The Plan of St. Gall a study of the architecture & economy of & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery |
| II. |
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| V. 15. |
| V.15.1. |
| V.15.2. | V.15.2 |
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| V. 16. |
| V. 17. |
| V. 18. |
| VI. |
 | The Plan of St. Gall |  |
V.15.2
THE MILL
MAN-, ANIMAL-, WATER-POWERED?
THE ROMAN TRADITION
Ferdinand Keller referred to the molae of St. Gall as
"hand mills."[472]
Albert Lenoir expressed the same view:
"The place they occupy in the room, as well as the absence
of any sort of motor mechanism in the vicinity, permits no
doubt that these mills were operated by the hand of man."
He felt convinced that they were similar to a type of mill
common among the ancients, which was set in motion by
driving the upper stone on a center spindle with a wooden
bar (fig. 440).[473]
For commercial purposes the Romans used a
larger variation of this type of mill; its size required
the strength of a donkey or horse to turn it, or lacking
such beasts of burden, it was turned by slaves (figs. 441442).
In the first century B.C., these devices found a
powerful rival in the water mill.[474]
Among the Roman water
mills two basic types can be distinguished: the vertical
mill (fig. 443A), in which the millstone is turned by means
of a water paddle attached to the lower end of a vertical
spindle; and the horizontal or "Vitruvian" mill, the type
in which a vertical water wheel is mounted on a horizontal
axis, from which its rotation is transmitted to the millstone
spindle by a pair of cogwheels (fig. 443B). The vertical mill
is typologically the more primitive form, and therefore
considered by some to be the earlier one.[475]
The "horizontal"
water mill was probably a Roman invention, and
judging from Vitruvius' description (23-25 B.C.), it was
still a relatively recent phenomenon at the time of his
writing. The earliest water mills of the city of Rome
apparently were installed in the Tiber "a little before
Augustus,"[476]
but for the first three centuries of the Empire
man-powered or animal-driven mills remained in the
majority.[477]
It was only from the beginning of the fourth
century onward that the water mill began to supersede the
earlier forms. The earliest pictorial representation of the
Vitruvian water mill is to be found on a fifth-century
439.A GERHARD MEMLING. SEATED MADONNA
FLORENCE, UFFIZI GALLERY. DETAIL
[Courtesy of the Gabinetto della Soprintendenza alle Gallerie]
The painting shows in the background a Northern waterwheel in a form that the
artist perceived it; the work, probably about mid-15th century, cannot be dated
with precision.
mill dating from the time of Leo I (457-474) has recently
been excavated in the Agora of Athens.[479] As early as A.D.
370 water-driven corn mills and saws for cutting marble
were seen by Ausonius on the Ruwer, one of the tributaries
of the Moselle River.[480] An intensely industrial application
of water power for the grinding of grain was a
Roman flour factory with sixteen wheels, erected 308-316
on a mountain slope at Barbegal near Arles (fig. 444). It
worked with two sets of eight overshot wheels, fed by two
channels of water from the aqueduct of Les Beaux, and
could produce in a ten-hour day, with all wheels in operation,
a total of twenty-eight tons of flour, sufficient to feed
a population of 80,000—which fact suggests that it supplied
the entire army of the province of Narbonne (besides
meeting the local demands of Arles, which had a population
of 30,000). There is archaeological evidence for the
existence of a similar flour mill at Prety (Pistriacum), near
Tournus, Burgundy, which ground the grain of the Saone
439.B GERHARD MEMLING. MADONNA AND CHILD
LONDON, NATIONAL GALLERY. DETAIL
[Courtesy of the National Gallery, London. Photo no. 61275]
The waterwheel in the London version of the painting is substantially of the
the same design, and shows with greater detail some of its construction. This
painting dates to about 1468.
supply for the army of northern Gaul.[481] These two facilities
were unusual and owed their existence, unquestionably, to
pressing military demands, but their existence nevertheless
denotes a general trend.
