Abstract Infamously, the abbot Suger appears to misread the metaphor of Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, which compares political unity with the walls of the church. Christ is the cornerstone that joins the walls. Suger takes this metaphor literally. Figuring God as an artisan influenced twelfth-century matter theory and provided a central place for the stones of Saint-Denis in the realization of the divine plan for creation. Hugh of Saint Victor is often mentioned as the intellect behind Suger's reconstruction of Saint-Denis, but his matter theory has gone unnoticed. Hugh stated that making the world beautiful beatified it. Suger's material approach to mysticism can be understood as engaging a parallel belief that craft sanctifies the world.

Keywords: architecture, prime matter, Pauline cosmology, material mysticism, wall of the church, 12th-century science

Ipso summo angulari lapide Christo Jesu, qui utrumque conjungit parietem, in quo omnis aedificatio, sive spiritualis, sive materialis, crescit in templum sanctum in Domino. In quo et nos quanto altius, quanto aptius materialiter aedificare instamus, tanto per nos ipsos spiritualiter coaedificari in habitaculum Dei in Spiritu sancto edocemur.

Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone which joins one wall to the other; in Whom all building‒whether spiritual or material‒groweth unto one holy temple in the Lord. In whom we, too, are taught to be builded together for an habitation of God through the Holy Spirit by ourselves in a spiritual way, the more loftily and fitly we strive to build in a material way.