I. 11
THE CONCEPTUAL
HOMOGENEITY OF THE PLAN
I.11.1
HOMOGENEITY IN QUESTION
On three different occasions, and each time for different
reasons, the conceptual homogeneity of the Plan of St.
Gall has been questioned: first, in 1952 by Hans Reinhardt,[207]
second in 1957 by Erwin Poeschel,[208]
and third in
1963/64 by Adolf Reinle.[209]
REINHARDT, 1952
Reinhardt expressed the view that the buildings that
appear on the large rectangular tract to the east and west
of the Church (sheets 4 and 5) were not part of the original
scheme but an afterthought or a later addition. He inferred
this from the fact that sheets 4 and 5 were added to the
center portion of the Plan only after the buildings on the
latter had been delineated and inscribed with their
explanatory titles.[210]
Reinhardt's factual observations on this
score were correct and important, but to infer from them
that the scheme of the Plan was a compilation of parts
created at different times involves a confusion between the
conceptual homogeneity of the original scheme and the
physical assemblage of the various pieces of parchment on
which the copy was traced. A monastery could hardly
function without the buildings that appear on the top and
bottom sheets of the Plan, which consist of such basic
and indispensable monastic facilities as the Novitiate, the
Monks' Infirmary, the Cemetery, the House of the
Physicians, the House for Bloodletting, the Vegetable
Garden and the Gardener's House, the houses for the
chicken and geese and their keepers, as well as the entire
aggregate of buildings west of the Church which shelter
the milk- and cheese-producing animals so vital to the
monastic economy. An analysis of the distribution of the
buildings and their respective functions in the monastic
community discloses that there is no conceptual disparity
along the lines that Reinhardt suggests. Some of the most
vital monastic needs are met by installations that lie on
sheet 4 to the east of the Church (Novitiate and Infirmary,
House of the Physicians, House for Bloodletting), whereas
some of the most basic service functions are accommodated
in houses shown on the center portion of the Plan (sheetgroup
1, 2, 3) together with Church and Claustrum
(Granary, Great Collective Workshop, Mill, Mortar,
Drying Kiln, House of Coopers and Wheelwrights, House
for Horses and Oxen and Their Keepers).
POESCHEL, 1957
Poeschel believed that Reinhardt's view of the composite
origin of the Plan was corroborated by the fact that in his
letter of transmittal the author of the Plan of St. Gall
refers to the monastic buildings as
officinae, i.e., "workshops."
[211]
This, Poeschel argued, can only mean that the
layout of the Church and the Cloister had already been
worked out in a previous drawing and that the Plan of St.
Gall was primarily concerned with the development of the
service structures. It would have been sounder, historically,
to infer from the use of the word
officina that the author of
the transmittal note employed this term in the general sense
of "building" or "installation," rather than to take the
radical step of concluding from its occurrence that the
Plan was patched together in separate conceptual stages. A
closer look at the use of the word
officina in medieval
literature subsequently proved, indeed, beyond any shadow
of doubt, that the word was employed in this broader sense
—not only in the monastic nomenclature of the ninth
century, but even in the language of the very founder of
western monachism, St. Benedict.
[212]
"The workshops wherein
we shall diligently execute all these tasks," we are told
in chapter 4 of the Rule, "are the enclosures [
claustra] of
the monastery and stability of the congregation,"
[213]
to which
the ninth-century commentators Basilius and pseudo-Paulus
add: ". . . and properly does he [St. Benedict] refer
to these workshops in the plural form, because the places
in the monastery where the `work of God' is done are
many; one workshop is the place where the Holy Scriptures
are read, another one is the place for prayer, another one
the place where the sick are attended to, and still another
one the place where the dead are buried."
[214]
The commentary
leaves no room for misinterpretation: "workshop" is a
term that applies to the Church as well as to all of the
claustral structures. It is applicable, even, to the monastic
cemetery.
REINLE, 1963-4
Reinle's reasons for questioning the conceptual homogeneity
of the Plan were of an entirely different order. In
his analysis of the dimensional incongruities between the
Church as it is shown on the Plan and the measurements
listed in some of its explanatory titles,[215]
he had come to the
disconcerting conclusion that the drafter of the scheme
made use of no fewer than three different scales:
1. A foot equivalent to 34.0 cm., which determined the
dimensions of the Church and the Cloister.[216]
2. A foot equivalent to 29.2-29.7 cm., used in the
construction of the Novitiate and the Infirmary.[217]
3. A foot equivalent to 30.0 cm., used in the planning
of the guest and service structures of the monastery, as
well as of the Monks' Cemetery and Garden.[218]
These findings, Reinle concludes, show that the Plan is
composed of heterogeneous parts, compiled from several
disparate sources.[219]
I am venturing to add to Reinle's three scales as a fourth
possibility the conjecture that all of his calculations are
wrong. They are advanced not on the basis of a thorough
and exhaustive scale analysis of the Plan, but on the simple
assumption that certain key dimensions of the Plan—such
as the length of the Church or the width of the Cloister
Yard—correspond to certain demarcations on a straightedge
graduated in Carolingian feet, the precise value of
which is unknown. Reinle observed correctly that the
40-foot width of the nave of the Church corresponds to
6.7-6.8 cm.[220]
This he considers to be the equivalent of
one fifth of a Carolingian foot: 33.5-34.0 cm. Here again
he allows himself to be trapped in an anachronism. The
medieval foot, as will be amply stressed, was not divided
into fifths but into twelfths.[221]
Reinle's reason for believing
that the large building to the east of the Church, which
contains the Novitiate and the Infirmary, was drawn on a
scale different from that used in the layout of the Church
is that none of the principal internal parts of the Novitiate
and the Infirmary can be understood as a fraction of the
Carolingian foot of 34.0 cm.[222]
The answer to this is very
simple. It cannot—because Reinle's reconstitution of the
Carolingian foot used for his construction of the Church is
wrong. The same criticism can be extended to the other
deviational scale that Reinle believed he recognized in the
layout of the guest and service structures of the Plan of
St. Gall.
