XVIII.

ABBOT  SUGER.

 

The administration of his order was quite enough to occupy Stephen's time; year after year new abbeys were founded, and Cistercian monasteries rose up on all sides to the astonishment of the world. He had often to undertake long journeys for the foundation of some new community; and besides these toils, the actual government of such a large body of men required no ordinary attention. It is not to be supposed that there were no dangers in the way of monks, or that signal falls, even in his most promising disciples, did not at times happen to grieve his heart.

For instance, in the year 1125, Arnold, whom he had made abbot of Morimond, one of the four governing abbeys of the order, suddenly grew disgusted with his charge, and while Stephen was absent in Flanders, suddenly left the cloister, carrying away with him several of the brethren. His pretence was a pilgrimage; but he never returned to his abbey, and died soon after at Cologne, a runaway monk. While, however, Stephen was thus busied in managing his own abbeys, a reform was silently going on in another, and a most important quarter, from the mere increasing weight of the Cistercian order. It might have been supposed that the Cistercian, occupied in digging the soil, in draining marshes, and reducing waste lands into cultivation, would certainly be a great comfort to the poor amongst whom he laboured, and whose life he imitated; but it could hardly be expected that their influence could reach higher; and yet so it was.

The bishop's palace and the king's court, unhappily at this time too much allied, both began to feel the influence of the bold stand in favor of Christian poverty which Stephen was making. About the year 1124, Peter, abbot of La Ferté, had been chosen archbishop of Tarantaise, and with the consent of Stephen and the general chapter, had accepted it. Cistercian bishops were still bound to keep the rules of the order; they did not wear the fur garments, with sleeves lined of a blood-red colour, which scandalized St. Bernard, but they kept the abbot of the order covered with only a poor mantle lined with sheep-skin. In the two fol­lowing years France was astonished by the conversion of three of the most powerful prelates of the country. Henry, archbishop of Sens, Stephen, bishop of Paris, and the celebrated Suger, abbot of St. Denis. By conversion it is not meant that these men led vicious or immoral lives; on the contrary, they were men whom it was impossible not to admire for the noble way in which they led what was then the better party in the state; but they were ambitious and courtly men, half soldier or statesman, and the rest churchman. It was the time when the French royalty was, with the help of the Church, rousing itself; the king of France had been but a king in name, often pious and devout, but seldom great or intellectual. In England our Norman lords were the real heads of a feudal sovereignty; they ruled by right of conquest, and the barons were kept under by common fear of the Saxons. But the poor king of France, in his royal city of Paris, was hemmed in on all sides by dukes of Normandy, and counts of Anjou, Blois, and Flanders, a mere shadow of Charlemagne, very different from his wily, unscrupulous, powerful majesty of England, the fine clerk who held his brilliant court at Westminster.

In Louis VI's time, however, the French monarchy began to develope itself; he was an energetic, and in many respects an estimable prince, brought up in his youth in the abbey of St. Denis, and even at one time inclined to become a monk. He made common cause with the Church against the nobles, who were wholesale robbers of Church lands, and respected neither his royal crown nor the bishop's mitre. But what had monarchy to do with Stephen, or Stephen with monarchy, that his poor order should be brought into the affairs of the kingdom? And yet, strange to say, it came across King Louis's plans by converting his minister. The very head of the political movement was won, when Suger's heart was touched by St. Bernard's burning words, and when the royal abbey of St. Denis was reformed by the example of the Cistercians. A noble heart was Suger's, even while the world had too great a share in it. Nothing low or mean ever entered into it; all, as even St. Bernard allows, that stained it, was too great a love of show and of worldly grandeur. Who but that man of little stature, of piercing eye, and sagacious and withal upright heart, had, when provost of Toury, broken the power of Hugh of Puiset, that thorn in the side of the Church, who put lance in rest against the king himself?  In his monkish cowl he rode into the town of Toury, even through the enemies who besieged it, and saved it for the king. No business was safe unless Suger was in it; his abbot Adam, and the king, both loved him, and sent him more than once even across the Alps; and no wonder, for his eloquence and learning was so great, that not only could he quote the Fathers, but even would repeat two or three hundred lines together of Horace by heart. He had once just quitted Pope Calixtus on one of these expeditions, and was on his way back to France at an inn, and had said matins at night, and had lain him down again to sleep, when he dreamed a dream—that he was at sea in a little boat tossed about by the waves, but was rescued by the help of the blessed martyr St Denis. Then he went on his journey, and was pondering what it all meant, when he saw coming towards him a brother of the abbey, with a face of mingled sorrow and joy; and the brother told that Abbot Adam was dead, that the monks had chosen him abbot of St Denis, even without waiting for the king's leave, and that the king was very angry, and had put in prison some of the brethren.

