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

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

318

[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.

319

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.

[297]

On this point see Reusch, op. cit., 150.

[298]

On the demolition of the Roman amphitheater of Trier by the monks
of Hemmerode, see Picht, 1966, 102.

[299]

Picht, op. cit., pp. 102-103.

[300]

On the question of the continuity of life between Antiquity and the
Middle Ages, as reflected in Frankish archaeology in the Moselle River
basin and the confluence area of Moselle and Rhine, see Böhner, 1959,
85-109; von Petrikovits, 1959, 74-84; and Ewig, 22-302.

In a recent study of the architecture and sculpture of the Migration
period, Jean Hubert likewise emphasized the fact that many of the new
barbarian masters of Gaul established themselves in palaces and villas
dating from the Gallo-Roman period. He cites as a striking example an
elaborate villa on a fortified Roman estate not far from Koblenz, in which
Nicetus, Bishop of Trier, took residence. The palace is described in
enthusiastic terms by the poet Fortunatus, around 565 (Hubert, 1969,
22).