A WORD OF CAUTION
In turning, at this juncture, to an account of my own conclusions
on the scale that was used in designing the Plan, I
should like to start with a word of caution. While I hold the
view that the Plan was drawn to a definite scale, and that
this scale was applied consistently throughout the entire
[ILLUSTRATION]
64. PLAN OF ST. GALL. MONKS' VEGETABLE GARDEN
The vegetable growing plots measure two
modules wide, 5 feet (60 inches) and would
require a reach of no greater than 30 inches
from the work space between plots, an
efficient size for hand cultivation. The clear
work space between the cultivated strips, 1-1½
modules wide (45 inches) was adequate for
a gardener with barrow or basket.
The center aisle, 2 modules wide, permitted
two men with their barrows or vegetable
baskets to easily pass each other.
The planning stresses no waste motion, no
scattered lost effort. This was not a garden
in which to play at gardening. It was close
to life, the need to live and the desire to
live. Nowhere in the Plan is the sense of
urgency, the necessity of collaboration and
conservation of resources more dramatically
and concisely expressed than in this simple
composition of eighteen rectangular garden
plots. Adjacent, on the north, where fruit
ripened for the monks' table, was the Monastery
Orchard which served a second purpose
as the Monks' Cemetery (always efficient
even in death) where the monks took their
long final rest.
Modularity was born of sacred numbers.
Each was but a finite and measureable
feature of divine and infinite order communicated
to men from heaven by a vast
scheme of symbolism. The passion for order
still persists, but the explanations are not the
same.
*
For extended treatment of the Monks'
Vegetable Garden see II, 204, 205.
Cemetery and Orchard are treated on page
211, vol. II.
Characters in black squares identify buildings
of the Plan, page xxiv, and III, 14
(Catalogue of Inscriptions).
E.B.
A submodule grid of 1¼ feet is superimposed on the plots of the vegetable garden (red drawing, same size as original; scale 1:192)
breadth and width of the scheme,
[359]
I do not think anyone
could expect to be able to determine without any shadow of
doubt the precise dimensions of every building, or any piece
of furniture, shown on this scheme. This is impossible for a
number of reasons. Most important among these are that
the Plan is not an original but a copy, and that this copy was
traced, without the aid of any supporting instruments,
through the opaque body of large and rather unmanageable
pieces of parchment that had to be held against a light
surface in order to acquire the requisite transparency.
[360]
This was bound to introduce a multitude of minor inaccuracies
and inconsistencies that are incompatible with the
precision of draftsmanship required in the development of
the original scheme.
Moreover, there is clear evidence, as I have demonstrated
elsewhere, that in the process of tracing, original and overlay
changed their respective positions, in several instances
causing a substantial measure of distortion. This is noticeable
especially in the alignment of the claustral structures
with the Church and in the distorted layout of the stables in
the southwestern corner of the settlement.[361]
Despite these malformations, minor or major as they
may be, the Plan of St. Gall retains enough of the precision
of the prototype to permit the conclusion that the original
was based on a consistent and carefully calculated scale, and
to allow us to reconstruct the basic graduations of this
scale.
The primary reason why this problem was not solved in
the past is, I think, that most of the students who took an
interest in this matter were Continental Europeans reared
on the metric system. Being raised in this system, I, too,
could not avoid interpreting the scale of the Plan—as I
presume many others tried before me—by constructing a
straightedge on which the value forty (width of the nave)
was graduated into forty equal units. Applying this scale to
the various buildings of the Plan as well as to the open
spaces between them, I recognized quickly, yet not without
consternation, that a staggering majority of the dimensions
appeared to coincide with intermediate values that did not
make sense in terms of an even numerical progression. I
was puzzled by the frequent occurrence of such values as
2½, 7½, 12½, 17½, 22½, 27½, and so on, and in a special sense
by the heavy recurrent rate of what appeared to be a
standard value, namely, the width assigned to the steps,
benches, and beds. It was larger than 2, yet smaller than 3,
and appeared to make sense only if interpreted as 2½.
I was puzzled by these observations until it occurred to
me that the conditions that they reflected might be related
to the possibility that the inventor of the scheme availed
himself of a scale that was not based on the continuous
sequence of equal numerical values used in the decimal
system, but emerged from the geometrical thinking of the
developmentally older sedecimal system that survives in the
subdivisions of the English inch. I consequently designed a
scale in which the value 40 was internally graduated into
sixteen units, each of a length of 2½ feet, and the entire
riddle of the Plan unfolded itself.
I shall demonstrate the validity of this assertion with a
scale analysis of two areas of the Plan which lend themselves
with particular ease to this type of investigation.
