University of Virginia Library

FOREWORD

THIS BOOK, the fruit of research that placed a heavy burden of work upon its author for over two decades, is
ultimately the result of a lucky encounter at the right hour. During preliminary planning discussions held in the
home of the editor of the Aachener Kunstblätter, and concerned with the structure and content of the Council of
Europe exhibition "Karl der Grosse," the desire arose for a new model based on the Plan of St. Gall, which would
transpose into three-dimensional reality the numerous discoveries and findings made by scholars from various
countries since the first model was constructed in 1877.

The realization of this project was made possible by the co-operation of three men whose personalities, experience,
and skills complemented one another in the most fortuitous manner: Walter Horn, to whom this assignment brought
the challenging opportunity to sharpen the detail and broaden the scope of his work on the Plan of St. Gall; Ernest
Born, the architect and designer, who rendered these findings in drawings of admirable accuracy and beauty; and
Siegfried Karschunke,[1] the great craftsman whose acquaintance I made by a stroke of luck, and who, with the loving
care of an artist inspired by his task, undertook to rebuild the manifold shapes in wood, half-timber, and lead.

Never, from the very outset, had it been our intent to confine the plans for 1965 to the exhibition alone. We
were convinced that the lifework and impact upon history of so multifaceted and powerful a personality as
Charlemagne's could not be done justice solely by an exhibition. From this awareness emerged the plan to
augment the exhibition with a scholarly work of four volumes to be published simultaneously, which would offer
to some eighty specialists an opportunity to illuminate Charlemagne's accomplishments from every conceivable
perspective.

It was in this context that I turned to Walter Horn with a request to contribute to our plans with a summary of
his studies on the Plan of St. Gall. In the ensuing negotiations it became clear that the range of his thoughts and
findings would far exceed the framework of our publications. An alternative plan, namely that of publishing his
findings on the Plan of St. Gall in a separate volume simultaneously with the exhibit had to be abandoned for reasons
of timing, because of the complexities involved in this work. At that time Walter Horn was still engrossed in
highly specialized studies in the field of medieval timber architecture, as an essential prerequisite to the completion

of his work on the Plan of St. Gall. The delay turned out to be a blessing, for in its present form, The Plan of St.
Gall stands as a comprehensive monograph. Not only does the author exhibit a sovereign command of all the
architectural problems but he has interpreted the Plan in the context of the manorial, economic, intellectual, and
spiritual life of the period. His book is an exposition both of an architectural master plan and of a segment of
fundamental cultural history, seen in the context of medieval life as a whole.

The Plan of St. Gall is indebted in more than one way to the cultural program of the Court of Aachen and the
monastic policy of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. Reflected in it is one of the essential traits in Charlemagne's
personality: his desire for order, unity, perfection. A number of monasteries sponsored by Charlemagne flourished
in the empire, and many others were founded during his long reign. On his death, these monasteries numbered
more than 650 in the kingdom of the Franks alone, not including those in Italy. Many of these monasteries—and
foremost among them were those meant to strengthen Frankish control in the recently annexed provinces south of
the Loire River, east of the Rhine, and in Italy—he favored with large donations. Others passed from the ownership
of their founders to that of the monarch.

In the second volume of the work which we published in connection with the Karl der Grosse Exhibition,
Joseph Semmler has portrayed Charlemagne's efforts to strengthen monastic life; with rich documentation he has
gathered together what is here only summarily reviewed. In monasteries throughout his realm the emperor was
eager to introduce the regula sancti Benedicti and replace with it many other monastic traditions and widely varying
customs. Even though it cannot be established with certainty that he succeeded in the so-called Aachener Normalexemplar
in securing for himself a copy of the original manuscript by the great father of western monachism, it
was a self-evident precept to him that all nuns and monks in his empire should be bound to shape their lives in
accordance with this and no other Rule.

