III. 2
NOVITIATE AND INFIRMARY
III.2.1
TWO AUTONOMOUS CLOISTERS IN A
SYMMETRICAL BUILDING COMPLEX
The training of the novices and the care of the sick are
relegated on the Plan of St. Gall to a building complex (fig.
236) that stands separate from the houses of the regular
monks. It consists of two autonomous cloisters, each about
two-thirds of the surface area of the cloister of the regular
monks, laid out on either side of a double-apsed church
(ECLESIA) which is internally divided into a chapel for
the novices (facing east), and a chapel for the sick (facing
west). The axis of this church is a prolongation of the axis
of the main church. The entrances to the two respective
cloisters lie on the west, on either side of the apse of the
chapel for the sick, but since the apex of this apse touches
the apex of the eastern paradise of the main church, it
would have been impossible for any of the novices to stray
onto the grounds of the Infirmary, or for any of the sick to
enter into the cloister of the novices. Aesthetically, and
even in the functional layout of their spaces, these two
installations mirror each other in almost perfect symmetry,
yet in actual life their occupants were completely separated.
The church is 27½ feet wide and 110 feet long. Each of the
cloisters on either side of it covers a surface area of 75 × 90
feet, not counting the adjoining privies and hypocausts.
The entire complex of buildings was probably inscribed
into a plot of land 110 feet wide and 210 feet long.
III.2.2
TWO CHAPELS IN A CHURCH
INTERNALLY HALVED
The two chapels are designated by a single name ECCLESIA,
in capitalis rustica. They lie on either side of a
wall which divides the structure into halves, one chapel
opening into the Infirmary (istorü ingressus), the other into
the Novitiate (istorthic). Each chapel is divided into three
areas of approximately equal size: an area where the novices
and the sick are seated during the celebration of the divine
services, an intermediate section with two freestanding
"benches" (formulae) for a selected group of singers, and
the apse with the "altar" (altar̄; idem) raised one "step"
(grad) above the level of the other parts of the oratory.
Twenty-eight persons may be seated in each chapel:
twenty-two in the principal space of each chapel and six
on the freestanding spaces in front of the altar space. As in
the principal Church of the monastery, a clear distinction
is made between the seating of the general choir and the
space reserved for the voices of the specially trained singers,
who are in charge of the more difficult parts of the antiphon.[268]
III.2.3
NOVITIATE
LAYOUT OF THE CLOISTER
A hexameter written clockwise into the open space of the
cloister yard of the Novitiate informs us:
Hoc claustro oblati pulsantib· adsociantur[269]
In this cloister the oblates live with the
postulants
The oblati were youths offered to the monastery by their
parents.[270]
The pulsantes, literally "those who knock" (i.e., insist
on being admitted despite initial rejection and deliberate
discouragement) are novices on probation. The Rule of St.
Benedict prescribes a probation period of one year for each
novice.[271]
The cloister walks (porticus) with their arcaded galleries
enclosing an open pratellum or garden repeat on a smaller
scale the layout of the cloister of the regular monks. In both
there is no direct communication between adjacent rooms;
each opens separately onto the corresponding section of the
cloister walk. The designs of the arcades and the layout of
the pratellum are identical, and both elevations show in vertical
projection three arcades on either side of a central
passageway, a square area in the center of the pratellum with
a circle, which (to judge by analogy with the same symbol in
the monks' cloister) indicates the position of a savin tree in
the cloisters of the novices.
The cloister walks, in turn, give access to a U-shaped
tract of buildings, containing on the west a refectory
(refectorium) and a storeroom (camera); on the east, a
dormitory (dormitorium) and a warming room (pisalis); and
on the south, a sick room (infimort domus) and the apartment
for the master of the novices (mansio magistr eort).
Like the warming room of the regular monks, the warming
room of the novices is heated by a hypocaust with firing
chamber (camin') and smoke stack (exitus fumi). The sick
ward and the lodging of the master are heated with corner
fireplaces and have separate privies (exitus), each with two
seats. The dormitory has a privy (neces̄s̄) with six seats. The
beds for the novices are not shown on the Plan. If they were
placed in single file along the four walls of the room, there
would have been space for twelve beds; if they were
arranged in alternating sequence, parallel and at right angles
to the wall, the room could have accommodated about
twenty novices. Twelve is the number prescribed by Abbot
Adalhard of Corbie[272]
as the normal contingent of pulsantes
for the monastery of Corbie, and this may reflect a general
condition.
