University of Virginia Library

III.1.5

DORMITORY AND WARMING ROOM

On the Plan of St. Gall the building that contains the
Dormitory of the Monks bounds the cloister to the east and
lies in direct axial prolongation of the transept of the
church (fig. 208). It is a double-storied structure, 40 feet
wide and 85 feet long. The ground floor serves as the warming
room, the upper floor is the dormitory (subtus calefactoria
dom', supra dormitorium). A hexameter inscribed into
the adjacent cloister walk informs us that this building can
be heated:

The plan of this building comprises elements of both the
lower and the upper story. The seventy-seven beds of the
monks (lecti, similt) as well as the doors that open from
this building to the transept of the church, to the cloister,
and to the monks' privy are obviously related to the
dormitory. The "exit from the warming room" (egressus
de pisale), which leads to the monks' bath house, on the
other hand, and the large "firing chamber" (caminus ad
calefaciendū) as well as the "smoke stack" (euaporatio
fumi) which are attached to the eastern wall of the building,
relate to the calefactory on the ground floor.

Dormitory

HOW THE MONKS ARE TO SLEEP

How the monks are to sleep is set forth in chapters 22 and
55 of the Rules of St. Benedict. According to these, each
monk must have his separate bed, assigned to him in
accordance with the date of his conversion. If possible, all
of the brethren should sleep in one room; but if their
number does not allow this, in groups of ten and twenty,
with seniors to supervise them. The young monks may not
sleep in a group among themselves, but interspersed with
their elders. A light must burn in the dormitory throughout
the night and the monks must sleep "clothed and girt with
girdles or cords," so that they can rise without delay when
the signal calls them to the work of God. They must not
sleep "with their knives at their sides lest they hurt themselves."

"When they rise for the work of God," St. Benedict
advises, "let them gently encourage one another, on account

[ILLUSTRATION]

196. ST. RIQUIER (CENTULA)

ANGILBERT'S CHURCH AND CLOISTER (790-799)
[after Effman, 1912, fig. 1]

The original manuscript of Hariulf's Chronicon Centulense,
written before 1088, (ed. Lot, 1894) perished in fire in 1719. It
contained Hariulf's drawing of the Carolingian abbey church and
cloister still in their original condition. His drawing is known through
two copies. The earliest and most authentic (above) was made in
1612 and published in Petau's De Nithardo Caroli magni
nepote, Paris, 1913. Our knowledge of the exterior of the
Carolingian church is derived from it. The interior layout was
reconstructed independently, with virtually the same results, by
Georges Durand (1911) and Wilhelm Effmann (1912) through
analysis of the description of religious services and liturgical
processions in Hariulf's chronicle. The best plan, because it takes into
account irregularities in the Gothic church reflecting conditions of its
Carolingian predecessor, is that of Irmingard Achter, 1956 (figs. 135
and 168).

of the excuses to which the sleepy are addicted."[35]
In waking each other, as Hildemar informs us in more
detail, "the wise and older monk will arouse the brother
who sleeps next to him . . . but no junior monk should ever
arouse another junior, because of the temptation this may
offer for sin (propter occasionem peccati); rather one or two
seniors, after having lit a candle, will walk through the
dormitory to wake the sleepy brothers; yet, in performing
this duty will never touch the brother but only a board of
his bed or something similar."[36]

For bedding they are allowed: a mattress (matta), a
blanket (sagum), a coverlet (lena), and a pillow (capitale).
The possession of any personal property other than that
which is issued to all of the brothers[37] is severely prohibited,
and in order to guard against infractions of this regulation
the beds are frequently inspected by the abbot.[38]

We must assume that the beds were provided with some
locker or storage space, in which the monks could keep the
duplicate set of clothing which the Rule permitted them
"to allow for a change at night and for the washing of these
garments."[39]

During the hours which are set aside for sleeping,
whether in the day or at night, silence is vigorously enforced
in the dormitory;[40] but on certain specified periods
of the daily cycle, such as when the monks return from
their chapter readings, they may engage in conversation, in
groups of two or three or more.[41] Even during the midday
rest in the summer, conversation is permitted, provided
that it does not "injure the peace of those who sit and read
in bed." Should there be any need for sustained talk, the
monks must go outside (i.e., to the cloister walk) and
conduct their business there.[42]

