NUMBER, LOCATIONS & LAYOUT OF FACILITIES
FOR BATHING & WASHING
The Plan of St. Gall shows facilities for baths in four
different locations. It provides for a bathhouse for the
sick,[94]
a bathhouse for the novices,[95]
a bathhouse for the
abbot,[96]
and a bathhouse for the monks. The bathhouse for
the monks, or rather the "bathhouse and laundry for the
monks" (balneatoriū & lauandi locus), since both these
facilities were combined in the same structure, lies in the
corner between the dormitory and the refectory. It is a
rectangular structure measuring 22½ × 32½ feet, which is
accessible from the calefactory of the monks by a covered
passageway (egressus de pisale); it is divided internally into
two rooms of approximately equal size, a laundry, which is
provided with a fireplace, and a bathhouse with two tubs
for bathing. Both rooms are entirely surrounded with wall
benches, and the round arch over the door that connects
the laundry with the bathing room suggests that the
building was a masonry structure. Figure 210 is a reproduction
of a woodcut in Schedel's Liber chronicarum,[97]
depicting
Seneca bleeding himself to death, which furnishes us
with a convincing portrait of the kind of tub (cupa balneariatina)
we could expect to find in this building. This example
could be amplified by scores of others. These tubs may
have been used for the washing of clothes as well as for
bathing. Chapter 4 of the synod of 816 rules that the monks
should do their own laundry,[98]
but the aged and sick, who
were incapable of attending to this chore, could be relieved
by others.[99]
It is possible that a special entrance in the
passageway that connects the laundry with the warming
room owes its existence to this eventuality, since it would
make the monks' laundry accessible to novices or serfs
performing this labor for the weak and the aged.
That the Laundry should be directly connected with the
Warming Room makes sense, since the latter, as we have
learned from Adalhard, was the place where the monks
hung up their clothes for drying. But the washing room
may also have been connected with the Dormitory. The
layout of the beds provides for an exit directly over the
egressus de pisale.
