Abbot Suger

Suger, who lived from around 1081 to 13 January 1151, was a French abbot and statesman who served as a key advisor to King Louis VI of France and then to his son Louis VII, acting as Louis VII's regent in France during the Second Crusade. His surviving writings are considered seminal texts for the history of the early twelfth century Capetian monarchy, offering a firsthand account of court affairs from a figure at the center of royal government. As abbot of the Basilica of Saint-Denis, just outside Paris, Suger directed its reconstruction in the 1140s, rebuilding the choir with tall pointed arches, ribbed vaults and large stained glass windows designed to fill the interior with light, a building program he described in his own writings as an expression of divine illumination. That reconstruction is regarded by architectural historians as instrumental in creating the Gothic architecture style, making Suger one of the style's earliest and most influential patrons even though he was not himself a builder or designer.