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

The arguments set forth on the preceding pages speak
plainly, I think, in favor of Dopsch's theory that the scheme
for a monastic settlement which is copied in the Plan of
St. Gall was a product of the monastic reform movement.
The ideal character of this scheme is in full accord with
the general spirit of this movement, which aimed at the
establishment of a universally binding rule for the monks
to replace the mixed rule that prevailed in the preceding
centuries. The arrangement of the buildings shown on the
Plan of St. Gall aimed in the same manner at the establishment
of guiding rules that could be followed in the physical
layout of a monastic settlement. It terminated the ambiguities
that had arisen from the never completely settled
battle between the tradition of the Irish and the Benedictine
monks. Moreover, it established in architectural
terms a modus vivendi et habitandi between the monks and

the laymen by confining the former to an inner and the
latter to an outer yard, and in this manner settled a conflict
that had been created by a steadily increasing influx of
serfs and workmen during the two preceding centuries as
the monastery assumed more and more the character of a
great manorial estate. It was an architectural program
whose conception depended on policy decisions of major
magnitude—no less complex in physical terms than the
web of regulations that affect the monks' religious and
temporal life—requiring a consensus of opinion as could
only have been attained in assemblies of leading dignitaries
of the Church such as occurred at Aachen in 816 and
817. Lastly, but not least: it embodied features which, as
I believe to have established on the preceding pages,
were the implementation of specific resolutions taken at
Aachen.

They are: establishment of separate quarters for visiting
monks, transfer of the houses for workmen from an
extramural to an intramural location, and separation of the
educational system of the monastery into inner and outer
schools. The existence of bathhouses for the novices and
healthy monks would have violated the legislation of the
first synod, but they were not in conflict with the legislation
of the second synod, which returned to the more tolerant
views of St. Benedict of Nursia. A separate house for the
abbot, while nowhere authorized in sharply defined terms,
is an implicit precondition of the legislation of the second
synod.[159]

[159]

Edgar Lehmann (1965, 312ff) believes that the theory that the Plan
of St. Gall is a product of the monastic reform movement is erroneous.
The generous dimensions given to the Church (in its original concept),
the existence of baths, the largeness of the number of monks for which
the monastery was designed, the detached location of the Abbot's House,
the presence of an Outer School are, in his opinion, not compatible with
the spirit of the movement fostered by Benedict of Aniane. Lehmann's
argument is correct to the extent to which it implies that the Plan, in
its over-all conception, reflects a generosity of thinking that is more
expressive of the "culture friendly" monastic policy of Charlemagne
and his advisors than of the ascetic attitudes that gained ascendancy under
Louis the Pious. (For more details on this, see the chapter "Some
Reflections About the Prototype Plan.") Yet Lehmann's conclusion, I
think, is wrong. It is based on an underevaluation of the political and
spiritual complexities of the reform movement. The old councilors of
Charlemagne, such men as Bishop Hildebold of Cologne (d. 819) and
Bishop Haito of Basel (d. 836), were still alive and their presence at the
two synods was an intellectual and cultural force to be reckoned with—a
powerful one at that, as may be gathered from the tenor of Bishop
Haito's reaction to some of the reformist proposals made during the first
synod, especially when these were in violation of the Rule of the greater
and more time-honored of the two St. Benedicts. It was precisely the
issue of the baths and questions involving the location of the Abbot's
House that roused his indignation. The reformists lost this battle.