I.14.8
CONCLUSIONS
The foregoing analysis of the construction methods employed
in the Plan of St. Gall should dispel, once and for
all, the widespread belief that medieval architectural drawings
were not made "to scale."[379]
In contradiction to traditionally
prevailing views—but in confirmation of certain
observations made by Boeckelmann and Arens—this
analysis demonstrates that the author of the original scheme
of the Plan availed himself not only of a clearly definable
scale, but that he applied this scale throughout the entire
layout of the Plan with full consistency and logic.
From the methods employed in modern scale construction
the Plan of St. Gall differs neither in the logic of its
graduations, nor in the truthfulness with which this
graduation reflects the variations of the rendered object.
From the methods of modern scale construction the Plan
of St. Gall differs in two points only: first, in the fact that
it flows from a basically modular type of thinking; and
second, that its basic working units are derived as fractions
or multiples from a dimensional master value.
If a modern architect assigns to a given area a value of
40 feet, he does so with the aid of a ruler, on which the
value 40 is graduated into forty equal parts of one. On the
scale of the Plan of St. Gall, quite differently, the magnitude
40, as is found, was not subdivided into forty units of one,
but into sixteen units of 2½. Why the author of the Plan of
St. Gall divided his 40-foot scale into 16 units of 2½ rather
than into 40 units of one must by necessity remain a matter
for speculation. The value 2½, as my colleague Hunter
Dupree points out to me, was a fundamental unit of the
English surveying system. Two and one-half feet is the
length of the English pace (the space traversed by one
step).[380]
Could it be that the 2½-foot standard module of the
Plan of St. Gall was the equivalent of a traditional and
widely used Carolingian pace? And that the superordinate
modules of 40- and 160-foot squares were calculated as
meaningful multiples of that pace? There are other
historical factors which may have contributed to the
genesis of such relationships. To subdivide a primary value
of 40 into sixteen equal fractions (or to arrive at that value
by multiplying sixteen times a primary value of 2½) as has
been pointed out on the preceding pages, is one of the
easiest and, for that reason, also the oldest operations of
the human mind, requiring no other instrument than a
straightedge and a compass (method of continuous halving
or doubling). In chosing this procedure, the draftsman may
also have been influenced by the eminently sacred connotations
associated in his day with the two basic figures used
in this operation, the figures 40 and 4.
The choice of the figure 40 for the width of the nave can
hardly be considered an accident. Forty was a number
which in Biblical tradition had been associated for ages
with periods of expectation and penitence. Forty were the
days of the great primeval deluge, forty the years that the
Hebrews spent in the desert, forty the days that Moses
passed in expectation on Mount Sinai, forty the days
announced by Jonah for the destruction of the city of
Nineveh, forty the days that separated the Ascension from
the Resurrection.[381]
Forty, it should be noted, is not only
the width attributed on the Plan of St. Gall to the nave and
the transept, but also the total number of buildings of
which the monastery is composed.
In halving this sacred figure four times in succession, the
draftsman put into operation another eminently sacred
figure, associated both in the pagan and the Christian
tradition with the basic divisions of matter, time, and
space: the four elements, the four seasons, the four rivers
of Paradise, the four cardinal virtues, the four main
prophets, the four evangelists.
Whatever his reasons may have been (and I shall say
more about the number symbolism of the Plan a little later)
in organizing the layout of his monastery in a manner in
which all values could be expressed as multiples of 40 or as
multiples of a fraction obtained by halving 40 four times,
the draftsman provided his plan with a scale that could be
read and applied by anybody who was familiar with the
principles involved or who knew the formula. It is due to
the relative largeness of its standard unit (2½ feet) that the
Plan owes its easy readability, and that it could be traced
upon another sheet of parchment without sustaining any
serious loss in clarity and measurability.
The development of a modular grid in which all superand
subordinate units are derived in logical steps of progression
or diminution from the dimensions of a controlling
master module was an intellectual achievement of the
highest order and a concept that was tragically corrupted
when—(I presume at the second synod of Aachen, as the
Plan was formally considered for adoption
[383]
)—it was decided
that the length of the church should be reduced from
300 feet (as shown in the drawing) to 200 feet (as stipulated
in the axial title of the church) and that the interstices of
the arcades should be reduced from 20 feet (as shown in
the drawing) to 12 feet (as stipulated in the title inscribed
into the arcades). Like the number 40, the number 12
belongs to a traditional repertoire of sacred figures that
formed a common currency of metaphor and analogy (the
twelve Judaic tribes, the twelve apostles, the twelve months
of the year, the twelve hours of the day, et cetera),
[384]
that
could be put into circulation on even the most precipitate
call. But in contrast to 40, 12 as a dimension is not part of
the modular grid of the Plan. Being neither a multiple nor
a fraction of 40, it is clearly a foreign body in this system.
In introducing this figure for a feature aesthetically as
prominent as the arcades of the nave, the churchmen who
prescribed this change demolished one of the most precious
and most innovative aspects of the Plan: its square schematism.
It is probable that we will never be able to establish
who they were, these men,
[385]
yet one thing is certain: they
could not, in any manner, have been involved in the design
process that went into the making of the original scheme—
and they were worlds removed from understanding its
unusual aesthetic merits. To shorten the church by 100 feet
did not in itself require abandoning the modular scheme.
It could have been done in increments of its own control
module by the simple elimination of five 20-foot bays in
the nave. But the stipulation that the interstices of the
arcades be reduced from 20 to 12 feet forestalled any such
possibility and effectively destroyed the system of squares
in the church. The change was drastic, and, had it been
implemented in the drawing, would have required the
preparation of an entirely new Plan.
We are faced here with a manifestation of the age-old
conflict between architectural creativity and administrative
control, with disastrous consequences for the former when
the latter unwittingly becomes involved in the design process
with decisions which, though not necessarily arbitrary,
are nevertheless extraneous to the creative act and innocent
of any knowledge of technical detail and planning.
The author of the original scheme, if he was present at
the gathering where these decisions were taken, must
have gone through moments of shattering pain. He had
produced a scheme of extraordinary conceptual subtleties
including the design of a church which, had it ever been
built, would have been one of the highlights of early
medieval architecture (fig. 110). It took two-and-one-half
centuries of further development in western architecture
before the ideas first conceived here were embodied in some
of the great Romanesque cathedrals of Europe.[386]
