University of Virginia Library

I

PREVIOUS LITERATURE,
ORIGIN, PURPOSE,
AND SPECIAL PROBLEMS

I. 1

PREVIOUS LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION

ONE of the most remarkable facts about the Plan of St. Gall is that it still exists and that it is still at St. Gall. Aside
from the length of time that has elapsed since the days it was first made, there were several specific dangers that
threatened its existence even after it was incorporated into the Library of St. Gall, such as the sack of the Magyars in
926, in expectation of which all the books were evacuated to the monastery of Reichenau,[1] and the stormy days of
secularization at the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth which spelled disaster to so
many other monastic libraries.

In addition to these external dangers there were those created by the Plan's unusual shape. Being a sheet of
parchment of unwieldy proportions it was subject to the same hazards of housekeeping that tend to beset all holdings
that do not fit neatly into a normal shelving system. That the Plan survived at all under these circumstances must be
credited—as Johannes Duft has correctly pointed out[2] —to an unknown monk of St. Gall who, at the close of the
twelfth century, availed himself of the unused back portions of the skin to inscribe upon it the text of a Life of
St. Martin. Conscious perhaps of the important role this document had played in the renovation of his monastery

and the construction of the buildings in which he lived, he refrained from cutting the Plan apart, but folded it lengthwise
and crosswise into a sequence that furnished him with fourteen pages for his text, plus two empty pages that
served as covers (fig. 1).[3] Thus the physically unmanageable Plan was transferred into a book-sized volume that
could easily be incorporated into a conventional shelving system.

The author of the Life of St. Martin did not proceed with equal wisdom when he discovered toward the end of
his task that the back of the Plan was not large enough to accommodate all of his text. With his mind set on finishing
his work, he turned the Plan over and entered the last twenty-two lines of his text on the lower left corner of the
front side of the Plan. In order to use this portion of the parchment for his text, he erased the lines and explanatory
legends of a large building that occupied the northwest corner of the monastery site (fig. 1.X).

I.1.1

FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE
MIDDLE OF THE 19th CENTURY

The Plan was thus made subservient to a hagiographical
text of lesser importance, and in this new association—
as the subsequent history shows—its original meaning fell
into oblivion. In a fragmentary catalogue of the holdings
of the Library of St. Gall, which was written in 1461 under
Abbot Kaspar of Breitenlandenberg, the document is
listed as a "large animal skin with the life of St. Martin
written upon it and a delineation of the houses of his
monastery" (pellis magna continens vitam S. Martini
scriptam structuramque domorum eius depictam). The author
of this catalogue, as is obvious from this entry, considered
the text on the back of the skin to be the principal part of
this document and interpreted the drawings on the front
of the skin as an outline of the monastery of St. Martin at
Tours.[4]

The true character of the Plan was rediscovered by
Henricus Canisius who in 1604 published the verses of the
Plan,[5] primarily for their literary interest. Canisius (d.1610)
was unaware of the paradigmatic character of the Plan but
thought it was a site plan of the monastery of St. Gall
"as it looked at the time of Abbot Gozbert." He was the
first to identify the "Cozb[er]tus" of the dedicatory legend
with Abbot Gozbert, who presided over the monastery of
St. Gall from 816-836, and inferred correctly from the fact
that the abbot was addressed as "my sweetest son"
(dulcissime filie) that the author of the Plan was a man of
higher rank and must have been a bishop.[6] One of the
consequences of the rediscovery of the Plan by Canisius
was that some time in the seventeenth or eighteenth century
(the date can no longer be established) the Plan was
strengthened with a backing of linen, which concealed the
Life of St. Martin.

On the basis of the interest awakened by Canisius, the
great Benedictine scholar Jean Mabillon (1632-1707)
featured in the second volume of his Annales ordinis
sancti Benedicti[7] the first graphical reproduction of its
explanatory titles. This engraving was neither complete nor
free of errors, but being published in a widely distributed
historiographical work, made the contents of the Plan
accessible to the learned world.

I.1.2

THE FIRST MONOGRAPHIC STUDIES

It took another 140 years for the Plan to become the
subject of a separate study. The first monographic treatment
of the Plan was published in 1844 by Ferdinand
Keller, the founder of the Antiquarische Gesellschaft of
Zurich.[8] It included as a novelty an attempt to interpret
the construction of the buildings shown on the Plan. Keller
intended to publish a full scale lithographic facsimile edition
of the Plan, but the stone on which the design was drawn
broke apart during the first printing and was subsequently
replaced by a smaller stone on which the outlines of the
Plan were reduced to four-fifths the original size. The
explanatory legends were superimposed in their original
dimensions upon this reduced image, and in this discordant

form the Plan was published, together with a detailed
description of its drawings and legends.

Although by no means free of errors and omissions—
the most serious of which is the omission of the dedicatory
letter—Keller's "facsimile" nevertheless was an excellent
specimen of lithographic reproduction and formed the
basis for all future research. In the English-speaking world
the Plan became known through an enlarged and annotated
translation of Keller's text by Robert Willis, published in
the 1848 volume of the Archaeological Journal;[9] in France,
through Albert Lenoir's treatment of the subject in his
Architecture monastique of 1852,[10] and through a translation
of Willis into French by M. A. Campion,[11] which appeared
in the Bulletin monumental of 1868. The latter formed the
basis of Leclercq's widely read description of the Plan of
St. Gall in Cabrol-Leclercq's Dictionnaire d'archéologie
chrétienne et de liturgie[12] which added nothing original to
the study of the Plan.

I.1.3

ENTRY OF THE SPECIALISTS

It was only natural that the Plan of St. Gall, once
published, should become an object of primary attraction
to the students of vernacular architecture who were not
slow in recognizing its signal importance for the history of
medieval house construction. This aspect of the Plan was
the concern of such men as J. R. Rahn (1876), Rudolf
Henning (1882), Julius von Schlosser (1889), Moriz Heyne
(1899-1903), Karl Gustav Stephani (1902-3), Christian
Rank (1907), Franz Oelmann (1923-24), H. Fiechter-Zollikofer
(1936), Otto Völkers (1937), and Karl Gruber
(1937 and 1952).[13]

Of deeper and even wider impact were the discussions
raised by the design of the Church and the claustral
structures of the Plan, as well as by certain discrepancies
between the drawing of the Church and the measurements
given in its explanatory titles. The literature of these
subjects has swollen into discouraging proportions. It
includes the writings of such men as: Hugo Graf (1892),
Georg Dehio (1892 and 1930), Wilhelm Effman (1899 and
1912), August Hardegger (1917 and 1922), Friedrich
Ostendorf (1922), Joseph Hecht (1928), Ernst Gall (1930),
Joseph Gantner (1936), Hans Reinhardt (1937, 1952, and
1962), Edgar Lehman (1938), Fritz Victor Arens (1938),
Otto Doppelfeld (1948 and 1957), Walter Boeckelmann
(1956), Wilhelm Rave (1956), Karl Gruber (1960), and
Wolfgang Schöne (1960). Landmarks in this sequence of
studies were the articles of Otto Doppelfeld (1948) and
Walter Boeckelmann (1956), each of which offered a new
solution to the difficult problem of the "dimensional
inconsistencies" of the Plan. Less successful were Wolfgang
Schöne's (1960) and Adolf Reinle's (1963-64) attempts
to settle this question.

The thorny problem of the origin of the cloister was
studied by Julius von Schlosser (1889), Joseph Fendel
(1927), and Ossa Raymond Sowers (1952). To add to these
names the countless references made by other authors who
addressed themselves to various aspects of the Plan in studies
not specifically devoted to this subject would be a
hopeless and unrewarding task.

An indispensable reference work that no student of the
Plan can by-pass is Hermann Wartmann's exhaustive
publication of the documentary sources of St. Gall (186392).[14]
An informative review of the economic history of St.
Gall, based on this material, is Hermann Bikel's Wirtschaftsverhältnisse
des Klosters St. Gallen;[15] a valuable
study of the monastery's literary and scriptorial activities is
J. M. Clark's The Abbey of St. Gall, as a Centre of Literature
and Art.[16]

I.1.4

A NEW ERA: THE FACSIMILE
EDITION OF 1952

A new era in the history of the investigation of the Plan
was initiated in 1952 with the publication, under the
auspices of the Historische Verein des Kantons St. Gallen,
of a facsimile reproduction of the Plan.[17] This praiseworthy
undertaking was initiated and carried out by the
late Hans Bessler of St. Gall and his lifelong friend Dr.
Johannes Duft, the distinguished director of the Stiftsbibliothek,
who together nursed this project through all its
critical stages.[18] Printed by the most advanced methods of
color reproduction, this facsimile has not only secured the
survival of the Plan in hundreds of widely distributed
copies, but has also opened the field for new studies on the
scale and construction methods used in the laying out of
the buildings shown on the Plan.[19]

The 1952 facsimile was accompanied by a descriptive
text by Hans Reinhardt,[20] which appeared as the 92.
Neujahrsblatt of the Historische Verein des Kantons St.
Gallen, together with an article by Johannes Duft on the
previous history of the Plan,[21] an analysis by Dietrich

[ILLUSTRATION]

1.A PLAN OF ST. GALL

VERSO OF THE PLAN WITH THE LIFE OF ST. MARTIN INSCRIBED MORE THAN THREE
CENTURIES AFTER THE PLAN WAS DRAWN ON THE RECTO.

[ILLUSTRATION]

THE PLAN OF ST. GALL

The first fold divided the parchment into
two equal areas. The and & 3rd foldings
were then made to the first
fold.

For ease in folding the outer rows X and Y
were made slightly shorter than the two center
rows.

1.B

Compactly folded the manuscript can
now be returned to the library shelf.
The blank space (space with no
writing) functions as front and back
cover.

THE LIFE OF ST. MARTIN AND THE FOLDING OF THE
PARCHMENT IN RELATION TO THE READING SEQUENCE

1.C

THE UNFOLDING PROCEDURE AND READING SEQUENCE

The scribe planned the LIFE OF ST. MARTIN to be easily read with the pages
following each other in numerical order from left to right. The reader, on taking the
manuscript from the shelf, had in hand a "package" as shown in fig. 1, diagram 8.
Laying the LIFE on the table, the reader opened the package. Before him, in
normal reading position, he saw page 1 on the left and page 2 on the right:

After reading pages 1 and 2, page 1 was turned backwards (on fold line 4) to the
left, and page 2 was turned to the right (on fold line 5). The reader then saw a
rectangle like this:

The row of pages 3, 4, 5, 6, was brought toward the reader and laid flat on the
table. This is what he saw—pages 7, 8, 9, 10, in reading sequence left to right:

So far the page numbers flowed in normal sequence, left to right. Page 11, however,
was clearly in view but upside down. The parchment was rotated 180 degrees to
permit the upside-down pages to be read.

After reading the sequence of pages 11, 12, 13, 14, left to right, in fig. 5, the
parchment was rotated back to the position shown in fig. 4. There was more to be
read; 14 was not the last page of the LIFE OF ST. MARTIN.

At this stage, the reader lifted the lower row of pages, 7, 8, 9, 10 (on fold line 3),
toward him and placed the parchment face down on the table. This is what he saw:

In the lower left corner, on the back of page 7, in reading position and clearly in
view, was the last page of the LIFE OF ST. MARTIN, page 15.

On the remainder of the parchment, intact and without erasure, was displayed
Haito's Plan of St. Gall: a graphic configuration, a senseless geometric abstraction.
Three centuries after its conception and delineation, it was neither with meaning
nor historical significance to a reader of the LIFE OF ST. MARTIN, until its
discovery or rediscovery in 1604 by Henricus Canisius (See p. 2, above).

We can be grateful that the LIFE OF ST. MARTIN was not treated to conventional
bookbinding techniques composed of cut leaves, folded and sewn into signatures.

The marvel of the survival of the parchment has been treated by Dr. Johannes
Duft (see above, p. 1, note 1).

Schwarz of the manner in which the Plan was folded by
the twelfth-century monk,[22] and a report by Hans Bessler,
on the technical measures taken for the preservation of the
Plan.[23]

Reinhardt did not propose to undertake a comprehensive
treatment of the subject and did not claim to deal with it in
an exhaustive manner. He offered a new solution to the
controversial issue of the inconsistent measurements of the
Church, and advanced some new thoughts about the origin
of the two circular towers, but touched only briefly on the
difficult problem of the reconstruction of the guest and
service structures of the Plan.

In 1949, during the preparatory stages of this great
facsimile edition, while the Plan was under photographic
examination in the Landesmuseum of Zurich, it was
freed from the linen backing with which it had been reinforced
during the seventeenth or eighteenth century.[24]
This brought to light the text of the Life of St. Martin
which covered the verso of the Plan. X-rays and other
penetrating photographic methods brought back the
outlines of the erased large service structure in the northwest
corner of the monastery (fig. 405), but failed to revive
its explanatory titles.[25] The last hope that these legends
could ever be recovered vanished when Dr. Duft discovered
that they belonged to a group of obliterated texts
that had fallen victim to the chemical experiments undertaken
either by the distinguished historian Ildefons von
Arx (1755-1833), or perhaps by Anton Henne, who served
as provisional librarian between 1855 and 1861.[26]

I.1.5

THE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
AT ST. GALL, 1957

It had been one of the wishes of Hans Bessler that the
publication of the facsimile edition of the Plan of St. Gall
should be followed by a symposium of scholars concerned
with the Plan, and that the work that would emerge from
this gathering should subsequently be made available in a
scholarly publication. Hans Bessler did not live to see both
of these dreams fulfilled. A symposium, organized and
conducted by him and Dr. Johannes Duft, was held in
St. Gall from July 12-16, 1957.[27] The publication of the
studies that emerged from the symposium had to be undertaken
by Dr. Duft alone and appeared as a memorial for
Bessler under the title, Studien zum St. Galler Klosterplan,
in the Mitteilungen zur Vaterländischen Geschichte, published
under the auspices of the Historische Verein des
Kantons St. Gallen.[28] It contained, apart from a masterful
review of the previous literature on the Plan by Johannes
Duft,[29] a fundamental analysis of the paleographical
problems of the Plan by Bernhard Bischoff;[30] two articles
by the writer of the present study, one on the question of
the originality of the Plan,[31] the other on the relation of the
Plan to the monastic reform movement;[32] an article on the
altars of the Plan by Iso Müller, OSB;[33] a study of Hildemar's
commentary on the Rules of St. Benedict and its
implications for the Plan by Wolfgang Hafner;[34] a study of
the plants and gardens by Wolfgang Sörrensen;[35] and two
brief essays by Heinrich Edelmann, one dealing with the
relation of the Plan to the actual building site of the
monastery of St. Gall,[36] the other with the history of the
three-dimensional model of the buildings of the Plan which
was executed in 1877 by the sculptor Jules Leemann of
Geneva for the Historisches Museum of the city of
St. Gall, where it is still on display.[37]

THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE
SCALE OF THE PLAN

A new study dealing with the "dimensional inconsistencies"
and the presumptive scale (or "scales") of the
Plan was published in 1963/64 by Adolf Reinle.[38] It departs
completely from all previous views expressed on this
subject and offers a radically different interpretation of the
large axial title of the Plan that records the length of the
Church as being 200 feet. The merits and demerits of this
thesis, as well as the opinion of others who had been
intrigued by this problem, were discussed in an article of
my own published in the September-December issue of the
Art Bulletin of 1966.[39] The old, yet still controversial,
problem "Schema oder Bauplan," was briefly and successfully
reviewed by Konrad Hecht,[40] in an article published
in 1965, which also offered some new and important
observations about the shrinkage of the parchment upon
which the Plan is drawn, and the relevance of this change
to the interpretation of the scale of the Plan.

I.1.6

COUNCIL OF EUROPE EXHIBITION
KARL DER GROSSE at AACHEN, 1965,
AND ITS IMPETUS

Recently a powerful impetus was given to the study of the
Plan of St. Gall by Dr. Wolfgang Braunfels who invited
the authors of the present work to furnish him with the
research and architectural drawings for a three-dimensional
model of the monastery shown on the Plan, to be put on

display at the Council of Europe Exhibition Karl der Grosse,
held in the city of Aachen in the summer of 1965. The birth
of this book, whose beginning reaches many years back, is
intimately connected with this project, and my gratitude
to Dr. Braunfels for motivating this final push has no
limits. There is no more acid trial for any theoretical
assumptions about the three-dimensional appearance of
buildings known only in simple line projection than that of
testing them in the constructional reality of a scale-drawn
model. As in previous studies posing similar problems, I
found myself in the fortunate position of being able to
draw on the professional knowledge, constructional experience,
and superior draftsmanship of Ernest Born and
Carl Bertil Lund, without whose expert and devoted
collaboration that project could never have been carried
out.[41] We are fortunate, in turn, to have found in Siegfried
Karschunke a model-builder of rare resourcefulness and
impeccable skill. It is on the work-drawings made for this
model that most of the reconstruction drawings of this book
are based. The costs of making these drawings were carried
by the University of California; the costs for the construction
of the model itself by the Council of Europe.[42] A
brief description of the model and the criteria used in the
reconstruction of its various installations was published in
the catalogue of the Aachen Exhibition.[43]

OTHER MORE GENERAL WORKS &
NEW CRITICAL EDITIONS

I cannot conclude this review of the historical and
bibliographical vicissitudes of the Plan of St. Gall without
drawing attention to two further events of vital importance
for this study, neither of them directly concerned with the
Plan. The first of these was the publication in 1910-43 of
the six volumes of Emile Lesne's monumental Histoire de
la propriété ecclésiastique,[44] a veritable storehouse of
knowledge, harboring a wealth of information on the
monastery as a legal, manorial, administrative, and educational
institution. The second was the publication, in
1963, under the general editorship of Kassius Hallinger,
OSB, by the Pontifical Athenaean Institute of St. Anselm,
in Rome, of the first volume of the Corpus consuetudinum
monasticarum,[45] a new critical edition of the monastic
consuetudinaries of the eighth and ninth centuries, elucidated
by a critical apparatus of incomparable excellence
and including inter alia the new edition of such crucial
contemporary sources as the resolutions, preliminary and
final, drawn up in 816 and 817 in connection with the two
reform synods of Aachen,[46] as well as that masterpiece of
administrative and manorial logistics, the so-called Statutes
of Adalhard of Corbie (Consuetudines Corbeienses), drawn
up in January 1821/22 by one of the most distinguished
abbots of the Frankish empire.[47] A complete translation of
this informative source, by my colleague Charles W. Jones,
will be found in Appendix II.[48]

The publication of this vast collection of monastic
consuetudinaries was preceded and accompanied by a
series of penetrating studies on the monastic legislation
enacted during the reign of Louis the Pious, from the pen
of one of its principal editors, Dr. Joseph Semmler,[49]
which opened new avenues for the understanding of the
monastic reform movement that forms the spiritual home
of the Plan of St. Gall. My indebtedness to the Corpus
consuetudinum monasticarum and the distinguished editors
and commentators is visible in countless places throughout
this book.

[ILLUSTRATION]

2. PLAN OF ST. GALL: THE DEDICATORY LEGEND

Addressed to Abbot Gozbert of St. Gall (806-836) by a churchman of higher rank who fails to identify himself, this letter of transmission
discloses (in the term EXEMPLATA) that the Plan is not an original but a copy, and therefore presumes the existence of a prototype.

The nature of its scripts reveals that the copy was made in the Abbey of Reichenau, perhaps around 820, but not earlier than 816/817 or later
than 830, the year in which Gozbert began to rebuild his monastery with the aid of the Plan.

The placement of the letter on the Plan's upper margin reveals that this scheme was to be viewed from west to east, not from south to north as
would be the case in similar post-medieval, and modern layouts.

A typographic transliteration of the letter with English translation is shown on the opposite page

I.1.7

THE SCOPE OF THE PRESENT STUDY

The opinions voiced on the various problems raised by
the Plan of St. Gall are numberless and, scattered as they
are in a vast array of books and disparate journals, prove to
be beyond the control of anyone but the most dogged
specialist. The time, therefore, is ripe for a general synthesis
of this scattered knowledge, and for a thorough and
comprehensive review of the issues raised in these
discussions.

Two queries, hitherto unsolved, require special consideration,
and perhaps more space than is desirable in the
context of the summary study that we have proposed. The
first of these is the highly controversial question of the scale
and construction methods followed in the Plan of St. Gall,
its initial mental conception and the actual drawing up of
the original scheme. The second is the question of the
constructional nature of the monastery's guest and service
structures. The former is the most tangled and most
widely debated single issue of the Plan;[50] the latter, the
most difficult and most complex, but also probably the most
rewarding. To settle it would be a breakthrough, not only
because of the light it would throw on the history of
monastic building, but also because of the contribution it
would make to our knowledge of vernacular architecture
at the time of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious.[51]

I. 2

THE DEDICATORY LEGEND

I.2.1

WORDING AND IMPLICATIONS

Our primary source of information concerning the circumstances
that led to the making of the Plan is the transmittal
note of seven lines that is written on the upper
margin of the Plan (fig. 2):

Haec tibi dulcissime fili cozƀte de posicione officinarum
paucis exemplata direxi. quibus sollertiam exerceas tuā.
meamq. deuotionē utcumq. cognoscas. qua tuae bonae uolun
tati satisfacere me segnem non inueniri confido. Ne suspiceris
autem me haec ideo elaborasse. quod uos putemus nr̄īs indigere
magisteriis. sed potius ob amorē dei tibi soli pscrutinanda pinxisse
amicabili fr̄n̄itatis intuitu crede. Uale in xp̄ō semp memor nri am̄.

Translated freely into English this text reads:

For thee, my sweetest son Gozbertus, have I drawn this briefly annotated copy
of the layout of the monastic buildings,[52] with which you may exercise your ingenuity
and recognize my devotion, whereby I trust you do not find me slow
to satisfy your wishes. Do not imagine that I have undertaken this task
supposing you to stand in need of our instruction, but rather believe that
out of love of God and in the friendly zeal of brotherhood I have depicted this
for you alone to scrutinize. Farewell in Christ, always mindful of us, Amen.

This transmittal note provides the following points of
information:

1. In undertaking his task the author of the Plan of
St. Gall had available for his guidance a prototype plan,
since he refers to his own work as exemplata, that is,
"copied."[53]

2. The Plan was to be used for some specific building
program, since it was transmitted to its recipient, Gozbert,
with the remark "with which you may exercise your
ingenuity."

3. The Plan must have been made at Gozbert's request,
since its maker states: "Whereby I trust you do not find
me slow to satisfy your wishes."

4. The writer of the transmittal note was a person of
higher standing in the administrative hierarchy of the
church than its receiver, since otherwise he could not have
addressed him as "my sweetest son."

I. 3

ABBOT GOZBERT, ORDERER &
RECEIVER OF THE PLAN

I.3.1

GOZBERT'S IDENTITY

There is general agreement that the "Gozbertus" to whom
the dedicatory legend is addressed is the abbot of this
name who presided over the monastery of St. Gall from
816 to 836, and who around 830 initiated a building program
whose aim was totally to reconstruct this old and
venerable settlement.[54] That the Plan was made for St. Gall
is suggested not only by the fact that it has been in the
possession of the library of this monastery ever since the
ninth century, but also by the more explicit evidence that
the high altar of the church of the Plan is dedicated jointly
to St. Mary and St. Gall (altare scaē mariae & sc̄ī galli).[55]

I.3.2

ST. GALL AT THE TIME OF
GOZBERT'S ACCESSION

In 816, when Gozbert became abbot, the Monastery of
St. Gall must have consisted of an aggregation of unimpressive
and superannuated buildings. The houses of the original
cell, erected in the Irish tradition[56] had been substantially
remodelled by Abbot Otmar (719-759)[57] who in
compliance with an order issued in 747 by King Carloman
and his brother Pippin[58] converted the abbey from the
Irish to the Benedictine rule. This change in custom undoubtedly
necessitated the replacement of the loosely scattered
houses of the original settlement[59] by a more ordered
claustral complex where the monks slept in a single dormitory
and took their meals in a common eating hall. Just
precisely how this was done, remains obscure. The sources
make it fairly clear, however, that Otmar replaced the
modest timbered oratory of St. Gall with a masonry church,
the nave of which rose to a height of 40 feet.[60] This building
had beneath its presbytery a crypt sufficiently large to
accommodate not only the sarcophagus of St. Gall, but
also an altar and whatever additional space was needed for
the attendant monks and priests to celebrate religious
services at and around this altar.[61] As far as the rest of the
monastery is concerned, the sources simply tell us that
Otmar "adapted the layout of the monastery to the diverse
needs by erecting all around dwellings that were suited for
the use by the monks" (undique versum habitacula monachorum
usibus congrua disposite construens eiusdem sancti statum
loci utilitatibus diversis aptavit)[62] and that this program
included a hospice for pilgrims and paupers as well as a
special infirmary for lepers.[63] There is no evidence that
Otmar's successors continued this work or improved upon
it. But the history of succeeding decades shows that much

of the property of the abbey was unrightfully seized by the
Counts Warin and Ruthard, who imprisoned Otmar and
put him into exile, and that similar infractions were committed
by the Bishop of Constance, in whose diocese the
abbey was located.[64] Economically St. Gall entered into a
period of stagnation, if not actual decline.

I.3.3

ADMINISTRATIVE ACCOMPLISHMENTS,
DECISION to REBUILD THE MONASTERY

Abbot Gozbert not only stopped, but reversed this trend
and thus led the monastery into an age of unprecedented
prosperity. Even in the first year of his abbacy he scored a
brilliant success by obtaining territorial independence from
the see of Constance.[65] Two years later, in 818, the monastery
was granted the formal immunity of a royal abbey.[66] In
the years that followed, Gozbert not only retrieved, through
vigorous litigation, the rights and properties that the abbey
had lost through fraud and lawless alienation, but augmented
its wealth beyond all previous standards by his skill
in soliciting additional gifts.[67] By 830 the monastic economy
had gathered sufficient strength to enable him to launch his
most ambitious project, the monastery's architectural reconstruction.

We are well informed about this project by reliable
contemporary sources that tell us that Gozbert started the
work by destroying the old church, and that he progressed
with the new church so rapidly that it could be dedicated in
837 (one year after his resignation) in the presence of the
bishops of Constance and Basel, and the abbot of the
nearby monastery of Reichenau.[68] It was Gozbert's need
for proper guidance in the execution of this building project
that had prompted him to request, from a churchman of
higher rank, the copy of a master plan for a monastic
settlement, which we now know as the Plan of St. Gall. To
what extent he used the Plan in pursuing this task will be
discussed in a later chapter.

I. 4

THE MAKER OF THE PLAN:
BISHOP HAITO OF BASEL?

I.4.1

OTHER CONTENDERS & OTHER VIEWS

Although there is little doubt about the person for whom
the Plan of St. Gall was made, we are not certain about the
identity of the person who made the Plan. In the vast and
steadily increasing body of literature that has been devoted
to this problem ever since the Plan of St. Gall was first
discussed by Henricus Canisius in 1604,[69] its authorship
has been attributed to such diverse persons as Einhard, the
friend and biographer of Charlemagne;[70] Gerungus, a
distinguished official at the emperor's court;[71] Frotharius,
bishop of Toul;[72] Ansegis, abbot of Fontanella (St.Wandrille);[73]
Hrabanus Maurus, abbot of Fulda;[74] Reginbertus,
headmaster of the monastic school at Reichenau;[75]
and Haito, bishop of Basel (803-823) and abbot of the
nearby monastery of Reichenau (806-823).[76]

I.4.2

HAITO:
THE MOST REASONABLE CHOICE

Konrad Beyerle, who proposed Bishop Haito as the
author of the Plan, pointed with good reason to the fact
that Haito's dual rank of bishop of Basel and abbot of the
monastery of Reichenau would well account for that peculiar
blend of paternal condescension ("my sweetest son
Gozbertus") and brotherly devotion ("in the friendly zeal
of brotherhood I have depicted this for you") that characterizes
the spirit of the address with which the author of the
Plan transmits the product of his labors to Gozbert.[77]
Reinhardt rejects this line of reasoning with the argument
that, as bishop of Basel, Haito could not have addressed
Abbot Gozbert as "my sweetest son," because the abbey
of St. Gall lay in the diocese of Constance, not Basel, and
therefore Haito was not his direct superior.[78] It is true that
even after it was granted manorial independence, in 816,
the monastery of St. Gall remained under the ecclesiastical
jurisdiction of the See of Constance, but the contention
that only the direct superior could address an abbot in this
manner is not based on historical evidence. Whatever the
boundaries of his diocese, in the hierarchy of the church,
the bishop held the higher rank.[79]

To be sure, Haito was not the only bishop in the empire
of Louis the Pious to hold an episcopate and an abbacy at

[ILLUSTRATION]

3. PLAN OF ST. GALL
HOUSE FOR HORSES & OXEN & THEIR KEEPERS

Detail showing writing of both scribes

the same time—there were few in fact who did not.[80] But
as abbot of Reichenau, Haito was a close neighbor of Abbot
Gozbert of St. Gall and therefore unquestionably well
acquainted with him.

None of the other contenders for authorship of the Plan
of St. Gall have these qualifications. Einhard was trained at
Fulda and in the palace school at Aachen, and while as the
emperor's personal friend and adviser he played a prominent
role at the court, he never rose to a church position
higher than that of abbot.[81] The name of Gerungus, who
held the rank of an ostiarius at the Palace of Aachen, has
never been taken seriously by any student of the Plan,
apart from its original proponent, and was convincingly
refuted in 1884 by Joseph Neuwirth.[82] Hrabanus Maurus,
the famed abbot of Fulda, was trained in the schools of
Fulda and Tours, and rose to the rank of bishop only
toward the end of his life, in 847.[83] Abbot Ansegis of
St.-Wandrille was trained in St.-Wandrille and possibly at
the palace school of Aachen.[84] Bishop Frotharius of Toul,
the only one besides Bishop Haito of Basel who would have
qualified by virtue of rank, was schooled in the monastery
of Gorze.[85] Reginbertus, lastly, the headmaster of the
school of Reichenau, who would have qualified by virtue
of his training, stood in no relation to Abbot Gozbert that
would justify the address dulcissime fili.[86] This leaves
Bishop Haito of Basel as the only reasonable choice among
all the persons proposed as makers of the Plan.

Moreover, new weight was added to this view in 1957 by
Bernhard Bischoff's careful paleographical analysis of the
textual annotations of the Plan, which showed that the
explanatory titles were written in the monastery of
Reichenau.

[ILLUSTRATION]

4. PLAN OF ST. GALL
NORTH PORCH OF WESTERN PARADISE

First three lines by second scribe, last three lines by main scribe

I. 5

THE EXPLANATORY LEGENDS
AND THE SCRIPTORIAL HOME OF
THE PLAN

I.5.1

DISTINCTION BETWEEN GENERAL
AND SPECIFIC TITLES

Apart from the transmittal note discussed above, the
explanatory legends of the Plan consist of 340 titles of
varying length which describe the purpose of each building,
the function of the individual rooms, as well as the equipment
and furnishings therein. The general purpose of each
building, as a rule, is described in a verse (hexameter or
distich), written parallel to and at a small distance from the
entrance wall of the house to which it pertains. The titles
that define the internal functions of each building are
written in prose.[87] They are always inscribed in the center
of the area they describe or as close to the center of that
area as conditions permit. Exceptions to this are made in
only a few cases, where the object is too small to accommodate
its title, such as the cupboards (toregmata) in the
dining hall of the House for Distinguished Guests (fig.
396),[88] the abbot's living room (fig. 251),[89] and the Monks'
Refectory (fig. 211).[90]

I.5.2

TWO HANDS REPRESENTING TWO
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT IN THE
SCRIPTORIUM OF REICHENAU

A careful paleographical analysis by Bernhard Bischoff
of the textual annotations of the Plan established the
monastery of Reichenau as the scriptorial home of the
Plan.[91] Bischoff distinguishes two hands, working in close
co-operation but representing two different developmental
stages of writing within the scriptorium of the abbey of
Reichenau: that of a younger man, the "main scribe,"
who is responsible for 265 of the 340 entries, and that of an
older man, the "second scribe," who wrote the remainder.

