V.18.2
TWO BASIC TYPES OF PRIVIES
INDIVIDUAL PRIVIES
Individual privies directly attached to the house or an
apartment, containing either one or more toilet seats, are
at the disposition of visiting noblemen (fig. 495A) and those
monastic functionaries who, because of their specific responsibilities,
must live in separate quarters outside the
claustrum, viz., the Porter (fig. 495B), the master of the
Outer School (fig. 495B), the master of the novices,
(fig. 495C), the chief physician (fig. 495D). They are
also installed for small groups of regular monks who are
not part of the monastic community, such as the visiting
monks (fig. 495E), and those being segregated for health
reasons, such as the sick novices (fig. 495C) or the acutely
ill patients in the House of the Physicians (fig. 495D).
COMMUNAL PRIVIES
Apart from these private toilets directly attached to the
bedrooms of their respective users, there are others installed
in greater quantities in separate outhouses located
directly behind the buildings they serve. The largest
among these is the privy for the servants at the House for
Distinguished Guests (fig. 496A). It is 10 feet wide, 45
feet long, and contains eighteen toilet seats. Next in size
is the privy for the students of the Outer School, which
measures 10 feet by 37½ feet and is furnished with fifteen
seats (fig. 496B). Then follows in order of decreasing magnitude:
the privy of the House for Bloodletting, with seven
seats (fig. 496C); the privy of the Abbot's House, with six
seats (fig. 496D); and the privies of the Novitiate and the
Infirmary, each with six seats (fig. 496E). The Monks'
Privy (fig. 497) falls into a category by itself; like the other
collective privies of the Plan, it is a separate house, but it
does not have their narrow, elongated floor plan; instead, it
is almost square. It measures 30 feet by 40 feet, provides
for a total of nine seats (
sedilia), a stand for a lantern
(
lucerna), and three other facilities of oblong shape, whose
function remains unexplained.
DIFFERENT ORIGINS
The small individual privies of the distinguished guests
and the higher monastic officials (fig. 495, A-E) doubtlessly,
have their prototypes in the vernacular architecture of the
upper strata of Carolingian society. The longhouse for the
servants of the distinguished guests, the students of the
Outer School, and other smaller monastic groups (figs.
496, A-E), I would be inclined to derive from Roman and
medieval military architecture, although I cannot support
this hypothesis with any tangible archaeological evidence.
The square shape of the Monk's Privy is somewhat reminiscent
of that of the Roman public latrine, but may
actually not be in any ancestral relation to the latter, and
may owe its squarish shape to the desire to add to the single
row of toilet seats such other facilities as a urinal or troughs
with water for washing hands.