The historical motivations for this mounting interest of
the fourth-century Romans in water as a source of power
for grinding grain are still somewhat mysterious. One cause
was, without doubt, the increasing shortage of slave labor
in the later days of the Roman empire; another one, the
new attitude toward labor associated with the Christian
concept of caritas, resulting in the view that the forces of
nature should be captured and trained to ease the life of
man; still another cause, perhaps, was the fact that the
center of cultural gravitation had shifted from the Mediterranean
basin, where most rivers carry widely varying
quantities of water in different seasons, to a northern area
that abounded with mountain streams fed by a constant
flow of water. Finally, but not least to be contended with:
440.A, B, C, D HAND OPERATED ROMAN MILLS
Stationary or portable mechanisms like these shown above were used in every
Greek and Roman household and were diffused throughout Europe by Greek and
Roman armies. In Roman military camps, where soldiers ground their own corn,
such handmills were a common sight. One mill was provided for every ten men;
each soldier was prepared to carry his own thirty-day flour supply (Forbes, 1956,
109; Moritz, 1958, 116; Horn, 1975, 223, and 231, fig. 7).
The upper stone, in examples A, B, C, D,
weigh, respectively, about 130, 55, 30 and
45 pounds. Quern A, with two handles, could
be operated by two persons. Quern D, a great
advance in the art of milling, provided for
adjustment of the upper stone by an under-table
device that controlled clearance between
stones at their outer rims, thereby regulating
the fineness of the milled particles. Advances
in the arts of military machines were paralleled
by invention in the agrarian arts.
were not slow in putting into the service of their growing
manorial economy technological devices that offered new
prospects of exploitation to the landlords who had the
right and means of building and of operating these mills.[482]
ROMAN MILL IN POMPEII
441.A
441.B
[After Mau, 1908, 408, fig. 237]
The mill of Pompeii operates on the same principle as the table pepper mill. Its
lower fixed stone (meta) is raised on a plinth that also forms a basin to catch freshly
ground flour. The mill is charged with grain at the top; kernels fall into the space
between the two stones (which can be enlarged or decreased by adjusting the spindle
of the moving stone, the catillus, on its overarm) and are ground at the lower edge of
the catillus flange where it touches the meta.
441.C ROMAN DONKEY MILLS
POMPEII. REMAINS OF A ROMAN BAKERY WITH
FOUR DONKEY MILLS AND A BAKING OVEN
[after Forbes, 1956, 110, fig. 77]
Donkey mills are known to have been used in Greece from about 300 B.C. They
could be set up anywhere on land, and for that reason became the favorite Roman
flour mill. The turning circles the animals were forced to follow in this and other
mills of the type were brutally narrow.
442. ROME, MUSEO CHIARAMONTI. FRAGMENT OF A SARCOPHAGUS (2nd cent. B.C.)
HORSE HARNESSED TO A DONKEY MILL
[By courtesy of the Archivio Fotografico delle Gallerie dei Musei Vaticani]
The relief shows the hourglass shaped mill being worked by a horse harnessed to a trace that fits into the rotating upper stone of the mill (cf.
fig. 441. A). The question of the relative distribution of water- and animal-powered mills in medieval Europe, and their differing functions,
requires a new systematic study. In an inquiry into conditions prevalent in certain Carolingian territories west of the Rhine, Weber reaches the
same conclusions that Bennett and Elton came to more generally:
"Wenn man die urkundlich nachweisbaren Standorte berücksichtigt, weiss man auch, dass es sich bei unseren Beispielen nur um Wassermühlen
gehandelt haben kann. Die von Tieren getriebene Mühle bleibt fortab die Ausnahme. Sie wird meist nur für Notfälle eingerichtet, z.B. auf
Burgen und ummauerten Städten für die Zeiten langdauernder Belagerungen." (F. W. Weber, "Die ersten urkundlich nachweisbaren
Wassermühlen westlich des Rheins," Pfälzer Heimat, vol. 3/4, Dec. 1972, 101-103. The journal is not easily available outside Germany.)
ROMAN WATER MILLS
443.A Horizontal water wheel at the end
of a vertical shaft fixed to the
upper millstone.
443.B Vertical waterwheel, with power
transmitted to the upper millstone
by means of gears.
