The Plan of St. Gall a study of the architecture & economy of & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery |
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 | The Plan of St. Gall |  |
III.1.3
FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE SQUARE
CLOISTER
Precisely at what time it became customary that the
cloister yard should assume the form of a galleried square,
attached on one side to the flank of the church and on the
192. PLAN OF ST. GALL. PRINCIPAL CLAUSTRAL STRUCTURES & THE MONKS' CLOISTER
Cutaway Perspective. Authors' Interpretation
Three double-storied masonry buildings solidly enclosing an open yard are attached to the southern flank of the Church, and are connected at ground level by the covered
arcaded walks of the cloister. The east structure contains the Warming Room, below, and the Monks' Dormitory, above. From its southern gable wall an exit leads to
the Monks' Privy on the upper level, and at ground level another leads to their Laundry and Bathhouse. The south structure contains on ground level the Monks'
Refectory and above it their Vestiary. From its western gable wall an exit leads to the Monks' Kitchen at ground level. The west structure contains on ground level
the cellar, and above it, the Larder.
On the Plan itself (fig. 191), although the Dormitory layout is actually drawn on ground level, an inscription makes clear that it is to be located in the second story.
The Plan does not show any stairs between floors. We make no attempt here to correct this shortcoming by supplying features to which the designer himself chose to make
no committment. By suppressing stairs he not only was able to keep his design uncluttered, but also emphasized that wherever, in the process of construction, stairs were
to be installed they should be located so as not to interfere with arrangements which he considered to be of more vital concern: Dormitory bed layout, Refectory bench
and table layout, Cellar barrel layout—all worked out with great care, in full consideration of the number of monks to be served by these respective structures, and the
volume of wine and beer to be stored (see below: Dormitory, pp. 250, 342; Refectory, p. 286 and Fig. 211; Cellar, pp. 296-303).
Not disregard, but rather a choice between details of primary and secondary importance, induced the designer to suppress stairs. In so choosing he arrived with depth
of technical insight and wise restraint at a solution, at once ingeniously simple and equally sophisticated, to the special task facing him: namely, assembling on a single
drafted plan all essential information needed to construct the forty-odd buildings of which a paradigmatic monastery of his period was to be composed.
is impossible to say in view of our almost total
ignorance about the layout of transalpine monasteries in the
critical period of transition from the Irish to the Roman
Benedictine rule.[8] The cloister of the famous Abbey of St.
Riquier, built under Abbot Angilbert from 790-799 (figs.
196-197),[9] had the shape of an obtuse triangle which shows
that even late in the eighth century the square had as yet
not been established as an obligatory form. Its dimensions
likewise are far from conforming to any recognizable
standards; for the longer side of this triangle had the extraordinary
length of 984 feet, the two shorter ones of 705 feet
and 525 feet.[10]
An early transalpine case of a square-shaped cloister,
by contrast, is the early Carolingian monastery of Lorsch
between 760-774.[12] The buildings of this settlement, as
its excavator Friedrich Behn points out, were not a new
creation but a conversion to monastic use of the villa of a
Frankish nobleman, laid out in the tradition of the Roman
villa rustica. Its galleried court formed a square of approximately
70 × 75 feet, and hence was considerably
larger than the atrium of the average Roman villa rustica.
Contrary to later monastic preference the church was
located along the southern side of the court, presumably
for special topographical reasons, namely because on this
side the monastery bordered on an ancient Roman road.
The east side and the west side of the square were taken
up by two oblong buildings, corresponding to the later
dormitory and cellar. The north side, as in most of the
Roman prototype villas, was only closed in by the galleried
porch that formed the northern cloister walk.
That a Frankish farmhouse, built in the Roman tradition,
could be converted into a Benedictine monastery
without substantial alterations bears witness to the close
conceptual relationship of the Carolingian cloister plan
with that of the Roman villa rustica. The countryside of the
former Roman provinces of Germany and Gaul abounded
with such buildings and many of these may still have been
in use during the early Carolingian period.
When the monastery of Lorsch was rebuilt on higher
ground on a neighboring site between 784 and 804 (figs.
southern flank of the new church, and masonry buildings
were placed peripherally around the three remaining sides
of the yard. This is the form that was chosen by the author
of the layout of the paradigmatic monastery shown on the
Plan of St. Gall. Richbold's monastery of Lorsch shares
with the layout of the latter another important feature. Its
cloister measures 100 by 100 Carolingian feet (34 m. by
34 m.), proportions which in the ninth century appear to
have acquired an almost canonical value.
As we are talking about the conceptual relationship between
the layout of a square-shaped monastic cloister range
with a galleried court and that of the Roman villa rustica,
we must not lose sight of another possibility heretofore
overlooked, namely, the likelihood of an influence from the
ruins of judiciary Roman basilicas. Many of these had
attached to one of their long sides a galleried court of considerable
size completely surrounded by shops. A double-apsed
basilica of this type was excavated around 1880 by
J. G. Joyce, in the Romano-British city of Silchester (fig.
202), and another one more recently in the Gallo-Roman
city of Augst, in Switzerland.[15]
The type must have been
very common in the transalpine provinces of Rome, and
their remains may still have been visible in many parts of
the empire at the time of Charlemagne.
Since this chapter was written, I have dealt with the question of the
first appearance of the square or U-shaped cloister in the article, "On
the Origins of the Medieval Cloister," Gesta XII (1973), 13-52. The
conclusions offered state that despite the sporadic appearance of four-cornered
cloisters in certain Early Christian monasteries of Syria
(Umm-is-Surab, Id-Dêr), the U-shaped cloister with its galleried
porches and its monastic houses ranged peripherally around them is an
invention of the Age of Charlemagne. Its development was dependent,
for one, on the rejection of the semi-eremitic forms of living of the Irish
monks in favor of the highly controlled and ordered forms of communal
living prescribed by St. Benedict. The U-shaped form also answered the
necessity of separating the monks' living quarters from those of the
monastery's serfs and workmen, who entered an economic symbiosis
when the monastery acquired the structure of a vast manorial estate in
the new agricultural society that arose north of the Alps (Horn, op. cit.,
47-48).
| The Plan of St. Gall | |