I. 16
THE PLAN
AND THE ROMAN CASTRUM
A connection between the layouts of the Plan of St. Gall
and the Roman castrum (fig. 71A-B) was proposed by Karl
G. Stephani (1903)[406]
and by Joseph Gantner (1936).[407]
It was
rejected by Franz Oelmann (1923/24)[408]
and Hans Reinhardt
(1937 and 1952),[409]
but was vigorously reaffirmed by Rave
(1958).[410]
A closer inspection shows that neither of these
theories can be wholly disproved or fully accepted. There
are some obvious similarities: the oblong shape of the site,
and the fact that both the castrum and the monastery were
enclosures in which a considerable number of men found
shelter in a carefully ordered conglomerate of houses. But
the functional and spiritual objectives of each of these
architectural organisms were different and called for different
solutions in the spatial connections and separations of
its constituent architectural components.
Reinhardt has drawn attention to the fact that the Plan
lacks the disposition most characteristic of the Roman
castrum, namely the two central arterials intersecting each
other at right angles.
[411]
This is correct. An axial system of
roads giving access to gates for speedy entry and exit on
all four sides was vital to the operation of a military camp.
In a medieval monastery this would not only have been
useless, it would have violated the principle of physical and
spiritual seclusion on which the life of the monks was
based.
[412]
The cloister of the monks, entirely inaccessible to
the layman, forms a
castrum within the
castrum. And the
entire area between this inner fortress and the monastery's
outer wall is characterized not so much by its web of connecting
roads, as by its carefully calculated system of
separating fences.
[413]
In fact, one may go so far as to contend
that there is no internal system of roads at all, but rather a
carefully ordered sequence of courts or yards with passages
leading from one to another through the separating fences.
The Church, the Monks' Parlor, and the houses for the
guests were the only buildings in the entire settlement
where monks and seculars met under the same roof.
[414]
Yet
even in the Church the areas for the monks were carefully
segregated from those that were accessible to seculars;
[415]
and in the Parlor and the guest houses their coming together
was allowed only upon the special occasions when a
monk was visited by his relatives, or for performing such
ceremonial duties as washing the feet of guests
[416]
and
serving meals to them.
[417]
Even after making due allowance for all these differences,
which are clearly conditioned by the disparate functions of
a monastery and a Roman military camp, there still remains
the possibility of an influence of the latter upon the formation
of the Plan of St. Gall. The oblong shape of the monastery
site, together with the orderly arrangement of the
houses in parallel rows on sites of rigidly rectangular form
is indeed reminiscent of the grid plan of the Roman
castrum or, for that matter, of the grid-planned Roman
city. The adoption of such features in the Plan of St. Gall
might have come about in any of three possible ways, or
even by all three in conjunction: first, through direct contact
with ruins of Roman camps or towns, which were still
extant in the ninth century both south and north of the
Alps;[418]
second, indirectly through the influence that the
Roman grid plan had exerted on the Early Christian
monasteries of Syria and North Africa;[419]
and third, through
the influence that the rectangular layout of the Roman
castrum had already exercised on certain secular Carolingian
fortifications. I am thinking of such sites as the
recently excavated Carolingian villa of Saint-Gervais in
Geneva, Switzerland (fig. 72),[420]
the fortified Carolingian
camp of Dorestad, Holland (fig. 73),[421]
and the medieval
castellum of Sabatz (formerly Hungary; fig. 74),[422]
which
looks like a three-dimensional reconstruction of the camp
of Dorestad.
Yet even in these military positions, the similarity to the
Roman castrum amounts to little more than the oblong
shape of the site and its system of defensive towers. For the
rest these fortifications have already assumed the tripartite
internal division of the medieval castle, with its successive
stages of defensive retreat from an outer bailey into a forecourt
(curticula) and from the fore-court into the inner
court (curtis). In a conspicuous way the economic and
spiritual objectives of the monastery called for a similar
internal differentiation of the monastic compound: an
outer court for the raising of livestock (the majority of the
tract lies to the west of the Church), an intermediate court
for the reception of visitors and the performance of the
basic labors and crafts by the serfs, and a secluded inner
enclosure, comprised of Church and Claustrum where the
monks, in spiritual and social retreat, were engaged in the
service of God (opus Dei).
The order and regularity exhibited in the grouping of the
basic building masses, through the entire Plan, has an
undeniably classical flavor; the intricate methods of measurement
by which they are obtained are medieval.[423]
The
design of the Church and all of the claustral structures is
unthinkable without Rome.[424]
But the houses of the serfs
and visitors which are grouped around this complex have
their roots in the vernacular architecture of the north,[425]
as
will be shown in the second volume of this work.
