ABSTRACT
In late 1127 or early 1128, the political and ecclesiastical equilibrium of Capetian France was shattered by the rebellion and fall of the king's favourite and chancellor, Suger's friend and mentor, Stephen de Garlande. The extreme reformers, like Bernard of Clairvaux, Bishop Stephen of Senlis and Abbot William of St-Thierry, who wanted to transmute secular into regular canons, and who wished to impose a Cistercian-inspired regime on all monasteries. Suger himself got on well with Pope Innocent II, who was his old friend, Gregory of S. Angelo, and played a substantial role in offering him French support after his election. His conception of the abbot of St-Denis as primate of France, as the most important churchman in Capetian France, meant that he always envisaged a strong and quite proper political dimension to the abbey. There was always an undercurrent of distrust between abbots and bishops, monastic and secular clergy: it had surfaced at the Lateran Council of 1123.
