CONCLUSIONS
It is possible that the controversy about the "predominantly
central character" of the guest and service buildings
of the Plan of St. Gall versus the "predominantly axial or
longitudinal character" of the Germanic long house (in
which I found myself involved even before I had an
opportunity to commit my ideas to print) has its origin in
an overevaluation of the frequency of occurrence of the
latter. The Germanic long house is only one among a great
variety of other aisled Germanic houses whose layouts
range from the short and stubby houses of Jemgum (figs.
313-314) and Ezinge (figs. 293 to 297) through all
degrees of elongation to the spectacular extreme of Känne
Burs, Sweden, which had the unbelievable length of 203
feet (62 m., cf. above, fig. 290). But these excessive forms
are neither very common nor very typical; and when they
are part of a larger settlement they are usually interspersed
with a variety of shorter houses. The excavations of
Ezinge, Fochteloo, and Feddersen-Wierde, moreover, have
shown that on the Continent it was the care of animals
rather than shelter for humans which tended to extend the
house along its longitudinal axis. The largest house of
Ezinge was a cattle barn (fig. 298). And of the longest
houses of Fochteloo (fig. 304) and Feddersen-Wierde (fig.
316), only one fifth are reserved for people; the rest
sheltered the cattle. On the Plan of St. Gall, too, the longest
house is one that serves as shelter for animals (House for
the Horses and Oxen, fig. 474; cf. below, pp. 271-79).
The excavations of Ezinge, Fochteloo, and many other
places teach us, in addition, that where animals and people
are housed in separate structures, or where the animals
associated with the people are few, the houses remain
small and squarish. It is from the tradition of this shorter
variety of houses that the guest and service buildings of the
Plan of St. Gall will have to be derived. The houses of
St. Gall, following this tradition, are entered broadside;
the length of the house exceeds its width by an appreciable,
but rarely excessive, margin; the center space of the house
amounts in width to about twice that of the aisles; and the
hipped roofs over the narrow ends in conjunction with the
broadside entrance must have given the house, despite its
basic axial orientation, a strongly centralized character.
In giving preference to the shorter variant, the author of
the Plan of St. Gall still remained entirely within the range
of possibilities offered by his own indigenous tradition.
Had it been the custom to house the monks together with
the cattle, this might have led, even on the Plan of St. Gall,
to the introduction of long houses rather than the shorter
or more centralized type. But the life of the monastery
represented on this Plan is based on the principle of
functional separation. The monks were the lords of the
estate, the leisure class, whose spiritual obligation postulated
that they be freed from at least the meanest agricultural
chores, which were left to serfs and herdsmen. Even
among those caring for the animals a high degree of
specialization had brought about a systematic separation of
the various species. There is a special house for horses and
oxen, for foaling mares, and for dairy cows, pigs, sheep
and goats. On the Plan of St. Gall the houses for the livestock
are no longer simply an axial extension of the house
of the farmer and his family; they are entities of their own,
within which a small area of space is set aside to serve as
sleeping quarters for the herdsmen.
There are other distinctive differences that herald a new
development. In some of the guest and service structures
there are, in addition to the central fireplace, one or several
other heating devices installed in the peripheral rooms.
About this we shall have to say more below.
