Suger’s regency during this king’s crusade, from the year 1147 to the year 1149, is the most brilliant period of his career. He firmly upheld the royal authority, rebuked the usurpations of the vassals, established some degree of order wherever his influence attained to, met the king’s expenses in Palestine by his excellent administration of the crown revenues, and the advancement of his domains, and, finally, won such fame throughout the length and breadth of Europe that persons from Italy and England came to study the salutary results of his government, and the title of “the Solomon of the century” was bestowed upon him by foreigners contemporary with him. Hitherto only illustrious bishops, or learned and subtle theologians had attained this European distinction by their authority in the church or by their writings; no other man had ever won it on the sole merit of his political conduct, and from the ninth to the twelfth century Suger remains the first example of a minister who won admiration for his skill and wisdom from beyond the mountains and over the seas. He did not show any anxiety to retain this absolute power which the king’s absence conferred on him, and, by a rare unselfishness, the interests of the state preoccupied him more than his personal ambitions. He was himself opposed to a crusade from which he foresaw dangers, and had only yielded at the instance of St. Bernard’s ardent entreaties, the pope’s orders, and the prevailing opinion of the day. When certain of the nobles, Robert de Dreux, his brother, among them, who had accompanied Louis, abandoned him in Palestine and returned without him to France, Suger never ceased from urging his immediate return to his dominions.