The main scribe rendered his legends in a deep-brown
ink almost bordering on black. He wrote in a small, crisp,
and finely articulated Carolingian minuscule, making use
of relatively closely spaced and nearly perpendicular
letters with long ascenders.[92] This scribe is also responsible
for the letter of transmittal on the upper margin of the Plan
(fig. 2) and for ten legends written in capitalis rustica.[93]

The second scribe rendered his legends in a pale-brown
ink. He wrote a minuscule of more rigid perpendicularity,
spacing his letters a little farther apart and using shorter
ascenders. The entries of this scribe are confined to the
designations of the trees and plants in the two monastic
gardens (figs. 414 and 426),[94] the names of the trees in the
Cemetery (fig. 430),[95] the titles of the ten altars in the aisles
of the Church (fig. 93),[96] the titles for the altars in the
Church towers;[97] as well as some lines which look like
additions, such as the supra camera et solarium in the
Abbot's House (fig. 251),[98] the infra supra tabulatum in the
House for Horses and Oxen (fig. 3),[99] and the first three
lines of the verse that identifies the function of the Porch
connecting the western paradise of the Church with the
grounds of the House for Distinguished Guests (fig. 4).[100]

Bischoff was able to identify the hand of the main scribe
as that of a monk who, at an earlier stage of his career,
wrote a Vita sancti Bonifatii on fols. 2v-19 (fig. 5) of a
hagiographical ms. (Karlsruhe, Codex Augiensis CXXXVI)
written in the monastery of Reichenau under the direction
of its erudite librarian, Reginbert. His script suggests that
he is a younger man, whose style of writing has been
influenced by a temporary sojourn in Fulda.[101]

[ILLUSTRATION]

5. VITA SANCTI BONIFATII. KARLSRUHE, BADISGHE LANDESBIBLIOTHEK. Codex Augiensis CXXXVI, fol. 14v

Script written by main scribe of the Plan of St. Gall (courtesy of the Badische Landesbibliothek, Karlsruhe). Illustration enlarged 1.07 ×.

The script of the second scribe is that of an older man,
and its basic paleographical features are so similar to those
of Reginbert himself—the last among the classical Carolingian
writers to use this type of script (he died in 846)—that
Bischoff feels it might well be the product of Reginbert's
own hand.[102] From the nature of his textual entries, which
have the appearance of what Bischoff calls "katalogartige
Nachträge," Bischoff infers that the second hand acted in
a supervisory capacity, filling in and completing where the
knowledge of the main scribe ended. Contrary to this
general relationship, however, there is one entry—the
legend that defines the function of the Porch connecting
the western paradise of the Church with the grounds of the
House for Distinguished Guests—in which the first three
lines are written in the ductus and pale-brown ink of the
"supervising" hand (the hexameter, Exi & hic hospes uel
templi tecta subibit), whereas the three lines that complete
this verse are written in the style and dark-brown ink of
the main hand (the pentameter, Discentis scolae pulchra
iuuenta simul). The co-operation between the main scribe
and the supervising scribe, Bischoff infers from this, must
have been extremely close.

I.5.3

CONCEPT OF AUTHORSHIP & HAITO

To what extent do Bischoff's findings on the paleographical
nature of the explanatory titles of the Plan confirm
or contradict our theory of Haito's authorship?

They make one point quite clear: Haito cannot have been
identical with the scribe who wrote the letter of transmittal
and the majority of the other titles of the Plan. At the time
the Plan was made, Haito was not a young man. He was
already around fifty-eight years of age in 820.[103] These
findings, however, do not in my opinion disqualify Haito
from the authorship of the Plan. The concept of authorship
in the Middle Ages is complex. Bischoff himself furnishes
us with an excellent case in point. The above-mentioned
Codex Augiensis CXXXVI contains on folio IV an annotation
in which Reginbert of Reichenau refers to himself in
unequivocal terms as the "fabricator" of the book, "Hunc
libellum . . . meo studio confeci." Yet besides this entry on
folio IV, some chapter headings on folios 21r, 24r, and 28r,
and some isolated corrections here and there, no other line
of this work is written in his own hand.[104]

It is not necessary, with this concept of authorship, to
expect that the person who in the transmittal note of the
Plan defines himself as its maker should actually have
traced the Plan or written its explanatory titles. He is the
person who directed that the Plan be made, and who—
once it was made—transmitted it to the person by whom
it had been requested.

Bischoff has established that the explanatory titles of the
Plan were written in the monastery of Reichenau, perhaps
under the supervision of Reginbert, with the assistance of
a scribe who had co-operated with Reginbert in other
literary endeavors. Reginbert is not a likely candidate for
the authorship of the Plan for reasons that I have stated in
the preceding chapter. This leaves, once more, as the only
logical choice, Bishop Haito of Basel who, as the superior
of the two, might very well have availed himself of their
joint support in making the Plan.

As one of the leading bishops and abbots in the empire,
Haito is furthermore a person who can be expected to have
had access to the prototype plan.

I. 6

ORIGINAL OR COPY?

I.6.1

SOME TECHNICAL OBSERVATIONS

That the Plan of St. Gall is a "copy" rather than an
"original" must be inferred not only from the fact that its
maker refers to it as exemplata, i.e., "transcribed" or
"copied," but also from a variety of observations of a
technical nature, on which I have reported in a previous
study.[105] A careful examination of the particulars of the
design of the Plan shows that it was traced, like a modern
"overlay," on pieces of parchment that were superimposed
upon a prototype plan. This is revealed by the following
facts:

1. The Plan does not show any underdrawing, as
would be inevitable in a layout of this complexity if it were
an original design.

2. The Plan exhibits in several places angular distortions
in the alignment of rectangular structures which are
characteristic of the displacement that occurs in tracing if
in the course of work the overlay inadvertently shifts a
few degrees from its initial alignment with the original and
this shift is not immediately corrected.

3. The drawing is full of minor inaccuracies and inconsistencies
that appear to be incompatible with the
exacting calculations prerequisite to the development of an
architectural drawing of this complexity; and it is rendered
in a fluid style not apt to be found in the work of a man
who went through the developmental labor of this demanding
task.

In what follows I shall elaborate on these observations.

ABSENCE OF UNDERDRAWING

In figure 6, I have reproduced a detail of a well-known
architectural drawing of the thirteenth century which
renders the ground floor of the southern tower of Cologne
Cathedral.[106] This design, which is a typical example of its
kind, shows how in laying out his plan a medieval architect
avails himself of an elaborate framework of auxiliary construction
lines and reference points which he presses into
the parchment with a fine stylus or silverpoint before
committing his drawing to ink. This constructional reference
work guides his eye as the drawing is being executed
and remains visible as an underdrawing, in the form of
thin grooves and fine prickings,[107] in those portions of the
design which are not covered by ink in the final stage of the
work.[108]

In contrast to this, on the entire Plan of St. Gall there is
not a single line of this type to be found.[109] The absence of
such auxiliary construction work is most conspicuous in

[ILLUSTRATION]

7. PLAN OF ST. GALL

Alignment of Outer School, House for Distinguished Guests, and
Kitchen, Bake, and Brew House for Distinguished Guests. The
superimposed black lines show which course the outer walls of buildings
would have taken had they been drawn with instruments. The largest
departure from parallelism at the end of lines running askew because of
inaccuracies incurred in tracing are 4 mm at the bottom of fig. 7 and
6 mm at the top of fig. 8.

areas where buildings of equal width are grouped in single
and double rows, or in the interior of buildings whose
layout is so complex that it could not have been drawn
without a linear frame of reference. This can be illustrated
by some typical examples.

ABSENCE OF GUIDING CONSTRUCTION LINES
IN THE ALIGNMENT OF BUILDINGS

Reproduced in figure 7 is a portion of the building site
to the north of the Church, showing (from top to bottom)
the western end of the Outer School, the House for Distinguished
Guests, and the Kitchen, Bake, and Brew
House for Distinguished Guests. Examination of the open
spaces between these structures shows that the parchment
here has never been touched by a stylus. This had noticeable
consequences for the style of these drawings: the walls
that form the outer boundaries of these houses do not stay
"in line," most drastically so in the case of the Kitchen,
Bake, and Brew House, whose southern gable wall slants
away from its proper alignment by an angle of two degrees.
If the parchment surface had been provided with guiding
construction lines, the draftsman's hand could never have
slipped away from its regular course as far as it did when
drawing the southern walls of the Kitchen and Bake House,
converting a building that was of rectangular shape into a
trapezoid structure.

An even more flagrant case of the divergence of lines
meant to run parallel to one another is to be found on the
opposite side of the Plan in the alignment of the three
buildings that contain the Mill, the Mortar, and the Drying
Kiln (fig. 8). This kind of linear aberration might easily
occur in the process of copying when the translucency of
the skin on which the Plan was being traced was temporarily
marred by changing light conditions, but would be unlikely
to occur on an original where the quill of the draftsman
followed the grooves of a constructional underdrawing.

On the Plan of St. Gall such grooves can be discovered
neither on the recto in the form of the familiar furrows nor
on the verso in the form of thin ridges. Throughout the
entire expanse of the Plan, with its total of forty separate
structures of varying size, no trace is to be discovered of
any underdrawing that would have enabled the architect
to fix the dimensions of an individual structure within the
aggregate of its superordinate building site, or the boundaries
of the individual building site within the layout of the
entire Plan. Yet it is obvious that even the most accomplished
architectural draftsman could not assemble such a
variety of different structures into an over-all design of
such complexity without the aid of a guiding underdrawing.
In the absence of underdrawing, the design can only have
been produced by tracing.

Parchment, because of its relative opacity, is not an ideal
medium for tracing; but designs can be traced directly
from one sheet of parchment to another, as may be established
easily by experimentation in any library that is
provided with scraps of medieval manuscripts.[110]

ABSENCE OF GUIDING UNDERDRAWING IN THE
INTERNAL LAYOUT OF INDIVIDUAL BUILDINGS

An examination of the procedure followed in the construction
of the internal layout of the various buildings leads us
to the same conclusions. No building illustrates this fact
more persuasively than the Monks' Dormitory.

The Dormitory of the monks (fig. 60.A) accommodates a
total of seventy-seven beds. These are arranged in a
complicated pattern, resembling the letter U along the
two side walls, and the letter H (the U-pattern of the side
walls coupled) along the center of the building. One does
not have to look twice at this complex arrangement to
realize that it is impossible to distribute seventy-seven beds
in the manner just described within an area of such small
dimensions without a carefully calculated underdrawing.
Yet intricate as this layout is, the basic frame of reference
from which it was developed was ingeniously simple. It
consisted, most likely, of a simple grid of squares of the
type that I have reconstructed in figure 60.B, making use of
a measurement that serves as a basic unit value throughout
the entire Plan. In the development of the primary design
for such a layout, which must have been worked out before
the building was inked onto the original plan, such a
square grid may have been pressed into the parchment in
full detail. As the design was transferred to the master
sheet in the final assembly, there was no need to retrace
the square grid in its entirety, but a minimum of auxiliary
co-ordinates and prickings must, nevertheless, have been
laid down to enable the draftsman to fix the width and
length of each bed and to enter it in its proper place. Yet
nowhere in the interstices between the beds, on the Plan
of St. Gall, is there the slightest trace of such auxiliary
construction work. It is omitted from the internal layout of
the buildings shown on the Plan, and absent as well from
their external alignment.

[ILLUSTRATION]

8. PLAN OF ST. GALL

Alignment of Mill, Mortar, and Drying Kiln

[ILLUSTRATION]

9. ARCHITECTURAL DRAWING: DETAIL, FACSIMILE
13th century

[courtesy of Vienna Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Kupferstichkabinet]

The spiral depicting the stairwell in the southwest tower of Cologne
Cathedral was constructed with compass and straightedge against a
framework of auxiliary lines and reference points pressed into the
parchment with a fine stylus or silverpoint before the drawing was
inked—a procedure wholly different from the manner in which the
Plan of St. Gall was drawn. The only freehand parts of this drawing
are those which because of their intricacy of design were not feasible
to draw otherwise.

Figures 6 and 9 are details of the same drawing and are reproduced in this work
at the same size exactly as they were drawn on the original. Drafting at this scale of
fine detail is essentially a freehand operation.

ABSENCE OF CENTER POINTS IN THE
CONSTRUCTION OF CIRCLES

To construct a circle accurately, one must firmly anchor the
center leg of the compass in the material on which the
circle is to be drawn. The point of this leg has to penetrate
deeply enough to stay in place while the outer leg strikes
the circle. This is bound to leave a mark in the parchment,
and for this reason, on all medieval architectural drawings
on which circles have been drawn with the aid of a compass,
there is always a clearly visible depression or minute hole
in the skin, which reveals the point from which the circle
was struck. I refer once again to the drawing of the southwestern
tower of Cologne Cathedral as a typical case. It
contains two circular installations, a spiral stairwell built
into the masonry of the southwestern corner pier (fig. 9)
and a circular opening in the vault of one of the two inner
bays of the tower (the latter not reproduced here). In both
instances the hole that the center leg of the compass left in
the parchment as the circle was struck appears as a small
but clearly perceptible mark.

For purposes of comparison, five circular installations
shown on the Plan of St. Gall are reproduced in figures
10-13. Figures 10.A-B are the ambo and the baptismal font
in the nave of the church; figures 11.A-B are the two
circular towers that flank the Church to the west. Figure 12
is the enclosure for the hens to the south of the House of
the Fowlkeepers. No trace of the center point is found in
any of these drawings. Furthermore, these circles are too
inaccurate to have been constructed with the aid of a
compass. A circle drawn by compass forms a continuous
line of equal thickness, all points of which are equidistant
from the center point, as is well illustrated by the circle
that forms the outer boundary of the stairwell of Cologne
Cathedral. The circles reproduced in figures 12-13, on
the other hand, are drawn in successive motions of the
rotating hand, the beginning and end of which can still
be identified in many cases. Thus, for instance, close
inspection of the Plan of St. Gall shows that the outer
circle of the Henhouse (fig. 12) was drawn in five separate

strokes. The circle must have been started at the top
with a leftward motion and continued counter-clockwise
in four successive strokes, as I have indicated in figure 13.
As the draftsman passed through this course, he must
have rotated the two skins on which he worked in a
clockwise motion, a procedure which he repeated when
he entered the large explanatory title enclosed by the
circle that identifies this structure as the Henhouse. As he
approached the close of the circle, the draftsman discovered
that his terminal stroke was not in alignment with his
opening stroke, corrected this discrepancy with an additional
stroke which ran parallel to the first, but about 1 mm.
farther out.

While the circles are neither continuous nor accurate
enough to have been drawn by compass, they are far too
accurate to have been drawn without auxiliary construction
lines. As no such lines are to be discovered, we are once

more left with no alternative but to assume that the circles
were traced directly from an underlying original.

ANGULAR DISTORTIONS CAUSED
BY A SHIFT IN THE RELATIVE POSITION OF
ORIGINAL AND OVERLAY

My second argument in support of the contention that the
Plan of St. Gall is not an original rests on the observation
that in several areas the drawing exhibits angular distortions
that owe their origin to a shift in the alignment of original
and overlay. This observation is of crucial importance not
only for the question of originality but also because it gives
us a clue for establishing the sequence in which the buildings
were traced. We shall analyze this phenomenon in
detail in a subsequent chapter.[112] For the present discussion,
suffice it to stress that we are faced here with a type of
linear deflection caused in the process of tracing when an
inadvertent shift between original and overlay is not
immediately detected and corrected. These deflections are
unlikely to occur on an original, as the underdrawing
would contain each individual building within the area
assigned to it, and would prevent the parallels from running
askew. The author of the Plan of St. Gall was able to
dispense with an elaborate system of auxiliary reference
lines, since for him the original itself performed the
function of the underdrawing. But as it was delineated on
a different surface, his drawing was subject to displacement
in relation to the original.

INCOMPATIBILITY BETWEEN THE FLUID
EXECUTION OF THE DRAWING AND
THE PRECISE DRAFTSMANSHIP REQUIRED IN THE
DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORIGINAL SCHEME

My last and final argument in favor of the proposition that
the Plan of St. Gall is not the original version of the scheme
is based on the observation of a profound discrepancy
between the fluid style of the drawing and the extraordinary
precision of construction that must have been employed in
the development of the original scheme—not only as the
dimensions of each individual building were established,
but also in the even more complicated task of fitting the
aggregate of structures into a coherent and scale-consistent
whole. No single line of the Plan has the mark of having
been drawn by rule or compass, as is the case with all the
principal lines of the pier and the tower of Cologne Cathedral (figs. 6 and 9). The draftsman of the Plan of St. Gall
rendered his lines with a broad quill in firm and fluent
strokes, the ease of which reveals the self-assurance of an
experienced hand; but being drawn without the aid of
supporting instruments, his rendering abounds with
inaccuracies and inconsistencies that are incompatible
with the precise draftsmanship required in the development
of the original scheme. About the nature of the latter more
will be said below. The observations presented here admit
of no other explanation than that the Plan of St. Gall is
a copy that was traced on sheets of parchment superimposed
upon a prototype plan. This raises the question
of the nature and origin of the prototype plan.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL

10.A Ambo in the nave of the Church
See also vol. III, page 21, COLUMN PAIR 8
APPENDIX I (Catalogue of Inscriptions)

10.B Baptismal font
See also vol. III, page 22, COLUMN PAIR 3
APPENDIX I (Catalogue of Inscriptions)

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL

11.A The south tower of the Church

11.B The north tower of the Church

[ILLUSTRATION]

12. PLAN OF ST. GALL. HENHOUSE

[ILLUSTRATION]

13. PLAN OF ST. GALL. HENHOUSE

Analysis of procedure followed in drawing of circle
superimposed upon facsimile red print
(authors' interpretation)

I. 7

THE PLAN AND ITS
RELATION TO THE MONASTIC
REFORM MOVEMENT[113]

I.7.1

THE PROTOTYPAL CHARACTER
OF THE PLAN

It has long been observed that the Plan of St. Gall, although
obviously made to assist Abbot Gozbert in the reconstruction
of his monastery, is not a plan for a specific site, but
is rather an ideal scheme that demonstrates what buildings
an exemplary Carolingian monastery should be composed
of and in what manner they should be arranged.[114] The
Plan is inscribed into a rectangle, not dissimilar to the shape
of a Roman military camp,[115] and does not reflect the particular
topographical conditions of the monastery of St.
Gall, wedged as it was into an area of irregular shape formed
by the capricious course of two converging streams.[116]

It was in view of the ideal, schematic character of the
Plan that Alphons Dopsch, in 1916, made the suggestion
that the original version from which the Plan of St. Gall
was derived might be a product of the great monastic
reform movement that stirred the life of the Church during
the reign of Louis the Pious.[117] Hans Reinhardt, in 1952,
challenged this view. Before entering into the particulars
of his argument, however, it is necessary to make a few
remarks about the general scope of the monastic reform
movement and the legislation resulting from it.

I.7.2

THE GENERAL AIM OF THE
MONASTIC REFORM MOVEMENT

The general aim of the monastic reform movement was to
create a single, universally binding code of rules (una
consuetudo) to replace the mixed rule (regula mixta) that
prevailed in the preceding period, a code of rules that
settled points not foreseen in the Rule of St. Benedict of

Nursia, and suppressed prescriptions that had become
superannuated or impracticable. The soul and leader of
this movement was Benedict of Aniane, the friend and
adviser of Louis the Pious. Under his guidance the movement
reached its climax in two synods—during which the
empire's leading bishops and abbots congregated in the
sacristy of the imperial chapel at Aachen—the first in the
autumn of 816, the second in the summer of 817.[118] The
deliberations of each synod resulted in a set of resolutions
which the attending dignitaries were instructed to make
known to their monks upon return to their respective
monasteries.

The resolutions passed during the first synod of 816
consisted of thirty-six chapters, the original text of which
was only recently discovered by Joseph Semmler in a
manuscript at Wolfenbüttel dating from about 820, which
furnishes us with the important date, August 23, 816.[119]
Prior to Semmler's discovery of this authentic contemporary
copy of the capitulary, the contents of the resolutions
of the synod of 816 had been known only through a
promulgation by Bishop Haito of Basel to his monks in the
abbey of Reichenau and Murbach, the so-called Statutes of
Murbach.[120]

The resolutions adopted during the second synod consisted
of forty-three chapters, and were promulgated in an
imperial ordinance dated July 10, 817, the famous Capitulare
monasticum of Louis the Pious.[121] Although the
Statutes of Murbach lists considerably fewer resolutions
than either of the two imperial capitularies, it is in many
respects of greater historical interest because it contains,
in addition to the resolutions themselves, an extensive
commentary by Bishop Haito that clarifies the intent of
the new legislation and suggests procedures for its implementation.

Haito's remarks provide insight into the disagreements
that must have prevailed during the first synod of Aachen,
and exhibit his doubt of the finality of some of the more
controversial resolutions passed by this assembly. There
are instances where he declares it his intention to postpone
action on a particular issue,[122] and others where he states he
will refuse to implement a resolution, suggesting that less
restrictive action on it might be forthcoming in the future.[123]
Others among the returning bishops and abbots may have
reacted in a similar manner,[124] and the fact that a second
synod was called into being only a year later is, in itself,
an indication that not everything was settled during the
first one.

In general the resolutions of the second synod were
milder than those of the first; the liberal and more humanistic
wing among the reformists apparently won out over
the restrictive asceticism promoted by Benedict of Aniane
and his supporters.[125] It is important to consider this
moderation of policy by the second synod, as it bears
directly upon the interpretation of certain specific resolutions
that affected the architectural layout of the Plan.

I.7.3

SPECIFIC RULINGS OF THE MONASTIC
REFORM MOVEMENT AFFECTING
MONASTIC ARCHITECTURE

Hans Reinhardt, in questioning Dopsch's thesis that the
Plan of St. Gall was a product of the monastic reform
movement, pointed to two conspicuous features of the
Plan which in his opinion militated against such a connection.
One of these was that the monastery was furnished
with bathhouses not only for the sick but also for the
healthy brethren; and the second, that on the Plan the
abbot was provided with a residence of his own. Both of
these establishments, Reinhardt contended, had been
interdicted by Aachen.[126] In advancing this criticism, however,
Reinhardt failed to take into account that in both
cases the resolutions passed at the second synod modified
those of the first. The synod of 816, to judge from Bishop
Haito's report, prohibited the use of baths by the healthy
monks, reserving this privilege to the sick,[127] yet when this
issue was taken up again in the second synod, the assembly
did not retain the strictness of the prohibition of the preceding
year, but liberalized it by the ruling: "That the
use of baths shall be left to the judgment of the prior."[128]
This was a return to the more tolerant attitude of St.
Benedict of Nursia, who granted the privilege of bathing
to the sick "as often as may be expedient; but to the healthy,
and especially to the young, let them be granted seldom."[129]

The Plan of St. Gall includes among its buildings a
bathhouse for the monks,[130] a bathhouse for the novices,[131]
a bathhouse for the sick,[132] and a bathhouse for the abbot.[133]
There is nothing in either the number, size, or furnishings
of these installations that would conflict with the ruling of
the second synod; and the bathhouse for the monks,
equipped as it was with no more than two tubs for seventy-seven
monks (this is the number of beds in the dormitory),
could scarcely do more to conform to the Rule of St.
Benedict, or to testify to the conservative "judgment of
the prior."

The question of a separate house for the abbot is a
different and considerably more complicated matter. It
appears to have been one of the more delicate issues discussed
in Aachen. As one weighs the respective merits of
the rulings that touch this matter, one cannot avoid the
impression that rather than face the issue squarely, the
leaders of the Church proposed to solve it by indirection.
It looks very much as though during the first synod of
Aachen some of the more extreme reformists argued for
legislation which, if enacted, would have deprived the
abbot of his right to a separate house and kitchen. This
may have been the intent of a preliminary resolution
referred to in chapter 4 of the Statutes of Murbach, which
directs: "That the abbots shall be subject to the same rules
as the brethren in meal and drink, in their sleep, and in
all other matters."[134] As in the question of baths, so in this
issue, too, the thinking of the reformists tended to become
more flexible in the ensuing deliberations as the synods
progressed. The official capitulary of 816 repeats the clause
that puts the abbots on the same footing with the monks
"in meal and drink," etc., but adds to this the important
qualification, "provided that they are not engaged in some
other useful task."[135] The capitulary of 817 drops the issue
altogether.[136] The synod of 816 is quite specific about the
fact that the abbot should not eat with the guests by the
gate of the monastery,[137] i.e., in the house held ready for
the reception of distinguished guests. The synod of 817
eliminates this ruling also. Neither of the two capitularies
contains a clause that challenged the abbot's right to live
in his own house. To introduce such legislation would
have been an abrogation of a time-honored mandate of the
great St. Benedict himself, who in chapters 53 and 56 of
his Rule had directed: "Let there be a separate kitchen for
the abbot and guests,"[138] and "Let the abbot always eat with
the guests and pilgrims. But when there are no guests, let
him have the power to invite whom he will of the
brethren."[139] How doubtful of the legality of any attempt
to tamper with these regulations of the founder of western
monachism some of the members of the synod of 816 must
have been, may be gathered from Abbot Haito's reaction.
Pointing to the irreconcilable conflict between the spirit
of this attempt and the Rule of St. Benedict, Haito
exclaims: "In this matter, to be sure, I wish to follow the
authority of customary procedure, which cannot be overruled
by the dictates of some new legislation."[140]

And in answer to the edict "that the abbot shall not take
his meal with the guests by the gates of the monastery,"
Haito remarks:

In professing this view, Haito informs us:

The auditorium to which Bishop Haito refers as the
traditional place for the abbot to take his meal with the
guests can only have been a room in the abbot's own house,
and since this house lay outside the claustrum near the
gate of the monastery—precisely where it is shown on the
Plan of St. Gall—it must have been provided with its own
kitchen.[143]

A review of the resolutions of the two synods of Aachen
which deal with the abbot's right to eat and sleep in his
own residence, then, provides no evidence to challenge the
theory that the Plan of St. Gall was a product of the
monastic reform movement. It argues, rather, in favor of it.
Moreover, there are other features of the Plan that give
added support to this thesis.

THE TRANSFER OF HOUSES FOR THE WORKMEN
AND CRAFTSMEN FROM AN
EXTRAMURAL TO AN INTRAMURAL LOCATION

A directive issued in chapter 4 of the first synod stipulated
that the monks should help "with their own hands"
(propriis manibus) in the bakehouse and in other workshops,
and should not stray outside for the acquisition of these
necessities.[144] It is Bishop Haito's commentary to this
directive that reveals to us the synod's intent to place the
houses for the workmen and craftsmen within the monastic
precinct, rather than outside. Prior to the issuance of the
regulation, in the monastery of Reichenau at least, the
workshop for the craftsmen lay outside the monastic
compound; and in implementing this rule, Haito ordered,
"that the fullers, the tailors, and the shoemakers be
instructed to perform their work of providing the monks
with their necessary clothing in the future within the
confines of the monastery, and not without, as was the
custom in the past." He adds "that this change should be
effected by the calends of next September."[145] The location
of the Great Collective Workshop and the House of
Coopers and Wheelwrights, immediately to the south and
west of the Monks' Cloister, may be interpreted to be a
direct implementation of this same directive.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF SEPARATE QUARTERS
FOR VISITING MONKS

Another point of agreement between the Plan of St. Gall
and a specific ruling of Aachen is to be found in the
establishment of special quarters for visiting monks.
Chapter 24 of the second synod rules, "that a dormitory
shall be erected by the side of the church where the
visiting monks may sleep."[146] This regulation is new, as it
was not included in the Rule of St. Benedict, who, in an
entire chapter devoted to the question, "How pilgrim
monks are to be received" (De monachis peregrinis, qualiter
suscipiantur), did not make the slightest reference to special
lodgings for visiting monks.[147] On the Plan of St. Gall the
Lodging for Visiting Monks is shown as a separate apartment,
addorsed to the northern wall of the church in the
immediate vicinity of the transept.[148]

THE TRANSFER OF THE SCHOOL FOR
LAYMEN AND SECULAR PRIESTS TO A LOCATION
OUTSIDE THE CLAUSTRUM

A last point in favor of the theory that the scheme of the
Plan of St. Gall is the product of the monastic reform
movement is to be found in the fact that in this scheme the
school for laymen and secular priests is on a site outside
the Claustrum.[149] The first synod of Aachen did not rule
on the subject of schools, but one should not infer from
this that the issue had not been raised at that time. Haito
touches upon the matter briefly in his discussion of the
rules concerning the reception of the novices, and from the
tenor of his commentary it is tempting to conclude that the

absence of any binding regulations concerning monastic
schools in the statutes of the first synod was caused by the
assembly's inability to reach an agreement on this important
question rather than by its failure to raise the issue:

The expression "so far as possible" could mean a number
of things. It could refer to the availability of suitable
quarters for the secular students, or the availability of a
sufficient number of teachers properly trained to instruct
them. The apposition "until we shall hear a more explicit
ruling in this matter" makes evident that action was
expected in the future, and the second synod did not fail
to take it. But the wording of this subsequent action poses
some problems of interpretation. Chapter 5 of the second
synod refers to the issue of schools with the terse sentence:
"There shall be no other school in the monastery than
that which is used for the instruction of the future
monks."[151] If the word "monasterium" in this sentence
were interpreted to refer to the monastery as a whole, this
ruling would certainly ban the instruction of laymen and
secular priests from the monastic educational system. It is
in this sense that the statute appears to have been interpreted
by such scholars as Emile Lesne[152] and Dom Jean
Leclercq.[153] There are good historical reasons, however, to
suggest that "monasterium" was used here in the sense of
"claustrum" rather than as reference to the monastery in
its entirety.

One of these is the fact that the severity of this statute,
if the complete abolishment of lay instruction had been its
manifest intent, would be entirely out of line with the
general spirit of the resolutions of the second synod, which
were consistently more liberal and more tolerant than those
of the first. Second and more important, however, is the
testimony of history itself; for in its actual implementation,
the rule laid down in chapter 25 of the second synod did
not result in the abolishment of lay instruction but in the
division of the monastic educational system into an "outer
school" (schola exterior) and an "inner school" (schola
interior), the former for the education of the laymen and
secular priests, the latter for the instruction of the monks.[154]

The monastery of St. Gall itself appears to be a typical
example of this development. Its two schools are frequently
referred to in contemporary narratives, the most notable
of which is a passage in chapter 2 of Ekkehard's Casus
sancti Galli, from which we learn that at the time of Abbot
Grimald (841-872) the Irish monk Marcellus was placed in
charge of the Inner School and the monk Iso in charge of
the Outer School.[155] Later teachers, such as Ratpert, the
two Notkers, and the four Ekkehards, taught in both, and
some among them served as the head of both.[156] On the
Plan of St. Gall the Inner School is established in a special
claustral structure that lies to the east of the Church and is
provided with its own chapel, refectory, dormitory, and
warming room; the Outer School lies to the north of the
Church between the Abbot's House and the House for
Distinguished Guests. The Library and the Scriptorium,
two indispensable facilities for both schools, lie midway
between them. As the Inner School was confined to the
training of the novices,[157] the advanced training of the
regular monks may have been conducted in the Scriptorium
and Library.

