Gothic is born at Saint-Denis
Abbot Suger builds a new choir for the abbey church where the kings of France are buried. Pointed arches, rib vaults and large stained-glass windows combine to create a space of light.
Within a hundred years cathedrals were being built in the new style all over Europe, from Chartres to Uppsala.
The abbey of Saint-Denis north of Paris was built over the grave of the first bishop of Paris, St Denis, and had been the burial church of the French kings since the early Middle Ages. Suger became abbot in 1122. He came from humble origins but was adviser to two kings, Louis VI and Louis VII, and governed the kingdom as regent while Louis VII was on crusade. For Suger the abbey and the monarchy were closely bound together. He also interpreted light theologically, inspired by writings attributed to a certain Dionysius, which were believed to have been written by the abbey’s own saint: light and shining materials were to lift the human mind from the material towards God.
Suger began with a new west front, consecrated in 1140, with three portals and one of the earliest rose windows. The choir was then built in just under four years and consecrated on 11 June 1144 in the presence of the king and many bishops. The choir has an ambulatory with a ring of chapels, and thanks to the pointed arches and rib vaults the walls between the chapels could almost be dispensed with. Slender columns carry the vaults, and the space is filled with light from large stained-glass windows. Unusually, Suger himself wrote detailed accounts of the building, describing how the timber was sought out, the inscriptions and the precious objects. The name of the architect, however, he does not mention.
The bishops who attended the consecration in 1144 took their impressions home with them, and soon choirs and cathedrals in the new style were being built in Sens, Noyon, Laon and Paris, where Notre-Dame was begun in 1163. Within a century Gothic had spread across Europe. At Saint-Denis the nave was rebuilt in the 13th century. During the French Revolution the royal tombs were broken open and the remains thrown into mass graves, but the church was saved and restored in the 19th century. Its north tower was dismantled after damage in the 1840s and is now being rebuilt. The route to Sweden was clear: Étienne de Bonneuil, who was summoned to Uppsala in 1287, came from the Paris region.