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II.3.4

DISENGAGED CROSSING

The crossing of the Church of the Plan is completely
separated at floor level from the contiguous spaces by rails
and choir screens (fig. 99); and if it was meant to be
framed by boundary arches at the top, as I believe it was
(figs. 107-110),[233] the crossing would be the only place
where a principal constituent part of the church was segregated
from the rest of the latter's space by dividing arches
reaching up to roof level. No other single architectural
feature had such deep and far-reaching reverberations for
the future.

Like the fore choir, the disengaged crossing did not
originate during the Middle Ages. Crossings framed by
boundary arches, which separated the intersected area from
the nave and the transept, occur in certain cruciform, non-basilican
churches of Cappadocia, such as Tomarza,
Halvadere (fig. 148.A-B) and Sivri Hissar, as early as the
fifth and sixth centuries, as Samuel Guyer has pointed out.[234]
That the type was known in Western Europe is attested by
the Abbey Church of Adala in Pfalzel near Trier, before
715 (fig. 148.C).[235] There is a faint possibility that some

[ILLUSTRATION]

VAGHARSHAPAT (ECHMIADZIN), Armenia

151.A

151.B

CHURCH OF ST. GAYANÉ

[after Arutiunan and Safrian, 1951, fig. 20]

Erected by the Catholicos Ezra between 630 and 646.

[ILLUSTRATION]

BANDE, Orense, south Galicia, Spain

151.Xa

151.Xd

151.Xb

CHURCH OF SANTA COMBA (7th Cent.)

A jewel of Visigothic architecture, small, built in cyclopic masonry, this church attests
the early adoption of the Early Christian quincunx church by the Germanic conquerors
of Spain, and their fascination with cellular space division and the concept of an arch-framed
and tower-surmounted crossing that was to become a key feature of Carolingian
architecture.

151.Xc

rudimentary forms of the disengaged crossing (but not, so
far as I can judge, a fully developed archetype) appear in
certain Early Christian basilicas with tripartite transepts:
in Greece, such as Basilicas A and B in Nikopolis, and the
basilicas of Epidaurus, and Lokris. But it is well to reserve
final judgment until such time as Guyer's schematic reconstruction
of churches of this type with intersecting naves
and transepts surmounted by crossing towers is corroborated
by more tangible archaeological evidence than is
offered in his own study.[236]

If Kraeling's and Egger's reconstructions of them are
correct, the two finest examples of Early Christian churches
with fully developed crossings are the churches of the Holy
Apostles and Martyrs of Gerasa, 464-465 (fig. 149), and
the cruciform church at Salona.[237] However, no less important
for the development of the arch-framed crossing in
medieval architecture may have been such Armenian
central plan churches as St. Gayané at Vagharshapat
(Echmiadzin), 630 (fig. 151) as well as a small but no longer
tracable group of near-eastern quincunx churches, which
one must postulate historically to have formed the connecting
link between such semisacral cross-in-square
buildings as the praetorium (or temple) in the Roman camp
of Mousmieh, Syria, ca. A.D. 180 (fig. 150), an audience hall
of like design outside of the walls of Rusafa, Syria, dating
from about 560, the minute, yet arrestingly beautiful
seventh-century church of Santa Comba de Bande, Spain
(fig. 151.X) and the sophisticated Germigny-des-Prés built
by Theodulf of Orleans, councillor and missus dominicus of
Charlemagne, between 806-810 at his summer residence
on the Loire, near the abbey of St. Benoit-sur-Loire (fig.
152).

Yet the true Early Christian prototype for the Carolingian
disengaged crossing may be found closer to home in
the north basilica of Trier, which Gratian, having chosen

[ILLUSTRATION]

151.Y TRIER, GERMANY

154.A*

NORTH BASILICA

[isometric reconstruction, redrawn from Krautheimer, 1965, 61, fig. 23]

In the conceptual interaction of quincunx and basilica a medieval style of architecture emerges. The north basilica lacks only the ordering principle
of modularity for its full development. Product of two building campaigns (basilica, shortly after 325; quincunx, 380) the result in Trier is a composition
of bold and unusual grouping of masses that must have strongly influenced development of the Carolingian Latin cross church with disengaged
and tower-surmounted crossing.