In proposing that the term "monasterium" in the statute
of the second synod was used in the sense of "claustrum,"
I do not wish to maintain that the total exclusion of lay
instruction from the monasteries may not have been one
of the acknowledged goals of the fanatics in the reform
movement. The introduction of facilities for the instruction
of laymen and the secular clergy no doubt had posed
problems of a disturbing nature, and the education, side
by side, of laymen, secular priests, and monks must have
had a disquieting influence on monastic peace and discipline.
But to overcome these shortcomings by the complete
exclusion of all outsiders from the monastic schools would
have been a measure too radically opposed to the educational
policy of Charlemagne who, in ordering the establishment
of monastic schools for the education of laymen and
secular priests in the first place, had assigned to the
monasteries a clearly defined responsibility within the
empire's general educational system.[158] Many of the bishops
and abbots who attended the synods of Aachen were of
sufficient age to have played a decisive role in the implementation,
if not the original framing, of this policy.
Complete abolishment of lay instruction would have been
too radical a measure to be accepted without opposition,
and the history of the monastic schools shows clearly that,
in this issue also, the extreme wing among the reformists
did not win out.

I.7.4

CONCLUSIONS

The arguments set forth on the preceding pages speak
plainly, I think, in favor of Dopsch's theory that the scheme
for a monastic settlement which is copied in the Plan of
St. Gall was a product of the monastic reform movement.
The ideal character of this scheme is in full accord with
the general spirit of this movement, which aimed at the
establishment of a universally binding rule for the monks
to replace the mixed rule that prevailed in the preceding
centuries. The arrangement of the buildings shown on the
Plan of St. Gall aimed in the same manner at the establishment
of guiding rules that could be followed in the physical
layout of a monastic settlement. It terminated the ambiguities
that had arisen from the never completely settled
battle between the tradition of the Irish and the Benedictine
monks. Moreover, it established in architectural
terms a modus vivendi et habitandi between the monks and

the laymen by confining the former to an inner and the
latter to an outer yard, and in this manner settled a conflict
that had been created by a steadily increasing influx of
serfs and workmen during the two preceding centuries as
the monastery assumed more and more the character of a
great manorial estate. It was an architectural program
whose conception depended on policy decisions of major
magnitude—no less complex in physical terms than the
web of regulations that affect the monks' religious and
temporal life—requiring a consensus of opinion as could
only have been attained in assemblies of leading dignitaries
of the Church such as occurred at Aachen in 816 and
817. Lastly, but not least: it embodied features which, as
I believe to have established on the preceding pages,
were the implementation of specific resolutions taken at
Aachen.

They are: establishment of separate quarters for visiting
monks, transfer of the houses for workmen from an
extramural to an intramural location, and separation of the
educational system of the monastery into inner and outer
schools. The existence of bathhouses for the novices and
healthy monks would have violated the legislation of the
first synod, but they were not in conflict with the legislation
of the second synod, which returned to the more tolerant
views of St. Benedict of Nursia. A separate house for the
abbot, while nowhere authorized in sharply defined terms,
is an implicit precondition of the legislation of the second
synod.[159]

I. 8

PRESUMABLE DATE OF THE PLAN

Since the Plan is dedicated to Abbot Gozbert of St. Gall,
its execution must fall into the time between Gozbert's
appointment to his abbacy in 816 and his resignation in
836 (he died in 837). As it was made to guide Gozbert in
the reconstruction of the monastery of St. Gall, the upper
limit of this span may safely be depressed to the year 830,
when this project was started. The prototype from which
the Plan of St. Gall was copied appears to date from the
year 817. We do not know at what point in his career
Abbot Gozbert conceived of the idea of rebuilding his
monastery; nor do we have any means of judging by how
many years his request for guidance in this project preceded
actual construction. Bishop Haito, the presumptive
"author" of the Plan, died in 836. From the tenor of his
transmittal note one is tempted to infer that the Plan was
drawn when Haito was still at the full height of his two
careers, i.e., before his retirement, in 823, from his episcopate
at Basel and his abbacy at the monastery of Reichenau.
The traditional date for the Plan, of "around 820," might
therefore be retained, provided that it be understood that
this is clearly not a compelling conclusion.

[ILLUSTRATION]

STYLUS

MUSEE D'HISTOIRE ET D'ART, LUXEMBOURG

The stylus, essentially a very simple tool of iron, bronze,
sometimes of hardwood, bone or ivory, has one or both
ends pointed according to the purpose for which the
instrument was used.

The example illustrated, Gallo-Roman, with one end
pointed, the other formed like a small, blunt chisel, was
probably for a professional writer. The pointed end,
needle sharp, was for pricking through the parchment, the
blunt end for scoring the parchment surface as a guide for
writing or ruling.

[ILLUSTRATION]

14. COLOGNE, CAROLINGIAN CATHEDRAL. PLAN OF HILDEBOLD'S FOUNDATIONS

[after Willy Weyres, 1966, 408, fig. 10]

Excavations by Otto Doppelfeld beneath the pavement of the Gothic cathedral (heavily bombed in World War II) revealed seven building
horizons ranging from the Roman occupation (per. I-IV) through the Merovingian (per. V-VI), to the time of construction of the Carolingian
cathedral (per. VIIA-B). The plan displays in dark shading the foundations of Hildebold's church, begun probably after the coronation of
Charlemagne in 800, but still not complete when Hildebold died in 819. The stippled areas in the church are remains of the floor of the
Merovingian cathedral, a structure about 49 m long and 20-22 m wide; its precise shape can no longer be determined.

Toward the end of Merovingian or in early Carolingian times (possibly after the elevation of Hildebold to the See of Cologne in 787) the
Merovingian cathedral was enlarged westward with the addition of transept and semicircular atrium.

I. 9

THE PROTOTYPE PLAN

I.9.1

SOME REFLECTIONS ABOUT IT AND
ITS RELATION TO THE
CAROLINGIAN CATHEDRAL
OF COLOGNE

CONCEPTUAL AFFINITIES WITH
COLOGNE CATHEDRAL

With its emphasis on the monastery as a general cultural
institution[160] and its generous allotment of space provided
for the reception of secular dignitaries[161] the layout of the
Plan of St. Gall displays a largesse d'esprit that appears
more akin to the educational and administrative policies
promoted by Charlemagne and his advisors than to the
constrictive atmosphere prevalent in monastic life at the
time of Louis the Pious.

Nowhere is this boldness of approach more clearly
disclosed than in the exuberant dimensions of the Church
of the Plan. Prior to 1948 the idea that an exemplary
Carolingian monastery church could attain a length of 300
feet appeared doubtful to many. The Abbey Church of
Fulda, 321 feet long and 100 feet wide, had always been
considered exceptional, and the rebellion of the monks of
Fulda against its inordinate size appeared to confirm this
view.[162] But Otto Doppelfeld's excavation of the foundations
of the Carolingian church of Cologne brought to
light under the pavement of the present Cathedral the
remains of a church that corresponded to the Church of
the Plan of St. Gall not only in size but also in the essentials
of its layout (figs. 14-16).[163] A late but trustworthy tradition
ascribes the construction of this edifice to Archbishop
Hildebold of Cologne (787-818),[164] a relative of Charlemagne
and one of his most trusted councilors.[165]

Like the Church of the Plan of St. Gall, the church of
Hildebold was about 300 feet long and about 80 feet wide.
As in the former, the nave in the latter had a width of about
40 feet, and the aisles half of that, about 20 feet. In both
churches the transept arms and the fore choir repeat the
dimensions of the crossing square. Both churches had
apses at either end, a semicircular paradise with a covered
walk in the west and an uncovered paradise in the east.
The similarities are very close and so striking, Doppelfeld
concluded, that one must have served as model for the
other. In the plan of the church of Cologne, he believed,
he had found the prototype for the layout of the Church
of the Plan of St. Gall.[166]

RELATIVE CHRONOLOGY

Unfortunately, we do not know precisely when Hildebold's
church was started; therefore, it was to be expected
that Doppelfeld's view of its priority over the Church of
the Plan of St. Gall should be challenged. Adolph Schmidt
voiced the opinion that both buildings might have a
common root in a prototype plan developed during the
two reform synods of Aachen (816-817).[167] Irmingard
Achter, Albert Verbeek, and Fried Mühlberg went so far
as to question the Carolingian origin of Cologne Cathedral
altogether and ascribed it to the time of Archbishop
Bruno (953-956).[168] Doppelfeld never budged from his
original position[169] and further excavations seemed to
confirm his view. In a careful and exhaustive re-analysis of
the entire archaeological and documentary evidence available,
Otto Weyres[170] arrived at the conclusion that the
concept of the church, the foundations of which are
shown in figure 14, is essentially that of Archbishop
Hildebold—a concept created on its initiative under the
impact of the enhanced significance that the empire of the
Franks had acquired through the coronation of Charlemagne
at Rome in the year 800—and for that reason
probably put into effect in the years immediately following
this important event. Hildebold, who held the position of
arcicapellanus at the court of Charlemagne, had witnessed
with his own eyes the construction, step by step, of the
Palace Chapel, Aachen (ca. 790-800). His own cathedral at
Cologne with its thin walls, then already 300 years old,
had become outdated. Before the year 800 Hildebold had
already made an attempt to enlarge it westward with a
semicircular atrium (by more than 20 years older than the
semicircular atria of the Plan of St. Gall).[171] After the
coronation of Charlemagne in Rome, Weyres argues,
Hildebold took the decisive step of tearing down the entire
ancient fabric of the Merovingian cathedral and of laying
the foundations for a new one (fig. 15): an aisled church
with apse and counter apse, a western transept, and an
extended eastern choir. The foundations of this building
(VIIa) are well attested, yet nothing is known about its
elevation. When Hildebold died in 819, the project was not
finished, but it must have been sufficiently advanced at
this time to be identified with him by later generations.
Certain conditions of the masonry and the soil suggest
that after Hildebold's death, construction was disrupted or
moved very slowly. There is good reason to believe that
the building was close to completion when Archbishop
Gunther was deposed in 864, since in the troubled six
years that followed not much could have been done.[172] The
church was solemnly dedicated by Archbishop Willibert
on September 27, 870 in the presence of the archbishops
of Mainz, Trier, and Salzburg and all of the suffragans.[173]
The imprints of two piers on the foundation of the northern
row of arcades disclose that the nave walls of this building
(VIIb) were supported by piers, 5.67 m. long (15 Roman
feet), at a clear interstice of 4.17 m. (14 Roman feet). A
reconstruction of this church, as proposed by Weyres, is
shown in figures 15 and 16. There is no conclusive evidence
that the elevation of this church was identical with that
which Bishop Hildebold had in mind. The imprints of its
pillars were found on a level of the foundations that seemed
to lie above the fabric completed at the time of Bishop
Hildebold.

[ILLUSTRATION]

COLOGNE: CAROLINGIAN CATHEDRAL (VIIB)

15.B LONGITUDINAL SECTION. LATE CAROLINGIAN CATHEDRAL, COLOGNE

15.A PLAN, LATE CAROLINGIAN CATHEDRAL, COLOGNE. RECONSTRUCTION

[after Willy Weyres, 1966, 410, figs. 11 and 12]

Changes in the masonry technique of the foundations of Hildebold's church (fig. 14) suggest that work on this building was discontinued
(possibly at Hildebold's death in 819) before its walls had risen to any appreciable height. The duration of this interruption is unknown, and
since no rising portions of the walls are left, the precise nature of the elevation of Hildebold's cathedral can no longer be determined.

The cathedral was completed by Archbishop Willibert and formally dedicated in 870. This late Carolingian church made full use, without any
changes, of the foundations built by Hildebold, the later masonry being distinguishable from that of Hildebold's work by its inclusion of a
reddish mortar. Enough of the rising portions of Willibert's walls and nave supports remain to make it clear that the nave walls rested on
rectangular piers rather than on columns. Figures 15 and 16 are attempts to reconstruct the elevation and interior view of the cathedral.

While the interstices of the arcades of this church are considerably narrower than those of the Church of the Plan of St. Gall (cf. figs. 109 and
110) they are spiritually related to them by the daring height of their rise.

Weyres' conclusions about the date and building sequence
of Cologne Cathedral are persuasive and suggest
that if there were any conceptual links between the Church
of the Plan of St. Gall and the Carolingian cathedral of
Cologne, it was the latter that influenced the former, as
Doppelfeld had proposed in the first place, and not the
other way round.

LIKELIHOOD OF HILDEBOLD'S INVOLVEMENT
IN ORIGINAL SCHEME

My own analysis of the Plan of St. Gall and its relation
to the monastic reform movement[174] has made a good case
for the assumption that someone, or some group, at
Aachen had been charged with the responsibility of working
out a master plan which was to show how the resolutions
taken by the assembled abbots and bishops about monastic
life and ritual reflected themselves in the physical layout
of an exemplary monastery. Bishop Hildebold, or someone
close to him, may have been in charge of this project. The
emphasis that it gives to houses used for the reception of
visitors—and in particular to the reception of the emperor
and his court—[175] makes one want to assign it conceptually
to a man who grew up in the time of Charlemagne rather
than in the time of Louis the Pious. These facilities are
treated with special care, if not a touch of lavish attention,
and give the impression of being devised by a man who
was not only thoroughly familiar with the architectural
needs of the traveling emperor, but also sufficiently convinced
of the unison of regnum and sacerdotium in the
office of the sovereign to justify the inclusion of that much
space for his reception on the hallowed grounds of a
monastery.

We do not know to what extent the prototype plan was
formally approved at Aachen. It may have been discussed
and endorsed in toto. Or it may have been accepted with
certain specific reservations. Some issues, as we have seen,
were controversial.[176]

It was Boeckelmann who first expressed the intriguing
view that at the two synods of Aachen, two parties were
wrestling about the aims of the future reform of the church:
an "old guard" who had reached the peak of their career
under Charlemagne and were now gradually dying out,
and another group of men who supported St. Benedict of
Aniane in his advocacy of more constrictive reforms.[177] My
own studies of Bishop Haito's commentary to the preliminary
acts of the first synod[178] and Semmler's analysis
of the antagonistic views held by such men as Abbot
Adalhard of Corbie (who was put into exile before the
synods started)[179] have confirmed this view. There is good
cause to believe that among the various topics that were
subject to controversy at Aachen—such as the permissibility
of baths,[180] the issue of whether there should be a
secular school in the monastery,[181] and the delicate problem
of where the abbot should sleep and eat—[182] was also the
question of the optimal length of the church.

[ILLUSTRATION]

COLOGNE. CAROLINGIAN CATHEDRAL

16. INTERIOR VIEW TOWARD THE WEST

[reconstruction by Willy Weyres, 1966, 415, figure 1]

Of the three monumental churches that emerged from the union of
REGNUM and SACERDOTIUM struck by Charlemagne's coronation in
Rome only Fulda was completed during the emperor's reign (not
without difficulties, cf. pp. 187-89). The dedication of Cologne in
870 virtually coincided with the collapse of the empire.

[ILLUSTRATION]

17. PLAN OF ST. GALL. MONKS' CEMETERY

Tendril-shaped ornamental design used to denote trees

[ILLUSTRATION]

GODESCALC GOSPELS (781-783)

PARIS, Bibliothèque Nationale. Nov. Acq. Lat. 1203, fols. 2r and 3r

18. Detail of border framing picture of St. Luke

19. Detail of border, framing picture of Christ

[courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale]

In 817 Abbot Ratgar of Fulda was deposed from his
abbacy by Emperor Louis the Pious, apparently on the
ground that Abbot Ratgar, in erecting at Fulda the largest
church then existing north of the Alps (321 feet long and
100 feet wide), had taxed the brothers' physical and mental
resources beyond endurance, ruined the monastery's
economy, and shortened the lectio divina, neglected the
traditional hospitality due pilgrims and other guests, and
forced the monks to violate time-honored customs in
many other ways.[183] These events show clearly enough that
the issue of what the desirable length of a monastic church
should be was very much alive at the time of the synods.
It is quite possible, therefore, that the reduction of the
length of the Church of the Plan of St. Gall from 300 feet
(shown in the drawing) to 200 feet, as stipulated in one of
its explanatory titles is, as Boeckelmann suggested, not the
expression of a change of spirit that occurred between the
time when an original scheme was drawn (816-817) and
the time when the copy was made (around 820), but a
corrective measure imposed upon the original scheme
when it was discussed and endorsed at Aachen.[184] In
adopting this change in his copy, Bishop Haito did not
take it upon himself to alter the drawing. He retraced the
layout of the prototype plan as he found it on the original
drawing.

AN ORNAMENTAL DETAIL SUGGESTING THE
COURT SCHOOL AS THE CONCEPTUAL HOME OF
THE PROTOTYPE PLAN

There is an interesting ornamental detail on the Plan of
St. Gall which suggests that the prototype plan might,
indeed, have been drawn by a hand that was trained in the
scriptorium of the court of Charlemagne, namely the
"tendril"-shaped design which designates the trees in
the Monks' Cemetery (fig. 17).[185] This motif has close
parallels in a group of sumptuously illuminated manuscripts
formerly designated as "Ada School" (after the
legendary donor of one of its principal manuscripts) but now
generally ascribed to the Court School.[186] The motif appears
first in the Godescalc Gospels, the earliest richly illuminated
manuscript of the group, written and illuminated
by the monk Godescalc (781-783) upon the request of
Charlemagne (fig. 18).[187] There one also finds its classical
prototype form (fig. 19). It reappears in the canon arches
of the Ada Gospels, written around 800 by a certain "Ada
Ancilla Dei," reputed to have been a sister of Charlemagne
(fig. 20).[188] It is found again in the canon arches of the
Harley Gospels (fig 21),[189] and the Gospels of St. Medard de
Soissons,[190] both from the beginning of the ninth century,
as well as in various places of the Lorsch Gospels (figs. 22
and 23), one of the latest and most illustrious manuscripts
of the Court School, written and illuminated around 810,
presumably upon the request of Charlemagne (now in
part in Alba Julia, Roumania, Bibliotheca Documentara
Batthyaneum; in part in the Vatican Library, Pal. lat. 50).[191]

The motif does not appear to be common to any of the
other major schools of the period.[192] I am tempted to
ascribe the drawing of the prototype plan to a man who
was trained in the tradition of the Court School. For
reasons already given, this man must have worked in close
association with Bishop Hildebold of Cologne, who as
sacri palatii arcicapellanus (a title which he held from
791 to the day of his death in 819) continued to remain,
even under the reign of Louis the Pious, the highest
ranking churchman in the empire. More evidence in favor
of the supposition that the original scheme of the Plan was
developed by someone close to the imperial court is to be
found in the striking similarities between the geometrical
square-grid pattern used in the dimensional layout of the
Plan with those which were employed, almost two decades
earlier, in the layout of the palace grounds at Aachen.[193]

There is no reason to assume that the scheme of the
prototype plan differed in any appreciable manner from
that of the copy. The very fact that the copy was made by
tracing precludes this. Even the textual annotations must
have been an integral part of the original, since without
them, the purpose of a great number of buildings of
virtually identical design would have remained incomprehensible.[194]
Clearly not part of the original plan, of course,
were the letter of transmission and the inscription of the
main altar of the Church, which relate to the specific
purpose of the copy.[195]

[ILLUSTRATION]

ADA GOSPELS (BEGINNING OF 9TH CENT.)

20.A

20.B

TRIER. Municipal Library, Codex 22, fol. 6v [photo: Ann Münchow]

Details of two columns of canon table (figures 183 and 184,
below, also illustrate portions of the Ada Gospels).

[ILLUSTRATION]

21. HARLEY GOSPELS

LONDON, British Museum, Harley Ms. 2788, fol. 9r

Early 9th cent.

[by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum]

Detail, columns of canon tables.

Stylistically the illuminations of this manuscript lie midway between
those of the Ada Gospels (fig. 20) and those of the Gospels of
St. Medard of Soissons, all of which precede the Lorsch Gospels.
The Godescalc Gospels (figs. 18-19) can be dated with accuracy;
the others are datable only on stylistic grounds.

[ILLUSTRATION]

22. LORSCH GOSPELS

BUCHAREST, National Library (formerly Alba Julia, Roumania), fol. 71r

about 810.

[after Braunfels, 1967, 141]

Detail from text of St. Matthew Gospels.

In the frames of the text columns of the Lorsch Gospels the tendril
motif appears, in linear form as on the Plan of St. Gall, on at least
eighteen different folios, besides numerous variations and enrichments
on other folios including the more plantlike classical prototype form.

[ILLUSTRATION]

23. LORSCH GOSPELS

BUCHAREST, National Library (formerly Alba Julia, Roumania), fol. 10v

ca. 810

[after Braunfels, 1967, 20]

Detail of the fifth canon arch.

The churchman in charge of the technical and aesthetic execution of the prototype plan (816-817) was trained at the so called "Court
School"—a scriptorium that flourished in the emperor's entourage. It produced a magnificent series of sumptuously illustrated manuscripts in
which decorative motifs of the preceding Hiberno-Saxon school of illumination (7th and 8th centuries) fused with classical tradition under the
influence of a new group of Romano-Christian and Romano-Byzantine manuscripts that must have found their way to the emperor's court.
The Godescalc Gospels is the earliest known manuscript of this school. It was executed between 771 and 773, at Charlemagne's request, by the
scribe Godescalc, a member of the emperor's following.

The illustrious manuscripts produced by the Court School during the next four decades included the Ada Gospels, the Harley Gospels, and the
Gospels of St. Medard. The work of the school reached an aesthetic height in the Lorsch Gospels. Written and illuminated around 810, and
kept during the Middle Ages in the monastery of Lorsch, it was done entirely in gold and includes, besides the twelve canon arches, portraits of
the four evangelists and a striking image of Christ in Majesty at the beginning of Matthew.

At some unknown time after the Middle Ages, the Lorsch Gospels were separated into two parts. The Gospels of Mark and Matthew, were
transmitted to the Biblioteca Documentaria Bathyaneum and were eventually moved to the National Library, Bucharest; the Gospels of Luke
and John came to be held by the Vatican Library.

At the Council of Europe exhibition, KARL DER GROSSE (Aachen, 1965), the two parts of the Lorsch Gospels were re-united for the first time
in centuries, and subsequently published in a superb facsimile edition, under the editorship of Wolfgang Braunfels.

The union between classical illusionism and northern linearism that characterizes the style of Court School manuscripts has its parallel in
architecture in the modular reorganization of the monolithic spaces of the Early Christian basilica, the nature and cultural significance of
which is analyzed below in our discussion of square schematism (pp. 221ff).

[ILLUSTRATION]

24.A THE PLAN OF ST. GALL

The drawing above illustrates how the large skin upon which the Plan is drawn is composed of an aggregate of five separate pieces of calfskin
which, after being sewn together, form a drawing surface 113 cm high × 78 cm wide, a size impossible to obtain from the hide of a single animal.
Our interpretation of the manner in which these skins were sewn together is given in the analysis of details reproduced and annotated on the
pages that follow.

Figure 24.B (page 36) shows in shaded tones the locations of these details.

I. 10

HOW THE PLAN
WAS DRAWN AND ASSEMBLED

I.10.1

NUMBER OF SHEETS & SEQUENCE IN
WHICH THEY WERE SEWN TOGETHER

The Plan is drawn upon a piece of parchment composed of
five separate sheets of calfskin (not lamb or goat, as was
formerly believed)[196] and sewn together by threads of gut
(fig. 24, nos. 1-5). The drawing is on the softer inner side
of the skins, which show traces of scraping and are slightly
roughened by pumice stone. The edges are irregular, most
markedly so on the right-hand side of the Plan, where the
skins did not yield sufficient surfaces to allow the corners
to be squared.

The largest over-all dimensions of the Plan are 30¾ × 44 3/16
inches (78 × 112 cm.).[197] The original dimensions are more
likely to have been in the neighborhood of 32 × 46 inches.
Konrad Hecht, who engaged in some interesting speculations
on this subject, estimates the over-all shrinkage to
which the parchment was subjected in ten centuries of
aging to amount to 5 to 6 percent of the original surface
area.[198] Even today the dimensions vary slightly in response
to changing humidity conditions.[199]

The distribution of the monastic buildings over the five
component sheets of the Plan is as follows: sheets 1 and 2
accommodate the Church, the Claustrum, the guest and
service structures to the north of the Church as well as in
the corner between the Church and the Claustrum; sheet
3 accommodates the service structures south of the Claustrum;
sheet 4, the Novitiate and the Infirmary, the
Cemetery, and all the other structures to the east of the
Church; sheet 5, the stables for the livestock and all the
other agricultural service structures to the west of the
Church.

The sequence in which the sheets were sewn together
can be reconstructed from the manner in which they overlap
each other. First, sheet 2 was attached to sheet 1 from
below. Next, sheet 3 was sewn onto sheets 1 and 2, again
from below. Then sheets 4 and 5 were sewn to sheet
group 1, 2, 3 from above (fig. 24, nos. 1-5).

The material used for threading the seams is a natural
uncolored gut identifiable as such even on the facsimile
(in contrast to the green pieces of thread that were used
at a relatively recent date to patch together certain sections
along the former folding lines of the Plan where the parchment
was torn). A closer look at these seams suggests that
not all of them were stitched by the same hand. The seams
that hold sheets 1, 2, and 3 together are made in short
stitches and take a surprisingly swerving course, while the
seams through which sheets 4 and 5 are attached to the
sheet-group 1, 2, 3 follow a very straight course and are
sewn in longer and more elegant stitches.[200]

There is clear evidence that sheets 1, 2, and 3 were sewn
together before the drawing was started, since the lines
of the drawing all run in a continuous motion over the
edges of these sheets, from the higher lying sheet on to
the lower one. Where sheet 1 overlaps sheet 2 (fig. 25,
the lines must have been drawn in the direction from sheet
1 to sheet 2 since the quill did not smear, as it would
inevitably have done had the stroke been conducted upward
from sheet 2 over the edge of sheet 1. Where sheets
1 and 2 overlap sheet 3, again, the lines were drawn from
the higher sheet (1 and 2) to the lower lying one (3). For
more detail I refer the reader to the explanatory caption
of figures 26-28.

In general the draftsman moved his line in a continuous
stroke across seam and edge, but in some cases he stopped
at the edge of the higher sheet and started a new stroke on
the lower sheet, so that the impact of the quill with the
edge of the higher sheet bent the start of his line into a hook
(fig. 28 and 29).

The ductus of the line shows all of the possible effects of
the encounter of the quill with the seam and the edge of
the sheets: a slight tendency for the ink to spatter at these
critical points, a minute disruption of the straightness of the
line as the quill takes a slight leap from the edge of the
upper skin to the surface of the lower, and a minute
tendency to swerve at this point. Nowhere in sheet-group
1, 2, 3 is any part of the drawing covered up by an
overlapping margin of the adjacent sheet—clear evidence
that this group of sheets must have been sewn together
before the drawing was started.

Sheets 4 and 5 must have been drawn separately and
sewn onto sheet-group 1, 2, 3 only after the latter had been
completed (fig. 24). This can be inferred from the fact
that a number of lines on sheets 1 and 2 are covered up by
the overlapping margin of sheet-group 4, 5. Thus, for
instance, the easternmost portion of the eastern apse of the
Church (fig. 30) is completely drawn out on sheet 1, but
covered up by the overlapping edge of sheet 4, as one can
see when lifting the overlapping edge from the front side
of the Plan. Similarly, the ascending stroke of the letter
A of the great axial inscription AB ORIENTE IN OCCIDENTEM
. . . appears on both the covered portion of sheet 1 and the

[ILLUSTRATION]

24.B PLAN OF ST. GALL

EXAMINATION OF CONDITIONS WHERE LINES OF THE
DRAWING CROSS OVERLAPPING SEAMS

A key plan for figures 25 through 32

The "window" areas of the Plan shown on opposite page define the
location of those areas of the drawing which are examined in detail
in figs. 25 through 32. In all these places the scribe's lines
cross seams and overlapping edges, thereby revealing much about the
sequence in which the five component sheets of parchment were
assembled.

Figs. 33-40 attempt to illustrate the eight successive stages of the
growth of the tracing. The interpretation is based primarily on two
types of observation:

1. The progress of work as inferred from the manner in which the
lines are drawn in critical areas where they run across the
overlapping margins of two joined pieces of parchment (figs. 25
through 30).

2. The detection of certain angular distortions in the layout of
buildings, which we attribute to a mainly inadvertent shift in the
relationship of overlay and original, incurred in the process of
tracing.

The draftsmanship of the Plan adheres to a prevailing concept of
rectangularity in its overall design as well as in the inter-relation of
many internal systems of rectangularity. Even unaided, the eye is
able to discern deflections between adjacent systems, in several places.
We are convinced that these could not have occurred in the
construction of the original drawing from which the Plan was copied.
The draftsmanship of the Plan of St. Gall exhibits a high degree of
manual expertise, but the Plan was traced and therefore not
dependent on any mechanical aid. The original scheme, by contrast,
must necessarily have been constructed. Large and complex as it was,
its author could not possibly have accomplished the orderliness and
scale correctness by which it was characterized without mechanical
aids, such as graduated straightedges, T-squares and or other similar
devices, the use of which would have precluded angular deviation.
The rectangular distortions in the Plan, and its deflections from the
square, we are convinced, were caused by difficulties encountered in
the act of tracing, an operation far from simple in a time when aids
such as light boxes, tracing paper, and adhesive tape for securing
both the original parchment and the overlay parchment with absolute
precision, were unknown.

overlapping margin of sheet 4.[201] The same condition can be
observed at the western end of the Church (fig. 31). Here
the porch was drawn out in its entirety on sheet 2 before
sheet 5 was sewn onto it from above. Sheet 5 also covers
the lower portion of the word habebit in the porch inscription,
not to the extent, however, of having to be redrawn
on sheet 5.

From these conditions it follows conclusively that the
drawings of sheet-group 1, 2, 3 must have been completed
before the sheets 4 and 5 were added to this group.[202] (For
additional evidence, see extended caption of fig 30.)

There is no conclusive evidence to show that sheet 5 was
drawn at a later stage than sheet 4. But it is obvious that
the buildings on sheet 4 are of greater importance for the
life of the monastic community than the service structures
shown on sheet 5, and therefore would command a higher
priority in attention. Moreover, the draftsmanship of
certain buildings on sheet 5, exhibiting signs of fatigue as
will be shown in a later place, suggests that this portion
of the Plan was the last to be drawn.

I.10.2

SUCCESSIVE STAGES IN TRACING
THE PLAN

Certain peculiarities in the drawing tell us a good deal
about the working procedures of the draftsman and about
the sequence in which the buildings were traced. It is quite
obvious that the draftsman was right-handed, and that he
made his copy by tracing the successive portions of the
drawing from left to right and from top to bottom. Our
analysis of the manner in which the quill responded to the
hurdle of the seams and edges of the overlapping margins
of the respective sheets left no doubt on this score (see the
extended captions of figs. 26-29). There is no dearth of
further confirmatory evidence. The distinctive marks of
the first impact of the ink with the parchment as the quill
touches the skin, and the tendency of the ink to diminish in
bulk as the line stretches out and to trail into a thin tail as
the quill is lifted can be observed in scores of places. Also
to be noticed in this connection is the fact that the ductus
of the draftsman's line was relatively straight and sure when
he started his work on the left-hand side of the skin and
remained so as long as his hand retained a firm base. But it
developed a tendency to swerve as his hand reached a
point where it began to lose its rest, as it was bound to do,
at the lower right-hand corner of the sheet. Clear evidence
of this is: the Bake and Brew House for Distinguished
Guests (the last to be drawn of the buildings that lie to the
north of the Church); the Medicinal Herb Garden (the
last installation to be drawn on sheet 4); and the houses for
the cows and foaling mares and their keepers (the last to
be drawn on sheet 5).

