Notre-Dame of Amiens: Life of the Gothic Cathedral.

Well over a century ago, Eug ene Lef evre-Pontalis published a ground-breaking guide for prospective authors of medieval church monographs, outlining a series of organisational, terminological and illustrative principles that continue to characterise the genre into the present day. While conceding there could be no substitute for the on-site explication of architectural conditions — a claim that attendees of the BAA’s annual conferences would be hard-pressed to contest — the eminent French archaeologist argued that there did exist numerous techniques for rendering a written account of a church ‘clear and interesting’ (claire et int eressante). At the level of substance, he recommended alternating between small-scale analysis and large-scale comparison, beginning with a section on historical context and concluding with sections on fittings and furnishings. At the level of style, he recommended proceeding through the building in a systematic fashion (west to east, bottom to top, inside to outside), employing technical terminology and enlisting professional photography. Only by implementing such practices, Lef evre-Pontalis contended, might an aspiring scholar be considered a practitioner of ‘the new archaeological method’ (la nouvelle m ethode arch eologique). Stephen Murray’s latest book on Amiens Cathedral, the publication of which marks the 800th anniversary of the building’s foundation, represents a quiet referendum on this enduring approach to the study of medieval churches. Murray is a well-known authority on what has long been celebrated as a seminal achievement in the history of Gothic architecture (he was made an honorary citizen of Amiens in 1998 and an honorary doctor of the University of Picardy, Jules Verne, in 2019). Two of his earlier books anticipate the present work. The first, NotreDame, Cathedral of Amiens: The Power of Change in Gothic (Cambridge 1996), delivered a boldly revisionist account of the construction of the edifice between c. 1220 and c. 1270. The second, A Gothic Sermon: Making a Contract with the Mother of God, Saint Mary of Amiens (Berkeley 2004), mobilised a local mid13th-century sermon text to analyse issues of production, reception and meaning. Many of the findings delineated in these pioneering studies recur here. But the new book expands on its predecessors by extending their chronological, spatial and social parameters — tactics that reflect the subtitle’s stated aim of presenting a more comprehensive ‘life’ of the famous building. The resulting work is organised into six chapters bookended by a prologue and an epilogue. The prologue opens with a provocative question: ‘How can we hope to create a written structure to match the cathedral’ (p. 1)? Murray, citing decades of teaching experience, recommends a ‘Socratic method’ in which the specialist (‘interlocuter’) employs a form of ekphrasis conceptualised less in terms of the agency of the author-subject and more in terms of the agency of the buildingobject (p. 2). Regrettably, no attempt is made to examine how such a modus operandi might relate to other historiographical theories or practices, but it does elucidate the structure of what follows. Chapter 1 provides an extended two-part introduction to the cathedral. Part one, ‘the vanished past’, focuses on urban, political and socioeconomic conditions