Fellows during my years as associate director have been unfailingly
helpful to me in ways too numerous and varied to list here. The
Board of Trustees helped facilitate my work by granting time away
from the Center so that I could devote time to research and writing.
Center directors Phil Converse and Neil Smelser both warmly sup-
ported my pursuit of this project and oªered extensive, thoughtful
reactions to earlier drafts of the manuscript.

I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Douglas McAdam, a for-
mer Fellow of the Center and now its director. From the moment
he learned about my interest in Gothic cathedrals, Doug conveyed
to me his abiding belief in the value of this somewhat unorthodox
project. I have especially appreciated his insistent instruction to
pay no heed to critics whose skepticism is rooted in narrow,
discipline-based concerns over ownership and control of intellec-
tual turf.

Then there are my colleagues on the Center staª. From the start,
our assistant director, Nancy Pinkerton, embraced this project and
the Sarum Seminar that grew out of it (more about the seminar in
a moment) with the same spirit of enthusiasm, joy, energy, and
ebullient playfulness that she brings to everything, and I thank her
deeply for all that she has done. Leslie Lindzey and Lisa Staton helped
prepare successive drafts of this manuscript and devised clever
schemes to protect occasional blocks of writing time while I was
carrying out my duties as associate director. Jesse Lewis worked his
photocopying magic to prepare the illustrations, charts, and graphs.
Kathleen Much helped make the manuscript more readable. Finally,
Cynthia Moore, Jean Michel, Steve Forte, and Emma Raub were
extremely helpful to me in locating books and journal articles, often
with only the flimsiest of clues about imagined titles or forgotten
authors.

Before beginning this project, I had not realized how many people
share an interest in cathedrals. Through conversations with them,
talks and seminar presentations I have given, and gatherings I have
attended with them, I have been drawn into an extremely interest-
ing circle of people from varied walks of life, people whom I might

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