The primary clue to identifying the sequence in which
the buildings were drawn is the number of shifts in the
relative position of original and overlay that occurred in

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL

25.A OVERLAPPING EDGES OF SHEETS 1 AND 2 ACROSS HOUSE FOR DISTINGUISHED GUESTS AND THE MONASTERY CHURCH

Sheet 2 was sewn to sheet 1 from below, a procedure that can be demonstrated by the scribe's lines, which run in continuous motion over the
edges from the higher-lying to the lower sheet, and from left to right east to west). The design reveals extraordinary skill of draftsmanship.
The line crosses the seam in a continuous motion, wherever the quill finds free passage in the interstice between the gut, and drops from the upper
to the lower-lying sheet with almost no displacement or tremor. Nowhere in sheet group 1, 2, 3 is a part of the lower sheet covered by the
overlapping margin of the upper sheet—clear proof that sheets 1, 2, 3 were sewn together before the tracing was begun.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL

26. DETAIL OF FENCE, MONKS' REFECTORY TO GREAT COLLECTIVE WORKSHOP

Drawn from left to right, the line stops on reaching the seam. It starts out again immediately
behind the seam and runs in smooth and continuous motion from sheet 1 over its edge down to
sheet 3.

27.A COVERED PASSAGEWAY, MONKS' KITCHEN TO MONKS' BAKE & BREW HOUSE

The upper line crosses seam and edge of sheet 1 in continuous motion. The lower line stops on
reaching the protruding portion of the gut, makes a fresh start behind it, and runs smoothly
across the edge onto the lower surface of sheet 3, it makes a minute jump westward.

27.B A CORNER OVERLAP

This interesting detail shows the corner at which sheets 1, 2, 3 overlap each other, clearly
revealing that sheets 1 and 2 must have already been joined before sheet 3 was attached from
below.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL

25.B
CHURCH

25.C
MONKS' CELLAR AND LARDER. CONDITION AT FENCE TO WEST

In drawing the choir screen, which connects the second pair of nave columns transversely, the draftsman had to guide his quill lengthwise over
the protruding ridges of the seam, an ennervating experience which he later tried to avoid by moving the line away from the seam when he
encountered similar conditions in drawing the west wall of the Cellar.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL

28. HOUSE OF COOPERS AND WHEELWRIGHTS. DETAIL

At A and C the line runs smoothly and continuously over seam and overlapping margin of sheet
1 down to sheet 3. At C the line stops at the edge of sheet 1 and starts fresh on the lower-lying
sheet 3, being bent into a hook by the impact of the quill with the edge of sheet 1.

29. HOUSE FOR HORSES AND OXEN. DETAIL

The lines are drawn from left to right smoothly across the seam, and in one case (third line from
bottom), smoothly over the edge of sheet 2; but in all other cases the line stops at the edge of
sheet 2 and makes a fresh start on sheet 3. The edge of the overlapping sheet bends the start of
the line into a hook.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL MONASTERY CHURCH, WESTERN APSE AND PARADISE

30.
The two easternmost portions of the apse are completely drawn out on sheet 1, but covered up by the overlapping edge of sheet 4—clear proof
that sheet 4 was not attached to sheet group 1, 2, 3 when the Church and the Claustrum were drawn. By inspecting the original, one would
observe that the rounding arcs of the apse on sheet 1 extend beyond the seam by which sheet 4 is fastened to sheet group 1, 2, 3.

the process of tracing, entailing deflections in the drawing
which cannot have been part of the original concept.[203]
A left-to-right and top-to-bottom movement frequently
referred to in the following stages of growth for tracing the
Plan is not exclusively controlled by convention in direction
of writing. In tracing, top-to-bottom issues mainly from
the need to avoid smearing ink. (Writing executed in clay or
wax, as in many ancient languages, could be from right to
left). The tracer is influenced by long established writing
convention, but he is not governed by it. He traces where it
is most convenient, moving freely from area to area according
to the matter he is working on. Drying time of the
writing fluid used has much to do with the tracer's sequence.
On completing a series of lines in one area he
relocates, usually to a safe distance removed from lines still
wet, then shifts back to the previous part of a different part.
Thus while tracing sequence may generally be left to right,
discontinuity is a characteristic in the Plan. When drawing
a set of lines perpendicular to another set, a draftsman
prefers to turn the sheet roughly 90° or to shift his position
similarly, rather than draw from the same position—
pushing the pen or pulling it toward him is avoided.
However each method is used. The one adopted, extremely
a matter of personal choice, is related to the tracer's temperament,
his experience, kind of materials, and equipment
used, lighting conditions and other matters. If the
Plan abounds with inexplicable details of execution it is
because tracing, like drafting, is a highly subjective skill,
defiant of rational prediction or logical deduction, except
in a very general way. In offering this study and analysis of
the tracing stages of the great Plan, the authors are humble
in mindfulness of the problem and respectful of the scribes
and draftsmen who made it.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL PORCH GIVING ACCESS TO WESTERN ATRIUM OF CHURCH

31. The last word of the explanatory title of the Porch, HABEBIT, is
partially covered by the overlapping margin of sheet 5, which was
sewn onto sheet group 1, 2, 3 from above. The Porch had been drawn
in its entirety on sheet 2 before sheet 5 was sewn onto it.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. DETAIL, BAKE AND BREWHOUSE OF THE HOSPICE FOR PILGRIMS AND PAUPERS (NORTH OF FENCE)
AND HOUSE FOR HORSES AND OXEN (SOUTH OF FENCE)

32. The corners of these two buildings are partially covered by the overlapping margin of sheet 5, which suggests that these buildings were drawn at
a time when sheet 5 was as yet not attached to sheet group 1, 2, 3.

[ILLUSTRATION]

33. STAGE 1 OF TRACING

The draftsman faces the Church from the
west and traces the eastern parts of the
Church and Dormitory with their subsidiary
buildings from left to right.

Sheet group 1, 2, 3, sewn and assembled for
the draftsman to work on, is shown with
color tint. Pale red lines indicate Plan not
traced at this stage. Sheets 4 and 5,
illustrated in subdued line, are incorporated
as part of the Plan later as shown in
figure 40.

COMMENTS

In our study of the Plan of St. Gall, over a long
period of years, it has constantly been necessary
to have a line, or base of reference, from which
to take measurements or from which to relate
one element of the Plan with another. The north
row of columns of the Church nave appears to
offer the most satisfactory remaining evidence
on which to establish a kind of base or reference
line. It will be seen on the facsimile reproduction
(see p. 3, n17) that a line drawn between the
center of the most easterly column W (fig. 34) of
the north row of columns establishes probably
the "strongest" line on the Plan. This line,
Z-Z, is shown extended to the border, top and
bottom. Nine columns intermediate between
these two extremity columns E-W, deviate but
slightly from this imaginary line. This line,
incidentally, contains the longest clearly defined
measure of the Plan.

The reference to 300 feet, length of the Church,
elsewhere on the Plan, is not so explicit. The
corresponding row of columns on the south side
of the nave deviates only very slightly more from
a similar line exactly parallel to the line of the
north row. The longitudinal axis of the Church
has been taken as a line midway between and
parallel to these two rows of columns and is
shown on the drawings as a ruled dot-and-dash
line, Y-Y. It is a useful reference line from
which, visually, to detect the presence or absence
of symmetry.

In the following analytic remarks the east-west
geometry of the nave serves as a base from which
deflections or angular relationships are referred.
The axis of the Church has been taken as an
axis of ordinates. Because the north row and the
south row of columns (the piers of the crossing
square are included in the column count) are so
slightly affected by aberrations in tracing, it is
likely that they were among the first items to be
drawn by the draftsman and were completed
(fig. 33) prior to shifting movements made later,
consciously or inadvertently (see note, pp. 48,
49).

As for a convenient reference line (X-X) exactly
at right angles to the nave geometry, the north-south
walls of the Dormitory are satisfactory,
although a wobbly condition toward the south
near the Refectory is noticeable and suggests
that the draftsman was beginning to have tracing
troubles which were to plague him intermittently
from there on to completion. The pair of
north-south walls of the Cellar likewise is
normal to the control geometry of the nave.

STAGE 1 (fig. 33)

Facing the Plan from the west the draftsman started the
drawing on sheet-group 1, 2, 3 with the eastern end of the
Church, moving from left to right and from the top downward
as far as the second pair of nave columns, then in a
southerly direction to the Annex for the Preparation of
the Holy Oil and Bread, the Monks' Dormitory and its
auxiliary buildings, until the south walls of the Monks'
Privy and the Monks' Laundry and Bathhouse were
reached. The irregular course of the lines discloses that
the draftsman worked without instruments, completing
each individual area before moving on to the next one. As he
traced the beds in the southern part of the Dormitory [3],[204]
the overlay apparently slipped slightly to the left about one
module,[205] thus extending this building a little more to the
south than it was meant to be.

The discussion that continues is concerned with tracing
and drafting procedure, with countless movements of hand,
body and pen, which can never be reconstructed with
certainty or uncovered by intellectual process.

The remarks, stages 2-8, with comments in captions for
figures 33-40, are pursued as a valid component of inquiry
into genesis—copy or original?

[ILLUSTRATION]

34. STAGE 2 OF TRACING

Just before the scribe draws the south wall
of the Dormitory, a shift occurs between
original and overlay, causing an angular
deflection between Dormitory and Refectory,
which is transmitted to Cloister Yard, Cellar,
as well as parts of the Church from column
5 westward.

*

LEGEND

Z prime reference nave columns, north row
(line continuous)

y line parallel to Y, Z

Y parallel to Z axis of Church and reference
ordinate (line dot-and-dash)

X reference co-ordinate, normal to Y and Z
(line continuous)

a, c line deflected by angle from reference
ordinate Y(Z) (line dotted)

δ angle of deflection from ordinate Y(Z)

δ′ angle of deflection in excess of δ
[applies to figure 35, page 44]

NOTE

Continuous line system is square with the nave
geometry, i.e., continuous lines are either
parallel or perpendicular to the axis of the
Church.

Dotted line system is square with the angle of
deflection.

STAGE 2 (fig. 34)

As the last lines of the Dormitory were drawn, a second,
more consequential shift took place. This time it was not
in a sideward direction, but was a rotary motion. This may
be inferred in that the Cloister Yard, obviously meant to
form a square, is not quadrate but trapezoidal (fig. 36).
East-west walls of the Refectory [6] are not parallel to the
Church axis, as they should be, but are inclined to it.
Prior to this shift the Church tracing possibly had been
confined mostly to its eastern parts and the columns of the
nave (comments, p. 47) but not including its exterior walls
on the north and south. Tracing of the south side of the
Church began near the nave column pair 3. The effect of
this deflection is shown on the Church north wall, west of
(near) column pair 4. We believe that the draftsman, after
working on the Church, generally peripheral to the area of
the chancel, altar, and crossing, then moved to the uncompleted
part of the Cloister Yard and the buildings
around it, in the sequence of the Refectory, cellar [7], and
Kitchen [8]. The ductus of the lines defining the stave
curvature of the large barrels in the Cellar (decreasing in
strength from east to west) suggests that he still faced the
drawing from the west as he drew this building. This
position would not be an impossible one for tracing the
Refectory.

[ILLUSTRATION]

35. STAGE 3 OF TRACING

After Church and Claustrum were completed the draftsman rotated the skins
counterclockwise by 90 degrees and traced the buildings to the north of the Church,
in the sequence: Abbot's House, Outer School, House for Distinguished Guests,
without correcting the deflection caused by the shift that occurred at the end of Stage 1.
A number of further shifts occurs as this latest portion of the tracing is finished.

STAGE 3 (fig. 35)

The draftsman is positioned to look south. He draws in
sequence: Abbot's House [14,13], Outer School [12],
House for Distinguished Guests [11], and Kitchen, Bake
and Brewhouse for Distinguished Guests [10]. The first
buildings in the sequence have their east-west walls parallel
to the nave geometry. However, the third building [11], its
south half in a deflected position, its north side with a
curious bent wall alignment, may imply a struggle by the
draftsman to correct the angular shift and return to
parallel position. In the fifth building [10], its east-west
(south) wall is deflected to exceed all other angular deviations,
save one, the east-west walls of building [40]. That
he traced these houses facing the Church from the north is
disclosed by the ductus of a good many lines which
decrease in strength as they are drawn from left to right and
from the top to the bottom. The shift between original and
overlay had moved the Abbot's House slightly to the east of
its proper position. The draftsman compensated for this
displacement by drawing the gallery, connecting the
Abbot's House with the northern transept of the Church,
on a slightly slanted, rather than rectangular, course to the
nave geometry.

[ILLUSTRATION]

36. STAGE 4 OF TRACING

The draftsman shifts his skin back into its
original position working from left to right in this
sequence: Hospice for Pilgrims and Paupers [31].
House for Coopers and Wheelwrights and
Brewers' Granary [39], Drying Kiln [29],
Kitchen, Bake, and Brewhouse for Pilgrims,
Paupers [32], and house for Horses and Oxen
and their Keepers [33]—again without correcting
the shift.

STAGE 4 (fig. 36)

When the tract to the north of the Church was finished we
believe that the draftsman rotated the parchment back to
the position of Stages 1 and 2, and then traced buildings
west of the Claustrum probably in this sequence: Hospice for
Pilgrims and Paupers [31], House of Coopers and Wheelwrights
and Brewer's Granary [39], Drying Kiln [29],
Kitchen, Bake, Brewhouse for Pilgrims and Paupers [32],
and house for Horses, Oxen, and their Keepers [33]. The
north-south lines of these five buildings are practically
perpendicular to the nave geometry (west wall of [32] is
deflected), whereas the east-west lines of each of these
buildings follow the same deflection found in the Refectory.
The condition (one set of lines square, the other oblique),
an interesting one, may be evidence of effort by the draftsman
to recover, in part, from the troublesome deflection
described in Stages 1, 2. The ductus of the lines leaves no
doubt. The draftsman faced the Plan from the west as he
traced these houses (thicker ends at the top as the lines
were drawn from east to west, and at the left as they were
drawn from north to south).

[ILLUSTRATION]

37. STAGE 5 OF TRACING

The draftsman swings the skins clockwise by 90 degrees and traces the buildings
that lie to the south of the Claustrum by facing the monastery from the south.
The alignment of these buildings discloses that the shift had been detected and
corrected. The deflection of the south walls of the buildings [28, 27] is similar
to the deflection of the north wall, east end of the Church, line C, figure 34.

STAGE 5 (fig. 37)

When the tracing had reached the stage defined in fig. 36,
the draftsman had become aware of the fact that overlay
and original had moved, and he decided to realign the two
skins. He readjusted the sheets, thus bringing the buildings
south of the Claustrum back into their original position (not
entirely, but nearly so), necessitating a deflection of the
line that connected the south wall of the Drying Kiln
(traced before readjustment) to the corresponding south
wall of the Mortar House [28], the deflected line continued
eastward as the south wall of the Mill [27], to its north-south
wall on the east, at which point it was restored to
normal position and in alignment with the south wall of
the Workshop Annex [26]. The other buildings of this
group appear to have been drawn, generally, from left to
right and from top to bottom in this sequence: Monks'
Bake and Brewhouse [9], Mortar House [29], Mill House
[27], Great Collective Workshop [25], with Annex [26],
and Granary [24]. These buildings have their east-west
and north-south walls perpendicular to each other and are
square with the nave geometry.

STAGE 6 (fig. 38)

The sequence of tracing the buildings on sheet 4 (which we
presume to have been separately drawn and completed
before it was sewn on to sheet-group 1, 2, 3) is difficult
to establish. The most functional approach for the draftsman
would have been to face this section of the Plan from
the east, since this would keep the bulk of the original away
from his body. But tracing the circles of Hen and Goose
Houses [23, 21] required a complete rotation of the skins;

[ILLUSTRATION]

38. STAGE 6 OF TRACING

The buildings east of the Church were
traced on sheet 4 before this sheet was
attached to sheet group 1, 2, 3. The draftsman
apparently drew the buildings from left
to right, facing the monastery from the east.
Evidence of shifts and deflections during the
act of tracing, visible on sheets 1, 2, 3, 5, is
almost absent. The prolonged axis of the
Church coincides with the axis of the
Novitiate-Infirmary complex [17], the walls
of which are square with the axis. Walls of
other buildings on this sheet are square, or
deviate from square no more than would
ordinarily be expected in tracing large sheets.
Sheet 4 adheres closest to perpendicularity
with respect to the nave geometry.

other areas of this tract, especially the Cemetery [y],
suggest that the draftsman may have worked from several
sides. (The southern line of the square that encloses the
cross seems to be drawn from west to east; the northern
line, from east to west.) A slight displacement occurred
when this sheet was sewn on to the center group of sheets.
The axis of the Chapel [17a, b] of the Novitiate [17c] and
Infirmary [17d] lies on the axis of the Church, Y-Y. Where
sheet 4 laps on top of sheet group 1, 2, 3, (figure 24.A), a
total of six building wall lines cross from one sheet to
another sheet. On the Plan, where sheet 5 overlaps sheet
group 1, 2, 3, only two lines cross from sheet to sheet.
Laps made at some north-south lines might have had as
many as 50 or more lines in conjunction. Was the troublesome
problem of conjunction of lines, where sheets overlap,
a consideration in making the copy? Certainly the assembly,
as made, has the least possible number of crossover line
breaks.

[ILLUSTRATION]

39. STAGE 7 OF DRAWING

Like their counterparts in the east the
buildings lying west of the Church were
traced upon a separate piece of parchment
(sheet 5) before this sheet was sewn on to the
center group of sheets (1, 2, 3). The draftsman
faced the monastery from the west as
he drew this portion of the Plan. In the
course of tracing, considerable clockwise
twist took place. The greatest deviation from
square with the nave geometry is exhibited
in the lower right hand corner (southwest).

STAGE 7 (fig. 39)

The last sheet of the Plan to be traced was the tract south of
the Church containing anonymous building [34] in the
northwest corner south of the access road of the Church,
and south of the road, building [38], use uncertain, with
five buildings for livestock and their keepers. Sheet 5
presents perplexing interest. Building [34], literally rectangular,
is also square with the nave geometry, as it ought
to be. Moving southward to the right, access road and
buildings [35, 38], display clockwise deflection which
agrees with that of the Refectory. Continuing southward,
deflections progressively increase in magnitude to their
maximum in [40], in the southwest corner of the Plan.
What gains the attention as one surveys the full expanse
of the parchment is this: the well ordered pattern of the
building layout that pervades the rest of the Plan in all its
parts, apparently goes awry in the lower right corner in an
odd dipping and tilting configuration. An explanation for
this departure from ordered regulation is not obvious.

[ILLUSTRATION]

40. STAGE 8 (FINAL) OF DRAWING

Sheets 4 and 5 have been attached to sheet
group 1, 2, 3.

for LEGEND see figure 34

Z prime reference, nave columns, north row
(line continuous)

Y parallel to Z (line dot-and-dash)

y parallel to Y, Z (line continuous)

X reference co-ordinate, normal to Y, Z
(line continuous)

a line deflected by

δ angle of deflection from Y, Z.

Σδ accumulated deflection

NOTE

Short dash line and X-dash line are lines
deflected greater than δ

It is reasonable to assume that the parchment,
as we know it today, has always been irregular in
shape on the right (south on the Plan), that is,
the shape was not altered by some unexplainable
local contraction or shrinkage. Top and bottom
of the parchment are, respectively, about 92 and
93 per cent of the median width. It is also
reasonable to assume that the original Plan was
drawn with normal consistency in all parts
without distortion (including the lower right
corner) on a parchment generally rectangular
like the left side of the existing parchment.

The Goose House posed no problem to the
tracer since the circular form of its plan fitted
neatly into the irregular shape at this location
(sheet 4 of the asembly).

At the lower right of the parchment there was a
different condition. Buildings 37 and 40, both
rectangular in plan, rather than circular,
suffered in the double set-back from the
general alignment of the south buildings (right)
of the Plan. That the draftsman did not make this
revision quite fit is illustrated by the south and
west boundary fence lines intersecting just
outside of the confining edge of the parchment
(sheet 5).

Conditions here support a belief that the draftsman
was striving to overcome the constrictive
inadequacy of the parchment and that the
angular deviation from square, seen here, in part
at least, is evidence of an attempt to compensate
for inadequate space on which to trace directly
from the original parchment. Thus, the lack of
necessary space invited a degree of irregularity
in tracing that was not inadvertent—a compelling
argument, it seems, that the existing
Plan is a copy.

In other words, to achieve his objective—
fitting an image into a space too small—by
composing all the elements of the original within
the space at his disposal without drastically
changing the size of the buildings not appreciably
altering the scale of the Plan, the draftsman
began making incremental adjustments as
be traced, starting at a point somewhat removed
from the trouble spot at the southwest corner of
the parchment.

His estimate of small incremental adjustments of
contraction and deflection, as he proceeded with
the task, was remarkably successful. Apparent
distortion, and lack of symmetric perfection at
this location are really no less than a brilliant
solution to an impossible task.

E.B.

Slovenliness and deterioration of line quality, the first signs
of boredom, exhaustion, declining interest in the act of
drafting, are not in evidence. On the contrary, the crisp,
neat execution prevailing elsewhere in the Plan persists here.
Ennui and enervation of draftsman do not seem to explain
this problem.[206]

In tracing the buildings the draftsman had to struggle
with the relative opaqueness of the sheet upon which he
traced his copy, or perhaps even with the difficult problem
of holding his sheets in a position that would allow the
reflected sunlight to penetrate the superimposed parchments
with sufficient strength to make the design of the
original readable through the body of the overlay. By
contrast the explanatory titles could be inscribed under
optimal conditions for the writing hand, as the parchment,
with its tracing completed, rested on the hard surface of a
table where the arm found solid support. The calligraphic
precision and firmness of the script leaves no doubt on this
score.

Since some of the inscriptions of sheet-group 1, 2, 3
continue under the overlapping margins of sheets 4 and 5,

the explanatory titles of the center group of sheets, as has
been shown, must have been completed before sheets 4
and 5 were added. It is logical to presume that the inscriptions
of the two outer sheets (4 and 5) likewise were
entered before these sheets were attached to the center
group, since they would be easier to handle separately than
after attachment. In general (but by no means exclusively
so) the scribe's working procedure paralleled that of the
draftsman. The majority of the titles of the Church were
inscribed transversely, the scribe facing the Church from
the west, the position in which the parchments were held
as this building was traced. He rotated the skin counterclockwise
by 90 degrees before inscribing the long axial
title defining the length of the Church, plus the two other
longitudinal titles that list the span of the columnar interstices
of the nave arcades. Still facing the Church from the
north, he inscribed the titles of the Scriptorium and the
Library as well as those of all the lodgings that range along
the northern aisle of the Church (Visiting Monks, Master
of Outer School, and Porter). The titles of the corresponding
rooms on the southern side of the Church were entered
from the opposite direction, which required a counterrotation
of the parchment by 180 degrees. Further rotations
were necessitated by the inscriptions of the semicircular
titles of the two atria as well as the two circular
towers. Again the principle of rotation was used in placing
the inscriptions of the Cloister Yard and the buildings
around it. Here the scribe stationed himself conceptually
in the center of the cloister garth and entered his inscriptions
clockwise, rotating the parchment counterclockwise
beneath his hand as he moved from building to building
around the four corners of the square, until he had made
a complete turn of 360 degrees. Other cases involving
complete rotation are the circular enclosures for the
chicken and geese and the title hic mansiunculae scolasticarum
in the Outer School.

For the rest, i.e., all of the buildings ranging peripherally
around the Church and the claustral block, the scribe
followed the simple procedure of inscribing his titles
facing each respective tract from the outer edge of the
Plan, which relieved him of the need to bend far over the
parchment. Exceptions to this rule are made only in those
cases where the particular shape of a room forced the scribe
to enter his titles at right angles rather than parallel to the
edge of the Plan (typical cases: Abbot's House, and House
of the Fowlkeepers).

There are, however, two notable exceptions: the title
that defines the functions of the large cross in the Monks'
Cemetery, and the letter of transmittal entered on the
margin to the east of the cemetery. They face west, like the
majority of the titles of the Church, thus suggesting that
the Plan was to be primarily viewed from the west. An
inscription that does not fall into the normal pattern is the
title designating the entrance to the Library, perhaps an
afterthought. It straddles the north wall of the fore choir
and faces east, in contrast to all other titles written transversely
into the church.

I. 11

THE CONCEPTUAL
HOMOGENEITY OF THE PLAN

I.11.1

HOMOGENEITY IN QUESTION

On three different occasions, and each time for different
reasons, the conceptual homogeneity of the Plan of St.
Gall has been questioned: first, in 1952 by Hans Reinhardt,[207]
second in 1957 by Erwin Poeschel,[208] and third in
1963/64 by Adolf Reinle.[209]

REINHARDT, 1952

Reinhardt expressed the view that the buildings that
appear on the large rectangular tract to the east and west
of the Church (sheets 4 and 5) were not part of the original
scheme but an afterthought or a later addition. He inferred
this from the fact that sheets 4 and 5 were added to the
center portion of the Plan only after the buildings on the
latter had been delineated and inscribed with their
explanatory titles.[210] Reinhardt's factual observations on this
score were correct and important, but to infer from them
that the scheme of the Plan was a compilation of parts
created at different times involves a confusion between the
conceptual homogeneity of the original scheme and the
physical assemblage of the various pieces of parchment on
which the copy was traced. A monastery could hardly
function without the buildings that appear on the top and
bottom sheets of the Plan, which consist of such basic
and indispensable monastic facilities as the Novitiate, the
Monks' Infirmary, the Cemetery, the House of the
Physicians, the House for Bloodletting, the Vegetable
Garden and the Gardener's House, the houses for the
chicken and geese and their keepers, as well as the entire
aggregate of buildings west of the Church which shelter
the milk- and cheese-producing animals so vital to the
monastic economy. An analysis of the distribution of the
buildings and their respective functions in the monastic
community discloses that there is no conceptual disparity
along the lines that Reinhardt suggests. Some of the most
vital monastic needs are met by installations that lie on
sheet 4 to the east of the Church (Novitiate and Infirmary,
House of the Physicians, House for Bloodletting), whereas
some of the most basic service functions are accommodated
in houses shown on the center portion of the Plan (sheetgroup
1, 2, 3) together with Church and Claustrum
(Granary, Great Collective Workshop, Mill, Mortar,
Drying Kiln, House of Coopers and Wheelwrights, House
for Horses and Oxen and Their Keepers).

POESCHEL, 1957

Poeschel believed that Reinhardt's view of the composite
origin of the Plan was corroborated by the fact that in his

letter of transmittal the author of the Plan of St. Gall
refers to the monastic buildings as officinae, i.e., "workshops."[211]
This, Poeschel argued, can only mean that the
layout of the Church and the Cloister had already been
worked out in a previous drawing and that the Plan of St.
Gall was primarily concerned with the development of the
service structures. It would have been sounder, historically,
to infer from the use of the word officina that the author of
the transmittal note employed this term in the general sense
of "building" or "installation," rather than to take the
radical step of concluding from its occurrence that the
Plan was patched together in separate conceptual stages. A
closer look at the use of the word officina in medieval
literature subsequently proved, indeed, beyond any shadow
of doubt, that the word was employed in this broader sense
—not only in the monastic nomenclature of the ninth
century, but even in the language of the very founder of
western monachism, St. Benedict.[212] "The workshops wherein
we shall diligently execute all these tasks," we are told
in chapter 4 of the Rule, "are the enclosures [claustra] of
the monastery and stability of the congregation,"[213] to which
the ninth-century commentators Basilius and pseudo-Paulus
add: ". . . and properly does he [St. Benedict] refer
to these workshops in the plural form, because the places
in the monastery where the `work of God' is done are
many; one workshop is the place where the Holy Scriptures
are read, another one is the place for prayer, another one
the place where the sick are attended to, and still another
one the place where the dead are buried."[214] The commentary
leaves no room for misinterpretation: "workshop" is a
term that applies to the Church as well as to all of the
claustral structures. It is applicable, even, to the monastic
cemetery.

REINLE, 1963-4

Reinle's reasons for questioning the conceptual homogeneity
of the Plan were of an entirely different order. In
his analysis of the dimensional incongruities between the
Church as it is shown on the Plan and the measurements
listed in some of its explanatory titles,[215] he had come to the
disconcerting conclusion that the drafter of the scheme
made use of no fewer than three different scales:

1. A foot equivalent to 34.0 cm., which determined the
dimensions of the Church and the Cloister.[216]

2. A foot equivalent to 29.2-29.7 cm., used in the
construction of the Novitiate and the Infirmary.[217]

3. A foot equivalent to 30.0 cm., used in the planning
of the guest and service structures of the monastery, as
well as of the Monks' Cemetery and Garden.[218]

These findings, Reinle concludes, show that the Plan is
composed of heterogeneous parts, compiled from several
disparate sources.[219]

I am venturing to add to Reinle's three scales as a fourth
possibility the conjecture that all of his calculations are
wrong. They are advanced not on the basis of a thorough
and exhaustive scale analysis of the Plan, but on the simple
assumption that certain key dimensions of the Plan—such
as the length of the Church or the width of the Cloister
Yard—correspond to certain demarcations on a straightedge
graduated in Carolingian feet, the precise value of
which is unknown. Reinle observed correctly that the
40-foot width of the nave of the Church corresponds to
6.7-6.8 cm.[220] This he considers to be the equivalent of
one fifth of a Carolingian foot: 33.5-34.0 cm. Here again
he allows himself to be trapped in an anachronism. The
medieval foot, as will be amply stressed, was not divided
into fifths but into twelfths.[221] Reinle's reason for believing
that the large building to the east of the Church, which
contains the Novitiate and the Infirmary, was drawn on a
scale different from that used in the layout of the Church
is that none of the principal internal parts of the Novitiate
and the Infirmary can be understood as a fraction of the
Carolingian foot of 34.0 cm.[222] The answer to this is very
simple. It cannot—because Reinle's reconstitution of the
Carolingian foot used for his construction of the Church is
wrong. The same criticism can be extended to the other
deviational scale that Reinle believed he recognized in the
layout of the guest and service structures of the Plan of
St. Gall.

Reinle's attempt to question the conceptual homogeneity
of the Plan of St. Gall appears no more convincing than
those of Reinhardt and Poeschel. It is also no less distressing.
Like them it violates, on inadequate grounds, the very spirit
of the historical forces that produced the Plan.

I.11.2

THE CAROLINGIAN CONCEPT OF
CULTURAL UNITY (UNITAS):
A COUNTER ARGUMENT

Recent studies have made it clear that the scheme for an
exemplary monastery that is known to us through the
Plan of St. Gall was a statement of policy drawn up on
the highest levels of political and ecclesiastical administration
and conceived within the framework of a monastic
reform movement whose overriding preoccupation was to
establish unity (unitas) where life had been controlled by
disparate traditions (diversitas), to put "a single rule"
(una regula, una consuetudo) in the place of the mixed
tradition (regula mixta).[223]

It is an historical incongruity to propose that a document
conceived in this spirit would have been patched together
from fragments drawn in disparate scales, thus perpetuating
in its technical execution the very disorder that it strove to
overcome on a conceptual level.

