University of Virginia Library

III

THE CLOISTERS AND
THE ABBOT'S HOUSE

III. 1

THE CLOISTER OF THE MONKS

(III.1.1)

LAYOUT

IN proposing that a monastery should "be so arranged that all necessary things, such as water, mill, garden, and
various crafts may be within the enclosure,"[1] St. Benedict made the monastery economically independent of the
secular world. The administration of the self-sufficient estates which emerged from this concept, however, brought
into the monastic community a host of seculars, whose very presence threatened to subvert the monastic ideal of
seclusion from the world and its preoccupations. As the monastery came structurally to resemble a large manorial
estate, monastic integrity demanded the creation of an inner enclosure that would isolate the brothers from the serfs
and the laymen and, at the same time, make it possible for the latter to live as close to the brothers as their tasks
required. Creating a cloister answered this problem. It established a monastery within the monastery. Moreover
in meeting the complex needs of monastic living, it created an architectural scheme that added to the glorious
history of the colonnaded classical court a new, and perhaps its most accomplished, embodiment.

The cloister is the monastic enclosure which serves as living, eating, working, and sleeping quarters for the monks
(figs. 191, 192, 193).[2] In its fully developed form it consists of a large square yard attached to the southern flank of
the church, entirely surrounded by a covered walk, and enclosed on the three other sides by a solid range of large
(usually double-storied) structures laid out so as to form a solid architectural enclosure. This ensemble of buildings
comprises, in addition to the dormitory and refectory of the monks, a warming room, a cellar, a larder, a storeroom
for the monks' clothing, and various smaller dependencies, such as a privy, a bath and wash house, a kitchen, and a
bake and brew house. Except for the times when he worked the fields or helped to reap the harvest, or those rare
occasions when he was away on journeys, the entire life of the monk was spent in this enclosure.

The origin of the layout of this well-ordered and symmetrical architectural scheme is as yet not clarified, since
many of the intermediary forms of its development are missing.[3] It has been connected with the peristyle court of
the Greek house, the colonnaded atrium of the Roman house, the monumental galleried atria of the large Early
Christian churches, and certain semi-galleried courts attached to the flanks of Syrian churches. In one way or
another, all these forms may have shared in its formation.

It is obvious that the concept of an open galleried court with living units around it, is a Mediterranean one. The
ubiquitous character of this motif in the Greek and Roman world needs no further comment. It is equally clear that
the concept of double-storied masonry structures, exhibited in the primary claustral structures (Dormitory,
Refectory, and Cellar) has its roots in Rome, and not in the vernacular architectural tradition of the Franks. The
consummate order and symmetry characterizing the claustral scheme was, in its ultimate form, classical and had
little to do with the scattered layout of the contemporary northern manor. But after full allowance is made for these
classical influences, it is equally clear that nothing quite like the layout of a medieval cloister existed in antiquity.
The medieval cloister differs from the Hellenistic peristyle and the colonnaded Roman atrium in that it is not a
court enclosed by a dwelling, but rather an aggregate of edifices, so arranged as to form a solid architectural frame
around a court. From the atria of the large Early Christian basilicas, to which it is related in design and in size, it
differs in function. The Early Christian atrium was a large formal plaza for the reception of the worshiping crowd;
it was never meant to form the nucleus of a cadre of dwellings. In Syria here and there we find monastic courts
attached to the flanks of the church—and these courts may indeed be one of the germinal prototype forms of the
medieval claustrum—but unlike the later medieval cloister, in Syrian monasteries the open courts were in general
not enclosed by buildings on all four sides. Often these courts were not even square, but L-shaped, or of irregular,
and undefinable shape, with vast openings between the houses of the monks giving free access to other segments
of the monastery grounds. There are, nonetheless, two notable exceptions: the convent of SS. Sergios and
Bacchos at Umm-is-Surab and the convent of Id-Dêr, both in Southern Syria. In the former (fig. 193) the monas-

tery church (489 A.D.) had attached to its northern flank a symmetrical range of residential buildings with a paved
court in the middle "colonnaded on all sides in two stories and completely surrounded by rooms, large and small,
in one or two stories, about twenty in all, forming an ideal monastic establishment."[5] In the latter (fig. 194) also of
fifth century date, the church had in front of it a great open atrium, with colonnaded apartments in two stories
symmetrically ranged around three sides of the court, plus a connecting colonnaded porch along the facade of the
church.

Although there is no tangible archaeological evidence to support such a conjecture, it is entirely possible that
together with the more common open plan of the Syrian cloister, the closed and highly symmetrical schemes of
Umm-is-Surab and of Id-Dêr may also have found their way into Western Europe. If they did, however, these
schemes would have found themselves in oppressive competition with the infinitely more common lavra system
adopted by the monks of Lerins, and diffused throughout the entire pre-Carolingian West by the Irish mission
which professed to the same ideals of anchoritic withdrawal and individualistic piety. To combat, repress, and
eventually wholly supersede this powerful tradition depended on the rejection of the scattered and semi-hermitic
forms of living of the Irish monks in favor of the highly controlled and ordered form of communal living prescribed
by St. Benedict. The evolution of this concept required first and above all that the formerly scattered
houses of the monks be brought together into an ordered architectural system, which in turn could be merged with
the concept of the colonnaded classical court. The creation of a tightly closed monastic range of buildings, however,
was only a part of the total need. The same ordering genius that led to the invention of an inner enclosure for the
monks was also to be applied to the layout for the cloisters of the novices and the sick, as well as to the problem of
meaningful interrelation of these three nuclear monastic blocks with the other indispensable monastic installations:
facilities for the reception of visitors, houses and workshops for the craftsman and serfs, and houses for
the monastic livestock and their keepers.

It is possible that the ultimate crystallization of this scheme does not antedate the reign of Charlemagne. Its
adoption depended on the abolishment, through binding acts of legislation, of the mixed forms of monastic living
that prevailed in pre-Carolingian times, and their replacement by the single, exclusive and universally binding
rule of St. Benedict. This striving toward uniformity of custom had been from the outset a prime objective of the
ecclesiastical policy of Charlemagne. It became again, under Louis the Pious an overriding goal of the monastic
movement, as evidenced in the legislation issued at the two synods held at Aachen in 816 and 817. To presume,
however, that the "Plan of an ideal City for Monks" that emerged from these efforts was a product wholly of
the Carolingian reform movement may be stretching the point. The individual elements and many of their combinations
are of a considerably earlier date, but the consummate order of the scheme, its binding perfection that was
to affect the entire future course of monastic planning may have been dependent on the codification of certain details
in the relation of monks to serfs, which was not undertaken prior to the two synods of Aachen.[6]

The novelty of this concept is thrown into full relief when it is compared to the monastic settlements which
the Irish holy men established during the sixth and seventh centuries in relatively inaccessible and often hostile
places of Ireland and western England.

III.1.2

THE "SCATTERED" PLAN OF THE
EARLY IRISH MONASTERIES

These early Irish monasteries were usually set up in a
circular or ovoid enclosure surrounded by a wall of stone
or earth with a ditch outside—not very different in appearance
from the old Iron Age ring forts (the so-called
cashels) many of which in fact appear to have been taken
over by the Irish missionaries and converted into monastery
sites.[7] Within such an enclosure there was a church, in
general of very modest dimensions, and loosely scattered
around it, without any fixed architectural order, the beehive
huts for the monks, as a rule inhabited by two,
occasionally by more—as well as a place for eating, a guest
house, a kitchen, and a school.

When the community outgrew the size of its original
church, rather than replacing it by a new and larger one,
the monks added another church and yet another one if
further growth demanded it. Since the majority of these
buildings were constructed in timber, they have left no
visual record whatsoever; and if it were not for the fact that
on the isolated and wind-swept islands off the west coast of
Ireland trees and thatch were not available, the monks
thereby being forced to build in stone, we would live in
total ignorance of the layout of these early monastery sites.
The best preserved among these stone-built monasteries is
the cashel of Inishmurray Island, off the Sligo coast (fig.
195). It consisted of an egg-shaped enclosure measuring
internally about 175 feet in length and 135 feet in breadth,
The enclosure was formed by a dry-built masonry wall that
varied at its base in thickness from 7 to 15 feet and rose to a
height of well over 13 feet. It shelters the remains of three
rectangular oratories of modest size, a circular school house
and two beehive huts. To complete the original appearance
of this settlement, one would have to add to the reconstruction
shown in figure 195 a few more dwellings for monks as
well as buildings indispensable for community use, such as
a refectory and a kitchen, which have left no trace on the
site.

Monasteries of this type—or to be more precise, their
timbered equivalents—must have been a common sight in
sixth- and seventh-century Ireland and England as well as
at all of those places on the continent where Irish missionaries
established new monastic communities. It must
have been that same type of settlement with monastic
dwellings loosely dispersed around an oratory that St.
Columban and St. Gall had founded at the upper end of
Lake Constance and that sprang up in the wilderness of the
upper Steinbach river, where after Columban's departure
for Italy, St. Gall had formed a cell that in the centuries to
follow was to become one of the greatest Carolingian
monasteries.

Irish monasticism, like that of the Egyptian and Syrian
monks of the desert after which it was modelled, was based
upon the concept of individual self-discipline of holy men
living either as hermits or in loosely connected groups. The
architectural layout of the Irish monastery mirrors this fact
as clearly as the ordered architectural enclosure of the
Benedictine monastery reflects the highly organized community
life established by the Rule of St. Benedict.

III.1.3

FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE SQUARE
CLOISTER

Precisely at what time it became customary that the
cloister yard should assume the form of a galleried square,
attached on one side to the flank of the church and on the

[ILLUSTRATION]

192. PLAN OF ST. GALL. PRINCIPAL CLAUSTRAL STRUCTURES & THE MONKS' CLOISTER

Cutaway Perspective. Authors' Interpretation

Three double-storied masonry buildings solidly enclosing an open yard are attached to the southern flank of the Church, and are connected at ground level by the covered
arcaded walks of the cloister. The east structure contains the Warming Room, below, and the Monks' Dormitory, above. From its southern gable wall an exit leads to
the Monks' Privy on the upper level, and at ground level another leads to their Laundry and Bathhouse. The south structure contains on ground level the Monks'
Refectory and above it their Vestiary. From its western gable wall an exit leads to the Monks' Kitchen at ground level. The west structure contains on ground level
the cellar, and above it, the Larder.

On the Plan itself (fig. 191), although the Dormitory layout is actually drawn on ground level, an inscription makes clear that it is to be located in the second story.
The Plan does not show any stairs between floors. We make no attempt here to correct this shortcoming by supplying features to which the designer himself chose to make
no committment. By suppressing stairs he not only was able to keep his design uncluttered, but also emphasized that wherever, in the process of construction, stairs were
to be installed they should be located so as not to interfere with arrangements which he considered to be of more vital concern: Dormitory bed layout, Refectory bench
and table layout, Cellar barrel layout—all worked out with great care, in full consideration of the number of monks to be served by these respective structures, and the
volume of wine and beer to be stored (see below: Dormitory, pp. 250, 342; Refectory, p. 286 and Fig. 211; Cellar, pp. 296-303).

Not disregard, but rather a choice between details of primary and secondary importance, induced the designer to suppress stairs. In so choosing he arrived with depth
of technical insight and wise restraint at a solution, at once ingeniously simple and equally sophisticated, to the special task facing him: namely, assembling on a single
drafted plan all essential information needed to construct the forty-odd buildings of which a paradigmatic monastery of his period was to be composed.

other three sides enclosed by a continuous range of buildings,
is impossible to say in view of our almost total
ignorance about the layout of transalpine monasteries in the
critical period of transition from the Irish to the Roman
Benedictine rule.[8] The cloister of the famous Abbey of St.
Riquier, built under Abbot Angilbert from 790-799 (figs.
196-197),[9] had the shape of an obtuse triangle which shows
that even late in the eighth century the square had as yet
not been established as an obligatory form. Its dimensions
likewise are far from conforming to any recognizable
standards; for the longer side of this triangle had the extraordinary
length of 984 feet, the two shorter ones of 705 feet
and 525 feet.[10]

An early transalpine case of a square-shaped cloister,
by contrast, is the early Carolingian monastery of Lorsch

(figs. 198-199), built by Bishop Chrodegang, its first abbot,
between 760-774.[12] The buildings of this settlement, as
its excavator Friedrich Behn points out, were not a new
creation but a conversion to monastic use of the villa of a
Frankish nobleman, laid out in the tradition of the Roman
villa rustica. Its galleried court formed a square of approximately
70 × 75 feet, and hence was considerably
larger than the atrium of the average Roman villa rustica.
Contrary to later monastic preference the church was
located along the southern side of the court, presumably
for special topographical reasons, namely because on this
side the monastery bordered on an ancient Roman road.
The east side and the west side of the square were taken
up by two oblong buildings, corresponding to the later
dormitory and cellar. The north side, as in most of the
Roman prototype villas, was only closed in by the galleried
porch that formed the northern cloister walk.

That a Frankish farmhouse, built in the Roman tradition,
could be converted into a Benedictine monastery
without substantial alterations bears witness to the close
conceptual relationship of the Carolingian cloister plan
with that of the Roman villa rustica. The countryside of the
former Roman provinces of Germany and Gaul abounded
with such buildings and many of these may still have been
in use during the early Carolingian period.

When the monastery of Lorsch was rebuilt on higher
ground on a neighboring site between 784 and 804 (figs.

200-201), the new cloister yard was attached to the
southern flank of the new church, and masonry buildings
were placed peripherally around the three remaining sides
of the yard. This is the form that was chosen by the author
of the layout of the paradigmatic monastery shown on the
Plan of St. Gall. Richbold's monastery of Lorsch shares
with the layout of the latter another important feature. Its
cloister measures 100 by 100 Carolingian feet (34 m. by
34 m.), proportions which in the ninth century appear to
have acquired an almost canonical value.

As we are talking about the conceptual relationship between
the layout of a square-shaped monastic cloister range
with a galleried court and that of the Roman villa rustica,
we must not lose sight of another possibility heretofore
overlooked, namely, the likelihood of an influence from the
ruins of judiciary Roman basilicas. Many of these had
attached to one of their long sides a galleried court of considerable
size completely surrounded by shops. A double-apsed
basilica of this type was excavated around 1880 by
J. G. Joyce, in the Romano-British city of Silchester (fig.
202), and another one more recently in the Gallo-Roman
city of Augst, in Switzerland.[15] The type must have been
very common in the transalpine provinces of Rome, and
their remains may still have been visible in many parts of
the empire at the time of Charlemagne.

III.1.4

CLOISTER YARD

The Cloister Yard is attached to the southern flank of the
Church (fig. 203). It consists of an open inner court surrounded
on all sides by galleried porches, through which the
monks must pass in order to move from one of their three
principal claustral structures to another. The claustral range
connects with the Church, on ground floor level, through a
door in the southern transept and, on the level of the
Dormitory, through a night stair used primarily in connection
with the services held at night or at dawn. The official
"exit and entry" (exitus and introitus) to the Cloister is the
so-called Parlour, a narrow and somewhat elongated room,
located between the Church and the Cellar. Permission to
enter this room for conversation with visiting friends or
relatives, or to pass beyond the barrier of its carefully controlled
passages into the outer monastery grounds or into
the secular world can only be granted by the abbot, and
only for the specific needs, such as labour in the workshops,
garden and fields, or the rare occurrence of a journey to
another monastery conducted in the common interest of
the abbey.

In all other respects the cloister of the monks is hermetically
sealed off from the world around it by the continuous

[ILLUSTRATION]

UMM-IS-SURAB, SOUTHERN SYRIA

193.C

193.B

CONVENT OF SS. SERGIOS AND BACCHOS (489)

[after Butler, 1929, 47, fig. 45]

The only extant Early Christian example of a monastery with claustral
layout similar to that which became standard in the Carolingian
period: a four-cornered open court surrounded by galleried porches and
a continuous enclosure of apartments—the whole attached to one flank
of the church. Both apartments and cloister walks are of two stories,
and beneath the open court lies a coextensive cistern with transverse
arches carrying the pavement of the court. The cloister is entered
through a vestibule in the center of its east range. Another in the middle
of its south range connects with the church. The relatively small apart-
ments suggest that the monks slept in groups of ten or twenty rather
than in a common dormitory, as was the case in Carolingian times.

193.A

bulk of masonry formed by the Church and the
three principal claustral ranges.

DIMENSIONS

In his commentary to the Rule of St. Benedict, written in
Civate between 845 and 850, Hildemar of Corbie remarks
that the cloister of a monastery should be "large enough so
that the monks can attend to all of their chores without
finding cause for murmur, yet not so grand as to invite
them to spend their time in gossip" (Nec debet esse ista
parva, ut cum aliquid vult operari monachus, occasionem
invenerit murmurandi propter parvitatem, nec ita debet esse
ampla, ut ibi occasionem possit invenire fabulandi cum
aliquo).[16] And in a subsequent paragraph he adds the
important piece of information that in his day, "It is
generally held that a cloister should be 100 feet square, and
not less, because that would make it too small; however if
you should wish to make it larger this is permissible"
(Dicunt multi, quia claustra monasterii centum pedes debent
habere in omni parte, minus non, quia parva est; si autem
velis plus, potest fieri).[17] The cloister yard of St. Gall complies
with this rule (figs. 69 and 203). It measures 100 feet

from west to east, and 102½ feet from south to north. It
contains in its center an open space 75 feet square, and all
around it a galleried walk.

THE PUZZLE OF THE SAVIN PLANT

The yard, which was perhaps covered with grass, is
intersected by four paths (quattuor semitae p transuersum
claustri) that emerge from the middle of each cloister walk
and terminate in a square enclosure decorated in the center
with a circle, designated sauina, and four branch-like
symbols extending from the circle outward into the corners
of the square.

Savina or savin are common names for Juniperus sabina,
a low, spreading shrub or small tree of Mediterranean
origin that was introduced in Germany and France in pre-Carolingian
times and from there its horticultural use was
extended to England.[20] A profusely illustrated Byzantine
copy of the famous Herbal of Dioscurides displays a delicate
drawing of this tree (fig. 204).[21] The leaves of this plant

are poisonous and today, for that reason, the savin appears
to be barred from public parks.[23] Yet in the Middle Ages,
as well as in classical Roman times it was used for a variety
of medical cures. Dioscurides, writing in the first century
A.D., informs us that applied as a poultice the leaves of the
savin tree stop spreading ulcers and soothe boils, mixed
with honey they cause carbuncles to break; drunk with
wine they draw out the blood by urine and draw off the
foetus.[24] More recent sources attest their use as a cure
against the spread of intestinal worms, primarily for cattle,
a purpose to which this herb is applied even today by the
peasants of Southern and Central Germany.[25]

The savin is one of the plants prescribed in the Capitulare
de villis as obligatory for the gardens of Carolingian crown
estates.[26] It is also mentioned in the Brevium exempla
amongst the plants grown in the royal fisc of Treola.[27] In

[ILLUSTRATION]

ID-DÊR, MONASTERY, SOUTHERN SYRIA, 5TH CENT.

194.B

194.A

[after Butler, 1929, 88, fig. 91]

"The most dignified, and most symmetrically planned of the monastic
institutions of Syria" (Butler, 1929, 85-85) now lies in ruins, deserted.
It consisted of an aisled basilican church attached to the east side of a
great open atrium, enclosed by apartments of two stories, all opening
upon pillared porticos likewise of two stories. The layout is unique for
its period and place, an adaptation to monastic use of the atria of the
great metropolitan churches of Rome. The same influence produced in
Carolingian times similar and equally atypical solutions (Fulda, fig.
169, and Kornelismünster, fig. 147).

both of these sources, it should be noted, it is listed among
the herbs, not with the trees.

Sörrensen describes the species as a shrub-like plant of
jagged growth, in general not growing higher than 3-10
feet, never forming a straight stem, but always growing
crooked and bent. He wonders why a plant so entirely
lacking in tallness, fullness, and beauty should occupy such
a central position in the life of the monks.[28]

I had occasion to study the savin in the summer of
1968 while on vacation on the Island of Ibiza in Spain,
where it grows profusely, and was fascinated to observe
that on this island it attains a considerably wider range of
shapes and sizes than one would gather from Sörrensen's
description. At the edge of the windswept coastal cliffs, the
plant hugs the ground and retains a prostrate mushroom-shaped
form attaining a diameter of up to 15 feet but

[ILLUSTRATION]

195. INISHMURRY, SLIGO, SOUTHERN IRELAND

MONASTIC CASHEL FOUNDED BY ST. MOLAISE, EARLY 6TH CENT.
[after Leask, I, 1955, 12, fig. 1]

The monastery, surrounded by a 13-foot stone wall, is internally
divided into four separate enclosures. The largest contains two
churches, a large one with ANTAE, Teampull na b Fhear (Men's
Church) and the smaller, more primitive Teach Molaise (St.
Molaise's Chapel). A third, Teampull na Teine (Church of the Fire)
stands in the northwest enclosure; next to it are the schoolhouse, a
dry stone beehive hut, and a smaller hut of the same type. In the
southern enclosure lie remains of a third very large beehive hut.
Reconstruction shows only buildings sufficiently preserved to leave
tangible evidence of their original appearance. The number of
dwellings must have been considerably larger, though evidence for
them has vanished.

rarely exceeding a central height of three or four feet (fig.
205). In more sheltered places 200 to 300 yards inland, it
rises to tree height of 17 feet, with two or three stems of
relatively straight growth emerging from a common trunk,
but usually hidden by the spreading branches completely
covered with short imbricated leaves (fig. 206). This
variety can be of a full and well-shaped form—somewhat
like the juniper trees on the high desert plateau that borders
on the east slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Yet
another variety, often rising to similar height has boldly
contorted trunks fully exposed, to a height of 6 to 8 feet,
and above that level branching out into a crown that
resembles that of an umbrella pine (fig. 207).

I feel as much at a loss as Sörrensen did, in explaining
why the savin should occupy such a central place in the
planting program of the Plan of St. Gall. The fact that it is
an evergreen must certainly have been an important consideration;
its medicinal benefits unquestionably another,
and not least, perhaps, the fact that its leaves were used in
the making of spiced wine. And one also wonders whether
its aromatic substance may have been a component of the
materials used in making incense. In contrast to Sörrensen,
I would not consider its size or shape to have been a deterrent
factor. One of the most precious features of the
cloister yard, the only place where the monks had daily
access to nature, was its exposure to the sun. To have it
planted with trees of clearly limited height had its advantages.

The architect who designed the Plan of St. Gall appears
to have been aware of the botanical characteristics of the
savin. He defines it visually as a prostrate plant with
straight branches spreading out from the center to the four
corners of the planting square, their short set boughs being
set in the manner of herring bones. The whole is of a
design that is quite distinct from the erect curvilinear
symbol used for tall trees in the Monks' Cemetery (fig. 17).

As in the latter one might interpret this design to stand for
either a single tree or to designate a cluster of trees. The
planting bed, 17½ × 17½ feet square, is large enough to
accommodate a tall tree in the center, with four lower, more
prostrate plants around it spreading out into the corners.

THE GALLERIED PORCHES

The arches (arcus) of the four covered walks which
surround the cloister garth are shown in vertical projection.
They consist of a central opening 10 feet wide and 7½ feet
high, and a group of four arches, each 5 feet wide and 5 feet
high, on either side of this passage, which unquestionably
rested on a low basement wall. The north walk of the
Cloister which runs along the southern aisle of the Church
(porticus ante eclam) is broader than the other three. From
the inscription we know that this walk performed the
function of the later chapter house, and for that purpose is
provided with two long benches, both on the Church and
on the cloister side, where the monks could face each other
in two single files; Hic pia consilium pertract & turba

salubre ("Here let the pious group hold their wholesome
deliberations").[30] It was here that a monk could confess his
sins and ask for forgiveness, that the overseers (circatores)
would announce transgressions of any sort committed by
the brothers, that one monk could accuse another, and that
punishment was pronounced and enforced, including such
corporal chastisement as flogging. It was here also where
much of the temporal business of the abbey was transacted,
where charters were sealed, where novices were admitted,
and where the dead and departed were commemorated.

