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The Plan of St. Gall

a study of the architecture & economy of & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery
Horn, Walter William
  
THE PLAN OF ST. GALL
  
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
  
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  
FOREWORD
 I. 
CONTENTS: VOLUME I
  
SYNOPSIS OF THE WORK
  
ABBREVIATIONS
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PREFACE
  
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I
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II
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III
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III. 1
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III.1.3
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III.1.5
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Dormitory
  
HOW THE MONKS ARE TO SLEEP
  
LAYOUT OF THE BEDS
  
FEARS OF THE VIGILANT ABBOT
  
ABSENCE OF STAIRS
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Warming room
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III.1.6
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IV

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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.

 
[56]

Ekkeharti (IV.) Casus sancti Galli, chap. 91; ed. Meyer von
Knonau, 1877, 322ff; ed. Helbling, 1958, 164ff. Cf. II, 327.

[57]

For night stairs in general see Aubert, I, 1957, 304-305. For
Fontenay, see Ségogne-Maillé, 1946, fig. 5; for Silvacane: Pontus, 1966,
38; for Hexham: Cook, 1961, pl. VII and Cook-Smith, 1960, pl. 39.
A night stair survives in the north transept of Tintern Abbey. Others in
varying degrees of preservation are found in many other medieval
churches (Beaulieu Abbey; St. Augustine, Bristol; Hayles Abbey, and
others). The remains of the earliest medieval flight of dormitory night
stairs known to me are those which have been excavated by Otto Doppelfeld
in the northern transept arm of Cologne Cathedral. They are virtually
coeval with the Plan of St. Gall. See Weyres, 1965, 395ff and 417,
fig. 5.

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