The Plan of St. Gall :: :: University of Virginia Library

The generous dimensions assigned to the House for
Horses and Oxen testifies, not only to the important role
these beasts of burden played in the monastic economy,
but also to the high social standing their caretakers held
amongst the monastery's permanent body of servants.[614]
Columella writes that in his day one farm laborer was
considered enough to look after two yokes of oxen.[615] The
bedrooms of the oxherds on the Plan are large enough to
provide bed space for seven hands; and the same number
of men could be accommodated in the quarters of the
horse grooms.

[614]

The high social status of the caretakers of the plow and cart pulling
oxen among the permanent servants of a medieval estate is reflected in
the payments for their services recorded in manorial accounts. I am
quoting from R. H. Hilton's summary of these conditions in the West
Midlands of thirteenth-century England: "The most important of the
full-time servants were those ploughmen (tenatores) who actually guided
the plough, better paid than the fugatores who drove the plough animals.
Carters were normally equivalent in status to the chief ploughman,
then came the cowman, swineherd and dairymaid. Full-time shepherds
were of high status, but quite often shepherds would only be taken for
periods of less than a year, such as for the winter or summer visit of the
flock to a manor." (Hilton, 1966, 137).

[615]

Columella, On Agriculture, Book VI, chap. 2, ed. Forster-Heffner,
II, 1954, 137.