In subsequent centuries these activities were transferred
to a special chapter house. In Carolingian times, it seems,
this step had not yet been undertaken.

The claims advanced by Georg Hager and Joseph
Neuwirth that separate chapter houses existed in the Abbey
of Jumièges as early as the seventh century and at Reichenau
in 780 are untenable. It is based, in the case of Jumièges
on an improper textual exegesis of a good hagiographical
source (Life of St. Philibert, d. 750), and in the case of
Reichenau, on a twelfth-century forgery of a deed alleged
to have been written in 780.[31]

An arrangement very similar to that shown on the Plan
of St. Gall existed in the Abbey of St.-Wandrille (Fontanella).
An account written by a contemporary of Abbot
Ansegis (d. 833) tells us that the latter "was buried outside
the church of St. Peter, and to the north of it, in the
porticus wherein the brethren are accustomed to hold their
meetings" (tumulatus extra basilicam s. Petri ad aquilonalem
plagam, in porticu, in qua fratres conventum celebrare soliti
sunt ac consultis Deo dignis aures accomodare).[32] This same
porticus, as George Forsyth has pointed out,[33] is mentioned
earlier in the chronicle as built by Ansegis himself to be a
place "where the brethren should gather together to seek
insight on all subjects, to listen daily to the reading of the
Holy Writ, and to consider any proposed action" (propter
quod in ea consilium de qualibet re perquirentes convenire
fratres soliti sint; ibi namque in pulpito lectio cotidie divina
recitatur, ibi quicquid regularis auctoritas agendum suadet,
deliberatur).[34]

III.1.5

DORMITORY AND WARMING ROOM

On the Plan of St. Gall the building that contains the
Dormitory of the Monks bounds the cloister to the east and
lies in direct axial prolongation of the transept of the
church (fig. 208). It is a double-storied structure, 40 feet
wide and 85 feet long. The ground floor serves as the warming
room, the upper floor is the dormitory (subtus calefactoria
dom', supra dormitorium). A hexameter inscribed into
the adjacent cloister walk informs us that this building can
be heated:

The plan of this building comprises elements of both the
lower and the upper story. The seventy-seven beds of the
monks (lecti, similt) as well as the doors that open from
this building to the transept of the church, to the cloister,
and to the monks' privy are obviously related to the
dormitory. The "exit from the warming room" (egressus
de pisale), which leads to the monks' bath house, on the
other hand, and the large "firing chamber" (caminus ad
calefaciendū) as well as the "smoke stack" (euaporatio
fumi) which are attached to the eastern wall of the building,
relate to the calefactory on the ground floor.

Dormitory

HOW THE MONKS ARE TO SLEEP

How the monks are to sleep is set forth in chapters 22 and
55 of the Rules of St. Benedict. According to these, each
monk must have his separate bed, assigned to him in
accordance with the date of his conversion. If possible, all
of the brethren should sleep in one room; but if their
number does not allow this, in groups of ten and twenty,
with seniors to supervise them. The young monks may not
sleep in a group among themselves, but interspersed with
their elders. A light must burn in the dormitory throughout
the night and the monks must sleep "clothed and girt with
girdles or cords," so that they can rise without delay when
the signal calls them to the work of God. They must not
sleep "with their knives at their sides lest they hurt themselves."

"When they rise for the work of God," St. Benedict
advises, "let them gently encourage one another, on account

[ILLUSTRATION]

196. ST. RIQUIER (CENTULA)

ANGILBERT'S CHURCH AND CLOISTER (790-799)
[after Effman, 1912, fig. 1]

The original manuscript of Hariulf's Chronicon Centulense,
written before 1088, (ed. Lot, 1894) perished in fire in 1719. It
contained Hariulf's drawing of the Carolingian abbey church and
cloister still in their original condition. His drawing is known through
two copies. The earliest and most authentic (above) was made in
1612 and published in Petau's De Nithardo Caroli magni
nepote, Paris, 1913. Our knowledge of the exterior of the
Carolingian church is derived from it. The interior layout was
reconstructed independently, with virtually the same results, by
Georges Durand (1911) and Wilhelm Effmann (1912) through
analysis of the description of religious services and liturgical
processions in Hariulf's chronicle. The best plan, because it takes into
account irregularities in the Gothic church reflecting conditions of its
Carolingian predecessor, is that of Irmingard Achter, 1956 (figs. 135
and 168).

of the excuses to which the sleepy are addicted."[35]
In waking each other, as Hildemar informs us in more
detail, "the wise and older monk will arouse the brother
who sleeps next to him . . . but no junior monk should ever
arouse another junior, because of the temptation this may
offer for sin (propter occasionem peccati); rather one or two
seniors, after having lit a candle, will walk through the
dormitory to wake the sleepy brothers; yet, in performing
this duty will never touch the brother but only a board of
his bed or something similar."[36]

For bedding they are allowed: a mattress (matta), a
blanket (sagum), a coverlet (lena), and a pillow (capitale).
The possession of any personal property other than that
which is issued to all of the brothers[37] is severely prohibited,
and in order to guard against infractions of this regulation
the beds are frequently inspected by the abbot.[38]

We must assume that the beds were provided with some
locker or storage space, in which the monks could keep the
duplicate set of clothing which the Rule permitted them
"to allow for a change at night and for the washing of these
garments."[39]

During the hours which are set aside for sleeping,
whether in the day or at night, silence is vigorously enforced
in the dormitory;[40] but on certain specified periods
of the daily cycle, such as when the monks return from
their chapter readings, they may engage in conversation, in
groups of two or three or more.[41] Even during the midday
rest in the summer, conversation is permitted, provided
that it does not "injure the peace of those who sit and read
in bed." Should there be any need for sustained talk, the
monks must go outside (i.e., to the cloister walk) and
conduct their business there.[42]

LAYOUT OF THE BEDS

The layout of the beds in the Monks' Dormitory is complex
and ingenious. We have already discussed the manner
in which it was designed in our analysis of the scale and
construction methods used in designing the Plan.[43] The
number 77 is not likely to be an accident.[44] Yet I have been
able to find only one instance where the number of monks
was confined to this figure.[45]

The Monk's Dormitory, like the two other principal
buildings of the cloister, the Refectory and the Cellar, has
no internal architectural wall partitions whatsoever, and for
that reason must be thought of as a unitary space, open from
end to end. This should not be interpreted to mean, however,
that the beds were in full and open view of everyone
throughout the entire length and width of the building.
They must have been separated from one another by
wooden panels sufficiently high and long to protect the
monks from interfering with one another. The Custom of
Subiaco stipulates "that there be wooden partitions between
bed and bed, so that the brothers may not see each
other when they rest or read in their beds, and overhead
they must be covered [with canopies] because of the dust
and the cold." The same custom also requires "that these

[ILLUSTRATION]

197. ST. RIQUIER (CENTULA). PLAN WITH ABBEY CHURCH & CLOISTER

[after Durand, 1911, 241, fig. 5]

This 19th-century cadastral plan of the city of St. Riquier shows the Gothic abbey church (1) and superimposed in the area to the south the
course of the covered walks that once enclosed its triangular cloister, with the church of St. Benedict (2) in one, and the church of St. Mary (3)
in the other corner. This layout, first suggested by Jean Hubert (1957, 293-309, Pl. 1.C), and again in Hubert, Porcher, and Volbach (1970,
297, fig. 341), on the basis of a documentary study, was confirmed by excavations of Honoré Bernard (Karl der Grosse, III, 1965, 370).

[ILLUSTRATION]

199. LORSCH

FIRST MONASTERY OF CHRODEGANG (760-774)

AXONOMETRIC RECONSTRUCTION [after Behn, 1949, pl. 1]

[ILLUSTRATION]

198. LORSCH

FIRST MONASTERY OF CHRODEGANG (760-774)

PLAN [after Selzer, 1955, 14]

Lorsch is the earliest medieval monastery with a square cloister
attached to one flank of the church. But a layout of similar shape
may already have existed in Pirmin's abbey of Reichenau-Mittelzell,
built between 724 and 750, if Erdmann's reconstruction of its
claustral compound is correct (Erdmann, 1974, 499, fig. TA 4). For
Lorsch see Behn and Selzer, and a more recent summary by
Schaefer in Vorromanische Kirchenbauten, 1966-68,
179-82.

spaces be so arranged, as to be provided with a window
admitting daylight for reading and writing as well as a
small table and a chair and whatever else is necessary for
that purpose."[46]

The Custom of Subiaco is a relatively late source[47] and
already reflects a relaxation of the Rule of St. Benedict in
favor of greater privacy—a development in the further
course of which the dormitory ended up by being subdivided
internally into a sequence of individual cubicles
ranged along the walls of the building, with a passage left
in the middle, each cubicle forming a separate enclosure
fitted, besides the bed, with a chair and a desk beneath a
window. This arrangement, so well known from the dorter
of Durham Cathedral (built by Bishop Skirlaw in 13981404)[48]
was clearly not in the mind of the churchmen who
ruled on the details of the layout of the Monks' Dormitory
on the Plan of St. Gall. Yet even here we might be justified
in counting on at least a rudimentary system of partition
walls between the beds—if not for moral protection, for
purely practical reasons: since the brothers were permitted
to read in bed during their afternoon rest period, they were
in need of at least a headboard against which to lean.

FEARS OF THE VIGILANT ABBOT

The eternal fear of the vigilant abbot was, of course, the
pollution of monastic life by what St. Benedict designated
with his distinctive discretion simply as impropriety
(improbitas),[49] but to which others before and after him
referred with less restraint as "that habit which is contrary
to nature" (usus qui est contra naturam) perpetrated by
men, who oblivious of their own sex turn nature into
iniquity "by committing shameless acts with other men
(masculi in masculos turpitudinem operantes),[50] or "that
most wicked crime . . . detestable to God" (istud scelus
valde nefandissimum . . . quae valde detestabile est Deo).[51]
The crime was common enough to come to the attention of
Charlemagne, who dealt with it in a vigorous act of public
legislation, incorporated in a general capitulary for his Missi
issued in 802.[52]

The monk Hildemar, writing in 845, devoted several
pages to this precarious subject and discussed in detail the
precautions an abbot must take to guard against this
danger. The abbot, he tells us, must watch not only over
the boys and adolescents, but also over those who enter the
monastery at a more advanced age. To each group of ten
boys there must be assigned three or four seniors, or
masters, so that no one among them is ever without supervision.
After the late evening service, Compline, "the boys
must leave the choir, and their masters, with a light in
hand, will take them to every altar of the oratory to pray a
little, one master walking in front, one in the middle, and
the third behind" (unus magister ante, alter magister vadat
in medio, et tertius magister retro); "then whoever wants to
go to the privy, should go perform the necessities of
nature with a light, and their master with them" (cum
lumine et magister eorum cum illis).[53] If a boy finds himself

compelled to respond to this call during the night, "he
must waken his master, who will light a lamp and take him
to the privy, and with the light burning, bring him back
to bed."[54] Even the dreamlife of the monks and its sexual
connotations are subject to supervision. Depending on the
varying degree of sleep or consciousness, the employment
of the senses of touch and vision, or the extent of deliberate
procrastination, the offense must be atoned for by the
recitation of psalms, five, ten, or fifteen respectively, and
if the indulgence was committed with no restraint, by the
reading of the entire psalter.[55]

ABSENCE OF STAIRS

The author of the Plan of St. Gall did not consider it a
matter of vital importance to express himself in great detail
about the stairs which connected the Dormitory with the
Church, the cloister, and the privy. He made it absolutely
clear, however, where such connections should be established.
There is no doubt that the door that leads from the
Dormitory to the southern transept arm of the Church
must have opened onto a flight of stairs by which the
monks descended into the Church for their nocturnal services.
A direct ascent to the dormitory a parte ecclesiae in
the Abbey of St. Gall is mentioned in Ekkehart's Casus
sancti Galli.[56] Flights of night stairs of precisely this type
survive in an excellent state of preservation in the transepts
of the Cistercian abbey churches of Fontenay and Silvacane,
both from about 1150, and the Benedictine abbey
church of Hexham (fig. 101), from about 1200-1225.[57] The
area in the middle of the Dormitory left unobstructed by
beds might have been meant to serve as landing for an inner
stair connecting Dormitory with Warming Room. This
same stair could also have been used for daytime access
from ground level to Privy, which to judge by numerous
later parallels must have been level with the Dormitory.

Warming room

METHOD OF HEATING

The heating system of the Monks' Warming Room raises
interesting historical and technological questions. It consists,
as already pointed out, of an external firing chamber
(caminus ad calefaciendū) that transmits its heat to the
building through heat ducts (not shown on the Plan), the
necessary draft for which is generated by an external smoke
stack (euaporatio fumi).

Identical heating units appear in two other places on the
Plan, the "warming room" (pisale) of the Novitiate and
the "warming room" (pisale) of the Infirmary.[58] Keller's[59]
attempt to interpret these devices as simple fireplaces is
untenable and was convincingly repudiated by Willis.[60]
They are clearly descendants of the Roman hypocaust
system. The existence of such heating systems in the
Middle Ages is well attested both by literary and archeological
sources. A hypocausterium almost contemporary with
those of the Plan of St. Gall was built by Abbot Ewerardus
at the monastery of Freckenhorst.[61] An excavation conducted
in 1939 at Pfalz Werla, one of the fortified places of

[ILLUSTRATION]

201. LORSCH, MONASTERY OF ABBOT RICHBOLD (784-804). ISOMETRIC RECONSTRUCTION

[after Selzer, 1965, 148]

The abbey grounds, of irregular ovoid shape, were surrounded by a masonry wall. Entering the monastery from the west the visitor stepped into
a large rectangular atrium where he had to pass through what can only be called the Carolingian equivalent of a Roman triumphal arch
accommodating over its passages a small royal hall (a jewel of Carolingian architecture, built 768-774, the earliest wholly preserved building of
post-Roman times on German soil). At the end of this atrium the visitor faced two massive towers flanking a gate that gave access to a second,
considerably smaller atrium lying before the monumental westwork of the church of St. Nazarius, an aisled basilica with low transept and
probably a rectangular choir, built between 767-774, and enlarged eastward in 876 by a crypt for royalty. The component building masses of
this architectural complex rose in dramatic ascent on successively higher levels of the gently rising slope of a natural sand dune; the west gate at
the bottom, the choir of the church at the top, the late Carolingian crypt eight meters below the level of the church on the steeply descending
east slope of the dune.

The walls of the monastery enclosed an area of roughly 25,000 square meters. Forming a veritable VIA SACRA, from gate to altar the route of
passage was nearly 260m. long.

[ILLUSTRATION]

LORSCH, MONASTERY OF ABBOT RICHBOLD (784-804).

200.X

200.

12TH-CENTURY PLAN AND ISOMETRIC VIEW

Fig. 200: after Behn, 1964, 117; Fig. 200.X: after Hubert, Porcher, Volbach, 1970, fig. 377.B]

Toward the middle of the 12th century, the inner Carolingian atrium was converted into a fore church. At the same time, all the claustral
ranges were rebuilt on the foundations of their Carolingian predecessors. (For remains of the latter see Vorromanische Kirchenbauten,
1966, 180).

Henry I of Saxony, tells us much about the details of construction
of such a hypocausterium. There, beneath a hall
constructed between 920 and 930, C. H. Seebach unearthed
a hypocaust in an excellent state of preservation.[62]
Its heating plant (fig. 209) consisted of a subterranean
firing chamber beneath the floor of the hall, which was
reached by an outside passageway. A system of radiant
ducts channeled the heated air from the firing chamber
into a circular flue which lay directly under the pavement
of the hall and was provided, at regular intervals, with
tubular vents through which the warmth ascended into
the hall above. Another large flue ran from this main duct
to the western gable wall where it emptied into a smoke
stack. This flue showed heavy traces of blackening, which
suggests that the hot air outlets into the hall could be
closed by stone lids during the initial firing stages, when
the volume of smoke and obnoxious gas was heaviest,
leaving the chimney as the only outlet.

Seebach believes that the hypocaust system of St. Gall
was identical with that of Werla. However, the two
systems are not alike in every detail. The Werla firing
chamber lay beneath the hall; the firing chambers of St.
Gall are external attachments. They must have been subterranean,
of course, for otherwise the heated air could not
rise into the hall above, but the general principle of construction
was doubtlessly the same, and the occurrence of
this type on the Plan of St. Gall is clear testimony that

[ILLUSTRATION]

202. SILCHESTER, HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND, ROMAN BASILICA AND FORUM

PLAN (after Joyce, 1887, pl. 16)

A provincial variant of a distinguished lineage of Roman market halls, Silchester is related to the basilicas of Trajan in Rome (fig. 239) and
Septimius Severus in Lepcis Magna (fig. 159). To students considering history as a chronological progression, the similarity of layout of these
Roman market halls with that of the Carolingian CLAUSTRUM is perplexing. Yet such a conceptual leap into the classical past may be even
more easily understood than the Carolingian revival of the Constantinian transept basilica. To study the layout of the latter, Frankish
churchmen had to travel to Rome, but they could see surviving or ruinous examples of the Roman market hall in their homeland. Basilicas of
the Silchester type existed in the Roman city of Augst in Switzerland (Reinle, 1965, 34) and in Worms, Germany. The latter was well known
to builders of the Merovingian cathedral of Worms (Fuhrer zu vor-und frühgeschichtlichen Denkmälern, XIII, 1969, 36).

[ILLUSTRATION]

203. PLAN OF ST. GALL. CLOISTER YARD

Although in plan displaying striking similarities with the great galleried courts of the Roman market halls (cf. figs. 202, 239) the four-cornered
medieval cloister shows marked differences in elevation (cf. fig. 192). The Roman basilican courts are vast areas for open-air assembly and
the conduct of business, surrounded by relatively small offices and shops of modest height (fig. 202). The open yard of a medieval cloister, by
contrast is small in relation to the buildings by which it is enclosed. The latter rise high and are surmounted by steep-pitched roofs. Internally,
although composed of two levels, they form open halls extending the entire length of the building. The galleried porches are the only connecting
links between these huge structures, none of which possess interconnecting doors or entrances. The tint block on the opposite page shows the above
cloister (100 feet square) at the scale of the Silchester basilica (1:600).

[ILLUSTRATION]

204. DIOSCURIDES. MATERIA MEDICA

Vienna, National Library, CODEX VINDOBONENSIS, fol. 48v

SAVIN PLANT (JUNIPERUS SABINA)

[by courtesy of the National Library of Vienna]

Pedanios Dioscurides of Anazarbos, a physician of Greek descent
who served in the army of Nero, wrote his Materia Medica around
50 A.D. It details the properties of about 600 medicinal plants and
describes animal products of dietetic and medicinal value. The writing
of Dioscurides was well known and widely read in the Middle Ages
and served as a standard text for learning in all medical schools.
The illustration shown above is from a richly (in places even
brilliantly and very realistically) illuminated copy of this treatise
executed by a Byzantine artist in 512, and now available in a
magnificent facsimile edition.

hypocausts with a complete system of heat-distributing air
ducts, and a chimney stack for draft and evacuation of
obnoxious gas were, at the time of Louis the Pious, a
standard system used in the construction of monastic
warming rooms. Whether or not the heat produced by this
system could also be conducted into the Dormitory above
remains a moot question.

PURPOSE

The primary function of the calefactory, we learn from
Adalhard, was to give the monks an opportunity to warm
themselves in wintertime in the intervals between the
divine services,[63] to hang up their clothes for drying,[64] and
to meet at certain hours for conversation.[65] This was also
the place, he cannot resist adding, "where the monks on
occasion succumb to drowsiness and neglect their reading
because of the pleasant warmth."[66]

It is possible, as Hafner has pointed out,[67] that the calefactory
was also used as a general work room, where the
monks did their sewing and mending, or other domestic
chores, when the weather was not mild enough to permit
them to do this in the cloister. The calefactory may also,
during the winter or on days of inclement weather, have
been the place for the weekly washing of the feet of the
monks.[68] To provide the wood for the hypocaust was the
responsibility of the chamberlain.[69]

RECONSTRUCTION

The reconstruction of the building containing the Calefactory
and the Dormitory poses no major problems (figs.
108 and 111.B). Although no Carolingian dormitory of significance
is preserved, as far as I know, we are fairly well
informed about the materials used in their construction by
contemporary chronicles. The dormitory of Fontanella
(St.-Wandrille), completely reconstructed under Abbot
Ansegis (823-833), is a good example. The Gesta Abbatum
Fontanellensium[70] tells us that its "walls were built in well-dressed
stone with joints or mortar made of lime and sand"
and that it received its light through "glass windows."
Apart from the walls the entire structure was built with
wood from the heart of oak, and roofed by tiles held in
place with iron nails.[71] The layout of this dormitory
differed distinctly from the one shown on the Plan of St.
Gall, but like the dormitory of St.-Wandrille, the building
that houses the Dormitory on the Plan of St. Gall was a
masonry structure. This can be inferred from the fact that
the cloister walk with its arched openings attached to it was
unquestionably built in masonry. With its span of 40 feet
from wall to wall, this building required a roof structure
comparable to that of the adjacent church. In the latter the
tie beams of the roof must have crossed the nave in a single
span; in the dormitory—with its live load of seventy-seven
monks on the top floor—the girders that supported the
joists of the dormitory floor are likely to have found
additional support in one or two rows of free-standing
posts.[72]

[ILLUSTRATION]

SAVIN PLANT (JUNIPERUS SABINA)

205.

206.

207.

IBIZA, SPAIN

205. Erect form, sheltered habitat, 300-400 yards inland, Bay of Santa Eulalia.
This globular, symmetrical specimen reaches h. 17 feet, dia. 12-14 feet.

206. Prostrate form, exposed habitat, cliffs near Santa Eulalia. This specimen
has dia. of ca. 15 feet, h. 3-4 feet.

207. Erect specimen, umbrella-shaped crown, beach near Santa Eulalia. H. ca.
15 feet, crown dia. ca. 22 feet.

III.1.6

MONKS' PRIVY

LAYOUT

From the southern gable wall of the dormitory an exit
opens into an L-shaped passageway that leads into the
Monks' Privy. This building is 30 feet wide and 40 feet
long. Along its southern wall it is furnished with a bench
containing nine toilet seats (sedilia) that are slightly larger
than the seats in the other privies, and, unlike them, not
set directly against the wall but parallel to it at a small
distance. A square support in the north-eastern corner of
the room serves as a stand for a light (lucerna) which,
Hildemar postulates in his commentary to the Rule of St.
Benedict,[73] was a necessity. Short strokes intersecting the
walls at suitable distances designate that the privy should
be furnished with window slits for daylight and ventilation.[74]
Not easy to identify in the absence of any explanatory
titles are three oblong areas in front of the three
remaining walls. Keller interpreted them as tables.[75] Later

[ILLUSTRATION]

208. PLAN OF ST. GALL. MONKS' DORMITORY AND WARMING ROOM, WITH PRIVY, BATHHOUSE,
AND LAUNDRY

The Dormitory forms the second story of a building 40 feet wide and 85 feet long (see fig. 192). It is furnished with seventy-seven beds that
one must assume were separated by wooden partitions as well as equipped with head and foot boards, and a modicum of locker space for storing
extra clothing. It is not clear whether the Dormitory could be heated, but its location above the Warming Room suggests the possibility that on
cold days heat from the lower chambers might rise into the upper through ducts in the walls or adjustable openings in the floor.