The two synods of Aachen did not deal specifically with
the needs for uniformity of scale and measures. Yet
chronologically, the Carolingian battle for standardized
weights and measures even antedates the monastic reform.
The capitularies of Charlemagne abound with directives
promulgated for the purpose of establishing unity where
diversity prevailed. In his Admonitio generalis, issued on
March 23, 789, the emperor rules "that everybody shall
make use of the same and correct measures and of just
and equal weights, in the towns as well as in the monasteries,
whether selling or buying."[224] The capitulary of
Frankfurt, issued in June 794, speaks of a "recently
established royal modius" (modium publicum et noviter
statutum);[225] and from the celebrated book of instructions
to the managers of royal estates, the Capitulare de villis,
we learn that standard molds for such measures of capacity
were kept in the royal palace.[226] Again in 802 Charlemagne
entreats his missi to see to it that "just and uniform
measures" be employed throughout the empire.[227] It was in
the pursuit of the same drive toward uniform standards
that the emperor dispatched special messengers to Monte
Cassino for the purpose of finding the precise weight of the
pound of bread (libra panis) and the measure of wine
(hemina) that St. Benedict had assigned to the monks as
their daily allowance.[228] The insistence with which the
capitularies reiterate the need for uniformity of weights
and measures bears witness to Charlemagne's profound
preoccupation with binding rules in such matters. Directives
to maintain established standards and severe warnings
against their adulteration were reissued by Charlemagne in
806[229] and 813,[230] and by Louis the Pious in 820,[231] 829,[232]
844,[233] and 847.[234]

It is true that practically all of the measures specifically
mentioned in these ordinances are measures of weight and
capacity: the "peck" (modius), the "sixteenth part of a
peck" (sextarius), the "bucket" (situla), and the "basket"

(corbus).[235] These measures were essential for the barter and
trade, which formed the basis for the entire Carolingian
economy. They would be the first to be singled out, if a
general principle would have to be illustrated by specific
examples. But it would be absurd to presume that measures
of length were not an implicit part of these directives. The
drive for uniformity was programmatic and universal. It
pervaded the whole of the political, administrative, economic,
and spiritual life of the Carolingian era, both under
Charlemagne and Louis the Pious.[236] On the highest level
the aim was the "unity of the empire." A precondition of
the unitas regni was the "unity of the church." The unitas
ecclesiae, in turn, depended on uniform standards of
conduct (una consuetudo) both for the secular clergy and
for the monks. A blueprint for this unity (forma unitatis)[237]
were the directives for canons and canonesses which were
framed in the synod of 816 and the rules controlling
monastic life which were issued at this same council and
at the synod of 817.[238] The importance of these events for
the whole of the state was underscored not only by the fact
that these directives emerged from assemblies that were
held in the royal palace of Aachen[239] but also that they were
subsequently promulgated by the emperor himself in the
form of official capitularies and thus acquired the character
of public laws.[240]

Surely enough, no truly binding unity might ever have
been attained in all of these segments of life and on all
levels. But to propose—as Reinle's theory of the multiplicity
of scales in the Plan of St. Gall implies—that a blatant
violation of these concepts of unity would have been perpetrated
in a document of paradigmatic significance, drawn
up in the palace itself under the eyes of the country's
leading bishops and abbots, appears to me to be an incongruous
historical assumption.

It is an incongruous assumption even on simple visual
grounds. In his reliance on precision instruments and
modern slide rules Reinle has neglected a powerful tool of
visual analysis: the human eye. For to the naked eye the
consummate conceptual and technical homogeneity of the
Plan reveals itself with infinitely greater strength than
could be disclosed by any mechanical devices. The order
in which the buildings are arranged is immaculate throughout
the entire width and length of the Plan. Since the
Plan is traced without the aid of a straightedge or the
benefit of a compass, it is full of minor irregularities. Yet
despite these shortcomings—inevitable in a freehand tracing,
and especially one of such bulky dimensions—one
cannot fail to observe that each building was developed
within the boundaries of a superordinate building site in
careful alignment with its companion structures, and that
the aggregate of these larger building sites of the Plan form
a mosaic of perfect order and rationality. This order is tight
and consistent. It does not show, at any place, the kind of
break or formal incompatibility that one associates with an
architectural composition pieced together from heterogeneous
parts.

I. 12

METHOD OF RENDERING

I.12.1

USE OF DIFFERENT COLORS FOR
DRAWING AND EXPLANATORY TITLES

All linear work on the Plan is rendered in a clear vermilion
ink which has retained its original intensity. The lines are
traced without the aid of instruments, in firm and fluent
strokes suggesting that the draftsman had experience with
this type of drawing. The textual annotations are written in
a deep-brown ink, bordering on black. In the crossing,
transept, and forechoir of the Church, brown ink is also
used to thicken the architectural line (fig. 99), obviously
with the intent of clarifying the basic spatial divisions of
the Church, which are somewhat blurred in this area by the
heavy concentration of stairs, altars, benches, and choir
screens.[241] It is impossible to say whether this was done at
the time the Plan was copied, or at a later stage, preparatory
to its use in actual construction.

The Plan of St. Gall is not the only Carolingian manuscript
where a vermilion red is used for the delineation of
buildings. The Zentralbibliothek in Zurich has among its
holdings an early ninth-century copy of Adamnan's book
De locis sanctis,[242] written in the scriptorium of the monastery

[ILLUSTRATION]

42. THE CHURCH OF MOUNT SION

ZURICH, Zentralbibliothek

Codex Rhenaugensis LXXIII, fol. 9v

[courtesy of the Zentralbibliothek, Zurich]

of Reichenau (Cod. Rhenaug. LXXIII), which displays the
plans of a group of Early Christian pilgrimage churches of
the Holy Land drawn, it seems, by the hand of Walahfrid
Strabo,[244] viz., on fol. 5r, the Holy Sepulcher Church of
Jerusalem (fig. 41); on fol. 9v, the Church of Mount Sion
(fig. 42); on fol. 12r, the Ascension Church on Mount
Olive (fig. 43); and on fol. 18v, the cruciform church of
Samaria (fig. 44). As on the Plan of St. Gall, so here, the
architectural plans are drawn in red, while the explanatory
titles are written in black. This suggests that red might
have been the preferred color for architectural drawings in
the early Middle Ages.

I.12.2

COMBINATION OF VERTICAL AND
HORIZONTAL PROJECTION

All buildings and installations shown on the Plan are
rendered in vertical line projection. In certain instances,
however, to this projection is added a straight-on view,
showing the elevation of a wall as though it were lying flat
on the ground. Examples of this are: the arcaded walls of
the cloister walks (Monks' Cloister [fig. 191], Novitiate and
Infirmary [fig. 236]), the arcuated porches of the Abbot's
House (fig. 251), and details such as the crosses on the
altars of the Church (fig. 251), or the monumental cross in
the graveyard (fig. 430). In tracing these elements the
architect made use of the mason's age-old habit of sketching
architectural elevations on the ground when explaining the
design of a building to an apprentice or a client. The method
was even more familiar to carpenters, who not only laid out
but actually cut, assembled, and jointed many of their roof-supporting
trusses on the ground before raising them into
the vertical plane with pulley and ropes.

The designer of the scheme of the Plan employed this
device with discretion—only in places that offered sufficient
space to use it without obstructing other architectural
features or blurring the general clarity of the Plan. In this
manner he succeeded in conveying to the builder, in unmistakable
language, not only the design but also the exact
proportions of the great galleried porches that surrounded
the cloister yards and served as connecting links between
the claustral buildings.

The combination of vertical and horizontal projection in
one and the same architectural drawing or plan probably is
a principle as old as architecture itself and common to all
periods. It was firmly established in Egyptian art and was
there refined to a point where it depicted not only the
planimetrical layout of the buildings with which it was
concerned, but also the human events that took place in
these settings. This led to compositions of great complexity,
in which features drawn in elevation (favored because of
their ability to tell a story more fully and more conspicuously)
tended to overcrowd and blur the plan.[245] The house
shown in figure 45.A-B is a simple and easily readable
example of this tradition. Others are not so susceptible to
easy interpretation.[246]

It is not so widely known that an admixture of vertical
and horizontal projection is also found in Roman architectural
drawings, although there it is not used with comparable

[ILLUSTRATION]

43. CHURCH OF
THE ASCENSION ON MOUNT OLIVE

ZURICH. Zentralbibliothek. Codex Rhenaugensis LXXIII, fol. 9r

[courtesy of the Zentralbibliothek, Zurich]

[ILLUSTRATION]

44. CRUCIFORM CHURCH OF SAMARIA (ISRAEL)

ZURICH. Zentralbibliothek. Codex Rhenaugensis LXXIII, fol. 18v

[courtesy of the Zentralbibliothek, Zurich]

profusion. This can be inferred from the famous
Forma urbis, the now-fragmentary plan of Rome that was
incised in marble during the reign of Emperor Septimius
Severus, between A.D. 205 and 208.[247] Generally rendered in
vertical projection (typical examples are shown in fig. 46),
this plan shows arcuated elements incised in elevation in at
least three different places, each time in connection with the
representation of an aqueduct (fig. 47.A-C).[248] As on the Plan
of St. Gall this delineation of arch forms occurs only in
relatively uncluttered areas of the Forma urbis; in more
crowded sections a more compact symbol of piers, or bars
connected by two curved lines, is used (fig. 47.D-F) for
aqueducts as well as other types of arches.

I.12.3

LACK OF DEFINITION OF WALL
THICKNESS

The walls of the buildings of the Plan of St. Gall are
rendered as simple lines. This fact has given rise to two
widely held assertions of questionable validity. One of
these, voiced as early as 1848[249] and frequently reiterated, is
that the designing architect failed to give any consideration
to wall thickness. The other, more recently advanced, is
that any preoccupation with wall thickness would have been
intrinsically incompatible with the ideal character of the
Plan.[250] As far as the first of these two contentions is concerned,
attention must be drawn to the fact (generally overlooked
in previous discussions of this point) that there are
two significant exceptions: the bases of the columns in the
nave of the church and the foundations of the arcade piers
in the western paradise are rendered as squares, in their full
planimetrical extension. Second, although the draftsman
drew his walls in simple lines, there is clear indication that
he was fully aware of the complications that might arise in
the actual erection of buildings drawn in linear projection
in such areas of the site where the masonry in two adjacent
structures would congest the available building space, unless
special provisions were made to forestall that eventuality.
The fact that the aisles of the Church are 22½ feet
wide and not 20 feet, as their titles prescribe, finds its
explanation, as will be shown later on, in the draftsman's
awareness of this danger.[251] Yet even here he does not go so
far as to draw the walls with two parallel lines, but guards
himself against cluttering his plan with unnecessary details
by simply moving his wall lines farther outward and thus
introducing a safety margin of 2½ feet on either side of the
Church. His decision to render the walls of the buildings by
single rather than double lines has little to do with the ideal
or paradigmatic nature of his subject, but is clearly conditioned
by the small scale of the Plan. Even today, as Konrad
Hecht has pointed out correctly, an architect faced with the
design of a project of similar complexity, drawn at a comparable
scale, would invariably choose the same method.[252] It was for this very reason that the architects who designed
the monumental marble plan of the city of Rome chose

[ILLUSTRATION]

46.A.B.C. FORMA URBIS ROMAE

ROME, ANTIQUARIUM COMMUNALE DEL CELIO

[after Carettoni, Colini, Cozza, and Gatti, Rome, 1960]

These fragments are of a plan of the city of Rome, etched in marble during the reign of Emperor Septimius Severus, between A.D. 205 and 208.
This plan, incised on numerous marble slabs, was installed near the Forum of Peace, on the wall of a building which before the fire of 192
served as municipal archives. A probable outgrowth of the emperor's fiscal reform, the plan may have served as a monumental compilation and
permanent record of numerous archival and boundary maps. Mounted on a base 4 meters high, the plan itself covered a surface about 42½ feet
(13m) by about 59 feet (18m), an impressive area of ca. 2,500 square feet (234 sq. m). It was drawn at a scale of 1:240, occasionally varying
to 1:245.

The walls of the overwhelming majority of buildings are drawn in single-line projection. A typical example of this method is shown in A, a
marble fragment showing the plan of the Horrea Lolliana and adjacent structures (fragment 25; Carettoni, pl. XXV). Exceptions to the rule are
found in the rendering of the plans of temples, where the cellar walls are indicated by parallel lines, as is shown in fragments 31bb and 37a,
delineating the temples of Argentina and Juno (IBID., pls. XXIX and XXXII, respectively).

single-line definition as their standard mode for rendering
walls.[253] When the Romans were faced with the task of
drawing the plan of an individual building, at a larger scale,
they defined the walls in thickness by two parallel lines, as
was done on the marble slab of Claudia Octavia, now in the
Museum of Perugia (fig. 48), and on a number of other
Roman fragments displaying house plans.[254]

This mode of rendering is of great antiquity and we can
safely assume that it was used at all times in all civilizations.
It existed in Egypt at the side of the more pictorial representations
of the type exemplified by figure 45.A, as is clearly
displayed by the detail of a house plan of the New Kingdom
shown in figure 49. Indeed the most accomplished plans
of this kind, as Ludwig Borchard has pointed out, were
probably those which Egyptian architects chiseled in full
size into the pavement of sacred sites, to be used as guidelines
for the masons who built the walls of the temples that
rose in these places.[255] The designers of the Forma urbis
were not entirely consistent in their use of the single line,
but interspersed it with a small number of buildings where
walls are defined by parallel lines. This was done, it seems
without exception, in the rendering of temples (here
exemplified in figures 46.B-C)[256] and it looks very much as
though this departure from the regular method may have
been motivated by the desire to throw into visual prominence
buildings of a strictly religious nature. The designer
of the Plan of St. Gall could have introduced a similar variation—the
church plans in the Cod. Rhenaug. LXXIII
(figs. 41-44) show clearly enough that the definition of
wall thickness by means of parallel lines is fully within the
range of working patterns of a Carolingian architect. If he
chose to stay away from this type of rendering, he did so
predominantly for stylistic reasons, viz., the desire for
homogeneity of design and, above all, an unwillingness to
clutter up his plan with parallel lines that could be confused
with benches, or run parallel to benches, as they would have
done practically everywhere along the walls of the Church.

I.12.4

DIFFERENTIATION OF LEVELS IN
DOUBLE-STORIED STRUCTURES

Whether a building on the Plan is a single- or a double-storied
structure cannot be inferred from its linear layout.
Structures of several stories are designated as such by their
explanatory titles. One must infer from this that other
buildings, which are without such explanations, are one-storied.
The multi-level buildings are: the Dormitory (fig.
208), the Refectory (fig. 211), and the Cellar (fig. 225), the
Abbot's House (fig. 251), the choir and crypt of the Church,
the Sacristy and the Vestry, the Scriptorium and the
Library (fig. 99). In projecting the design of these buildings
onto his parchment, the draftsman is not consistent, but
switches from the rendering of the ground floor to that of
the second story, whichever is of greater interest to him.
Thus, he depicts the layout of the Refectory with its tables
and benches in full detail and merely indicates with the
inscription supra uestiarium that the Refectory is surmounted
by an upper level serving as storage for the
monks' clothing (fig. 211). In the case of the Dormitory
(fig. 208) he follows the opposite procedure. He depicts the
layout of the upper story with the beds of the monks and
explains with the inscription subtus calefactoria dom' that the
building has a lower level, which is occupied by the warming
room of the monks. Conversely, in the case of the Cellar
(fig. 225), he dwells with loving care on the two impressive
rows of wine and beer barrels set up on the ground floor,
and suggests by the legend supra lardariū. &' necessariorū
repositio that the Cellar is surmounted by the Larder. In
only one case, namely that of the choir and the crypt, are
elements of two levels combined on the same surface. The
area is of crucial importance from a liturgical point of view,
and the draftsman uses this device to make absolutely sure
that it is clearly understood in what manner the pilgrims
are given access to the tomb of St. Gall.

The designers of the Forma urbis Romae also seem to
have felt free to switch from the predominantly ground-floor
layout method to an ideographic rendering of the
superstructure, when this was a more interesting and
significant aspect. Buildings such as the Colosseum (fig.
50.A) or the Theater of Marcellus (fig. 51.A) are rendered in
bird's-eye view, or in a combination of bird's-eye view and
planimetrical projection. Thus in the Colosseum a sequence
of elliptical lines defines the four major sections of the
theater, corresponding to the podium and the three maenia
for the spectators, suggesting rows, yet not specifically
representing them in their actual number.[257] In the representation
of the Theater of Marcellus (fig. 51), in addition
to the semicircular tiers of seats and the passage ways
(praecinctiones) by which these are separated, there is a
complex system of fan-shaped passages that intersect the
seats radially. Some of these represent the ascending stairs
in the superstructure that connect the three tiers (cavea) of
seats (and would have been visible to anyone seated in the
theater); others show the hidden ramps (cryptae) in the substructure
(not visible from above) that give access to the
upper deck through openings (called vomitoria, because
they "spit out" the masses of spectators into the galleries).
This is an ideogrammatic contraction on one and the same
plane of elements belonging to different levels and not
visible simultaneously from the same point of inspection.
A comparison of the portrayal of these two buildings on the

[ILLUSTRATION]

47.A,B,C,D,E,F FORMA URBIS ROMAE, FRAGMENTS

ROME, ANTIQUARIUM COMMUNALE DEL CELIO

[after Carettoni et al., 1960, vol. II]

A. Fragment 517. Four arches of an aqueduct shown in elevation (Carettoni, pl. LII).

B. Fragment 223. Five arches of an aqueduct shown in elevation, perhaps the Aqua Alsietina (IBID., pl. XLII).

C. Fragment 612. Sequence of arches of an aqueduct shown in elevation, changing direction at an obtuse angle (IBID., pl. LVI).

D. Fragment 215. Series of arches of an aqueduct, with arches shown in vertical projection by curved lines connecting with piers (IBID., pl. XLI).

E. Fragment 413. Aqueduct arches shown in vertical projection by curved lines connecting with crossbars (IBID., pl. XLVIII).

F. Fragment 480. Aqueduct with arches shown in vertical projection by curved lines connecting with crossbars (IBID., pl. L).

* position of fragment not identified

Forma urbis with modern architectural drawings of the same
subjects (figs. 50.B and 51.B) shows in the rendering of these
details how little they conform to a consistent scale or to
dimensional accuracy—and how difficult it is (especially
in the case of the Marcellus Theater) to determine what
belongs to the upper deck and what to the supporting
structure. To render the relationship of all these elements
in accurate planimetrical projection would have necessitated
making as many separate plans as there are different stories
in each building (or a combination thereof as is done in
figs. 50.B and 51.B), which was clearly beyond the scope and
function of the Forma urbis. In his rendering of the Colosseum
the designing architect confined himself to portraying
in a crudely abbreviated form what a spectator
would have seen of the elliptical seating arrangement of this
amphitheater, had he hovered vertically above it. In his
portrayal of the Theater of Marcellus, by contrast, he made
an attempt to combine distinctive features of the substructure
(not visible from above) with distinctive features
of the upper deck (visible from above) without making it
clear what belongs to one, what to the other.

The conception of the Plan of St. Gall is highly superior
in this respect. In his layout of the transept and the presbytery
of the Church (fig. 99), where the component parts of
several levels are shown in simultaneous projection, the
author defines the interrelationships so clearly that the eye
finds no trouble in establishing that the presbytery is
raised above the level of the transept by seven steps and
that the vaulted arms of the ambulatory corridor crypt lie
beneath that level. He makes it unequivocally clear that the
longitudinal arms of that crypt run along the outer surface
of the choir walls and terminate in a transverse arm that
gives access to the tomb of St. Gall. He leaves no doubt
about the length and width of these arms.

With all of this I do not mean to imply that a Roman
architect might not have been equally proficient. To place
this entire problem into proper historical perspective the
reader must here be reminded of the fact that the Forma
urbis was not only drawn at a considerably smaller scale
(1:240) than the Plan of St. Gall (1:192), but also that it
included buildings of exasperating constructional complexity
and most important of all, that it was never meant
to serve as a building plan to be used in construction; it
was more in the nature of a real estate record. Considering
its scale and its purpose, it renders with admirable conceptual
simplicity the layout of such complex structures as
the Colosseum and the Theater of Marcellus.[258]

I.12.5

LACK OF SPECIFIC INFORMATION
CONCERNING BUILDING MATERIALS

The Plan does not give explicit instructions for the materials
with which the individual buildings were to be constructed.
All installations are rendered in a uniform line,
and this line may stand for a masonry wall, a wooden fence,
the outlines of a bench or a table, or a seedling bed in the
vegetable garden. It is fairly obvious, however, both in
view of the peculiarity of their design and the prevailing
building customs, that stone construction was envisaged
for the nuclear claustral structures: the Church, with its
columnar order, its circular towers, and apses; the Cloister,
with its round-arched galleries and portals, as well as the
monastic buildings directly contingent to the Cloister; the
Dormitory, the Refectory, and the Cellar. To these should
be added the complex that contains the Novitiate and the
Infirmary with its round-arched cloister walks and round-apsed
chapels, and, finally, the Abbot's House with its
arcuated porches. Whether masonry can be postulated for
any of the remaining structures is a controversial question
to which special attention will have to be given later in this
study.[259]

I.12.6

DIFFERENTIAL ATTENTION IN THE
RENDERING OF DOORS

An interesting case of discrimination between buildings of
lesser and greater importance can be observed in the
rendering of the doors. Throughout the whole expanse of
the Plan the location of a door is designated by two short
strokes intersecting the walls at right angles. In buildings
of major importance, the wall line stops as it reaches the
first crossbar and takes a fresh start in the center of the
opposite bar

. In buildings that hold a
lesser rank in the religious or social hierarchy of the
monastery the wall runs through as a continuous line, and
the crossbars simply intersect it

[ILLUSTRATION]

. This is,
of course, a faster way of rendering, which the draftsman
first substituted sporadically for the more exacting manner
as his hand got tired in the tracing of individual structures,
and then consistently as he turned from the primary to the
secondary buildings. In the Church (fig. 55), the most
important building of the Plan and the first to be traced,
there is only one instance of the abbreviated form: one of
the passages in the barrier that connects the penultimate
freestanding pair of columns, significantly enough, in a
place where the line straddles the seam of two connecting
sheets of parchment. In the atrium west of the Church there
are two more cases: the two openings in the wall that connect
with the passages of the two towers. There is none in
the Abbot's House (fig. 251), nor the Outer School (fig.
407), and only one in the House for Distinguished Guests
(fig. 396), one of the entrances to the stables of the horses.

[ILLUSTRATION]

48. MARBLE SLAB OF CLAUDIA OCTAVIA

PERUGIA, MUSEO ARCHEOLOGICO NATIONALE DELL' UMBRIA

[courtesy Soprintendenza alle Antichǐtà dell' Umbria]

The slab displays the plan of a sepulchral monument (large building, right), and the house of its guardian (smaller building, left). The third
plan (in center, and at top) shows the basement of the guardian's house. Walls are rendered by two parallel lines; doors are indicated by
continuation of the outer line or by interruption or bending of both wall lines. Stairs are indicated varyingly as a sequence of parallel lines or as
two converging lines. The dimensions of the room are designated by Roman numerals. Gatti, who analyzed the plans, came to the conclusion
that they were drawn in three different scales: that of the sepulchral monument at the scale of 1:84; those of the guardian's house at the scales
of 1:140 and 1:230, respectively (see Carettoni ET AL, 1960, I, 210).

The incidents increase as the draftsman works himself
through the claustral structures, and thereafter the abbreviated
method of rendering becomes routine. The first
building drawn entirely in this style is the Hospice for
Pilgrims and Paupers (fig. 392). In some of the more
important guest and service buildings, such as the Great
Collective Workshop (fig. 419), and the House for Horses
and Oxen and Their Keepers (fig. 474), the two methods
are judiciously combined: the disrupted line for the principal
entrances, the undisrupted line for the secondary
doors. In the buildings to the east of the Church the continuous
line is standard; the disrupted line, the exception.
And in all of the buildings that lie to the west of the Church,
there is only one occurrence—obviously accidental—of the
disrupted line, in the House for Sheep and Shepherds and
Their Keepers.

I.12.7

THE PLAN IN HISTORICAL
PERSPECTIVE

The method of rendering used in the Plan of St. Gall is
closely related to that displayed in the great marble plan
of the city of Rome made under Emperor Septimius
Severus, and belongs to the same historical tradition of
rendering. Functionally, these two plans have little in
common. The Forma urbis delineates an existing condition,
the layout of a grown city. The Plan of St. Gall does not
define how it is, but how it should be. These differences,
however, had little, if any, effect on the manner in which
the two plans were rendered.

Like the architects who designed the Forma urbis, where
wall thicknesses are indicated in a few judiciously selected
categories of building, the author of the Plan of St. Gall
would have been fully capable of rendering the walls of his
buildings in full thickness. Like the former, he chose not
to employ this method for the same reason an architect
today would use single line projection instead of double line
projection for the rendering of walls, namely, the complexity
of his subject and the smallness of the scale in which
it was drawn. There is good evidence that the Forma urbis
was still in place on the walls of SS. Cosmas and Damian
in the Carolingian period,[260] and thus could have been seen
by the Frankish emperors who visited Rome and the
architects who traveled in their following. Moreover, there
are more substantive reasons for thinking that the designer
of the Plan of St. Gall was familiar with the layout of the
city of Rome.[261]

If it was the purpose of the Plan of St. Gall to depict on
a single spread of parchment the layout of the buildings and
furnishings of a paradigmatic medieval monastery, it would
be hard to improve upon the method of rendering that the
designer chose in order to accomplish this task. One of the
most successful features is the freeness and flexibility of
mind with which the designer switches from the rendering
of the ground floor to the rendering of an upper level—

wherever the complexity of the layout of the upper floor
suggested such action—and chooses to explain the nature
and function of the repressed story with the aid of an
explanatory title. To do it differently would have required
supplementary drawings. Even from a purely technical
point of view the Plan of St. Gall is a highly sophisticated
document. It tells the story of a very complex architectural
situation with ingenious simplicity. One of the designer's
overriding preoccupations was the retention of clarity in
the over-all appearance of the settlement. He was detailed
where attention to detail was imperative in the light of
function; but he did not hesitate to omit almost entirely
such features as stairs where their delineation would have
impaired the clarity and easy readability of the primary
elements of his drawing.

With all its medieval idiosyncraises, the Plan of St. Gall
has a surprisingly modern flavor. Its analytical precision
and clarity compare favorably with any modern site plan
drawn at a comparable scale. The designer did not hesitate
to enliven his plan with elevations in a few places, where
this method promised to convey his thoughts more fully;
but in departing in this manner from his general mode of
rendering he proceeded with a deep sense of discrimination
and with conspicuous self-restraint. Above all he carefully
resisted any temptation to indulge in architectural pictorialism.
This quality is strikingly revealed if one compares
the Plan of St. Gall with the twelfth-century plan of the
Waterworks of Christchurch Monastery at Canterbury
(fig. 52) where everything is shown in elevation as in a
child's drawing.

[ILLUSTRATION]

50.B FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATRE (COLOSSEUM)
PLAN

ROME, ANTIQUARIUM COMMUNALE DEL CELIO

[after Durm, 1885, 344, fig. 310]

This composite plan of the Colosseum shows four different levels.

[ILLUSTRATION]

50.A FORMA URBIS ROMAE

ROME, ANTIQUARIUM COMMUNALE DEL CELIO

[after Carretoni, 1960, vol. II, pl. XXIX]

These fragments show the seating arrangement of the Colosseum as if
seen from above.

COMMENT:

for figure 50.A and FORMA URBIS ROMAE, generally

The illustration, using the lower portion of the graphic scale graduated 0-100
metres, scales 186 metres on its major axis. This compares with 187.5 metres
(615 feet) commonly given for the length of the Colosseum, a variance of less
than 1 percent between present day measurements and the sculptured mural
version that records the measurements of engineers at a time when the plan
was cut in place in stone.

FORMA URBIS ROMAE stands as a remarkable demonstration of the state of
the art of drawing, with knowledge not only of measure, but the skill of taking
measurements and translating these measurements precisely into a graphic
configuration of great accuracy. Far exceeding any practical function, such as
a cadastral plan for administrative purposes, must have been its effect on the
mind of the beholder. The impact on a viewer of the plan of Rome, incised in
stone for all time, spread across a wall 59 feet wide and rising, on its base,
to 56 feet, could not but impress even the most sophisticated Roman. For the
visitor from beyond the hills of Rome and from lands afar, the effect could
not have been less than overwhelming.

The conjecture is tempting, that the sculptural mural map may have been
seen, if not by the great Carolus himself, by learned men of his court and
soldiers of his entourage in the course of their duties in Rome.

A record of achievement, symbol of law and order and authority, invincible
and eternal, it seemed without doubt, and a fitting inspiration as well, for an
emperor and his sometimes loyal and always ambitious followers.

The comparative scale, included with the illustration, compares the scale of the
sculptured plan above, the line (40 cm), with the actual "on the ground"
measure (100 m), below. The ratio, 41.7 cm. to 100 m, is almost 1:240.
The ratio between the scale of illustration 50.A and the Colosseum computes
at about 1:951.7 (derived from the relation between 19.7 cm = 187.5 m).
Thus the illustration is about ¼ the size of the rendering of the plan on the
sculptured wall.

1/952/1/240 = 240/952 = 1/3.98 [or ¼]

I. 13

OMISSIONS AND OVERSIGHTS

I.13.1

INTENT OR INADVERTENCY

It would be incongruous to expect that a plan comprising
forty buildings and other installations, such as a cemetery
and gardens, would be free of omissions or oversights. A
few of these do indeed exist, but for absolute errors one
looks in vain. The majority of missing features, which
might appropriately be termed omissions, appear, however,
to have been left out by intent rather than by neglect or
inadvertence.

Most conspicuous among these are: the lack of consistent
attention to stairs and privies; the absence of any suggestion
of waterways to operate the monastery's water-driven
machinery and to dispose of the monastery's waste; and,
perhaps, the absence of a peripheral wall enclosure.

I.13.2

STAIRS

The traditional assertion that "stairs are omitted altogether"
on the Plan[262] is incorrect. Where stairs are vital to the
liturgical service or are of an extraordinary construction,
they are delineated with the greatest care. Two flights of
seven steps (septem gradus, similiter) lead from the crossing
of the Church to the forechoir (fig. 99). The altars in the
transept rise from platforms that are raised by two steps
over the pavement of the transept arms (fig. 99). The apse
of St. Peter at the western end of the church is raised by
one step over the contiguous pavement of the nave (fig.
84); the same condition is found in the two apses of the
church of the novices and the sick. Finally, the altars of St.
Michael and St. Gabriel at the top of the two circular
towers are made accessible by a circular stair, the winding
course of which is delineated by meticulously drawn spirals
(fig. 84).

On the other hand, one observes with some surprise that
the large double-storied buildings of the monks, which
surround the cloister, contain not the slightest suggestion
of stairs. We do not know at which point and by what
means the monks entered the Vestiary, above the Refectory
(fig. 211), or the Larder, which lies above the Cellar (fig.
225). The structure which houses Dormitory (above) and
Warming Room (below) has four exits. One of them, a
passage leading to Bathhouse and Laundry, is designated by
its title as issuing from the Warming Room. The others
may refer either to ground level or upper story—or to doors
located one above the other on two levels. The Privy was
probably on Dormitory level with cesspool and running
water beneath, but might also have been accessible from
ground level by stairs connecting Warming Room and
Dormitory internally (for suggestions how this might

[ILLUSTRATION]

ROME. THEATER OF MARCELLUS

51.B [after Calza-Bini, 1953, facing p. 15]

Plan showing substructure and two lower tiers of seating. The memorial was built by Augustus, and dedicated to Marcellus in 13 B.C.

51.C [after Calza-Bini, 1953, p. 14]

Plan showing two upper tiers of seating and gallery.

[ILLUSTRATION]

51.A FORMA URBIS ROMAE

ROME. ANTIQUARIUM COMMUNALE DEL CELIO

51.A [after Carretoni, 1960, vol. 11, pl. XXIX]

Group of fragments (no. 13) shows the semicircular rows of seats in the Theater of Marcellus, and the vaulted ramps and stairs by which they
are made accessible, as though they were lying on the same plane, interweaving parts that in the building itself belong to several different levels.

have been accomplished see below pp. 253 and 261; also
cf. fig. 192).

Likewise, in the Abbot's House (fig. 251) we are not told
from what point and by what means the Abbot reached the
solar and other rooms located in the upper level of his
residence. These details the designing architect left to the
ingenuity of the builder—perhaps to protect the Plan from
being overloaded with particulars. It is to policy decisions
of this kind, bringing relief to areas that required minute
attention to other details, that the Plan owes its extraordinary
over-all clarity.

