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II.1.6

NAVE

The nave (figs. 84, 93 and 99) is 40 feet wide and 180 feet
long. Its clerestory rests on nine arcades, with columns
spaced at intervals of 20 feet on center. In three places
the nave is blocked in its entirety by cross partitions which
make it impossible for anyone at any point within the
nave to move in a straight line from the western apse to
the transept. The first of these screens connects the second
pair of columns; the second lies in line with the fifth pair;
and the third, midway between the seventh and eighth pair.
In addition, in three places, the nave is also railed off from
the aisles: in the third arcade, the sixth, and the last one-and-a-half
arcades. The spaces thus segregated isolate the
areas reserved for the monks from those accessible to the
laymen.

CHOIR OF ST. PETER

Between the two westernmost arcades of the nave an area
22½ feet wide and 32½ feet long is screened off to serve as a
choir (chorus) for the monks who chant before the altar of
St. Peter. The railing of this choir has a wide central
opening toward the altar of St. Peter, and two narrow
lateral passages at the opposite end. What such choir

[ILLUSTRATION]

85. MEDIEVAL ROUND TOWER, NORTHWEST CORNER OF CATHEDRAL

VALE OF GLENDALOUGH, WICKLOW, IRELAND

The Old Irish word for these towers, some of which rise to over 100 feet, is CLOIGTHEACH or "bell tower;" but the placement in most of them
of entrances well above ground level suggests they were used as places of refuge during attack. The earliest date from about 900.

screens looked like may be inferred from the surviving
choir and altar railings of the churches of Santa Sabina and
San Clemente in Rome, as well as from numerous fragments
of other screens of this type in Greek, Syrian, and
Palestinian churches. The arrangement is traditional. We
are showing as a typical example a reconstruction of the
presbytery of the Basilica of Thasos, Macedonia (fig. 94),
which also displays the Early Christian prototype for the
semicircular wall benches in the two apses of the Church
of the Plan of St. Gall.[27]

BAPTISMAL FONT AND ALTAR

The space between the first and second cross-partitions
of the nave serves as a baptistery. In the westernmost bay
is the baptismal font of the Church, and in the bay next to
it, an altar dedicated jointly to SS. John the Baptist and
John the Evangelist (altare sc̄ī iohannis & sc̄ī iohī euangelistae).
The baptismal font (fons) is marked by two concentric
circles and the hexameter:

Francis Bond interpreted these two rings as representing
"either a circular piscina or a circular font."[28] The first
proposition in this alternative must, I think, be abandoned.
Baptismal fonts constructed in the form of piscinae sunk
below the level of the pavement were common in Early
Christian times and during the period of conversion of the
barbaric tribes, when the majority of the people to be
baptized were adults. But in Carolingian times (with the
notable exception of the conversion of the Saxons, as Bond
himself points out),[29] the baptism of adults had become
unusual. Babies,[30] unable to stand upright, had to be dipped
into the water by the officiating priest and this could be
done successfully only if the water level were brought
within reasonable range of the priest as he bent over to
perform the ceremonial immersion of the child. The
elevated tub-shaped water font was the logical answer to
this need.

A convention of bishops held at the banks of the Danube
River in the summer of 796 reaffirmed an old ecclesiastical
directive according to which baptismal rites could be held
only at Pentecost and Easter, except in cases of extreme
urgency.[31] This may explain the large dimensions of the
font of the Plan of St. Gall, whose diameter runs over 6 feet.

That same convention took it for granted that the baptismal
rite should be performed "in a font, or some such
vessel, in which one can be immersed thrice in the name of
the Holy Trinity" (in fonte, vel tali vase, ubi in nomine
sanctae trinitatis trina mersio fieri possit).[32]

Baptismal fonts were in general made of stone, but a
directive issued in 852 by Bishop Hincmar of Reims orders
that "if a parish church cannot afford a baptismal font of
stone, it must provide for other suitable substitutes,"[33]
which can only refer to portable wooden tubs. A charming
picture of a baptismal rite performed in such a temporary
contrivance may be found in one of the marginal illuminations
of the Luttrell Psalter (fig. 95).[34] Circular fonts of
stone exist in many places; like the font of the Plan of St.
Gall, they usually are raised on a plinth. I show as typical
examples (fig. 96 and 97) a highly decorated font in the
church of Deerhurst, Gloucestershire, England, of pre-Conquest
date,[35] and a larger cylindrical font of around
1100 now in the possession of Dr. Peter Ludwig, Aachen.[36]

In the Middle Ages the baptismal font usually stood in
the northern aisle of the church close to the western
entrance.[37] The arrangement on the Plan of St. Gall where
the font is placed into the very axis of the church is unusual[38]
and probably owes its existence to the desire to
restrict the services for the laymen to the nave in order to
keep the aisles clear for the passage of the pilgrims who
wished to visit the tomb of St. Gall.

ALTAR OF THE SAVIOR AT THE CROSS & THE
PLACE OF WORSHIP FOR LAYMEN

The space between the second and third transverse partitions
of the nave serves as the parish church for the monastery's
serfs and tenants and as the place of worship for the
pilgrims and visitors. It contains between the sixth pair of
columns the altar of the Saviour at the Cross (altar
scī saluatoris ad crucem). This altar is surmounted by a large

[ILLUSTRATION]

86. TABRIZ, IRAN. RECONSTRUCTION AFTER PASCAL COSTE [after Saare, Denkmäler Persischer Baukunst, Berlin, 1901, 29, fig. 26]

The masjed i Kebud or Blue Mosque was built by Jehan Shah of the Kira Kuyumli dynasty (1437-1467). The mosque, now in ruins, is of a
type reaching far back to the early centuries of Mohammedism.

cross shown in horizontal projection, and has ascribed to it
the hexameter:

The cross rises 10 feet above the altar, and has a spread of
7½ feet. Altars in honor of the Holy Cross existed in the
abbey churches of Centula, Fulda, Corvey-on-the-Weser,
St. Vaast at Arras, the Cathedral of Le Mans, and at many
other places.[40] As in the Church of the Plan of St. Gall,
they were located in the axis of the church at a point lying
midway between the eastern and western ends of the
church.

AMBO

The last 1½ bays of the nave are again completely
screened off by railings. In the center of this enclosure,
which is accessible by two lateral passages from the west
and a central passage from the east, there rises a circular
pulpit (ambo) on a concentric plinth 10 feet in diameter,
from which "is recited the lesson of evangelic peace" (hic
euangelacae recitat' lectio pacis).

The Plan does not tell us from what side the ambo was
entered. But since it was from here that the abbot or
visiting bishop addressed the crowd congregated around
the altar of the Holy Cross, the lectern side of the ambo
must have been at the west, the entrance side at the east.
Pulpits of this kind were in use in Early Christian churches
from the fourth century onward.[41] They were of circular,
ovoid, or polygonal shape. A typical example from the
church of Hagia Sophia, in Salonica, now in the Museum
of Constantinople, is shown in figure 98.[42]

LECTERNS FOR READING

Further east of the ambo, yet within the same enclosure,
are "two lecterns for reading" (analogia duo ad legendū),
one to be used "at night" (in nocte), the other, by implication,
in the daytime. They are built against the railing that
separates the nave from the crossing and must have faced
eastward toward the place where the monks congregated.
The existence of these two lecterns suggests that the service
books which they supported were so large that they could
not be easily held in the hand. This holds true, practically
without exception, for the Carolingian Bibles and Psalters.[43]