St. Benedict ruled (see above, p. 249) that the brothers "if possible should sleep in one room." This directive is probably the primary historical
impetus for construction of such large sleeping halls. The earliest structure of this type appears to be the dormitory of the Abbey of Jumièges,
ca. 650. (See the reconstruction of the layout of this monastery by Horn, 1973, 35, fig. 35. For procedure followed by the maker of the Plan
in developing the layout of beds within a grid of 2½-foot squares, see above, p. 89. The term DORMITORIUM is not classical and does not appear
in general use before the 8th century; see III, Glossary, s.v.)

students of the Plan, sufficiently puzzled by their purpose,
ignored them entirely. That they were meant to be tables
seems to me precluded by their dimensions alone (5 × 10
feet and 5 × 17½ feet), not to mention the fact that tables
are not a traditional part of the furnishings of a privy. From
a purely functional point of view one would expect to find,
besides the toilet seats, one or two areas serving as urinals,
a stand with pitchers filled with water or some other means
of providing water for washing the hands, and perhaps a
bin for the storage of straw.

A STRANGE VISIT AT NIGHT: ITS SANITARY,
MORAL, AND ARCHITECTURAL IMPLICATIONS

That straw was used for sanitary purposes in the Middle
Ages may be inferred from a story in Ekkehart's History of
the Monastery of St. Gall, which is of interest in more than
this particular respect. It tells us how the monks of St. Gall
foiled an attempt of Ruodman, the reform abbot of the
neighboring monastery of Reichenau (972-986)[76] to convict
them of laxity in monastic discipline. Having failed in
previous and more conventional attempts to prove corruption
in the monastery of St. Gall, he took an extraordinary
course of action, which the chronicler describes with painstaking
accuracy: the abbot mounted his horse, rode to St.
Gall, and entered the monks' cloister, unrecognized, in the
depth of night, searching like a thief for evidence that might
support his accusations (equite ascenso sanctum Gallum
noctu invadens claustrum clandestinus introiit, ut siquid reatui
proximum invenire posset furtive perspiceret). Frustrated by
finding no incriminating evidence, he decided upon the
even more unusual expedient of installing himself as a
quiet observer on one of the seats in the monks' privy.
Since this occurred in the monastery in which he himself
had been raised, he was familiar with the layout of the
buildings, and the writer describes with great precision the
steps which the abbot had to take in order to reach his
goal: from the cloister yard where his inquisition started
he went into the church, climbed up to the dormitory, and
from there gained access to the privy (e parte aecclesiae
dormitorium ascendit secessumque fratrum pedetemptivus ascendit
et occulte resedit). As he passed through the dormitory
his presence was discovered by an alert monk from St.
Gall, who instantly woke his fellow brothers, took them in
procession to the privy and placed a shining lantern
(lucerna) in front of the abbot, together with a handful of
straw (stramina)—a derisive gesture, obviously, through
which he invited the distinguished visitor to terminate his
ritual so that he could be properly received by his angry
hosts.[77]

This story helps to clarify a number of points about the
Plan. First of all the fact that the relative location of

[ILLUSTRATION]

210. WOODEN BATHING TUB

HARTMANN SCHEDEL. LIBER CHRONICARUM (NUREMBERG, 1493),
fol. cv

The subject is Seneca bleeding to death in his bath. For another
medieval example of a wooden bathtub, see fig. 238.

cloister, church, dormitory, and privy in the monastery of
St. Gall was identical with that shown on the Plan.
Secondly, that the monks' privy could not be reached
directly from the cloister yard, but only through the
monks' dormitory.[78] And lastly, that the monks' privy was
level with the dormitory, and hence probably formed the
upper story of a building that had a cesspool or a trench
flushed with running water on its ground floor. This is the
classical medieval arrangement, attested by numerous
examples, both on the continent and in England, about
which more will be said in a later chapter.[79] Since it is the
arrangement of the monastery of St. Gall, built with the
aid of the Plan, it is probably also the arrangement that the
designer of the Plan had in mind. In analogy with all of
these conditions, therefore, I would interpret the detached
position of the toilet seats in the Monks' Privy of the Plan,
in conjunction with the line drawn in front of them and the
line that defines the wall behind them, as the means by
which the draftsmen indicated that the seats were suspended
axially over a cesspool or water-flushed channel
below it. The space behind the seats might be the logical
place for straw to be stored.

TIMES SET FORMALLY ASIDE FOR THE
USE OF THE PRIVY

Because of the rigid time schedule of the monks, their
number, and the many hours which they had to spend
collectively in the church celebrating the divine services,
the use of the privy, too, was subject to the need for timing.
The Rule of St. Benedict prescribes that from Easter to the
first of November "the hour of rising be so arranged that
there be a short interval after Matins, in which the brothers
may go out for the necessities of nature, to be followed at
once by Lauds, which should be said at dawn."[80] Other
consuetudinaries provide for similar opportunities between
the hours of rising and Matins[81] and before the principal
meal of the day.[82] In Centula with its 390 monks (three
choirs of 130 monks, all worshiping simultaneously) the
problem of timing was solved by a directive of Angilbert,
which prescribed that "after the services had been fulfilled
in a seemly fashion, the third part of each choir should go
out of the church and fulfill their corporeal necessities."[83]

III.1.7

MONKS' LAUNDRY AND BATHHOUSE

CONCEPT OF CLEANLINESS & DIRECTIVES
CONCERNING THE USE OF BATHS

The custom of taking baths, in view of the traditional
monastic repugnance toward the sensuality with which this
practice had been associated in Greco-Roman times, was
always a somewhat controversial issue in the life of the
monks. St. Anthony rejected the use of baths entirely. His
biographer Athanasius reports that "he never washed his
body with water to cleanse it from filth nor his feet, and
even abstained from putting them in water except from
necessity."[84] St. Benedict, with the tolerance that characterizes

his judgment, permitted the use of baths "to the
sick, as often as may be expedient," but prescribes that
"to the healthy and especially to the young" this privilege
"be granted seldom" (Ualnearum usus infirmis, quotiens
expedit, offeratur, sanis autem et maxime iubenibus tardius
concedatur).[87] During the preliminary negotiations of the
first synod of Aachen there was a strong movement to
revert to the ascetic precepts of the early desert monks,
which culminated in a proposal "to interdict the use of
baths entirely, except when imposed by sickness" (usus
balnei interdictus omnino est excepto quibus necessitas infirmitatis
insistit).[88] Judging from Bishop Haito's reaction, this
proposal could not have enjoyed great popularity. Refusing
to implement it for his own monasteries, he urges, in
expectation of a clarification in future directives, that "in
the meantime bathtubs be made in abundance under the
supervision of the prior and of the cellarer, in which the
brothers may bathe, individually, and not together, as
necessity commands, and having previously received benediction,
giving relief to themselves in turn and allowing no
access to others" (interim uero fiant cupae balneariae
abundanter prepositi et cellerarii ordinatione factae in quibus
se fratres singillatim et non communiter cum necessitas
exposcit benedictione ante percepta lauare possint inuicem
sibi solatia prebentibus sine accessu extraneorum).[89]

In its final promulgation the synod of 816 struck a compromise
by permitting the use of baths at Christmas and
on Easter, reiterating the stipulation that the bath must be
taken singly (Ut balneis generaliter tantum in Natiuitate et
in Pascha Domini ueruntamen separatim utantur),[90] and in
the synod of the subsequent year the matter was given a
new degree of flexibility by a directive that submitted the
taking of baths "to the discretion of the prior" (Ut opus
balnearum in arbitrio prioris consistat).[91] A further boost to
personal cleanliness and hygiene was given, at that same
synod, by the stipulation that the provost provide the
brothers with soap and ointment and see to it that they
keep these items near their beds together with the other
things they need.[92] The monk Hildemar considers the use
of baths at Christmas and Easter sufficient and militates
against the introduction by certain abbots of a third bath
during the beginning of the feast of Pentecost. He suggests,
that the monks who are engaged in heavy and soiling work
might be allowed to bathe more frequently and reemphasizes
that all baths must be taken singly in a wooden tub
(tina) capable of accommodating one person only. No
monk, in taking his bath, should ever be in full sight of any
other monk, or should ever be seen in the nude on this as
well as any other occasion. Hildemar categorically rules out
the use of "bathtubs made of stone, in which three or two
or even four might bathe simultaneously" (petrinum
balneum, ubi tres vel duo aut etiam quattuor balneari possint)
and leaves no margin of doubt about the reason for this
precaution; since the sharing of baths in such tubs will
give occasion to "that most detestable crime" (in quo loco
illius sceleris nefandissimi occasio potest esse) to which a monk
must never succumb. "It would be of little help," so

[ILLUSTRATION]

213. WINCHESTER PSALTER (PSALTER OF HENRY OF BLOIS, 1129-1171)

BRITISH MUSEUM (Cotton Nero C IV, fol. 17v)

[by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum]

Detail of an illumination which represents on the upper half of the page (not shown) the Wedding at Cana at the moment the company is
seated, when the Virgin announces to Christ the lack of wine. The lower register (here shown) depicts the servants and butler of Architriclinus
drawing the water which Christ will presently transform into wine, from a well (to the right) in pitchers taken from a tall cupboard; these are
carried up a tall staircase running diagonally across the picture, to the upper story on which the feast takes place. The cupboard is gabled like
the specimens from Germany shown in figs. 214 and 215. It is roughly 10 feet high and internally divided into three compartments by horizontal
shelves.

The manuscript is a superb product of the Winchester School, executed in the scriptorium of the Old Minster or Priory of St. Swithin's
presumably between 1150-1160, and was probably made for Henry of Blois, brother of King Stephen, and Bishop of Winchester (1129-1171),
who held the great Abbey of Glastonbury in plurality with the See of Winchester. Rich in narrative pictures taken from both Old and New
Testaments, the manuscript combines mannerisms of the Winchester School, so brilliantly exhibited in the famous Winchester Bible, with a
grotesque realism in which evil men are represented, as in scenes of the Betrayal and Flagellation.

Hildemar contends in borrowing a phrase coined by St.
Gregory, "to fortify an entire town, and yet leave a
passage open through which the enemy may enter."[93]

NUMBER, LOCATIONS & LAYOUT OF FACILITIES
FOR BATHING & WASHING

The Plan of St. Gall shows facilities for baths in four
different locations. It provides for a bathhouse for the
sick,[94] a bathhouse for the novices,[95] a bathhouse for the
abbot,[96] and a bathhouse for the monks. The bathhouse for
the monks, or rather the "bathhouse and laundry for the
monks" (balneatoriū & lauandi locus), since both these
facilities were combined in the same structure, lies in the
corner between the dormitory and the refectory. It is a
rectangular structure measuring 22½ × 32½ feet, which is
accessible from the calefactory of the monks by a covered
passageway (egressus de pisale); it is divided internally into
two rooms of approximately equal size, a laundry, which is
provided with a fireplace, and a bathhouse with two tubs
for bathing. Both rooms are entirely surrounded with wall
benches, and the round arch over the door that connects
the laundry with the bathing room suggests that the
building was a masonry structure. Figure 210 is a reproduction
of a woodcut in Schedel's Liber chronicarum,[97] depicting
Seneca bleeding himself to death, which furnishes us
with a convincing portrait of the kind of tub (cupa balneariatina)
we could expect to find in this building. This example
could be amplified by scores of others. These tubs may
have been used for the washing of clothes as well as for
bathing. Chapter 4 of the synod of 816 rules that the monks
should do their own laundry,[98] but the aged and sick, who
were incapable of attending to this chore, could be relieved
by others.[99] It is possible that a special entrance in the
passageway that connects the laundry with the warming
room owes its existence to this eventuality, since it would
make the monks' laundry accessible to novices or serfs
performing this labor for the weak and the aged.

That the Laundry should be directly connected with the
Warming Room makes sense, since the latter, as we have
learned from Adalhard, was the place where the monks
hung up their clothes for drying. But the washing room
may also have been connected with the Dormitory. The
layout of the beds provides for an exit directly over the
egressus de pisale.

III.1.8

REFECTORY AND VESTIARY

The south side of the cloister is bounded by a building of
two stories which on the ground floor contains the Monks'
Refectory, and on the upper level their Vestiary (Infra
refectorium supra uestiarium). A hexameter in the adjacent
cloister walk refers to the Refectory with the words:

Haec domus adsistit cunctis qua porgitur aesca

This hall, where the food is laid out, has a place
for everyone

[ILLUSTRATION]

ROYAL BANQUET

MICHAEL WOHLGEMUT, SCHATZBEHALTER, 1491, fol. 86

[after Fridolin, Schatzbehalter, ed. 1962]

The Schrein und Schatzbehalter der wahren
Reichtümer des Heils und der ewigen Seligkeit is a
richly illustrated book for laymen, published in Nuremberg in 1491.
Seventy-five of its woodcuts were made by Michael Wohlgemut,
eleven by Hans Pleydenwurff.

[ILLUSTRATION]

215. AUSTRIA. BURG KREUZSTEIN. CUPBOARD, 14TH
CENT. (1.32 × 0.70 × 0.42m)

[ILLUSTRATION]

216. HALBERSTADT, GERMANY. OUR LADY'S CHURCH
ROMANESQUE CUPBOARD (2.35 × 0.83 × 0.85m)

[both examples after August, 1950, 25]

The walls of this type of cupboard—widely diffused in the
Romanesque period and presumably of very old style—are formed of
solid oak boards held together by iron bands also serving as hinges
for the doors (usually two, one above the other, and a third in the
gable).

Refectory

TABLES AND BENCHES

The Plan provides us with a complete and detailed
account of the furnishings of this hall (fig. 211). It shows in
the center of the eastern, or upper, half of the hall the
"table of the abbot" (mensa abbatis), a

-shaped table
with two arms 30 feet long, and a connecting head piece 10
feet long. Two longitudinal benches (scammum, aliud) range
along the arms of the table. The center is left free for easy
access by the servers. The abbot's table has a total length of
70 feet and can seat twelve persons on each of its long arms
and four at its head, if we allow 2½ feet per person. Parallel
to the abbot's table, on either side of the hall, are two
L-shaped tables, each having a total length of 40 feet,
providing space for sixteen persons per table. These tables
are served by a single continuous wall bench which ranges
around the circumference of the entire eastern half of the
hall (sedes in circuitu) and also serves the abbot's table. The
combined seating capacity of the upper portion of the hall
is sixty: twenty-eight at the abbot's table, sixteen at the
southern wall table, and sixteen at the northern wall table.

The seating arrangement in the western or lower half of
the hall is different. It consists of a straight center table
(mensa) with benches on either side (sedile, aliud) 27½ feet
long, permitting sitting space for twenty-two persons, and
two L-shaped wall tables along the southern and northern
walls of the hall, identical with the corresponding tables in
the upper end of the hall, each seating nineteen persons.
The total seating space at the lower end of the hall, despite
the different layout, is the same as that in the upper half,
viz., twenty-two at the center table, nineteen at the southern
wall table, and nineteen at the northern wall table,
equaling sixty. The grand total for the entire hall is 120,
not counting the table for the visiting monks (ad sedendū cū
hospitibus), which provides six additional seats, corresponding
exactly to the number of beds available in the
lodging for the visiting monks.[100] The table for the visiting
monks stands in front of the reader's pulpit.

READER'S PULPIT

The reader's pulpit (analogium) is marked by a square
with a circle inside and appears to be raised on a platform.
In later times the reader's pulpit generally consisted of a
semicircular balcony with lectern corbelled out from the
wall and accessible by a stairway built into the wall. A good
example is the reader's pulpit in the refectory of the
Cistercian monastery of Poblet, Catalonia (fig. 212).[101] In
even better states of preservation are the pulpits of the
refectories of the priory of St.-Martin-des-Champs at
Paris,[102] the cathedral of Chester (Cheshire),[103] and the
Abbey of Beaulieu (Hampshire).[104] Traces of others are
found in many ruined abbeys, such as Tintern and
Fountains.[105] The pulpit of the Refectory of the Plan of St.
Gall, however, is square, not semicircular or polygonal like
the later examples. Moreover, the layout of the wall

[ILLUSTRATION]

217. PLAN OF ST. GALL. MONKS' KITCHEN

Interpretation by Völckers

[after Völckers, 1949, 27]

[ILLUSTRATION]

218. WOODCUT FROM KUCHEMAISTREY, AUGSBURG,
1507

[after Schiedlausky, 1956, 22]

Kitchen with cook and maid. Völckers' reconstruction is handsome,
but incompatible with the inscription FORNAX SUPER ARCUS, "a
stove supported by arches." Square stoves on arches with firing
chambers and cooking wells must have been common in Antiquity as
well as in the Middle Ages, as figs. 218-221 show.

benches which run around the perimeter of the hall does
not allow access to a stairway built into the wall itself. I am
inclined to think that the pulpit was reached by an open
stairway.

The reader's pulpit faces the entrance to the Refectory,
which lies in the middle of the southern cloister walk. The
symbol used for this entrance differs from that of any other
door on the Plan. It suggests a double door arrangement
with entrance and exit separated by a median wall partition,
such as are used as standard passageways even today in
countless churches, in England as well as on the continent.

CUPBOARDS

The only other piece of furniture found in the Refectory
of the Plan of St. Gall is a double square referred to as
toregma. Square symbols designated by this term are found
in two other places on the Plan, in each case within a dining
area, in the Abbot's House, and in the House for Distinguished
Guests (figs. 251 and 396). Keller interpreted these

symbols variously as "a large cupboard, probably for
storing vessels" (Refectory),[108] "a vessel for washing hands"
(Abbot's House),[109] and "chairs or cushioned seats" (House
for Distinguished Guests).[110] Willis interpreted them as
"presses,"[111] Stephani as "cupboards,"[112] and Lesne as
"waterfountains."[113]

The confusion stems from the spelling of the term
toregma (plural, toregmata) which is otherwise unattested,
and must be equated with the common word toreuma,
which denotes either embossed metal objects (including
statuary) or turned wooden objects, or the products in
general of the woodworkers' craft (again extending to
statuary). Du Cange under the word tornarius, i.e.,
"turner," states that a tornarius or tornator made toreumata.

Since most of the plates and bowls from which the
monks ate and in which their food was served were
wrought on the turner's lath,[114] I am inclined to think that
toregma or toregmata relates to the bowls and vessels used

[ILLUSTRATION]

219. GEORGIUS AGRICOLA. DE RE METALLICA, LIBRI XII, BOOK X, BASEL, 1556

SEPARATION OF GOLD AND SILVER WITH AQUA VALENS

[after H. C. and L. H. Hoover, trans., London, 1912, 446]

Agricola's woodcut portrays a furnace of the same construction type as the stove in the Monks' Kitchen, except in size. It is described in the
text:

"The furnace is built of bricks, rectangular, two feet long and wide and as many feet high and a half besides. It is covered with iron plates . . .
which have in the center a round hole and on each side of the center hole two small round air holes. The lower part of the furnace, in order to
hold the burning charcoal, has iron plates at the height of a palm . . . In the middle of the front there is the mouth, made for the purpose of
putting fire into the furnace; this mouth is half a foot high and wide, and rounded at the top, and under it is the draught opening."

Georgius Agricola (baptised Georg Bauer, 1494-1555) was a German expert in mining methods and metallurgical processes who wrote the first
systematic treatise on these subjects. His informative and richly illustrated De re metallica, published in Basel in 1556, remained until the
18th century the authoritative handbook on mining. It owed its spectacular success to the author's broad knowledge of classical learning, acute
power of empirical observation, and thorough acquaintance with technical installations used in the operation of mines.

in eating and, by extension, to the piece of furniture in
which this ware was stored. A twelfth-century manuscript
in the British Museum, the Psalter of Henry of Blois,
gives us a good idea how such a piece of furniture may have
looked (fig. 213),[115] and a handsome woodcut by Michael
Wohlgemut in the Schatzbehalter of Nuremberg (1491)
shows such a cupboard in its setting, on a page that depicts
a royal banquet (fig. 214).[116] A beautiful Tyrolian cupboard
of the same variety, dating from the thirteenth or fourteenth
century, exists in Burg Kreuzenstein (fig. 215).[117]
Others, no less impressive, dating from the thirteenth to
the sixteenth centuries, may be found in Our Lady's
Church in Halberstadt (fig. 216),[118] the Church of Schulpforta,[119]
and the Museum of Wernigerode,[120] the Cathedral
of Halberstadt,[121] and the Museum of Lübeck.[122] The most
monumental of all is a great thirteenth-century ambry in
the Cathedral of Chester.[123]

LACK OF FACILITIES FOR HEATING

As one analyzes the layout of the Monks' Refectory one is
struck by the observation that this large hall has no
facilities for heating. It is provided neither with a hypocaust,
nor with the kind of open fireplace that forms the
central source of warmth in the guest and service buildings,
nor with any corner fireplaces such as are provided to warm
the bedrooms of the higher ranking officials of the monastery,
and those of the distinguished guests.[124] It is impossible
to look upon this omission as an oversight. The Refectory
obviously was not meant to be heated. The only source of
warmth available to this hall was the body heat of the people
who assembled there during the meal hours which in the
cold of the transalpine winters must often have been passed
in an uncomfortable chill. This willful rejection of physical
comfort surely can only be interpreted as a retention in
ceonobitic medieval monachism of the ascetic attitudes of

[ILLUSTRATION]

221. POMPEII. HOUSE OF THE VETII

[after Mau, 1908, 274]

This hearth is in essence merely a large square base, on the top of
which meals are cooked with the aid of charcoal braziers. A rim
around the edges of the cooking surface prevents cinders or ashes
from falling on the floor. The hole at the bottom of the hearth is for
storing of firing materials. But a hearth of identical construction
with a corresponding opening serving as firing chamber is represented
on a 2nd-century Roman relief at Igel near Trier (see Singer et
al, II, 1956, 119, fig. 89).

the early desert monks to whom eating was an irrelevant,
even contemptible activity, gluttony no less than a venal
sin. Again it was St. Benedict who reinstituted the meal as
a normal function of life. One eats in order to live. Yet in
furnishing the body with what is needed for its sustenance,
one should not take more than is required for that purpose.
Under no circumstances should one allow the meal or the
refectory to become a preoccupation of the mind or the
senses, or allow oneself to indulge in any form of excess.
St. Benedict expresses himself in unequivocal terms on this
point: "Above all things, gluttony must be avoided"
(remota prae omnibus crapula).[125] Rendering the refectory
chilly and uncomfortable would reduce the temptation to
linger over one's food unduly, and would prevent in large
measure untoward enjoyment of what was served. To impose
silence on those who congregated at the table, and
direct their attention to the lessons of the Reader, were
further means to forestall any unwarranted engrossment
with the physical pleasures of eating.

LAYOUT OF TABLES AND BENCHES IN
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

By contrast to this conspicuous disregard for comfortable
standards in heating, the physical layout of the tables and
benches in the Monks' Refectory is sophisticated and most
carefully planned. The designing architect must not only
have had accurate instructions concerning the number of
people the Refectory was to accommodate in a single
sitting, but also must have been fully aware of the precise
needs in linear length of the tables and benches required to
meet this condition.[126] He solved his problem, as we have
seen, by placing two tables in the center, and four along
the walls of the room. The details of this concept pose
fascinating, if unanswerable historical questions, into a
discussion of which I enter in full awareness of its highly
tentative and speculative nature.