[redrawn by C. B. Lund, after Forbes 1956, 595, fig. 540]
The earliest water mill of which we have any record is one to which the Greek
historian Strabo refers as having been built by the Pontic king, Mithradates VI
Eupator, in his palace at Cabeira (some distance inland from the southern shore
of the Black Sea), which was completed in 63 B.C. (For sources and a
suggestion that this may indicate an Asiatic origin, as in the case of the water-powered
triphammer, see Horn, 1975, pp. 226-27 and below, pp. 245f.)
The origins and the early history of the water mill have been dealt
with in a comprehensive work by Bennet and Elton, 1898-1904, competently
reviewed and amended in a recent article by Curwen, 1944, and
brilliantly rediscussed in a masterful book by L.A. Moritz, 1958. There
is also a basic study by Bloch, 1935, and an historical review by Forbes,
1957. Also see Horn, Journal of Medieval History, I, 1975 219-57.
Others question this view of Moritz, 1958, 131ff. With the exception
of a narrow stretch of land in southwestern France, this type is not well
attested for medieval Germany, France and England. Cf. Curwen's
distribution map, which is based on its modern survival forms (Curwen,
1944, 145, fig. 6).
To the hand-, donkey-, and water-driven mill, we will have to add
as a fourth category the mola divino numine rotata, if the author of the
Life of St. Winnoc may be trusted in his touching account of an event
that occurred late in the seventh century. In order to demonstrate his
humble spirit, Winnoc, the head of a small monastic cell in Worumholt,
Flanders (today: Wormhoudt, Dept. du Nord, arr. Dunkerque), toward
the close of his life decided "that he wished to rotate the mill with his
own sacred hands [molam suis sacris rotare manibus], and thus in grinding
grain into flour, served in daily labor the brothers who lived in this
place as well as Christ's paupers whom he often received there with
great benevolence." The brothers failed to understand how the feeble
and aged Abbot could produce the amount of flour that left his mill
daily, and spying upon him, discovered that the mill "was operated by
the will of God" [divino numine rotatum] rather than by the Abbot's
own hands. The latter simply stood to the side of the stones, his arms
raised in the gesture of prayer (Vita Andomari, Bertini, Winnoci, chap.
25, in Mon. Germ. Hist., V, 1910. 771-72).
Parsons, 1936. The Athenian mill was an overshot; the Vitruvian mill
and the mill on the mosaic of the Palace at Constantinople were undershot.
"As he the river Ruwer turns his millstones in furious revolutions,
and drives the shrieking saws through smooth blocks of marble,"
Ausonius, Mosella, lines 359-64. See Ausonius, ed. Evelyn-White, 1919,
253. But take note that Lynn White, 1962, 82ff, expresses some doubt
concerning the reliability of the manuscript tradition of the Mosella
poem.
For a succinct discussion of the converging historical factors that
might have contributed to the increasing use of water power from the
fourth century onward see Forbes, 1957, 601ff, on whom I am heavily
leaning with this summary. On the new Christian attitude toward labor
see Geoghegan, 1945, 93ff, and Benz, 1964, 241-63.
THE MONASTERY A PRIMARY AGENT
IN THE HARNESSING OF WATER POWER AND IN
DIFFUSING ITS USE
The medieval monastery, a leader in all other aspects of 444.B CONJECTURAL RECONSTRUCTION [after Forbes 1956, 599, fig. 547] 444.A PLAN [after Forbes 1956, 598, fig. 546; redrawn by C. B. Lund] ROMAN INDUSTRIAL WATER MILL, 308-316 A.D. The mill was serviced by an aqueduct. It worked with two sets of eight overshot
rural economy, became one of the primary agents in the
dissemination of water power for the grinding of grain as
well as for many other uses. The earliest transalpine water
mill put to monastic use is recorded by Gregory of Tours
at the time of the Visigoth ruler Alaric (484-507).[483]
This
account is of particular interest, since it tells us how, during
and for a short time after the construction of the monastery
of Loches (Indres-et-Loire) by Abbot Ursus, "the brothers
ground the wheat required for their sustenance by turning
the millstones by hand" (molam manu vertentes). Ursus
decided to supplant their labor by constructing a mill at
the banks of the river Endria: "Setting stakes across the
river and heaping a great pile of large stones, he built
sluices, gathered the water in a channel, and by its impetus
thus drove the wheel of the work into swiftly spinning
BARBEGAL (ARLES), FRANCE
wheels, fed by two channels of water, and could produce in a ten-hour day, with
all wheels in operation, enough flour to feed the nearby city of Arles and the
entire army of the province of Narbonne.
