Abbot Suger, the cowled warrior and statesman, had become monastic reformer after his conversion. The circumstance proved more lucrative to St. Denis than would be thought. In his _De rebus a se gestis_, Suger writes at great length of the additional possessions he secured for the abbey, and amongst these is enumerated the nunnery of St. Mary at Argenteuil. He was not only a rigid disciplinarian, but he had an unusual acquaintance with ancient records. Many of his early years at St. Denis had been spent in the _archivium_, in diligent scrutiny of deeds and documents relating to the earlier history of the abbey. One day when he was absorbed in this study he hit upon a document from which it seemed possible to prove that the convent of the Benedictine nuns at Argenteuil, two or three miles away, belonged to the monks of St. Denis. It was a complicated question, the nuns dating their possession from the time of Charlemagne. But when Suger became abbot of St. Denis himself, and eager to employ his political ability and influence in the service of the abbey, he recollected, along with others, the document relating to the nunnery. When, moreover, he had been converted, he was able to see the licentiousness of the nuns of Argenteuil, and make it a pretext for asserting the rights of his abbey. In 1127, he states in his Life, he obtained from Honorius II. a bull which was supposed to legalise his seizure of the convent: ‘both in justice to ourselves and on account of the enormity of life of the nuns who were established there, he restored the place to us with its dependencies, so that the religious life might be re-instituted in it.’ In his _Vita Ludovici Grossi_ he also lays stress on the ‘foul enormity’ of life in the nunnery. How far we may accept the strong language of the enterprising abbot it would be difficult to say. Honorius, who would be flattered by the request to pronounce on the domestics difficulties of the Church of France, would certainly not be over-exacting in the matter of proof. Still, he sent a legate, the Bishop of Albano, and directed him to hold an inquiry into the affair, together with the Archbishop of Rheims and the Bishops of Paris, Chartres, and Soissons. The name of Geoffrey of Chartres is a guarantee that the inquiry was more than a mere cloak to cover the sanctioning of a questionable act. Although, we must remember, Suger does not quote their words in the above passage, they must have decided that his charge was substantially founded. The nuns were turned out of their convent a few months afterwards.