The Plan of St. Gall a study of the architecture & economy of & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery |
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| VI. |
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CONCERNING THE WIDTH AND THE LENGTH
OF GOZBERT'S CHURCH |
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 | The Plan of St. Gall |  |
CONCERNING THE WIDTH AND THE LENGTH
OF GOZBERT'S CHURCH
According to the scale-drawn plan made by Father Gabriel
Hecht, in 1725-26 the nave of the medieval church had a
length of 155 feet. Its clear inner width was 46 feet, that of
the aisles 23 feet. The two clerestories rested on sixteen
piers, each 3 feet square. They were placed at intervals of
17 feet (measured on center) and had between them a clear
arcade span of 14 feet.[13]
Hardegger could establish that
Gabriel Hecht, in measuring the medieval building as well
as in laying out his own drawings availed himself of the
so-called Württemberg foot[14]
which had a unit value of
28.6 cm., and consequently was considerably smaller than
the foot used in drafting the Plan of St. Gall. Hardegger
thought that the architect who drew the Plan of St. Gall
scaled his layout with a foot that formed an equivalent of
33.3 cm.[15]
Converted to this scale, the measurements
recorded by Gabriel Hecht would read as follows: length
of nave: 133 feet; clear width of nave: 40 feet; clear width
of aisles: 20 feet; clear span of the arcade openings: 12 feet.
This in complete harmony with the dimensions stipulated
in the explanatory titles of the Plan of St. Gall, with one
difference only: the builders of Gozbert's church interpreted
509.X MATTHAEUS MERIAN. ABBEY AND CITY OF ST. GALL. BIRD'S-EYE VIEW FROM THE EAST
ETCHING: 20.7 × 31.2cm. FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1638 & BASED ON THE MELCHIOR FRANK ETCHING, FIG. 507
Merian's etching defines with great clarity the tripartite division of the post-medieval city; the abbey, the upper, and the lower town all
separated from one another by high girdle walls. The city by now had grown to more than six times the ground area of the monastery in the
shadow of which it had arisen. The wedge-shaped boundaries of the rise of land on which the monastery was built are distinctive. (For
identification of the parts of the Church with its staggered roof levels, see caption to fig. 513.)
Noteworthy among the medieval buildings east of the Church are: the circular chapel of St. Gallus (built 958-971) and north of it St. Peter's
chapel, the oldest sanctuary on the grounds and dating from before the incumbency of Abbot Gozbert. East of it and in axial prolongation lies
St. Catherine's chapel, where the monk Tutilo was buried in 912, and that served as chapel for the abbot's palace. (The latter, a tall building
north of St. Catherine's, is not identical with the PALATIUM built by Grimoald, abbot from 841-872, and gutted by fire in 1418; it may have
been located further west.
509.Y JOHANNES ZUBER, CADASTRAL PLAN
OF THE CITY OF ST. GALL & ENVIRONS, 1835.
[scale of figure 509.Y as shown, about 1:11,500]
ST. GALL, STADTBIBLIOTHEK, CH 9000. SIZE OF ORIGINAL: 53 × 746m
[By courtesy of the Stadtbibliothek]
The plan carries the title GRUNDRISS DER STADT ST. GALLEN NEBST DER
UMGEBUNG AUFGENOMMEN VON
JOH. ZUBER. LITHOGRAPHIE VON HELM UND SOHN, ST. GALLEN, 1835.