I.13.3

DOORS AND WINDOWS

The location of all exits and entrances is treated with the
greatest care, not only the opening by which each individual
structure is made accessible from the outside, but also all
the doors giving access, internally, from one room to
another. There are altogether some 290 doors shown on the
various buildings of the Plan, and only five true oversights
that I can find: two doors in the House of the Gardener
(fig. 426)[263] and three in the Monks' Bake and Brew House
(fig. 462)[264] are not shown.

The architect does not lavish quite the same degree of
attention on the designation of gates that give access from
court to court through enclosing fences. Here, as in the
case of the privies, he appears to discriminate between the
higher and lower levels of monastic polity. A gate in the
passage that connects the Abbot's House with the Church
(fig. 251) permits the Abbot to inspect the buildings lying
east of the Church, and at the same time admits the novices
and the sick to the Church on the days of the great religious
festivals.[265] A gate in the fence that separates the grounds of
the House of the Physicians from those of the House for
Bloodletting insures that the physicians have free access to
the structures that come within their professional care.
Gates in appropriate places of the enclosure of the Outer
School (fig. 407) permit the headmaster to communicate
with his own quarters (addorsed to the northern aisle of the
Church) and allow the students to attend the divine services
by passing through the quarters of the visiting monks into
the northern transept of the Church.

Yet one looks in vain for gates in any of the fences that
enclose the various installations of the large service yard in
the western tract of the monastery site, with its stables and
houses for the emperor's staff. Here, again, I believe we
cannot speak of these omissions as oversights. The draftsman
was eager to make it clear that these installations
should be surrounded by walls or fences, but the builder,
as he adapted the elements to the terrain, would have to
determine exactly where these enclosures should be made
accessible by gates.

He used the same discretion in the designation of
windows. Arcaded openings are delineated with the greatest
care (Monks' Cloister, cloisters in the Infirmary and the
Novitiate, porches in the Abbot's House);[266] and to make
unmistakably clear what he had in mind, he switched from
vertical to horizontal projection. In all other instances,
windows are omitted—with one exception, the Scriptorium
(fig. 99), where to neglect the appropriate conditions for
lighting would have had disastrous consequences.[267] Openings
for ventilation are indicated in the Monks' Privy (fig.
497), again to stress an important functional need. Had
windows been shown in such buildings as the Dormitory,
the Refectory, and the Cellar, they would have impaired
the clarity of the internal layout of these structures. In the
majority of the other houses, windows could not even be
expected, because these houses belonged to a building type
that had no windows, as we shall show later.[268]

I.13.4

FIREPLACES AND LOUVERS

The primary device for heating the guest and service
buildings of the Plan of St. Gall, as will be shown later,[269] is
an open hearth (locus foci) located in the exact center of the
house; above it in the ridge is a lantern or louver (testu)
for the escape of smoke and for light and air. In most of the
larger houses these two devices are entered very carefully;
but in some they are omitted, most conspicuously so in the
workshops of the wheelwrights and coopers, and the workshops
of the goldsmiths, blacksmiths, and fullers. Again, I
do not think that these are oversights. Rather they stem
from the draftsman's desire to avoid endless reiteration of a
feature that had been clearly established in all of the truly
important houses of the Plan, and could, therefore, be
taken for granted, the more so in installations where fire
was needed not only for warmth, but also for professional
reasons.

I.13.5

WATERWAYS

The availability of a good water supply was a prime condition
for the proper functioning of a monastic settlement.
This was expressed in unmistakable terms by St. Benedict[270]
and can be inferred from countless later accounts of the
selection of suitable sites for new monastic settlements.

Most monasteries were built in the immediate vicinity of
a stream. When, toward the middle of the sixth century,
Cassiodorus the Senator founded the monastery of
Vivarium near his ancestral home of Scyllacium, in
Calabria, Italy, he established it on the river Pellena,
deflected its flow so that it brought drink to the brothers,
serviced the monastery's garden and mills, and filled the
ponds (vivaria) for the stocking and breeding of fish.[271] In
like manner, during the reign of King Pepin (751-768),
when Count Wilbertus and Countess Ada searched for an
appropriate site for the new monastery of Lièssies, they
gave primary consideration to the availability of "water for
the running of the mill, the serving of the bakery, kitchen,

garden, and the other monastic workshops."[272] Even the
hermits were dependent on a good supply of water. St. Gall,
in 612, established himself with full deliberation at the side
of a pool which nature had carved beneath a waterfall of
the river Steinach, in Switzerland, and which he had found
to abound in fish. And a century later when this cell of the
Irish missionary was converted into a cenobitic monastery
by Abbot Otmar (719-759) it was—again deliberately—
erected at the side of this stream.[273] Elaborate waterworks
are known to have been installed by Sturmi (744-799) in
the monastery of Fulda to provide the brothers with drinking
water and to create the required slope for the sluices
which carried the water to the mills.[274]

In general the water required for the sustenance of the
community and the operation of its water-driven works was
diverted from this stream at the upper side of the monastery,
conveyed to the monastic workshops through a carefully
constructed system of flues, and then directed back to
the bed of the stream at a lower level, carrying with it all
of the monastery's waste. In many English abbeys of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, where the buildings themselves
have disappeared, the course of the waterways is now
completely exposed, and can be studied under ideal conditions.[275]
When a stream of running water was not available
nearby, the supply had to be brought in from a distant
source by means of an aqueduct.[276]

Such a system of aqueducts existed at the Canterbury
monastery and is depicted on two large sheets of parchment,
now inserted (with somewhat trimmed margins) into the
famous Canterbury Psalter of the Library of Trinity
College, Cambridge.[277] Drawn around 1165, probably by
Wibert (d. 1167) who engineered the system, these drawings
(one of which is shown in fig. 52.A) trace the course of
the water from its source in the surrounding countryside
through five settling tanks—located in cornfields, vineyards,
and orchards—to a circular conduit house; thence,
through a passage in the city walls into the precinct of the
monastery itself. There is branches out into several separate
subterranean systems serving the monastic houses and
workshops, and finally it empties into the large sewers from
which the waste is carried into the town ditch.[278]

A literary parallel to this depiction of a medieval monastic
water system is to be found in Book II of the Vita prima
sancti Bernardi, written in 1153 by Arnold of Benneval,
who refers to the reconstruction of the monastery of Clairvaux
after St. Bernard's return from Rome in 1133 and the
construction of its waterworks as follows:

The Plan of St. Gall nowhere suggests the existence of
any waterways. But it would be incorrect to infer from this
that the availability of water and its distribution throughout
the various monastic shops and houses was not a factor of
first importance in establishing their sites. The majority of
the privies are so placed that wastes can be sluiced through
straight channels, and the water-driven mills and mortars
are located at the monastery's edge, where water of an
adjacent stream was apt to be within easy reach. All other
shops and houses are placed in such a manner as to tie them
without difficulty into a logical and simple water system.

Figure 53 shows how easily a well-planned system of
waterways could be superimposed upon the Plan of St.
Gall.

[ILLUSTRATION]

52.A PLAN OF A WATERWORKS:

CANTERBURY, CHRISTCHURCH MONASTERY

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

This plan of Christchurch waterworks, together with a supplementary and unfinished
plan of the extra-mural parts of the same waterworks, is inserted as a foreign leaf in
the famous Canterbury Psalter (Cambridge, Trinity College Library, ms. 110, fols. 284b
and 285). The plan dates around 1165 and was probably drawn by Wibert (d. 1167).
It is reproduced here slightly reduced from its original size of 11⅝″ × 16⅝.

For a detailed description and a brilliant analysis of the principles of delineation used in
making this extraordinary drawing, see Willis, 1868, 158ff and 176ff. Additional
literature is cited in James, 1935, 53.

[ILLUSTRATION]

52.B PLAN OF A WATERWORKS: AN INTERPRETATION

CANTERBURY, CHRISTCHURCH MONASTERY

[analysis by Willis, 1868, modified by Wysuph, Horn, Born, 1975]

[ILLUSTRATION]

52.C DESCENT BY GRAVITY FROM SUPPLY SOURCE
AT A HIGHER LEVEL TO TERMINAL
DEBOUCHEMENT

The delineation of Christchurch Monastery tells more as pictorial representation, and
of architectural appearance, than it reveals of functional building planning: waterways
shown are schematic. The document shows a water source on high ground, east of the
Monastery, flowing through five (settling?) tanks in cornfields, vineyards, and orchards,
through the monastery wall to Laver I (east cloister), thence to Laver II (Great
Cloister), thence returning on the east to Laver III. This waterway, with Lavers I,
II, III, may be taken as the primary supply system (solid blue line in Plan and
Diagram). Three secondary branches (segmented blue line) are designated on Plan
and Diagram as 1, 2, 3.

Branch 1 leaves the main line between Lavers I and II, flows southward to a
cemetery fountain, then on to debouche in the Piscina. Branch 2 flows northward
from Laver II to a point south of the Brewery where it turns abruptly eastward to
serve the monk's bathhouse, then flows southward to a tank or catchbasin (M) on the
drainage line (solid red line). Branch 3, departing where Branch 2 flows eastward,
serves the Brewery. A short eastward leg serves the Bakery, a short westward leg, the
Abbot's House. From Laver III, at the end of a short extension eastward, the
primary line terminates, draining into the Piscina (blue dotted line).

In addition to the potable supply system a scheme of drainage (red), more or less
polluted, is discernible. Originating in the Great Cloister, it descends southward and
terminates beyond the walls on the north.

The interpretation (figs. 52.B, 52.C) assumes that the drainage line (red), descending in
a short arc from Vestiarium to abut the roof line on the infirmary complex, continues
directly northward through or under the structure to join the drainage system (from
Piscina and tank M) at or near the Infirmary toilets; thus, non-potable water never
comes in contact with the Piscina.

I.13.6

PERIPHERAL ENCLOSURE WALL

Whether built of wood or stone, or simply in the form of a
hedge, the outer monastery wall is an intrinsic expression of
the concept of monastic seclusion. In 320, when St.
Pachomius founded the earliest Christian coenobium in
Tabennessi near Dendera in the Upper Nile Valley, he
surrounded it with a wall,[280] perhaps not so much for
defensive purposes as for insulating the monastic enclosure
from the noise and impurities of the secular world. The
wall became the symbol of monkish self-determination and
collective integrity.[281] Medieval texts distinguish time and
again between that which is "within" (infra, intrinsecus) or
"without" (extra, extrinsecus, foris, subtus, juxta), which
presupposes a separating enclosure.[282] In Irish and Anglo-Saxon
monasteries this enclosure often consisted of earthen
ramparts with a moat or ditch in front and a wooden
palisade above,[283] or even more simply, just a hedge of thorn
(sepes magna spinea, quae totum monasterium circumcingebat),
as at the monastery of Oundle, a foundation of Wilfrid.[284] A
wooden palisade enclosure existed at the monastery of
Lobbes as late as the twelfth century,[285] but from the end of
the eighth century, monastery walls were with increasing
frequency built of stone;[286] and from the end of the ninth
century, many of these walls assume a distinctly defensive
function (murus in modum castri).[287]

In view of these facts, the absence of a peripheral wall
enclosure on the Plan of St. Gall presents a puzzle. Was it a
feature so self-evident to the inventor of the scheme that he
did not bother to include it? Ot should we presume that it
existed on the original, but was omitted in the copy?

There are two reasons why I believe that it existed on the
original. First, the fences that separate the grounds of the
houses to the north and the south of the Church were useless
unless they connected with a peripheral wall enclosure.[288]
Second, our analysis of the scale and construction
methods used in the Plan will show that the location of the
axis of the Church as well as the major site divisions of the
monastery are related to a system of framing lines (fig. 62),
which on the original would only have meaning if they
defined an outer wall enclosure.[289]

The copyist might have dropped this feature for various
reasons: for one, simply because his sheet of parchment
was not large enough to include it; for another, because a
rectangular wall perimeter may have been meaningless on
the reconstruction of the monastery of St. Gall for which
the copy was to be used. The monastery of St. Gall was
wedged into an irregular area shaped by the capricious
course of the Steinach, whose steep embankments may
have served as an acceptable substitute for masonry walls
for a considerable stretch along the southern and eastern
boundaries of the monastery site. No such natural defenses
existed to the west and to the north, where the terrain is
flat. Yet even here there must have been a clear demarkation,
either architectural or topographical, between the
grounds of the monastery and the grounds of the secular
settlement that had begun to rise around it. There is
documentary evidence for the existence, in Carolingian
times, of a protective perimeter of masonry walls. When the
monastery was attacked by the Magyars in 926 the monks
found themselves compelled to throw up a temporary system
of heavy defense (castellum fortissimum) on the spur of a
nearby mountain.[290] This has been interpreted to mean that
the monastery was not sufficiently fortified to block their
advance.[291] It was doubtlessly in response to this alarming
event that Abbot Arno, in 953-954, decided to construct a
masonry wall with thirteen towers (muros . . . cum turris
tredecim) that encompassed not only the monastery, but
with it the entire city (urbs) of St. Gall.[292]

I.13.7

PRIVIES

With regard to privies either the designer of the original
scheme or the copyist was guilty of an oversight. The
apartment of the master of the Infirmary and the adjacent
room for those who are critically ill (fig. 236) lack this
facility. It is obvious that privies of the same design as
those provided for the master of the novices and for the
sick room of the novices were needed in the Monks'
Infirmary in the portion that corresponds exactly to the
Novitiate.

In all other cases where privies are missing, I believe
they are left out intentionally.[293] More will be said about this
in the chapter on monastic sanitation.[294]

I.13.8

KITCHEN FOR SERFS AND WORKMEN

The ensemble of buildings shown on the Plan of St. Gall
includes no fewer than six kitchens: the Monks' Kitchen[295]
(drawn with all of its furnishings), the Abbot's Kitchen,[296]
the Kitchen for the Novices,[297] the Kitchen for the Sick,[298]
the Kitchen for the Distinguished Guests,[299] and the
Kitchen for the Pilgrims and Paupers.[300] In view of the
meticulous attention given to the need for all of these
installations, we are surprised to note the absence of a
kitchen and dining hall for laymen. The aggregate number
of serfs, workmen, and servants living within the monastic
enclosure, as a rule, exceeded that of the monks.[301] Where
did they eat? Clearly, not in the Refectory. This would be
impossible not only because there is no entrance into the
Refectory for the serfs and servants; but also because a
regulation of the Second Synod of Aachen (817) prescribes
"that laymen should not be conducted into the refectory
for the sake of eating and drinking" (Ut laici causa manducandi
uel bibendi in refectorium non ducantur).[302]

Emil Lesne's contention[303] that the meals of the servants
were not prepared in the Monks' Kitchen is right, in my
opinion, if for no other reason than because of the differences

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL

WHAT SCHEME OF WATERWAYS?

The Plan invites speculation concerning the water supply for the needs of the monastic
population and the removal, beyond the confines of the site, of wastes and waters polluted
by man and beast. The Plan does illustrate, as a paradigmatic concept, the composition
of structures. But what conditions, topographic, hydrographic, climatic (winds, snow,
rain) governed considerations for site selection?

Essential to the operation and good health of the monastery were good drainage, an
adequate supply of potable water, and a well-functioning scheme of sanitation, all
conditions related to the type of terrain. The site illustrated in figure 53 is entirely
assumptive. Contours provide downslope to the south: a downslope to the west of
about 15 feet in the length of the Plan is shown, (roughly 0.25 inch per foot, or 25
inches per 100 feet). That of 83 privies shown on the Plan, 74 are on or near the
north and east boundaries, may or may not allude to planning for odors as related
to prevailing winds, or to a system by which, for most of the privies, excreta could
be removed by water-carriage for building sites on terrains where generous slope and
abundant water supply existed.

Besides solid wastes, sewage comprises water fouled from baths, kitchen use, lavatories,
and also surface drainage from rain or snow. These fluid wastes may have been
removed by surface channels, or by subsurface conduits, probably of terra cotta made
with nesting joints (such as present day "bell and spigot" clay pipe). Drinking
water is best distributed by conduit with tight or sealed joints to prevent leakage and
contamination from without. These two waterways, supply and waste, must be
distinct and separate at all points through their full length.

Bronze and lead, and sometimes wood, were used for piping by the Romans. Delivery
of drinking water by horse drawn tank or barrel was possible. Probably all of these
materials and modes of water supply and disposal of sewage were in use for a
monastery of the period and, no doubt, varied according to the availability of materials,
the skill of local craftsmen and the level of technology of the region.

On sites where no water was available for sluicing of sewage, surface or underground,
excreta was probably disposed in pits or middens, and treated with ashes or floor dust
and sweepings, then removed at intervals and applied as manure on neighboring
ground. From the agricultural view this was sound practice; from the view of hygiene,
not to be tolerated. Nevertheless, such practice existed and exists today in some
communities.

While the 50 privies along the north boundary suggest planning for a system of
sewage removal, the mills and mortars on the south boundary imply the presence of
a running stream as a power source for their operation.

It is notable that only those buildings of the Plan designated for occupancy by clerics
or by men of noble status are provided with privies. The various buildings for essential
services to the monastery, including services requiring high expertise (cooking, beer
and wine making, goldsmithing, etc) have no privies. These men, about 70 percent
of the monastery population, made shift for themselves according to the customs of
the time and the regulations of the establishment.

The nine privies in Building 4, the Monks' Toilets (adjacent to Building 3, the
Monks' Dormitory) attached to the core of the Plan, pose a problem for sewage
removal. A surface sewage ditch does not seem likely here in the midst of clean
water lines; removal from this central location in underground conduit by water
would be no small feat even if feasible. The proximity of these privies to the Monks'
Vegetable Garden X and the Monks' Orchard Y may indicate that an agricultural
destination for human wastes produced in Building 4 was intended.

Figure 53 suggests how, within the scheme of topography shown, supply lines could
penetrate the east boundary of the site. Interior branches we do not show.

The Plan of St. Gall, by the careful ordering of its structures, could adapt well
to an engineered system of water supply and waste drainage consonant with the state
of the art of the plumber and the sanitary knowledge of the time.

E. B.

SCALE: ⅛ ORIGINAL SIZE (1:1536)

in diet of monks and servants. The monks were forbidden
to eat meat; the servants were not.[304] To provide two
completely different menus in a kitchen not more than 30
feet square for about 300 people[305] would not have been
feasible.

The 370 pigs that the monastery of Corbie hung in its
larder annually were for the serfs, the guests, and the sick.[306]
Abbot Wala of Corbie (826-833), in his list of monastic
officials, mentions a cellerarius familiae, i.e., a cellarer for
the laymen, who is subordinate to the prior, and provides
the monastery's servants with their drink.[307] Hildemar (845850)
in his commentary to the Rule of St. Benedict refers
to a monk whose special task was to take care of the serfs'
needs for food and drink.[308] Yet nowhere in the vast body
of Carolingian consuetudinaries, or for that matter in any
other contemporaneous sources as far as I know,[309] is there
any evidence for the existence of a kitchen for laymen.

The Plan of St. Gall, I believe, enables us to solve this
puzzle. It suggests that the meals of the serfs and the
servants were cooked in their own houses, which differ
from those of the monks in that they were furnished with
hearths and in this way equipped for the cooking of meals.[310]
The serfs apparently continued within the monastic enclosure
to eat as they had before they entered the monastery's
service and to live in the same kind of houses.

Had the serfs and workmen eaten at a common table,
their considerable number would have required the monastery
to have been provided with a dining hall and kitchen
even larger than that provided for the monks. The absence
of such structures on the Plan cannot be interpreted as an
oversight or omission, because presumably the dining
arrangements were handled in quite a different way.

It would nevertheless be unreasonable to assume that
every layman cooked his own meals. In fact, this was probably
not even done by every group of servants living
together in a given house. It is more logical to assume that
the meals for the lay servants were prepared and eaten in
two or three of the larger service structures strategically
located so as to accommodate people living in different
parts of the enclosure. I feel this view is supported by an
unusual arrangement in the House for Horses and Oxen
and Their Keepers.[311] This house is provided with a large
central hall with benches all around its walls, offering sitting
space for forty-three people (fig. 54). The hearth is three
times as large as the hearths in the other houses and
has inscribed into it an

-shaped symbol, which
might well stand for the kind of boom or rigging that in the
Middle Ages was used to hang pots over open fires. It is
here, in my opinion, that the meals were cooked and eaten
by all the serfs and herdsmen who lived west of the Great
Collective Workshop.[312] The latter house, too, may have
served a similar purpose. It is occupied by men of higher
skills and its yard is separated from that of the herdsmen
by a conspicuous fence. A third center of this kind may
have existed in the area of the gardeners and the fowl-keepers.[313]

[ILLUSTRATION]

54. PLAN OF ST. GALL

HOUSE FOR HORSES AND OXEN (BUILDING 33, SEE PLAN PAGE XXIV)

The hall of this building (DOMUS BUBULCORUM ET EQUOS SERUANTIUM) may have served as kitchen and dining space for herdsmen of this
and other houses. Its unusually large hearth, and benches ranging around the walls, offering seating for over forty people, appear to attest
communal use of this space.

[ILLUSTRATION]

56. PLAN OF ST. GALL

Plan of Monastery Church as interpreted by
Ostendorf [after Ostendorf, 1922, 42, fig. 53]
(Illustrated above at about 1:600)

[ILLUSTRATION]

55. PLAN OF ST. GALL

Plan of Monastery Church, shown ½ original size,
scale 1:384

I. 14

SCALE & CONSTRUCTION
METHODS USED IN DESIGNING
THE PLAN

I.14.1

INCONSISTENCIES BETWEEN THE
DRAWING AND THE
EXPLANATORY TITLES

In 1848 Robert Willis first expressed the view that the Plan
of St. Gall was not drawn to scale and should be considered
merely as a diagrammatic scheme.[314] Since then the question
of its measurements and construction method has become
the subject of a perplexing controversy. Although in the
course of this dispute practically every leading architectural
historian of the Middle Ages has had his say, no unanimity
has yet been reached in this matter.[315]

The controversy was caused by the fact that the dimensions
given in the explanatory titles of the Church (the only
place on the Plan where dimensions are listed) could not be
brought into agreement with the manner in which the
building is drawn. The titles that contain these dimensions
are written by the main scribe,[316] four in the small and finely
articulated minuscule in which most of the other legends of
this scribe are written, and one in a widely spaced capitalis
rustica. They are (fig. 55):

1. In the longitudinal axis of the Church, written in capitalis rustica, in groups of two and three letters, so as to extend
the entire length of the Church:

traditionally transcribed as:

and accordingly translated:

2. In the nave, written crosswise, midway between the altar of the Holy Cross and the ambo:

3. In the aisles, in line with the preceding title:

   

Latitudo utriusque porticus	pedum xx
The width of each aisle	[is] 20 feet

4. Between the interstices of the columns of the nave arcades the distich:

   

Bis senos metire pedes interque columnas	[southern row]
Ordine quas isto constituisse decet	[northern row]

5. In the interstices of the piers of the western Paradise the hexameter:

[ILLUSTRATION]

59. PLAN OF ST. GALL. MONASTERY CHURCH DETAIL, FACSIMILE RED PRINT

The south transept arm of the Monastery Church (A) is shown in original size (scale 1:192).

The superimposition of lines at 2½ foot intervals running north-south (B) and east-west (C) demonstrate that internal area divisions are
calculated as multiples of a 2½-foot module. The complete 2½-foot modular grid (D) forms a conceptual prime condition for laying out all
values smaller or larger than 40 feet.

Many other students of the Plan have observed that a
conflict exists between the figures defining the width of the
Church and those which are given for its length. If a scale
is constructed on the basis of the 40-foot width of the nave
and applied to the length of the Church, the over-all
dimensions of the latter would come not to 200 feet (as is
stipulated in No. 1), but to 300 feet; and if the same 40-foot
scale were applied to the interstices of the two great
columnar orders, the axial distance from the column to
column would not amount to 12 feet (as stipulated in No.
4), but to 20 feet, since the drawing shows this span as
being exactly one-half the width of the nave. How is this
conflict to be resolved?

I.14.2

PREVIOUS INTERPRETATIONS

CONTRADICTORY TITLES NOT PART
OF THE ORIGINAL SCHEME

Two of the earlier students of the Plan, Hugo Graf[317] and
August Hardegger[318] proposed to solve these inconsistencies
with the assumption that the explanatory titles were not
part of the original textual annotations of the Plan but were
inserted at a later time, presumably when the plan was
subjected to a final revision before the actual construction
of the church by Abbot Gozbert in 830. Bischoff's palaeographical
analysis of the inscriptions has disproved this view
by establishing that the titles that list the dimensions of
the Church were written by the same hand that wrote the
letter of transmittal, whose writer refers to himself explicitly
as the author of the Plan.[319] The measurements, for this
reason, cannot be ascribed to a revision undertaken by
Abbot Gozbert or any of his builders. Their inconsistency
with the drawing is an intrinsic feature of the Plan itself.

THE TITLES NOT THE DRAWING REFLECT
THE INTENT OF THE ORIGINAL SCHEME

In attempting to explain this disturbing incongruity
three further theories have evolved. One group of students
of the Plan proposed that the linear layout of the Church
was only a schematic concept and that the true intent of the
draftsman was revealed not in the drawing, but in the
accompanying explanatory titles. The main proponents of
this view are Georg Dehio,[320] Joseph Hecht,[321] Wilhelm
Pinder,[322] Hans Reinhardt,[323] and Wolfgang Schöne.[324] All
made an attempt to reconstruct what they believed to be
the author's "true intentions" by modifying the plan of the
Church in the light of the measurements listed in its
explanatory legends.[325]

THE DRAWING NOT THE TITLES
SHOULD BE TRUSTED

A second group of scholars, comprised of Wilhelm
Effman,[326] Friedrich Ostendorf,[327] Ernst Gall,[328] Edgar
Lehman,[329] Otto Doppelfeld,[330] and Wilhelm Rave[331] chose
to give credence to the drawing rather than to the explanatory

[ILLUSTRATION]

58. Diagram illustrating sedecimal division of Roman and medieval inch, obtained
by binary section of each preceding value.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. MONKS' DORMITORY

A. Facsimile reproduction of the red drawing of the Plan (see caption, page 13, vol. III)

B. Same, with 2½-foot module superimposed

C. Probable scheme by which the layout shown in A was constructed

After the area analyzed in Fig. 59, the
Monks' Dormitory embodies the next most
obvious proof that in designing the Plan, the
maker used an accurately graduated scale.
The basic unit of this scale, the 2½-foot
measure, the designer obtained by halving four
times in succession the width he assigned to
the nave of the Church, its transept, and all
the basic claustral structures (see pp. 89-90
and Ernest Born's diagrams and captions,
pp. 92-93).

A 2½-foot module was a felicitous
size for the basic unit of measurement
applying to a settlement the size of the
monastery of the Plan. It was large enough
to account for critical space (seating,
sleeping) and small enough to obviate the
need to draw in excessive detail, and thus to
cloud the view of the community's buildings.
With a practical understanding, the maker
of the Plan rounded up his dimensions to the
next higher—never the lower—module:
furnishings or features that might, when
installed, lay in size between one and another
module, were drawn to the larger size.

This choice was deliberate. The beds of the
Monks' Dormitory, and all other places
where beds are depicted on the Plan (Abbot's
House, House for Distinguished Guests,
Dormitory for Visiting Monks), are examples
of it. All these beds are assigned a width of
one module and a length of three. One module
2½ feet (30 inches) might be considered
adequate for the width of a monk's cot,
but three modules totalling 7½ feet seems
overly long. However, the space of two
modules, 5 feet, would surely have been too
short for a grown man. The longer increment
allowed the designer to indicate just how
many were expected to sleep in a space the
size of the Dormitory; to suggest a possible
bed arrangement while permitting enough
more space to accommodate furnishings; and,
by accumulation of "extra" measure,
ultimately to account for space required by
such constructional features as wall thick-
nesses and staircases, nowhere specifically
indicated on the Plan. Such issues would have
been resolved as a function of supervision
in actual construction, decisions delegated
to an experienced artisan who not only could
understand and interpret the Plan and its
maker's intentions, but who also knew how
to deal with practicalities of building a
wing to house 76 men. More discussion of
these issues is offered, pp. 112-13, and II,
225ff.

60.

titles. To them the Church with the thickness of its
walls reconstructed, would have looked as it is shown in
figure 56 (a proposal made by Ostendorf).[332]

Doppelfeld, the most articulate exponent of this group,
has proposed that the inconsistencies between the drawing
and the measurements given in the explanatory titles can
be easily resolved if one were to assume that the scribe who
wrote these legends converted the figure 300 (in Latin,
CCC) into 200 (in Latin, CC) by inadvertently dropping
one of the C's; and that he committed a second error by
confusing a d with an s and thus inadvertently converting
the crucial word bis denos ("twice ten," equaling twenty) of
the intercolumniary legend of the arcades of the nave of
the church into bis senos ("twice six," equaling twelve). If
these errors of the copyist are corrected, Doppelfeld concluded,
all the discrepancies between the drawing and its
explanatory titles would disappear, and the text and drawing
would endorse one another.[333]

Doppelfeld had another reason for believing in the trustworthiness
of the drawing: his own excavations beneath the
pavement of Cologne Cathedral which had brought to light
the foundations of a Carolingian monastery church whose
dimensions were virtually identical to those of the Church
of St. Gall.[334]

THE INCONSISTENCIES NOT PART OF THE
ORIGINAL CONCEPT BUT A CORRECTIVE MEASURE

Doppelfeld's argument was persuasive, and it was based
on a hypothesis subsequently proven to be correct, namely,
that the Plan of St. Gall is not an original but a copy.[335] Yet
even before this fact was established, Doppelfeld's view
was challenged by Walter Boeckelmann.[336] The incompatibility
between the drawing and the explanatory titles,
Boeckelmann contended, was not the product of an erring
scribe, but the reflection of a conflict that had arisen at the
council of Aachen, held in 816,[337] between the bold dimensional
thinking of the old ecclesiastical leaders who had
shaped the policy of the church under Charlemagne and
the constrictive views of the leaders of the reform party
who controlled the church under Louis the Pious. A plan
worked out by the "old guard" had come under the
criticism of the reform party. The dimensions listed in the
explanatory titles were not meant to explain the drawing,
but to correct it. And since the proponents of these corrective
measures did not take it upon themselves to revise the
drawing in the suggested sense, "the disagreement was not
solved in the Plan, the conflict remaining preserved."

Boeckelmann's view, in my opinion, is correct. It reconciles
more of the conflicting traits of the Plan than any of
the previous hypotheses. More recent investigations have
shown that there indeed existed a serious ideological split
at the synods of Aachen between an old conservative group
of churchmen and the leaders of the reform party, which
affected other aspects of the Plan.[338]

CONFLICTING VIEWS ON SCALE OF THE PLAN

But Boeckelmann's theory was challenged, in turn, in
1965 by Adolf Reinle,[339] who came forth with a new interpretation
of the textual incongruities of the Plan that
departed radically from all views previously expressed on
this subject. The meaning of the axial title of the Church, so
Reinle contended, is not as is generally assumed,

but rather,

Reinle arrived at this interpretation in the following
manner:

1. PED̄, he maintained, must not be transcribed as
PEDUM (genitive plural of pes = "foot"), but as PEDA or
PEDIA (imperative form of the verb pedare or pediare = "to
measure in feet").[340]

2. LONGĪT̄. must not be read as LONGITUDO (nominative
of the noun longitudo = "length"), but as LONGITUDINE
(ablative form of the noun longitudo = "in length").[341]

3. .CC. is not the simple cardinal figure ducentum =
"two hundred," but must be interpreted as a multiplicative
term, in the sense of ducenties = "two hundred times."
Reinle, accordingly, transcribes the title:

and purports this to mean

or

This interpretation is untenable on two counts: first, it is
based on an improper textual exegesis; and second, it
ascribes to the ninth century a method of defining architectural
scale relationships that does not antedate the French
Revolution.[343]

[ILLUSTRATION]

61. PLAN OF ST. GALL

CHURCH AND CLAUSTRUM

The 40-foot module is superimposed upon the facsimile
red drawing (shown ½ original size; 1:384)

IMPROPER TEXTUAL EXEGESIS

It is apparent that Reinle's interpretation of the axial title
of the Church has been undertaken without reference to the
Latinity of the other titles of the Plan and their system of
graphical abbreviations. The Plan, as we have seen,[344] is
furnished with some 340 separate entries of varying length,
the majority in prose, the remainder in verse. The prose is
lucid and not susceptible to misinterpretation at any point.
The verses are often flowery in style, but their syntax and
sense are always clear. There is nothing equivocal about the
distich that defines the interstices between the columns of
the nave arcades (No. 4) or the hexameter that defines the
interstices between the piers of the western Paradise (No.
5). And there is nothing equivocal about the style or syntax
of any of the other titles of the Plan. It is inconceivable
within the total context of these legends that the drafter of
these texts would have framed one of the most crucial lines
of his commentary in so sloppy a manner as to mislead
some seven generations of Latinists into interpreting as a
simple designation of length what he meant to be a ratio of
scale.

