Kingship in the Dionysian Context

Throughout the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the fortunes of the abbey of Saint-Denis were closely connected to those of the Capetian kings.^[12] As early as the twelfth century, Abbot Suger succeeded in weaving together the destinies of France and the abbey. He acted as regent while Louis VII was on crusade; secured the privileges of guarding the coronation regalia and the oriflamme , the official standard of the French kings; and established the abbey as the burial place for France's rulers.

Subsequent abbots followed Suger's lead in promoting Dionysian involvement in France and the king's involvement in the abbey. Abbot Matthew of Vendôme (1258–86) acted as regent when Louis IX was on his second crusade and handled the day-to-day administration for Louis's successor, Philip III.^[13] Perhaps at the request of Louis, this same abbot gave visual expression to the abbey's role as royal necropolis by commissioning an extensive tomb program.^[14] The deliberate interweaving of abbey and realm continued during the tenure of Giles of Pontoise (1304–26). He had been sponsored for the abbacy by Philip IV, had

acted as a royal councillor, and was an executor of Philip's will. In his commissions Giles of Pontoise continued the long-standing tradition of presenting the French ruler with objects that glorified his kingship and demonstrated the special role of the abbey in royal history.^[15] Throughout this period the abbey's royal programs seem to have had a consistent aim: to combine self-promotion with promotion of the royal house. Programs aimed at a larger audience as well as those geared to a single viewer, the king, demonstrate this consistency of purpose.

Two Dionysian commissions of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries exemplify this merging of self-promotion and royal promotion in the abbey's patronage. The program of tombs completed by Matthew of Vendôme in 1267 glorified kingship but also aimed to secure the rights of Saint-Denis over private foundations like Royaumont as the burial place for French kings.^[16] Similarly, the presentation copy of Ivo of Saint-Denis's Vita et Passio Sancti Dionysii (B.N. fr. 2090–92 and B.N. lat. 13836), commissioned during the reign of Philip IV by Giles of Pontoise and given to Philip V around 1319, combined a vita of Saint Denis with a chronicle stressing his miraculous interventions in French history. This text was intended to reawaken royal devotion to Saint Denis as much as to promote kingship.^[17]

Although these commissions consistently promoted the abbey, their portrayal of kingship and their dynastic content developed over time. The arrangement of tombs changed after the death of Louis IX and again after his canonization, evolving away from the original schematic demonstration of the origins of the Merovingian, Carolingian, and Capetian kings of France and their relationships to one another. The addition of a gilded tomb for Louis IX sometime before May 1282 affirmed his importance, as did Philip IV's directive in 1306 that the bodies of four Carolingian rulers and Philip III and Isabella of Aragon be moved to make room for his own tomb next to that of Saint Louis. In the process the tombs' program shifted from celebrating the succession of dynasties to concentrating on Louis IX, France's holy king.^[18] Similarly, when the presentation copy of Ivo of Saint-Denis's Vita et Passio was prepared for Philip V, its text was translated and miniatures were added to reflect the special importance dynastic themes held for Philip.^[19] Similar royal and Dionysian preoccupations influenced the development of cycles of the Grandes Chroniques .