ABSTRACT
Suger’s public and private careers, as I have stressed, not only ran concurrently, but were also intertwined. Suger took advantage of his travels on behalf of Louis the Fat to oversee abbey properties and exploited to the abbey’s advantage the personal connections that his political career brought him. Nevertheless, the rhythm and time-scale of Suger’s work as abbot of St-Denis is very different from that of his ‘public’ political career, and it demands separate consideration. I shall deal with it from three angles: the abbot as pastor of his flock; the abbot as manager of what was in effect his flock’s investment portfolio; and the abbot as guardian of his flock’s physical environment. Suger was well aware that the good abbot should neglect none of these aspects. If the spiritual health of an abbey was paramount, it nonetheless depended on good management.