If PED̄ had been meant to stand for PEDA, the scribe would
have found himself compelled to make this clear by spelling
the word out—as he had done in title 4 (metire) and title 5
(moderare) where this form is used—in view of the fact that
PED̄ is the traditional abbreviation for PEDUM. By the same
token, he would have had to make it clear that LONGĪT̄
stood for LONGITUDINE, rather than allowing it to be read as
LONGITUDO. And if the capital letters CC were meant to
convey the meaning "two hundred times," rather than the
figure 200, the scribe would have had to make this clear,
since such a use of the letters would have differed distinctly
from their traditional usage. The need for this clarification
would have been the more pressing because clearly all of
the other dimensional titles on the Plan are designations of
simple linear length. No reader of the Plan can fail to notice
that the syntax of the longitudinal title of the Church (No.
1) and the two titles that describe the width of the nave and
the aisles (No. 2 and 3) is identical. Each consists of a
subject (LONGIT[UDO], Latitudo, Latitudo), a prepositional
phrase (AB ORIENTE IN OCCIDENTE[M], interioris templi,
utriusque porticus), and a predicate phrase (PED[UM] .CC.,
pedu[m] xl, pedum xx). The verb est is missing, but is
implicit in the text, and it is, therefore, entirely proper to
translate these respective passages (1, 2, 3, above) as:

What was it that induced Reinle to engage in such arbitrary
textual exegesis? This question takes us to our second
main objection:

ANACHRONISM IN MENSURATION

Reinle believes he has discovered that the Plan of St. Gall
was drawn at a scale of 1:200.[345] He is not the first to
advance this view. Wilhelm Rave had expressed himself
along similar lines in 1956,[346]
and Emil Reisser likewise, in a
study published posthumously in 1960.[347]

The Plan is, indeed, drawn to a scale that comes close to
what we would define today as a ratio of 1:200. But it is one
thing to observe that the Plan was drawn at a scale that
corresponds or comes close to the ratio of 1:200; it is quite
another to claim that it was actually drawn at that scale. In
proposing this view, Reinle is caught in an anachronism.
The concept 1:200 is not a medieval concept and does not
make sense within the medieval system of mensuration. If a
modern architectural drawing is said to be laid out at a
scale of 1:200, this means that one unit on the drawing
corresponds to 200 identical units on the ground. The base
of this ratio is decimal. A medieval architect could not have
expressed himself in these terms, since the two basic units
of measurement with which he worked, the foot and the
inch, were internally divided not into tenths, but into
twelfths and sixteenths (a system that still persists in
England and the larger Anglo-Saxon world) or into
twelfths and twelfths (the pied royal de France, which was
used in France until the introduction of the metric system).[348]

The foot and its primary subdivision, the inch, were
derived from the human body.[349] Twelve thumb-breadths
of a fully grown man equal the length of his foot (fig. 57).
This is the raison d'être for the twelve units of the English
foot. The French word pouce, the Old French poulcée, the
Latin pollex—all meaning "thumb"—reflect the history of
the genesis of this measure. Like the English foot, the
Latin foot consisted of twelve units[350] "Inch," Anglo-Saxon
ynce, comes from Latin uncia = "a twelfth"; and
the duodecimal graduation of the Roman foot is reflected
in the series: uncia = 1/12;

                   

sextans	= 2/12 or ⅙
quadrans	= 3/12 or ¼
triens	= 4/12 or ⅓
quincunx	= 5/12
semipes	= 6/12 or ½
septunx	= 7/12
bes	= 8/12 or ⅔
dodrans	= 9/12 or ¾
dextans	= 10/12 or ⅙
deunx	= 11/12

[ILLUSTRATION]

62. PLAN OF ST GALL: SHOWING 40 FOOT MODULE SUPERIMPOSED UPON
THE ENTIRE SITE OF THE MONASTERY

The human body does not offer reliable guidance for
divisions smaller than the breadth of a thumb. These
smaller units could only be obtained by instrumental
operations, and the simplest, easiest, and for that reason,
probably the oldest, way of graduating a distance into a
sequence of consistently decreasing smaller units is the
method of continuous halving—a procedure by means of
which a whole is reduced to a half, a half to a quarter, a
quarter to an eighth, and eighth to a sixteenth (fig. 58).[351]
This is the procedure that created the sixteen graduations
of the English inch.[352]

We know nothing about the internal divisions of the
Carolingian inch, but whether it was graduated into twelfths
or into sixteenths, this much is certain: there was no
common decimal denominator between a Carolingian inch
and a Carolingian foot that could be expressed in the ratio
1:200.

The modern metric scale is based on a comparison of
parts of like nature, all of which can be understood either
as fractions or as multiples of ten. The medieval scale has
no such common unit of reference. It is a combination of a
variety of different forms of graduation (sedecimal, duo-

• 1. Corporibus. Scilicet non solum de temporibus.

• 2. Miliarium. Id sunt mille passus. Legua enim ·I· D· passus.

• 3. Stadium. Id est ·CXXV· passus. Stadium octava pars miliarii est.

• 4. Iugerum. ·XLVIII· passus. Iugerum est quod possunt duo boves in una
  die arare, id est iornalis.

• 5. Perticam. Decem pedes . . .

• 6. Dimidium. Id est medietas.

• 7. Semis. Scilicet non solum appellatur medietas librae semis, sed etiam
  medietas cubiti et ideo dixit in corporibus.

• 8. Semis. Scilicet ubi semis ponitur, non ponitur et coniunctio.

• 9. Semissem. Id est dimidium. Accusativus a semis.

"Bede had asserted that the traditional measures had to be adapted to
duodecimals. But the Metz glossator, in introducing these definitions,
gratuitously introduced other schemes of fractions. Granted (2) that a
mile is a thousand paces, a league is 3/2 thousand. A stade (3) is 125
paces, an eighth of a mile. An acre (4) is 48 paces, a rod (5) ten paces. At
this stage of the pattern, medietas (6), the mid-point, becomes a congenial
concept for one half, not only for the semi-pound (7) but for the semicubit,
`and therefore it is used in measuring bodies,' a usage justified
for Bede by no lesser an authority than Moses (Exodus xxv.10) who used
dimidium and semissem in the same sentence interchangably. Hence it
seems that the Metz glossator found it easy, with his mind centered on
the building measurements of Noah's and Moses' arks, to introduce a
scheme of fractions quite at odds with the duodecimalism he was teaching
as the determining ratio of weights and measures."

[ILLUSTRATION]

63. PLAN OF ST. GALL: ONE LINE OF A GRID, 160 FOOT MODULE, FIXED THE CHURCH AXIS

decimal, and decimal), whose relation to one another cannot
be expressed in the terms of a decimal sequence.

It would be correct to say that the Plan of St. Gall is
drawn to a scale in which one sixteenth of a Carolingian
inch on the drawing corresponds to one Carolingian foot
on the ground. To convert this scale into a relationship in
which the ratio is expressed in the form of like units
requires that the base value of one sixteenth of an inch be
multiplied first by 16 (the sixteen parts of the inch) and then
by 12 (the twelve parts of the foot): 16 × 12 = 192,[353] the
number of sixteenths of an inch in a foot. The ratio 1:192
is not far from the ratio 1:200, but it is not identical with it
and should, under no circumstances, be confused with it.[354]
In medieval mensuration the scale relationship 1:200 not
only did not exist, it would have been meaningless.[355] This
fact by itself precludes that the axial title of the Church
could have meant what Reinle purports it to mean, and
thus we are taken back to Boeckelmann's interpretation as
the most reasonable explanation of the dimensional incongruities
of the Plan.

EARLY EXPRESSION OF THE VIEW THAT
THE PLAN WAS DRAWN TO A CONSISTENT SCALE

In contrast to those who held that the Plan of St. Gall
was purely a schematic rendering, Boeckelmann believed
that the Plan was drawn to a definite scale and that the key
to this scale was to be found in the 40 feet that the draftsman
ascribed to the width of the nave of the Church. He
observed that values consistent with this scale can be recognized
in the dimensions of many other areas of the Plan.
The Cloister Yard, for example, if measured in the light of
the 40-foot width of the nave, forms a square of 100 feet;
the rectangular area in its center, a square of 20 feet.[356]

Boeckelmann was not the first to make this observation.
As early as 1938, Fritz Viktor Arens had drawn attention
to the fact that many of the dimensions of the Plan of St.
Gall were based upon a decimal system consistent with the
40-foot width of the nave of the Church.[357] He also observed
another important fact, that if one attempted to
redraw the Plan of St. Gall in the light of the measurements
given for the length of the Church (200 feet), the Cloister
and all service structures of the Plan would be reduced to a
size in which they could no longer perform their designated
functions.[358] It was the most stringent argument in favor of
the assumption that if any of the measurements given in
the explanatory titles of the Plan reflect the original scale,
it is the 40-foot figure listed for the width of the nave, and
not the 200-foot figure listed for the length of the Church.

Arens' and Boeckelmann's observations were fundamental.
Yet neither Arens nor Boeckelmann realized their
full significance. Their failure to do so was probably caused
by their awareness that, whereas the dimensions of many of
the larger installations of the Plan can clearly be interpreted
as multiples of ten, many others—and in particular the
majority of all the smaller dimensional values of the Plan—
are inexplicable in the context of a decimal scale.

I.14.3

SCALE USED IN DESIGNING THE
PLAN

A WORD OF CAUTION

In turning, at this juncture, to an account of my own conclusions
on the scale that was used in designing the Plan, I
should like to start with a word of caution. While I hold the
view that the Plan was drawn to a definite scale, and that
this scale was applied consistently throughout the entire

[ILLUSTRATION]

64. PLAN OF ST. GALL. MONKS' VEGETABLE GARDEN

The vegetable growing plots measure two
modules wide, 5 feet (60 inches) and would
require a reach of no greater than 30 inches
from the work space between plots, an
efficient size for hand cultivation. The clear
work space between the cultivated strips, 1-1½
modules wide (45 inches) was adequate for
a gardener with barrow or basket.

The center aisle, 2 modules wide, permitted
two men with their barrows or vegetable
baskets to easily pass each other.

The planning stresses no waste motion, no
scattered lost effort. This was not a garden
in which to play at gardening. It was close
to life, the need to live and the desire to
live. Nowhere in the Plan is the sense of
urgency, the necessity of collaboration and
conservation of resources more dramatically
and concisely expressed than in this simple
composition of eighteen rectangular garden
plots. Adjacent, on the north, where fruit
ripened for the monks' table, was the Monastery
Orchard which served a second purpose
as the Monks' Cemetery (always efficient
even in death) where the monks took their
long final rest.

Modularity was born of sacred numbers.
Each was but a finite and measureable
feature of divine and infinite order communicated
to men from heaven by a vast
scheme of symbolism. The passion for order
still persists, but the explanations are not the
same.

*

For extended treatment of the Monks'
Vegetable Garden see II, 204, 205.

Cemetery and Orchard are treated on page
211, vol. II.

Characters in black squares identify buildings
of the Plan, page xxiv, and III, 14
(Catalogue of Inscriptions).

E.B.

A submodule grid of 1¼ feet is superimposed on the plots of the vegetable garden (red drawing, same size as original; scale 1:192)

breadth and width of the scheme,[359] I do not think anyone
could expect to be able to determine without any shadow of
doubt the precise dimensions of every building, or any piece
of furniture, shown on this scheme. This is impossible for a
number of reasons. Most important among these are that
the Plan is not an original but a copy, and that this copy was
traced, without the aid of any supporting instruments,
through the opaque body of large and rather unmanageable
pieces of parchment that had to be held against a light
surface in order to acquire the requisite transparency.[360]
This was bound to introduce a multitude of minor inaccuracies
and inconsistencies that are incompatible with the
precision of draftsmanship required in the development of
the original scheme.

Moreover, there is clear evidence, as I have demonstrated
elsewhere, that in the process of tracing, original and overlay
changed their respective positions, in several instances
causing a substantial measure of distortion. This is noticeable
especially in the alignment of the claustral structures
with the Church and in the distorted layout of the stables in
the southwestern corner of the settlement.[361]

Despite these malformations, minor or major as they
may be, the Plan of St. Gall retains enough of the precision
of the prototype to permit the conclusion that the original
was based on a consistent and carefully calculated scale, and
to allow us to reconstruct the basic graduations of this
scale.

The primary reason why this problem was not solved in
the past is, I think, that most of the students who took an
interest in this matter were Continental Europeans reared
on the metric system. Being raised in this system, I, too,
could not avoid interpreting the scale of the Plan—as I
presume many others tried before me—by constructing a
straightedge on which the value forty (width of the nave)
was graduated into forty equal units. Applying this scale to
the various buildings of the Plan as well as to the open
spaces between them, I recognized quickly, yet not without
consternation, that a staggering majority of the dimensions
appeared to coincide with intermediate values that did not
make sense in terms of an even numerical progression. I
was puzzled by the frequent occurrence of such values as
2½, 7½, 12½, 17½, 22½, 27½, and so on, and in a special sense
by the heavy recurrent rate of what appeared to be a
standard value, namely, the width assigned to the steps,
benches, and beds. It was larger than 2, yet smaller than 3,
and appeared to make sense only if interpreted as 2½.

I was puzzled by these observations until it occurred to
me that the conditions that they reflected might be related
to the possibility that the inventor of the scheme availed
himself of a scale that was not based on the continuous
sequence of equal numerical values used in the decimal
system, but emerged from the geometrical thinking of the
developmentally older sedecimal system that survives in the
subdivisions of the English inch. I consequently designed a
scale in which the value 40 was internally graduated into
sixteen units, each of a length of 2½ feet, and the entire
riddle of the Plan unfolded itself.

I shall demonstrate the validity of this assertion with a
scale analysis of two areas of the Plan which lend themselves
with particular ease to this type of investigation.

THE 2½-FOOT MODULE (STANDARD MODULE)

Figure 59 shows a scale analysis of the southern transept

arm of the Church of the Plan of St. Gall. The surface area
covered by this part of the Church forms a square, each
side of which is equal to the width of the nave, i.e., 40 feet.
In the second and third drawing shown on this page, this
square is subdivided into sixteen strips, first from north to
south, then from east to west; in the last drawing the two
systems are combined.

The experiment proves that all the internal area divisions
of the southern transept arm are conceived as
multiples of a 2½-foot square. The passageway that gives
access to the crypt is three units wide and sixteen units long
(7½ × 40 feet), the platform on which the altar of St.
Andrew stands is three units wide and ten units long
(7½ × 25 feet). The steps and benches have a standard
width of one unit (2½ feet) and vary in length between five,
six, and ten units (12½ feet, 15 feet, and 25 feet). The
intervals between the steps and benches likewise can be
brought into a system of logical relationships, if interpreted
as multiples of a 2½-foot square.

An analysis of the adjacent area of the Dormitory of the
Monks (fig. 60.A) enables us to establish this point with

even greater persuasiveness. The complicated layout of the
beds in this building is inconceivable without the use of a
carefully constructed system of auxiliary construction lines.
It is easily understandable if it is conceived as being developed
within a grid of 2½-foot squares (demonstrated in fig.
60.C). The overall analysis of Cloister and Church suggests
that the building was meant to be sixteen 2½-foot units wide
and thirty-four 2½-foot units long (40 × 85 feet). Each bed
is one unit wide and three units long (2½ × 7½ feet), with

[ILLUSTRATION]

65. PLAN OF ST. GALL. KITCHEN AND BATHHOUSE OF THE ILL

A 1¼-foot module grid is superimposed on this detail from the facsimile red print (scale 1:192, original size).

the exception of a small number of beds near the two gable
walls which had to be shortened to leave sufficient room for
the entrances and exits located in these walls. A glance at
the drawings shown in figure 60.B discloses that the boundaries
of the beds do not in all cases coincide with the
boundaries of the underlying squares. The beds that lie at
right angles to the long wall straddle the grid lines with
their center axis. This suggests the possibility of the use of
an even smaller module, which we shall discuss later.

The superimposition of the square grid on the original
drawing (fig. 60.B) reveals the means by which the draftsman,
in copying this building, extended its length by one
unit beyond what it was meant to be through an accumulation
of small errors. The center group of beds in the northern
half of the Dormitory has a length of twelve 2½-foot
modules. The corresponding group of beds in the southern
half of the building is thirteen 2½-foot modules long. It is
obvious that they were meant to be of identical size. Figure
60.B shows with great precision those places where the
draftsman took on these additional increments of space
(first and second transverse row in the southern half of the
building). This was probably due to two slight and almost
imperceptible shifts in the relation of the original parchment
to the tracing sheets. By the time the draftsman had
reached the end of the second row of beds, he had inadvertently
picked up an excess of an entire module. This lengthened
the Dormitory from thirty-four to thirty-five standard
modules, or from 85 feet (length of the original) to 87½ feet
(length of the copy).[364]

In analyzing the dimensional layout of this as well as any
other building of the Plan it is important that the overall
dimensions of each respective structure be ascertained by
its relation to neighboring or superordinate units before an
attempt is made to decipher its internal relationships.

THE 40-FOOT MODULE (LARGE MODULE)

This module controls the proportions of the Church and
the layout of the Claustrum (fig. 61). The transept and
nave of the Church, being of equal width, by necessity form
a square at their area of intersection. As is the case in
certain Romanesque churches of Normandy and the Rhineland
two centuries later, the dimensions of this square
determine the layout of the remaining portions of the
church. Thus on the Plan of St. Gall the transept of the
Church forms an oblong composed of three times the area
of the crossing unit. The nave is a space composed of
four and one-half such units, while three more units of
identical size are added to the east of the transept; the forechoir,
the sacristy, and the library. It should be noted that
in the nave the squares are arranged in such a manner that
the corners coincide with the axis of each column. The 40
feet assigned to the width of the nave must for that reason
be interpreted to relate not to the clear span between the
bases of these columns, but to the distance from axis to axis
of each corresponding pair of columns.

That the Church of the Plan of St. Gall is laid out
according to a system of squares has been observed by

many previous students of the Plan, but a fact that appears
to have been entirely overlooked is that the entire aggregate
of buildings forming the Claustrum is developed in a
similar manner.

A glance at figure 61 shows that the body of the Church
can be inscribed into a grid of 40-foot squares (three units
wide and nine units long), and the claustral structures that
abut the Church to the east can be entered into an adjacent
grid of identical squares (three units wide and five and one-half
units long). I have no doubt that this is the manner in
which the drawing was started. But attention must be
drawn to the fact that the alignment of the drawing with the
grid is not perfect. There are two discrepancies—not large,
yet conspicuous enough to cause some concern.

One of these is that the aisles of the Church are not 20
feet wide, as one should expect them to be in the light of
their explanatory titles (latitudo utriusque porticus pedum xx);
instead they measure 22½ feet. The other is that in certain
places the Dormitory and the Refectory extend over the
southern boundaries of the 40-foot grid of the Claustrum
by as much as 5 feet. I believe that these deviations are the
result of purposeful modifications undertaken as the drawing
progressed from its initial conception into its final
stages; and I shall discuss this point in detail later.

THE 160-FOOT MODULE (SUPER MODULE)

The discovery that the Church and the Claustrum were
designed ad quadratum raises the question of whether the
site plan for the entire monastery may not have been
developed from the dimensions of the crossing square. To
answer this question is not easy, because the Plan of St.
Gall fails to inform us about the location of the walls that
separate the monastery from the secular world. We do not
know where the grounds of the monastery begin and where
they end. It is probable, however, that this problem may be
solved by a simple proportional speculation.

Measured from west to east—or more precisely, from the
westernmost fences of the agricultural service structures
west of the Church to the easternmost lines of the building
masses east of the Church—the monastery grounds are
sixteen times the width of the nave of the Church (640
feet), a round and very convincing number, in which the
figure four plays a determinant role (fig. 62). By contrast,
the distance between the outermost lines of the building
masses sited along the southern edge of the monastery and
the outermost lines of the building masses on the northern
side amounts to 11½ times the 40-foot width of the nave of
the Church (fig. 62). The proportion 11½:16 is not a likely
medieval relationship. A more convincing proportion would
be 12:16 (or 3:4). There is some evidence, not easily discarded,
which suggests that in the south and north the
monastery grounds were meant to extend beyond the outer
building masses, since the fences of some of the buildings
located along the southern and northern border of the
monastery site run out into the space which lies beyond
these structures, and end only at the end of the parchment.
Two such fences, running north, may be seen on either side
of the Outer School; another runs south in extension of the
west wall of the House for the Workmen (fig. 62). There
are other considerations of a practical nature which would
require a buffer zone between the outer building lines and
the monastery wall. The water-driven machinery of the
Mill and Mortar houses are dependent on flues and sluices
that can only have run to the south of these buildings, and
a similar safety margin of space would have been desirable
in the north for servicing the privies.

A buffer zone of 10 feet added to the building masses, on
either of the two long sides of the Plan, would take care of
these necessities and would result in a meaningful overall
proportion (12:16 or 3:4) for the Plan (fig. 62). The
acceptance of such an overall modular scheme would,
moreover, help us to settle two other puzzling aspects of
the Plan.

It would explain the location of the Church. It has never
been clarified why the Church lies where it does on the
Plan. It is obvious that it had to be off-center. Had it been
placed in the center of the Plan, the southernmost buildings
of the Claustrum would have been moved to the southern
edge of the monastery, leaving no room for the subsidiary
claustral structures, such as the Monks' Bake and Brew
House, the Mill, and the Mortar. But what determined the
exact distance by which the axis of the Church was to be
off-center?

If we assume that the monastery site was calculated as an
oblong, sixteen 40-foot modules long and twelve 40-foot
modules wide, the entire monastery site could be conceived
as having been inscribed into a grid of twelve supersquares,
each formed by four 40-foot squares, and therefore measuring
160 × 160 feet (fig. 63). Within the linear frame of
reference established by such a grid the difficult problem
of the axial position of the Church—incomprehensible in
terms of the layout of the Roman castrum, with which it has
frequently been compared—would find a surprisingly
simple explanation. The axis of the Church would coincide
with the first, the axis of the Refectory with the second of
the two longitudinal lines of the grid.

The same grid would also explain the transverse division
of the monastery into its four principal building sites:

The western and eastern group of buildings are each
inscribed into a surface area formed by three 160-foot
squares; the central block of buildings extends over six.

[ILLUSTRATION]

DIAGRAM I THE SEQUENCE OF PROGRESSIVE DICHOTOMY USED IN THE SCHEME OF MEASUREMENTS
EMPLOYED IN THE DESIGN AND DRAWING OF THE PLAN

The standard module, 2½ feet, is obtained by successively halving the large module (40 feet) four times. The value of the exponent, column B, indicates the number
of times that the number 40 has been halved. The procedure shown here that yields successively smaller units of measurement, decreasing from 40 feet to
2½ feet by successive halving is "reversible," and is reversible by the same pattern of geometric progression shown here, but in the "opposite" direction yielding
progressively larger values.

Thus larger modules, multiples of 40 feet, such as 160 feet and 640 feet, are evolved from the same standard module and using the same pattern of development.

This is illustrated on the opposite page in Diagram II.

In Diagram II one can visualize the grand symmetry of the scheme of measures by which the design of the Plan was ordered and controlled. For example, 640
is symmetrically disposed with respect to 2½ about the sacred number 40 taken as a pivot or point of origin. In the pattern of such a formula, the infinitely great
and the infinitely small participate with equal significance, in a scheme, it seemed, of divine order. The crossing square, four equal sides each of 40 feet, indeed
defined a holy space.

Forty, the number of greatest value in the series of NUMERI SACRI, was chosen by the designer of the Plan of St. Gall as that dimension in feet
for the crossing square of the Church, the holy space unsurpassed in meaning and felicity to all inhabitants of the monastery.

It was clearly discernible from tracing drafts, in our study of the Plan, that 160 feet, four times forty, was the major module of the Plan.

This is the largest measure which is a common multiple of the Plan. Four units of this module, or 640 feet, is the length of the Plan, and three
units of this module, or 480 feet, is the width of the Plan.

The reason that the 160-foot module, four times the 40-foot dimension of the crossing square, was chosen as a module may be understood by
perusing Diagrams I and II, giving attention to the numerical sequences in columns A, B, C, in each figure. Diagram I portrays a
progression of halving starting with the 40-foot module and DESCENDING to 2½ feet. Diagram II starts out with the 40-foot module, extends the
geometric series in the opposite upward direction by doubling.

The values obtained by doubling, from 40 to 160, correspond at each level of ascent, to the smaller values obtained by the descent from 40 to
2½ feet. The bar elements of Diagram II illustrate the progression graphically: however, it is Column B that cogently reveals the homogeneity
of the numerical relationships as a scheme that established the intrinsic pattern of measurements used in the Plan of St. Gall.

[ILLUSTRATION]

DIAGRAM II THE SUPERMODULE, 160 FEET, ITS DERIVATIVES, 640 FEET AND 480 FEET, AND ITS
RELATIONSHIP TO THE LARGE MODULE

† 640 is the "height" or east-west dimension of the Plan

* 480 feet, the "width," or north-south dimension of the Plan, is an element in this geometric progression. It is derived by taking the sum of the two elements
of the progression 320 & 160, or 3 × 160. With sacred numbers 3 and 4 as multipliers and 160 as a multiplicand, 480 and 640 emerge as the dimensions, in feet,
of the Plan. Sacred numbers, NUMERI SACRI, are treated extensively under I.17, page 118; see also remarks, caption, page 109.

We noticed that, out of the scared number 40, the values of 2½, 10, 40, 160, 640 are generated by exponential values of 4, 2, 0, -2, -4.
Although the more sophisticated notation of Column B was probably not common knowledge in the 9th century, the notation of Column C was
understandable. There is no magic in this simple observation. But it is apparent that the multiplier 4, operating on 40 and yielding 160 was not
chosen by caprice. A module less than 40 facilitated the arduous work of design.

The number 480, 3 times 160, is not one of the natural steps of the progression between 2½ and 40, as shown in DIAGRAM II. This strongly
suggests that the CAUSA PRIMA of the dimension system of the Plan was the longitudinal axis of the Plan of the Church, extended to east and
west to satisfy designing a plan of paradigmatic significance and future influence. The axis of the Church was extended one module of 160 feet to
the east (of the front line of the altar of St. Paul) and one module of 160 feet to the west of the entrance to the covered walk of the west paradise.
This established the length of the Plan, four modules of 160 feet or 640 feet. One module of 160 feet north of the axis and two modules of 160 feet
south of the axis gives three modules of 160, or 480 feet, the width of the Plan. That the dimensions of the Plan are in the proportion of 3 to
4 was more than good theology. The numbers 3, 4, and 5 are the key to accurate construction of a rectangle in land surveying and in building
construction.

E. B.

[ILLUSTRATION]

THE CAROLINGIAN MEASURE AND SCALE USED IN DESIGNING THE PLAN

On the basis of the calculations listed below we compute the length of the foot used in designing the Plan to have these equivalents:

In English and U.S. standard measure: 1′ ⅝″.

In metric measure: 32.07cm

This computation can only be understood as an approximation of the real Carolingian foot that the draftsman of the Plan himself used. The computation
must be corrected, first by the diminution in size to which the parchment was subjected through shrinkage throughout the ages of its existence, and second,
minor distortions caused by shrinkage of photographic elements in development, or of the paper on which the facsimile was printed, during drying.

Our computation of the "foot of the Plan" as reflected in the Löpfe-Benz facsimile is based on an analysis of the longest clearly measurable dimension shown
on the drawing, namely the span extending from the center of the arcade columns that stand at the entrance wall of the church to the center of the columns
that form the easternmost boundary of the crossing square. This span encompasses five and one-half 40-foot squares and consequently represents a length of
220 "Plan feet". Owing to uneven shrinkage or irregularities in the drawing this distance varies slightly depending on whether it is measured along the axis
of the northern, or of the southern row of nave arcades. Using an engine-divided scale of good manufacture with 16 divisions to the inch based on the U.S.
standard foot (identical with the British standard foot) we arrive at the following figures:

231 + 232/2 = average value = 231.5 units (measure on south row = 232 units of 1/16 inch, measure on north row = 231 units)

231.5/220 = 1.05227 feet—12⅝ inches—32.067 cm

This is the measure of the foot of the Plan.

[computation: 12 inches = 30.480 cm.

⅝ inch = 1.587 cm/32.067 cm]

THE 1¼-FOOT MODULE (SUBMODULE)

There is good reason to assume that in certain installations
the inventor of the scheme made use of a submodule by
halving his standard module of 2½ feet, thus arriving at the
smallest module of 1¼ feet. I refer to this unit as a "submodule"
because it is used sparingly, in contrast to the
2½-foot unit which is used as a standard module throughout
the length and width of the Plan. I have pointed out that
2½ feet is one sixteenth of 40, the width assigned to the
nave of the Church; 1¼ is one thirty-second of this measure.
The peculiar values 2½ and 1¼—strange to anyone accustomed
to working with a metric scale—will ring a more
familiar tone if it is remembered that these units correspond
to 30 and 15 inches.

The Plan contains a number of installations which cannot
be explained in any other manner than on the assumption
that they have been constructed on a 1¼-foot module. We
have already encountered it in our analysis of the Dormitory

(fig. 60). The most convincing evidence for the use of the
submodule, however, is in the Monks' Vegetable Garden
(fig. 64).

The Garden covers a surface area that is twenty-one
standard 2½-foot units wide and thirty-three standard
2½-foot units long (52½ × 82½ feet). It consists of two rows
of planting beds, nine on either side, made accessible by a
carefully designed system of paths: three running lengthwise,
ten crosswise. The planting beds are 5 feet wide and
20 feet long. The width of the crosspaths by which they are
separated is less than 5 feet but more than 2½ feet. The
only logical way to relate nine planting beds 5 feet in width
to ten paths the width of which is less than 5 and more than
2½ feet within the available surface area, is to assume that
the draftsman conceived this layout within a grid of squares
of one-half the value of his standard square, i.e., a submodule
of 1¼ feet. This module would allow him to
develop the respective width of the planting beds and the
paths with absolute precision, lengthwise in the simple
sequence of

and crosswise in the sequence of

The 1¼-foot module is also used in the Kitchen and Bath
houses of the Novitiate and the Infirmary (fig. 65). These
buildings are each nine by eighteen of the 2½-foot modules.
They are internally divided into two coequal squares of
nine by nine 2½-foot modules, one containing the Bath
House, the other the Kitchen. The hearth in each of these
two installations forms a square that is composed of four
2½-foot modules. To place a square of four 2½-foot modules
concentrically into the interior of a square of eighty-one
2½-foot modules is possible only within the framework of a
1¼-foot grid. In such a grid each side of the Kitchen and
Bath House would be graduated into eighteen units of 1¼
feet. The position of the hearth could be struck off with
absolute precision in the sequence 7 · 4 · 7; the position of
the bath tubs, with their diameter of three submodules, in
the sequence 2 · 3 · 2 within the squares of seven submodules
left in the four corners.

