University of Virginia Library

I.1.6

COUNCIL OF EUROPE EXHIBITION
KARL DER GROSSE at AACHEN, 1965,
AND ITS IMPETUS

Recently a powerful impetus was given to the study of the
Plan of St. Gall by Dr. Wolfgang Braunfels who invited
the authors of the present work to furnish him with the
research and architectural drawings for a three-dimensional
model of the monastery shown on the Plan, to be put on

display at the Council of Europe Exhibition Karl der Grosse,
held in the city of Aachen in the summer of 1965. The birth
of this book, whose beginning reaches many years back, is
intimately connected with this project, and my gratitude
to Dr. Braunfels for motivating this final push has no
limits. There is no more acid trial for any theoretical
assumptions about the three-dimensional appearance of
buildings known only in simple line projection than that of
testing them in the constructional reality of a scale-drawn
model. As in previous studies posing similar problems, I
found myself in the fortunate position of being able to
draw on the professional knowledge, constructional experience,
and superior draftsmanship of Ernest Born and
Carl Bertil Lund, without whose expert and devoted
collaboration that project could never have been carried
out.[41] We are fortunate, in turn, to have found in Siegfried
Karschunke a model-builder of rare resourcefulness and
impeccable skill. It is on the work-drawings made for this
model that most of the reconstruction drawings of this book
are based. The costs of making these drawings were carried
by the University of California; the costs for the construction
of the model itself by the Council of Europe.[42] A
brief description of the model and the criteria used in the
reconstruction of its various installations was published in
the catalogue of the Aachen Exhibition.[43]

OTHER MORE GENERAL WORKS &
NEW CRITICAL EDITIONS

I cannot conclude this review of the historical and
bibliographical vicissitudes of the Plan of St. Gall without
drawing attention to two further events of vital importance
for this study, neither of them directly concerned with the
Plan. The first of these was the publication in 1910-43 of
the six volumes of Emile Lesne's monumental Histoire de
la propriété ecclésiastique,[44] a veritable storehouse of
knowledge, harboring a wealth of information on the
monastery as a legal, manorial, administrative, and educational
institution. The second was the publication, in
1963, under the general editorship of Kassius Hallinger,
OSB, by the Pontifical Athenaean Institute of St. Anselm,
in Rome, of the first volume of the Corpus consuetudinum
monasticarum,[45] a new critical edition of the monastic
consuetudinaries of the eighth and ninth centuries, elucidated
by a critical apparatus of incomparable excellence
and including inter alia the new edition of such crucial
contemporary sources as the resolutions, preliminary and
final, drawn up in 816 and 817 in connection with the two
reform synods of Aachen,[46] as well as that masterpiece of
administrative and manorial logistics, the so-called Statutes
of Adalhard of Corbie (Consuetudines Corbeienses), drawn
up in January 1821/22 by one of the most distinguished
abbots of the Frankish empire.[47] A complete translation of
this informative source, by my colleague Charles W. Jones,
will be found in Appendix II.[48]

The publication of this vast collection of monastic
consuetudinaries was preceded and accompanied by a
series of penetrating studies on the monastic legislation
enacted during the reign of Louis the Pious, from the pen
of one of its principal editors, Dr. Joseph Semmler,[49]
which opened new avenues for the understanding of the
monastic reform movement that forms the spiritual home
of the Plan of St. Gall. My indebtedness to the Corpus
consuetudinum monasticarum and the distinguished editors
and commentators is visible in countless places throughout
this book.

[ILLUSTRATION]

2. PLAN OF ST. GALL: THE DEDICATORY LEGEND

Addressed to Abbot Gozbert of St. Gall (806-836) by a churchman of higher rank who fails to identify himself, this letter of transmission
discloses (in the term EXEMPLATA) that the Plan is not an original but a copy, and therefore presumes the existence of a prototype.

The nature of its scripts reveals that the copy was made in the Abbey of Reichenau, perhaps around 820, but not earlier than 816/817 or later
than 830, the year in which Gozbert began to rebuild his monastery with the aid of the Plan.

The placement of the letter on the Plan's upper margin reveals that this scheme was to be viewed from west to east, not from south to north as
would be the case in similar post-medieval, and modern layouts.

A typographic transliteration of the letter with English translation is shown on the opposite page