THEIR MAGNITUDE: A REFLECTION OF THE CLOSE
ALLIANCE OF CHURCH AND STATE
The Plan of St. Gall provides for four separate houses
for the reception of royal visitors: 1, a house for the emperor
and his immediate entourage; 2, an ancillary building
containing the kitchen, bake, and brewing facilities pertaining
to this house; 3, a House for Visiting Servants; and,
if my interpretation is correct, 4, a house for the emperor's
vassals and others of knightly rank traveling in the emperor's
train. Plans, sections, reconstructions, and authors'
interpretations for these facilities are shown in figures
396-406.
The total surface area taken up by these houses and their
surrounding courts amounted to 1,360 square feet, or a
little over one-fifth of the surface area of the entire monastery
complex.
The presence of obligatory royal quarters of such magnitude
within the precincts of the monastery is a reflection of
the close alliance that had been struck in the kingdom of the
Franks between the concepts of regnum and sacerdotium, a
development that started with the sanctioning of the Carolingian
house by Pope Zacharias in 751 and reached its
apex with the coronation of Charlemagne in the year 800.
As the appointed successor of the emperors of Rome,
Charlemagne had taken upon himself not only the duty of
protecting the Church in a physical sense, but also the
obligation of safe-guarding its institutions, regulating the
life and education of the clergy, and even ruling in questions
of liturgy and dogma.[310]
It is fully understandable that
within the context of a political philosophy so replete with
religious overtones the emperor's presence in the monastery
was as yet not considered a worldly infraction on
monastic peace and seclusion.
