University of Virginia Library

Royal guesthouses of the Consuetudines Farfenses

An interesting guesthouse for royal travelers, bearing
striking resemblance to the House for Horses and Oxen,
is described in the Consuetudines Farfenses[616] , a literary
master plan for a monastic settlement written around 1043
in the monastery of Farfa in the Sabine mountains, but
now generally believed to record the layout of the monastery
which Abbot Odilo (994-1048) built at Cluny:[617]

Next to the narthex must be built a lodging 135 feet long, 30 feet
wide, for receiving all visiting men who arrive at the monastery
with horsemen. From one part of the dwelling 40 beds have been
prepared, and just as many pillows made of cloth, where only men
sleep, with 40 latrines. In the other part are arranged 30 beds
where countesses or other noblewomen may sleep, with 30 latrines,

---

276

[ILLUSTRATION]

476. LUTTRELL PSALTER (1340). PLOWING

LONDON, BRITISH MUSEUM, ADD. MS. 42130, fol. 170 (detail)

[By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum]

The plow is drawn by two span of yoked oxen guided by one man; another alongside them wields a long whip. The plow itself, with heavy
blade cutting vertically, plowshare at right angles cutting horizontally, and mould board turning the cut slice over to the side, is one of those
great innovations made by the barbarians of the North in the early Middle Ages, and one that changed the course of history. For its primitive
Roman prototype incapable of coping with the heavy alluvial soil of the North, see fig. 262, I, 348. For a superb review of the full economic
and cultural impact of this piece of equipment, see Lynn White, 1963, 44ff.

where they alone may attend to their natural necessities. In the
middle of this lodging should be placed tables like the refectory
tables where both men and women may eat.[618]

The Farfa Consuetudinary describes a guesthouse that is
to be an integral part of the architectural layout of an
eleventh-century monastery. (The mounts and grooms of
the traveling party were to be housed in a separate building.)

The measurements of this building, as listed in this
account, are wholly compatible with the function it was to
perform, as is demonstrated in the reconstruction of its
layout shown in fig. 477, where it is assumed that the
mattresses were ranged side by side at right angles to the
long walls. Laid out in this manner, the two wings of the
building could indeed yield sleeping space for forty men
and thirty ladies, leaving in the center a dining hall 30
feet square. The privies, as the text implies, were separate.
They could not have been arranged in a single line, as that
would have required an outhouse 175 feet long (40 feet
more than the house itself). The proportions are more
reasonable, if we assume that they were arranged in a
double row.[619]