vertere fecit). Another water mill is mentioned by the same
Gregory of Tours in his description of the city of Dijon.[484]
More evidence (so far overlooked) attesting the rapid
spread of use of water mills in Merovingian Europe may
be found in the Lives of Father Romanus (fifth century),
of St. Remy (ca. 437-533), and of Athala, Abbot of Bobbio
(615-627).[485]
The availability of water for the operation of a
445. HERRADE DE LANDSBERG. HORTUS DELICIARUM (1195), fol. 112A
(formerly) STRASSBOURG, BIBLIOTHÈQUE PUBLIQUE
[after Straub and Keller, 1901, pl. xxx]
Two women attend a water-powered mill. This illustration
is after a postmedieval copy of a manuscript that was
destroyed during the Franco-German war.
situating a monastery which Count Wibertus and Countess
Ada, during the reign of King Pippin, erected for their
daughter St. Hiltrud (d. ca. 790) at Liessies.[486] Two water
mills on the Leto River were given to the monastery of
Aniane by Charlemagne in a donation charter dated Aachen,
June 799;[487] another one in the vicinity of Dover is mentioned
in a charter of King Ethelbert, dated 762.[488] The
context of the chapter in which Abbot Adalhard in 822
defines the duties and privileges of the millers employed
by the Abbey of Corbie and its various dependencies leaves
no doubt that he is referring to water-powered mills, since
he stipulates that the millers be furnished, inter alia, with
everything that is required for the maintenance and repair
of their sluices (sclusa).[489] The Abbey of St.-Riquier in 798
had a water-driven mill which received its power from a
small stream called Scarduo running through the middle
of the monastery.[490] From the ninth century onward references
to water mills are made with increasing frequency.
An interesting incident in connection with the establishment
of water mills is the account of the failure of Abbot
Habertus of Laubach (d. A.D. 835) to cut an aqueduct to
channel water to the mills through the rugged slopes of the
mountain which surrounded his monastery.[491] In the centuries
that follow, references to water mills become legion.
The Domesday Book (ca. 1080) lists 5,624 of them.[492] From
the twelfth century on they are frequently depicted in
illuminated manuscripts. In the precision of their detail,
some of these representations compare favorably with
modern engineering drawings; (cf. fig. 445).[493]
Gregorii Episcopi Turonensis Liber Vitae Patrum, chap. xviii, in
Mon. Germ. Hist., Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, I, 1881, 734-35.
Cf. Bloch, 1935, 545.
Gregorii Episcopi Turonensis Historia Francorum, Book III, chap.
19, in Mon. Germ. Hist., op. cit., 128; and The History of the Franks by
Gregory of Tours, ed. Dalton, II, 1927, 103: "Before the gate it turns
mill-wheels with wondrous speed."
For the life of Father Romanus see: Vita Patrum Iurensium Romani,
Lupicini, Eugendi, Book I, chap. 18, in Mon. Germ. Hist., op. cit., III,
1896, 141; for the life of St. Remy see: Vita Remigii Episcopi Remensis
Auctore Hincmaro, ibid., 306-7; for the life of Abbot Athala see: Vitae
Columbani abbatis discipulorumque eius libro duo auctore Iona, Book II.
(Vita Atalae), chap. 2, in Mon. Germ. Hist., op. cit., IV, 1902, 114-15.
Vita S. Hiltrudis Virginis in Coenobio Lesciensi, chap. 2, in Schlosser,
1896, 226-27, No. 705.
"Primo enim acqua rivuli Scarduonis medium praeterfluens claustrum,
ibidem farinarium in usus fratrum volvebat." (Schlosser, 1896, 263, No.
792).