LAYOUT OF THE BEDS

The layout of the beds in the Monks' Dormitory is complex
and ingenious. We have already discussed the manner
in which it was designed in our analysis of the scale and
construction methods used in designing the Plan.[43] The
number 77 is not likely to be an accident.[44] Yet I have been
able to find only one instance where the number of monks
was confined to this figure.[45]

The Monk's Dormitory, like the two other principal
buildings of the cloister, the Refectory and the Cellar, has
no internal architectural wall partitions whatsoever, and for
that reason must be thought of as a unitary space, open from
end to end. This should not be interpreted to mean, however,
that the beds were in full and open view of everyone
throughout the entire length and width of the building.
They must have been separated from one another by
wooden panels sufficiently high and long to protect the
monks from interfering with one another. The Custom of
Subiaco stipulates "that there be wooden partitions between
bed and bed, so that the brothers may not see each
other when they rest or read in their beds, and overhead
they must be covered [with canopies] because of the dust
and the cold." The same custom also requires "that these

[ILLUSTRATION]

197. ST. RIQUIER (CENTULA). PLAN WITH ABBEY CHURCH & CLOISTER

[after Durand, 1911, 241, fig. 5]

This 19th-century cadastral plan of the city of St. Riquier shows the Gothic abbey church (1) and superimposed in the area to the south the
course of the covered walks that once enclosed its triangular cloister, with the church of St. Benedict (2) in one, and the church of St. Mary (3)
in the other corner. This layout, first suggested by Jean Hubert (1957, 293-309, Pl. 1.C), and again in Hubert, Porcher, and Volbach (1970,
297, fig. 341), on the basis of a documentary study, was confirmed by excavations of Honoré Bernard (Karl der Grosse, III, 1965, 370).

[ILLUSTRATION]

199. LORSCH

FIRST MONASTERY OF CHRODEGANG (760-774)

AXONOMETRIC RECONSTRUCTION [after Behn, 1949, pl. 1]

[ILLUSTRATION]

198. LORSCH

FIRST MONASTERY OF CHRODEGANG (760-774)

PLAN [after Selzer, 1955, 14]

Lorsch is the earliest medieval monastery with a square cloister
attached to one flank of the church. But a layout of similar shape
may already have existed in Pirmin's abbey of Reichenau-Mittelzell,
built between 724 and 750, if Erdmann's reconstruction of its
claustral compound is correct (Erdmann, 1974, 499, fig. TA 4). For
Lorsch see Behn and Selzer, and a more recent summary by
Schaefer in Vorromanische Kirchenbauten, 1966-68,
179-82.

spaces be so arranged, as to be provided with a window
admitting daylight for reading and writing as well as a
small table and a chair and whatever else is necessary for
that purpose."[46]

The Custom of Subiaco is a relatively late source[47] and
already reflects a relaxation of the Rule of St. Benedict in
favor of greater privacy—a development in the further
course of which the dormitory ended up by being subdivided
internally into a sequence of individual cubicles
ranged along the walls of the building, with a passage left
in the middle, each cubicle forming a separate enclosure
fitted, besides the bed, with a chair and a desk beneath a
window. This arrangement, so well known from the dorter
of Durham Cathedral (built by Bishop Skirlaw in 13981404)[48]
was clearly not in the mind of the churchmen who
ruled on the details of the layout of the Monks' Dormitory
on the Plan of St. Gall. Yet even here we might be justified
in counting on at least a rudimentary system of partition
walls between the beds—if not for moral protection, for
purely practical reasons: since the brothers were permitted
to read in bed during their afternoon rest period, they were
in need of at least a headboard against which to lean.