The desert monks thought so little of eating (or so much
of its dangers!)[127] that many of them preferred to ingest
their food while standing or walking around. Of Father
Sisoës it is said that he frequently did not know whether or
not he had already taken his meal.[128] Tables on which to
spread one's food, or chairs to sit upon while taking a meal,
were incompatible with this concept and even the comfort
offered by a simple stone or the crude stump of a tree, in
this mode of thinking, was looked upon as a source of
sensuous self indulgence. But when St. Pachomius took the
epochal step of renouncing his hermitic past and founding,
in a desolate place called Tabenissi, on the river Nile the
first systematically organized community for monks, he
furnished this monastery with a refectory where the monks
took their meals seated at tables. They had to do this in
rigid silence, their heads covered by their cowls, so that
their eyes would only see the bowls from which they ate,
and could not stray aside to look at any of the other monks.
Yet no one was forced to come to the table and St. Pachomius,
in fact considered it to be a higher form of religious
attainment if a monk chose to dispense with the regular
food either through fasting or relying on only the slimmest
diet of bread, water, and salt which his superior, upon
request, could allow him to take to his cell.[129]

While many may have chosen these individual forms of
dietary ascetism as the more desirable path in their search
for salvation, in a community whose population reached at
its peak the staggering figure of 2,500 monks, the number
of those who attended the common meal must still have
been sufficiently large to call for a substantial and carefully
planned arrangement of tables and benches. The only
other sphere of life where men in comparable numbers
assembled for a common meal must have been the eating
halls of permanent Roman military camps, with the layout
of which St. Pachomius must have been well acquainted
from the days when he served in the Roman army.[130] It is

[ILLUSTRATION]

MARMOUTIER, INDRE-ET-LOIRE, FRANCE. KITCHEN

222.A

222.B

PLAN

[after Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire Raisonné, IV, 1858, 462 and 463]

Like the Kitchen shown in fig. 223, this one is a masterpiece of functional construction. A natural fire hazard, this type of kitchen (whether
monastic or secular) is invariably built as a separate entity a short distance from the eating hall, precisely as shown on the Plan of St. Gall
(fig. 122). From the 12th century onward they were generally built in masonry, often in the shape of an inverted funnel and ventilated by a
multitude of chimneys. The kitchen of Marmoutier has an external diameter of roughly 12m. It had five hearths installed in five niches, each
with one central (A) and two lateral (B) chimneys. Three further chimneys emerge from the shell higher up in the vault, which terminates in a
large central chimney (K) forming the top of the building. The stereotomy in structures of this type is almost beyond belief, and in an exterior
view appears to defy gravity. Six arches of the Marmoutier interior support six squinches which, in turn, support a second set of six squinches.
On these, the inverted masonry funnel rides magically on a circle of incredible shear stress.

in this ambient, I presume—the same ambient to which
monachism also probably owed the concept of its wall
enclosure,[131] —that we may have to look for the ultimate
source for both the layout of the Pachomian refectory and
its Roman prototypes and Carolingian derivatives.

When monachism spread to the north, however, the
monastic refectory may have been exposed to another
secular influence, namely the large and festive banqueting
halls that played such an important role in the life of the
Germanic kings and chieftains. In the traditional Germanic

[ILLUSTRATION]

FONTEVRAULT, MAINE-ET-LOIRE, FRANCE

223.A

223.B

ABBEY KITCHEN

[after Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire Raisonné, IV, 1858, 468 and 470]

A structure of unsurpassed sophistication, compared to which the Marmoutier kitchen (fig. 222) seems almost simplistic. The basic elements are
the same: five niches with hearths for cooking. In Marmoutier these niches were contained within the shell of a structure presenting an externally
smooth and continuous surface all the way to its top. At Fontevrault the niches sally outward, making the disposition of the inner spaces
visible in the form of the outer shell. Buttresses are raised along lines where the niches meet, to receive the thrust of the vault that covers the
center space. The latter consists of a daringly steep pyramid. It is composed of two octagonal cloister vaults, one superimposed upon the other,
the transition from the square of the arch-framed center space being made by squinches with holes for smoke emission. The chimneys are
pencil-shaped and terminate in lanterns. Structurally this building is an ingenious transposition to a centrally planned space of principles
developed by the architects of the great Gothic cathedrals.

eating hall—about which we are well informed by descriptions
such as that of Hall Heorot in the Beowulf poem[132]
(eighth century; but reflecting a tradition that reaches considerably
farther back) and the realistic accounts of
banquets in the Nordic sagas (ninth to twelfth centuries)[133]
—the retainers sat at tables and benches ranged along the
walls of the house throughout the entire length of the
building. The host sat on a high seat in the middle of one
of the two aisles of the hall, his guest of honor on a corresponding
seat in the middle of the opposite aisle. A cross
bench at the inner end of the room was taken up by women.
The fire burned in the middle of the center floor, from which
the food and the drinks were served. Only on very rare
occasions, i.e., when the number of guests was so large that
not all of them could be accommodated in the aisles of the
house, was the center floor taken up by an additional row
of tables and benches.[134] On such occasions the physical
layout of the Germanic banqueting hall, indeed, bore close
resemblance to that found in monastic refectories, although
there still remained an important difference: in the monastic
refectories, the highest ranking person, the abbot, sat on
the cross bench at the upper or eastern end of the hall; the
entrance was in the middle of the long wall facing the
cloister. This arrangement is more closely related to that
of the later feudal halls (especially well known in England)
where the lord dined on an elevated platform (dais) in the
uppermost bay of the building, at a table placed crosswise
to the long tables, while his retainers sat at tables ranging
lengthwise down the aisles of the hall.[135] The location of
the table for the abbot, "the representative of Christ in the
monastery,"[136] at the eastern head of the refectory unquestionably
has its origins in the Christian ritual, which in
turn was deeply influenced by the ceremonial of the Roman
imperial court. The latter was also the ultimate source of
the exalted position of the table of the medieval feudal lord,
to whom I presume, this concept was transmitted by their
royal overlords, after they assumed the successorship of the
emperors of Rome.

NUMBER AND HOURS OF MEALS OF THE MONKS

The number and hours of the meals of the monks are
regulated in Chapter 41 of the Rules of St. Benedict.[137]
The schedule set forth there is, as Dom David Knowles has
put it, "so foreign to anything in modern life, even among
religious orders . . . that it is difficult, when reconstructing
it in the imagination, to appreciate where its physical
handicaps lay and where use had become second nature.[138]

During the winter, beginning with the thirteenth of
September and ending with Ash Wednesday, the monks
were allowed a single full meal per day which was eaten
about two o'clock in the afternoon. The same schedule
prevailed for the time of Lent, but in this period the meal
was served after Vespers, i.e., about half past five or six.
During the summer months, and on all Sundays and Feast
Days, the monks ate two meals, one at midday, the other
about six o'clock in the evening. This schedule made
allowance for a rest after the midday meal.

The most perplexing aspect of this schedule of meals, in
the eyes of a modern observer, "is the assignment of the
first meal to a time never less than ten, and throughout the
winter of about twelve hours after rising."[139] The change
from a winter schedule of one meal to a summer schedule
of two, providing for a midday rest, is of course the product
of the Mediterranean climate, in which monachism
originated. There "the heat of the summer makes a siesta
after the midday meal all but a physical necessity."[140]
North of the Alps this routine was senseless, yet the force
of tradition was so strong that it remained unmodified by
any difference of climate or latitude throughout the entire
Middle Ages.

THE MONKS' DIET

St. Benedict prescribes that every meal of the monks
"should have two cooked dishes, on account of individual
infirmities, so that he who perchance cannot eat of the one,
may make his meal of the other . . . and if any fruit or
young vegetables are available, let a third be added.
(Sufficere credimus ad refectionem cotidianam tam sextae quam
nonae omnibus mensis cocta duo pulmentaria propter diuersorum
infirmitatibus, ut forte, qui ex illo non potuerit edere,
ex alio reficiatur . . . et si fuerit, unde poma aut nascentia
leguminum, addatur et tertium).[141] Hildemar, in commenting
on this chapter, points out that in contrast to the biblical
tradition where the term pulmentum is used for a considerably
broader range of dishes (including meals made of
venison), it is applied by St. Benedict exclusively to cooked
dishes made "of vegetables, of cheese and eggs, and of
flour" (de oleribus, de caseo et ovis et de farina). He adds to
this that if the term is used without the qualifying adjective
coctum it refers to uncooked dishes, "in which something is
added to bread to make it better eating such as cheese, the
leaves of leek [greens in general?] or egg, or other similar
things" (quidquid pani adijicitur, ut melius ipse panis
comedatur, sicuti est caseum et folia porrorum et ovum et

[ILLUSTRATION]

CHICHESTER, SUSSEX, ENGLAND. KITCHEN, BISHOP'S PALACE

224.A

224.B

224.C

RECORDED BY THE AUTHORS, 1960

With its simple square form and timbered roof, the kitchen of the bishop's palace at Chichester reflects the tradition of the Monks' Kitchen of
the Plan of St. Gall (fig. 211) more closely than the elaborate structures of Fontevrault and Marmoutier (figs. 222-223), with their
sophisticated masonry skills in arching and vaulting that one would scarcely expect to antedate the Romanesque and Gothic periods.

The roof frame of Chichester, despite its primitive appearance, is nevertheless a highly evolved form of early English hammerbeam construction
that apparently did not emerge before the end of the 13th century, and which became very fashionable shortly thereafter. It is formed of four
trusses springing from trussed brackets suspended in the masonry walls, and was surmounted at its apex by an open lantern, now concealed by a
modern ceiling added early in the 20th century. Certain constructional similarities of the scantling of the bishop's palace with that of St. Mary's
Hospital in Chichester (figs. 341-343) suggest a late 13th- or early 14th-century date.

cetera his similia). Each monk was allowed a pound of
bread per day—St. Benedict calls it a "weighed pound"
(panis libra una propensa), i.e., a quantity of bread whose
mass was controlled by weighing it on the scales rather
than by the estimate of the baker or servers.[142] On days on
which two meals were served, one third of this allowance of
bread was to be put aside for the evening meal.

"Except the sick who are very weak, let all abstain
entirely from the flesh of four-footed animals" (Carnium
uero quadripedum omnimodo ab omnibus abstineatur comestio
praeter omnino deuiles egrotos). St. Benedict states his views
about the inadmissibility of meat from quadrupeds clearly
enough, but frustrates his modern readers by not giving any
reasons for this injunction. His ninth-century commentator
Hildemar fortunately comes to aid in this matter: "It is on
account of its pleasurable taste, not because of the number
of feet that monks are known to abstain from the meat of
four-footed animals" (et ideo propter suavitatem gustus, non
propter numerum pedem abstinentes et poenitentes a carnibus
abstinere noscuntur) . . . "For the desires of the flesh are
more easily aroused where greater delight and pleasure is
encountered in the food (eo quod stimuli carnis magis solent
insurgere ubi major dulcedo et major suavitas gustus in cibum
percipitur). He points to the example set by Christ and by
the apostles, as well as by leading monastic authorities "of
none of whom we read in scripture or in Church history
that they ate any meat other than fish"; and concludes his
argument with a quotation from the fifth book of the
institutae patrum, where it is said that "the food of the
monks must be such as to contribute to the sustenance of
life, but not such as to arouse the desires of flesh and to
subminister to vice" (ut ille cibus debeat esse monachorum,
qui sustentationem tribuat vitae, non ille, qui occasionem
concupiscentiis et vitiis subministrat).[143]

The consumption of fowl was a controversial matter on
which St. Benedict had failed to express himself. This was
interpreted by many to mean that he condoned it. The
reform movement of Benedict of Aniane attempted to
eliminate the uncertainties that arose from this lack of
specific legislation, but the directives issued at Aachen
contradict, even annul, each other. The synod of 816 barred
the consumption of poultry, except in case of sickness (Ut
uolatilia intus forisue nisi pro infirmitate nullo tempore
comedant).[144] The council of 817 admitted it for the great
feasts of Christmas and Easter for a period of eight days
each (Ut uolatilia in Natiuitate Domini et Pascha tantum
octo diebus si fuerit unde aut qui uoluerit comedant).[145] A later
capitulary reduced this span to four days.[146]

A second controversial issue taken up at Aachen concerned
the question whether St. Benedict, in barring the
flesh of quadrupeds from the monks' table, also eliminated
the use of fats extracted from these creatures. Since his own
monastery, Monte Cassino, lay in one of the richest olive-producing
regions of Italy, it is probable, as Semmler has
pointed out,[147] that this question did not even enter his
mind. North of the Alps, where olive oil was not available
in sufficient quantity to satisfy the needs of the monks'
kitchen, animal fats became a basic necessity.[148] Benedict
of Aniane, after initially barring its use in the kitchen of his
own monastery, eventually felt himself constrained to
rescind this order.[149] The synod of 816 adopted this more
moderate view and formally permitted the use of animal
fats for cooking, except on Fridays, the twenty days before
Christmas, and the period between Sunday Quinquagesima
and the feast of Easter.[150] This custom was universally
adopted, with the exception of Adalhard of Corbie,
who retained the position that fat from quadrupeds was
meat and therefore subject to St. Benedict's injunction.[151]

The Rule permitted each monk a hemina of wine per day,
and the synod of 816 expanded this allowance, so when
wine was not available in sufficient quantity, it could be
replaced by twice its measure in beer.[152]

The diet of the monk thus consisted of bread, a variety of
dishes made of pulse, fresh vegetables and fruit when in
season, a good measure of wine or beer, poultry at certain
periods of the year, every variety of fish, and of course the
entire gamut of dairy and poultry products such as milk,
cheeses, and eggs. The Consuetudines Sublacenses contains
a paragraph from which we may learn what, at the time of
its writing, was considered a typical monastic menu:

Apples, or any other fruit that is eaten raw, were divided
equally among the brothers by the cellarer and laid out on
the tables before the monks were seated.[154] Outside the
regular mealtime the eating of fruit or any other sort of
fresh vegetables was forbidden.[155]

MONKS' BEHAVIOR DURING THE MEAL

The monks' behavior at mealtime is described in a compilation
of monastic customs which was written toward the end
of the eighth century, and appears to have been held in such
esteem by Benedict of Aniane that he proposed to promulgate
it by attaching it to the capitulary of 817.[156]

As the hour of the meal approaches, upon completion of
the divine service, the monks wait in the choir, softly singing
psalms. At the first sound of the bell, they walk to the
refectory in order and, after having washed their hands,
salute the cross with their faces turned east. When the bell
rings again they kneel, say a verse, and recite the Lord's
Prayer. Then the prior blesses the monks, the brothers
take their seats at the table, each at his proper place, and
thereafter they remain in complete silence.

The boys are not seated separately, but are intermixed
with their elders, two at each table.[157] In Corbie the boys
took their meals standing opposite their teachers.[158] "If
anyone does not arrive before the verse, so that all may say
the verse and the prayers together and all at the same time
go to the table . . . he shall be corrected once and a second
time for this. If he still do not amend, he shall not be
allowed to share the common meal; but let him be separated
from the company of the brethren and take his meal alone,
and be deprived of his allowance of wine, until he do penance
and amend."[159]

The food is served from the kitchen, beginning at the
lower end of the refectory, near the kitchen, where the
most recently admitted monks are seated and ending with
the abbot at the upper, eastern end of the hall. When the
bell rings a third time, the abbot blesses the bread and
breaks it, and the brothers, after blessing each other in
turn, begin to partake of their food. The lector ascends the
pulpit and commences his reading.

When the time comes to serve the wine, the cellarer
motions to the server, and immediately upon this signal the
junior brothers rise from their seats and fill the cups for
the monks.[160] In carrying out this task they lower their
heads, first to the Cross, then to the abbot, and finally in
a circle to all of the brothers, whereafter they return to
their seats.

If there is anything the brothers need as they eat and
drink they must supply it to one another, so that no one
shall have to ask for anything. Should need arise, nevertheless,
that something must be requested, it must be done
by a sign rather than by speech.[161] When all the food is
eaten, the reader stops his recitation, the brothers say a
verse, rise from the table—the left-hand choir first, the
right-hand choir next, and the abbot last—singing the
fiftieth psalm. They enter the church in this manner, "bow
to the Gloria," say the Lord's Prayer, and then proceed to
the chapter "silently, as befits the time."[162]

THE READER

The reader is appointed for the entire week and enters
upon his office on Sunday, after having received the blessing
of his brothers in the preceding service. Before he
ascends the pulpit he is given some bread and wine, and he
takes his full meal only after the monks have eaten, together
with the servers and kitcheners.[163] A chapter of the first
synod of Aachen amplifies this tradition by stipulating that
he should not receive anything else beyond what is granted
to him by the Rule.[164]

The lector's reading is supervised by the corrector, who
sits beside him on the pulpit. If need be, the latter rises,
looks into the book and corrects the Reader "gently"
(leniter).[165]

THE SERVERS

The Rule prescribes that no one be excused from service
in the kitchen and in the refectory unless he be engaged in
some more important task or is prevented by sickness.
However, if the community is large, the cellarer may be
relieved from this duty altogether.[166] In entering upon their
weekly duty on Sundays, immediately after Lauds, the
incoming servers, together with those whom they relieve,

[ILLUSTRATION]

226. POMPEII [after Billiard, 1931, 184. fig. 70]

Tavern sign of burnt clay showing the common Roman amphora used for
transport and storage of standardized quantities of wine.

[ILLUSTRATION]

227. NÎMES, MAISON CARRÉE. ROMAN DOLIUM

The largest extant Roman DOLIUM, displayed on the podium of the
Maison Carrée in Nîmes, near the Cella entrance. The height of the
person standing to the right is 74 inches, ca. 1.88m. (photo: Horn).

prostrate themselves before the brothers in the church and
ask for their prayers. An hour before the meal, all are
given, over and above their regular allowance, a drink and
some bread, "in order that at the meal time they may serve
their brethren without murmuring and undue hardship."[167]

The servers set the tables, bring in the food and take away
what is left. In cleaning the tables after the meal they brush
the crumbs into a canister with a broom made for that
purpose.[168] As they serve the food they must see to it that
those who eat are not in want of any food or drink, that the
brothers are not given less than the abbot, the juniors not
less than the seniors, except for the boys who receive a
smaller portion.[169] If they distribute more or less than is
right, or perform their tasks noisily, or if they neglect,
lose, spill, or break something, or create damage in any
other way, they must immediately ask for indulgence by
throwing themselves on the ground before the prior, holding
in their hand that which they have damaged, and telling
what has happened.[170] After the monks have eaten, the
servers take their own meal "not at one table but each in
his proper place," and while they eat "the same texts that
were recited to the others, will be recited to them."[171]

At the end of their weekly term the outgoing servers
wash the towels the brethren use for drying their hands and
restore the vessels to the cellarer "clean and sound." Then
the cellarer delivers them to the monk whom he has placed
in charge of the incoming servers "in order that he may
know what he is giving out and what receiving back."[172]
Then together the outgoing and the incoming servers wash
the feet of the whole community.[173]

WHO IS ADMITTED BESIDE THE MONKS

The question of who was to be admitted to the refectory
was never settled to everybody's satisfaction. In order to
protect the life of the monks from being contaminated
by association with visitors from the outside world, St.
Benedict provided the abbot with his own kitchen, "so
that the brethren may not be disturbed when guests—
who are never lacking in a monastery—arrive at irregular
hours."[174] This rule had always been a source of annoyance
to reform-eager souls, and the resulting uncertainties are
reflected in conflicting legislation. Chapter 14 of the synod
of 817 rules "that layman should not be conducted into the
refectory for the sake of eating and drinking" (Ut laici in
refectorium causa manducandi uel bibendi non ducantur),[175]
but a directive which appears to have been issued not before
818-819 eased this directive by admitting ecclesiastics
of superior rank, and noblemen.[176] Some abbots, such as
Adalhard of Corbie, went even further by making this
privilege available to paupers and secular canons of lower
ranks.[177] Other monasteries retained the more restrictive
customs of earlier periods, as is suggested by a passage in
Ekkehard's Casus sancti Galli, which reads:

The monastery of St. Gall, as I come to speak about this place, has
always been held in such high veneration from the oldest memory
of our fathers, that no one, not even the most powerful canon or

[ILLUSTRATION]

227.X BOǦAZKÖY, ANKARA, TURKEY, TEMPLE 1

This large pithos lies in the ground of a storeroom of the great Hittite temple built
between 1275 and 1220 B.C. by the kings Hattusli III and Tudhalya IV [photo: Horn]

[ILLUSTRATION]

228. BOSCOREALE, CAMPAGNA, ITALY

[after Billiard, 1931, 476, fig. 163]

Cave of a Roman wine merchant with large DOLIA buried in sand, a method used by
the Hittites as early as the mid-second millennium B.C.

[ILLUSTRATION]

229.B MAINZ. MITTELRHEINISCHES LANDESMUSEUM

Remains of a Roman barrel found in a bog, filled with the remains of fillets of fish
[photo courtesy Mittelrheinisches Landesmuseum].

[ILLUSTRATION]

229.A HAITHABU. SCHLESWIG-HOLLSTEIN, GERMANY

Wine barrel re-used in an upright position as a well lining [photo courtesy
Schleswig-Hollsteinisches Landesmuseum für Vor-und Frühgeschichte].

layman of the secular world, was permitted to enter the monks'
enclosure or even to glance into it.[178]

Infractions of this rule are carefully recorded by Ekkehard,
such as the time when King Conrad I surprised the monks
of St. Gall, on December 26 of the year 911, by entering
the refectory in the company of two bishops, with the word
"With us you shall have to share your meal whether you
wish or not!" and at the same time instructing Abbot
Salomon not to join the party in the refectory but to
preside over the table of the king's retainers in the House
for Distinguished Guests—a complete reversal of the roles
of abbot and emperor.

The entry of laymen into the refectory could be legalized,
however, by the act of confraternization, often performed
on such occasions, and on the day after Conrad's first unauthorized
entry into the refectory at St. Gall he petitioned
to be voted in confraternity by the monks. This was granted
him, and at the noon meal of the same day he again shared
their company, during which the monks were treated to
delicacies not permitted on their regular diet. "No one
complained that this or that was contrary to custom,"
concludes Ekkehard's account of this unusual event, "although
nothing like this had ever been heard or seen before,
or even experienced by a monk in this house."[179]

Vestiary

Above the refectory there is a room of equal size for the
storage of the monks' clothing. It must have been accessible
by an external stairway from the southern cloister walk, but
the Plan is not explicit on this point. As the draftsman chose
to instruct us about the layout of the Refectory, we learn
nothing about the arrangement of the Vestiary above it.
We may imagine that it was equipped with chests, cupboards,
and racks for storage of garments and blankets.

[ILLUSTRATION]

231. ROME. TRAJAN'S COLUMN (A.D. 113)

Bas-relief shows Roman soldiers loading a Danube galley with barrels from an embankment depot near a Roman fort in Northern Dalmatia.
It is the earliest visual representation known attesting replacement of earthenware AMPHORAE with wooden barrels for wine transport.

[ILLUSTRATION]

230. AUGSBURG, GERMANY. ROMAN RELIEF

[after Pignorius, De Servis, 1656, 226]

Discovered in 1601, the panel shows the cellar of a Roman wine
merchant of the Germanic provinces of Rome, with wine barrels being
rolled into position and stored on a ledge.