NOVICES AND THEIR SUPERVISORS
Hildemar[273]
classifies the youths of the monastery as
"children" (infantes), "boys" (pueri), and "adolescents"
(adolescentiores) according to their respective ages: "children"
up to the age of seven, "boys" from the age of seven
to fourteen, "adolescents" from the age of fourteen to
twenty-eight. Since every ten novices, according to Hildemar,[274]
had to have three to four supervisors with them at
all times, the Novitiate must have housed, along with the
novices, four or five regular monks. Some of those must
have slept in the Dormitory of the Novices. Others may have
shared the quarters of the master of the Novitiate. That the
latter was not the sole occupant of his apartment is suggested
by the size of his room and the fact that his privy has
two toilet seats. But the master's room could never have
held more than four or five beds besides his own. I call
attention to the interesting observation that the maximum
number of beds which could be installed in the novitiate
(twenty-six) does not exceed the seating capacity of the
chapel (twenty-eight), but is, rather, slightly below it.[275]
DIET AND CLOTHING
The abbot was responsible for the novices' food and
clothing. He had to provide them with fish, milk, and butter
and even with meat on the days of the higher religious
feasts. The younger boys received larger portions than the
adolescents. From the age of fifteen on, the novices renounced
meat entirely and their diet conformed to that of
the regular monks.[276]
Once each week, or at least once a
month, the youths were taken out into the open for games
and other forms of physical exercise.[277]
A complete account
of their clothing is given by Adalhard of Corbie:
These are what should be given to our aforesaid clerical canons who
have the special title of "knockers": in clothing, two white tunics
and a third of another color and four hose, two pairs of breeches,
two felt slippers, four shoes with new soles costing seven pence at
the cobblers, two gloves, two mufflers. These they receive every
year, but a cope of serge and fur and a mantle or bedcloth, or a
blanket, in the third year. All these should be taken from the
clothing which the brothers return when they receive new. And
they should select from the stock those garments which they think
are most useful to them. The other cowled garment—the tunic or
the cowl of serge from which the tunic can be made—will be issued
at the discretion of the prior.[278]
Adalhard also informs us that at Corbie some novices
were attached for special duty to other buildings: three to
the infirmary, one to the monks' laundry, and one to the
abbot's house.[279]
III.2.4
INFIRMARY
LAYOUT OF THE CLOISTER
The cloister containing the Infirmary lies on the northern
side of the double chapel:
Fribūs infirmis pariter locus iste par & ur
For the sick brethren similarly this place should
be established
The layout of its buildings corresponds in every detail to
that of the Novitiate. The warming room (pisal) and the
dormitory (dormitoriū·) lie in the east wing; the supply
room (
Camera) and the refectory (
Refectorium) in the west
wing—but the sequence is reversed, resulting in a complete
mirror reflection of the arrangement of the corresponding
spaces of the Novitiate. The room which in the Novitiate is
reserved for the sick (
infirmorum domus), is in the Infirmary
designated as "the place for those who suffer from acute
illness" (
locus ualde infirmorum). The dormitory of the Infirmary
(
dormitoriū·), then, must have served as sleeping
quarters for those afflicted with minor ailments, as well as
for the aged and infirm who made the Infirmary a permanent
home.
[280]
Its bedding capacity is the same as in the dormitory
of the novices: twelve beds, if they were ranged in single
file along the four walls of the room; about twenty, if they
were staggered. The apartment of the master of the
Infirmary (
mansio magistri eorum) and the "room for the
critically ill" each have a corner fireplace, but lack the other
facility shown in the corresponding rooms of the Novitiate,
the privy. This is one of the few genuine oversights of the
Plan and may be an inadvertent omission by the copyist.