FEARS OF THE VIGILANT ABBOT

The eternal fear of the vigilant abbot was, of course, the
pollution of monastic life by what St. Benedict designated
with his distinctive discretion simply as impropriety
(improbitas),[49] but to which others before and after him
referred with less restraint as "that habit which is contrary
to nature" (usus qui est contra naturam) perpetrated by
men, who oblivious of their own sex turn nature into
iniquity "by committing shameless acts with other men
(masculi in masculos turpitudinem operantes),[50] or "that
most wicked crime . . . detestable to God" (istud scelus
valde nefandissimum . . . quae valde detestabile est Deo).[51]
The crime was common enough to come to the attention of
Charlemagne, who dealt with it in a vigorous act of public
legislation, incorporated in a general capitulary for his Missi
issued in 802.[52]

The monk Hildemar, writing in 845, devoted several
pages to this precarious subject and discussed in detail the
precautions an abbot must take to guard against this
danger. The abbot, he tells us, must watch not only over
the boys and adolescents, but also over those who enter the
monastery at a more advanced age. To each group of ten
boys there must be assigned three or four seniors, or
masters, so that no one among them is ever without supervision.
After the late evening service, Compline, "the boys
must leave the choir, and their masters, with a light in
hand, will take them to every altar of the oratory to pray a
little, one master walking in front, one in the middle, and
the third behind" (unus magister ante, alter magister vadat
in medio, et tertius magister retro); "then whoever wants to
go to the privy, should go perform the necessities of
nature with a light, and their master with them" (cum
lumine et magister eorum cum illis).[53] If a boy finds himself

compelled to respond to this call during the night, "he
must waken his master, who will light a lamp and take him
to the privy, and with the light burning, bring him back
to bed."[54] Even the dreamlife of the monks and its sexual
connotations are subject to supervision. Depending on the
varying degree of sleep or consciousness, the employment
of the senses of touch and vision, or the extent of deliberate
procrastination, the offense must be atoned for by the
recitation of psalms, five, ten, or fifteen respectively, and
if the indulgence was committed with no restraint, by the
reading of the entire psalter.[55]

ABSENCE OF STAIRS

The author of the Plan of St. Gall did not consider it a
matter of vital importance to express himself in great detail
about the stairs which connected the Dormitory with the
Church, the cloister, and the privy. He made it absolutely
clear, however, where such connections should be established.
There is no doubt that the door that leads from the
Dormitory to the southern transept arm of the Church
must have opened onto a flight of stairs by which the
monks descended into the Church for their nocturnal services.
A direct ascent to the dormitory a parte ecclesiae in
the Abbey of St. Gall is mentioned in Ekkehart's Casus
sancti Galli.[56] Flights of night stairs of precisely this type
survive in an excellent state of preservation in the transepts
of the Cistercian abbey churches of Fontenay and Silvacane,
both from about 1150, and the Benedictine abbey
church of Hexham (fig. 101), from about 1200-1225.[57] The
area in the middle of the Dormitory left unobstructed by
beds might have been meant to serve as landing for an inner
stair connecting Dormitory with Warming Room. This
same stair could also have been used for daytime access
from ground level to Privy, which to judge by numerous
later parallels must have been level with the Dormitory.

Warming room

METHOD OF HEATING

The heating system of the Monks' Warming Room raises
interesting historical and technological questions. It consists,
as already pointed out, of an external firing chamber
(caminus ad calefaciendū) that transmits its heat to the
building through heat ducts (not shown on the Plan), the
necessary draft for which is generated by an external smoke
stack (euaporatio fumi).

Identical heating units appear in two other places on the
Plan, the "warming room" (pisale) of the Novitiate and
the "warming room" (pisale) of the Infirmary.[58] Keller's[59]
attempt to interpret these devices as simple fireplaces is
untenable and was convincingly repudiated by Willis.[60]
They are clearly descendants of the Roman hypocaust
system. The existence of such heating systems in the
Middle Ages is well attested both by literary and archeological
sources. A hypocausterium almost contemporary with
those of the Plan of St. Gall was built by Abbot Ewerardus
at the monastery of Freckenhorst.[61] An excavation conducted
in 1939 at Pfalz Werla, one of the fortified places of

[ILLUSTRATION]

201. LORSCH, MONASTERY OF ABBOT RICHBOLD (784-804). ISOMETRIC RECONSTRUCTION

[after Selzer, 1965, 148]

The abbey grounds, of irregular ovoid shape, were surrounded by a masonry wall. Entering the monastery from the west the visitor stepped into
a large rectangular atrium where he had to pass through what can only be called the Carolingian equivalent of a Roman triumphal arch
accommodating over its passages a small royal hall (a jewel of Carolingian architecture, built 768-774, the earliest wholly preserved building of
post-Roman times on German soil). At the end of this atrium the visitor faced two massive towers flanking a gate that gave access to a second,
considerably smaller atrium lying before the monumental westwork of the church of St. Nazarius, an aisled basilica with low transept and
probably a rectangular choir, built between 767-774, and enlarged eastward in 876 by a crypt for royalty. The component building masses of
this architectural complex rose in dramatic ascent on successively higher levels of the gently rising slope of a natural sand dune; the west gate at
the bottom, the choir of the church at the top, the late Carolingian crypt eight meters below the level of the church on the steeply descending
east slope of the dune.