Folcuini Gesta Abbatis Lobiensis, chap. 12, ibid., 67-68, No. 237:
"temptavit et idem abbas aquaeductum a foreste ducere, ardua montium
sulcans, sed perficere non potuit opus praeposterum et sero inchoatum."
Fig. 445 is fol. 112a in the Hortus Deliciarum of Herrade de Landsberg
(ed. Straub and Keller, 1901, pl. XXX). Herrade became Abbess
of the monastery of Hohenburg in 1167 and died in 1195. The earliest
pictorial representation of a medieval water mill (according to Bennet
and Elton, II, 73) is to be found in a French manuscript of the twelfth
century, British Museum, London, Harley Ms. 334, fol. 71v. It is
undershot, as are most of the medieval mills depicted in manuscripts.
That overshot wheels were in use, however, as early as the thirteenth
century, is demonstrated by a water mill represented in the Sachsenspiegel;
cf. von Künssberg, 1934, fol. 65 (the manuscript dates from
1221-24).
EVIDENCE FOR A WATER-POWERED MILL
In the light of this abundant and clear evidence, Keller's
and Lenoir's opinion that the mills of St. Gall were hand-operated
mechanisms seems quite open to debate. What
Keller had in mind, I should think, was the kind of hand
mill that is depicted in a German manuscript of the fourteenth
century (fig. 446), reproduced by Bennet and
446. MEDIEVAL HAND MILL
The drawing, from a German 14th-cent. manuscript, shows a mill
derivative of the hand-operated Roman mill (fig. 440. A, B) that
survived the advent of the watermill.
447. HAUSBUCH MASTER. MILLING APPARATUS
CA. 1480
[after Bossert and Stork, 1912, pl. 46]
Although the drawing is rendered in the clumsy perspective of a
Middle Rhenish master of the pre-Dürer period, it portrays the
milling mechanism with great factual accuracy. The pen and ink
drawing appears in a manuscript written and illustrated by an
official who in 15th-century Germany was called "Büchsenmeister"
—master of firearms. Of relatively high social standing, such a
personage would today hold a position comparable with civil or
military engineer. (The manuscript is the property of Fürst
Waldburg-Wolfegg-Waldsee.)
448.B, C PLAN OF ST. GALL. MILL
AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION. GROUND PLAN
Waterpower for the Mill and Mortar of the Plan of St. Gall is a viable proposal; we have therefore reconstructed the mechanisms as water driven, for these reasons:
As regards the millstones, their size, at a literal diameter of 7½ feet, would tend to eliminate the possibility of hand operation. Their depiction on the Plan lacks any
indication of drive systems, but that lack is consistent with other such omissions where practicalities, to be left to a master craftsman to execute, have been eliminated in
favor of clarity of scale and function.
The alignment of mills and mortar on the southern edge of the Plan site would facilitate use of water power assuming that a stream existed on the site and could be
channeled down a gradient sufficient to provide it (cf. I, 68-69 and fig. 53). Abundant documentary evidence shows that from the end of the 5th century onward and
with increasing frequency in succeeding centuries, monastic mills of transalpine Europe were water powered; finally, references to animal-driven mills in these some
sources are almost entirely lacking (see above, p. 228, fig. 442 caption).
We have already discussed the question of why the Romans, although they had it, made scant use of the water mill; whereas the young barbarian nations of the north
adopted and diffused it with enthusiasm. To reasons already set forth we suggest here, as a factor so far overlooked, that the strongest impetus for the phenomenal spread
of waterpower in the early Middle Ages came not from the secular world but from the ascendancy of Benedictine monasticism.
The records of many abbots show that extensive monastic estates included mills located far outside the immediate vicinity of the monastery; Gozbert himself doubtless
would have controlled several beyond the two proposed by the Plan for the monastery. Adalhard records that Corbie's bakeries had to produce 450 one-pound loaves
each day, for which the monastery drew on an annual volume of 5,475 modii of grain from 15 mills, each of six millstones, all of which had to be maintained in good
working order (see III, 106-107). And the abbey of St.-Germain-des-Prés had several times again that number of mills (see Horn, 1975, 248ff, for details and sources.)