[281]
CARE OF THE SICK:
THEIR DIETARY PREROGATIVES
The welfare of the sick was one of St. Benedict's primary
concerns:
Before all things and above all things care must be taken of the sick,
so that they may be served in very deed as Christ himself; for he
said: I was sick and ye visited me; and what ye did to one of these least
ones, ye did unto me. But let the sick on their part consider that they
are being served for the honour of God, and not provoke their
brethren who are serving them by their unreasonable demands.[282]
The abbot is admonished to take the utmost care that they
suffer no neglect. They are allowed to take baths, as often
as their condition requires and, in contradistinction to the
healthy monks, to whom the meat of quadrupeds is categorically
interdicted, the sick are allowed to eat meat when
they are very weak, "for the restoration of their strength,"
but must abstain from it as usual, as soon as they are
better.[283]
St. Benedict stipulates that the Infirmary be established
as a separate building (cella super se deputata) under the
supervision of a "God-fearing, diligent, and careful" master,
and Hildemar, in his commentary to this passage, says
that it ought to consist of several rooms in order to be
prepared for all exigencies; otherwise it might happen that
"one is ready to die, another about to vomit, a third in need
of eating, and a fourth compelled to take care of his natural
needs."[284]
As in the Refectory of the monks, the meal in this
refectory was accompanied by reading. If there were six
or less the text was read "in a subdued tone" (leniter); if
there were twenty, it was read "in full voice" (in voce).[285]
The Infirmary had to have its own oratory so that the sick
could attend mass.[286]
If they were too weak to be taken into
the oratory, the office was read to them in the sick ward.[287]
ADMISSION TO INFIRMARY
Admission to the Infirmary was neither a trifling nor a
purely private event. The first step was to appeal to the
abbot and the entire body of the assembled community for
entrance to the Infirmary. The
Concordus regularis, a monastic
consuetudinary of the end of the tenth century, based
partly on ancient English and partly on continental traditions,
defines the process as follows: When one of the brethren
is called upon to pay the debt of the common fragility
. . . he must declare to the abbot and the entire assembled
community the reasons of his distress, and then, after
having received their benediction, will be admitted to the
infirmary.
[288]
The Infirmary does not include space for physicians.
The quarters of these professionals are in an adjacent house,
to the north; it will be discussed in a later chapter.[289]
III.2.5
KITCHENS AND BATHHOUSES
Because of the detached location of their quarters, their
special diet, and their prerogative to take baths whenever
their condition required, the novices and the sick were
provided with their own kitchens and bathhouses. These lie
west of the Novitiate and the Infirmary, on either side of
the eastern paradise of the Church. They consist of two
oblong houses (22½ × 45 feet),[290]
each internally divided
into two equal halves, one containing the "kitchen" (coquina
eorundē), the other, "the bath" ([balnea]toriu, balneatorum
domus). The kitchens have a square stove, the baths a
central fire place, four corner tubs for bathing, and three
short wall benches (fig. 237). The Infirmary kitchen, besides
attending to the needs of sick monks, also provides the
food for the brothers who are being bled in the adjacent
House for Bloodletting (coqina eorunde & sanguine minuentium).
A thirteenth-century manuscript of the Chirurgia of
Roger of Salerno, contains an illumination of a medical
bath (fig. 238).[291]
The patient, as the accompanying text
explains, is soaking in the tub in order to heal "a rib bent
inward"; the instructions for the physician are that he
"anoints his hands with honey, turpentine, or pitch, then
presses and relaxes them at the hurt place, continuing
until the rib is restored to its proper place.[292]
III.2.6
SCHEME OF THE COMPLEX
ITS CLASSICISM
I am not aware of the existence of any other complex of
buildings of comparable designs, either earlier or later than
this one, nor of the existence elsewhere of two chapels,
placed end to end on the same axis, facing in opposite directions.
No other building of the Plan of St. Gall is as
classical in flavor as the complex which houses the Novitiate
and the Infirmary. Its classicism stands out against the rest
of Carolingian architecture with an intensity comparable to
that of the Aachen or Vienna treasury gospels against the
other schools of Carolingian book illumination. While no-one
has pointed at any classical prototypes (the question has
as yet not even been raised)—as one gazes at the consummate
order of its building masses laid out at right angles
around two open galleried courts on either side of a dominant
axial structure, terminating in apse and counter apse, one's
mind strays back to the grandiose layout of the forum of
Emperor Trajan with its double-apsed basilica and its
monumental courts (fig. 239).
ROMAN IMPERIAL PROTOTYPES
Constantine's basilica at Trier
Yet the answer to this puzzle may be closer at hand.
Excavations conducted after the close of World War II on
the grounds of the Constantinian Basilica at Trier, have
made it clear that the great audience hall in the palace of
Constantine the Great (figs. 240.A and B) had attached to
each of its two long sides an open galleried court.[293]
The
weight of the architectural masses differs distinctly (colossal
hall with comparatively narrow courts at Trier—large
courts with a comparatively narrow center tract of chapels
in the Novitiate and Infirmary complex) but the underlying
principles of composition are identical.
The porticus villa at Konz
The analogies are even stronger, if one turns from here
to a building, excavated early in 1959, 8 km. upstream from
Trier, on a high embankment formed by the confluence of
the river Saar with the Moselle: the imperial summer
residence of Konz, the ancient Contionacum.[294]
This large
and elegant porticus villa (fig. 241.A and B), of an overall
length of 84 m. and an overall width of 38 m., consisted
of a central audience hall flanked on either side by an open
court that had attached to its outer side two massive cross
wings, with dwelling units, view terraces and a bath.
