The Abbey of Saint Denis was exempt from ecclesiastical jurisdiction,
which meant that it could set its own laws and it was richly endowed.
Charlemagne's grandson, Charles the Bald,
confirmed in a charter from the ninth century that
income from a certain number of greatest States known as villae
belong to the Monks of Saint-Denis along
with all of the slaves or serfs attached to them.
However, in the general demographic and economic decline of the 10th and 11th centuries,
the economic condition of the Abbey also declined.
It wasn't until Suger became Abbot that the Abbey of Saint Denis began to flourish.
Suger was a great reformer and manager of the Abbey,
a superb administrator with a human touch.
Within the church proper,
he provided for the comfort of the monks with
endowments for their food and provision to keep older monks
warm in winter by making their seating in
the cold hard prayer stalls of the choir less harsh.
Suger was denounced by that great other church figure of the period, Saint Bernard,
who was a great ascetic and who railed against Suger's Abbey as a synagogue of Satan,
a forge of Vulcan,
a military arsenal and a cave of thieves because he thought it was too luxurious.
Bernard criticized what surely must be Suger,
an Abbott who travels,
he claims with armed escort of 60 horsemen.
In his tenure as abbot,
Suger tripled the revenues of Saint Denis.
He did this primarily through revenue from The Fair of Lendit.
The Fair of Lendit,
one of the early signs of economic recovery in the High Middle Ages,
was a biannual gathering of merchants who brought goods for sale, tools, food,
cloth and expensive textiles like silks,
skins, leather for shoes and parchment.
In this 15th century rendering of The Fair of Lendit,
we see shoemakers making and selling leather goods at the fair.
The man on the far right works on a piece of leather with
what looks like a leather tunic spread on the table before him.
The man in the middle holds shoe lasts or forms,
and the man on the left arranges pairs of shoes for potential clients.
Above him hang a pair of high boots and a third boot graces the merchant's
sign on a high pole in the far left quadrant of the image.
As we can see in this second 15th century painting,
The Fair of Lendit drew not only merchants,
but moneylenders and even a traveling tavern.
In the lower portion,
we see a shepherd who has clearly brought what look like pigs to market.
In the middle left, we see what look like
money changers passing a little pouch from one hand to another and above them,
two women sitting at stalls one of whom has a bundle of goods in front of her.
Opposite them on the far right,
we see a tavern where both a man and a woman are seated while a servant approaches
with two glasses and a pitcher of drink much as in a modern day café.
Above them all presides the bishop surrounded by monks,
recognizable because of their tonsured heads.
The bishop collected a percentage on every transaction just as in today's sales tax.
The bishop's part or tax was not a gratuitous fee but payment for
guaranteeing the fairness of
the proceedings and the safety of the roads to and from market.
The term Lendit comes from the Latin indictus meaning judgment.
From the beginning then we see the link between
the sacred space of cathedral's legal judgment and commerce.
In our next time together,
we shall see just how Abbot Suger accomplished all that he did in rebuilding Saint Denis,
the first Gothic Cathedral.
Howard BlochSterling Professor of French