WHAT CLOTHES THE MONKS ARE TO WEAR

In a chapter dealing with the quantities and the kinds of
clothing that the monks should wear, St. Benedict enumerates
what he considers necessary under ordinary conditions
and advocates a certain amount of flexibility, "for
in cold districts they will need more clothing, and in warm
districts less."[180] The synod of 816 paid great attention to
this question, and in a chapter of substantial length defined
the standard issue of clothing for each monk as follows:
Two shirts (camisias), two tunics (tunicas) two cowls
(cucullas), and two copes (cappas), to each of which might
be added a third one if necessity requires. Further: Four
shoes (pedules), two pairs of hose (femoralia), one frock
(roccum), one fur garment down to the heels (pelliciam usque
ad talos), two head coverings (fasciolas)—two more of the
same in case of a journey—one pair of summer gloves, in
vulgar language called uuantos (manicas quas uulgo uuantos
appellamus in aestate), one pair of winter gloves made of
sheep skin (muffulas ueruicinas), two pairs of day shoes (cal-

[ILLUSTRATION]

232. ROMAN RELIEF. AVIGNON, MUSÈE CALVET

This relief from Cabrières d'Aygues (Vaucluse) showing boatmen towing a wine barrel laden boat with the aid of hawsers tied to the mast. The
earthenware amphorae standing on a ledge above this scene disclose that these more easily breakable containers, while in transport already
replaced by the sturdier oak barrels, were on land still being used for commercial storage.

ciamenta diurna), two night slippers for the summer (subtalares
per noctem in aestate), two night slippers for the winter
inhieme uero soccos), a sufficient amount of soap and unction
(saponem sufficienter et uncturam), all of this to be increased,
if necessity demands, with the consent of the abbot.[181]

Another chapter rules that the clothing must be "of
middling quality, neither too mean, nor too costly" (nec
multum pretiosa sed mediocria),[182] and Bishop Haito, in his
commentary to the preliminary acts of the first synod
specifically rules against "vestments made of goat fur or
hemmed with silk" (capernina uestimenta seu sirico circum-
suta).[183] The abbot wears the same clothes as the regular
monks.[184]

The abbot must see to it that all of the issued garments
fit their wearers properly, and that the monks return
their old clothes as they receive new garments, so that they
can be stored in the Vestiary for distribution to the poor.[185]
A letter dispatched by Abbot Dietmar (778-797) of Monte
Cassino to Count Dietrich informs us that this exchange of
clothing occurred—appropriately enough—on the day of
the feast of St. Martin (November 11) on which the
monks presented themselves in the Vestiary, in solemn
procession, singing psalms and carrying lamps. There, during
the recitation of the Gospel passage, "Take no thought
for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor

[ILLUSTRATION]

233. GALLO-ROMAN STONE RELIEF, LANGERS, FRANCE. MUSÉE SAINT-DIDIER

[Photo after plaster cast in the Musée des Antiquités Nationales, Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye]

A huge wine barrel, being transported on a four-wheeled cart drawn by two mules, shows the same concave curvature at the ends as the TUNNAE
MINORES in the Cellar of the Plan of St. Gall (fig. 225). Judging by the size of the mules drawing the cart, as well as by the height of the body
of its driver, this barrel must have been roughly of the same size as the TUNNAE.

yet for your body, what we shall put on" (Matthew 6:25)
the brothers were issued their new clothing.[186]

Also kept in the Vestiary, in compliance with a stipulation
made in chapter 58 of the Rule of St. Benedict, are the
clothes which a prospective monk wore when he first
arrived at the monastery, and of which he was stripped
before the altar during his formal and solemn reception
into the community. They were held in readiness "should
he ever listen to the persuasions of the devil and decide to
leave the monastery (which God forbid)."[187]

III.1.9

MONKS' KITCHEN

LAYOUT AND FURNISHINGS

From the western gable wall of the refectory an arched door
leads into the "exit to the kitchen" (egressus ad coquinam).
This passage is not straight, but broken, to baffle the kitchen
noise—a courtesy to the hebdomadarius reading in the refectory.
It had the additional advantage of removing the
working area of the kitchen from the sight of the dining
monks while the dishes were being carried in and out, and
perhaps also to serve as a barrier for the kitchen odors. It is
wide enough (44 inches) to permit two persons to pass each
other.

The kitchen forms a square approximately 30 × 30
feet,[188] which appears to be the norm for the period (fig.
211). The monks' kitchen of the Abbey of Cluny, described

in the Consuetudines Farfenses measured 30 × 25 feet, and
the kitchen for the guests of the same monastery had the
same dimensions.[190] In the center of the kitchen a space
almost 10 feet square is taken up by a large "hearth on
arches" (fornax super arcus) with four circular openings for
cooking. Around the stove are four work tables, and in each
corner of the building is a large circular container. These
are either tubs for washing the vegetables and dishes or
additional cauldrons for heating water. A continuous range
of wall benches, or work tables, runs around the entire
periphery.

DESIGN OF COOKING RANGE

Völcker's reconstruction of a kitchen stove as an open
fireplace surmounted by an arched canopy with a pyramidal
smoke shaft overhead (fig. 217) is untenable.[191] The stove

[ILLUSTRATION]

234. BAYEUX TAPESTRY (1073-1083). LADING OF WILLIAM'S SHIPS

BAYEUX, CALVADOS, FRANCE. MUSÉE DE LA REINE MATHILDE

The episode is the embarkation of the Conqueror's army, after the construction of his invasion fleet in or near Dives-sur-Mer, a Norman
boat-building center some fourteen miles east of Caen. The scene is of supplies and arms being taken down to the ships and, in the detail shown
above, a cart with a great barrel of wine is portrayed, as well as a shipment of helmets and lances that are being drawn to the beach by
horsemen. The barrel is of the same shape, and appears to approximate the length of the TUNNAE MINORES in the Monks' Cellar (Fig. 225).
Behind the cart walk two soldiers (not shown here), one carrying a huge animal skin and the other a small barrel; each a vessel for wine. The
inscription above the cart translates:

THESE MEN CARRY ARMS TO THE SHIPS, AND HERE THEY PULL A CART WITH WINE AND ARMS.
The tapestry, a long stretch of bleached linen embroidered in colored wools (l. 231 feet, h. 20 inches, or 70.34 × 0.50 m.) was almost certainly
commissioned by William's half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and Earl of Kent after 1067; he may have made a gift of it to Queen
Mathilde. It is a tendentious apologia of William's conquest of England justified in terms of feudal promise, perjury, and retribution. Its style
and the English spelling of place names disclose that it was made in England. For more detail see Gibbs-Smith, 1973, 4.

of the Kitchen of the Plan of St. Gall was supported, not
surmounted, by arches, as its explanatory title discloses in
unmistakable terms (fornax super arcus). Square arch-supported
stoves for cooking or firing are pictured on
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century woodcuts, such as the
"Kitchen with Cook and Maid" in the Kuchemaistrey,
published in Augsburg in 1507 (fig. 218),[195] or the "Alchemist's
Workshop" in Cajus Agricola's De re metallica,
published in Basel in 1556 (fig. 219).[196] The arches that
support the cooking range release sufficient space beneath
for the storage of wood and kindling. The heat is produced
in firing chambers built into the body of the stove.

Cooking ranges of this type were in use in Mediterranean
countries at very early times. Figure 220[197] reproduces a
sketch of a kitchen stove in the palace of Mari, Mesopotamia
(excavated in 1935-38), from the beginning of the
second millennium B.C. It was built of unbaked bricks and
consisted of five firing holes and five cooking units set up in
a single range. A square hearth on arches stood in the kitchen
of the House of the Vettii in Pompeii, but does not
appear to have been furnished with any firing chambers
(fig. 221).[198] In Roman family life much of the cooking could
of course be done on top of the stove over open charcoal
fires; in a monastic kitchen, which had to serve 120 monks
each session, this method would have been impracticable.

ARCHITECTURAL SHELL

In reconstructing the architectural shell of this interesting
building we have a wide range of choices. One thinks
immediately, of course, of those masterpieces of functional
construction—the medieval kitchens of Marmoutier (fig.
222), Fontevrault (fig. 223), and Glastonbury, or the kitchen
of the palace of Saumur, the chimneys of which can be
spotted on the charming September picture of the Très
Riches Heures de Jean de France.[199] These are the buildings
Gruber had in mind when he reconstructed the Monks'
Kitchen of the Plan of St. Gall as a masonry structure with

a large pyramidal roof (fig. 282).[201] On the opposite end of
our range of choices there are such simple wooden sheds
as the one shown in the picture of the bakehouse of the
Behaim Codex in Kraków (fig. 387).[203] The Kitchen of the
Plan of St. Gall may have belonged to the latter type. A
third and perhaps more likely possibility is that its walls
were built in masonry but its roof framed in timber. An
interesting example of this variant survives in the kitchen
of the Bishop's Palace at Chichester (Sussex; fig. 224),[204] an
early example of hammer beam construction, dating probably
from the beginning of the fourteenth century.[205]

KITCHEN UTENSILS

A complete account of the equipment and utensils "that
should never be wanting" in a monastic kitchen is given in
the Customary of Cluny, written by the German monk
Ulrich in the last quarter of the eleventh century.[206] We
could not ask for a more authentic interpretation of the
accoutrements in the Kitchen of the Plan of St. Gall:

Three cauldrons (caldaria): one for cooking the beans
(fabas); the other for cooking the vegetables (olera); and
the third on an iron tripod (cum tripode ferrea) for heating
water, should it be needed for the washing of clothes. Four
additional basins (cuppae): one to keep the half-cooked
beans; the second with running water (in qua cadit aquaeductus)
for cleaning the vegetables before they are put
into the cooking cauldron; the third for washing the plates
(scutellae); and the fourth for heating the water that is
needed for washing the feet of the monks (mandatum) and
for shaving (ad rasuram).

Further, four ladles (cochlearia): one for the beans; one
for vegetables; the third, a little smaller, for skimming the
fat (ad saginam exprimendam); and a fourth, made of iron,
to cover the cinders of the stove. Lastly, a pair of tongs
(forceps) to reduce or quench the fire.

In addition: four pairs of protective sleeves (manicae), to
prevent the shirts of the monks from being soiled by the
ever present soot of the kitchen; two special gloves (palmariae),
to shield the hands of the monks against the heat
of the cooking vessels as they are removed from the fire and
tipped; three towels (manutergiola), to be replaced each
Thursday, with which the kitcheners clean their hands;
a knife to cut the lard (cultrum ad lardum) and a whetstone
for sharpening it (cotis ad acuendum); a skillet (patella) for
heating water and for melting lard, and a smaller one, with
tiny holes in the bottom, to strain the fat (in fundo minutatim
perforata ut ipse adeps coletur). Also: a salt box (pyxis in qua
sal recondatur); a chest (scrinium) to store odds and ends
(minora); a bucket (urna) for drawing water; two brushes
(scopae) for scrubbing the cauldrons after cooking; two ends
of wire netting (retis abcisiones) to clean both cauldrons and
plates; two tables, one for stacking the plates (scutellas)

[ILLUSTRATION]

236. PLAN OF ST. GALL. NOVITIATE AND INFIRMARY WITH KITCHENS & BATHHOUSES

SHOWN ½ ORIGINAL SIZE (1:384)

Right: the Novitiate; left: the Infirmary, each a smaller replica of the Cloister of the Monks. These facilities flank a double-apsed church,
internally divided by a median transverse wall into two separate chapels: one for the Novices (facing east), the other for the ill (facing west).
The layout is more Roman in spirit than any other building on the Plan, and is without antecedent in either Early Christian or early medieval
architecture. It has its roots instead in Roman imperial audience halls (fig. 240) and luxurious Roman villas (figs. 241-242).

after they have been rinsed immediately following the meal,
the other for stacking them for the subsequent day after
being thoroughly cleaned. Lastly: two seats (sedilia), called
benches (banci) in vulgar Latin; a four-legged stand of
moderate height (cella quadripoda et submissa) on which
the basin with the vegetables is placed before they are put
into the cooking cauldron; a large stone, perhaps even a
millstone, upon which any of the cauldrons may be put when
beans or vegetables are served; another one to serve as a
stand for the basin in which the plates are washed between
meals.

There is a bellows to blow the fire (follis ad sufflandum
ignem) and a fan woven of pliant twigs to air it (flabellum
vimineum ad ventilandum); a pole (contus) to carry cauldrons,
another one to reduce the fire (ad ignis dimotionem); a trough
(canalis) for water, for the frequent washing of hands; two
swinging cranes of triangular shape (trigoni), each made of
three beams so joined together at irregular angles (de tribus
lignis licet imparibus angulis facti) that they may be turned
like doors in this and in that direction. To this frame,
chains are attached to carry the cauldrons which, suspended
in this manner, may be filled with water at the aqueduct
(prope aquaeductum) and then moved without strain
to the fire.

Among other things, Ulrich also tells us that the fire in
the kitchen is never allowed to die out, but is carefully
covered in the evening, so that on the coming morning it
is found alive.[207]

RULES GOVERNING WORK IN THE KITCHEN

The management of the kitchen, like that of the refectory,
comes under the jurisdiction of the cellarer, whom
Adalhard warns about getting so immersed in the detail of
chores that can be handled by others, that he may not keep
himself free for the important task of directing and supervising

the entire operation.[209] The labor in the kitchen is
done by the monks themselves, who are assigned to this
task in weekly shifts. Talk is permitted only when the
fulfillment of a chore makes speech inevitable. For the rest
of the time all work is done with the brothers continually
singing psalms.[210]

Laymen and serfs are not permitted in the kitchen.
Adalhard of Corbie is very emphatic on this point and
orders that if laymen assist in the task of preparing and
cleaning the food, "some window, niche, or opening outside
of the kitchen should be set up as a place where the
brothers may pick up the food to be prepared or carry the
food to be washed."[211]

"If there are vegetables to be cleaned or dressed for cooking,
or fish to be gutted or scaled, or beans of different
sorts to be washed or prepared," he adds, "the laymen must
fully and honestly perform these tasks outside the kitchen as
many times as is necessary, and in places assigned for the
purpose. They must use great care to place or stack the
food in a spot where the brothers can conveniently pick it
up. . . . If this procedure is followed, the laymen will not
have to come in to the brothers, nor will the brothers have
to go out to them."[212]

[ILLUSTRATION]

238. ROGER OF SALERNO

CHIRURGIA (13th century), III, 25 fol. 7. (London, British Museum, Sloane 1977)

[by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum]

The illustration portrays a medical bath. The Chirurgia of Rogerius Salernitanus (1108-1170) is a work marking the beginning of the
medieval renascence of ancient surgical learning and practice. From Roger's time to the end of the Middle Ages, it served as the authoritative
text for surgery both north and south of the Alps. Roger was a student of Greek and Arabic sources, and as a practicing surgeon, a man of vast
experience and great originality of judgement. The Church prohibited the clergy from practicing surgery, and not until the 18th century was
surgery accepted as an autonomous discipline in European universities.

[ILLUSTRATION]

239. ROME. TRAJAN'S BASILICA AND FORUM (DEDICATED 313). PLAN

[after Enciclopedia dell'Arte Antica, VI, 1965, 838, fig. 951]

Platner termed this complex the "last, largest and most magnificent of the imperial fora built by Trajan . . . probably the most impressive and
magnificent group of buildings in Rome." In final form it had five parts: the forum proper; the basilica Ulpia; the column of Trajan; two halls
housing the library; and the great temple of Trajan erected by Hadrian after Trajan's death in A.D. 116. The site dimensions are 185 × 310 m.
The forum itself consists of a rectangular court, with colonnades on three sides and two semicircular exedrae facing each other across the court
in the middle of its two long sides. The court is entered through a central gate in a convex wall contiguous to the forum of Augustus. The
basilica Ulpia lies at the eastern end of this court, its axis at right angles to that of the forum. It is rectangular in plan, five-aisled, with an
apse at each of its two narrow ends, and three monumental portals on the long side facing the forum. Two doors in the opposite wall give access
to the small, open court that accommodates in its center the famous column of Trajan, whose pedestal served as a sepulchral chamber for the
emperor's ashes and whose shaft displays reliefs arranged in a spiral band, representing the principal events of Trajan's campaign in Dacia
(A.D. 101-106). The rest of the court is taken up by two halls housing the library, one for Greek, the other for Latin manuscripts.

In the east the forum terminates in a monumental hemicycle, in the axis of which Hodrian erected the great temple honoring Trajan and his
wife Plotina. The ruins of the temple of Trajan were eventually covered by almost two millennia of rubble. But during the Carolingian period its
buildings, although damaged, were probably sufficiently well preserved to convey an accurate image of their original appearance and composition.
The real disintegration occurred in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, when Rome began to grow again and the ruins of the ancient city
were quarried by everyone needing building materials.

The culmination of interest in this great expanse of magnificence and splendor is the
Column of Trajan, A.D. 114.

Of special interest, set above the doorway to the sepulchral chamber in the base of the
shaft, is a single stone about nine feet wide and a little less than four feet high. On this
stone is to be seen a dedicatory inscription, carved and composed in six lines of lettering
created and executed in a manner never surpassed and rarely equalled.

Here, one finds exemplified "a monumental writing such as the world has not seen since"
(David Diringer). Roman capital letters, capitales quadratoe, attained the level of their
highest perfection in the first and second centuries A.D.

Roman letters of this excellence (on the tomb of a great emperor, flanked on each side by a
library for manuscripts) became symbols that helped shape learning and education in the
renaissance of Charlemagne. The Roman letter prevails today. The display type used in
this book, designed by Eric Gill, himself a cutter of letters in stone, is directly related to
the Roman model cut in stone.

E.B.

[ILLUSTRATION]

240.A TRIER. AULA OF IMPERIAL PALACE

PLAN (4th century)

The aula, whose axis runs from south to north is 67 × 30 × 27.5m.
It was preceded by a monumental narthex and terminates in the
north in a large apse, which contained the emperor's throne. The
entire floor of the hall (nearly 1700 sq. m.) was underpinned by a
hypocaust system with tubes in the long walls carrying heat to a
height of 8m. The aula was flanked on either side by a narrow
colonnaded court. While the precise layout of these courts became
known only through recent excavations, it is possible that in
Charlemagne's time they were still intact. They might therefore have
exerted a direct influence on the creation of concepts embodied in the
layout of the Novitiate and Infirmary of the Plan of St. Gall.

III.1.30

CELLAR AND LARDER

The Cellar and Larder is contiguous to the western cloister
walk, whose inscription refers to these facilities (fig. 225)
with the hexameter:

The building is 87½ feet long and, like the Dormitory and
the Refectory, was probably meant to be 40 feet wide. The
line that defines its southern long wall is disturbed in its
course, probably because the draftsman wanted to avoid
the stitches of the seam that runs along the line where this
wall should be, had it been placed in its proper position.
Because of the overlapping margins of the two joining
sheets, the parchment is so thick along this line that it
would have been impossible for the scribe who traced the
copy, even under the most favorable light conditions, to
recognize the details of the prototype plan.

Cellar

LAYOUT, DESIGN, AND DIMENSIONS
OF CASKS

The Cellar occupies the ground floor of a double-storied
structure, the upper level of which contains the Larder and
other necessary supplies (Infra cellarium. Supra lardariū &
aliorū necessarioriu repositio). The Cellar is equipped with
two rows of barrels set on rails: five large ones (maiores
tunnae) and nine smaller ones (minores). The small barrels
are 10 feet long and have a maximum diameter of 5 feet.
Their staves, convex for most of the length of the barrel,
take a turn toward the concave as they reach the end of the
cask. The large barrels are 15 feet long and have a central
diameter of 10 feet. Their staves are convex for the entire
length of the vessel. The scribe does not distinguish which
size barrel was used for wine and which for beer. (My
colleague, Prof. M. A. Amerine, assures me that there is no
technical reason why the same barrel might not be used
successively for the storage of wine and of beer, except that
red wine deposits pigment in the wood of the cask which, if
the cask is then used for beer or white wine, tends to discolor
these liquids.) It is likely that the practice was followed
of decanting the contents of large wine casks into
smaller ones, as volume was reduced through evaporation
and consumption, in order to prevent the wine spoiling
from contact with air.

During the aging of wine, as modern enologists point
out,[213] there is a constant loss of liquid (called "ullage")
through the wood of the cask in which the wine is stored, a
loss which will cause acetification of the wine if it is not
made up. To prevent this occurrence, accepted modern
practice requires that large containers of wine be refilled
periodically (a process in California wineries called "topping")

[ILLUSTRATION]

240.B TRIER. AULA OF IMPERIAL PALACE. PERSPECTIVE FROM SOUTHEAST

[by courtesy of the Laudesmuseum, Trier]

The narthex (its walls are no longer standing) was internally divided into an entrance hall projecting forward, and presumably also reaching
higher up than the two lateral arms, from which doors lead into the galleries of the two courts flanking the hall.

with the same kind of wine, and preferably of the
same vintage, a supply of which is stored in smaller casks
and demijohns. The Monks' Cellar on the Plan of St. Gall,
with its different sizes of barrels, would be perfectly
equipped to handle this problem and the layout may indeed
suggest that both operations, the topping of larger from
smaller casks, as well as the decanting of larger barrels into
several smaller ones, were practiced in the monastic wineries
of the ninth century.

Another reason for having a larger number of small barrels,
in addition to the big ones is that this made it possible
to store smaller quantities of wine, obtained from different
vinyards, in separate containers and thus to retain their
specific character.

THE BARRELS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

An invention of the Celts

Recent research has shown that the practice of storing and
moving wine in wooden casks made its appearance in
Europe in the first century B.C. in the territory of the Celts
and of the Illyrians. Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23/24-79) states
that "in the neighborhood of the Alps people put [wine]
into wooden casks and closed these round with hoops."[214]
Edward Hyams in an intriguing, but poorly annotated,
book ascribes this invention to the Allobroges, a Celtic
tribe that lived in and around the valley of one of the
principal alpine tributaries of the Rhone river, the Isère
(modern Dauphinois) where wine was first grown north of
Italy.[215] Strabo (64/63 B.C.-A.D. 21 at least) informs us that

[ILLUSTRATION]

KONZ (CONTIONACUM)

241.B PERSPECTIVE RECONSTRUCTION

[by courtesy of the Landesmuseum, Trier]

241.A PLAN 1:600

[by courtesy of the Landesmuseum, Trier]

A summer residence of the Roman emperors in Trier, on a plateau above the confluence of the Saar and Moselle rivers, the palace consisted
of a central heatable audience hall with apse—a much smaller replica of the great aula of Trier (fig. 240), plus two outer wings running
parallel to the audience hall and separated from it by two inner courts. The wings were used as living quarters and included a bath. The
grouping of the principal building masses, in their perfect bisymmetry, bears striking resemblance to the layout of the Novitiate and Infirmary
complex of the Plan of St. Gall, except that in the villa of Konz the open courts were not colonnaded.

wooden casks "larger than houses" (πίθοι ξύλινοι μείζους
οἴκων) were used to store wine in Cisalpine Gaul,[216] and
that the Illyrians brought their wine from Aquileia to
various markets in wooden casks in exchange for slaves,
cattle and hides.[217]

Egyptian & Greco-Roman methods of storing wine

The Romans, who like the Greeks and Egyptians, stored
and carried their wine in earthenware amphorae (fig. 227)
were startled by this ingenious innovation. Hyams believes
that this invention of storing wine in huge containers
formed by a multitude of separate pieces was dependent on
the more temperate climate prevalent in the lower Alps,
where barrels could more easily be kept in good condition
than in the hot and dry climate of the mediterranean
countries.[218] Unlike the more breakable and considerably
smaller amphora used in the classical world (as an official
capacity measure the amphora was the equivalent of 25.5
liters) the wooden barrel was capable of storing wine in
larger quantities, and at considerably lower cost. Its primary
contribution to western life, however, appears to have lain
not so much in this as in the fact that it enabled man to
develop superior vintages by offering more favorable conditions
for the aging of wines. Edward Hyams purports this
fact to constitute the great difference between the wines of
antiquity (made from sweet grapes and stored in heavily
pitched containers offering poor conditions for maturing)
and the wine of modern times (made from smaller and
more acid grapes and susceptible to oxygenization under
the influence of air filtering through the pores of the
wood).[219]

From a reading of Hyam's interesting study one may
gather the impression that the ancients drank only young
wines. This is clearly not the case, as a perusal of Billiard's
exemplary and carefully documented study on wine and
vines in the ancient world will show. Pliny (Hist. Nat.,
XXIII, 22, 3) makes it a point to emphasize that a good
wine should neither be too young nor too old. Galen (De
antidotis, I, 3) and Athenaeus (Deipn., I, 26, b) write that
the wine of Alba reaches its maturity after fifteen years;
the wines of Tibur, Pompeii and Labicum after ten years.
Greek wines are said to decline after six or seven years
(Pliny, Hist. Nat., XIV, 10, 2; Athenaeus, Deipn., I, 26, b).
The wine of Falerno, bitter when young, became drinkable
after ten years, and after fifteen or twenty years acquired
the exquisite refinement that made it an incomparable
liqueur (Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXIII, 20, 2). It could attain
thirty or forty years (Petronius, Trim., XXXIV), but
having reached that age, it began to turn (Cicero, Brutus,
83).[220] If there was a difference, then, it could not have
been in the possession or want of knowledge about the
virtues of aging but in the more favorable conditions
offered for this process by the new material used for the
containers in which wine was matured.