Lengthwise these units were connected by two magnificent
porticos. Admittedly, even here the analogies tend to
become evasive if one begins to focus on details: the courts
are not colonnaded. Nevertheless, the two buildings make
it forcefully clear that the Novitiate and Infirmary complex
of the Plan of St. Gall, with its two open courts symmetrically
laid out to either side of a dominant center block
had its historical roots in Roman palace architecture.
Other porticus villas in the territory of the
Salian Franks
The porticus villa at Konz is not the only example of its
kind north of the Alps. In the early 1930s of this century
the Dutch excavator W. C. Braat unearthed on a hill
called Kloosterberg near Plasmolen, parish Mook, in the
province of Limburg, Holland, the foundations of a
Roman villa, which he interpreted to have been composed
of a large central hall, flanked by two open courts with
living ranges grouped around them on the three remaining
sides (fig. 242).[295]
Another luxurious Roman porticus villa
of this type had been excavated as early as 1904-1906, at
Wittlich on the Lieser river, a northern tributary of the
Moselle.[296]
This, however, exhausts our knowledge of this
building type. No other Roman villas or palaces of comparable
plan appear to have been found anywhere else in
the Roman Empire; and it may be significant for our
problem that the only four examples known to date are
located within an air distance of no more than 62 (Wittlich),
75 (Trier and Konz) and 87 (Kloosterberg) miles respectively
from the Palace at Aachen, where the details for the
scheme of the Plan of St. Gall were worked out.
Could they still be seen in Carolingian times?
Of course, this raises the question whether any of these
presumptive Roman prototypes could still be seen in
Carolingian times. For the porticus villa at Konz and the
audience hall of the imperial palace at Trier this question
must probably be answered in the affirmative. The villa
at Konz had walls of considerable height, even as late as
the seventeenth century, as is attested by drawings made
of its ruins at that period.[297]
The audience hall of Constantine,
although internally divided into a variety of smaller
spaces and externally submerged in an agglomeration of
other extraneous accretions, remained in constant use, and
its masonry survived even the holocaust of Allied carpet-bombing
in August 1944.
Historians of Trier have pointed out that the worst
damage inflicted to its Roman buildings was caused not by
the havoc of the Frankish conquest (or any of the other
barbarian incursions of the Moselle river valley), but
through their ruthless exploitation, by their own medieval
and postmedieval guardians, who used these treasures as a
source for building materials, or ceded them for that use to
others. The Roman amphitheater of Trier remained intact
until the thirteenth century, when it was deeded to the
monks of Hemmerode by the Bishop of Trier (1211) with
leave to use its stones for the construction of buildings on a
vignard they had acquired outside the walls of the city.[298]
The Barbara baths were used for residential purposes by a
local noble family, and in this manner preserved throughout
the better part of the Middle Ages. It was only after
the last descendant of that family had died, in the fourteenth
century, that this building was abandoned and
surrendered to the citizens of Trier as a free-for-all quarry.
What its medieval pilferers left behind was finally blown
up by explosive charges in the seventeenth century and
used for the construction of a college for Jesuits.
[299]
The
ability to survive the storms of the Germanic migration was
strongest of course in the walled and fortified towns, which
continued to serve as administrative centers for both the
church and the secular powers. But even in the country the
continuity of life was not so radically broken as was
formerly believed. In an illuminating review of this
problem, based on a study of the distribution pattern of
Roman and Frankish cemeteries, Kurt Böhner could
demonstrate that large segments of the Roman and Gallo-Roman
populations in the Moselle River basin continued
to carry on their peaceful work, under their new Germanic
rulers, living side by side with them on interspersed
holdings.
[300]
In the light of these conditions there appears to be no
reason whatsoever to question the survival, in Carolingian
times on Frankish territory, of buildings (albeit in ruinous,
but nevertheless in recognizable condition) of the type of
the imperial villa at Konz or to doubt the possibility of an
influence of this building tradition upon the creation of the
layout for the Novitiate and Infirmary complex of the
Plan of St. Gall.
