Amiens Cathedral, Gallery of Kings (photo credit: Steven Zucker)
The Lordship & Commune Project
Editors and Organizers of the Work
This project has been developed at the invitation and with the support of Barbara Abou-El-Haj’s husband, Rifa’at Abou-El-Haj, and her two daughters, Sarra Fleur and Marriam, as well as two close friends, Kathryn Sklar and Tom Dublin (both professors and colleagues of Barbara’s at SUNY Binghamton).
Editors and Organizers of the work:
· Michael Davis, Professor, Mount Holyoke College
· Lindsey Hansen, PhD, Indiana University Bloomington
· Jennifer Feltman, Assistant Professor, University of Alabama
· Janet Marquardt, Distinguished Professor Emerita, Eastern Illinois University
· Nina Rowe, Associate Professor, Fordham University
At her death on March 6, 2015, Barbara Abou-El-Haj left a book, long in the works, unfinished. Her title was Lordship and Commune: A Comparative History of Building and Decorating in Reims and Amiens. The book was to engage with the ways in which the differing political structures of the medieval cities of Reims and Amiens affected the construction of their respective Gothic cathedrals in the thirteenth century. Abou-El-Haj observed that scholars have noted the differences in the apparent quality and variety of sculptural decoration at Reims and Amiens but failed to consider the dissimilar political situations in the cities. The archdiocese of Reims was ruled by an autocratic archbishop-count, who held the power to levy taxes on its citizens, while Amiens, a suffragan of Reims, was a self-ruled commune independent of episcopal jurisdiction. She maintained that it was precisely the governmental differences at the sites and the resulting disparity of resources that were reflected in the buildings themselves.