The Plan of St. Gall a study of the architecture & economy of & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery |
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| VI. |
 | The Plan of St. Gall |  |
V.18.5
MEDIEVAL PARALLELS
MONKS' LATRINE IN THE MONASTERY OF CLUNY II
The longhouse became the preferred medieval form for
monastic latrines. The earliest prose description of this
type of building known to me is that of the monks' latrine
in the monastery of Cluny II. The author of the Consuetudines
Farfenses, writing around 1043, defines it as follows:
500. PIAZZA ARMERINA. PROVINCE OF ENNA,
SICILY
VILLA OF EMPEROR MAXIMIANUS, †310 A.D.
[Redrawn from Gentili & Bandinelli, 1956]
1:600
The villa, probably an imperial hunting lodge, consisted of clusters of rectangular and
curved-wall buildings laid out on shifting axes around a large galleried court containing
a fountain. Its most prominent architectural features are the emperor's audience hall
(BASILICA) at the eastern end of the court, his dining hall (TRICLINIUM) to the north,
and an elaborate cold and warm water bath (FRIGIDARIUM, TEPIDARIUM) at the
southeastern corner of the complex near its entrance. The residential quarters lay to the
south side of the court and audience hall.
The latrines were judiciously sited: a large one next to the baths, probably the first to
be used by returning hunters, and a smaller one near the living quarters, in a wedge-shaped
space between QUADRIPORTICUS and thermal installations. Their amphitheatrical
layout allowed users to attend to their needs in full view of everyone else—a
reflection of the unihibited affirmation with which the ancients responded to the body's
natural functions, and an attitude quite opposed to the reticent privacy and hierarchical
social segregation with which these facilities are treated in the repressing ambience of a
medieval monastery.
501. CLUNY II. MONKS' PRIVY (ODILO'S MONASTERY, 994-1049). PLAN
AFTER DESCRIPTION IN THE CONSUETUDINES FARFENSES
The location of the latrine at Cluny is ascertained by excavation of its foundations. It lay at right angles to the monks' dormitory at a distance
of about 1·50m from it, and was accessible through its southern gable wall by a connecting bridge at dormitory level. The dormitory itself
occupied the upper level of a long structure that bounded the claustral complex to the east. For more detail, see Conant's reconstruction of the
layout of Cluny II shown in fig. 515, and his description of Odilo's work in Conant, 1968, 59-67.
"The latrine of the monks is 70 feet long, 23 feet wide. In
the building there have been arranged 45 seats with a small
window above each seat, 2 feet high, 1½ feet wide. Above
these are wooden structures, and above this wooden construction
there are seventeen windows, 3 feet high, 1½ feet
wide" (Latrina LXXta pedes longitudinis, latitudinis XXti et
tres; sellae XL et quinque in ipsa domo ordinatae sunt, et per
unamquamque sellam aptata est fenestrula in muro altitudinis
pedes duo, latitudinis semissem unum, et super ipsas sellulas
compositas strues lignorum, et super ipsas constructionem
lignorum facte sunt fenestrae Xeë et VIItë, altitudinis tres
pedes, latitudinis pedem et semissem).[680]
The specifications for
this building disclose a perspicacious awareness of the need
for light and ventilation: two tiers of windows, sixty-seven
in all. Since each seat is provided with its own window the
latrines must have been ranged along the outer walls of the
building, as shown in figure 501, which is based on the
dimensions recorded in the Farfa text and the assumption
of a surface area 2½ feet square for each seat.
THE MONKS' LATRINE OF CHRISTCHURCH
MONASTERY AT CANTERBURY
An early graphical portrayal of such a latrine is the Norman
necessarium shown on the famous plan of the waterworks
of the monastery of Christchurch, Canterbury
(fig. 502), drawn around 1165 by Wibert or one of his
assistants.[681]
The foundations and lower portions of the
walls of this privy survive (fig. 503). It was 145 feet long
and 25 feet wide (internal measurements) and in its original
form contained fifty-five toilet seats in a single room, at
intervals of 2 feet, 7 inches, measuring the seats on their
centers. The seats were supported by fifty-three transverse
arches which bridged a fosse flushed by running water.[682]
Two plans of the waterworks of the monastery of Christchurch
are inserted into the Canterbury Psalter on fol. 284v and fol. 285; see
James, 1935, last two plates; for more details on these plans see I, 68-70.
