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

Probably aware of these inconsistencies in Keller's and
Lenoir's interpretations, the Swiss art historian J. R. Rahn
presented a new solution in 1876, which was incorporated
into a graphical reconstruction of the entire settlement in
a bird's-eye view drawn up for him by Georg Lasius
(fig. 266).[5] Without explicitly refuting or even discussing
Keller's and Lenoir's views, Rahn reconstructed the St.
Gall house as a masonry structure of basilican type with a

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. OUTER SCHOOL.[6] INTERPRETATION OF KELLER (1844). AUTHORS' DRAWING

264.C PERSPECTIVE

SHOWING INTERNAL OPEN COURT

Houses with living quarters ranged around an
open inner court were in use in the Euphrates
river basin in the Isin Larsin period (20241763
B.C.) in the city of Ur (H. Frankfort,
The Art and Architecture of the
Ancient Orient, Harmondsworth, 1958, 66).
They form the point of origin of an illustrious
lineage of Near Eastern and Mediterranean
courtyard houses which in Classical Antiquity
evolved into the beautifully conceived symmetrical
layout of the Greek peristyle house and the Roman
atrium house (fig. 265).

264.B PERSPECTIVE

WITH ROOF STRUCTURE REMOVED

Keller's interpretation of the two squares drawn
in the center space of this house as "courtyard
houses" or "garden huts" is incompatible with
the annotation of the Plan, on which they are
clearly labeled "testu", indicating a feature of
the roof on a ground floor plan. See below,
pp. 117ff, and III, Glossary, s.v. The presence of
"testu" demonstrates that the house was roofed
over, and did not have an open court.

264.A THE PLAN IN PERSPECTIVE

The squares in the center space are the designer's
way of indicating the location of a hearth. In the
House for Distinguished Guests (see below,
pp. 146, 160) this square is explicitly so designated
(LOCUS FOCI). For this and the reason explained
above, this part of the house must have been
roofed over.

large rectangular center room that rose above the outer
rooms and received its light through clerestory windows.
The squares that are inscribed in the Plan alternately as
locus foci and testu[do] Rahn interprets as open fireplaces
surmounted on the level of the main roof by a lantern with
openings for the escape of smoke. This solution was suggested
to him by similar architectural contraptions "still
nowadays in use in certain rural houses of northern
Germany and also occasionally found in England."[7] Rahn's
reconstruction has subsequently found the widest circulation
by being reproduced in Cabrol-Leclercq's Dictionnaire
d'archéologie chrétienne.[8] It also formed the basis for a
masterful three-dimensional model, executed in 1877 by
Julius Lehmann, which found a permanent home in the
Historisches Museum of the city of St. Gall (fig. 267).[9]

The advantages of Rahn's reconstruction over those of
Keller and Lenoir are obvious at first sight. It establishes
correctly, and in accordance with the legends of the Plan,
the large rectangular center space of the house as a covered
room. Second, it associates the term testu[do] with a
device that is compatible with its etymology (protective
shield, or cover). Third, it offers a constructive solution to
the interchangeability of the terms testu[do] and locus foci,
since "hearth" and "lantern," if arranged in the manner
Rahn suggested, would merely be two complementary
aspects of the same device—namely, an open fire with a
smoke hole in the roof surmounted by a lantern.

[5]

Rahn, 1876, 91, fig. 12.

[6]

BUILDING 12: PLAN page xxiv, vol. I

[7]

The statement is not further substantiated. Rahn, however, was not
the first to suggest such a solution. It was considered as early as 1848 by
Robert Willis (1848). Willis' interpretation of the St. Gall house vacillates
between that of Keller, whom he follows closely in his general
description of the Plan, and suggestions that could be called anticipations
of Rahn's and Lenoir's views, as may be gathered from the following
quotations: in connection with the House for Distinguished Guests
(p. 90): "This central room either rose above the roofs of the others,
so as to allow for small open windows like clerestory windows, or else the
central room was so roofed over as to leave a small square opening in the
middle, which admitted light and allowed the smoke of the fire to escape.
In warm southerly climates, as at Pompeii, the opening had a cistern
below to receive rain. But in the north, if a fire-place was below it, the
central opening must have been covered with a sort of turret or lantern,
with open sides, to prevent the rain from pouring down upon the fire";
with regard to the other buildings (p. 91): "I am inclined to think that
. . . the central square in most of the examples . . . represents the central
opening of a roof, which roof may either slope outwards or inwards, as
the case may be"; with regard to the farm buildings (p. 91): "In the
great farm buildings at the south-west part of the establishment the
small central square may indicate that the central space has an overhanging
shed carried round it, leaving the opening in the middle; or if
this appears improbable, we must suppose in this case that it means a pond
for water, or, as Keller seems to think, a little cabin or sentry-box,
which I confess does not appear very likely."

[8]

Article "St. Gall," by Leclercq, in Cabrol-Leclercq, VI:1, 1924,
cols. 80-248.

[9]

On the history of the construction of this model see Edelmann, in
Studien, 1962, 291-95. The model in turn served as prototype for a
painting made by B. Steiner in 1903 for use in school instruction, which
shows the monastery from the south east. This painting has never been
published, so far as I have been able to determine. It places the settlement
shown on the Plan of St. Gall into the topographic relief of the
site on which the monastery of the Abbey of St. Gall rose. Since it adds
nothing to the concept of the buildings established by Rahn and Lasius,
I pass over it.