WALL BENCHES
Wall benches lined both sides of the fore choir and
continued into the round of the apse. The monks faced
each other vultus contra vultum from either side of the
altar, except for those who sat in the curving parts of the
apse, and faced the altar westward. The abbot presumably
sat at the apex of the apse and had a counterpart in the
choir master, who occupied a position of comparable
centrality in the middle of the crossing square. The layout
of the benches discloses that crossing and presbytery—
despite their different levels—formed liturgically a unitary
space; and a count of the sitting places available for the
monks in the areas screened off for their exclusive use in the
eastern parts of the Church suggests that when the entire
community participated at a common service, even the
benches in the transept arms were occupied by monks
attending the service,[62]
. On the north side "an upper
entrance leads into the library above the crypt" (introitus
in bibliothecā sup criptā superius). The qualifying adjective
"upper" implies the existence of a "lower" entrance, which
must have made the library accessible from the Scriptorium
below it. The prototype for the raised platform of the
presbytery and the apse of the Church of the Plan of St. Gall
was the raised presbytery that Pope Gregory the Great had
installed in Old St. Peter's in Rome between 594 and 604
(fig. 104) by lifting the pavement of the new choir 5 feet
above the original floor of the church and establishing
below this platform a crypt that incorporated directly
beneath the new altar the old shrine of St. Peter, which
before this alteration had been exposed to view.[63]