For a detailed description of the rere-dorter of Christchurch
monastery, see Willis, 1868, 85ff.
OTHER MONASTIC PRIVIES
AND WATER-FLUSHED CHANNELS FOR WASTE
The remains of many other structures of this kind, dating
from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, may be found
in other English monasteries, such as Kirkstall, Fountains,
Lewes Priory, Rievaulx, Roche, and Byland; an unusually
fine Continental specimen exists in the Abbey of Maubuisson.[683]
502. CHRISTCHURCH, CANTERBURY, ENGLAND, PLAN OF WATERWORKS (CA. 1165)
MONKS' PRIVY (DETAIL, ACTUAL SIZE)
[By courtesy of the Trustees of Trinity College Library, Cambridge University]
The plan, probably drawn by Wibert (d. 1167), who engineered the system, shows the privy lying at the southern side of the CURIA at right
angles to the Norman dormitory (DORMITORIUM). With an external length of 155 feet (more than double the length of the monks' privy at
Cluny), and a height of 35 feet, it was an imposing structure.
The artist took license in portraying the Christchurch privy as a detached building; remaining fragments of the masonry of dormitory and
privy show that in reality a portion of its western gable wall butted against the dormitory and was accessible from it through a connecting
vestibule (fig. 503.A).
The privy was water-flushed down its length by means of a drainage ditch that, on the drawing, is shown to run parallel to and outside the
structure; in actuality this channel passed beneath it (fig. 503. B, C) and emptied into the fosse of the city wall.
After the dissolution of the monasteries in England by Henry VIII, the privy was converted into a common hall for minor canons and officers
of the choir. So it remained with slight modifications until 1850, when it was taken down. Some of the masonry of the fosse and many of the
arches that supported the privy seats (fig. 503.C) are part of the surviving ruins and can still be seen.
The complete plan of the Christchurch waterworks is reproduced in Volume I of this work, pp. 70-71, and is part of a discussion of schematic
waterways as they might apply to Christchurch; the discussion includes a schematic speculation of watercourses that might be applicable to the
St. Gall site (I, 72, and 74, fig. 53).
503.A CANTERBURY, CHRISTCHURCH MONASTERY, MONKS' PRIVY. PLAN
[after Willis, 1868, fig. 12]
The designations are misleading. The "Third Dormitory" was not a hall for sleeping, but a latrine. The "Second Dormitory" may have served
as sleeping quarters for certain conventual officers, such as sacristan, chamberlain, cellerar, and superior.
cleansed by running water diverted from a natural stream
at some point above the monastery and returned to it with
the waste further down the valley. There is no doubt in
my mind that the majority of the privies shown on the
Plan of St. Gall were cleansed in this manner, although
the author of the Plan refrained from delineating the course
of such a water system. What he had in mind can be
elicited from the fact that the majority of his privies are
sited in such a manner that they could be flushed in
succession by a drainage channel connecting them in a
straight course.[684]
For Kirkstall, see St. John Hope and Bilson, 1907, 73ff; for Fountains,
Wainwright, 1962, 47-48; for Lewes Priory, Godfrey, 1933, 23;
for Rievaulx, Peers, 1934, 8; for Roche, Thomson, 1962, 11; for Byland,
Peers, 1952, 9; for Maubuisson, Lenoir, II, 1856, 367.
VARIATION IN ARRANGEMENT OF SEATS
An interesting, and possibly common, variation of the
longhouse represented by the rere-dorter of the monastery
of Christchurch in Canterbury (figs. 502-503) was created
by moving the row of toilet seats away from the wall into
the center axis of the building and making each alternate
seat accessible from the opposite side. We have the good
fortune of being able to visualize the furnishings of such a
privy down to its minutest detail because of the survival,
in the Collection of Drawings of the British Museum, of a
set of meticulously measured drawings made by J. G.