In this endeavor Charlemagne found a great ally, from 782 onward, in Benedict of Aniane. This descendant of a
line of powerful counts of southern France threw himself with the full force of his impassioned asceticism in support
of literal adherence to the Rule of Saint Benedict. Charlemagne's Admonitio generalis of 789 to the clergy of his
empire, and the Synod of Aachen of 802, are two milestones in his efforts to have the Rule adopted in all the monastic
communities of the empire. In 802 Charlemagne's royal messengers (missi dominici) were dispatched throughout
the counties to make sure that all monasteries had adopted the Rule.

There was no want of countermovements. Angilbert, a son-in-law of Charlemagne, furnished his monks at
St. Riquier a different custom, which stipulated a laus perenneis, that is, a continuous and uninterrupted prayer
offered by groups of monks in alternating sequence. Adalhard of Corbie, a blood-cousin of the emperor, made a
passionate defense of the regula mixta at the synod of 802. The emperor may have recognized on that occasion that
full conformity could not be obtained. From the records of synods which he called together in five principal
conters of the empire, in 813, as his life was already drawing to a close, we learn that there were provinces where
monasteries flourished and others where they had fallen into decay. This book will make it clear that even in 816
and 817, under the very eyes of Benedict of Aniane, whom Louis the Pious had ordered to come to Aachen,
opposition to the uniform interpretation of the Rule for all monasteries had not, as yet, died out. Nonetheless,
even the scheme of the Plan of St. Gall reflects that propensity for norm and for unity that characterizes all
ordinances issued by Charlemagne in his quest for an unalterable law and a perfection that reached toward the
utopian.

The great leaders of medieval monachism were powerful and self-willed personalities. The Rule of Saint
Benedict was primarily conceived as an abbot's rule, an ordered body of prescriptions for a good abbot, who was to
be a strong yet compassionate father. The material welfare of the entire abbey, as well as the spiritual well-being of
each individual monk, was placed in his hands. He was both ruler and educator, for just as a kingdom in the Middle
Ages belonged to the king, so the abbey belonged to the abbot, not only the order or the congregation. A powerful

father figure of this type was Haito, the bishop and abbot who, at request of Abbot Gozbert of St. Gall, arranged
for the Plan to be copied from the scheme worked out in 816 and 817 during the two synods of Aachen. As one of
Charlemagne's counsellors, Haito was entrusted with a mission to Constantinople in 811. He is known to have
produced a report on his experiences which, unfortunately, has not survived. The diocesan directives which he
issued for the clergy of Basel (Capitulare Hettonis) and the so-called Statutes of Murbach testify his passionate
concern with a life governed by firm custom. He sent the monks Grimald and Tatto to Benedict of Aniane with the
commission to procure an accurate copy of the Rule, word for word, syllable for syllable, as these monks themselves
attest. For even though Haito differed from Benedict of Aniane in the interpretation of certain passages of the Rule,
he was in full accord with him, as well as with Charlemagne, in postulating that the Rule should be the sole guideline
for the monks' life.

As a sexagenarian, in 823, this remarkable man, Haito, relinquished all his offices to devote the remaining
thirteen years of his life to a singular task. In a comprehensive book he gathered the names of all his friends and
acquaintances, entire monasteries, entire clans of noblemen, even the house of the king himself, to unite them in
this manner in a brotherhood of supplicants who could pray in concert for their eternal salvation. At the end, his
collection embraced more than 20,000 names representing the century's prominent men in their entirety, whom
Haito thus proposed to summon in a final Imperial Assembly in Heaven. At the same time he took it upon himself to
record in prose the metaphysical visions of his pupil, Wetti, the Visio Wettini, in which, inter alia, the punishment
of Charlemagne in Purgatory was listed. It was on this account that Walafrid Strabo, who succeeded Haito at
Reichenau in 838, based his famous poem which stands at the beginning of a long lineage terminating in Dante's
Divine Comedy.

The same will to perfection and order that inspired Haito's instructions to the priests of his diocese and the
monks of his monasteries and that drove him to compile the list of names for the confraternity of Reichenau animated
the directives issued by all those great codifiers who worked under Charlemagne and Louis the Pious in the overriding
task of unifying Church and State in the endeavor to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth. It was this
same spirit which also inspired the design of the perfect city for monks transmitted by Haito to the abbot of St. Gall.

