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II.3.8

DETACHED TOWERS

Detached circular masonry towers, like those found on the
Plan of St. Gall, do not occur elsewhere in the ecclesiastical
architecture north of the Alps.[267] The builders of the North
chose to incorporate the towers into the body of the
church, and the preferred Carolingian solution was the
Westwerk, which eventually developed into the two-tower
facade. Detached towers were common enough, however,
in the churches of the Exarchate of Ravenna. Giuseppe
Galassi[268] dates some of these Ravenna churches in the
eighth century: San Giovanni Evangelista, San Pier'
Maggiore, and San Giovanni e Paolo. Others doubt that
they are this early.[269] Still, I am inclined to believe that the
idea originated in Ravenna, where it remained a favorite
motif throughout the Middle Ages. It has been generally
overlooked in this context that the Church of San Vitale in
Ravenna, consecrated in 547, has two impressive circular
towers with spiral staircases, which, for all practical purposes,
may be classified as detached towers (fig. 162).[270]
Therefore, I think it very probable that the trend began
with the towers of San Vitale. The Ravenna towers may, in
turn, have been influenced by Asiatic or Syrian prototypes.
Reinhardt[271] has drawn attention to a church with two detached
circular towers on an ivory panel in the Victoria
and Albert Museum (fig. 163), formerly considered to be of
late antique date but recently declared a Carolingian
pastiche.[272] Another contributing source, as has been pointed

[ILLUSTRATION]

166.X ST.-DENIS, SEINE, FRANCE

ABBEY CHURCH

(Consecrated 24 Feb. 775)

[redrawn from Crosby and Conant]

The plan is based on Crosby's interpretation of the remains of the Early
Carolingian church (Crosby, 1953, 68) as rendered and reproduced by
Conant (1959, 292). The square grid, superimposed in red, is based on
Formigé's analysis of the proportions of the church (Formigé, 1960).

out in the preceding chapter, were the two defensive
towers flanking city gates, shown on contemporary representations
of the two sacred towns of Rome and Jerusalem
(see above, p. 129).

Why the author of the Plan of St. Gall gave preference
to two detached towers over the more common Carolingian
Westwerk remains an enigma. The westwork consisted of
a multi-storied avant-corps on the entrance side of the
church, in which two lateral staircase towers gave access
to a raised tribune from which the emperor and his entourage
could attend the divine services. This innovation—a
tangible architectural expression, it appears, of the protectorate
which the secular ruler exercised over the Church in

[ILLUSTRATION]

NEUSTADT-AM-MAIN. SAVIOR'S CHURCH (768-769) WITH SQUARE GRID SUPERIMPOSED

167.A

167.B

[after Boeckelmann, 1962, 11, fig. 3]

The church was dedicated, according to a later tradition, on 19 August 793. But this date has recently been questioned (see Vorromanische
Kirchenbauten, 1966, 233). For another view of the church, see fig. 116; for its Early Christian prototypes and the roles they may have played
in stimulating medieval modularity, see figs. 144-151 and above, pp. 190ff.

the empire of the Franks—made its first appearance,
perhaps not accidentally, in the royal abbeys of Lorsch,
767-774 (figs. 200-201), and St. Riquier, 790-799 (figs. 168
and 196). The only preserved example besides the Palace
Chapel at Aachen (fig. 71.Za) is the Abbey Church of
Corvey-on-the-Weser (873-885), but others are known to
have existed at Reims Cathedral (founded by Archbishop
Ebbo, 816-835, and consecrated by his successor, Hincmar,
in 862), in the cathedral of Halberstadt (consecrated in
859), Hildesheim (consecrated in 872), and Minden (consecrated
in 952).[273]

Although, on the Plan of St. Gall, the emperor and his
following are given ample space in houses that the monastery
had set aside for reception of visitors,[274] in the church
itself he was not granted a station of his own. Perhaps we
are sensing here, once more, an expression of the touchiness
of the reform movement with regard to the possibility of
secular contamination of the House of God and its servants.[275]
The interpretations of the relation of Church
(sacerdotium) and State (regnum) were still far from attaining
any fixed or permanent form. Under Charlemagne, even
such leading churchmen as Theodulf of Orleans and Alcuin
did not hesitate to refer to the secular sovereign both as
"king in power" and "pontifex in preaching"; and
Charlemagne himself left no margin of doubt that it was
the emperor who installed the bishops and reserved for
himself the ultimate authority in the trial of prelates.[276] Yet
all throughout his reign and, with increasing strength, that
of his sons, there was a clerical reaction that rejected
temporal hegemony, proposed to erect the order of the
church as a second government beside the temporal power,
or even to arrogate complete subordination of the royal
power to the jurisdictional apparatus of the clergy. The
conviction of Louis the Pious that the emperor stood "in
the service of God" (in Dei servitio) gave added impetus
to this concept.[277] This ambiguity was not solved in
Carolingian times; and if it expressed itself in architecture,
we cannot expect it to have led to uniformly acceptable
solutions.