Reinle's attempt to question the conceptual homogeneity
of the Plan of St. Gall appears no more convincing than
those of Reinhardt and Poeschel. It is also no less distressing.
Like them it violates, on inadequate grounds, the very spirit
of the historical forces that produced the Plan.
I.11.2
THE CAROLINGIAN CONCEPT OF
CULTURAL UNITY (UNITAS):
A COUNTER ARGUMENT
Recent studies have made it clear that the scheme for an
exemplary monastery that is known to us through the
Plan of St. Gall was a statement of policy drawn up on
the highest levels of political and ecclesiastical administration
and conceived within the framework of a monastic
reform movement whose overriding preoccupation was to
establish unity (unitas) where life had been controlled by
disparate traditions (diversitas), to put "a single rule"
(una regula, una consuetudo) in the place of the mixed
tradition (regula mixta).[223]
It is an historical incongruity to propose that a document
conceived in this spirit would have been patched together
from fragments drawn in disparate scales, thus perpetuating
in its technical execution the very disorder that it strove to
overcome on a conceptual level.
The two synods of Aachen did not deal specifically with
the needs for uniformity of scale and measures. Yet
chronologically, the Carolingian battle for standardized
weights and measures even antedates the monastic reform.
The capitularies of Charlemagne abound with directives
promulgated for the purpose of establishing unity where
diversity prevailed. In his Admonitio generalis, issued on
March 23, 789, the emperor rules "that everybody shall
make use of the same and correct measures and of just
and equal weights, in the towns as well as in the monasteries,
whether selling or buying."[224]
The capitulary of
Frankfurt, issued in June 794, speaks of a "recently
established royal modius" (modium publicum et noviter
statutum);[225]
and from the celebrated book of instructions
to the managers of royal estates, the Capitulare de villis,
we learn that standard molds for such measures of capacity
were kept in the royal palace.[226]
Again in 802 Charlemagne
entreats his missi to see to it that "just and uniform
measures" be employed throughout the empire.[227]
It was in
the pursuit of the same drive toward uniform standards
that the emperor dispatched special messengers to Monte
Cassino for the purpose of finding the precise weight of the
pound of bread (libra panis) and the measure of wine
(hemina) that St. Benedict had assigned to the monks as
their daily allowance.[228]
The insistence with which the
capitularies reiterate the need for uniformity of weights
and measures bears witness to Charlemagne's profound
preoccupation with binding rules in such matters. Directives
to maintain established standards and severe warnings
against their adulteration were reissued by Charlemagne in
806[229]
and 813,[230]
and by Louis the Pious in 820,[231]
829,[232]
844,[233]
and 847.[234]
It is true that practically all of the measures specifically
mentioned in these ordinances are measures of weight and
capacity: the "peck" (modius), the "sixteenth part of a
peck" (sextarius), the "bucket" (situla), and the "basket"
(
corbus).
[235]
These measures were essential for the barter and
trade, which formed the basis for the entire Carolingian
economy. They would be the first to be singled out, if a
general principle would have to be illustrated by specific
examples. But it would be absurd to presume that measures
of length were not an implicit part of these directives. The
drive for uniformity was programmatic and universal. It
pervaded the whole of the political, administrative, economic,
and spiritual life of the Carolingian era, both under
Charlemagne and Louis the Pious.
[236]
On the highest level
the aim was the "unity of the empire." A precondition of
the
unitas regni was the "unity of the church." The
unitas
ecclesiae, in turn, depended on uniform standards of
conduct (
una consuetudo) both for the secular clergy and
for the monks. A blueprint for this unity (
forma unitatis)
[237]
were the directives for canons and canonesses which were
framed in the synod of 816 and the rules controlling
monastic life which were issued at this same council and
at the synod of 817.
[238]
The importance of these events for
the whole of the state was underscored not only by the fact
that these directives emerged from assemblies that were
held in the royal palace of Aachen
[239]
but also that they were
subsequently promulgated by the emperor himself in the
form of official capitularies and thus acquired the character
of public laws.
[240]
Surely enough, no truly binding unity might ever have
been attained in all of these segments of life and on all
levels. But to propose—as Reinle's theory of the multiplicity
of scales in the Plan of St. Gall implies—that a blatant
violation of these concepts of unity would have been perpetrated
in a document of paradigmatic significance, drawn
up in the palace itself under the eyes of the country's
leading bishops and abbots, appears to me to be an incongruous
historical assumption.
It is an incongruous assumption even on simple visual
grounds. In his reliance on precision instruments and
modern slide rules Reinle has neglected a powerful tool of
visual analysis: the human eye. For to the naked eye the
consummate conceptual and technical homogeneity of the
Plan reveals itself with infinitely greater strength than
could be disclosed by any mechanical devices. The order
in which the buildings are arranged is immaculate throughout
the entire width and length of the Plan. Since the
Plan is traced without the aid of a straightedge or the
benefit of a compass, it is full of minor irregularities. Yet
despite these shortcomings—inevitable in a freehand tracing,
and especially one of such bulky dimensions—one
cannot fail to observe that each building was developed
within the boundaries of a superordinate building site in
careful alignment with its companion structures, and that
the aggregate of these larger building sites of the Plan form
a mosaic of perfect order and rationality. This order is tight
and consistent. It does not show, at any place, the kind of
break or formal incompatibility that one associates with an
architectural composition pieced together from heterogeneous
parts.