One may wonder whether it could ever have been built in exactly that form. Like many of the laws of Charlemagne,
it had a basically utopian character. However, in stressing this quality inherent in the Plan, we must not lose
sight of the fact that it was made to serve as a guide to actual construction. Whether or not the Plan should be
interpreted as a schematic drawing or a building plan has puzzled scholars for over a century. Walter Horn's
research has brought three surprising discoveries to light. First, contrary to former opinion, he has established
without any shadow of a doubt that the Plan was drawn to a consistent scale. Second, this scale was used with an
acute awareness of the spatial and functional realities involved. And third, once the building types had been
identified, the entire Plan could be converted into working drawings, on the basis of which a monastery could in
fact be built in its actual dimensions.

Of course, the variability from monastery to monastery of topographical and prevailing economic conditions, as
well as changing monastic customs, may have prevented the literal instrumentation of a plan of such paradigmatic
perfection. Yet, a preliminary inquiry into the effects which the Plan of St. Gall had on other monastic planning
suggests that in all its basic dispositions it in fact conditioned the course of all future developments. Whatever
alterations were undertaken were caused by changes in monastic custom.

It was therefore a real temptation of the mind to attempt to embody this instrument in a model. When I called
upon Walter Horn in 1963 to develop such a model and he confessed to me that its construction would fulfill a dream
he had entertained for many years, it was clear to both of us that we were in search of architectural solutions which
could not be obtained on the sole basis of the data contained in the Plan itself. Walter Horn found the key for these
solutions in his comprehensive and many-branched studies of the monastic architecture of Western Europe, and of

the contributions made to it by early Germanic timber architecture. His aim was not—and could not have been—
to demonstrate what form the scheme assumed when Abbot Gozbert used it for the reconstruction of his own
monastery for the topographic features of the site upon which Gozbert had to build would in itself have precluded
the Plan's being put into effect in precisely the form in which it was drawn. Rather, Mr. Horn had to confine
himself to demonstrating the ways in which various buildings and installations of the Plan of St. Gall could have
been built with the means of the period, adhering as closely as was possible to precepts disclosed in this first ideal
plan.

The Plan itself is a work of art of the highest order. It draws on old customs and serves old ideals. In styling it
"a near-utopian concept," we want to stress the fact that it is an architectural entity whose outer order most nearly
reflects its inner order, and whose laws govern the aesthetic organization of even the smallest buildings, and the
gardens. It was to result in an organism within which the Rule of Saint Benedict could be lived in the most rational
manner, with the shortest connections for traffic, secure segregation of monks from laymen, healthy from sick,
novices from those who had already taken their final vows. There was to be a minimum of dependence on necessary
supplies that could not be produced or stored within the walls of the monastery, to avoid disturbance from the
outside world. It was a self-contained and completely rationalized monastic entity.

Charlemagne and Louis the Pious dispatched junior and senior Frankish monks to all parts of the empire,
including Italy and the deep forests of Saxony, the Spanish marks as well as the only recently acquired steppes of the
Avarii. With amazement we gaze upon an aristocracy that embraced only two ideals of life: the life on horseback, in
continuous movement year in and year out, and the life behind the walls of monasteries—boundless liberty or
hermetic isolation. Men of those times must have given a great deal of thought to the perfect life in a monastery in
which nothing disturbed the inner calm of men turned toward God. In full compliance with the precepts of the Rule,
they took everything into this Noah's Ark—the staples for a considerable length of time, a full range of domesticated
animals and plants, craftsmen and scribes, physicians and teachers. They saw to it that the inner circle of life was
tightly enclosed by an outer economic circle. Both circles were centered upon the space of the church, where the
sole product was offered that could be entered upon the credit balance of the monastery: the praise of God. Graduated
in an ascending scale of mass and form, the buildings of this monastery rank from the more modest economic and
agricultural houses to the more spacious and comfortably furnished buildings for receiving guests, to the solid
volumes of the claustral structures and the imposing hall of the church with its altars. The conceptual realization of
this rich and perspicacious architectural composition is controlled from within, but the order of building has
entered into an aesthetic consonance with the order of life established in the Rule of Saint Benedict.