At this news Suger's heart was sad; he loved his abbot dearly, and besides his brethren were in prison for his sake, and worst of all, he foresaw a contest between the king his master and the pope, about the liberty of election. However, the blessed martyr's prayers helped him through all, and the king confirmed the choice of the monks, and he was installed abbot of the first abbey in France. Then what a life was his when he was thus raised on high! If a turbulent noble was to be put down, Suger was to be there; on one occasion, when he was riding at the head of a body of soldiers to Orleans after his lord the king, he fell in with an officer of Hugh of Puiset, whom he took captive, and put securely into the abbey prison.

Rome saw him in 1123 at the Lateran council; next year the Church of St. Denis showed a memorable scene. The emperor, stung with the excommunication pronounced against him at the council of Rheims, invaded France, the constant ally of the Church. Then the royalty of France plucked up heart, and the men of the country gathered round the king, and all together went to St. Denis, where Louis received the Oriflamme from the hands of Suger at the high altar, with all the chivalry of France standing around him.

The cause of God's Church prevailed, and the emperor took himself back to Germany, without waiting to see the Oriflamme unfurled. This was all very well; Suger was on the right side; his policy was the best for France, which was thus slowly finding a bond of union in the king, and getting rid of the petty tyrants which disturbed it. Again, he was on the side of the Church, for these nobles were its intolerable oppressors; but still something was wanting to the abbot of St. Denis. The concerns of his soul were not prospering amidst this perpetual tumult. Its wear and tear fretted his body down, and "Abbot Suger", says a monk, "did not get fat as other abbots did." The prayers of the Cistercians, however, were at work, and St. Bernard's words pricked his conscience. Indeed, an honest mind like his, could not be long in seeing that he looked very little like a churchman and a monk, as he rode at the head of troops, or moved in the brilliant train of a court. Besides, his own abbey was in a most miserable state: without believing the calumnies of Abelard, it is evident that it was as unlike a monastery as it could well be. It was thoroughly secularized; this ancient sanctuary, once the very soul of the devotion of France, and the burial place of its kings, was now the centre of the business of the whole realm.

"Deftly and faithfully did Cesar get his own there; but as for the things of God, they were not paid so faithfully to God." Posts came rushing in from all quarters; the cloister was often filled with armed men; monks might be seen lounging about, idly talking with strangers, and even women were sometimes admitted within its precincts. No wonder that this scene raised Cistercian indignation; but it was not long to continue so. Suger's was an honest heart; he had been entangled by the force of circumstances, even from his youth, in secular affairs, and the hurry of business had prevented his looking about him. Now, however, that the fearful responsibility of the government of the abbey was upon him, it made him shudder. The Cistercian reform was spreading with a wildfire speed about him; it was a declaration from heaven against his own most criminal neglect of the important charge which God had committed into his hands. His long troop of armed retainers, and his sumptuous habits, formed but a poor contrast to Stephen's paltry equipage, as he travelled about in his coarse white garment, with a monk or two and a lay-brother in his train. The soul of Suger sinks within him at the thought of his danger, and he determines to reform both himself and his abbey. If Citeaux had never done more than turn to God this noble heart, its labour would not have been thrown away. By thus suggesting the reform of St. Denis, it was conquering the very stronghold of worldliness; it was purging the Church from the thorough secularization which a long mixture with the world had brought on. Oh! how must Stephen's heart have leaped within him, when he thus saw his order doing his work. He would most cordially have joined in the devout gush of quiet joy with which Suger thanked God.

“Amidst the recovery of the ancient lands of the Church, and the acquirement of new, the spread of this Church all around, the restoration or construction of its buildings, this is the chief, the most grateful, yea, the highest privilege which God in His mercy has given me, that He has fully reformed the holy order, the state of this holy Church, to His own honor and that of His saints in the same place, and has settled in peace the end and object of holy religion, by which man attains to the enjoyment of God, without causing scandal or trouble among the brethren, though they were all unaccustomed to it”.

The conversion of Suger is in itself the justification of Stephen, in the rigid rates of poverty which he adopted at Citeaux; it was the best way of gaining an upright heart, like that of the abbot of St. Denis, to put before him a clear and unquestionable example of holy poverty, which must reach him even in the whirl of secular business. France afterwards called him the father of his country, and it is to the influence of the Cistercian reform that he owed that single-hearted conscientiousness, and that habit of devotion, which kept him up, when he was afterwards regent of the whole realm.

It is true, that in one particular he was not a disciple of Stephen; he could not bear poverty in the adorn­ment of churches; it was not in his nature, and could not be helped. He even seems evidently to aim at his good friends at Citeaux, when he says, "Every man may have his own opinion; I confess that what pleases me best is, that if there he anything more precious than another, yea most precious of all, it should serve to the ministration of the blessed Eucharist above all things."

