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

A second group of scholars, comprised of Wilhelm
Effman,[326] Friedrich Ostendorf,[327] Ernst Gall,[328] Edgar
Lehman,[329] Otto Doppelfeld,[330] and Wilhelm Rave[331] chose
to give credence to the drawing rather than to the explanatory

[ILLUSTRATION]

57. Diagram illustrating duodecimal division of Roman and medieval foot, and its
relation to the thumb-breadth of a grown man.

[ILLUSTRATION]

58. Diagram illustrating sedecimal division of Roman and medieval inch, obtained
by binary section of each preceding value.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. MONKS' DORMITORY

A. Facsimile reproduction of the red drawing of the Plan (see caption, page 13, vol. III)

B. Same, with 2½-foot module superimposed

C. Probable scheme by which the layout shown in A was constructed

After the area analyzed in Fig. 59, the
Monks' Dormitory embodies the next most
obvious proof that in designing the Plan, the
maker used an accurately graduated scale.
The basic unit of this scale, the 2½-foot
measure, the designer obtained by halving four
times in succession the width he assigned to
the nave of the Church, its transept, and all
the basic claustral structures (see pp. 89-90
and Ernest Born's diagrams and captions,
pp. 92-93).

A 2½-foot module was a felicitous
size for the basic unit of measurement
applying to a settlement the size of the
monastery of the Plan. It was large enough
to account for critical space (seating,
sleeping) and small enough to obviate the
need to draw in excessive detail, and thus to
cloud the view of the community's buildings.
With a practical understanding, the maker
of the Plan rounded up his dimensions to the
next higher—never the lower—module:
furnishings or features that might, when
installed, lay in size between one and another
module, were drawn to the larger size.

This choice was deliberate. The beds of the
Monks' Dormitory, and all other places
where beds are depicted on the Plan (Abbot's
House, House for Distinguished Guests,
Dormitory for Visiting Monks), are examples
of it. All these beds are assigned a width of
one module and a length of three. One module
2½ feet (30 inches) might be considered
adequate for the width of a monk's cot,
but three modules totalling 7½ feet seems
overly long. However, the space of two
modules, 5 feet, would surely have been too
short for a grown man. The longer increment
allowed the designer to indicate just how
many were expected to sleep in a space the
size of the Dormitory; to suggest a possible
bed arrangement while permitting enough
more space to accommodate furnishings; and,
by accumulation of "extra" measure,
ultimately to account for space required by
such constructional features as wall thick-
nesses and staircases, nowhere specifically
indicated on the Plan. Such issues would have
been resolved as a function of supervision
in actual construction, decisions delegated
to an experienced artisan who not only could
understand and interpret the Plan and its
maker's intentions, but who also knew how
to deal with practicalities of building a
wing to house 76 men. More discussion of
these issues is offered, pp. 112-13, and II,
225ff.

60.

titles. To them the Church with the thickness of its
walls reconstructed, would have looked as it is shown in
figure 56 (a proposal made by Ostendorf).[332]

Doppelfeld, the most articulate exponent of this group,
has proposed that the inconsistencies between the drawing
and the measurements given in the explanatory titles can
be easily resolved if one were to assume that the scribe who
wrote these legends converted the figure 300 (in Latin,
CCC) into 200 (in Latin, CC) by inadvertently dropping
one of the C's; and that he committed a second error by
confusing a d with an s and thus inadvertently converting
the crucial word bis denos ("twice ten," equaling twenty) of
the intercolumniary legend of the arcades of the nave of
the church into bis senos ("twice six," equaling twelve). If
these errors of the copyist are corrected, Doppelfeld concluded,
all the discrepancies between the drawing and its
explanatory titles would disappear, and the text and drawing
would endorse one another.[333]

Doppelfeld had another reason for believing in the trustworthiness
of the drawing: his own excavations beneath the
pavement of Cologne Cathedral which had brought to light
the foundations of a Carolingian monastery church whose
dimensions were virtually identical to those of the Church
of St. Gall.[334]

[326]

Effmann, I, 1899, 162, fig. 44.

[327]

Ostendorf, 1922, 43 note 262.

[328]

Gall, 1930, 16, and pl. I fig. 4.

[329]

E. Lehmann, 1938, 137, fig. 93.

[330]

Doppelfeld, 1948.

[331]

Rave, 1956.

[332]

See note 14 above.

[333]

Doppelfeld, op. cit., 11-12; likewise, Rave, loc. cit.

[334]

Doppelfeld, op. cit.