The ancients when faced with the problem of storing
wine in bulk, did so by putting it into large earthenware
vessels (dolia, Old Latin: calpares) which were covered by
a convex lid (operculum) sealed to the body of the vessel by
a heavy layer of pitch. These vessels were buried to the
rim in a deep layer of sand (fig. 228). Some of the larger
dolia were so high that a fully grown man could stand erect
inside without being visible. The specimen shown (fig. 227)
has a height of 6 feet 3 inches (1.90 m.), a circumference of
14 feet 8 inches (4.45 m.) and a storage capacity of 211 U.S.
gallons (800 liters). There is no need to emphasize that
these large earthenware containers must have been frightfully
expensive, since their manufacture was dependent on
firing ovens of unusual dimensions; and that to transport
them, even over small distances, posed delicate problems,
both in view of their weight and their susceptibility to
breakage. It is also quite obvious that there was a non-transgressible
upper limit for the size of an earthenware
container that had to be fired in a single piece.

The barrel: constructional & viticultural advantages

The barrel was free of any such limitations. Being composed
of a multitude of long and narrow staves (laminae,
tabulae) forced into position by iron hoops (circuli) its
volume could be extended to previously unfeasible proportions,
as witnessed by the casks, "as large as houses"
which Strabo saw in Cisalpine Gaul, or the monster cask
in the Castle of Heidelberg, which has a storage capacity
of 49,000 gallons: 232 times the volume of the large
dolium of the Maison Carrée in Nîmes (fig. 227). The
transport of such large containers posed no problem whatsoever,
since they were assembled on the spot. Smaller
barrels, as a glance at fig. 230 shows, could even be rolled
on the ground. Being set up above the ground the content
of these containers was more easily tapped than that of the
buried dolia; it did not require that the container itself be
opened, another advantage to the process of aging.

The oldest extant barrel and the earliest
visual representations

The oldest extant wooden barrel, to the best of my
knowledge, is a cask that was lifted from a pond outside the
city of Mainz in Germany, together with numerous other
Roman objects (fig. 229.B). It was filled with fillets of fish.

An oak barrel virtually contemporaneous with those
shown on the Plan of St. Gall, and of the same elongated

[ILLUSTRATION]

242. KLOOSTERBERG (near Plasmolen)

MOOK, LIMBURG, THE NETHERLANDS

[after Braat, 1934, 9, fig. 6]

This provincial Roman porticus villa is almost identical in plan with
the imperial villa of Konz (figs. 240.A, B). A third luxurious villa
of this type was excavated in Wittlich-on-the-Lieser.

shape as the tunnae minores was found in the maritime
trading settlement of Haithabu where, standing upright,
it formed the walls of a well (fig. 229.A). To use barrels for
that purpose appears to have been a common practice of
medieval well construction.[221]

The earliest visual representations of wine barrels are
found on the column of Trajan (A.D. 113) where Roman
soldiers are shown loading wine barrels onto a Danube
boat at a fort in Northern Yugoslavia (fig. 231), and in a
number of Gallo-Roman stone reliefs showing barrels as
they are being moved on boats or carted on wagons (fig. 232
and 233). The shape and dimension of one of these,
recorded on a Roman stone relief now in the Musé Saint-Didier
at Langres (fig. 233), appears to be identical with
that of the smaller barrels on the Plan of St. Gall. The
barrel depicted fills the entire length of a four-wheeled
wagon, and to judge by the size of the mules by which
the cart is drawn and the height of the body of its driver,
it must have had a length of roughly seven feet. It has the
same concave curvature of the staves at the two ends of
the vessel. This form may have been standard throughout
the entire first millennium A.D., for it appears again in the
Bayeux Tapestry (fig. 234) in a scene that shows William's
army setting out to conquer England, and carrying on carts
a provision of wine and weapons. The inscription leaves
no doubt about the content of this precious container:

ET HIC TRAHUNT CARRUM CUM VINO ET
ARMIS.

"And here they pull a cart with wine and with arms."

THE MEASURE OF WINE AND BEER ALLOWED TO
THE MONKS

Conflicting views among the early fathers

Most of the early desert monks looked upon wine as an
unsuitable drink; St. Anthony never touched it and even
St. Pachomius struck it entirely from the diet of his monks
except in case of sickness.[222] But others, such as Palladius
(d. 431) proclaimed that "it is better to drink wine with
measure than water with hubris."[223] The moderates among
the early fathers had a powerful precedent to lean upon
since the Lord himself drank wine (Matt. IX, 11). St.
Benedict settled the controversy with his distinctive discretion.
"We do indeed read that wine is no drink for
monks; but since nowadays monks cannot be persuaded of
this, let us at least agree upon this, to drink temperately
and not to satiety."[224]

No difference in alcoholic content between ancient
and modern wines

Concerning the concentration of alcohol in wine, there
is no reason to presume any appreciable difference between
wines of ancient and modern times. Table wines (wine consumed
with meals) cannot have less than 8 per cent alcohol
by volume (at lower levels, the wine will not be stable, and
will tend to spoil), and in general no more than 12 per cent.
(At levels of alcohol higher than this, the wines are no
longer table wines but are classified as sweet wines, the
production of which requires special treatment or fortification
by artificial sugars.)[225]

The hemina of St. Benedict: Charlemagne's
attempts to establish its value

St. Benedict allows each monk "a hemina of wine a
day"[226] and leaves it to the discretion of the prior to add
to this a little more "if the circumstances of the place, or
their work, or the heat of the summer require more."[227]
He holds out the promise of a "special reward" for those
"upon whom God bestows abstinence"[228] and admonishes
the superior "to take care that neither surfeit nor drunkeness
supervene."[229] The precise content of the measure of
wine which St. Benedict designated with the term hemina
is unknown.[230] Charlemagne made an attempt to ascertain

[ILLUSTRATION]

243. GERASA (JERASH), PALESTINE. THREE EARLY CHRISTIAN SANCTUARIES ON AXIS

[after Krautheimer, 1965, 119, fig. 50]

In the foreground and to the left the atrium and church of St. Theodore, built A.D. 494-496; in the center, but on a slightly lower level, the
cathedral of Gerasa, built around A.D. 400. It had at its rear another atrium enclosing a shrine of St. Mary located directly behind the apse of
the cathedral. This atrium was approached by a grand staircase from yet a lower level. Three sanctuaries were thus aligned on a common axis.

[ILLUSTRATION]

244. CANTERBURY, ENGLAND

PLAN OF SAXON ABBEY CHURCH OF SS PETER AND PAUL, FOUNDED BY ST. AUGUSTINE (597-604), AND THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY

[same period; after Clapham, 1955]

To the left lies the church of SS Peter and Paul; to the right, the church of St. Mary. The church of St. Pancras, lying in eastern
prolongation of the axis of these two churches, and dating from the same period, is not visible in this plan. The church of St. Wulfric (interposed
between SS Peter and Paul and St. Mary) was not part of the original concept. In the medieval monastery of St. Gall, St. Peter's chapel
(prior to 830), Gozbert's church (830-836) and Otmar's church (dedicated 867) lay in axial prolongation; see II, figs. 507-509.

its value by sending a delegation to Monte Cassino.
Hildemar, in discussing this event, in his commentary to
chapter 40 of the Rule of St. Benedict, claims that the
emperor succeeded in retrieving the old measure and that
this was the measure currently used in the monasteries of
the empire as the basis for the daily allotment of wine.[231]
The event is also referred to in a letter by Abbot Theodomar
of Monte Cassino to Charlemagne, where it is said
that a sample measure was dispatched to the emperor. Two
of these according to the estimate of the older brothers of
Monte Cassino formed the equivalent of the hemina of St.
Benedict, one being served at the midday meal, the other
at supper.[232] The text leaves no margin for doubt: it was
not the original hemina of St. Benedict (or a duplicate
thereof) that the emperor received from Monte Cassino
but a sample of which the senior monks "supposed"
(aestimaverunt, i.e., judged by careful consideration, yet
from incomplete data) that it was half the equivalent of that
measure. St. Benedict's original hemina, as we learn from
Paul the Deacon's History of the Lombards had been taken
to Rome by the Monks of Monte Cassino, as they fled from
the invading barbarians in 581, together with the original
measure for the Benedictine pound of bread, and the
original manuscript of the Rule of St. Benedict.[233] There
is no evidence that these two measures were returned to
the monastery in 720 when it was rebuilt, and the content
of Theodomar's letter, as well as a good deal of other
evidence, indicates clearly that in the eighth century even
in St. Benedict's own monastery the precise value of the
Benedictine hemina was forgotten.[234]

The Carolingian inflation of capacity measures

The leaders of the Church, under Charlemagne, and
even more so under Louis the Pious, had some reason to
be concerned with this issue, since in the lifetime of these
two rulers, the hemina had more than doubled its value.
The base of the Carolingian system of capacity measure,
as that of the Romans, was the modius internally divided
into 2 situlae, 16 sextarii, and 32 heminae. The classical
Roman modius had a capacity equivalent to 8.49 liters, the
hemina to 0.2736 liters.[235] Between the fall of the Roman
Empire and its renovation under Charlemagne the capacity

of these measures increased considerably. The modius in
use in the Frankish kingdom and in the early years of the
reign of Charlemagne was equivalent to 34.8 liters. In a
capitulary of 794, Charlemagne instituted a new modius,
larger by one third than the preceding one, which brought
the modius up to an equivalent of 52.2 liters. Before 822,
Louis the Pious increased again the newly established
modius of his father, this time by one fourth of its current
value, which brought it up to an equivalent of 68 liters.
Thus in the short span of not more than 25 years, the
hemina had risen from a capacity equivalent to 1.06 liters
(in use when Charlemagne acceded to his throne) to one
equivalent to 1.46 liters (instituted by Charlemagne in 794)
and finally to one equivalent to 2.12 liters (instituted by
Louis the Pious, prior to 822).[236] The inflation clearly
worked in favor of the monks, with proportions that must
have taxed the wit of even the most astute monastic leaders.
St. Benedict may have foreseen such possibilities when he
foreclosed all future abuse with the qualifying clause that
whatever measure of wine the abbot should be willing to
grant, "he always take care that neither surfeit nor drunkeness
supervene,"[237] a directive that as the centuries passed
by must have proved to be a more trustworthy guide than
any reliance on capriciously changing physical capacity
measures.

The probable daily allowance of wine at the time
The Plan of St. Gall was drawn

The hemina that St. Benedict had in mind probably
came closer to that which was in use under the Romans in
classical times than to any of the later Frankish measures.
This would have entitled the monks to drink a little over a
fourth and perhaps as much as a third of a liter of wine
per day. Whether taken in the course of a single meal or
spaced out over two meals, this amount could hardly have
had any damaging effects on health or have lead to "surfeit"
or "drunkeness," especially not if these meals were
followed, as they traditionally were, by either a brief
period of rest,[238] or by sleep.[239] St. Benedict's assessment
of the quantity of wine that could be safely consumed at
the monks' table was both conservative and judicious. But
in evaluating his ruling historically one must not lose
sight of the fact that when St. Benedict took the epochal
step of sanctioning the consumption of wine for the
monastic community, the issue was as yet a highly controversial
one. Once the decision was made, the frailties of
human nature would tend to push the allowance upward.
From 0.2736 liters to 0.5 liters is not a big step; the less so,
if one considers the great inflation the hemina experienced
as an official capacity measure between the time of St.
Benedict and the time of Louis the Pious. That the daily
monastic allowance would follow this inflationary cycle,
which peaked under Louis the Pious to the impressive
equivalent of 2.12 liters, is impossible to assume. That it
rose to 0.5 liters is probable. There are even some indications
that it might have risen as high as 0.7 liters. A half-liter
of wine per day, if consumed by a healthy man in the
course of two successive meals, could still be interpreted as
lying within the spirit of St. Benedict's ruling; 0.7 liters
would have pushed the Rule to its limit; any amount above
that would have been clearly in violation of the Rule.[240]
My suspicion that the daily allowance of wine might have
risen as high as 0.7 liters at the time of Louis the Pious is
based upon a well known but perhaps not fully explored
passage in the Customs of Corbie, where we are told that in
this monastery each visiting pauper was issued two

[ILLUSTRATION]

245. BOOK OF KELLS. DUBLIN, TRINITY COLLEGE LIBRARY. MS 59, fol. 188r

OPENING WORDS OF ST. MARK GOSPELS

[by courtesy of the Trustees of Trinity College]

[ILLUSTRATION]

246. PLAN OF ST. GALL

DIAGRAM SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRINCIPAL BUILDING MASSES

The shape of Church and Claustrum bears striking resemblance to the Quoniam initial of the St. Mark Gospels, Book of Kells (fig. 245).
The building masses grouped around this central motif likewise recall the manner in which secondary letter blocks are ranged peripherally
around the initial. The similarity may be accidental, if not deceptive, since the prime reasons for grouping buildings on the Plan of St. Gall (as
well as the development of the claustral scheme) are clearly funtional. Yet one cannot entirely discard the possibility of an interplay of
functional with aesthetic considerations.

[ILLUSTRATION]

247. PLAN OF ST. GALL. NOVITIATE AND INFIRMARY

PLAN. AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

The circular apses of the double chapel to which the Novitiate and the Infirmary are attached, as well as the round arches of passages and
openings in the walls of the cloister walks (see fig. 236) leave no doubt that this building complex was conceived as a masonry structure. Each
of its two components has all the constituent parts of a monastic cloister (Dormitory, Refectory, Warming Room, Supply Room, lodgings for
supervising teachers and guardians) but since these facilities are strung out on ground floor level rather than in two-storied buildings, this
architectural compound covers a surface area almost as large as that of the Monks' Cloister. It housed in practice probably no more than twelve
novices plus twelve sick or dying monks—together with teachers and guardians not more than thirty individuals.

Differing dietary prerogatives, bathing privileges, and need for special educational and
medical facilities, required that novices and the ill not only be housed apart from regular
monks, but also separated from each other. The Novitiate and Infirmary complex—inspired
by the grandiose centrality and axial bisymmetry of Roman imperial palaces (figs. 240-242)
—is an ingenious architectural implementation of all these needs. Two U-shaped ranges
of rooms around open inner courts, on either side of a church halved transversely, served
a dual constituency with identical, mutually isolated facilities. No doubt the location of
Novitiate and Infirmary was purposeful. Away from the bustle and noise of workshops
and near the open, "parklike" eastern paradise of the Church, the Orchard, and
gardens, its residents might find activities and recreation suited to the returning strength
of the convalescent, or the energies and spirits of the young. Proximity might serve to
remind both ill and novices of beginnings and an end, in view of the great Cemetery cross,
while healing and learning continued in the embrace of the larger community.

"beakers" (calices) of beer per day. The context of the
passage discloses that the "beaker" of Corbie was capable
of holding 1/96 of a modius[241] which in the light of the
values established by M. B. Guérard for capacity measures
in use at the time when this text was written (A.D. 822)
would amount to 0.7 liters.[242] The passage does not refer
to wine but to beer; however, the relative value of wine
and beer had been defined in 816 in the first synod of
Aachen, in a chapter which directed that if a shortage of
wine were to occur in a monastery, the traditional measure
of wine should be replaced by twice that volume of beer:
ubi autem uinum non est unde hemina detur duplicem eminae
mensuram de ceruisa bona . . . accipiant.[243] This directive was
promulgated as an imperial law and must have been known
to everyone in the empire.

Truly enough the Customs of Corbie speak of rations to
be issued to the poor, not to the monks, but since from
another chapter of that same text it can be inferred that
monks and paupers are entitled to the same ration of
bread,[244] there is more than a high probability that they
were also granted the same ration of wine or beer. Good
monastic custom would require that an equal amount be
also granted to the serfs. The latter might even have been
issued slightly larger rations because of their involvement
in hard physical labor.

ARE THE BARRELS DRAWN TO SCALE AND
SCALED TO NEED?

The layout of the Monks' Cellar raises some interesting
dimensional questions. Are the scale, the size, and the
number of its barrels to be taken seriously? Or are they
meant to simply indicate in a schematic and purely general
way that there is a cellar full of barrels for the storage of
wine and beer?

An answer to this question depends on our ability to
assess the total number of men who were to be housed in a
monastery such as that which is shown on the Plan of St.
Gall, the extent of their total annual need for storage of
alcoholic beverages, and the relation of this need to the
storage capacity of the barrels that are drawn out on the
Plan.

In entering upon a discussion of these relationships,
one has to keep in mind, first, that the wine for an entire
year is manufactured in the fall and must be stored in its
entirety at that time; second, that this wine cannot be
tapped during the first six months of storage (during which
it is still in full process of fermentation) and preferably
should not be tapped during the first twelve months. This
means that a well planned monastic cellar should be able to
hold the entire yield of not less than two years' vintage.
Beer, unlike wine, was not a seasonal product, but could be
manufactured all year round.[245] It needed only a few weeks
of recovery in the cellar for clearing and therefore no large
facilities for long range storage.

A calculation of the probable number of people daily to
be fed in the monastery shown on the Plan of St. Gall
discloses that it consisted of about 110 monks, some 150170
serfs, plus an indeterminate and varying number of
guests: all together roughly 300.[246] Our analysis of the
layout of the Monks' Cellar has shown that there are nine
small barrels, each of a length of ten feet and a central
diameter of five feet; and five large barrels each of a length
of fifteen feet and a central diameter of ten feet.[247] My friend
and colleague William B. Fretter (experienced vintner,
and mathematician), by a calculation based on the apparent
dimensions of the barrels portrayed on the facsimile
Plan, concluded that each small barrel contained 4,250
liters and each large one, 28,250 liters. These capacities
vary slightly from those determined by Ernest Born (Fig.
235.A-C, p. 286). Both tend to confirm nonetheless that
the scale of the barrels on the drawing is not capricious,
but an intentional representation of casks the size of which
related directly to the needs of the inhabitants of the proposed
community.

On the preceding pages it has been shown that the daily
allowance of wine for each monk at the time of Louis the
Pious could not have been less than 0.2736 liters (old
Roman hemina) and is very unlikely to have been more than
0.7 liters. The most persuasive historical assumption is
probably that it was somewhere in the middle between
these two extremes, perhaps around 0.5 liters. This gives
us a lower and upper limit as well as an intermediate value,
all of which can be checked against the storage capacity of
the barrels actually shown on the Plan.

1. If the daily allowance was 0.2736 liters (fig. 235.B):

If the normal daily allowance of wine had still been the
old Roman hemina of 0.2736 liters the total daily consumption
of wine for 300 people would have been 82 liters,
the total yearly consumption, 29,930 liters. To store two
years of vintage in this order of magnitude would have
required barrel space for 59,860 liters. This amount could

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. NOVITIATE AND INFIRMARY. ELEVATION AND SECTION

248.A CROSS SECTION THROUGH CLOISTER AND CHAPEL LOOKING WEST

248.B WEST ELEVATION

AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

The absence of explanatory titles to indicate the existence of any upper stories, as well as the fact that the ground floor accommodates all
parts of the traditional claustral scheme, is clear evidence that all rooms of the Novitiate and Infirmary lay at ground level. In reconstructing
the elevations and sections of this compound shown in this and the subsequent figure, we have followed the procedure chosen for every other
building on the Plan by conjecturing comfortable minimum heights for each part of the complex: head clearance in the cloister walks, sufficient
elevation in the walls of the chapels to receive the roof covering them, and sufficient height in the clerestory above that level to allow for
proper fenestration. The outer wall perimeter, likewise, must have been of sufficient height to allow for windows giving light and air to the
rooms they enclose.

have been stored in two of the large barrels of the Monks'
Cellar, but would have left a number of barrels empty, or
for the storage of beer, which seems excessive: three of the
large ones, and all of the nine small ones. We have already
pointed out that from a purely historical point of view it
seems unlikely that the daily measure of wine at the time
of Louis the Pious was still the old Roman hemina of
0.2736 liters. Our analysis of the storage capacity of the
Monks' Cellar would tend to confirm this assumption.
The Cellar, if it was rationally planned, must have been
planned for a larger volume of alcoholic beverages.

2. If the daily allowance was 0.5 liters (fig. 235.C):

If the normal daily allowance of wine was 0.5 liters; the
daily consumption for 300 people would have been 150
liters, the needed supply for one year, 54,750 liters; for
two years, 109,500 liters. This amount could have been
stored in four of the five larger barrels, leaving the fifth for
the storage of beer, and all the smaller barrels for the aging
of smaller quantities of higher quality wine, perhaps
reserved for distinguished guests and for the abbot when
he dined with distinguished guests.

It is interesting to note that under this assumption,
which we found to be historically the most persuasive one,
the physical layout of the Monks' Cellar makes perfect
sense. It offers comfortable space for everything, leaving
perhaps even a small margin for extra needs—a condition
that we found to prevail everywhere else in analyzing the
scale of the Plan.[248]

3. If the daily allowance was 0.7 liters:

If the normal daily allowance was 0.1 liters, the daily
consumption for 300 people would have been 210 liters;
the needed supply for one year 76,650 liters; for two years,
153,300 liters. 153,300 liters would have occupied all of the
five large barrels, plus three of the smaller ones, leaving
only six of the smaller barrels for other purposes, such as
the long term storage of wines of higher quality for aging,
or the short term storage of beer.

Again it is interesting to note that under this assumption,
which lies at the borderline of what would have been
acceptable within the tenets of the Rule of St. Benedict,
would also in the physical sense have been a very tight fit.

CONCLUSION

All of these calculations tend to show that the storage
capacity of the barrels in the Monks' Cellar was carefully
planned, and that the person who decided on the number
and the dimensions of the barrels shown in the cellar, as
well as the dimensions of the cellar itself, had a clear and
accurate statistical picture of the total annual needs in
alcoholic beverages of the community for which the cellar
was designed, as well as the precise volume of cooperage
required to meet these needs. In the light of the results of
our general analysis of the scale and construction methods
used in designing the Plan, these findings will not come as
a surprise.

LACK OF FACILITIES FOR THE PRESSING
OF GRAPES

The Plan of St. Gall does not provide facilities for the
pressing and processing of grapes. This work was probably
performed in the outlying vineyards. The climatic and
topographical conditions of many monasteries were such
that the cultivation of grapes in their immediate vicinity
was impossible. We know, for instance, that in the eighth
and early ninth centuries, the Abbey of St. Gall had to
import its wine from vineyards in Breisgau, and from
others located in the Alsace.[249] Later the grape was introduced
into the neighboring Thurgau. In the days of Abbot
Notker (971-975) and his skillful prior Richer, there were
years when the supply was so abundant, the cellar could
not hold it, and the overflow had to be stored in the
open under guard. Spoiled by so much good fortune,
the monks became fastidious enough to reject the red wine
in favor of the white although, as Ekkehart remarks, "it
had been a good vintage."[250]

Wine and beer were probably not the only fermented
drinks available to the monks. Ekkehard, in his Benedictiones
ad mensas, refers to cider, spiced wine (Sabenwein,
savina), mulberry wine, heated wine, mead and wine mixed
with honey.[251]

Larder

The Monks' Cellar and Larder is the only one of the three
principal claustral structures to communicate directly with
the service yard to the south of the Claustrum. A door in
the middle of its southern gable wall opens into the court
around the Kitchen and other adjacent yards. This connection
is indispensable, since in addition to wine and
beer, all the meats and staples stored in the Larder above
the Cellar had to be brought in from the outer areas.

As with the Dormitory and the Refectory, the plan of the
Cellar tells us nothing about the location of the stairs that
connected the ground floor with the upper level, and since
the Plan concentrates on the furnishings of the Cellar, we
are left in the dark about the layout of the Larder. This gap
can fortunately be closed by a vivid literary account from
the pen of Abbot Adalhard. In a chapter devoted to a discussion
of the "number and disposition of the pigs,"[252]

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. CHAPEL OF NOVITIATE AND CHAPEL OF INFIRMARY

249.B LONGITUDINAL SECTION THROUGH CHAPELS LOOKING SOUTH

249.A LONGITUDINAL ELEVATION OF CHAPELS AND SECTION (EAST-WEST) THROUGH CLOISTER

AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

Like the principal church of the monastery this building has an apse at either end; in contrast to the former it has no aisles and is internally
divided into a Chapel for Novices (facing east) and a Chapel for Sick Monks (facing west), each furnished with its own altar, the patronage
of which is not disclosed in its titles. The building was 27½ feet wide and 110 feet long, and including the ridge of its roof is here conjectured
to have risen to a height of roughly 50 feet. On the ultimate Roman prototypes for double-apsed structures, and connecting Early Christian
and Early Medieval links, see caption to fig. 111.

