The Plan of St. Gall a study of the architecture & economy of & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery |
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ELEVATION |
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 | The Plan of St. Gall |  |
ELEVATION
The elevation of the Church (figs. 108-113) must by necessity
remain a matter of conjecture. We have calculated it on
the assumption of certain minimal heights for consecutive
parts of the Church, moving in additive progression from
the lower to the upper portions of the building. The
aggregate of the estimates thus obtained produces a fairly
convincing picture.
The arcaded walls of the cloister, the northern wing of
which is built against the southern aisle of the Church,
must have been at least 10 feet high to give head clearance
to the monks who walked in this wing. The arched exits, in
the center of each cloister walk, are shown on the Plan
itself as being 7½ feet high. They must have had above
them a small amount of masonry to carry the timbers of the
roof which covered their walks. To this we have assigned a
height of 2½ feet.
The roof which covered the northern cloister walk—
assuming that it rose at an angle of about 30 degrees—
would have connected with the wall of the southern aisle
of the Church at a height of 17½ feet above the ground.
Beyond that point the aisle walls must have continued for
at least another 12½ feet in order to give clearance for the
windows (to which we have assigned an estimated height of
7½ feet). This would bring the top of the aisle walls to a
height of 30 feet. The aisle walls of the Abbey Church of
Fulda rose to a height of 8.75 m., which comes close to 30
Roman feet.[132]
The aisle walls of St. Gall cannot have been
any lower than that, since the tie-beams that supported the
aisle roofs had to clear the arches over the nave arcades.
These beams could not have cleared the arches at a level
lower than 30 feet, as will be shown presently.
The columns of the arcades of the nave are spaced at
intervals of 20 feet on center. The apex of the extrados of
the arches that rose from these columns cannot have been
any lower than 30 feet, without resulting in inordinately
depressed arcade proportions. Above the extrados of these
arches there must have been some 15 feet of clearance for
the aisle roof, and above the level of the aisle roof another
15 feet of clearance for the clerestory wall and its windows.
PLAN OF ST. GALL
108. CHURCH AND CLAUSTRUM, TRANSVERSE SECTION
The sections and elevations, as well as the perspective view of the
interior of the Church shown on the opposite and on subsequent
pages are our attempt to show what the Church of the Plan would
have looked like had it been built in full three-dimensional reality.
There is nothing mysterious about our conjecture. The nave of the
Church, as we are told by an unequivocal explanatory title, had a
width of 40 feet, each of its aisles a width of 20. We have assigned
to each component of the elevation of nave and Claustrum a
comfortable height required by its function and in this manner
arrived at a height of 30 feet for the aisle walls, and of 60 feet for
the nave walls. This is in full harmony with the decimal thinking
that controls the Plan in the planimetric sense, as our analysis of
its scale and construction has shown (above, pp. 77ff).
109. CHURCH, LONGITUDINAL SECTION
It is in longitudinal section that the pristine modular quality of the
proportions of the Church (cf. fig. 173) finds its strongest expression.
All measurements are related to the controlling module
of the crossing, a 40-foot square. The columnar interstices
(measured on centers) are exactly half that value. This condition
is responsible for the magnificent width and height of the
arcades—a concept fundamentally different from the low, narrow
intercolumniation of the great Early Christian prototype churches
from which the Church of the Plan is typologically derived (for
good examples see figs. 81, 141, 170, 174, and 177).
Although nave and transept were of equal width we cannot be
certain that they also were of equal height. Yet even if the transept
was lower, it is reasonable to assume that the crossing was
disengaged, i.e. framed by boundary arches on all four sides. There
are good contemporary parallels for either alternative (cf. fig. 15,
a low transept with boundary arches of unequal height; and figs.
116 and 117, high transepts with boundary arches of equal
height.)
110. PLAN OF ST. GALL. CHURCH INTERIOR. VIEW TOWARD EAST APSE
AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION
The Church of the Plan—its interior appearance here recreated by Ernest Born—was never built. Yet being conceived, it became a historical
reality, and our reconstruction for that reason, if correct in its principal lines, is a significant contribution to the visual history of medieval
architecture. The underlying compositional scheme (nave, two aisles and transept) is Early Christian. But none of the great metropolitan
basilicas of the West had arcades so wide and high, or proportions so rationally coordinated with a spatial master value, by the alignment of
the columnar interstices with the 40-foot module of the crossing square.
walls. The clerestory walls of the Abbey Church of
Fulda were 21.10 m. high, which corresponds roughly to
60 Roman feet.[133] The relation of the width to the heights
of the nave of the Church of the Plan would then be a ratio
of 1:1½ (40:60 feet), which is in harmony with the ratio of
1:1½ obtained in calculating the corresponding proportions
of the aisles (20:30 feet). From the floor to the ridge of its
highest roof, the Church of the Plan would probably have
measured 75 feet.
Admittedly these calculations are schematic, yet they are
based on constructional assumptions which are reasonable.
| The Plan of St. Gall | |