Building and operating such facilities required impressive capital investment dependent on ownership of great acreage and an unparalleled degree of managerial
competence. The monastic school-trained leaders of the period brought to the vast monastic holdings the ingenuity and spirit of radical innovation that necessity alone
would have made welcome. In addition, the monastries and their high officials had the pressing moral committment to free the monks from long hours of arduous
physical labor, in order to further the Opus Dei. By contrast the secular world, lacking intellectual advantages, integrated physical resources, administrative unity, and
religious incentives, lagged behing the great monastries in technical innovation; as in most labor-intensive societies, medieval secular institutions tended toward
conservatism.
Gregory of Tours leaves as an anecdote about Abbot Ursus that constitutes the first documentary evidence of a monastic mill. After relating that "on account of this
[water mill] the work that formerly had to be done by many monks could now be accomplished by a single brother," Gregory repeats a dialogue between Ursus and
Sichlerius, a Visigoth and nobleman whose land bordered the abbey's, and who had seen first hand the installation of the new mill and its sluices:
"Covetous to acquire the mill, he told the abbot, `Give me this mill, to become my property, and I shall give you, in return, whatever you ask for,' Replied the Abbot:
`It was only with the greatest of pain, on account of our poverty, that we were able to install this mill; and now we cannot give it to you lest our brethren die of
hunger.' Sichlerius retorted: `If you wish to give it to me by your own free will, I shall be grateful. Otherwise I will take it by force, or build another mill, for which I
shall divert the water from your sluice; and in this way it will no longer be able to turn your wheel.' The abbot replied, `You will not do what God shall not permit you
to do, you will not take it at all!' Sichlerius, in ire, did what he had threatened to do, but because of divine intervention, the water failed to turn the wheels of his
mill." Thus the intransigent noble was defeated.
The story, embodying all the social dichotomies between secular and religious spheres, is symptomatic and may have remained so for the most of the Middle Ages.
Ingenuity and initiative, in addition to divine justice, were clearly on the side of the abbot.
PLAN OF ST. GALL. MILL
448.D LONGITUDINAL SECTION
448.E TRANSVERSE SECTION
AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION
type could never have produced the volume of flour needed
in a settlement the size of that represented on the Plan of
St. Gall. Hand-operated mills, because they were subject
to the limitations of manual operation, were bound to be
small. Yet the millstones of the Plan are not only large,
they seem colossal. They are drawn at a diameter of 7½ feet.
Even if the representation is not literal,[495] such weight and
volume could not possibly have been set in motion by manual
operation. There are other factors suggesting water power.
The drafter of the Plan, as we have seen, did not consider it
part of his task to include a delineation of the monastery's
water system, but he was not oblivious to the fact that
buildings requiring water power would have to be located
in places to which water could easily be conducted. This is
clearly indicated by the way he carefully aligned all the
buildings and activities requiring water along the edge of
449.C LUTTRELL PSALTER (1340). LONDON, BRITISH MUSEUM. ADD. MS. 42130, FOL. 207
BY COURTESY OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
A cook tends his kettles and his assistant wields choppers; at the right a third man macerates some substance with a long pestle in a large
container. It is not clear whether he is pounding meat (as Millar, 1932, 49, thought), crushing grain, or churning butter.
it could have been channeled to serve all of them
efficiently.[496]
Bennet and Elton, I, 1898, 163. For modern parallels of this type of
hand mill, see Meringer, 1909, 166-67.
This dimension should not be taken too literally. The maker of the
Plan, as has been previously shown, defined all pieces of equipment and
furniture as multiples of the 2½-foot module. When a piece of equipment
did not fit into this graduation, he rounded off its dimensions to
the next higher modular value, never to the lower one. If the diameter of
the millstone is rendered as three 2½-foot modules (7½ feet), this means
that it was larger than two 2½-foot modules (5 feet), but not necessarily
as large as three 2½-foot modules (7½ feet). It could have been at any
reasonable point between 5 feet and 7½ feet. (Cf. our discussion of the
dimensions of the beds in the Monk's Dormitory I, 89-90, as well
as the general analysis of the scale and construction method used in
designing the Plan, I, 77ff).