Buckler in 1868, before the interior of the longhouse of
New College, Oxford, was gutted to make room for more
modern installations.[685]
Although this type does not appear
on the Plan of St. Gall, the furnishings as such may well
reflect a very old tradition. In the annals of New College
the rere-dorter of New College, varyingly referred to as
domicilium necessarium and as "longhouse," was part of the
quadrangle complex built by Bishop Wykeham from 1380
to 1386. It is 16 feet, 2 inches wide and 82 feet long (clear
inner measurements; the external dimensions are 22 feet,
9 inches by 89 feet, 4 inches) and was built two stories
high with walls 3 feet thick. The lower story originally had
no openings and served as a cesspool, which was periodically
cleaned.[686]
The upper story, approached by an external
stair, was lit by narrow slit windows with a wide internal
splay. In the axis of the room throughout its entire length
CANTERBURY, CHRISTCHURCH MONASTERY. MONKS' PRIVY
503.B TRANSVERSE SECTION
[after Willis, 1868, fig. 13]
503.C ARCHES SUPPORTING PRIVY SEATS
[after Willis, 1868, fig. 14]
A longitudinal wall separated the lower part of the privy into two portions of unequal width. The southern part, 14 feet wide, was filled with
earth and paved at the top. The northern part, 7 feet wide, formed a fosse bridged over by thin masonry arches, and carried wooden seats and
seat partitions.
rear and to the side, making the seats accessible from
opposite sides in alternate sequence. Figure 504A-D shows
the plan, sections, and exterior view of this structure and a
detailed view of one of the original seats.
The rere-dorters of the monks and lay brothers of Kirkstall
Abbey, Yorkshire, as well as the Monks' privy of the
Abbey of Maubuisson (Seine-et-Oise), had this same axial
arrangement of seats (and there were unquestionably many
others), but unlike the longhouse of New College, Oxford,
these buildings were flushed by running water.[687]
London, British Museum, Collection of Drawings, Add. Ms.
36437. Buckler, Architectural Drawings, Miscellaneous, vol. VIII, fols.
271-86. The existence of these drawings seems to have escaped the
historiographers of Oxford. They are mentioned neither in the chapter
on New College of the Victoria History of the Counties of England,
Oxfordshire, III, 1954, 144-62, nor in A. H. Smith's New College and
its Buildings (Oxford Univ. Press, 1952).
DISPOSAL OF WASTE BY WATER:
AN URBAN, NOT A RURAL PRACTICE
Disposing of human waste by using water power is an idea
monks inherited from the Romans. It was an urban, not a
rural, invention. In a purely agricultural society the nitrogenous
content of this matter was far too valuable a substance
for replenishing the soil to be discarded in a stream.
The monks whose background was rural could not help
being impressed by the skillful engineering that went into
these water systems and lent to a primordial problem of
nature a touch of inventive elegance. Now and then, in
medieval sources, one runs into a passage that seems to
504.A OXFORD UNIVERSITY, NEW COLLEGE
COLLEGE PRIVY BUILT BY BISHOP WYCKHAM BETWEEN 1380 AND 1386
PLAN OF THE UPPER FLOOR. DRAWINGS BY J. G. BUCKLER [504. A, B, C, D, E]
LONDON, BRITISH MUSEUM COLLECTION OF DRAWINGS, ADD. MS. 36437. BY COURTESY OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
Lobbensium which lists the following among the accomplishments
of Abbot Levinus (twelfth century):
He built a new but more elegant room of sewers, joined to the dormitory,
in the place of the old one (literally: from the old one);
which room, below cleansed from filth by incessantly running
water, he made more honorable above for the necessary use with
seats furnished by suitable beauty.[688]
Gesta Abbatum Lobbensium chap. 23, ed. Arndt in Mon. Germ.