This difference between St. Denis and Citeaux was in after days curiously illustrated; for Abbot Suger was pondering within himself how to get gems to adorn a magnificent crucifix on the high altar of the abbey church, when in came three abbots, among whom were my lord of Citeaux (probably Stephen's successor) and another Cistercian abbot, with such a store of jewels as he had never seen before. Thibault, count of Champagne, another disciple of Citeaux, had out of love for holy poverty broken up two magnificent gold vases, and given them as alms to these abbots, and they came at once to St. Denis, knowing that they should be sure to find a market for them. Unlike the simple choir of Citeaux, the sanctuary of the royal abbey blazed with gold and jewels, with painting and sculpture; there was the cross worked by Eligius the goldsmith-saint, and there were the jasper, the ruby, the sapphire, the eme­rald, and the topaz, "yea," says Suger, "all the precious stones of old Tyre were its covering, save the carbuncle." All the crowns of the kings of France were there deposited after their death, on the shrine of the martyrs. Yet the abbot's delight in thus adorning the shrine of his Lord was utterly unmixed with selfish feeling, "for," he says, "it is most meet and right that with all things universally we should minister to our Redeemer, who in all things without exception has mercifully deigned to provide for us, who has united our nature to His own in one admirable never to be divided Person, who, placing us in His right hand, has promised us that we shall verily possess His kingdom; our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Ghost, One God forever and ever. Amen."

It is instructive to see how the Cistercian influence ex­tended to persons whose minds were of a texture so different from that of the abbot of Citeaux. However Stephen might have been scandalized with the unmonastic appearance of the high altar of St. Denis, he would have found a kindred spirit in its noble-minded abbot, a very Cistercian in simplicity, amidst all this splendor, "This man shames us all,' said of Suger a certain abbot of Cluny, "he does not build for himself as we do, but for God only." With all his love for architecture, he built but one thing for himself, and that was a cell ten feet broad and fifteen long. Here was his little bed of straw, hid in the day time by handsome covering, but during the few hours that he lay there at night, it had nothing on it but the rough Cistercian laena or woollen rug, which St. Alberic substituted for the many coverings of the Cluniac dormitory. Thus he lived, one of the most noble conquests of Citeaux, and through whom, as he afterwards, when regent, had in his hands the appointment of every bishop in the realm, Stephen's love of poverty influenced most materially the whole Church of France.

And what said King Louis, when this strange influence appeared in his own palace? He was doing his best for the Church, and was the alliance between Church and State to be broken up, and his ecclesiastical friends to be taken from his very side, for the sake of a monk like Stephen? The king had patronized the Cistercians, and, as appears from a letter written at this time, had at some former period joined himself in a fraternity of prayers with them; but now that Henry of Sens, and Stephen of Paris, left his court to govern their flocks like good pastors, he began to think that Cistercian prayers were very well in their way, provided they did not convert his ministers. Annoyed by the conduct of the bishops, he took occasion of some cabal in the diocese of Paris, to seize upon the temporalities of the see; and when the archbishop of Sens, as metropolitan of Paris, took the part of the bishop, he began also to persecute him.   

It appears that the king had partizans amongst the cardinals, and it was doubtful  how the matter would turn out; the poor bishop knew not where to find help, but he bethought himself that there was then sitting an assembly of fearless men who had nothing to expect from the world. He applied to the chapter of Citeaux for letters to the pope to recommend his cause.   

The abbots judged it best to write first to the king himself, and St. Bernard composed a letter in the name of the abbot of Citeaux, and his brethren assembled at their annual meeting.  Here then was Stephen in direct opposition to kings and cardinals. Strange is the style of the opening of this bold epistle. "To the noble king of the  Franks Louis, Stephen, abbot of Citeaux, and the whole assembly of Cistercian abbots and brethren, health, safety, and peace in Christ Jesus." The wooden crozier of Citeaux against the gold scepter of the Louvre! the match seems most unequal; but the wooden crozier won the day at last. The cardinals hung back, and there came a decision from Rome in favor of the king, and all seemed to be prospering on his side. But there was still a party unsatisfied, which had sprung up silently and imperceptibly around the king, and whose influence now began to be felt across the Alps.   

Its wishes must henceforth form an item in the consultation of popes and kings. St. Bernard and Hugh of Pontigny cry aloud to the pope himself in spite of the murmers of some of the cardinals, who loved not such importunate partizans of justice. At last the Holy See interfered in the bishop's favour, at or about the time of the council of Troyes, 1128, at which Stephen and St. Bernard were both present. Shortly afterwards, Stephen, with the abbot of Clairvaux and Pontigny, wrote to the pope in favour of the archbishop of Sens, whom King Louis was still persecuting. They were an uncompromising set of men, whom nothing could satisfy, till the oppressed was delivered from the tyranny of his oppressor; these Cistercian frogs would croak out of their marshes, and would not hold their peace, for all the bitter complaints of the cardinals, whose rest was sadly disturbed by their noise. They must needs be at the bottom of every movement in the Church, with their importunate poverty. Even the warlike Templars felt its influence, and clothed themselves in their white cloaks "without arrogance or super­fluity," and in plain armour, with horse-trappings unadorned with gold and silver. They were first made an order at the council of Troyes, in the presence of Stephen, and each provincial master of the Temple took an oath, that he would defend all religious, but, above all, Cistercian monks and their abbots, as being their brethren and fellows.

 

TROUBLES IN  THE CHURCH.