The walls of the monastery enclosed an area of roughly 25,000 square meters. Forming a veritable VIA SACRA, from gate to altar the route of
passage was nearly 260m. long.

[ILLUSTRATION]

LORSCH, MONASTERY OF ABBOT RICHBOLD (784-804).

200.X

200.

12TH-CENTURY PLAN AND ISOMETRIC VIEW

Fig. 200: after Behn, 1964, 117; Fig. 200.X: after Hubert, Porcher, Volbach, 1970, fig. 377.B]

Toward the middle of the 12th century, the inner Carolingian atrium was converted into a fore church. At the same time, all the claustral
ranges were rebuilt on the foundations of their Carolingian predecessors. (For remains of the latter see Vorromanische Kirchenbauten,
1966, 180).

Henry I of Saxony, tells us much about the details of construction
of such a hypocausterium. There, beneath a hall
constructed between 920 and 930, C. H. Seebach unearthed
a hypocaust in an excellent state of preservation.[62]
Its heating plant (fig. 209) consisted of a subterranean
firing chamber beneath the floor of the hall, which was
reached by an outside passageway. A system of radiant
ducts channeled the heated air from the firing chamber
into a circular flue which lay directly under the pavement
of the hall and was provided, at regular intervals, with
tubular vents through which the warmth ascended into
the hall above. Another large flue ran from this main duct
to the western gable wall where it emptied into a smoke
stack. This flue showed heavy traces of blackening, which
suggests that the hot air outlets into the hall could be
closed by stone lids during the initial firing stages, when
the volume of smoke and obnoxious gas was heaviest,
leaving the chimney as the only outlet.

Seebach believes that the hypocaust system of St. Gall
was identical with that of Werla. However, the two
systems are not alike in every detail. The Werla firing
chamber lay beneath the hall; the firing chambers of St.
Gall are external attachments. They must have been subterranean,
of course, for otherwise the heated air could not
rise into the hall above, but the general principle of construction
was doubtlessly the same, and the occurrence of
this type on the Plan of St. Gall is clear testimony that

[ILLUSTRATION]

202. SILCHESTER, HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND, ROMAN BASILICA AND FORUM

PLAN (after Joyce, 1887, pl. 16)

A provincial variant of a distinguished lineage of Roman market halls, Silchester is related to the basilicas of Trajan in Rome (fig. 239) and
Septimius Severus in Lepcis Magna (fig. 159). To students considering history as a chronological progression, the similarity of layout of these
Roman market halls with that of the Carolingian CLAUSTRUM is perplexing. Yet such a conceptual leap into the classical past may be even
more easily understood than the Carolingian revival of the Constantinian transept basilica. To study the layout of the latter, Frankish
churchmen had to travel to Rome, but they could see surviving or ruinous examples of the Roman market hall in their homeland. Basilicas of
the Silchester type existed in the Roman city of Augst in Switzerland (Reinle, 1965, 34) and in Worms, Germany. The latter was well known
to builders of the Merovingian cathedral of Worms (Fuhrer zu vor-und frühgeschichtlichen Denkmälern, XIII, 1969, 36).

[ILLUSTRATION]

203. PLAN OF ST. GALL. CLOISTER YARD

Although in plan displaying striking similarities with the great galleried courts of the Roman market halls (cf. figs. 202, 239) the four-cornered
medieval cloister shows marked differences in elevation (cf. fig. 192). The Roman basilican courts are vast areas for open-air assembly and
the conduct of business, surrounded by relatively small offices and shops of modest height (fig. 202). The open yard of a medieval cloister, by
contrast is small in relation to the buildings by which it is enclosed. The latter rise high and are surmounted by steep-pitched roofs. Internally,
although composed of two levels, they form open halls extending the entire length of the building. The galleried porches are the only connecting
links between these huge structures, none of which possess interconnecting doors or entrances. The tint block on the opposite page shows the above
cloister (100 feet square) at the scale of the Silchester basilica (1:600).

