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

Because of its geographical distribution primarily in the
territory of the Franks, Saxons, and Normans, Georg
Dehio considered the square schematism to be essentially
a "Germanic" contribution.[288] Samuel Guyer,[289] in a complete
reversal of this contention declared this "geometrical
clarity" to be a mark "of the Mediterranean way of thinking,"
and "one that had its roots in classical antiquity."[290]
The square schematism of the Plan of St. Gall, he maintained,
was not one of the new and creative contributions
to medieval architecture that it had been assumed to be,
but "transmits to the West in a rather muddled manner the
thought of the qualitatively superior art" of the Early
Christian period.[291]

These statements are of questionable historical validity—
and the argument does not gain in power when one finds it
supported by such sweeping generalities as "A civilization
in process of just awakening from the darkness of an
a-historical past" and "as yet suspended in a state of
unstable hovering between unconsciousness and awakeness"
could not possibly have produced aesthetic concepts
"of such distinct and clear rationality. . . . The period of
Charlemagne had never the significance ascribed to it so
fervently in recent times. . . . In the time of Emperor
Charlemagne the thoughts of Late Antiquity and Early

214

[ILLUSTRATION]

173. PLAN OF ST. GALL. PLAN OF MONASTERY CHURCH

SHOWN AT SCALE 1:600

The Church of the Plan of St. Gall is chronologically the last of a triad of Carolingian transept basilicas of monumental dimensions owing
their size to the tide of spiritual and cultural exhilaration that seized the Frankish clergy in the wake of Charlemagne's coronation as emperor,
on Christmas Eve of the year 800, in the basilica of Old St. Peter's in Rome.

Unlike Cologne (fig. 172) and Fulda (fig. 169) which were occidented in imitation of Old St. Peter's, (fig. 170) the Church of the Plan was
oriented. Like Cologne and Fulda, on the other hand, and in contrast to St. Peter's, the Church of the Plan was constructed on a square grid,
in the most elaborate and most consistent application of it, since it encompassed, in addition to the Church itself, the entire claustral complex
and in fact the entire monastery site (figs. 62 and 63).

215

[ILLUSTRATION]

174. ROME. SANTA MARIA MAGGIORE (432-440)

LOOKING NORTH AND SOMEWHAT EAST TO THE APSE

Despite its coffered Renaissance ceiling (added in 1500, substituting for the original open-timbered roof) this view of Santa Maria Maggiore
conveys persuasively the stylistic quality of the great Early Christian basilicas composed of huge, block-shaped, and internally undivided
voids.

The concept differs fundamentally from that of the square-divided Carolingian churches of Neustadt, St. Riquier, Fulda, Reichenau-Mittelzell,
Cologne, and that of the Plan of St. Gall (figs. 167-69; 171-73), as well as from the bay-divided and arch-framed spaces of the Romanesque
and Gothic (Hildesheim, Speyer, Jumièges; figs. 188-90), the cellular composition of which has primary roots in the Carolingian modular
reorganization of the Early Christian scheme.

For another magnificent view of the interior of a great Early Christian basilica see fig. 81, St. Paul's Outside the Walls, Rome.

216

[ILLUSTRATION]

175. FEDDERSEN-WIERDE, BREMERHAVEN, GERMANY

175: AISLED HOUSE OF A CHIEFTAIN, WARF-LAYER 11B, 1ST-2ND CENT. (authors' reconstruction)

176: PLAN (after Haarnagel, 1956, pl. 3)

The house belongs to the second settlement horizon of an artificially raised dwelling mound (Warf) which was occupied, on successively higher
levels, from the 1st to the 4th centuries. The house was 28.5 × 7.5m on an east-west axis. The living portion with hearth and the section for livestock
were, respectively, 9m and 16m long. An entrance in the middle of the eastern end wall was primarily used by cattle. (Also see figs. 315-316, II, 58.)

217

Christianity were taken over in a manner so superficial as
to be incapable of taking any deep root or of being developed
any further."[292]

I propose that we confine ourselves to specific issues
rather than argue the case in such global terms.

[288]

On the question of "square schematism," see Adamy, 1887, 180ff;
Dehio and von Bezold, I, 1892, 161ff.; Effman, I, 1899, 161ff; idem.,
1912, 133ff; Gall, 1930, 16ff.

[289]

Guyer, 1945, 73ff; and idem., 1950, 116ff and 133ff.

[290]

Guyer, 1949, 98-99.

[291]

Ibid.

[292]

Guyer, 1950, 116-17. Guyer is over-reacting to a cultural prejudice
that has been ruthlessly expressed by some of the proponents of the
opposite view.