I.14.7
DIFFICULT OR INSOLUBLE FEATURES
Although the Plan of St. Gall reflects the original scheme
with an amazing accuracy, the irregularities that slipped
into the design as it was traced through the opaque body
of the sheets of parchment created a number of problems
that are hard to settle and may have to remain unsolved.
Foremost among these are certain aspects in the layout of
the Cellar, the Scriptorium, and the Medicinal Garden.
THE CELLAR
In contrast to the Dormitory and the Refectory, to which
it corresponds in all other respects, the great monastic
Cellar, which lies on the western side of the cloister yard,
is not 40 feet wide, but has a width that ranges somewhere
between 35 and 37½ feet (fig. 70.A-C). The building is
firmly drawn except for its western long wall, which swerves
inward and is a little more shaky than the draftsman's
average line. Its curve runs parallel to a seam that fastens
two sheets of parchment and it looks as though its wriggling
and swerving course owed its existence to the copyist's
desire to avoid this seam. Had the copyist drawn the western
long wall at the exact distance of 40 feet from the opposite
wall, he would have had to superimpose the line that
defines the course of that wall on the seam for a considerable
distance, running his quill over the projecting loops
of the thread. It appears probable to me that it was the
wish to avoid this complication that pushed the line of the
western long wall of the Cellar further inward. By how
much he displaced this line, the draftsman could not even
judge at this point, as the overlapping edges of the two
connecting sheets of parchment which separated him from
the original prevented him from actually seeing the corresponding
line of the prototype plan.
The layout of the remaining portions of the Cellar
presents no problem. The dimensions of the barrels, both
small and large, as well as of all the interstices between
them, are multiples of the 2½-foot module (fig. 70.C). The
small barrels are 10 feet long and have a central diameter
of 5 feet. Their outside curvatures are struck with a radius
of 12½ feet. The large barrels are 15 feet long and have a
central diameter of 10 feet. Their stave curvatures are
struck with a radius of 15 feet. The rails on which the small
barrels rest are 5 feet apart. The distance between the
rails of the large barrels is 7½ feet.
SCRIPTORIUM & NORTHERN TRANSEPT ARM
An irregularity which, I confess, I cannot solve, is found
in the dimensions of the northern transept arm and of the
adjacent Scriptorium (fig. 61). Both of these spaces
should be 40 feet square, but are slightly less. In order to
be 40 feet square the head wall of the northern transept and
the adjoining wall of the Scriptorium would have had to
project by 2½ feet beyond the line of the outer wall of the
Rooms for the Visiting Monks, which abut the northern
aisle of the Church. Yet the Plan does not show such a
projection. Is this through error of the copyist? Or was it
a purposeful modification undertaken by the drafter of the
prototype plan? I am inclined to assume the former, as
only a 40-foot square would provide for a symmetrical
layout of the transept and a consistent arrangement in the
windows and writing desks along the northern and eastern
wall of the Scriptorium. However, one cannot be sure of
this. In general, the designer strove for symmetry, but to
contend that he did so without exception is a different
matter.
THE MEDICINAL GARDEN
A third case difficult to settle is the apparent displacement
of the Medicinal Garden (fig. 62). It lies in the northeastern
corner of the monastery site, but is out of line with
the protruding outhouses and hypocaust flues of the
Novitiate and the Infirmary. It was the last installation to
be drawn on the sheet containing all the buildings lying
to the east of the Church. I can explain its peculiar position
only by the assumption that the copyist lost space through
an accumulation of small irregularities, as he drew the last
row of buildings near the right-hand edge of sheet 4 in the
sequence, House for Bloodletting, House of the Physicians,
Medicinal Garden.
THE HOUSES FOR THE COWS AND THE
FOALING MARES
The dimensions of the houses for the cows and the foaling
mares can only be guessed at, as the narrowing of the
parchment at the southwestern corner of the monastery
forced the copyist to decrease the size of these two houses
along the southern edge of the monastery site (above,
p. 48f.; figs. 483 and 487). To what extent it is impossible
to say.