I have not been able to find any reliable information on the size of
medieval millstones. The average diameter may not have been more
than 4 feet. But monastic millstones, because of the immense volume
of bread to be baked per day, (in Corbie 420 one-pound loaves daily!
cf. III, p. 106) they are likely to have been considerably larger. In the
summer of 1969 while traveling in Yugoslavia, I saw a millstone 6 feet
in diameter, unfortunately in a place the name of which I have forgotten,
but later on, on the same trip, in the medieval granary of the Abbey of
Le Thoronet in Provence, I came across a millstone with a diameter of
5 feet, 5 inches (it is visible in the interior view of that building, reproduced
on p. 88 of Père M. A. Dimier's L'Art Cistercien, published in
1962).
With regard to the hydrographical patterns of the site see my
remarks on the waterways of the Plan, I, 68-70. The general problem
of the application of water-power to industry during the Middle Ages
has been dealt with by Prof. Bradford B. Blaine of Scripps College, in a
doctoral thesis submitted at the University of California at Los Angeles in
1966, and will form the subject of a forthcoming book by Prof. Blaine,
entitled Water-Power in Medieval Industry.
RECONSTRUCTION OF MILLING APPARATUS
The reconstruction of the milling apparatus poses no
major problem, since both Herrade de Landsberg (1195)[497]
and the Hausbuch Master (ca. 1480)[498]
have furnished us
with very detailed drawings of water-driven milling mechanisms
(figs. 445 and 447). Herrade's mill is undershot. A
large waterwheel transmits its rotation through an axle to
a smaller wheel, the cogs of which are geared into a vertical
drum. The vertical power of the driving wheel is thus converted
into the horizontal motion of the millstone. A hopper
feeds the grain from overhead into a hole in the center of
the upper stone, the so-called "runner". This system is
essentially the same as that of the so-called Vitruvian mill,
except for a difference in the speed of transmitting power.
The Vitruvian mill is relatively small and moves faster
than the wheel that turns the millstone. In the medieval
mill, with its larger waterwheel, the transmission is from
slower to faster.[499]
In our reconstruction of the Mill of the
Plan (fig. 448A-E) we have adopted the latter system.
The Mill of the Plan would have taken care only of those
milling operations which were performed within the monastic
enclosure. On its outlying estates a monastery usually
operated a great number of additional mills. According to
Guérard's calculations, at the time of Abbot Irminon (ca.
800-826) the Abbey of St.-Germain des Prés managed as
many as eighty-four mills on its outlying estates.[500]
The
HAND-OPERATED MORTARS AND PESTLES
OF OAK
449.A.1
449.A.2
[after Keller, 1860, 45 and 50]
BELTIS, LAKE WALLENSTADT, SWITZERLAND
Devices of this kind, used for crushing cereal grains, were in the Middle Ages
employed in every household; porridge made from these grains was one of the
principal items in the common man's diet.
judge from the Administrative Directives of Adalhard of
Corbie, differed from that of the other monastic tenants in
that they were exempt from the manual labor to which the
other tenants were held, such as "plowing, sowing, harvesting
grain or hay, making malt or hops, delivering wood
or anything else in the service of the lord" (ad opus
dominicum).[501] Adalhard stipulates that each miller was to
be provided with a pair of oxen and other things necessary
for the sustenance of himself and his entire family, so that
he could raise pigs, geese, and chickens, and set up his
mill, and might obtain or manufacture all such materials
as he needed in order to improve his mill, repair his sluice,
transport his millstone, and everything else that he might
need to own or manufacture.[502]
449.B LE THORONET, VAR, FRANCE
MORTAR AND PESTLE
Hand mortars of this kind continued in use in the Middle Ages along with
water-powered trip hammers (figs. 454, 457), and were important in seasons
when streams were too low to drive trip hammers.
450. MODERN TRIP-HAMMER
[redrawn after Meringer, 1906, 16, fig. 26]
Trip-hammers of this type are used even today in areas stretching from Central
Europe throughout the whole of Asia, as far as India, China, and Japan. The
hammer shown is of the foot operated type.
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