A monk who was one of the earliest patrons of Gothic architecture, a powerful political figure and the most vivid chronicler of his times was consecrated as Abbot of Saint-Denis 900 years ago

It all began, so the monk Suger recalled, on the journey home from Rome in the early spring of 1122. Having been dispatched as envoys to Pope Calixtus II, Suger and his companions were returning to their Abbey of Saint-Denis, located six miles north of the city of Paris. Suger and his contemporaries held St Denis to be the first bishop of Roman Paris and believed that he had been martyred, together with two faithful ­companions, on what is now Montmartre. The Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Denis had been the centre of Suger’s life since his entry into the community as a child oblate in the 1080s. The encounter on that journey home from Rome in 1122 was narrated by Suger more than 20 years later. He even recalls, with his flair for the dramatic, the dream that haunted him in the early morning of that same day. In this dream he found himself cast out at sea, “all alone in an unstable ship”, enduring a terrible storm. In his desperation, as he was thrown in different directions by the winds and waves, he implored God to save him. It was then that the storm melted away, the sky cleared and he was blown by a gentle breeze safely into harbour.