[ILLUSTRATION]

204. DIOSCURIDES. MATERIA MEDICA

Vienna, National Library, CODEX VINDOBONENSIS, fol. 48v

SAVIN PLANT (JUNIPERUS SABINA)

[by courtesy of the National Library of Vienna]

Pedanios Dioscurides of Anazarbos, a physician of Greek descent
who served in the army of Nero, wrote his Materia Medica around
50 A.D. It details the properties of about 600 medicinal plants and
describes animal products of dietetic and medicinal value. The writing
of Dioscurides was well known and widely read in the Middle Ages
and served as a standard text for learning in all medical schools.
The illustration shown above is from a richly (in places even
brilliantly and very realistically) illuminated copy of this treatise
executed by a Byzantine artist in 512, and now available in a
magnificent facsimile edition.

hypocausts with a complete system of heat-distributing air
ducts, and a chimney stack for draft and evacuation of
obnoxious gas were, at the time of Louis the Pious, a
standard system used in the construction of monastic
warming rooms. Whether or not the heat produced by this
system could also be conducted into the Dormitory above
remains a moot question.

PURPOSE

The primary function of the calefactory, we learn from
Adalhard, was to give the monks an opportunity to warm
themselves in wintertime in the intervals between the
divine services,[63] to hang up their clothes for drying,[64] and
to meet at certain hours for conversation.[65] This was also
the place, he cannot resist adding, "where the monks on
occasion succumb to drowsiness and neglect their reading
because of the pleasant warmth."[66]

It is possible, as Hafner has pointed out,[67] that the calefactory
was also used as a general work room, where the
monks did their sewing and mending, or other domestic
chores, when the weather was not mild enough to permit
them to do this in the cloister. The calefactory may also,
during the winter or on days of inclement weather, have
been the place for the weekly washing of the feet of the
monks.[68] To provide the wood for the hypocaust was the
responsibility of the chamberlain.[69]

RECONSTRUCTION

The reconstruction of the building containing the Calefactory
and the Dormitory poses no major problems (figs.
108 and 111.B). Although no Carolingian dormitory of significance
is preserved, as far as I know, we are fairly well
informed about the materials used in their construction by
contemporary chronicles. The dormitory of Fontanella
(St.-Wandrille), completely reconstructed under Abbot
Ansegis (823-833), is a good example. The Gesta Abbatum
Fontanellensium[70] tells us that its "walls were built in well-dressed
stone with joints or mortar made of lime and sand"
and that it received its light through "glass windows."
Apart from the walls the entire structure was built with
wood from the heart of oak, and roofed by tiles held in
place with iron nails.[71] The layout of this dormitory
differed distinctly from the one shown on the Plan of St.
Gall, but like the dormitory of St.-Wandrille, the building
that houses the Dormitory on the Plan of St. Gall was a
masonry structure. This can be inferred from the fact that
the cloister walk with its arched openings attached to it was
unquestionably built in masonry. With its span of 40 feet
from wall to wall, this building required a roof structure
comparable to that of the adjacent church. In the latter the
tie beams of the roof must have crossed the nave in a single
span; in the dormitory—with its live load of seventy-seven
monks on the top floor—the girders that supported the
joists of the dormitory floor are likely to have found
additional support in one or two rows of free-standing
posts.[72]

[ILLUSTRATION]

SAVIN PLANT (JUNIPERUS SABINA)

205.

206.

207.

IBIZA, SPAIN

205. Erect form, sheltered habitat, 300-400 yards inland, Bay of Santa Eulalia.
This globular, symmetrical specimen reaches h. 17 feet, dia. 12-14 feet.

206. Prostrate form, exposed habitat, cliffs near Santa Eulalia. This specimen
has dia. of ca. 15 feet, h. 3-4 feet.

207. Erect specimen, umbrella-shaped crown, beach near Santa Eulalia. H. ca.
15 feet, crown dia. ca. 22 feet.