[ILLUSTRATION]
478.A FONTANELLA (ST.-WANDRILLE) SEINE-MARITIME FRANCE, FOUNDED BY ST. WANDRILLE, 645
SCHEME OF CRITERIA FOR AN INTERPRETIVE STUDY
FONTANELLA (ST.-WANDRILLE)
These studies show in the Carolingian monastery of Fontanella a dormitory that is a
monastic variant of a Germanic long house of very ancient vintage, examples of which
are discussed in this chapter. Our present interpretation, differing from those proposed by
von Schlosser, 1889, Hager, 1901, and in minutiae even from one proposed by Horn
(1973, 46, fig. 47), makes no claim for authenticity in particulars. The design of the
architectural envelope, its fenestration, and its "graceful cloister walks" is an exercise
of imagination. But we feel confident of the interpretation of the disposition of primary
building masses.
The Gesta Abbatum Fontanellensium, written around A.D. 830 and 845,
describes the church of Abbot St. Wandrille, begun in 649 (here translated pending
fuller treatment in a subsequent study):
"The above-said admirable father built in this place a basilica in the name of the
most blessed prince of the Apostles, Peter, in squared stones and having 290 feet in
length and 37 feet in width."
Almost 200 years later Ansegis began construction of the cloister. First to be built was a
new dormitory (see Latin and English text, p. 277). The Gesta describes the erection
of a new refectory and a third structure, the MAIOR DOMUS:
"Thereafter he built another house called the refectory, through the middle of
which he had constructed a masonry wall to divide it so that one part would serve as
refectory, the other as cellar. This building was of precisely the same material and
the same dimensions as the dormitory . . . then he caused to be erected a third
exceptional structure which they called `the larger building'. It turned toward the
east, with one end touching the dormitory, the other adjoining the refectory. He
ordered a supply room to be installed in it, and a warming room, as well as several
other rooms. But because of his premature death this work remained in part
unfinished.
"These three most beautiful buildings are laid out in this manner: the dormitory is
situated with one end turned toward the north, the other toward the south, with its
south end attached to the basilica of St. Peter. The refectory likewise is aligned in
these two directions, and on the south side it almost touches the apse of the basilica
of St. Peter. Then that larger building is placed just as we have said above . . . . The
church of St. Peter lies to the south and faces east . . . ."
The chronicler finished his account by telling us that Ansegis "ordered graceful porches
to be built in front of the dormitory, refectory, and larger house," and that he
added midway along the cloister walk "in front of the dormitory a house for charters"
and "in front of the refectory a building in which to preserve a quantity of books."
On the use of the cloister wing that runs along the flank of the church as a place for
daily chapter meetings, see I, 249ff.
Ansegis's construction of the claustral range
of Fontanella, begun in 823, precedes
Gozbert's reconstruction of the monastery of
St. Gall by only a few years. Like St.
Gall, Fontanella conforms with the claustral
scheme emerging from Aachen in 816-817:
its ranges enclose an open court adjacent to
one flank of the church.
The topography of Fontanella did not allow
Ansegis to place the new cloister on the
south side of the church (as did Gozbert at
St. Gall, in conformity with the Aachen
scheme; cf. below, 327ff) because the old
church of St. Wandrille already stood
against the southern slope of a valley too
steep to permit further construction. But
there was ample space for building on the
flat valley floor north of the church.
In Ansegis's time the Roman supply road
from Rouen ran east of the abbey, and the
unchanneled Seine often flooded the low
valley meadows. These limitations of topography
caused Ansegis to adopt a most unorthodox
order for his claustral buildings—
cellar and refectory to the east; close to
supply routes; dormitory to the west. A
further difference is that in the Aachen
scheme all claustral structures were double-storied
whereas at Fontanella they were not;
hence their inordinate length.
Ansegis's cloister strikingly illustrates the
Carolingian search for a new order in which
a Roman passion for symmetry and monumentality
prevails over loose, casual
assembly of parts. It is furthermore a
testimony to the triumph of Benedictine
monachism over other less ordered forms of
monastic observance, and the role the Benedictine
ideals played in lending new eminence
and vigor to the quest for cultural unity
that pervaded the whole of Carolingian life.
