he was moved by religious and esthetic sensibilities, but because St. Denis was the royal abbey (and thus a symbol of royal power), its renovation was also a political statement at a time of unrest in France. In fact, the only loyal region to Louis VI was the Ile-de-France, and it was in the kings interest to patronize the rebuilding of the church. Suger wrote an account of his renovation program titled A Little Book on the Consecration of the Church of Saint Denis. The first major phase was the reconstruction of the west facade and the narthex: dismantling a certain addition said to have been built by Charlemagne we