Adalhard instructs us that the full number of pigs that were
killed per year "at the cellar" of Corbie amounted to 600.
Sixty of these went to the porter for the table of the guests,
370 to the cellarer for the sustenance of the serfs and the
sick monks, 120 to the prebendaries and fifty into the
abbot's reserve.

The 370 pigs that went to the cellarer for use by the
serfs and the sick were to be issued at the rate of one pig
per day (365 a year), leaving a reserve of five to be used for
emergencies. These 370 pigs, the abbot tells us, are to be
hung in the larder, entrails and all, in monthly batches of
thirty. If anything is left over from the previous month, it
must remain hanging in its place and may be removed only
if a shortage occurs in the meat or fat supply of the subsequent
month. Never should the cellarer "take anything
from a future month to compensate for a shortage of a
preceding month," but always "a shortage of the following
month must be covered by a saving from the preceding
month." Since the entrails spoil faster than the meat and
the lard, they must be distributed first. And since the lard,
when rendered in January, is not fit for consumption before
Easter, the cellarer must build up a reserve from the preceding
year, to be used during this critical interval.[253]

One cannot infer from Adalhard's account that a full
year's supply of pork was hung at the first of January.
Several months' batches must have existed at a given time,
however, since otherwise the abbot could not have warned
against the loan of meat from a following month to make
up for a shortage incurred in the preceding month. One
must remember that in the Middle Ages, when farming
practices provided only a limited supply of winter food for
stock, at the end of each year the farmers customarily killed
all but a small number of their cattle, sheep, and pigs and
salted down the flesh for their winter meat supply. The
traditional month for slaughtering pigs was December. In
the illuminations of medieval calendars illustrating the
labors of the months, this event is depicted with lavish
attention.

Adalhard tells us nothing about the disposition in the
larder of the other kinds of meat, but if we add to the pig
the carcasses of beef, mutton, and goat, and the vast array
of sacks or baskets filled with beans, lentils, and onions,
plus the racks of fruit, cheeses, and bread that passed
through the larder, we have a fairly vivid picture of the
disposition of the 2,700 square feet of storage space above
the Cellar that insured the livelihood of the community.

III.1.11

PARLOR

ITS DUAL ROLE: CONVERSATION WITH
VISITORS & WASHING OF FEET

Between the Cellar and the southern aisle of the church lies
the Parlor, a long rectangular room that serves as exit and entrance
to the Cloister, where the monks may engage in conversation
with their guests, and where the washing of the
feet takes place (exitus & introitus ante claustrū ad conloquendum
cum hospitibus & ad mandatū faciendū). The parlor measures
15 feet × 47½ feet and is lined entirely with benches. It
is the only legitimate place of contact between the monks and
the outside world. It is here that, with the permission of the
abbot or prior, they may meet with friends or visiting
relatives. Here, also, they perform one of the most venerable
Christian services, the so-called mandatum. Keller[254] translated
the phrase ad mandatū faciendū mistakenly as "the
place where orders are given to the servants," and some of
the later commentators of the Plan inherited this error.[255]
Mandatum is "the washing of the feet" and refers to an old
monastic custom, based upon the example set by Christ
himself, when before the Last Supper he humbly washed
the feet of his disciples, admonishing them to fulfill his
"new mandate" (novum mandatum)[256] by perpetuating this
rite. The custom has a long Biblical tradition and was widespread
in eastern countries, where owing to the general use
of sandals, the washing of the feet was from the earliest
times recognized everywhere as a courtesy shown to
guests. In the hot climate of the Mediterranean countries,
with their dusty and often rain-soaked roads, to offer water
to a guest for his feet was one of the duties of the master of
the household, and in certain areas was even the equivalent
of a formal invitation to stay overnight.[257] Often this
service was rendered by slaves, occasionally by the daughter
or wife of the owner of the house.[258] Common both in the
Jewish and the Hellenistic world, the custom of washing
feet was taken over by the Early Christian and became an
integral part of the monastic tradition.

MANDATUM FRATRUM
AND
MANDATUM HOSPITUM

A distinction must be made between the mandatum
fratrum, i.e., the washing of the feet of one brother by
another, and the mandatum hospitum, the washing of the
feet of guests. St. Benedict establishes both rites as obligatory,

[ILLUSTRATION]

250. PLAN OF ST. GALL. AIR VIEW OF NOVITIATE AND INFIRMARY

AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

This drawing is after the reconstruction model of the buildings of the Plan made for the exhibition Karl der Grosse, in Aachen, 1965.
Besides the Monastery Church (an airview of which is shown in fig. 352) the building complex which accommodates the claustral compounds
of the Novitiate and Infirmary, in consummate symmetry on either side of the dominant mass of a double apsed Church, is the largest single
building shown in the Plan. Its layout, wholly unrelated to the vernacular tradition of the North, is one of the finest products of the Carolingian
renascence—a concept perhaps inspired by the layout of the Constantinian aula at Trier (fig. 240) or Roman imperial summer residences,
such as Konz (fig. 241) and Kloosterberg (fig. 242). Its classicism could be defined as an architectural counterpart to some of the finest and
most classicising manuscripts of the so-called Palace School, such as the famous Aachen or Vienna treasure Gospels, whose evangelists,
portrayed in senatorial robes and seated in open landscapes, cannot be stylistically derived from the preceding Hiberno-Saxon schools of
illumination, but are a revival of an illusionistic Roman tradition that had been lost in the shuffle of the Great Migrations.

but places a higher premium on the mandatum
hospitum, as it is in the service rendered to the poor "that
Christ is most truly welcomed."[259] The so-called Customs
of Farfa (in reality the Customs of Cluny, written under
Abbot Odilo, between 1030 and 1048) furnish us with a
complete description of this ritual.[260] The brother who is
placed in charge of the service saw that everything indispensable
for its conduct was kept in readiness: "the
cauldron, in which the water is heated" (laebetem ubi
aquam calefaciat), "the basin in which their feet are washed"
(concam ad lavandum pedes eorum) and "three towels of
linen" (tria linteamenta). One towel was used for drying
the hands of the monks in charge of the service; with the
second the pauper's feet were dried; the third one was for
drying their hands.[261] The ritual took place after the
evening meal, when the brothers left the refectory, assembled
in procession in the cloister wing "next to the cellar"
(juxta promptuarium)[262] and chanted the songs by which
the service was introduced. The feet of one pauper after
another were washed, and the monks to whom this task
was assigned alternated with one another, each in succession.
The first monk washed, dried, and kissed the feet of
the first pauper. The second one relieved him of the towel
and basin and carried it to the brother who stood near the
water and the aqua manile, dried his own hands and withdrew
to his station. Then the next brother advanced to
attend to the next pauper, and the procedure was repeated
until the feet of all were washed. At the end the pauper's
hands were rinsed.[263]

While the feet of the newly arrived guests were washed
daily, the mandatum fratrum was a weekly service extended
to the assembled brothers by the incoming and outgoing
servers, each Saturday after the evening meal. Although it
is quite clear that the feet of the paupers were washed in
the Parlour—both in the light of the latter's explanatory
title, as well as in view of the fact that the Parlour was the
only place where monks could legitimately meet with
guests—the Plan of St. Gall does not tell us anything
about the place where the feet of the brothers were
washed. In leading Benedictine monasteries of the eleventh
century it was done in the chapter house, as can be deduced
without any shadow of doubt from the Customs of Farfa
(1030-48), the Customs of the Monastery of Bec, composed
on the request of Lanfranc while he was prior of his
abbey, 1045-70 and the Customs of Lanfranc, worked out
by Lanfranc between 1070 and 1077 for Christchurch
Monastery after he had been made archbishop of Canterbury.[264]

The monastery shown on the Plan of St. Gall, as has
been pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, was not
provided with a separate chapter house. The chapter
meetings were held in the cloister wing that ran along the
southern aisle of the Church, and for that purpose the wing
was furnished with two benches extending its entire length.
This was the only place in the cloister beside the Refectory
where the monks could be seated en masse, as they would
have to be when their feet were washed. It is for this
reason, as well as the association of the rite with the
chapter house in later centuries, that I am inclined to
assume that in the monastery portrayed on the Plan, the
mandatum fratrum was performed in the northern cloister
wing. During inclement weather both the chapter meetings
and the mandatum fratrum may have been shifted to the
Warming Room.[265]

The rite of the washing of feet was dear to the brothers.
When the abbot of Fulda proposed to abolish it, the monks
of that monastery remonstrated before the emperor who
ordered it to be reinstated.[266] In remembrance of the
washing of the feet of the disciples of Christ before the
Last Supper, the mandatum conducted on Maundy
Thursday was a special event. The synod of 816 directs
that on this day the service be rendered by the abbot
himself, who dries the feet of each monk with his own
hands and serves him a drink in a beaker.[267]

[ILLUSTRATION]

251. PLAN OF ST. GALL. ABBOT'S HOUSE

The House of the Abbot lies in axial prolongation of the northern transept arm of the Church, in a position corresponding to that of the Monk's
Dormitory on the opposite side of the Church. In contrast to the Guest and Service Buildings which have peripheral suites of outer spaces
ranged symmetrically around an inner hall with a central hearth that emits smoke through a hole in the roof (see vol. II, pp. 117ff), it consists
of two oblong spaces separated by a median partition wall, one serving as the abbot's living room (Mansio Abbatis), the other as dormitory
(Dormitoriū). Along each long side of the house is an arcaded porch opening on the surrounding yard. Like the corresponding arches in
the Monks' Cloister (fig. 203) and in the cloisters of the Novitiate and Infirmary (fig. 236) these are shown in horizontal projection (cf. above,
pp. 55ff). The inscription SUPRA CAMERA ET SOLARIUM written in the pale brown ink of the correcting scribe (cf. above, p. 13 and below
p. 321) leaves no doubt that the abbot's house had two levels. The upper story accommodated a supply or treasure room (CAMERA) and a sun
room (SOLARIUM). This arrangement precludes the use of an open central hearth, and necessitates installation of chimney-surmounted corner
fireplaces (cf. II, pp. 249ff) in the abbot's living and bedroom.

III. 2

NOVITIATE AND INFIRMARY

III.2.1

TWO AUTONOMOUS CLOISTERS IN A
SYMMETRICAL BUILDING COMPLEX

The training of the novices and the care of the sick are
relegated on the Plan of St. Gall to a building complex (fig.
236) that stands separate from the houses of the regular
monks. It consists of two autonomous cloisters, each about
two-thirds of the surface area of the cloister of the regular
monks, laid out on either side of a double-apsed church
(ECLESIA) which is internally divided into a chapel for
the novices (facing east), and a chapel for the sick (facing
west). The axis of this church is a prolongation of the axis
of the main church. The entrances to the two respective
cloisters lie on the west, on either side of the apse of the
chapel for the sick, but since the apex of this apse touches
the apex of the eastern paradise of the main church, it
would have been impossible for any of the novices to stray
onto the grounds of the Infirmary, or for any of the sick to
enter into the cloister of the novices. Aesthetically, and
even in the functional layout of their spaces, these two
installations mirror each other in almost perfect symmetry,
yet in actual life their occupants were completely separated.
The church is 27½ feet wide and 110 feet long. Each of the
cloisters on either side of it covers a surface area of 75 × 90
feet, not counting the adjoining privies and hypocausts.
The entire complex of buildings was probably inscribed
into a plot of land 110 feet wide and 210 feet long.

III.2.2

TWO CHAPELS IN A CHURCH
INTERNALLY HALVED

The two chapels are designated by a single name ECCLESIA,
in capitalis rustica. They lie on either side of a
wall which divides the structure into halves, one chapel
opening into the Infirmary (istorü ingressus), the other into
the Novitiate (istorthic). Each chapel is divided into three
areas of approximately equal size: an area where the novices
and the sick are seated during the celebration of the divine
services, an intermediate section with two freestanding
"benches" (formulae) for a selected group of singers, and
the apse with the "altar" (altar̄; idem) raised one "step"
(grad) above the level of the other parts of the oratory.
Twenty-eight persons may be seated in each chapel:
twenty-two in the principal space of each chapel and six
on the freestanding spaces in front of the altar space. As in
the principal Church of the monastery, a clear distinction
is made between the seating of the general choir and the
space reserved for the voices of the specially trained singers,
who are in charge of the more difficult parts of the antiphon.[268]

[ILLUSTRATION]

252. CHRISTCHURCH, CANTERBURY. ABBOT'S
HOUSE

PLAN OF MONASTERY WATERWORKS

[courtesy of the Trustees of Trinity College Library, Cambridge]

Like the Abbot's House of the Plan, that of Christchurch Monastery
was a two-storied structure with upper level containing a solarium.
The entire Christchurch waterworks plan, prepared by Wibert ca.
1165, is reproduced in fig. 52 below.

III.2.3

NOVITIATE

LAYOUT OF THE CLOISTER

A hexameter written clockwise into the open space of the
cloister yard of the Novitiate informs us:

The oblati were youths offered to the monastery by their
parents.[270] The pulsantes, literally "those who knock" (i.e., insist
on being admitted despite initial rejection and deliberate
discouragement) are novices on probation. The Rule of St.
Benedict prescribes a probation period of one year for each
novice.[271]

[ILLUSTRATION]

253. BAYEUX TAPESTRY (1073-1083). BAYEUX, CALVADOS, FRANCE. MUSÉE DE LA REINE MATHILDE

[courtesy of Zodiaque]

Harold and his followers take a last shore meal before sailing to Normandy, in the solarium of his castle at Bosham (on Bosham Channel,
3½ miles from Chichester, Sussex). Bosham had been acquired by Harold's father, Godwin, Earl of Wessex, "one of the most powerful men
at the court of Edward I of England and the leader of the opposition to the Norman influence at the English Court" (C. H. Gibbs-Smith,
The Bayeux Tapestry, London, 1973, 10). The feast is held in the upper story of a feudal hall reached by an outer staircase. The party
drink from a horn and bowl, which appear to be passed around, while a servant standing on the upper landing of the staircase gestures to
the men feasting in the solarium that the ship which will take them to Normandy is ready to sail. The hall, like most of the other buildings
shown on the tapestry (with the sole exception of Westminster Abbey) is not an accurate architectural rendering. Nevertheless, the design suggests
clearly enough that the hall was of two stories and that the upper story was supported from the ground floor by means of arcades. (For more
detail on the history and narrative thrust of the tapestry see caption to fig. 234; on the artist's idiosyncrasies of portraying architecture:
R. Allen Brown in Sir F. Stenton et al., The Bayeux Tapestry, a comprehensive survey, 2nd ed., London 1962).

The cloister walks (porticus) with their arcaded galleries
enclosing an open pratellum or garden repeat on a smaller
scale the layout of the cloister of the regular monks. In both
there is no direct communication between adjacent rooms;
each opens separately onto the corresponding section of the
cloister walk. The designs of the arcades and the layout of
the pratellum are identical, and both elevations show in vertical
projection three arcades on either side of a central
passageway, a square area in the center of the pratellum with
a circle, which (to judge by analogy with the same symbol in
the monks' cloister) indicates the position of a savin tree in
the cloisters of the novices.

The cloister walks, in turn, give access to a U-shaped
tract of buildings, containing on the west a refectory
(refectorium) and a storeroom (camera); on the east, a
dormitory (dormitorium) and a warming room (pisalis); and
on the south, a sick room (infimort domus) and the apartment
for the master of the novices (mansio magistr eort).
Like the warming room of the regular monks, the warming
room of the novices is heated by a hypocaust with firing
chamber (camin') and smoke stack (exitus fumi). The sick
ward and the lodging of the master are heated with corner
fireplaces and have separate privies (exitus), each with two
seats. The dormitory has a privy (neces̄s̄) with six seats. The
beds for the novices are not shown on the Plan. If they were
placed in single file along the four walls of the room, there
would have been space for twelve beds; if they were
arranged in alternating sequence, parallel and at right angles
to the wall, the room could have accommodated about
twenty novices. Twelve is the number prescribed by Abbot
Adalhard of Corbie[272] as the normal contingent of pulsantes
for the monastery of Corbie, and this may reflect a general
condition.

NOVICES AND THEIR SUPERVISORS

Hildemar[273] classifies the youths of the monastery as
"children" (infantes), "boys" (pueri), and "adolescents"
(adolescentiores) according to their respective ages: "children"
up to the age of seven, "boys" from the age of seven
to fourteen, "adolescents" from the age of fourteen to
twenty-eight. Since every ten novices, according to Hildemar,[274]
had to have three to four supervisors with them at
all times, the Novitiate must have housed, along with the
novices, four or five regular monks. Some of those must
have slept in the Dormitory of the Novices. Others may have
shared the quarters of the master of the Novitiate. That the
latter was not the sole occupant of his apartment is suggested
by the size of his room and the fact that his privy has
two toilet seats. But the master's room could never have
held more than four or five beds besides his own. I call
attention to the interesting observation that the maximum
number of beds which could be installed in the novitiate
(twenty-six) does not exceed the seating capacity of the
chapel (twenty-eight), but is, rather, slightly below it.[275]

DIET AND CLOTHING

The abbot was responsible for the novices' food and
clothing. He had to provide them with fish, milk, and butter
and even with meat on the days of the higher religious
feasts. The younger boys received larger portions than the
adolescents. From the age of fifteen on, the novices renounced
meat entirely and their diet conformed to that of
the regular monks.[276] Once each week, or at least once a
month, the youths were taken out into the open for games
and other forms of physical exercise.[277] A complete account
of their clothing is given by Adalhard of Corbie:

Adalhard also informs us that at Corbie some novices
were attached for special duty to other buildings: three to
the infirmary, one to the monks' laundry, and one to the
abbot's house.[279]

III.2.4

INFIRMARY

LAYOUT OF THE CLOISTER

The cloister containing the Infirmary lies on the northern
side of the double chapel:

The layout of its buildings corresponds in every detail to
that of the Novitiate. The warming room (pisal) and the
dormitory (dormitoriū·) lie in the east wing; the supply

[ILLUSTRATION]

254. PLAN OF ST. GALL. ABBOT'S HOUSE

RECONSTRUCTION BY FIECHTER-ZOLLIKOFER

[after Fiechter-Zollikofer, 1936, 407, fig. 7]

Fiechter-Zollikofer's concept of a low roof—also suggested in his
reconstruction of the Outer School (fig. 278) is dependent on a house
tradition too narrowly associated with post-medieval alpine Switzerland,
to be acceptable for the interpretation of a document worked out in the
heart of the Frankish empire (see II, 27ff) where the traditional house
was covered by a steep-pitched roof (see II, 88ff). The absence of a
title specifying that the ground floor porches were surmounted by an
upper tier of porches suggests that the rooms on the second level did
not extend over the entire width of the building.

room (Camera) and the refectory (Refectorium) in the west
wing—but the sequence is reversed, resulting in a complete
mirror reflection of the arrangement of the corresponding
spaces of the Novitiate. The room which in the Novitiate is
reserved for the sick (infirmorum domus), is in the Infirmary
designated as "the place for those who suffer from acute
illness" (locus ualde infirmorum). The dormitory of the Infirmary
(dormitoriū·), then, must have served as sleeping
quarters for those afflicted with minor ailments, as well as
for the aged and infirm who made the Infirmary a permanent
home.[280] Its bedding capacity is the same as in the dormitory
of the novices: twelve beds, if they were ranged in single
file along the four walls of the room; about twenty, if they
were staggered. The apartment of the master of the
Infirmary (mansio magistri eorum) and the "room for the
critically ill" each have a corner fireplace, but lack the other
facility shown in the corresponding rooms of the Novitiate,
the privy. This is one of the few genuine oversights of the
Plan and may be an inadvertent omission by the copyist.[281]

CARE OF THE SICK:
THEIR DIETARY PREROGATIVES

The welfare of the sick was one of St. Benedict's primary
concerns:

The abbot is admonished to take the utmost care that they
suffer no neglect. They are allowed to take baths, as often
as their condition requires and, in contradistinction to the
healthy monks, to whom the meat of quadrupeds is categorically
interdicted, the sick are allowed to eat meat when
they are very weak, "for the restoration of their strength,"
but must abstain from it as usual, as soon as they are
better.[283]

St. Benedict stipulates that the Infirmary be established
as a separate building (cella super se deputata) under the
supervision of a "God-fearing, diligent, and careful" master,
and Hildemar, in his commentary to this passage, says
that it ought to consist of several rooms in order to be
prepared for all exigencies; otherwise it might happen that
"one is ready to die, another about to vomit, a third in need
of eating, and a fourth compelled to take care of his natural
needs."[284] As in the Refectory of the monks, the meal in this
refectory was accompanied by reading. If there were six
or less the text was read "in a subdued tone" (leniter); if
there were twenty, it was read "in full voice" (in voce).[285]
The Infirmary had to have its own oratory so that the sick
could attend mass.[286] If they were too weak to be taken into
the oratory, the office was read to them in the sick ward.[287]

ADMISSION TO INFIRMARY

Admission to the Infirmary was neither a trifling nor a

purely private event. The first step was to appeal to the
abbot and the entire body of the assembled community for
entrance to the Infirmary. The Concordus regularis, a monastic
consuetudinary of the end of the tenth century, based
partly on ancient English and partly on continental traditions,
defines the process as follows: When one of the brethren
is called upon to pay the debt of the common fragility
. . . he must declare to the abbot and the entire assembled
community the reasons of his distress, and then, after
having received their benediction, will be admitted to the
infirmary.[288]

The Infirmary does not include space for physicians.
The quarters of these professionals are in an adjacent house,
to the north; it will be discussed in a later chapter.[289]

III.2.5

KITCHENS AND BATHHOUSES

Because of the detached location of their quarters, their
special diet, and their prerogative to take baths whenever
their condition required, the novices and the sick were
provided with their own kitchens and bathhouses. These lie
west of the Novitiate and the Infirmary, on either side of
the eastern paradise of the Church. They consist of two
oblong houses (22½ × 45 feet),[290] each internally divided
into two equal halves, one containing the "kitchen" (coquina
eorundē), the other, "the bath" ([balnea]toriu, balneatorum
domus). The kitchens have a square stove, the baths a
central fire place, four corner tubs for bathing, and three
short wall benches (fig. 237). The Infirmary kitchen, besides
attending to the needs of sick monks, also provides the
food for the brothers who are being bled in the adjacent
House for Bloodletting (coqina eorunde & sanguine minuentium).

A thirteenth-century manuscript of the Chirurgia of
Roger of Salerno, contains an illumination of a medical
bath (fig. 238).[291] The patient, as the accompanying text
explains, is soaking in the tub in order to heal "a rib bent
inward"; the instructions for the physician are that he
"anoints his hands with honey, turpentine, or pitch, then
presses and relaxes them at the hurt place, continuing
until the rib is restored to its proper place.[292]

III.2.6

SCHEME OF THE COMPLEX

ITS CLASSICISM

I am not aware of the existence of any other complex of
buildings of comparable designs, either earlier or later than
this one, nor of the existence elsewhere of two chapels,
placed end to end on the same axis, facing in opposite directions.
No other building of the Plan of St. Gall is as
classical in flavor as the complex which houses the Novitiate
and the Infirmary. Its classicism stands out against the rest
of Carolingian architecture with an intensity comparable to
that of the Aachen or Vienna treasury gospels against the

[ILLUSTRATION]

HELMSTED, BRAUNSCHWEIG, GERMANY

256.B

256.A

MARIENTHAL. ABBOT'S HOUSE, 14TH CENT.

