University of Virginia Library

V.17.1

ANIMAL HUSBANDRY:
AN INTRINSIC
PART OF THE MONASTIC ECONOMY

The presence on the Plan of St. Gall of a vast array of
houses for livestock and poultry and their keepers may at
first seem puzzling in view of the monks' essentially vegetarian
diet. It becomes a less surprising phenomenon,
however, when one considers that, although meat was categorically
interdicted to the monks themselves by a rule
that left no margin for ambiguity, it was permitted to
the serfs and workmen, who outnumbered the monks, and
even to the monks themselves in times of sickness and
during the period of bloodletting.[594] But there are other
reasons, and probably more important ones, why the raising
of livestock was a necessary part of the monastic
economy. Animals were needed for hauling and riding.
Without horses and oxen harnessed to plows and carts,
the serfs could neither have tilled the soil nor brought in
the harvest. Saddle horses were an indispensable means of
transportation for the abbot or any other monastic official
whose business took him onto the monastery's outlying
estates. Horses had to be raised for the king as an annual
contribution to the common defense, and horses had to be
kept in readiness for the armed men whom the monastery
was required to dispatch to the king's army in times of
war.[595]

Cows, sheep, goats, and pigs were slaughtered for their
meat, and from the Liber benedictionum of Ekkehart we
learn that the cuts of meat from these animals were as
cherished in his day on the tables of those who could
afford them as they are today.[596] But cows, goats, and sheep
also produced milk, a more important product, because it
was used to make cheese—a staple in everyone's diet.
Sheep's wool was indispensable for making coats and
blankets. Leather was made from the hides of oxen. The
skin of the calf and the lamb yielded a commodity that was
of prime importance for the monastery's religious and
educational mission: parchment. The quill used in writing
the sacred texts came from the wings of geese.

The meat of poultry, as has already been pointed out,
was not subject to the same restrictions as the meat of
quadrupeds. The second synod of Aachen (817) granted
it to the monks for a period of eight days on each of the
great religious feasts of Christmas and Easter. Later the
number of days was reduced to four on each of these

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL, HENHOUSE, HOUSE FOR FOWLKEEPERS, GOOSEHOUSE

466.

466.X

SITE PLAN

The proximity of the fowl runs to the Granary, Vegetable Garden, and
Orchard shows with what degree of skill convenience and necessity were planned
for by the makers of the Plan. Grain for feed could be gleaned or threshed at
need in the Granary and carried to the fowl runs. Proximity to the gardens was
a boon for both birds and their keepers—garden clippings might provide the
chickens and geese with additional food, while in the beds and orchard manure
from the pens could quickly be distributed, enhancing sanitation. In all facilities
housing animals on the Plan of St. Gall, the herdsmen and keepers lived in
close contact with beasts; while the fowlkeepers were spared the literal
necessity of "going to bed with the chickens," their house is separated by only
ten feet from the two poultry enclosures.

The house for fowlkeepers is 35 feet in length (ridge axis E to W) and 42½ feet wide. Its communal hall with fireplace measures 22½ × 35 feet,
allowing two 10-foot aisles at either side for sleeping accommodation.

The form that the pair of circular pens may have taken is discussed extensively on the following pages. Their sheer size, at a diameter of
42½ feet (across the outermost circle) is impressive evidence of the importance that poultry (perhaps including ducks) had in the monastic
economy. A monastery population of the size postulated on the Plan of St. Gall would in itself have required many birds to augment diet; the
guest facilities and lay dependents proposed for St. Gall made planning for fowl pens of this size a necessity. The poultry houses and that for
their keepers are masterpieces of functional planning; they exhibit great charm in the symmetrical composition of circular with rectangular
structures.

[ILLUSTRATION]

467. LUTTRELL PSALTER (1340). GOOSEHERD

LONDON, BRITISH MUSEUM, ADD. MS. 42130, fol. 169v (detail)

[By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum]

A goose and five goslings are threatened by a hawk; the gooseherd waves his hood and staff at it to drive it off. Geese were not only useful as
food, but kept vermin and garden pest populations down; their raucous and hostile response to strangers, well known since the early days of
Rome, may have added to their utility in the life of a large monastic complex.

occasions.[597] For the rest of the year, when consumption was
prohibited, hens were of vital importance for their capacity
to produce eggs—a year round staple in the monastic diet
and one of its most important sources of protein. For egg
production alone, the raising of poultry was bound to be
one of the most important aspects of monastic animal
husbandry, and the polyptichs and household accounts from
medieval abbeys abound with records of supplementary
deliveries of eggs, chickens, and hens (ova, pulli et gallinae)
from the abbey's outlying farms.[598]

Lastly we must not overlook the fact that these animals
provided the only good fertilizer that was known to the
medieval agriculturalist and one that made a vital contribution
to the enrichment of the community's crop and
harvest.

It becomes quite clear then, that despite the monks'
essentially vegetarian diet, the monastery as a self-sustaining
economic and agricultural entity could not forego
the need to raise livestock and poultry in quantities commensurate
with the number of men whom it had to clothe
and feed. In the spring, summer, and autumn the majority
of monastic animals were unquestionably put out to pasture.
For that reason, the houses for livestock and their
keepers shown on the Plan of St. Gall are likely to define
only that space which was needed to stable the animals
kept under roof and shelter during the harsh winter months
in order to insure the propagation of the species. The
costliness of stall feeding demanded that this be done with
discretion. A thirteenth-century directive recorded in the
cartulary of Gloucester Abbey rules that "no useless and
unfertile animals are to be wintered on hay and forage"
(quod nulla animalia inutilia et infructuosa hyementur ad
consumptionem foeni vel foragii) and the text makes it clear
that exceptions to this ruling should be made only with
regard to such useful and deserving animals as the plow
oxen and breeding cows (talia scilicet de quibus non credatur
posse nutriri aliquis bos utilis ad carucas vel vacca competens
ad armentum).[599] The directive reflects a general condition
of medieval animal husbandry that pervaded all social
strata and the whole of medieval life, with only minor
variations on the highest levels.

The importance of animal husbandry is eloquently
attested by St. Fructuosus in the ninth chapter of his
Galician Rule. As noted in the translation by Barlow, this
chapter does not appear in the Fructuosan Rule for other
areas, presumably because (as Fructuosus acknowledges)

[ILLUSTRATION]

468. MEINDERT HOBBEMA

A FARM IN THE SUNLIGHT (1660-1670)

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON D.C.

[By courtesy of the Trustees of the National Gallery of Art]

then, as now, Galicia required "more work on the soil than
any other land" and the monk in whose charge lay the
pasturing of livestock needed not only firm direction but
also moral support:

The total area set aside for animal husbandry on the
Plan of St. Gall takes up more than one-fourth of the
monastery site. It accommodates six houses for the larger
breeds and two enclosures for poultry, as well as the living
rooms and bedrooms needed for their keepers. The stables
for the larger animals are concentrated in a large service
yard lying to the south and west of the claustrum; the
houses for the poultry are in the southeast corner of the
monastery site, between the vegetable garden and the
granary.