Hist., Scriptores, XXI, 1869, 326-27: "Domum cloacarum dormitorio
coniunctam de veteri novam opere elegantiori aedificavit, ut Quam acqua
indeficienter pretercurrens inferius sordibus mundam rederet forma competens
superius aptatis sedibus honestam usui necessario facerit."
PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS
In other sources one finds undertones of a feeling that
the currents of water so skillfully channeled through the
monastic workshops cleansed the monastery in a deeper
sense than the purely physical; the impressive, and in
parts truly poetic, thirteenth-century description of the
waterways of the monastery of Clairvaux, after a minute
account of all the services that the water rendered to the
various offices and workshops, terminates with:
Lastly, in order that it may not omit any thanks due to it, nor leave
the catalogue of its services in any way imperfect, it carries away
all dirt and uncleanness and leaves all things clean behind it. Thus
after having accomplished industriously the purpose for which it
came, it returns with rapid current to the stream and renders to it
in the name of Clairvaux thanks for all the services that it has performed,
and replies to its salutation with worthy response.[689]
One of the puzzling aspects of the Plan of St. Gall is
the fact that although its author is scrupulously precise in
the specifications of the privies that answer the needs of
the monks and their noble visitors, the question of privies
is not even raised on the level of the serfs, the workmen,
504.B OXFORD, NEW COLLEGE. LONGITUDINAL SECTION
A strikingly functional and no less sophisticated solution to the problem of monastic sanitation was applied in medieval university life (where
students, while not cloistered, were in minor orders). The carpentry was superb; seats facing opposite sides in alternating sequence offered a
maximum of privacy and comfort without violating the traditional monastic regulation that even while engaged in the most humble of human
pursuits, none may enjoy the privilege of total seclusion.
provision of space for such) is most strongly felt in the
case of the Great Collective Workshop and the Hospice for
Pilgrims and Paupers.[690] This is not an oversight, in my
opinion, but a case of social discrimination. From a certain
level downward the designer of the scheme left the solution
of the individual privy to the ingenuity of the builder. In
the case of those structures housing both humans and
animals this poses no problem, as the sanitation of the
human occupants is subject to the same order of cleanliness
that governs good animal husbandry and can be met with
the greatest of ease by an infinite variety of ingenious
improvisations. But in the case of the Great Collective
Workshop and the Hospice for Pilgrims and Paupers, the
absence of privies—or even of the provision of space for
504.C OXFORD, NEW COLLEGE.
EXTERIOR VIEW FROM NEW COLLEGE LANE
to express himself on this issue.
The Consuetudines Farfenses furnishes us with an interesting
literary parallel for this discriminatory planning procedure.
The same text that tells us with firm precision that
the number of toilet seats in the House for Distinguished
Guests should be equal to the number of visitors who can
be bedded in this structure, wastes not a single word on
the subject of privies of the large building—280 feet long
and 25 feet wide—which contains on the ground floor the
stables for the horses of the royal party and on the upper
floor the eating and sleeping quarters of the lower ranking
members of the emperor's train:
Near the Southgate and [extending from there] to the Northgate,
westward, let a house be built, 280 feet long and 25 feet wide. There
establish the stables for the horses, divided into stalls; and above
let there be a solarium where the servants eat and sleep; here tables
should be installed, 80 feet long and 4 feet wide.[691]
504.E DETAIL
504.D OXFORD, NEW COLLEGE
The roof belongs to the same period that produced
the magnificent carpentry of the 14thcentury
hall of Nurstead Court, Kent (fig.
346.A-D) and is similar to it.
The roof of New College privy is carried by
nine trusses, spaced at intervals slightly less
than 10 feet. Their elegant, sharply cambered
tie beams, chamfered underneath, are dovetailed
into the wall plates. King posts rising from mid
beam carry a center purlin surmounted crosswise
by a collar piece bracing the rafters midway.
Short vertical uprights steady the rafters at
their springing.
