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

The original concept of the Plan of St. Gall was that the
Church should be 80 feet wide and 300 feet long, but an
explanatory title inscribed in the longitudinal axis of the
Church directs that in actual construction it should be
reduced to 200 feet.[76] The church of Cluny II, built by
Abbot Mayeul between 965 and 981, was only 140 feet
long (Ecclesia longitudinis CXL pedes).[77]

Conant believes that the timbered houses in which Abbot
Mayeul lodged the monks of Cluny lay further inward than
Odilo's conventual buildings, and that when Odilo constructed
the new masonry ranges he located them outside
and around the original structures.[78] If this assumption is
correct, the old cloister yard of Cluny would have been
considerably smaller than the cloister yard of the Plan of
St. Gall (only about 75 feet square, as compared to the 100
by 102½ feet of the Plan or the 100 by 100 feet stipulated

340

by Hildemar as the acceptable minimum).[79] Should the
original dormitory of the monks indeed have been located
inside of Odilo's masonry ranges, the original dormitory
of Cluny would have been in axial prolongation of the
transept of Mayeul's church, i.e., in the same relative
position in which it is shown on the Plan of St. Gall. Moving
his claustral ranges further out, Odilo would have
brought the cloister yard of Cluny back to the dimensional
standards set by the Plan of St. Gall but at the same time
would have created an irregularly shaped cloister yard, in
which the east range was separated from the transept. This
solution had no lasting effect on later monastic planning.[80]
It may very well have been the outcome of special local
conditions, namely the inordinate smallness of Mayeul's
church and original cloister which could only be overcome
by disconnecting dormitory and transept.[81]

[76]

See I, pp. 77ff.

[77]

See above, pp. 333ff.

[78]

Conant, 1965, 182.

[79]

See I, 246.

[80]

See below, p. 343.

[81]

Conant's arrangement also depends on the 1700-1710 plan of
Cluny (now in the Musée Ochier).

If the west range of Cluny II remained in the position in which
Conant shows it, and the east range were aligned with the transept,
the cloister yard would still be in line with the standard set on the Plan
of St. Gall. Nevertheless, if the east range is placed to the east of the
transept, it does account for a passage in the Farfa text which states that
the chapter house, which was located at the northernmost end of the
dormitory range, had "four windows on the east and three on the north"
(ad oriente fenestrae IIIIor; contra septemtrionem tres). In order to accommodate
three windows, the north wall of the dormitory range would
have to have been a free-standing wall and could not have butted directly
against the southern transept wall of the church. Clapham in his reconstruction
of Cluny, however, placed a passage way between the transept
and chapter house and thus provided for the windows in the text. Clapham,
1930, 167, 173.