Abbot Suger of St. Denis renovated the Church of St. Denis according to the latest trends and most lofty goals of medieval ecclesiastical architecture. He explained his motivation in his De Administratione and Scriptum Consecrationis:

I found myself, under the inspiration of the Divine will and because of that inadequacy which we often saw and felt on feast days, namely the Feast of the blessed Denis, the Fair, and very many others (for the narrowness of the place forced the women to run toward the altar upon the heads of the men as upon a pavement with much anguish and noisy confusion), encouraged by the counsel of wise men and by the prayers of many monks (lest it displease God and the Holy Martyrs) to enlarge and amplify the noble church consecrated by the Hand Divine; and I set out...