Outhouses with seating capacities comparable
to that of the necessarium of New College are
recorded in the most distant parts of medieval
Europe, in both monastic and secular life. A
monks' privy with two rows of seats (19 in all)
backing each other along the center axis of the
structure was built for the monastery of
Batalha, Portugal, shortly after 1388 (for
plans, see Lenoir, 1856, VII 6: 2, 366); in the
northernmost fringes of the world, Old Norse
sagas refer to royal "long houses" that could be
used simultaneously by 22 men (for sources see
Gudmundsson, 1899, 247).
TRANSVERSE SECTION
We close PART V with a charming and amusing verse, its presence in "a certain monastery, perhaps Tours" testifying another equally
humble and traditional use of such structures.
IN LATRINO[692]
Luxuriam ventris, lector, cognosce vorantis,Putrida qui sentis stercora nare tuo.
Ingluviem fugito ventris quapropter in ore:
Tempore sit certo sobria vita tibi.
—translation by Charles W. Jones
Here, friend, may you ponder ingluvial excess,
As your nostrils distend with the stink of the cess.
Now avoid crapulence and eschew overchewing
Lest at Judgment intemperance prove your undoing.
END OF PART V
505. ST. GALL. VIEW OF THE CITY FROM THE WEST, IN 1545
HEINRICH VOGTHERR. WOOD ENGRAVING (29.6 × 42cm)
The rendering shows the town and its surroundings from an imagined perspective in the air. Not yet separated, abbey and town are enclosed by a common masonry wall
elaborated by towers, houses, and two main gates. A glimpse of the Bodensee (Lake Constance) orients the view to the northeast.
Dominating the countryside are meadows cleared for bleaching linen, a local industry. The view is crowded with dwellings, farms and outbuildings, an inn, a fort,
barracks and parade ground, an exercise and training yard. The main access road appears smooth and well paved approaching the city's crenellated gate; down the
other, rougher road a carter gallops three span of horses hitched to a drey, laden perhaps with baled linen. A group of buildings amid trees (center, right) suggesting
modest dwellings is situated outside the city walls. By mid-16th century, St. Gall clearly consisted of URBS and SUBURBS, a dichotomy that attested the arrival
of modern times.
The four largest meodows are bisected by the Irabach; its water-course, now underground, formed a natural boundary between town and monastery in the early Middle
Ages. Two mills locate the cascade of the Steinach; its course deflects sharply westward, broken by the escarpment of the monastery site (cf. fig. 514, p. 331.) The
abbey church lies slightly south of the east-west axis of this rise of land, its staggered roofs indicating various steps of construction. Similar views from different angles
(figs. 507, 509.X) confirm the veracity of the rendering.
Photo: Courtesy of Zentralbibliothek, Zürich, Department of Prints and Drawings.
Each of the two extant prints of this subject is somewhat damaged; this image is
made from a photographic composite of them, in order to obtain the best possible
reconstruction.
Migne, Patr. lat, CLXXXV, 1879, col. 571: "Postremo, ne quid ei
desit ad ullam gratiam, et ne ipsius quaquaversum imperfecta sint opera,
asportans immunditias, omnia post se munda relinquit. Et jam peracto
strenue propter quod venerat, rapida celeritate festinat ad fluvium, ut vice
Clarae-Vallis agens ei gratias pro universis beneficiis suis, salutationi ejus
resalutatione condigna respondeat; statimque refundens ei aquas quas nobis
transfuderat, sic de duobus efficit unum ut nullum appareat unionis vestigium;
et quem dicessu suo teneum et pigrum fecerat mistus ei morantem praecipitat."
For
an equally interesting and even earlier description of the same
water-ways, see I, 69.
Consuedutines Farfenses, ed. Bruno Albers in Cons. mon., I, 1900,
139: "A porta meridiana usque ad portam VIIItem trionalem contra occidentem
sit constructa domus longitudinis CCtu LXXXta pedes, latitudinis
XXti et V, et ibi constituantur stabule equorum per mansiunculas partitas,
et desuper sit solarium, ubi famuli aedant atque dormiant, et mensas habeant
ibi ordinatas longitudinis LXXXta pedes, latitudinis vero IIIIor."
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