BAPTISMAL FONT AND ALTAR
The space between the first and second cross-partitions
of the nave serves as a baptistery. In the westernmost bay
is the baptismal font of the Church, and in the bay next to
it, an altar dedicated jointly to SS. John the Baptist and
John the Evangelist (altare sc̄ī iohannis & sc̄ī iohī euangelistae).
The baptismal font (fons) is marked by two concentric
circles and the hexameter:
Ecce renascentes susceptat x̄p̄s̄ alumnos
See, it is here that Christ receives reborn disciples
Francis Bond interpreted these two rings as representing
"either a circular piscina or a circular font."[28]
The first
proposition in this alternative must, I think, be abandoned.
Baptismal fonts constructed in the form of piscinae sunk
below the level of the pavement were common in Early
Christian times and during the period of conversion of the
barbaric tribes, when the majority of the people to be
baptized were adults. But in Carolingian times (with the
notable exception of the conversion of the Saxons, as Bond
himself points out),[29]
the baptism of adults had become
unusual. Babies,[30]
unable to stand upright, had to be dipped
into the water by the officiating priest and this could be
done successfully only if the water level were brought
within reasonable range of the priest as he bent over to
perform the ceremonial immersion of the child. The
elevated tub-shaped water font was the logical answer to
this need.
A convention of bishops held at the banks of the Danube
River in the summer of 796 reaffirmed an old ecclesiastical
directive according to which baptismal rites could be held
only at Pentecost and Easter, except in cases of extreme
urgency.[31]
This may explain the large dimensions of the
font of the Plan of St. Gall, whose diameter runs over 6 feet.
That same convention took it for granted that the baptismal
rite should be performed "in a font, or some such
vessel, in which one can be immersed thrice in the name of
the Holy Trinity" (in fonte, vel tali vase, ubi in nomine
sanctae trinitatis trina mersio fieri possit).[32]
Baptismal fonts were in general made of stone, but a
directive issued in 852 by Bishop Hincmar of Reims orders
that "if a parish church cannot afford a baptismal font of
stone, it must provide for other suitable substitutes,"[33]
which can only refer to portable wooden tubs. A charming
picture of a baptismal rite performed in such a temporary
contrivance may be found in one of the marginal illuminations
of the Luttrell Psalter (fig. 95).[34]
Circular fonts of
stone exist in many places; like the font of the Plan of St.
Gall, they usually are raised on a plinth. I show as typical
examples (fig. 96 and 97) a highly decorated font in the
church of Deerhurst, Gloucestershire, England, of pre-Conquest
date,[35]
and a larger cylindrical font of around
1100 now in the possession of Dr. Peter Ludwig, Aachen.[36]
In the Middle Ages the baptismal font usually stood in
the northern aisle of the church close to the western
entrance.[37]
The arrangement on the Plan of St. Gall where
the font is placed into the very axis of the church is unusual[38]
and probably owes its existence to the desire to
restrict the services for the laymen to the nave in order to
keep the aisles clear for the passage of the pilgrims who
wished to visit the tomb of St. Gall.
