SUGER
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SUGIN"
sary. The Mnsuavi, their principal book, expatiates largely upon tlie love of God, the dignity of virtue, and the high and holy enjoyments arising from a union with God. All Siitistic poetry and parlance are to be taken al- legorically and sj-mbolically. They represent tlie high- est things by human emblems and luanan passions; and religion being with them identical with love, erotic terminology is chiefly used to illustrate the relation of man to God. Thus the beloved one's curls indicate the mysteries of the Deity; sensuous pleasures, and chiefly intoxication, indicate the highest degree of divine love, or ecstatic contemplation. Its principal religious writer is Jalaleddin liumi, and its theology prevails among the learned Mussulmans, who avow it without reserve. See Chambers's Encycloj). s. v. ; Gardner, Faiths of the World, s. v.; Christian Observer, 1819, p. 379; Mill, Moll am medanism.
Suger, abbot of St. Denis, and a leading dignitary of the Church and statesman of France in the l'2th cen- tury, was born pmhably in the year 1081, and in the neighborhood of St. Omer, and was educated in the Monastery of St. Denis, where the crown-prince, Louis the Fat, was his companion. After completing his studies in 1103, he was employed by abbot Adam of St. Denis in the administration of distant possessions of the convent, and in their defence against the incursions of predatory knights. On the accession of Louis VI to the throne (1108), Suger became his counsellor, and con- tributed greatly to the sidjjugation of the barons, who had thrown off all responsibility, and to the establish- ing of the royal authority, by which the reign of Louis VI became noted in the history of France. He was also an active participant in the dispute about investi- ture (see the article), which at that time agitated both Church and State, taking sides with the pope, as tlie pol- icy of France demanded. He was present at the Lat- eran Council in 1112, which annulled the concessions made by pope Paschal II to Henry V. In 1118 he met the fugitive pope Gelasius II, and, in the name of his king, placed all the resources of France at his disposal against his Italian adversaries. He subsequently ne- gotiated a settlement of the question of investiture, in 1121, which proved satisfactory to both France and the papacy. In 1122 he became the successor of the de- ceased Adam in the abbacy of St. Denis, and in 1124 he visited Kome to attend the great Lateran Council, and while there so ingratiated himself with the pope, Calix- tus II, that the latter proposed to create him cardinal, a project which failed by reason of the decease of tlie pope. He accompanied the army in a campaign against the emperor Henry V in the same year; and he was at the same time earnestly engaged in endeavoring to induce the king to release the colones, or lower orders in the State, from many of their pressing burdens, and to con- cede the right to form autonomous communes as a means of undermining the feudal system.
About 1127 Suger renounced the habits of his pre- vious worldly life and became an ascetic; and, after having reformed himself, he undertook to enforce the Benedictine rule in all its strictness in the abbey of St. Denis. He fultilled his spiritual functions conscien- tiously, and built a magnificent church while himself living in a little cell. His principal merit consists, how- ever, in an excellent administration of the convent, in the conservation of its rights, in the artistic decoration of churches, and in the dissemination of the influences of culture throughout the surrounding wastes. His di- rection of the affairs of the State still continued, and, when Louis VII ascended the throne (in 1137), became even more pronounced than before. He was associated with bishop Joscelin of Soissons in the regency, and ad- ininistered the government on the plan of the late king. His boldness appears in his resisting the papal inter- dict (in 1141) b}- which Innocent II sought to force a prelate into the archbishopric of Boiirges against the expressed will of the king. His endeavor to restrain the king from embarking in his crusade failed; but he
was appointed regent of the coimtry during the king's absence, in conjunction with the archbishop of Eheims and count Vermendois. Aided by the pope, he subdued tlie rebellious nobility, and so wisely administered the finances that he was able to honor the incessant drafts of Louis, and also to erect many edifices, and still save large sums of money to the public treasury. The height of his career was reached when he succeeded in neutralizing the endeavors of Kobcrt of Dreux, the brother of Louis VI, who had returned from the Holy Land in 1148, to seize upon the supreme authoritj'. At the same time, he succeeded in resisting the desires for radical reform fostered by Abelard and Pierre de Bruys, while zealously endeavoring to correct the abuses from which those desires had sprung. He was further suc- cessful in a conflict with the canons of St. Genevieve, in Paris, whose convent pope Eugene III had directed him to reform in accordance with the Benedictine rule. Louis VII, on his return, in 1149, publicly thanked the regent and called him the father of his country; and Bernard of Clairvaux and a number of foreign princes wrote to him in token of their admiration and respect. He enjoyed his fame, however, during a brief season only, and died Jan. 12, 1151. His literary remains in- clude only sixty miscellaneous letters (in Duchesne, Scriptores, vol. iv), a report of his administration of St. Denis, and a biography of Louis VI which ranks among the superior historical productions of the Middle Ages (both in Duchesne, itt sup.).