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- Title
Negotiating Kingship in France at the Time of the Early Crusades: Suger and the Gesta Ludovici Grossi.
- Authors
Naus, James
- Abstract
This article shows the crusading movement to be an optimal route into an understanding of Europe's twelfth-century power structure by examining its impact on the valuation and practice of kingship in France. The article argues that Suger of Saint-Denis's history of Louis VI, the Gesta Ludovici Grossi, can be read as one of several responses to the threat posed to kingship by the new crusade ideology and to the prestige attaching to former crusaders. Suger fuses Carolingian notions of sacred kingship with the newer crusade ideas to craft a highly selective narrative of Louis's reign that foregrounds the motif of military actions prosecuted to vindicate justice and with ecclesiastical endorsement. Suger thereby exploits the unknown future of crusading to create a space into which the self-fashioning of Capetian kingship could insinuate itself and from which emerged the late medieval image of a "crusader king."
- Subjects
LOUIS VI, King of France, 1078-1137; SUGER, Abbot of Saint Denis, 1081-1151; CRUSADES (Middle Ages); KINGS &; rulers -- Biography; GESTA Ludovici Grossi (Book); CAPETIAN dynasty, France, 987-1328
- Publication
French Historical Studies, 2013, Vol 36, Issue 4, p525
- ISSN
0016-1071
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1215/00161071-2294865