He did not seem marked out by birth for so great things, his father, Hélinand, being only a man of the people, living, according to the most probable supposition, at St. Omer, where Suger was born in 1081. But even at that date the church busied herself in searching out and welcoming, even from among the lowest ranks, men capable of serving and honouring her. Everywhere present and active, in touch with all the social conditions, associating alike with poor and rich, dwelling with the humble as with the great, she went forward to meet even childhood on its way, studying its varying dispositions, surrounding its earliest days, unfolding to it a brilliant career, the only one which invited development of its intellectual faculties, in which every reward was accessible to merit, and, finally, in which principles of equality and co-operation reigned. The monastery of St. Denis received and brought up the young Suger; he passed ten years in the dependent priory of Lettrée, and when, in 1095, Philip intrusted the education of his son, Louis the Fat, to the monks of St. Denis, Abbot Adam recalled Suger into the abbey itself that he might become the companion of the young prince. Thus sprang up between the children the intimacy which was to bind them together all their lives. In 1098, Louis returned to his father’s house, and Suger went to complete his studies in the monastery of Florent-de-Saumur, where the sciences of the day flourished under Abbot William. In returning to St. Denis in 1103 he speedily became the confidant of Abbot Adam, who, not content with employing him in all matters relating to the monastery, frequently took him to court where Prince Louis, who now for four years had had a share in the throne, knit yet more closely the bonds that had bound him to his childhood’s friend. From this date there is no further need to trace the life of Suger; it is part of history and nearly all the details that have come down to us are to be found either in his _Vie de Louis VI_[k] or in the _Panegyric_ written upon him by the monk William, his secretary.