Lepers and Kings | Project Description

The Lepers and the Kings

The 12th Century French Abbey of St. Pierre, Moissac

Project
Description

Project Description

The Lepers and the Kings is an experimental project in transporting academic research into a web setting. The Project will build dynamically around core research which exists in linear form. Posting the core research constitutes an invitation to participate in the project. Anyone with an interest in Moissac is welcome to contribute to the evolution of the site and, therefore, to an increased understanding of this remarkable abbey that has so many stories to tell.

Plan I will post the research in chunks which I will have revised from the original form. This will allow me to overlap information in a way that is not possible in linear written form, creating something like a series of essays, each more or less independent of the others but all forming a body of work that has no defined beginning or end.

Goal As the goal of this project is to increase interest in and understanding of this particular fascinating abbey, what begins as a linear work with my name on it will, I hope, develop into a more collaborative effort as questions are answered, errors corrected, wisdom collected. The final form of this project is still unclear although it strives to break taboos about individual authorship.

The Core Research The core of this site consists of dissertation research done in the mid 80s and moldering ever since. I have tried repeatedly to put it into book form, but it simply won't cooperate. It needs to be in an interactive environment where it can be experimental and where the format will not constrain it. By its nature the research opened more questions than it closed, so the format needs to reflect that.

The dissertation was completed in 1987 under the direction of Prof. Robert G. Calkins in the Department of the History of Art at Cornell University. It is entitled The Power of the Gate: The Sculptured Portal of St. Pierre, Moissac.

Dissertation Abstract
Art historical scholarship generally studies sculptured portals from a fixed position, at a distance generally great enough to see either the door in its entirety, or its tympanum. This understanding separates the doorway from its context - the building it is a part of and, specifically, the wall it provides an opening in. Theories concerning its sculpture concentrate on its lineage, relationship to other buildings, or possible derivation from other media.

This dissertation takes a particular sculptured portal - the south doorway of the abbey church of St. Pierre, Moissac - and studies it both within its architectural context and in its cultural and historical context. It suggests the need to assess those characteristics that set this particular monument apart from all others while at the same time examining its relationship to its contemporary audience and to its own architectural setting. It suggests the need to see portals as a medium different from all others, as a medium which takes into account the passage of the viewer through the doorway.

The dissertation had a specific focus which, of course, has evolved in the years since. Nevertheless, the core concern remains: to place the abbey in its context and to see that context as complex, layered, multivalent. In a sense, the web project will try to do what the dissertation could only talk about — open up thinking about the doorway into multiple interlocking and overlapping processes.