University of Virginia Library

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

[ILLUSTRATION]

HELMSTED, BRAUNSCHWEIG, GERMANY

256.B

256.A

MARIENTHAL. ABBOT'S HOUSE, 14TH CENT.

[plan and perspective after Völckers, 1949, 53]

The stairs shown at the gable wall give an idea of how the two
levels of the Abbot's House of the Plan may have been connected.

[ILLUSTRATION]

257. PLAN OF ST. GALL. ABBOT'S HOUSE

AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

BASED ON THE RECONSTRUCTION MODEL DISPLAYED AT THE EXHIBITION KARL DER GROSSE, AACHEN, 1965

As the lord of a vast web of manorial estates, the Abbot was the connecting link between monastery and the secular world. The location of
his house in a narrow plot of land to the north of the Church (see fig. 77) is an expression of this fact. It is an area outside of the claustral
compound of the monks, and in addition accommodates the Outer School (figs. 407-409) where the secular clergy and the sons of noblemen
were trained, as well as the House for Distinguished Guests (figs. 397-401) where the emperor and members of his court were received while
on travel or in attendance of great religious festivities such as Christmas, Easter or Pentecost. For reasons explained on p. 323 and in the
caption to fig. 254 we have assumed that the roof covering the upper level of the Abbot's House did not extend over the entire width of the
building.

The arched openings of the two porches ranging along the east and west side of the Abbot's House suggest that it was a masonry structure.
But the Privy and the free standing annex containing the Abbot's Kitchen, Cellar and Bath, may well have been built in timber.

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

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. ABBOT'S HOUSE. AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

258.C

The reconstruction of the various elevations
of the Abbot's House shown here and in fig. 259
are purely conjectural; but based on the
assumption of comfortable minimum heights for
each of its component spaces (cf. the remarks made
in connection with the reconstruction of the heights
of the Church, above on pp. 160ff and in the captions
to fig. 108 and 109).

TRANSVERSE SECTION

258.B

Since the drafter of the Plan does not tell us how
the ground floor was connected with the upper
level, we have not included such a feature in our
reconstruction. For one of several ways in which
this could have been done, see fig. 256.

LONGITUDINAL SECTION

258.A

The orientation of this building which places the Abbot's living room on the south side, his dormitory and privy to the north, and its two
open porches east and west, enables the abbot and the brothers who share his quarters, to enjoy the benefits of the morning and afternoon sun,
both on the ground floor and on the level of the solarium. Since the house has two stories it cannot draw its heat from open fireplaces on the
lower level. To put the two corner fireplaces which service living room and dormitory back to back simplifies the task of smoke emission,
which can be accomplished by a common smoke stack. For the shape and historical importance of this type of fireplace, see II, 123ff.

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.