THE INCONSISTENCIES NOT PART OF THE
ORIGINAL CONCEPT BUT A CORRECTIVE MEASURE
Doppelfeld's argument was persuasive, and it was based
on a hypothesis subsequently proven to be correct, namely,
that the Plan of St. Gall is not an original but a copy.[335]
Yet
even before this fact was established, Doppelfeld's view
was challenged by Walter Boeckelmann.[336]
The incompatibility
between the drawing and the explanatory titles,
Boeckelmann contended, was not the product of an erring
scribe, but the reflection of a conflict that had arisen at the
council of Aachen, held in 816,[337]
between the bold dimensional
thinking of the old ecclesiastical leaders who had
shaped the policy of the church under Charlemagne and
the constrictive views of the leaders of the reform party
who controlled the church under Louis the Pious. A plan
worked out by the "old guard" had come under the
criticism of the reform party. The dimensions listed in the
explanatory titles were not meant to explain the drawing,
but to correct it. And since the proponents of these corrective
measures did not take it upon themselves to revise the
drawing in the suggested sense, "the disagreement was not
solved in the Plan, the conflict remaining preserved."
Boeckelmann's view, in my opinion, is correct. It reconciles
more of the conflicting traits of the Plan than any of
the previous hypotheses. More recent investigations have
shown that there indeed existed a serious ideological split
at the synods of Aachen between an old conservative group
of churchmen and the leaders of the reform party, which
affected other aspects of the Plan.[338]