[ILLUSTRATION]

GERMIGNY-DES-PRÉS

152.A

152.B

152.C

CHURCH OF THEODULF OF ORLEANS, 806-810

[plans after Viellard and Troiekouroff, 1965, 356, fig. 111]

Small, yet of magnificently controlled proportions, the spaces of Germigny-des-Prés step in bold progression to the slender, steeply rising nave and
transept, from whose intersection rises a tower of great elan. This church attests that the quincunx, even in the 9th century, had life enough to capture
the imagination of a great Carolingian churchman. Theodulf was a Visigoth and his acquaintance with such churches as Santa Comba de
Bande (fig. 151.X) may have influenced his choice.

to reside in Trier, rebuilt in 380. In its final Early Christian
form (fig. 151.Y) this building terminated in the east in
what can only be called a grandiose variant of a quincunx
church, consisting of a large, central, tower-surmounted
bay surrounded by eight smaller two-storied spaces: four in
the cross, four in the corners, the latter appearing externally,
like towers. Much masonry of this structure survives
today, incorporated in the fabric of the Romanesque church
which superseded it in the eleventh century. But in Charlemagne's
time it still stood there in its original form for all
his subjects to see, located about seventy-five miles as the
crow flies from the emperor's residence at Aachen.[238]

As one surveys all of this material, it must be stressed
again that sharp distinction must be made between the
occasional appearance of these motifs in the relatively
isolated topographical contexts of Armenia and Spain and
their formal and systematic combination with the basilican
scheme as attested by the sequence discussed in the
preceding chapter: St. Denis, 750-755; Neustadt-on-the-Main,
after 768/69 (figs. 116 and 133); Reichenau-Mittelzell,
806-816 (fig. 134); Cologne, 800-819 (fig. 139); in
some respects even the church of St. Benedict of Aniane at
Inden, 815-816 (fig. 147); and certainly, most decidedly
and programmatically, the Church of the Plan of St. Gall,
prototype plan: 816-817; copy: ca. 820 (figs. 55 and 99).
The tripartite Early Christian transept may have helped
bring about this fusion, but it had in itself none of the
exciting aesthetic and constructional implications which
made the disengaged crossing so important for the future.
Again it is difficult, if not impossible, to say precisely what
triggered the development of this particular solution. There
can be no doubt that the increase in the number of altars
affected the form of the crossing as much as it affected the
fore choir. Nor should it be overlooked that the division of
the congregation into choirs singing in antiphonal response
called for a more distinct architectural recognition of the
two constituent parts of this ritual. The Plan of St. Gall

[ILLUSTRATION]

154.B* ROME. OLD ST. PETER'S. CRYPT PLAN

[after Kirschbaum, 1959, 58, fig. 9]

In the Constantinian basilica the funerary monument marking the place of Peter's
execution stood in the chord of the apse, his altar in the transept before it. Gregory
raised the presbytery floor and beneath it made Peter's monument accessible to
pilgrims by a circular corridor crypt (the first of its kind), thus reserving the altar
space for exclusive use of clergy.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. FORE CHOIR AND ITS SYSTEM OF CRYPTS

155.A

155.B

For our interpretation of how this delineation of the
Presbytery and the Crypt of the Church of the Plan
would have to be translated into a modern architectural
drawing, with walls shown in their full thickness we
are referring to fig. 123, p. 177.

suggests that the fore choir and the apse became the
station for the majority of the monks, while the antiphonal
singing of the psalms by voices trained specifically for that
purpose took place in the crossing. There was, no doubt, a
liturgical need for spatial differentiation; the establishment
of a "house for the counter song" (this is how I think we
must interpret the term chorus psallentium) in the crossing
of the Plan served the purpose of preventing the altar
space from being crowded. Yet it would be foolish to
presume that this need alone brought about the creation of
a new architectural form.

In constructional terms the disengaged crossing established
in the most crucial area of the church a system of
bracing arches which could serve as a sound architectural
base for a superincumbent tower, and thus demonstrated
that arches rising from relatively slender piers could carry
substantial loads at impressive heights without weight-bearing
walls beneath them. This idea, once conceived,
prepared the way for the perforation of the nave walls and
their conversion from weight-bearing sheets of masonry
into a skeletal frame of structural members. Moreover, in
separating the crossing from the rest of the church by
framing arches, a space came into being which could be
used as a unit of measurement for the modular articulation
of the remaining spaces of the church. In the Church of the
Plan of St. Gall this articulation is already far advanced.