University of Virginia Library

V.8.8

HOUSE FOR KNIGHTS AND VASSALS
WHO TRAVEL IN THE EMPEROR'S
FOLLOWING

ERASURE OF OUTLINES AND DESTRUCTION OF
EXPLANATORY TITLE

The large anonymous building in the northwestern corner
of the monastery remains enigmatic. Its lines and all its
explanatory titles were erased in the twelfth century by the
monk who wrote the Life of St. Martin on the back of the
Plan and spilled his text over onto the front side of the
Plan (fig. 404).[331] During the nineteenth century an attempt
was made to make the inscription legible with the aid of a
chemical substance, which destroyed it forever.[332] The chemicals
left strong blue blotches whose distribution reveals
that the house was originally provided with a long title
(unquestionably in metric form), running parallel to the
entrance side of the house, which is east; a shorter title
explaining the function of the large hall in the center; and
other short titles designating the purpose of the rooms in
the aisles and lean-to's. X-ray photographs taken in 1949
by the Schweizerische Landesmuseum at Zurich brought
to light the outlines of the building itself (fig. 405), but
failed to reveal its titles. Ildefons von Arx, in two hand-drawn
annotated copies of the Plan, made around 1827,
remarks, "Von dem Hause sind bloss geringe Spuren übrig
und die angeschriebenen Erklärungen und Bestimmungen
vertilgt. . . . Es scheint aber ebenfalls eine Stallung (vielleicht
für Gastpferde) gewesen zu sein."[333] Keller apparently could
still read the word cubilia.[334]

PRESUMPTIVE PURPOSE

I have expressed the view in previous studies that this
building might have been a large barn or wagon shed,[335] but
I am now inclined to think that it served as quarters for the
emperor's bodyguard. The assumption of a wagon shed is
precluded by the fact—not recognizable to the naked eye
but clearly exposed by the X-rays (fig. 405)—that the only
entrance that gives access to the building is not wide enough
to admit any wagons. Unfortunately, we are not well informed
about the size and composition of the emperor's
bodyguard when he was engaged in travel. In the previously
quoted passage from the Life of Charlemagne, where Einhard
tells that the emperor liked to take his sons and daughters
along on his journeys, Einhard remarks that on such occasions
"his sons would ride at his side and his daughters
follow him, while a number of his bodyguards, detailed for
their protection, brought up the rear."[336] A hint of the total
number involved in such movements might be contained in
a passage of the Chronicle of Hariulf, where it is said that
the abbot and priors of St.-Riquier, when traveling, enjoyed
the protection of the monastery's entire retinue of
110 mounted knights. As the chronicler proudly adds in
this context, when the knights were gathered at St.-Riquier
during the religious festivals, "their presence lent to the
monastery almost the appearance of a royal court,"[337] we
must infer that the emperor himself was wont to turn up
with an even larger escort when visiting the abbey.

Heusinger estimates the traveling emperor's court to
have run into the hundreds.[338] Professor Ganshof would
consider this to be an excessive figure if it were applied to
the Carolingian period.[339] Obviously, the number of men
who made up such a protective guard must have varied
greatly, depending on the political stability at the time of
travel and the distance involved in the journey,[340] but one
might safely expect that an elite guard of some twenty to
thirty men accompanied the emperor wherever he went.
The great anonymous building at the northwestern corner
of the monastery site could easily have accommodated a
detachment of this magnitude, and if necessity demanded,
a detachment several times larger. The natural monastic
traffic flow would call for such a barracks to be located in
that corner rather than anywhere else in the rectangular
site into which the monastery is inscribed.

One wonders whether von Arx's conjecture that the
house might have been used for "guest horses," was pure
fantasy or whether his eye could still decipher somewhere
among the obliterated titles the word caballi.

DIMENSIONS AND HOUSING CAPACITY

The building is 100 feet long and 80 feet wide. Its great
common hall covers a surface area of 65 feet by 45 feet. It
contains in its center a hearth or cooking area 17½ feet
long and 15 feet wide. The lean-to's of the hall, if used as
stables, could accommodate fourteen horses under the
eastern hip of the roof and sixteen horses under the western
hip (counting per horse a standing area 5 feet wide and 7½

feet long). Each of the four large rooms in the aisles have a
bedding capacity for ten to twelve men (if the beds were
ranged in standard fashion around the four walls of the
room). Total occupancy: thirty horses and forty to forty-four
men. If utilized in barrack fashion—and especially, if
the large common hall in the center was also used for stabling
and bedding—the housing capacity of the building
could be tripled.

CONSTRUCTIONAL IMPLICATIONS

The reconstruction of this colossal structure poses problems
as difficult as the bewildering riddle of its purpose. Its
great central hall (measuring 45 feet by 60 feet) is 5 feet
wider than the nave of the Church of the Plan of St. Gall.
It is technically possible to span such a distance with tie
beams of very heavy scantling—the abbey church of Fulda
had a nave width of well over 50 feet (16.70 m.)—but the
fact remains that an aisled hall with an open center space
of 45 feet is not known to have existed in the earlier Middle
Ages at any place, with the solitary exception of the Great
Hall of the Palace of Westminster (1097-99) which owed
its inordinate dimensions to a very unusual set of historical
circumstances.[341] Even in the largest monastic barns of the
thirteenth century the center aisle rarely exceeds a span of
30 feet, and, in general, stays below the range of 20 feet.[342]
Where barns attained a width that was in any manner comparable
to the building with which we are here concerned,
their roofs were supported not by two but by four ranges of
freestanding inner posts, as in the great monastic barn of
Parçay-Meslay in France (figs. 352-354).[343] In order to
bring our building a little closer to both constructional
realities as well as to what appears convincing in the light
of existing historical parallels, we have introduced in our
reconstruction two inner rows of roof-supporting posts
along lines which have no equivalent on the Plan itself.
This is not quite as arbitrary as it may appear on first sight.

The inventor of the scheme of the Plan, as I have already
pointed out,[344] was not preoccupied with the definition of
the constructional details of his houses—these were fixed
by tradition, and therefore not in need of further specification.
Instead he chose to give his full attention to defining
the size and functional boundaries of its component spaces.
We shall meet this same problem again when discussing the
Granary, the House for Bloodletting, and the hall in the
House for Horses and Oxen.[345]

The colossal dimensions of the large anonymous building
may elicit the thought that the designing architect was not
aware of the unusual dimensional and constructional implications
of what he drew. If this were so, it would be in
complete departure from the procedures that he followed
everywhere else in the Plan. Wherever the relation of size
to function can be checked, it is apparent that at every step
of his work the draftsman operated in full awareness of the
dimensional realities involved. Accordingly, if he drew a
house 80 feet wide and 100 feet long, we must assume he
did so because he felt that there was a need for a house of
such dimensions.