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| The windows of the apse in Suger's Abbey of Saint Denis |
One of my favorite churches
is the Abbey of Saint Denis in the northern suburbs of Paris. It’s fame comes from its being the birthplace
of Gothic architecture and while that is certainly one of the reasons that draws
me there, there is just a wonderful aura of the sacred that fills the
place. There has been a church on the
site since the days of Saint Genevieve, the fifth-century nun who is said to
have saved Paris from Attila the Hun and who has long been the patron saint of
the city. The church was the burial
place of the French Kings from Clovis through the Merovingians down to the
French Revolution. After the Revolution
the remains of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were moved from the Cimetière of the Madeleine where they
had been buried in unmarked graves and reinterred in the crypt of Saint
Denis. Louis XVIII, the king at the
Bourbon Restoration in 1814 is also buried there.
The royal connections served
the abbey well. In the Middle Ages the
Kings of France granted the abbey the right to hold a semi-annual fair and it
was one of the largest commercial exchanges in Europe as merchants came from
Italy and Spain as well as Scandinavia, Britain, and Ireland to do
business. Saint Denis was neither the
largest nor the wealthiest abbey in France but it was among them. In 1122, Suger, a monk of remarkable talent
was named Abbot. As abbot of the Royal necropolis, Suger was
guaranteed a place at Court but Louis VI and Louis VII recognized his
particular talents and relied heavily on his participation in the royal
administration. It was only after
fifteen years of royal service that the abbot could turn to his monastic duties
and one of his ambitions was the rebuilding of the Abbey Church.
His first project was a new
west front to the church, basing his idea loosely on the Arch of Constantine
with its three portals. This replaced
the single door of the 9th century church and made access to the
church all the easier for the large crowds Suger hoped to draw. Above the central portal Suger constructed
what is believed to be the first “rose window” in architecture. Much smaller than the massive walls of glass
that would ornament Reims or later catherals, the window nevertheless represents
a breakthrough in engineering, The west
front and the interior narthex behind it are a very interesting example of the
transition from Romanesque to Gothic.
Finishing the new front, Suger moved to the other end of the church and
built a new choir and apse. It was here
that the gothic became most clearly visible.
Suger modeled his design on the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius’ The Heavenly Hexarchies and its nine
choirs of angels. Suger surrounded the
altar with an apse of nine bays, each containing a radial chapel. Each of the traditional three levels—the
pavement, the triforum and the clerestory—held massive windows flooding the
sanctuary with light. In order to
support the roof—now that the walls were virtually of glass—several new
features including external flying buttresses were introduced. It was a radical innovation that would
influence all European architecture for the next four hundred years.
Today there is no monastic
community at Saint Denis but the Abbey Church serves as a cathedral, the seat
of a suburban diocese to Paris. The
royal tombs are, for the most part, empty as the royal corpses had been
disinterred and thrown into a common grave at the time of the Revolution. But when you go to Paris Saint Denis is well
worth a trip out north of the city. In
some respects it is superior to Notre Dame.
It is certainly not as crowded and much easier to enjoy but I personally
think the architecture is far more pure and conducive to both prayer and
admiration than Notre Dame. Notre Dame
has somewhat of a squat and shopworn feeling
to it, like someone stepped on it and crushed it just a bit, whereas Saint
Denis has that feeling of light pouring down from heaven and the soul soaring
upwards that Abbot Suger aimed for in his design.
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