The Plan of St. Gall :: :: University of Virginia Library

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]

312

[ILLUSTRATION]

253. BAYEUX TAPESTRY (1073-1083). BAYEUX, CALVADOS, FRANCE. MUSÉE DE LA REINE MATHILDE

[courtesy of Zodiaque]

Harold and his followers take a last shore meal before sailing to Normandy, in the solarium of his castle at Bosham (on Bosham Channel,
3½ miles from Chichester, Sussex). Bosham had been acquired by Harold's father, Godwin, Earl of Wessex, "one of the most powerful men
at the court of Edward I of England and the leader of the opposition to the Norman influence at the English Court" (C. H. Gibbs-Smith,
The Bayeux Tapestry, London, 1973, 10). The feast is held in the upper story of a feudal hall reached by an outer staircase. The party
drink from a horn and bowl, which appear to be passed around, while a servant standing on the upper landing of the staircase gestures to
the men feasting in the solarium that the ship which will take them to Normandy is ready to sail. The hall, like most of the other buildings
shown on the tapestry (with the sole exception of Westminster Abbey) is not an accurate architectural rendering. Nevertheless, the design suggests
clearly enough that the hall was of two stories and that the upper story was supported from the ground floor by means of arcades. (For more
detail on the history and narrative thrust of the tapestry see caption to fig. 234; on the artist's idiosyncrasies of portraying architecture:
R. Allen Brown in Sir F. Stenton et al., The Bayeux Tapestry, a comprehensive survey, 2nd ed., London 1962).

313

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.

[269]

The first two words and the last word of this legend are written
horizontally from left to right, the third and fourth are written vertically,
each subsequent letter being placed beneath the preceding one. This is
the only place on the Plan where this system is used. The scribe,
obviously, did not want to rotate the parchment under his hands as he
entered the title, but retained it in the position in which he held it as he
started his line.

[270]

For more details on this, see below, pp. 337-39.

[271]

Benedicta regula, chap. 58; ed. Hanslik, 1960, 138-41; ed. McCann,
1952, 128-33; ed. Steidle, 1952, 275-79.

[272]

Consuetudines Corbeienses, chap. 1; ed. Semmler, Corp. cons. mon.,
I, 1963, 366; Jones II, Appendix III, 103.