posted 10-28-2012 01:00 PM            

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Opulence Fit for the King of Kings
By E.A. CARMEAN JR.

It is one of the greatest liturgical objects of the Medieval world. Known as the Chalice of Abbot Suger, it was made about 1140 and used for more than six centuries for the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist at the Basilica of St. Denis, the Parisian abbey and church where, under the direction of Abbot Suger, the Gothic form of architecture was invented.

The chalice stands less than a hand high. At its heart is a fluted sardonyx cup carved in Hellenistic Alexandria about a century before Christ. Writing circa 1148 about his "precious chalice," the abbot described this cup of "partly sard and partly onyx, in which the red sard's hue, vying with the blackness of the onyx...seem to compete in trespassing on each other"—phrasing that reveals Suger's visual sensitivity and descriptive powers.

The beautiful and the glorious helped Abbot Suger focus his mind on the heavenly.

The cup was already more than a thousand years old when Suger had it made into a chalice by setting it into a gilded-silver enclosure atop a broad base. The monastery's craftsmen then added five medallions, of which only one original relief remains: that of Christ as Pantocrator. The chalice was further enriched with double-beading filigree designs, and with precious stones (some are actually glass) and pearls, adding to its luminous glory.

Suger, born in 1081 into a modest knightly family, at about age 12 was enrolled in the Abbey School of St. Denis. This was most fortuitous, for the institution was then powerful, and traced its origins back to Denis, the first Bishop of Paris. The banner French monarchs carried into battle was kept at St. Denis, along with the relics of this saintly protector of the realm. The original building had been consecrated by King Charlemagne in 775, establishing an institution that would serve as the royal abbey, church and necropolis until the execution of Louis XVI in 1793.

It was King Louis VI—whose son, the future Louis VII, was then being educated at St. Denis—who first took notice of the young Suger. A full measure of his rise at court can be seen in 1137 when Abbot Suger, the prince and some 400 escorting knights rode south to the royal son's wedding to Eleanor of Aquitaine. Her marriage gift to her husband of a rock-crystal bottle was in turn given by him to Suger, who had it mounted as a vessel for Eucharistic wine. In 1147, now-King Louis VII and Eleanor departed for the Holy Land (she in knee-high red boots) leading the Second Crusade. During their two-year absence, the kingdom was ruled by Abbot Suger, appointed by the king as the most powerful of three regents.

Suger was not so esteemed by Abelard, one half of the 12th century's other famed couple. Following the discovery of his illicit affair with Heloise (and their illegitimate son), Abelard had been sent to St. Denis; there he began to attack this royal church for its worldly manner. Suger and the king had Abelard removed.

Bernard of Clairvaux also would challenge the Sugerian ornamentation of St. Denis. Bernard was at once the heir to the Iconoclastic controversies of the eighth century and the ancestor of the Protestant Puritians some 500 years after his time. He located his Cistercian monasteries in remote locations, with strict rules and no ornamentation. Abbot Suger's St. Denis was the very opposite (never modest, Suger would ask well-traveled visitors to rate St. Denis in comparison to Byzantium's Hagia Sophia).

"O vanities of vanities," Bernard wrote, pointedly asking, "What is gold doing in a sanctuary?" and adding, "We know that the bishops...use material beauty to cause the devotion of a carnal people because they cannot do so by spiritual means." He disparaged elaborate vessels as better belonging in the ancient Temple of Jerusalem.

Suger's words lay out a bold counterpoint. In his "Administratione," an autobiographical account of his history at St. Denis, he wrote of the illumination engendered by the beautiful and glorious, saying "I can be transported from this inferior to that higher world in an anagogical manner"—positing the church as both the earthly presence of the New Jerusalem and the eschatological preview of heaven. He said that the most beautiful things (like the chalice) "should serve, first and foremost for the administration of the Holy Communion," adding that if the Temple's objects were for "the blood of goats and calves.... How much more must golden vessels, precious stones and whatever is most valued [receive] the blood of Christ."

Suger and Bernard eventually agreed to drop their dispute, and when told of Suger's death in 1151 Bernard graciously said, "If there is a precious vase adorning the palace of the King of Kings, it is the soul of the venerable Suger."

Suger's chalice was likely used at the June 11, 1144, consecration service for his Gothic revisions on the Basilica's east end. Not only were Louis and Eleanor in attendance, but 13 bishops and five archbishops, including Theobald, England's Archbishop of Canterbury.

From that day forward, Abbot Suger's chalice stood on the most important altar of St. Denis for nearly 650 years. During the French Revolution in 1789, a collector named A. Lenoir saved the vessel, removing it shortly before the mobs of the Terror begin their destruction of St. Denis and its royal tombs. Windows were broken, the heads of the sculpted Old Testament Kings around the portal were knocked off, and its adjoining gilded bronze doors reduced to melted metal. The remaining Sugerian items of gold and jewels were transformed into ingots and chattel. And the abbey's clergy and monks were forced to break into the kings' tombs and to empty the royal bones into a canal of the Seine.

The chalice itself was soon safely in Holland. Sold at public auction, it went through two collections before being given by the Widener family to Washington's National Gallery of Art in 1942.

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