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

The stresses that these new educational obligations imposed
upon monastic seclusion were great and must have
been in debate at the second synod of Aachen which passed
the perplexing resolution, "There shall be no other school
in the monastery than that which is used for the instruction
of the future monks."[353] I have already had occasion to point
out that it could not have been the intent of this ruling to
relieve the monasteries entirely from their share in the intellectual
training of the secular youth, which would have
been a complete reversal of the educational policies promoted
by Charlemagne. Rather it was the expression of a
conflict which in practice was settled by the division of the
monastic educational system into an "inner" and an "outer"
school, the former for the training of the future monks, the
latter for the instruction of those who planned to enter upon
the career of the secular clergy and of such laymen, poor
or noble, whose education was entrusted to monastic
teachers. The former was located in the cloister; the latter
outside it, at a place where it would not intrude on monastic
privacy. This is precisely the manner in which this problem
was settled on the Plan of St. Gall. The inner school is in
the cloister of the Novices,[354] the Outer School lies between
the House for Distinguished Guests and the Abbot's House,
i.e., in a tract which in all other respects held a transitional
position between the monastic and secular world. Unlike
the schola interior, which remained essentially confined to
elementary learning, the schola exterior developed quickly
into a school for advanced study.[355]

169

[ILLUSTRATION]

407. PLAN OF ST. GALL. THE OUTER SCHOOL

The simple map reveals with almost startling clarity the centrality of the site of St. Gall in the Frankish Empire. The dicta of Charlemagne
regarding education of clerics and children of free laymen were embodied on the Plan in the Outer School, where it was intended the Empire's
most outstanding teachers should profess and the nation's intellectual leaders be trained. Provided with bedroom cubicles, two classrooms, and
an annexed privy, the Outer School lacks a kitchen; perhaps students dined in the House for Distinguished Guests when it was unoccupied,
or perhaps took a meal in the Monks' Refectory, seated at the lower end of the hall.

170

[ILLUSTRATION]

408.A PLAN OF ST. GALL. OUTER SCHOOL. PLAN. AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

Cubicles in the aisles and lean-to's of this building reflect more clearly than the room divisions in other guest and service structures the bay
division of the aisled Germanic all-purpose house, from which these buildings of the Plan historically derive.

Explanatory titles identify the cubicles of the Outer School as students' bedrooms, and the large central common hall as the area for teaching
and study. This hall is divided into two classrooms by a freestanding median wall partition. Each is furnished with its own fireplace, and above
these in the roof ridge are lanterns (TESTU) serving as smoke escape and to admit light and air. The small squares in the students' cubicles are
unexplained. It is tempting to interpret them as study tables; but similar squares in the two divisions of the central hall suggest that there
should be openings in the roof to admit light. We have thus reconstructed them in this sense, as dormer windows.

[353]

Cf. I, 24.

[354]

Ibid. Concerning the responsibilities and differences between the
scholae exteriores and the scholae interiores, see Jean Mabillon, Acta, III:1,
1939, xxxiv-xxv. The history of the School of the monastery of St. Gall
and its teachers has been dealt with in a special study by P. Gabriel Meier,
published in 1885. Also to be consulted in this context is De Rijk's
account of the curriculum and the still existing text books of the schools
of the monastery of St. Gall, published in 1963.

[355]

This aspect is stressed by Leclercq in Cabrol-Leclercq, VI:1,
1924, col. 100.