The Plan of St. Gall :: :: University of Virginia Library

The gate to the Monastery is a large semicircular atrium,
which lies immediately west of the Church (fig. 84). This
installation comes under the jurisdiction of the Porter
(portarius) and the master of the paupers (procurator pauperum).
It is provided with three porches, in which the
visitors are received and screened for dispersion to their
respective quarters. The first of these three porches faces
west and carries the inscription:

Adueniens aditum populus hic cunctus habebit

Here all the arriving people will find their entry

The other two, facing south and north, lie at the ends of the
atrium. The one to the north gives access to the grounds of
the House for Distinguished Guests and the Outer School.
It is inscribed with a distich that reads:

Exi & hic hospes uel templi tecta subibit
Discentis scolae pulchra iuuenta simul[3]

At this point the guests will either go out or enter
quietly under the roof of the church.

Likewise the noble youth who attend the academic school.
The southern porch opens onto the grounds of the Hospice
for Pilgrims and Paupers and also serves as entryway for
the Monastery's serfs and workmen:

Tota monasterio famulantum hic turba subintret

Here let the entire crowd of the servants enter the
monastery quietly

The lodgings of the porter and of the almoner are contiguous
to these porches. That of the porter abuts the
northern aisle of the Church, that of the almoner the
southern.[4]

The principal body of the atrium consists of a covered
semicircular gallery that gives access to the aisles of the
Church. The outer perimeter of this gallery is formed by a
solid wall; its inner perimeter consists of an open arcade
with arches rising from square piers. A hexameter inscribed
into the gallery in capitalis rustica states:

HIC MURO TECTUM IMPOSITUM
PATET ATQUE COLUMNIS

HERE A ROOF EXTENDS, SUPPORTED
BY A WALL AND BY COLUMNS

A title entered in the interstices of the arcades that support
the roof of the covered walk ascribes to them an inter-columniary
distance of 10 feet:

Has interque pedes denos moderare columnas

Between these columns count ten feet

The gallery encloses concentrically an open plot of land
covered with grass, whose purpose is explained by another
hexameter, again in capitalis rustica:

HIC PARADISIĀCUM SINE TECTO
STERNITO CAP̄UM[5]

HERE STRETCH OUT A PARKLIKE
SPACE WITHOUT A ROOF

[3]

The first three lines of this verse, as has been noted above, are written
by the hand of the second scribe, the last three by the hand of the main
scribe. See pp. 13ff.

[4]

See II, p. 153.

[5]

"Paradisus," a word of Persian origin, denoting a royal park or enclosed
pleasure garden, used in the Greek Old Testament in the sense of
"green space" or "park" for the Garden of Eden, and subsequently, in a
more supernatural sense, for the paradise of Hope, situated not on earth
but in heaven. In architecture it is used as a name for the hallowed spaces,
encircled by porticoes, in front of the entrance of temples and churches.
"Fecit et atrium ante ecclesiam, quod nos Romana consuetudine Paradisum
vocitamus." Leo of Ostia, 1115; for other sources, see Du Cange, Glossarium,
s.v. "paradisus." For later uses of the term, see Parker, 1850,
338-39.