University of Virginia Library

HANS REINHARDT (1937 and 1952)

Hans Reinhardt, who tends to under-evaluate the square
schematism of the Church of the Plan of St. Gall,[194]
attempted to resolve these discrepancies by developing a
drawing in which the Church was shown reduced to 200
feet. But to attain this goal he found himself compelled to
reduce the fore choir and the space of the crypt beneath it
to one-fourth of their original dimensions, and thus he
arrived at a modified plan which appears to retain no spiritual
kinship to the original concept of the drawing (fig.
131).[195]

Reinhardt contracts the Church most severely where
contraction hurts most: in the all-important area around
the high altar and the tomb of St. Gall, where the entire
body of the monks assembled daily for a total of four hours
or more, in common chant and the celebration of the divine
services. He placed the high altar against the very edge of
the raised choir, where it drops vertically down to the floor
level of the transept leaving no space for the officiating
priest and his attendants (fig. 132). A step on the eastern
side of the altar suggests that Reinhardt imagines the priest
to stand behind the altar facing west. This not only is
incompatible with what is known to have been a general
custom in Carolingian liturgy,[196] but also in open conflict
with fourteen other altars in the Church of the Plan (figs.
84, 93 and 99). Their layout leaves no doubt that the
officiating priest stood west of the altar, facing east; the

[ILLUSTRATION]

128. SYRIA, BATUTA CHAPEL. PORCH, SOUTH SIDE

[courtesy Princeton University Archaeological Expedition to Syria]

location of the altar barriers and the position of the crosses
leaves no doubt on this score.

One feels equally puzzled about Reinhardt's modification
of the crypt. The drafter of the Plan provided the
monastery with two crypts with different but complementary
functions. One is an outer corridor crypt in the
shape of a crank, which takes the pilgrims and the other
secular visitors to the tomb of St. Gall. The other is an
inner crypt which lies beneath the high altar and is reached
from the crossing through a passage marked accessus ad
confessionem, between the two flights of steps that lead up
to the fore choir (fig. 99). Being accessible from an area

[ILLUSTRATION]

130. PLAN OF ST. GALL. CHURCH

[after Dehio, 1887, pl. 42 and fig. 2]

Dehio reconciles the conflict between the "corrective" titles of the plan
of the Church and the manner in which it is drawn, by reducing the
arcade spans to 12 feet. Leaving Transept and Presbytery untouched,
he retains the full measure of space (and incidentally its square
schematism in the liturgically most vital part of the Church, where
monks assembled daily for no less than four hours of religious services.
This solution is acceptable—even perfect—if one excludes the western
apse, as Dehio seems to have done, from the 200-foot length prescribed
for the Church. Dehio's church measures 218 feet from apex to apex of
its apses.

[ILLUSTRATION]

131. PLAN OF ST. GALL. CHURCH

[after Reinhardt, 1952, 20]

Reinhardt proceeded by assuming that the 200-foot prescribed length
of the Church must be understood to include both apses. He adopted
Dehio's solution for the nave of the Church and accomplished a further
reduction of the overall length to exactly 200 feet by eliminating the fore
choir, moving the high altar into the apse, dispensing with the altar of
St. Paul, placing the tomb of St. Gall beneath the altar, and the high
altar itself, into a position where it had to be serviced from the east
rather than the west as was customary in this period.

[ILLUSTRATION]

129. SYRIA. BRAD CONVENT. PEDIMENT OF PORCH

[after Butler, 1929, 199, fig. 201]

Had Forsyth not discovered the 6th-century roof of St. Catherine's on Mt. Sinai, Brad and Batuta (fig. 128) would be sole evidence for
reconstructing the design of timbered roofs in Early Christian Syria. St. Catherine's roof is still functioning, in perfect condition. See The
Monastery of St. Catherine at Mt. Sinai, 1973.

reserved for the exclusive use of the monks, this can only
have been a hall crypt providing the monks with prayer
space around the tomb of St. Gall.[197] Reinhardt eliminates
this confessio altogether and thus creates a spatial vacuum
in one of the most spiritually vital spots of the Church.

From a liturgical and functional point of view the
removal of the fore choir is fatal. Moreover, it is devastating
in its effect on the subsidiary spaces of the Sacristy and the
Scriptorium, which are built against the fore choir and, like
the latter, each cover a surface area of 40 × 40 feet. What
does Reinhardt propose to do with them? To reduce them
proportionately would render them unusable;[198] to retain
them as originally planned would amount to an aesthetic
degradation of the apse which seems incompatible with its
liturgical and architectural function.

Reinhardt's proposal also seems unsuitable in general
historical terms. The interposition of a separate spatial unit
between apse and transept is one of the new and original
features of Carolingian architecture. It appeared in
Neustadt-on-the-Main shortly after 768-769 (figs. 116, 133);
in the abbey church of St. Riquier (Centula) between 790799
(fig. 135); in the church of Vreden around 800 (fig. 136);
in the cathedral of St. Mary and St. Peter of Cologne, prior
to the death of its founder, Archbishop Hildebold, d. 819
(fig. 139); in St. Mary at Mittelzell on Reichenau, as rebuilt
by Abbot Haito between 806 and 816 (fig. 134); and in the
abbey church of Hersfeld, if Groszmann's reconstruction is
correct, between 831 and 851.[199] The primary motivation
for this new spatial entity was, as Thümmler has correctly
pointed out, the desire to isolate and strengthen the importance
of the high altar, at which the choral services were
held, and to provide more space for the officiating clergy.[200]
The increasing dimensions of the crypt, and the latter's
division into an outer corridor crypt for the pilgrims and an
inner confessionary for the monks, is directly related to this
development. Both of these innovations were responses to
pressing liturgical needs.