III.2.7
NOVITIATE & INFIRMARY COMPLEX IN
THE CONTEXT OF THE WHOLE PLAN
THREE SEPARATE CLOISTERS: AN ANSWER
TO MONASTIC STRATIFICATION
Conceptually, of course, this plan is an elaboration of the
layout of the monastery's principal church and claustrum,
and like the latter, it has its compositional roots in clearly
definable functional needs. Monastic custom required that
the novices be separated from the regular monks, the healthy
from the sick, and all of the religiosi from the family of
the monastery's serfs and workmen. This called for a
tripartite internal division of the claustral section of the
architectural plant as well as for a separation of this entire
aggregate of cloisters from an outer belt of service buildings,
in which the serfs and workmen were housed. The Plan of
St. Gall offers a brilliant answer to these needs: in axial
prolongation of the monastery church and the cloister of the
regular monks, a second church, of one-third the length of
the principal church, internally halved so as to be able to
serve the occupants of two further cloisters, ranged symmetrically
to either side of this sanctuary.
AXIALITY OF CHURCHES:
A PRINCIPLE INHERITED FROM EARLY
CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE
The placing of this complex on the axis of the main
church recalls a scheme that was in use in Early Christian
times in the eastern parts of the Roman empire, in such
places as the sanctuary of Menas in Abu Mina, Egypt,
fourth to fifth century,[301]
the cathedral of Gerasa (Jerash,
Palestine, ca. 400), and the church of St. Theodor, in the
same town, 494-96 (fig. 243),[302]
as well as an early Byzantine
complex at Ephesus, in Asia Minor.[303]
In all of these places
several churches were arranged in sequence, one behind
the other, along the same axis. The prototype of this
arrangement may have been the Constantinian Anastasis
Church at Jerusalem.[304]
A striking early medieval parallel
existed at St. Augustine's Abbey at Canterbury (fig. 244).
There, three churches, aligned east to west, were built in
Saxon times (SS. Peter and Paul, 598-616; St. Pancras,
before 613; St. Mary, about 618) and a fourth one at the time
of Abbot Wulfric (d. 1059).[305]
Undoubtedly, there were
others;[306]
the majority of the early medieval twin or cluster
churches, however, were laid out in lateral sequence or in
rather haphazard fashion.
GROUPING OF BUILDING MASSES: A
TRANSFER TO SITE ORGANIZATION OF PRINCIPLES
DEVELOPED IN BOOK ILLUMINATION
In the layout of the churches and cloisters of the Plan
of St. Gall another influence must be acknowledged: with
all of its classicism, it also has an amazing kinship with the
layout of some of the great illuminated pages found in
Carolingian and Iberno-Saxon manuscripts, in particular,
with those pages which illustrate the opening words of
each Gospel. Again, it may be futile to point at any one
specific example. Yet as one glances at the great decorated
page with the opening word of St. Mark's (Quoniam) in
the Book of Kells (fig. 245),
[307]
one cannot help but be
struck by the compositional similarities between the layout
of its dominant letter masses (stem and loop of the great
initial
Q) and that of the dominant architectural masses on
the Plan of St. Gall (aggregate of churches and cloisters):
their asymmetrical axiality, the manner of their framing by
secondary surrounding units (fig. 246). One cannot help
wonder whether there might not be some compositional
connection between the shape of the large inverted
L that
forms the second dominant motif of the
Quoniam-page of
the Book of Kells and the manner in which the guest and
service buildings to the south and west of the Church of the
Plan of St. Gall are pressed into an L-shaped sequence of
roofs that frame the dominant building masses of Church
and cloister in a similar manner. I am far from attempting
to establish any direct connection between the Plan of St.
Gall and the Book of Kells—the influence could have come
from common sources in a dozen different ways—but
should like to confine myself to the more general observation
that the comparison suggests that in the grouping of
the basic architectural masses of his monastery site the
architect may have drawn some inspiration from the
grouping of the letter masses on the great illuminated
manuscripts of his period.
III.2.8
RECONSTRUCTION
The reconstruction of the Novitiate and Infirmary (figs.
247-250) complex poses no problems. The round apses of its
two chapels, its arcaded cloister walks, its Roman hypocaust
system leave no doubt that it was to have been a masonry
structure. In determining the heights of these buildings, we
have based our calculations on the minimum requirements,
as we did in the elevation of the Church. The arcades of the
cloister walks would have had to be sufficiently high to give
head clearance; the windows of the two chapels, to be above
the line that touches the roof of the contiguous cloister
walks. We need not assume a clerestory between the roofs
of the cloister walks and the contiguous quarters of the
novices and the sick, since the exterior walls of these
structures would have offered ample space for the installation
of windows.
The Kitchen and Bathhouse have been reconstructed as
timber-framed buildings. Even in considerably later periods
ancillary structures of this kind were, as a rule, constructed
in timber.
