The Plan of St. Gall a study of the architecture & economy of & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery |
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 | III. |
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| III. 3. |
| III.3.1. |
| III.3.2. | III.3.2 |
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 | The Plan of St. Gall |  |
III.3.2
OTHER MEDIEVAL BUILDINGS OF
THE SAME TYPE OF CONSTRUCTION
The plan of the Abbot's aula is, as far as I can judge, the
earliest visual record we have of a medieval hall with a
solarium. It is also the earliest record of a medieval residence
whose rooms are heated by corner fireplaces that
release their smoke through a chimney. A solarium is "a
place open to the sun";[313]
in Rome the sun-exposed roofs or
decks in front of houses (even the house-fronts of an entire
insula) usually supported by colonnades or by arcades,
were known as solaria.[314]
In medieval literature the term solarium is used varyingly
to designate 1) the open galleries that surrounded the upper
story of a palace; 2) the window-lighted chambers of the
upper story of a palace, even if not surrounded by open
galleries; 3) as pars pro toto for the palace; and 4) the
galleries or tribunes of churches.[315]
An excellent example of
a medieval residence with a solarium is the aula of the
Priory of Christ Church at Canterbury. An elevation of
this is given in the remarkable twelfth-century drawing
which records the system of water distribution and drainage,
installed in this Priory around 1165 (fig. 252).[316]
A building
of similar design was Harold's castle at Bosham, Sussex,
depicted on the famous Bayeux tapestry (ca. 1070-1080)
where a drinking feast is being given in the solarium above
the ground-floor porches (fig. 253).[317]
The solarium as such,
however, is a considerably older institution. It was a
favorite feature of the palaces of Carolingian emperors and
nobles, as is attested by numerous literary references;[318]
in a
contemporary work, the Brevium exempla,[319]
we find this
description of a royal residence, which sounds like a literary
counterpart of the drawing of the Abbot's House on the
Plan of St. Gall:
Invenimus in Asnapio fisco dominico salam regalem ex lapide factam
optime, cameras iii; solariis totam casam circumdatam, cum pisilibus
xi; infra cellarium; porticus ii. . . .[320]
On the crown estate of Anappes we found the royal residence,
excellently built in stone, with three chambers, the entire building
surrounded with solaria; with eleven heatable rooms; below, the
cellar and two porches. . . .
Although we lack particulars about this arrangement, the
basic structure is clear: a two-story building abutted by
two open porches on the ground floor, and above these
porches the sunlit galleries designated as solaria. This is,
in essence, the arrangement of the hall of William the
Conqueror on the Bayeux tapestry (fig. 253), and it is like
the aula of the Priory of Christchurch at Canterbury (fig.
252).
This derivation is not uncontested. For the etymology of the term
and the various theories attached to it, see Stephani, I, 1902, 274, note 2;
also Hale, 1858, xcix, note †.
Du Cange, VII, 1938, 511, and the examples cited in note 11 below
and in the references listed there.
For date and latest views on the tapestry, see Gibbs-Smith, 1973, 4.
For an interpretation of the representation of Harold's hall and a reconstruction
of its plan, see Stephani, I, 1902, 439-40.
Schlosser, 1896, No. 118, solarium of the palace of Charlemagne;
No. 182, mansum indominicatum cum solario lapidio, time of Louis the
Pious; No. 223, wooden solarium in Flamersheim, 870; No. 233,
Imperial palace with solarium, at Gondreville, ca. 840; No. 503, sala
cum solario in Secanio, mentioned in last will of Tello of Chur, December
15, 766 (earliest example attested); No. 709, Episcopal residence with
solarium in Lyon, 813-815. By the eighth century the solar was also known
in England, since reference to a solarium is made in one of Cynewulf's
poems, see Pfeilstücker, 1936, 31. For solaria mentioned in documents
of the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, see the indices
of Lehmann-Brockhaus, 1935, idem, 1938; Mortet, 1911; and Morter-Deschamps,
1929.
The Brevium exempla ad describendas res ecclesiasticas et fiscales
are specimen descriptions of property, more or less fiscal in character,
which were drawn up around 812 for the guidance of the royal agents
engaged in assessing the produce of the domain. The first description is
of the possessions of the see of Augsburg on an island in Staffelsee,
Bavaria; the second is part of a register of the possessions of the Abbey
of Weissenburg in Alsace, and the third is the survey of a group of royal
fiscs belonging directly to the Crown. Two of the royal villas mentioned
in the latter have been identified: Asnapium, i.e., Anappes (Lille, Nord),
and Griscone, being the neighboring villa Gruson. Treola, another villa,
was probably in Alamannia. The other unnamed villas were probably
situated around Anappes, and are, according to Philip Grierson, the
present-day Vitry, Cysoing, and Soumain. For date, presumable place of
issue, and identity of unnamed fiscs, see Grierson, 1939; Dopsch, I,
1921, 75ff.; Verhein, 1954 and 1955.
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