University of Virginia Library

V.1.4

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Thus, by the sixth decade of this century the discussion
of the guest and service structures of the Plan of St. Gall
still remains stalemated by two opposing schools. The
classicists had tried to explain the St. Gall house in the
light of a presumptive Roman or Romano-Etruscan type
of house that antedated the Plan of St. Gall by over a
millennium, and whose existence they could not really
prove. On the other hand, the house types on which the
reconstructions of the opposing school were based reached
no further back than the sixteenth, or at best, the end of
the fifteenth century. The proponents of neither of these
two contending approaches were able to demonstrate that
the type of building they had in mind was actually in use
at the time the Plan was drawn. And the great cultural
alternative that Henning had raised in 1882—the suggestion
that the guest and service structures of the Plan of
St. Gall should be interpreted in the light of northern
building tradition rather than in the light of classical
Roman architecture—still loomed as an unsolved problem
over the entire controversy.

Oelmann had summarized this condition correctly in
1923-4, by stating, "The entire quibble about the Northern-Germanic
or Southern-Roman derivation will only be
decided once the existence of layouts that correspond
exactly can be proven in either one or the other area."[46]
However, he added to this statement a passage of questionable
validity when he amplified it with the remark, "The
North is totally excluded, for neither are any contemporary
house remains preserved which would be worthy of mention,
nor is it possible to infer from later specimens earlier forms
of an identical type."

Doubtful in 1923-4, Oelmann's latter idea had become
untenable by 1971 (when this chapter was written).
It is true that at the time of Oelmann's writing research
into the problem of the Northern house was still in its
infancy. Nevertheless, some significant discoveries about
transalpine house construction in the Middle Ages had
already been made in Sweden and on the islands of Gotland
and Iceland.[47] To be sure these were few and scattered;

[ILLUSTRATION]

282. PLAN OF ST. GALL. BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE MONASTERY

RECONSTRUCTION BY KARL GRUBER (1937, 25, fig. 15)

This handsome reconstruction was published in the same year that Otto Völckers published his reconstruction of the St. Gall house (figs. 280-81).
In structural terms Gruber's concept is as workable as that of Völckers and Fiechter-Zollikofer (figs. 277-278), but the conjecture that the guest
and service buildings would all have been constructed in masonry in a part of the world where houses were by tradition built in timber (see
pp. 23ff) is unconvincing.

Very interesting and historically defensible, but not supported by the Plan itself (see I, 163ff) is Gruber's conjecture of a tower over the
intersection of nave and transept. Abbot Haito's church at Reichenau (I, fig. 117) and the abbey church of St. Riquier (I, fig. 196) had such
towers.

[ILLUSTRATION]

283. PLAN OF ST. GALL. BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE MONASTERY

RECONSTRUCTION. PERSPECTIVE BY ALAN SORRELL (Rice, 1965, 279-280)

The design of the houses for animals and their keepers (foreground) is based on the superannuated concept of the courtyard house, proposed by
Keller in 1844 (fig. 264). Most of the other houses are interpreted as basilican structures, in conformity with suggestions made by Rahn in
1876 (fig. 266), Schlosser in 1889, and Oelmann in 1923-24 (fig. 274). Sorrell was not familiar with the writing and reconstructions of scholars
who interpreted the St. Gall house in the light of northern building traditions (fig. 277, 278, 280).

but the numerical lack of strong, convincing archaeological
material was made good to a considerable extent by the
availability of a substantial body of literary and textual
references to house construction which had been touched
upon as early as 1882 by Rudolf Henning[48] and was discussed
at length in 1902-3 by Karl Gustav Stephani's
comprehensive treatise on the German dwelling.[49]

During the last three decades this material has been
enriched by a veritable flood of archaeological discoveries
bearing upon the problem. As I propose to deal with this
material at length in a separate study, I shall review it here
only to the extent necessary for the typological identification
of the guest and service structures of the Plan.