The Plan of St. Gall a study of the architecture & economy of & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery |
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RULES GOVERNING WORK IN THE KITCHEN |
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 | The Plan of St. Gall |  |
RULES GOVERNING WORK IN THE KITCHEN
The management of the kitchen, like that of the refectory,
comes under the jurisdiction of the cellarer, whom
Adalhard warns about getting so immersed in the detail of
chores that can be handled by others, that he may not keep
himself free for the important task of directing and supervising
237. PLAN OF ST. GALL. KITCHEN & BATHHOUSE OF NOVITIATE AND INFIRMARY[208]
AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION
Because of their different diets and remoteness from the Monks' Kitchen and Bathhouse, the planner provided the ill with a kitchen-bath
building adjacent to the infirmary, and a similar kitchen-bath building for the novices symmetrically located on the south. The Plan, in this
part, reveals remarkable responsiveness to administration, practical convenience, and professional care. The walls could have been of masonry
where we show timber construction.
done by the monks themselves, who are assigned to this
task in weekly shifts. Talk is permitted only when the
fulfillment of a chore makes speech inevitable. For the rest
of the time all work is done with the brothers continually
singing psalms.[210]
Laymen and serfs are not permitted in the kitchen.
Adalhard of Corbie is very emphatic on this point and
orders that if laymen assist in the task of preparing and
cleaning the food, "some window, niche, or opening outside
of the kitchen should be set up as a place where the
brothers may pick up the food to be prepared or carry the
food to be washed."[211]
"If there are vegetables to be cleaned or dressed for cooking,
or fish to be gutted or scaled, or beans of different
sorts to be washed or prepared," he adds, "the laymen must
fully and honestly perform these tasks outside the kitchen as
many times as is necessary, and in places assigned for the
purpose. They must use great care to place or stack the
food in a spot where the brothers can conveniently pick it
up. . . . If this procedure is followed, the laymen will not
have to come in to the brothers, nor will the brothers have
to go out to them."[212]
238. ROGER OF SALERNO
CHIRURGIA (13th century), III, 25 fol. 7. (London, British Museum, Sloane 1977)
[by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum]
The illustration portrays a medical bath. The Chirurgia of Rogerius Salernitanus (1108-1170) is a work marking the beginning of the
medieval renascence of ancient surgical learning and practice. From Roger's time to the end of the Middle Ages, it served as the authoritative
text for surgery both north and south of the Alps. Roger was a student of Greek and Arabic sources, and as a practicing surgeon, a man of vast
experience and great originality of judgement. The Church prohibited the clergy from practicing surgery, and not until the 18th century was
surgery accepted as an autonomous discipline in European universities.
239. ROME. TRAJAN'S BASILICA AND FORUM (DEDICATED 313). PLAN
[after Enciclopedia dell'Arte Antica, VI, 1965, 838, fig. 951]
Platner termed this complex the "last, largest and most magnificent of the imperial fora built by Trajan . . . probably the most impressive and
magnificent group of buildings in Rome." In final form it had five parts: the forum proper; the basilica Ulpia; the column of Trajan; two halls
housing the library; and the great temple of Trajan erected by Hadrian after Trajan's death in A.D. 116. The site dimensions are 185 × 310 m.
The forum itself consists of a rectangular court, with colonnades on three sides and two semicircular exedrae facing each other across the court
in the middle of its two long sides. The court is entered through a central gate in a convex wall contiguous to the forum of Augustus. The
basilica Ulpia lies at the eastern end of this court, its axis at right angles to that of the forum. It is rectangular in plan, five-aisled, with an
apse at each of its two narrow ends, and three monumental portals on the long side facing the forum. Two doors in the opposite wall give access
to the small, open court that accommodates in its center the famous column of Trajan, whose pedestal served as a sepulchral chamber for the
emperor's ashes and whose shaft displays reliefs arranged in a spiral band, representing the principal events of Trajan's campaign in Dacia
(A.D. 101-106). The rest of the court is taken up by two halls housing the library, one for Greek, the other for Latin manuscripts.
In the east the forum terminates in a monumental hemicycle, in the axis of which Hodrian erected the great temple honoring Trajan and his
wife Plotina. The ruins of the temple of Trajan were eventually covered by almost two millennia of rubble. But during the Carolingian period its
buildings, although damaged, were probably sufficiently well preserved to convey an accurate image of their original appearance and composition.
The real disintegration occurred in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, when Rome began to grow again and the ruins of the ancient city
were quarried by everyone needing building materials.
The culmination of interest in this great expanse of magnificence and splendor is the
Column of Trajan, A.D. 114.
Of special interest, set above the doorway to the sepulchral chamber in the base of the
shaft, is a single stone about nine feet wide and a little less than four feet high. On this
stone is to be seen a dedicatory inscription, carved and composed in six lines of lettering
created and executed in a manner never surpassed and rarely equalled.
Here, one finds exemplified "a monumental writing such as the world has not seen since"
(David Diringer). Roman capital letters, capitales quadratoe, attained the level of their
highest perfection in the first and second centuries A.D.
Roman letters of this excellence (on the tomb of a great emperor, flanked on each side by a
library for manuscripts) became symbols that helped shape learning and education in the
renaissance of Charlemagne. The Roman letter prevails today. The display type used in
this book, designed by Eric Gill, himself a cutter of letters in stone, is directly related to
the Roman model cut in stone.
E.B.
240.A TRIER. AULA OF IMPERIAL PALACE
PLAN (4th century)
The aula, whose axis runs from south to north is 67 × 30 × 27.5m.
It was preceded by a monumental narthex and terminates in the
north in a large apse, which contained the emperor's throne. The
entire floor of the hall (nearly 1700 sq. m.) was underpinned by a
hypocaust system with tubes in the long walls carrying heat to a
height of 8m. The aula was flanked on either side by a narrow
colonnaded court. While the precise layout of these courts became
known only through recent excavations, it is possible that in
Charlemagne's time they were still intact. They might therefore have
exerted a direct influence on the creation of concepts embodied in the
layout of the Novitiate and Infirmary of the Plan of St. Gall.
The illustration, figure 237, shows the facility for Novices. The
Infirmary facility is identical but of opposite hand, i.e. flopped plan.
Consuetudines Corbeienses, chap. 5; ed. Semmler, Corp. cons. mon.,
I, 1963, 384, and Jones, III, Appendix II, 109.
Consuetudines Corbeienses, chap. 5; ed. Semmler, Corp. cons. mon.,
I, 1963, 385: "But to keep these matters from slipping from anyone's
mind, because of some earlier code, we herewith briefly formulate the
three principles underlying all these statements: that is, either keep quiet
if the matters are not essential, or say what is necessary, or else chant
psalms" and Jones, III, Appendix II, 110.
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