[plan and perspective after Völckers, 1949, 53]

The stairs shown at the gable wall give an idea of how the two
levels of the Abbot's House of the Plan may have been connected.

[ILLUSTRATION]

257. PLAN OF ST. GALL. ABBOT'S HOUSE

AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

BASED ON THE RECONSTRUCTION MODEL DISPLAYED AT THE EXHIBITION KARL DER GROSSE, AACHEN, 1965

As the lord of a vast web of manorial estates, the Abbot was the connecting link between monastery and the secular world. The location of
his house in a narrow plot of land to the north of the Church (see fig. 77) is an expression of this fact. It is an area outside of the claustral
compound of the monks, and in addition accommodates the Outer School (figs. 407-409) where the secular clergy and the sons of noblemen
were trained, as well as the House for Distinguished Guests (figs. 397-401) where the emperor and members of his court were received while
on travel or in attendance of great religious festivities such as Christmas, Easter or Pentecost. For reasons explained on p. 323 and in the
caption to fig. 254 we have assumed that the roof covering the upper level of the Abbot's House did not extend over the entire width of the
building.

The arched openings of the two porches ranging along the east and west side of the Abbot's House suggest that it was a masonry structure.
But the Privy and the free standing annex containing the Abbot's Kitchen, Cellar and Bath, may well have been built in timber.

other schools of Carolingian book illumination. While no-one
has pointed at any classical prototypes (the question has
as yet not even been raised)—as one gazes at the consummate
order of its building masses laid out at right angles
around two open galleried courts on either side of a dominant
axial structure, terminating in apse and counter apse, one's
mind strays back to the grandiose layout of the forum of
Emperor Trajan with its double-apsed basilica and its
monumental courts (fig. 239).

ROMAN IMPERIAL PROTOTYPES

Constantine's basilica at Trier

Yet the answer to this puzzle may be closer at hand.
Excavations conducted after the close of World War II on
the grounds of the Constantinian Basilica at Trier, have
made it clear that the great audience hall in the palace of
Constantine the Great (figs. 240.A and B) had attached to
each of its two long sides an open galleried court.[293] The
weight of the architectural masses differs distinctly (colossal
hall with comparatively narrow courts at Trier—large
courts with a comparatively narrow center tract of chapels
in the Novitiate and Infirmary complex) but the underlying
principles of composition are identical.

The porticus villa at Konz

The analogies are even stronger, if one turns from here
to a building, excavated early in 1959, 8 km. upstream from
Trier, on a high embankment formed by the confluence of
the river Saar with the Moselle: the imperial summer
residence of Konz, the ancient Contionacum.[294] This large
and elegant porticus villa (fig. 241.A and B), of an overall
length of 84 m. and an overall width of 38 m., consisted
of a central audience hall flanked on either side by an open
court that had attached to its outer side two massive cross
wings, with dwelling units, view terraces and a bath.
Lengthwise these units were connected by two magnificent
porticos. Admittedly, even here the analogies tend to
become evasive if one begins to focus on details: the courts
are not colonnaded. Nevertheless, the two buildings make
it forcefully clear that the Novitiate and Infirmary complex
of the Plan of St. Gall, with its two open courts symmetrically
laid out to either side of a dominant center block
had its historical roots in Roman palace architecture.

Other porticus villas in the territory of the
Salian Franks

The porticus villa at Konz is not the only example of its
kind north of the Alps. In the early 1930s of this century
the Dutch excavator W. C. Braat unearthed on a hill
called Kloosterberg near Plasmolen, parish Mook, in the
province of Limburg, Holland, the foundations of a
Roman villa, which he interpreted to have been composed
of a large central hall, flanked by two open courts with
living ranges grouped around them on the three remaining
sides (fig. 242).[295] Another luxurious Roman porticus villa
of this type had been excavated as early as 1904-1906, at
Wittlich on the Lieser river, a northern tributary of the
Moselle.[296] This, however, exhausts our knowledge of this
building type. No other Roman villas or palaces of comparable
plan appear to have been found anywhere else in
the Roman Empire; and it may be significant for our
problem that the only four examples known to date are
located within an air distance of no more than 62 (Wittlich),
75 (Trier and Konz) and 87 (Kloosterberg) miles respectively
from the Palace at Aachen, where the details for the
scheme of the Plan of St. Gall were worked out.

Could they still be seen in Carolingian times?

Of course, this raises the question whether any of these
presumptive Roman prototypes could still be seen in
Carolingian times. For the porticus villa at Konz and the
audience hall of the imperial palace at Trier this question
must probably be answered in the affirmative. The villa
at Konz had walls of considerable height, even as late as
the seventeenth century, as is attested by drawings made
of its ruins at that period.[297] The audience hall of Constantine,
although internally divided into a variety of smaller
spaces and externally submerged in an agglomeration of
other extraneous accretions, remained in constant use, and
its masonry survived even the holocaust of Allied carpet-bombing
in August 1944.

Historians of Trier have pointed out that the worst
damage inflicted to its Roman buildings was caused not by
the havoc of the Frankish conquest (or any of the other
barbarian incursions of the Moselle river valley), but
through their ruthless exploitation, by their own medieval
and postmedieval guardians, who used these treasures as a
source for building materials, or ceded them for that use to
others. The Roman amphitheater of Trier remained intact
until the thirteenth century, when it was deeded to the
monks of Hemmerode by the Bishop of Trier (1211) with
leave to use its stones for the construction of buildings on a
vignard they had acquired outside the walls of the city.[298]
The Barbara baths were used for residential purposes by a
local noble family, and in this manner preserved throughout
the better part of the Middle Ages. It was only after
the last descendant of that family had died, in the fourteenth
century, that this building was abandoned and

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. ABBOT'S HOUSE. AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

258.C

The reconstruction of the various elevations
of the Abbot's House shown here and in fig. 259
are purely conjectural; but based on the
assumption of comfortable minimum heights for
each of its component spaces (cf. the remarks made
in connection with the reconstruction of the heights
of the Church, above on pp. 160ff and in the captions
to fig. 108 and 109).

TRANSVERSE SECTION

258.B

Since the drafter of the Plan does not tell us how
the ground floor was connected with the upper
level, we have not included such a feature in our
reconstruction. For one of several ways in which
this could have been done, see fig. 256.

LONGITUDINAL SECTION

258.A

The orientation of this building which places the Abbot's living room on the south side, his dormitory and privy to the north, and its two
open porches east and west, enables the abbot and the brothers who share his quarters, to enjoy the benefits of the morning and afternoon sun,
both on the ground floor and on the level of the solarium. Since the house has two stories it cannot draw its heat from open fireplaces on the
lower level. To put the two corner fireplaces which service living room and dormitory back to back simplifies the task of smoke emission,
which can be accomplished by a common smoke stack. For the shape and historical importance of this type of fireplace, see II, 123ff.

surrendered to the citizens of Trier as a free-for-all quarry.
What its medieval pilferers left behind was finally blown
up by explosive charges in the seventeenth century and
used for the construction of a college for Jesuits.[299] The
ability to survive the storms of the Germanic migration was
strongest of course in the walled and fortified towns, which
continued to serve as administrative centers for both the
church and the secular powers. But even in the country the
continuity of life was not so radically broken as was
formerly believed. In an illuminating review of this
problem, based on a study of the distribution pattern of
Roman and Frankish cemeteries, Kurt Böhner could
demonstrate that large segments of the Roman and Gallo-Roman
populations in the Moselle River basin continued
to carry on their peaceful work, under their new Germanic
rulers, living side by side with them on interspersed
holdings.[300]

In the light of these conditions there appears to be no
reason whatsoever to question the survival, in Carolingian
times on Frankish territory, of buildings (albeit in ruinous,
but nevertheless in recognizable condition) of the type of
the imperial villa at Konz or to doubt the possibility of an
influence of this building tradition upon the creation of the
layout for the Novitiate and Infirmary complex of the
Plan of St. Gall.

III.2.7

NOVITIATE & INFIRMARY COMPLEX IN
THE CONTEXT OF THE WHOLE PLAN

THREE SEPARATE CLOISTERS: AN ANSWER
TO MONASTIC STRATIFICATION

Conceptually, of course, this plan is an elaboration of the
layout of the monastery's principal church and claustrum,
and like the latter, it has its compositional roots in clearly
definable functional needs. Monastic custom required that
the novices be separated from the regular monks, the healthy
from the sick, and all of the religiosi from the family of
the monastery's serfs and workmen. This called for a
tripartite internal division of the claustral section of the
architectural plant as well as for a separation of this entire
aggregate of cloisters from an outer belt of service buildings,
in which the serfs and workmen were housed. The Plan of
St. Gall offers a brilliant answer to these needs: in axial
prolongation of the monastery church and the cloister of the
regular monks, a second church, of one-third the length of
the principal church, internally halved so as to be able to
serve the occupants of two further cloisters, ranged symmetrically
to either side of this sanctuary.

AXIALITY OF CHURCHES:
A PRINCIPLE INHERITED FROM EARLY
CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE

The placing of this complex on the axis of the main
church recalls a scheme that was in use in Early Christian
times in the eastern parts of the Roman empire, in such
places as the sanctuary of Menas in Abu Mina, Egypt,
fourth to fifth century,[301] the cathedral of Gerasa (Jerash,
Palestine, ca. 400), and the church of St. Theodor, in the
same town, 494-96 (fig. 243),[302] as well as an early Byzantine
complex at Ephesus, in Asia Minor.[303] In all of these places
several churches were arranged in sequence, one behind
the other, along the same axis. The prototype of this
arrangement may have been the Constantinian Anastasis
Church at Jerusalem.[304] A striking early medieval parallel
existed at St. Augustine's Abbey at Canterbury (fig. 244).
There, three churches, aligned east to west, were built in
Saxon times (SS. Peter and Paul, 598-616; St. Pancras,
before 613; St. Mary, about 618) and a fourth one at the time
of Abbot Wulfric (d. 1059).[305] Undoubtedly, there were
others;[306] the majority of the early medieval twin or cluster
churches, however, were laid out in lateral sequence or in
rather haphazard fashion.

GROUPING OF BUILDING MASSES: A
TRANSFER TO SITE ORGANIZATION OF PRINCIPLES
DEVELOPED IN BOOK ILLUMINATION

In the layout of the churches and cloisters of the Plan
of St. Gall another influence must be acknowledged: with
all of its classicism, it also has an amazing kinship with the
layout of some of the great illuminated pages found in
Carolingian and Iberno-Saxon manuscripts, in particular,
with those pages which illustrate the opening words of
each Gospel. Again, it may be futile to point at any one
specific example. Yet as one glances at the great decorated
page with the opening word of St. Mark's (Quoniam) in

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. ABBOT'S HOUSE, AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

259.C

In the foreground the Privy. It lies in line with
the privies of all of the other houses located
north of the church and like the latter was probably
cleansed by a common channel of water running
from east to west (cf. above pp. 68ff and p. 74,
fig. 53.

NORTH ELEVATION

259.A

The grouping into units of three and four of the
arched openings that admit sun to the two porches
ranged along the eastern and western long wall
of the Abbot's House may be another manifestation
of the maker's preference for sacred numbers (see
above pp. 118ff).

WEST ELEVATION

259.B

The eastern porch of the Abbot's house faces the
Annex with the Abbot's Kitchen, Cellar and Bath
and for that reason is provided with two passages
rather than the single passage of the west porch.

EAST ELEVATION

the Book of Kells (fig. 245),[307] one cannot help but be
struck by the compositional similarities between the layout
of its dominant letter masses (stem and loop of the great
initial Q) and that of the dominant architectural masses on
the Plan of St. Gall (aggregate of churches and cloisters):
their asymmetrical axiality, the manner of their framing by
secondary surrounding units (fig. 246). One cannot help
wonder whether there might not be some compositional
connection between the shape of the large inverted L that
forms the second dominant motif of the Quoniam-page of
the Book of Kells and the manner in which the guest and
service buildings to the south and west of the Church of the
Plan of St. Gall are pressed into an L-shaped sequence of
roofs that frame the dominant building masses of Church
and cloister in a similar manner. I am far from attempting
to establish any direct connection between the Plan of St.
Gall and the Book of Kells—the influence could have come
from common sources in a dozen different ways—but
should like to confine myself to the more general observation
that the comparison suggests that in the grouping of
the basic architectural masses of his monastery site the
architect may have drawn some inspiration from the
grouping of the letter masses on the great illuminated
manuscripts of his period.

III.2.8

RECONSTRUCTION

The reconstruction of the Novitiate and Infirmary (figs.
247-250) complex poses no problems. The round apses of its
two chapels, its arcaded cloister walks, its Roman hypocaust
system leave no doubt that it was to have been a masonry
structure. In determining the heights of these buildings, we
have based our calculations on the minimum requirements,
as we did in the elevation of the Church. The arcades of the
cloister walks would have had to be sufficiently high to give
head clearance; the windows of the two chapels, to be above
the line that touches the roof of the contiguous cloister
walks. We need not assume a clerestory between the roofs
of the cloister walks and the contiguous quarters of the
novices and the sick, since the exterior walls of these
structures would have offered ample space for the installation
of windows.

The Kitchen and Bathhouse have been reconstructed as
timber-framed buildings. Even in considerably later periods
ancillary structures of this kind were, as a rule, constructed
in timber.

III. 3

THE ABBOT'S HOUSE

North of the Church, in line with the transept, is the Abbot's
House (aula), and with it a narrow annex containing the
abbot's kitchen (coquina), cellar (cellariū), and bath (balneatorium),
as well as the quarters for his servants (cubiliae
famulantium). The yard in which these buildings (fig. 251)
stand is enclosed by fences:

Only on two sides (south and west) are these fences
actually drawn out. The eastern leg of the fence probably
coincided with the seam of two connecting sheets of parchment
and was presumably left out for that reason.[308] The
northern portion probably coincided with the outer wall
enclosure, which is nowhere shown on the Plan.[309]

The plot appears to have been calculated as a square of
100 × 100 feet. The Abbot's House measures 40 × 55 feet;
the annex (kitchen, cellar, and bath), 25 × 55 feet; the
privy, 10 × 20 feet.

III.3.1

THE AULA

The aula consists of a double-storied oblong hall divided
on the ground floor by a central cross partition into "the
abbot's sitting room" (mansio abbatis) and his "bedroom"
(dormitoriū). On the upper level is the abbot's "store room
and solarium" (supra camera et solarium), we are informed
by a title written in the pale-brown ink of the second scribe.[310]
On either side, along the entire length of the building,
there is a "porch brightened by arcades" (porticus arcubus
lucida and porticus similis). Both porches are accessible
from the abbot's living room and both have doors that open
to the exterior, two on the side of the annex, and one on
the opposite side giving access to a plot of land that may
have served as the abbot's garden. An opening in the center
of the southern gable wall of the aula leads through a
covered passage into the northern arm of the transept of
the Church (ad eclam ingressus). In the opposite gable wall
a similar passage connects the dormitory with a "privy"
(requisitum naturae), furnished with six seats.

Both dormitory and living room are heated by a "corner
fireplace" (caminata; caminata).[311] Installed back to back
they probably shared a single chimney flue. The abbot's
living room is furnished with wall benches (sedilia) and two

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. ABBOT'S HOUSE,
ANNEX WITH KITCHEN, CELLAR & BATH

260.C SOUTH ELEVATION

260.B WEST ELEVATION

Our assumption that the Annex of the Abbot's House was meant to be built in timber
is reasonable, but by no means compelling. In so important a residence even its service
building might have been of masonry.

260.A PLAN

AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

The Annex is a narrow building, divided internally into three equal
parts which contain the services that make the Abbot's House a
self-sufficient residence. It is furnished on the east side with a lean-to
which serves as bedrooms for the servants (FAMULANTES) who
attend to the Abbot's needs as well as those of the seven monks who
share his quarters.

cupboards for dishes and drinking vessels (toregmata).[312] His
bedroom has eight "beds" (lecti hic). One of these, set
slightly apart from the others and in closer proximity to the
fireplace, was presumably the abbot's.

III.3.2

OTHER MEDIEVAL BUILDINGS OF
THE SAME TYPE OF CONSTRUCTION

The plan of the Abbot's aula is, as far as I can judge, the
earliest visual record we have of a medieval hall with a
solarium. It is also the earliest record of a medieval residence
whose rooms are heated by corner fireplaces that
release their smoke through a chimney. A solarium is "a
place open to the sun";[313] in Rome the sun-exposed roofs or
decks in front of houses (even the house-fronts of an entire
insula) usually supported by colonnades or by arcades,
were known as solaria.[314]

In medieval literature the term solarium is used varyingly
to designate 1) the open galleries that surrounded the upper
story of a palace; 2) the window-lighted chambers of the
upper story of a palace, even if not surrounded by open
galleries; 3) as pars pro toto for the palace; and 4) the
galleries or tribunes of churches.[315] An excellent example of
a medieval residence with a solarium is the aula of the
Priory of Christ Church at Canterbury. An elevation of
this is given in the remarkable twelfth-century drawing
which records the system of water distribution and drainage,
installed in this Priory around 1165 (fig. 252).[316] A building
of similar design was Harold's castle at Bosham, Sussex,
depicted on the famous Bayeux tapestry (ca. 1070-1080)
where a drinking feast is being given in the solarium above
the ground-floor porches (fig. 253).[317] The solarium as such,
however, is a considerably older institution. It was a
favorite feature of the palaces of Carolingian emperors and
nobles, as is attested by numerous literary references;[318] in a
contemporary work, the Brevium exempla,[319] we find this
description of a royal residence, which sounds like a literary
counterpart of the drawing of the Abbot's House on the
Plan of St. Gall:

Although we lack particulars about this arrangement, the
basic structure is clear: a two-story building abutted by
two open porches on the ground floor, and above these
porches the sunlit galleries designated as solaria. This is,
in essence, the arrangement of the hall of William the
Conqueror on the Bayeux tapestry (fig. 253), and it is like
the aula of the Priory of Christchurch at Canterbury (fig.
252).

III.3.3

RECONSTRUCTION

Jules Leeman, in his model of 1877 (fig. 267),[321] and Karl
Gruber, in his bird's-eye view of 1952 (fig. 282),[322] envisioned
the Abbot's House as a structure of basilican elevation.
Fiechter-Zollikofer (1936)[323] and Otto Volkers (1937)[324]
thought of it is a simple box-shaped house with the second
story extending over the porches (figs. 254-255). Leeman's
and Gruber's versions appear to me the more likely of the
two interpretations, because the Plan does not stipulate
that the two porches were to be surmounted by upper
galleries or other superincumbent rooms. Each porch is
referred to in the singular, porticus arcubus lucida; porticus
similis. This suggests that there was nothing above. If the
architect had a building in mind in which the second story
was to extend out over the porches, he could have stated
this simply by adding to their titles supra similiter ("above,
a second flight of porches").

There is no doubt that the house was a masonry structure.
Its arcuated porches permit no other assumption.

As in all the other buildings of the Plan where stairs are
missing,[325] we have refrained from introducing them in our
reconstruction (fig. 257-259). The problem could have been
settled in a number of different ways. Perhaps the Abbot's
House was meant to have had an outer flight of stairs, such
as those in the Palace of William the Conqueror on the
Bayeux tapestry (fig. 253) or in the abbot's house of the
Cistercian Monastery of Marienthal near Helmstedt,
Germany (fig. 256).[326] Or perhaps it was to have had a
circular staircase tower of the type found on the Carolingian
gate-house of the Monastery of Lorsch.

I do not think that there is any necessity to assume that
the annex was a masonry structure. In general, this type of
ancillary structure was built in timber, even at considerably
later periods.

III.3.4

THE ABBOT'S RIGHT TO LIVE IN
A SEPARATE HOUSE

St. Benedict, in a chapter the brevity of which reflects its
importance, grants the abbot the right to live in a separate
house:

During the preliminary discussions of the first synod of
Aachen a movement was under way to curtail these freedoms.
I have dealt with the dynamics of these attempts at
length in a previous chapter.[328]
A word should be said, however,
to explain the fact that the abbot's bedroom contained
seven beds in addition to his own.

Chapter 22 of the Rule of St. Benedict prescribes that if
possible, all monks should sleep in one place, but if their
number does not permit this, they should sleep by tens or
twenties, with seniors to supervise them (Si potest fieri,
omnes in uno loco dormiant; sin autem multitudo non sinit,
deni aut uiceni cum senioribus, qui super eos solliciti sint,

pausent).[329] In chapter 13 of a capitulary issued at Frankfort
in 794, this was interpreted to mean "that the abbot should
sleep with the monks in conformity with the Rule" (Ut
abbas cum suis dormiat monachis secundum regulam sancti
Benedicti).[330] In one of the preliminary resolutions formulated
during the first synod of Aachen (816) this view was
reemphasized: "The abbots shall be subject to the same
rules as the brethren in meal and drink, in their sleep and
in all other matters" (Ut abates communes esse debeant suis
monachis in manducando, in bibendo, in dormiendo seu in
ceteris quibuslibet causis.)[331] This can only have been intended
to mean that the abbot should be brought back into the
company of the monks, at least when he slept. To enlarge
the abbot's bedroom into a dormitory, so that he could sleep
in the same room with others, may have been an ingenious
compromise between the rigorous views of the reformists
and the abbot's traditional right to live in a separate house.
Hildemar makes some interesting suggestions concerning
the criteria which should govern the abbot's selection,
should he make use of his "power to invite whom he will
of the brethren":

III.3.5

LATER PRACTICES

Separate quarters for the Abbot became a standard practice
in the monastic building tradition following the second
synod of Aachen. But during the Cluniac reform of the
eleventh century this privilege was revoked. The Customs
of Udalric written about 1085, tell us that "the abbot's bed
stood in the middle of the dormitory next to the wall" and
that it was the abbot himself who struck the bell to arouse
the brothers for the divine service.[333] In the early Cistercian
monasteries likewise the abbot was at first required to sleep
in the monk's dormitory, but later on, in the thirteenth
century, he was again installed in a house of his own.[334] In
Carolingian times, I am inclined to think this was the rule
rather than the exception; and the Plan of St. Gall must
have been a primary force in solidifying that custom. It
certainly left its imprint on the monastery for which it was
drawn. Gozbert (816-836), during the last six years of his
abbacy, was too intensely preoccupied with the completion
of his new church to allow himself to get involved in the
construction of a new residence. This project was undertaken
by his second successor Grimald, abbot of St. Gall
from 841-872 (and for much of that time also chancellor
at the court of Louis the German), who built himself an
aula worthy of his high political standing. Two wall
inscriptions of the new building, recorded in Cod. 397 of
St. Gall[335] describe it as follows:

This hall was built by masters of the palace, while
the island of Reichenau furnished its famous
painters.

A second inscription praised the splendid marble columns
of the abbot's residence and stated that it was built by
Grimaldus during the reign of Louis the Pious:

Abbot Grimald's aula stood to the north of the abbey
church—like the Abbot's House on the Plan of St. Gall,
but a little further east than the latter. In 1414 it was gutted
by fire, and subsequently rebuilt internally and re-roofed.
In this form it is portrayed on the bird's-eye-view of the
City of St. Gall, in 1596 (fig. 507), and all subsequent views

of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.[338]

[ILLUSTRATION]

TABLE I
ADMINISTRATIVE AND EXECUTIVE ORGANIZATION OF A BENEDICTINE MONASTERY
IN THE TIME OF CHARLEMAGNE AND LOUIS THE PIOUS

"The Abbot is believed to be the representative of Christ in the monastery and his order should be received as a divine command and not suffer any delay in execution."
St. Benedict, who wrote these lines, was wary of the office of Provost, preferring instead to divide power among deans rather than centralize authority in a second in
command, whose presence "might lead to rivalries and dissention." But the growing managerial complexities of the medieval monastery, with its vast web of outlying
estates, and with serfs and workmen living within the monastic enclosure itself, made inevitable the existence of such an executive.

‡ Latin words lacking English equivalents are set in roman type, an exception to normal editorial style.