The Plan of St. Gall :: :: University of Virginia Library

The two semicircular atria of the Church of the Plan
are a most unusual feature. The customary early
Christian form was a fore court of square or rectangular
plan, surrounded by colonnaded porticoes with a fountain
or water basin in the center and porches in the galleries for
entry and exit. These courts served varyingly as a preliminary
place of assembly for the faithful, as refuge during
inclement weather, as a burial ground, and often also as a
gathering place for those who were as yet not formally
admitted to the Christian community.[260] The architectural
prototypes of these early Christian atria (from Greek:
αίϑςιον; i.e., "a place under the open sky")[261] were the
galleried courts which the ancients interposed as a transitional
zone between the profane world and their sacred
buildings, in a multitude of aesthetic variations including
the use of semicircles, as well as an exuberant combination
of squares and semicircles, such as in the temples of
Baalbek or the Forum of Emperor Trajan in Rome. If
viewed against these lavish architectural orchestrations of
Rome, the early Christian atrium signifies historically a
retrenchment to the somber form of the square. Among
hundreds of well-attested early Christian atria, there are
only three, to my knowledge, that make use of the semicircle:

205

[ILLUSTRATION]

165. PLAN OF ST. GALL * AXONOMETRIC DRAWING

In aligning altars and altar screens with every second nave column, the architect projected the modular order of the Church (fig. 61) into the layout of its liturgical
furnishings. The interior is divided into a multitude of separate devotional stations, leaving only narrow passages in the aisles for the worshiper to move through the entire
length of the Church (fig. 82).

The emergence in Carolingian architecture of the ordering of space in recognizable, aesthetically modular form (cf. pp 217-23, below) has a striking parallel in the appear-
ance in Hiberno-Saxon and Carolingian book illumination of a decorative scheme whereby the entire book is divided internally into clearly distinguishable parts and sub-parts—
leading, in a crescendo of pictorial emphasis from letter to initial, initial to ornamented page, ornamented to figured page, and thus separating Gospel from Gospel, book
from chapter, chapter from paragraph, and paragraph from sentence. On the emergence of comparable stylistic trends in Carolingian literature and music, see Crocker,
Jones, and Horn in Viator VI, 1976.

206

[ILLUSTRATION]

166. RAVENNA. SAN GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA

BUILT BETWEEN 424 AND 434

Plan with square grid superimposed [after Petrovič, 1962, 43, fig. 2]

Navenka Petrovič's interpretation of the proportions of the church
of San Giovanni Evangelista in Ravenna is based upon a plan too
small and sketchy to be susceptible to critical evaluation. One is
disturbed to find that in some places the lines run along the outer,
in others along the inner surfaces of the walls of the Church. In the
case of the nave columns one observes with consternation that they
are not even touched by the longitudinal lines of the grid. Petrovič is
probably correct when she concludes that the church of San Giovanni
Evangelista is twice as long as it is wide, but the square grid from
which she thinks these proportions are developed is meaningless, since
the boundaries of the component squares of the grid are in no tangible
relation to the nave columns or the blind arcading of the outer-wall
surfaces. They are even less compatible with the dimensions of the
porch, the apse, or the two rectangular spaces (DIAKONIKON and
PROTHESIS) to the side of the apse.

Similar, if not more blatant discrepancies between Petrovič's modular
grids and the actual course of the masonry as well as the spacing of
the nave columns exist in virtually all of the other dozen odd fifth
and sixth century churches of Ravenna and the Northern Littoral of
the Adriatic Sea with which she deals, although in many of these the
length of the church appears to be indeed, the double of its width.
The proportions of all of these churches should be re-examined with
new plans made on the spot, and at a scale considerably (!) larger
and draftsmanship more precise than those upon which the Petrovič
grids are based.

a large fourth-century church at Damous-el-Karita,
a suburb of ancient Carthage;[262] the domed basilica of
Meriamlik, in Silicia, Asia Minor, 471-94;[263] and the
recently excavated church of St. Leonidas at Lechaion, the
harbor suburb of Corinth, whose atrium dates from 518527
(fig. 161).[264]

The earliest semicircular atrium north of the Alps is the
western atrium of Cologne Cathedral (period VI), which
was added to the enlarged transept of the old Merovingian
church (period V), as is now believed, after the accession
of Hildebold to the episcopal see in 782 and before the
coronation of Charlemagne in 800[265] (fig. 139), and thus
precedes the two circular atria of the Plan of St. Gall by
over twenty years.

It appears to me extremely doubtful that there is any
connection between these semicircular Carolingian forecourts
and those of the just-mentioned fourth- to sixth-century
churches of North Africa, Asia Minor, and Greece;
and I would be inclined to give stronger credence to a
connection with the semicircular courts of the basilica of
Emperor Trajan (fig. 239); their layout may have exerted
the additional influence of stimulating the aesthetic acceptance
in Carolingian churches of the motif of apse and
counter apse. We have other reasons to think that the
Forum of Trajan had some influence on the mind of the
architect who invented the scheme of the Plan.[266]

[260]

For literary sources attesting these uses, see A. M. Schneider,
"Atrium," Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, I, 1950, cols. 888-889.

[261]

Nor from the Latin word ater ("black"), referring to the soot-covered
walls in the courts of Roman houses, as some classical ethymologists
suggest. See Isidore of Seville, Etymol., Lib. XV, iii; ed.
Lindsay, 1911.

[262]

So far only published in a very sketchy review by J. Vaultrian, 1932,
188ff and 1933, 118ff. See Krautheimer, 1965.

[263]

For Meriamlik, see Herzfeld-Guyer, 1930, 46ff and Krautheimer,
1965, 177-78.

[264]

For St. Leonidas at Lechaion, see Krautheimer, 1965, 99-100 and
the literature quoted there.

[265]

Weyres, 1965, 390ff and 409ff; cf. above, pp. 27ff.

[266]

See our remarks concerning the role the Forum of Emperor Trajan
might have played in the formation of the layout of Novitiate and
Infirmary, below, pp. 315ff.