509.Z DETAIL Central portion of St. Gall with the cathedral (shown at about 1:11,500)
source: STADT S. GALLEN, 1964, 1:5000 Art Institut Orell Füssli AG Zurich, 1964
510. PATER GABRIEL HECHT. "ICHNOGRAPHIA"
MEASURED PLAN OF THE MONASTERY OF ST. GALL DATED A.D. SEPTEMBER 1719 ST. GALL, STIFTSARCHIV
KARTEN UND PLÄNE, M.83
[By courtesy of the Stiftsarchiv]
The disposition of church and cloister are basically the same as those shown on the etching of Melchior Frank (fig. 507), except that the church
was enlarged westward in 1623-26 by two bays that absorbed the space formerly occupied by St. Michael's chapel. All of the smaller chapels to
the east of the Church (St. Gall, Holy Sepulchre, St. Peter's, St. Catherine's) were demolished during a building campaign undertaken by
Abbot Gallus II Alt in 1666-1671. He erected a long wing of domestic facilities east of the church (nos. 18-25) including a new dining room
and audience hall for the abbot (no. 18) and a new chapel for St. Gall (no. 19), new lodgings for the porter (no. 20) and beyond the passage
beneath the porter's lodging, servants' quarters, a bakery, and a pharmacy (nos. 21-25). The old but decaying abbot's palace remained at its
original site (no. 48) but the site of St. Peter's and St. Catherine's was now occupied by a carriage house (no. 32).
511.A PATER GABRIEL HECHT. MEASURED PLAN OF THE ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. GALL, 1725-26,
WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR MODIFICATION
ORIGINAL FORMERLY ST. GALL STIFTSBIBLIOTHEK,
Evacuated and lost during World War II [after Hardegger, 1917, plate facing p. 4]
Gabriel Hecht retains the church of Otmar, the nave and aisles of Gozbert's church, as well as Eglolf's choir. He adds on either flank of the church
two continuous rows of chapels, and converts the last two bays of the nave into a pseudo-transept surmounted by a tower.
of the Plan worked with a 40-foot square, the corners of
which coincided with the center of every second arcade
support. Being composed of nine arcades of spans of 12
feet on center, the nave of the Plan of St. Gall would have
had a clear inner length of 108 feet. If one adds to this the
thickness of the eight piers, each of which was 3 feet square,
one arrives at a clear inner length of 132 feet, which corresponds
within a margin of error of only 1 foot to the layout
of the church measured by Gabriel Hecht. To place this
figure into proper historical perspective, the reader must
be reminded of the fact that Abbot Gozbert's church was
two bays shorter than the church which Father Gabriel
had before him. Before 1623 the two westernmost bays of
the church were taken up by an open porch, surmounted by
a chapel that was dedicated to St. Michael (fig. 513). This
chapel was built after Gozbert's death as a connecting link
between the main church and the church of St. Otmar.
Consecrated in 867, it was taken down to make room for
an enlargement of the monastery church by two additional
bays when the chapel of St. Otmar was rebuilt, between
1623 and 1626.[16] If one subtracts the length of these two
added bays (34 Württemberg feet or 23 Carolingian feet)
from the total length of the nave (155 Württemberg feet or
133 Carolingian feet) one arrives at an original length of
121 Württemberg feet or 105 Carolingian feet. This comes
as close to the 108 feet of the nave of the Plan as one could
expect, in absence of any more tangible archaeological
information. It left 95 more feet of the total length of 200
511.B PATER GABRIEL HECHT. LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. GALL, 1725-26,
WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR MODIFICATION. FORMERLY ST. GALL STIFTSBIBLIOTHEK
Evacuated and lost during World War II [after Hardegger, 1917, plate facing p. 5]
apse.[17]
Hardegger, 1917, 47; Poeschel, 1961, 31 accepts this interpretation
of the scale of the Plan. Hardegger's assumption was confirmed by our
own calculations (cf. I, 95-97).
Hardegger's interpretation of the measurements furnished by
Gabriel Hecht find confirmation in the measurements recorded by
Johannes Caspar Glattburger, in 1917, as Erwin Poeschel has pointed
out (Poeschel, 1961, 30ff). As already mentioned, they are, recorded
in Acta monasterii, B. 322 p. 839 and 841. Glattburger, who like Gabriel
Hecht used the Württemberg foot, listed the total length of the church
as 272 feet. If one subtracts from this figure the 34 Württemberg feet of
the two added westernmost bays of the church, one arrives at a total
length of 238 Württemberg feet or the equivalent of 206 Carolingian
feet, again close enough to justify the assumption that Gozbert complied
with the explanatory title of the Plan that stipulated that the church
should only be built to a length of 200 feet.
| The Plan of St. Gall | |