There are four or five more buildings on the Plan—not
counting several smaller areas here and there—in which the
submodule appears to have been employed (Abbot's
House, House for Distinguished Guests, cloisters of the
Infirmary and the Novitiate, and possibly the Refectory),
but to interpret how exactly it was used in each case is
difficult because the module is so small. A distance of 1¼
feet on the Plan amounts to not much more than twice the
thickness of the stroke of the quill with which the Plan was
drawn. Since the lines were traced without the aid of a
straightedge, even the slightest irregularity in the movement
of the hand would tend to blur the intent of the
original scheme. Therefore, rather than weakening the
argument by interpreting details which may be susceptible
to different solutions, I should like to confine myself to
establishing that this module was used by focusing on
those areas in which its existence can be clearly demonstrated.

I.14.4

THE SCALE OF THE PLAN
AND ITS RELATION TO THE
CAROLINGIAN FOOT

Having established that the Plan was drawn to a consistent
scale we must then ask whether this scale was invented for
this specific purpose, or whether it was related to any
regular Carolingian system of measurement. I believe that
the original scheme of the Plan of St. Gall was drawn with a
regular Carolingian straightedge, 40 Carolingian inches
long, and that the designer of the scheme established the
overall dimensions of the monastery site by assigning to it
a length of 40 and a width of 30 Carolingian inches.

The modern English foot is the equivalent of 30.48 cm.
The classical Roman foot was 29.60 cm. The Carolingian
foot was larger and, despite Charlemagne's attempt to
standardize weights and measures, appears to have been
afflicted by a good deal of regional variation. Kutsch,
Schmidt, and Behn in measuring Carolingian churches
believed that they were able to establish its length as 34.00
cm.; Hanftmann and Arens as 33.29 cm.; Rave as 33.3033.50
cm.; and Doppelfeld as 30.04 cm.[367] The studies of
Felix Kreusch[368] and Leo Hugot[369] suggest that the Palace
Chapel at Aachen was built on a Carolingian foot whose
length corresponded to 33.30 cm. This is the exact equivalent
of the old Drusian foot, which the agrimensor Hyginus
tells us was in use in the territory of the Tungri[370] and which
Drusus adopted from the Belgians as a northern standard
for the border settlements of the Agri Decumates. This foot,
two digits longer than the Roman foot, appears to have
been the traditional standard measure of the Franks and
may have formed the base of the commonest building foot
used in medieval France and England.[371]

[ILLUSTRATION]

67. PLAN OF ST. GALL

No other drawing shows the unique conceptual elegance
of modular design to any higher degree of purity and
perfection: the dimensioning of the two intersecting spatial
volumes of nave and transept as multiples of a 40-foot
square, and determination of the width of the aisle in
an ingenious division of the 40-foot measure (16 modules of
2½ feet) as is shown in figure 67.

Possibly, in a preliminary draft of the Plan, the aisle
had been taken by the designer as one half of the nave width.
This could account for the inscription PEDUM XX (see caption
for figure 68). Further consideration, probably of a
pragmatic nature, resulted in the aisle width adopted,
3 + 3 + 3 units—3 modules for the width of the aisle
altars and 3 modules clearance space on each side of each
altar. This method of division gave a splendid trinity of
threes, with 7 modules left over, all in admirable conformity
with St. Augustine's admonition on number (page 118).

This illustrates well how a scheme of modularity can be
selectively manipulated to yield relationships of some
complexity, variety and interest, quite removed from unmitigated
repetition of the same measure, inherent in a grid of
equal divisions. The grid can be banal, but it need not be.

Imaginative manipulation of the sacred number dogma as
seen here, while not exactly typical practice, besides
revealing cognition of alternatives to monometric
schematism, responds to exigencies of a situation. Theology,
liturgy, convenience, amenity, and structure, needed to be
resolved in an effective layout, and were.

Figure 67 notes the concept as it existed in the author's mind
before modifications that would have to be made in places
where a purely intellectual concept—easy to express in a
simple line drawing—came into conflict with progmatic
realities such as allowances for wall thickness. Such conflict
was inevitable where two buildings shared a common wall
in which case the space needed for masonry would have
to be subtracted from the interior of these buildings rather
than from the open areas around them.

STEP 1: CONSTRUCTION OF THE LAYOUT OF THE MONASTERY CHURCH

The foot used in the Plan of St. Gall, if calculated on its
present dimensions, amounted to 32.16 cm. However,
attention must be drawn to the fact that the parchment on
which the Plan is drawn was subject to a considerable
amount of shrinkage. Even today, as Dr. Duft has observed,
when displaying the Plan in its showcase, the surface of the
parchment expands and contracts in response to the
changing humidity content of the air. Konrad Hecht, who
has made some interesting observations on this subject[372]
estimates the mean loss by shrinkage to which the Plan was
exposed through the ages to be 5 to 6 percent. If we modify
the figure obtained from the present shrunken surface of
the Plan by this quotient, the metric equivalent of the
Carolingian foot which was used in the Plan is more likely
to have been around 34.00 cm., which would conform to
the findings of Kutsch, Schmidt, and Behn. It could
equally well have been the exact equivalent of the old
Drusian foot of 33.30 cm., which appears to have been the
historical prototype of the Carolingian foot.

Tabulated in their respective order of magnitude, the
relation of the graduations shown on the straightedge used
in designing the Plan to the actual dimensions for which
they stood are as follows:

• 1. Dimensions of the entire monastery site:

  30 × 40 Carolingian inches = 480 × 640 feet.

• 2. Super module:

  10 × 10 Carolingian inches = 160 × 160 feet.

• 3. Large module:

  2½ × 2½ Carolingian inches = 40 × 40 feet.

• 4. Standard module:

  one sixteenth of 2½ Carolingian inches (i.e., one
  sixteenth of 40 feet) = 2½ feet.

• 5. Submodule:

  one thirty-second of 2½ Carolingian inches
  = 1¼ feet.

It should be noted that the value of the crossing square
(2½ Carolingian inches square) is developed from the value
of the next largest module (10 Carolingian inches square)
in the same manner in which the value of the small unit
(one sixteenth of 2½ Carolingian inches) is developed from
the crossing square: by the method of binary section.

All the surface calculations of the scheme are determined,
accordingly, by a geometrical ground relationship in which
each smaller base value is calculated as one sixteenth of the
superordinate value: the large module (40 feet square) is
one sixteenth of the super module (160 feet square), the
small module (2½ feet square) one sixteenth of the large
module (40 feet square).

In handling these modules, the designing architect displayed
an extraordinary sense of discretion, using each for
its specific purpose: the super module (160 feet square) for
the calculation of the overall relationship of the site, the
location of the axis of the Church, and the grouping of the
principal building masses (fig. 63); the large module (40

feet square) for the square schematism of the Church and
Claustrum (fig. 61); the small module for all dimensions
that were too small to be expressed by any of the larger
modules (figs. 59 and 60).

The Plan is drawn to a scale in which one foot on the
ground corresponds to one sixteenth of a Carolingian inch
on the parchment (which corresponds roughly to the
metric scale of 1:200), a ratio that one would consider even
today ideal for a plan of this kind, as it allows for easy
readability of details without obscuring primary values.

Figure 66A-D shows all of these relationships coordi-

nated on a straightedge that would correspond to one-fortieth
of the yardstick of 40 Carolingian linear inches,
which we presume the drafter of the Plan used in designing
the scheme. See also Diagrams I, II, pages 92 and 93, above.

I.14.5

PURPOSEFUL MODIFICATIONS

One of the remarkable qualities of the planner of the
scheme of St. Gall is that, although he exhibits an extraordinary
sense of sophistication in the working out of
modular relationships, he does not hesitate to modify his
schematism when special conditions so require. I have
already alluded to this fact in my discussion of the 40-foot
module. There are two deviations from the use of this
module, which call for an explanation.

One of these is that accurate measurement of the aisles
of the Church shows them to be not 20 feet wide as their
explanatory title requests (latitudo utriusque porticus pedum
xx) but 22½ feet; the other is that the Dormitory and the
Refectory extend in places as much as 5 feet southward
over the 40-foot grid of the Claustrum (figs. 61 and 62).

What caused these modular incongruities? Are they due
to the carelessness of the copyist? Or are they purposeful
modifications? The latter possibility was suggested by
Arens, the former by Poeschel. Arens thought that the
surplus in the width of each aisle owed its existence to the
draftsman's desire to provide enough space for the thickness
of the walls of the church.[376] Poeschel contends that
since the draftsman makes no concessions to the thickness
of the walls at any other place, it would be illogical to
expect him to do so here.[377]

Although Poeschel's argument is not to be dismissed
lightly, I am inclined to agree with Arens. We cannot infer
from the fact that the drafter of the Plan rendered the walls
of his buildings as simple lines that he was unaware of the
difficulties that might arise from this method of rendering
the more congested areas of the Plan unless they were forestalled
by special provisions from the very start. In the case

[ILLUSTRATION]

68. PLAN OF ST. GALL

A comparison of this with the preceding figure shows
how the draftsman, in developing his final version of
the plan of the Church, modified the square schematism
of the original concept—in which the aisles (PEDUM
XX) were assigned a width of exactly one half of the
width of the nave—by moving the aisle walls one 2½foot
module further outward. An instrument-drawn
grid of auxiliary lines, similar to the one above, enabled
the architect to plot the bases of nave columns, as well
as the location of altars and all other Church furnishings
with a precision so great that their exact
dimensional values were not lost in the freehand tracing
to which the Plan of St. Gall owes its existence.

The lines of the Plan as drawn on the parchment vary
considerably in width from less than 1/32 to over 1/16
of an inch, representing, at the scale of the document,
less than 6 inches to more than a foot. These widths do
not relate in any way to actual wall thicknesses. The
draftsman had a clear notion of line in the abstract
Euclidean sense of defining the limits of an area. The
lines comprise a diagram drawn to scale with astonishing
accuracy. As an instrument of communication it transmits,
at this scale and at this stage in the evolution of
the Plan, all that can be expected of any plan at this stage.

It is a graphic image delivering a message concerned
with policy and concept. Wall thicknesses of structures
as they might take shape in the future were irrelevant in
mind of the drafter and to the purpose. Quite possibly
he did have some vague notion that certain structures or
parts of them might be of masonry, wood, or metal,
according to the traditions of the time. Uppermost in his
thoughts was the message.

In viewing the purpose of the Plan in this light, as a
paradigmatic delineation of Benedictine planning policy
for a "model" monastic establishment, the Plan stands
on its own, without embroidery of detail that would come
with development by others for a particular site.

The Plan is capable of interpretation in more than one
way, and that was part of its intent. If the Plan is
interpreted today, in this way, or that way, we are doing
no different than what was intended. It is this capacity
of the Plan to stir the imagination almost 13 centuries
after it was drawn in the Scriptorium at Reichenau that
is among its remarkable characteristics, a property
common to all great works of art.

E.B.

STEP 2: CONCEPTUAL GROWTH OF THE LAYOUT OF THE
MONASTERY CHURCH

of the freestanding buildings, the linear style of the draftsman
posed no problems as the space required for the wall
thicknesses in subsequent construction could easily be
borrowed from the open yard surrounding the building,
and did not have to be subtracted from the building itself.
But where a group of major masonry buildings butted
against each other, as in the case of the Church and the
adjacent claustral structures (fig. 61), the problem was
serious. Here the builder would have been forced to
borrow the space that he needed for the masonry either
from the interior of the Church or from the contiguous
gallery of the cloister, where spatial congestion was undesirable,
since this gallery, besides serving as a passageway,
was used for the daily assembly of the monks in
chapter. To obviate these contingencies the designer introduced
two safety measures: first, by increasing the width
of the aisles of the Church from 20 to 22½ feet; second, by
enlarging the contiguous cloister walk from 12½ feet (the
width of the other three wings of the Cloister) to 15 feet.
Without changing his style of rendering he thus interposed
a safety area 5 feet wide along the crucial line of encounter
of Church and Claustrum. He left it to the builder to
determine precisely what the thickness of the walls should
be but freed him from the need of invading any of the
adjacent spaces with his masonry as the building went up.

It is obvious that the insertion of this safety margin
between the Church and Claustrum would affect the layout
of the latter as well as its relation to the square grid. Thus
the cloister yard, instead of measuring 100 × 100 feet,
covers a surface area of 100 × 102½ feet; the Dormitory,
instead of measuring 40 × 80 feet, as one would expect in
the light of the 40-foot module, measures 40 × 85 feet;
in consequence all the buildings lying at the southern edge
of the claustral grid extend 5 feet beyond the southern
boundary of that grid.

On the north side of the Church it was equally undesirable
that any usable space be sacrificed to wall construction.
Here, too, the required space would have had to be subtracted
from either the Church or the contiguous Lodgings
for the Visiting Monks, the Master of the Outer School, and
the Porter.

I.14.6

SUCCESSIVE STAGES IN THE
CONCEPTUAL GROWTH OF THE
LAYOUT OF CHURCH AND CLAUSTRUM

If the observations on the modular basis of the Plan
presented in the preceding paragraphs of this chapter are
correct, the procedure followed in the construction of the
layout of the Church and the Claustrum can be reconstructed
as follows:

Step 1 (fig. 67):

The draftsman first constructed the grid of 40-foot squares
which determined the overall dimensions of the Church.
This grid established the boundaries of the nave, the
transept, and the choir, as well as those of the two subsidiary
contiguous spaces of the Sacristy and the Scriptorium.
The transept was composed of three, the nave of
four and one-half 40-foot squares. The introduction of an
extra half-square in the nave was inevitable, if the draftsman
started from the premise that his church should be
300 feet long. The columns of the nave arcades were
plotted at a distance of 20 feet, so that each second column
came to coincide with one of the corners of its corresponding
40-foot square. The width of the aisles, at that
stage, was meant to be half the width of the nave, i.e., 20
feet.

Step 2 (fig. 68):

In working on the internal layout of the Church, the draftsman
was aware that an acute shortage of space would occur
in actual construction if no allowance was made for the
thickness of the aisle walls where the Church was abutted
by other masonry structures. He took account of this
contingency by moving the center line of his aisle walls 2½
feet further out and producing the safety strip previously
mentioned. Within the schematic floor space of the church
created in this manner, he could now map out the foundations
for his columns and altars by a system of auxiliary
construction lines which divided the Church lengthwise in
the sequence

and crosswise in the sequence

The altar screens in the aisles are inscribed into 7½-foot
squares, the altars in the nave, the ambo, and the baptismal
font into 10-foot squares. The system of auxiliary construction
lines shown in figure 68 is the minimum required
for the internal layout of the Church.

Had the wall thickness been inked in as solid bars, the
Church would have appeared as shown in figure 56. This
is the manner in which it was interpreted by Graf, Ostendorf,
and Gall, and it is interesting to note that this concept
can be translated into the language of a modern architectural
drawing without sustaining the slightest distortion. Had the
designer of the Church intended to draw the Plan in this
manner, it would have been fully within the scope of his
capabilities. If he confined himself to the more abstract
procedure of simple linear definition, it probably was
because he had the task of designing the layout of not just a
church, but an entire monastery comprised of a multitude
of buildings of greatly varying dimensions, where the
drawing out of wall thicknesses would have introduced
unnecessary complications.

Step 3 (fig. 69):

After the floor plans of the Church were completed, the
draftsman could lay out the cloister yard with a relatively
simple system of auxiliary lines, inheriting from the

[ILLUSTRATION]

69. PLAN OF ST. GALL

STEP 3: CONSTRUCTION OF CLOISTER YARD. METHOD USED IN DEVELOPING LAYOUT OF YARDS AND WALKS

Our analysis of the cloister yard reveals an intense preoccupation not only with the mystique of the square, but also with sacred numbers 3, 4, 10, 40 (see
pp. 118-25). The cloister yard is inscribed in a 100-foot square within which is inscribed a 75-foot square, which in turn accommodates in its center a
20-foot square. The sides of each are respectively, 40, 30, and 10 standard 2½-foot modules. The porch arches, arranged in groups of 4, are each inscribed
in a 5-foot square (area: 4 standard modules); the passages between them into rectangles 4 modules wide and 3 high.

Church, of course, the five-foot displacement from the
superordinate grid of 40-foot squares which transmitted
itself to all of the contiguous structures (Dormitory,
Refectory, and Cellar). The cloister yard was designed to
cover a surface area 100 feet square, and as a strip 12½ feet
wide was taken off on either side for the covered walk (15
feet in the north), a surface area 75 feet square was left for
the open pratellum in the center. Arches which open into
the latter from the center of each covered walk are 10 feet
wide and 7½ feet high, while the galleried openings on
either side measure 5 × 5 feet, leaving in the corners a
solid piece of masonry 7½ feet long. The square in the
center of the pratellum measures 20 feet on each side.

I.14.7

DIFFICULT OR INSOLUBLE FEATURES

Although the Plan of St. Gall reflects the original scheme
with an amazing accuracy, the irregularities that slipped
into the design as it was traced through the opaque body
of the sheets of parchment created a number of problems
that are hard to settle and may have to remain unsolved.
Foremost among these are certain aspects in the layout of
the Cellar, the Scriptorium, and the Medicinal Garden.

THE CELLAR

In contrast to the Dormitory and the Refectory, to which
it corresponds in all other respects, the great monastic
Cellar, which lies on the western side of the cloister yard,
is not 40 feet wide, but has a width that ranges somewhere
between 35 and 37½ feet (fig. 70.A-C). The building is
firmly drawn except for its western long wall, which swerves
inward and is a little more shaky than the draftsman's
average line. Its curve runs parallel to a seam that fastens
two sheets of parchment and it looks as though its wriggling
and swerving course owed its existence to the copyist's
desire to avoid this seam. Had the copyist drawn the western
long wall at the exact distance of 40 feet from the opposite
wall, he would have had to superimpose the line that
defines the course of that wall on the seam for a considerable
distance, running his quill over the projecting loops
of the thread. It appears probable to me that it was the
wish to avoid this complication that pushed the line of the
western long wall of the Cellar further inward. By how
much he displaced this line, the draftsman could not even
judge at this point, as the overlapping edges of the two
connecting sheets of parchment which separated him from
the original prevented him from actually seeing the corresponding
line of the prototype plan.

The layout of the remaining portions of the Cellar
presents no problem. The dimensions of the barrels, both
small and large, as well as of all the interstices between
them, are multiples of the 2½-foot module (fig. 70.C). The
small barrels are 10 feet long and have a central diameter
of 5 feet. Their outside curvatures are struck with a radius
of 12½ feet. The large barrels are 15 feet long and have a
central diameter of 10 feet. Their stave curvatures are
struck with a radius of 15 feet. The rails on which the small
barrels rest are 5 feet apart. The distance between the
rails of the large barrels is 7½ feet.

SCRIPTORIUM & NORTHERN TRANSEPT ARM

An irregularity which, I confess, I cannot solve, is found
in the dimensions of the northern transept arm and of the
adjacent Scriptorium (fig. 61). Both of these spaces
should be 40 feet square, but are slightly less. In order to
be 40 feet square the head wall of the northern transept and
the adjoining wall of the Scriptorium would have had to
project by 2½ feet beyond the line of the outer wall of the
Rooms for the Visiting Monks, which abut the northern
aisle of the Church. Yet the Plan does not show such a
projection. Is this through error of the copyist? Or was it
a purposeful modification undertaken by the drafter of the
prototype plan? I am inclined to assume the former, as
only a 40-foot square would provide for a symmetrical
layout of the transept and a consistent arrangement in the
windows and writing desks along the northern and eastern
wall of the Scriptorium. However, one cannot be sure of
this. In general, the designer strove for symmetry, but to
contend that he did so without exception is a different
matter.

THE MEDICINAL GARDEN

A third case difficult to settle is the apparent displacement
of the Medicinal Garden (fig. 62). It lies in the northeastern
corner of the monastery site, but is out of line with
the protruding outhouses and hypocaust flues of the
Novitiate and the Infirmary. It was the last installation to
be drawn on the sheet containing all the buildings lying
to the east of the Church. I can explain its peculiar position
only by the assumption that the copyist lost space through
an accumulation of small irregularities, as he drew the last
row of buildings near the right-hand edge of sheet 4 in the
sequence, House for Bloodletting, House of the Physicians,
Medicinal Garden.

THE HOUSES FOR THE COWS AND THE
FOALING MARES

The dimensions of the houses for the cows and the foaling
mares can only be guessed at, as the narrowing of the
parchment at the southwestern corner of the monastery
forced the copyist to decrease the size of these two houses
along the southern edge of the monastery site (above,
p. 48f.; figs. 483 and 487). To what extent it is impossible
to say.

I.14.8

CONCLUSIONS

The foregoing analysis of the construction methods employed
in the Plan of St. Gall should dispel, once and for
all, the widespread belief that medieval architectural drawings
were not made "to scale."[379] In contradiction to traditionally

[ILLUSTRATION]

70. PLAN OF ST. GALL. MONKS' CELLAR

The swerving uncertain ductus of
the line which defines the position
of the western long wall of the
Cellar (inconsistent with the
firmness of the drawing elsewhere
in the Plan), as well as departure
from the correct position of this
line (not 40 but 35-37 1/2 feet
distant from the opposite wall) is
conditioned, in our opinion, by two
factors:

1. This line is drawn where the
overlapping margins of two
connecting sheets of parchment
(sheets 1 and 2; cf. above, pp.
35-37 and p. 34, Fig. 24.A)
which, because of their thickness,
made it impossible for the draftsman
to see the corresponding lines of the
prototype plan as he traced it; and
because

2. the draftsman tried to avoid the
stitching by which the two sheets
were sewn together (shown in grey
tint within the margin of the
parchment) and which his quill
would have had to straddle had he
drawn the line at its proper
geometrical position.

(Cf. fig. 235, p. 286, and caption.)

A. Facsimile reproduction of the red drawing of the Plan (see caption, page 13, vol. III)

B. Same with 2½-foot module grid superimposed

C. Possible scheme by which the layout shown in A was constructed

prevailing views—but in confirmation of certain
observations made by Boeckelmann and Arens—this
analysis demonstrates that the author of the original scheme
of the Plan availed himself not only of a clearly definable
scale, but that he applied this scale throughout the entire
layout of the Plan with full consistency and logic.

From the methods employed in modern scale construction
the Plan of St. Gall differs neither in the logic of its
graduations, nor in the truthfulness with which this
graduation reflects the variations of the rendered object.
From the methods of modern scale construction the Plan
of St. Gall differs in two points only: first, in the fact that
it flows from a basically modular type of thinking; and
second, that its basic working units are derived as fractions
or multiples from a dimensional master value.

If a modern architect assigns to a given area a value of
40 feet, he does so with the aid of a ruler, on which the
value 40 is graduated into forty equal parts of one. On the
scale of the Plan of St. Gall, quite differently, the magnitude
40, as is found, was not subdivided into forty units of one,
but into sixteen units of 2½. Why the author of the Plan of
St. Gall divided his 40-foot scale into 16 units of 2½ rather
than into 40 units of one must by necessity remain a matter
for speculation. The value 2½, as my colleague Hunter
Dupree points out to me, was a fundamental unit of the
English surveying system. Two and one-half feet is the
length of the English pace (the space traversed by one
step).[380] Could it be that the 2½-foot standard module of the
Plan of St. Gall was the equivalent of a traditional and
widely used Carolingian pace? And that the superordinate
modules of 40- and 160-foot squares were calculated as
meaningful multiples of that pace? There are other
historical factors which may have contributed to the
genesis of such relationships. To subdivide a primary value
of 40 into sixteen equal fractions (or to arrive at that value
by multiplying sixteen times a primary value of 2½) as has
been pointed out on the preceding pages, is one of the
easiest and, for that reason, also the oldest operations of
the human mind, requiring no other instrument than a
straightedge and a compass (method of continuous halving
or doubling). In chosing this procedure, the draftsman may
also have been influenced by the eminently sacred connotations
associated in his day with the two basic figures used
in this operation, the figures 40 and 4.

The choice of the figure 40 for the width of the nave can
hardly be considered an accident. Forty was a number
which in Biblical tradition had been associated for ages
with periods of expectation and penitence. Forty were the
days of the great primeval deluge, forty the years that the
Hebrews spent in the desert, forty the days that Moses
passed in expectation on Mount Sinai, forty the days
announced by Jonah for the destruction of the city of
Nineveh, forty the days that separated the Ascension from
the Resurrection.[381] Forty, it should be noted, is not only
the width attributed on the Plan of St. Gall to the nave and
the transept, but also the total number of buildings of
which the monastery is composed.

In halving this sacred figure four times in succession, the
draftsman put into operation another eminently sacred
figure, associated both in the pagan and the Christian
tradition with the basic divisions of matter, time, and
space: the four elements, the four seasons, the four rivers
of Paradise, the four cardinal virtues, the four main
prophets, the four evangelists.

Whatever his reasons may have been (and I shall say
more about the number symbolism of the Plan a little later)

in organizing the layout of his monastery in a manner in
which all values could be expressed as multiples of 40 or as
multiples of a fraction obtained by halving 40 four times,
the draftsman provided his plan with a scale that could be
read and applied by anybody who was familiar with the
principles involved or who knew the formula. It is due to
the relative largeness of its standard unit (2½ feet) that the
Plan owes its easy readability, and that it could be traced
upon another sheet of parchment without sustaining any
serious loss in clarity and measurability.

The development of a modular grid in which all superand
subordinate units are derived in logical steps of progression
or diminution from the dimensions of a controlling

master module was an intellectual achievement of the
highest order and a concept that was tragically corrupted
when—(I presume at the second synod of Aachen, as the
Plan was formally considered for adoption[383] )—it was decided
that the length of the church should be reduced from
300 feet (as shown in the drawing) to 200 feet (as stipulated
in the axial title of the church) and that the interstices of
the arcades should be reduced from 20 feet (as shown in
the drawing) to 12 feet (as stipulated in the title inscribed
into the arcades). Like the number 40, the number 12
belongs to a traditional repertoire of sacred figures that
formed a common currency of metaphor and analogy (the
twelve Judaic tribes, the twelve apostles, the twelve months
of the year, the twelve hours of the day, et cetera),[384] that
could be put into circulation on even the most precipitate
call. But in contrast to 40, 12 as a dimension is not part of
the modular grid of the Plan. Being neither a multiple nor
a fraction of 40, it is clearly a foreign body in this system.
In introducing this figure for a feature aesthetically as
prominent as the arcades of the nave, the churchmen who
prescribed this change demolished one of the most precious
and most innovative aspects of the Plan: its square schematism.
It is probable that we will never be able to establish
who they were, these men,[385] yet one thing is certain: they
could not, in any manner, have been involved in the design
process that went into the making of the original scheme—
and they were worlds removed from understanding its
unusual aesthetic merits. To shorten the church by 100 feet
did not in itself require abandoning the modular scheme.
It could have been done in increments of its own control
module by the simple elimination of five 20-foot bays in
the nave. But the stipulation that the interstices of the
arcades be reduced from 20 to 12 feet forestalled any such
possibility and effectively destroyed the system of squares
in the church. The change was drastic, and, had it been
implemented in the drawing, would have required the
preparation of an entirely new Plan.

We are faced here with a manifestation of the age-old
conflict between architectural creativity and administrative
control, with disastrous consequences for the former when
the latter unwittingly becomes involved in the design process
with decisions which, though not necessarily arbitrary,
are nevertheless extraneous to the creative act and innocent
of any knowledge of technical detail and planning.

The author of the original scheme, if he was present at
the gathering where these decisions were taken, must
have gone through moments of shattering pain. He had
produced a scheme of extraordinary conceptual subtleties
including the design of a church which, had it ever been
built, would have been one of the highlights of early
medieval architecture (fig. 110). It took two-and-one-half
centuries of further development in western architecture
before the ideas first conceived here were embodied in some
of the great Romanesque cathedrals of Europe.[386]

I.14.9

CONFIRMING EVIDENCE:
THE PALACE GROUNDS AT AACHEN

We do not know whether or to what extent, if ever, the
modular construction methods used on the Plan of St. Gall
were implemented in any of the larger monasteries built or
rebuilt during the reign of Louis the Pious. But one other
site, a physical and historical reality, can be said to have
been organized along similar lines: Charlemagne's Palace
at Aachen. While Ernest Born and I were working on the
Plan of St. Gall, Leo Hugot of Aachen made a meticulous
dimensional survey of the palace grounds and its buildings.
None knew of the other's work, which was simultaneously
and for the first time displayed in 1965 at the Council of
Europe Exhibition Karl der Grosse in Aachen, each in the
form of a model, together with two brief explanatory statements
that formed part of the official Exhibition Catalogue.[387]

Charlemagne's Palace at Aachen was established on the
ground of an old Roman settlement that—like most other
Roman provincial towns or military camps—was inscribed
into a large rectangle, internally divided into four equal
quarters by two streets intersecting each other at right
angles, conditions that are even today mirrored in the
course of certain streets of the city of Aachen (fig. 71.X).
In the southeast corner of that rectangle were the famous
hot springs, the amenities of which were one of the primary
reasons for the selection of this site as the first "permanent"
residence of the great ruler. In laying out his residence,
Charlemagne did not follow the Roman dispositions
blindly. He changed the alignment of his buildings so that
the axis of the Palace Chapel would run from west to east,
as the liturgy demanded, and since all of the other buildings
of the Palace were either parallel or at right angles to the
church, this system of building came to lie athwart, at an
angle of 38 degrees, the Roman street system. As the
Romans had done with their settlement, so Charlemagne
also inscribed his residence and its buildings into an area
of rectangular shape (fig. 71.Y). In laying out his grounds
he availed himself, as the dimensional survey of the site by
Leo Hugot shows, of a modular base value consisting of a
rod 12 feet long. He placed the Palace Chapel (fig. 71.Y, 1)
against the southern edge, the Audience Hall (fig. 71.Y, 5)
against the northern edge of a large open square, each side
of which had a length of 30 rods = 360 feet. Internally
this square was composed of 16 smaller modules, each of
which formed an equilateral square of 7 rods = 84 feet.
The Palace grounds were intersected by two streets which
crossed each other at right angles dividing the site into an
outer and an inner court. These streets were each 2 rods
broad = 24 feet, bringing each side of the square to a total
of 30 rods = 360 feet. Hugot's analysis of the square grid
of the Palace grounds (Hugot, 1965, fig. 2 facing p. 524)

did not include the site of the Emperor's Audience Hall
(fig. 71.Y, 5) or the site of the southern annex to the Palace
Chapel; the so-called Secretarium (fig. 71.Y, 4). Ernest
Born's analysis, superimposed in red on Hugot's plan
shows that with these two buildings included, the whole of
the Palace grounds could be conceived as being inscribed
into a rectangle, measuring 30 rods in width (30 × 12 =
360 feet) and 52 rods in length (52 × 12 = 624 feet). He
emphasizes in his caption to fig. 71.Y the importance of the
use of the sacred numbers 3, 4, 10, 12, 30 and 40 in the
construction of this grid.

The proportions of the Palace Chapel, Hugot's analysis
has shown, were as carefully and consistently regulated as
the layout of the entire Palace grounds (figs. 71.Za, b, c).
The base module, again, is a rod 12 feet long. The chapel
itself was fitted into a square, each side of which measured
84 feet = 7 rods (fig. 71.Za). To this cube was added in the
east a choir 24 feet deep (2 rods), and on the entrance side
a westwork of identical depth. In the vertical plane the
84-foot cube reaches from ground floor to base of the
pyramid. The total elevation is composed of: height of
outer wall, 48 feet (4 rods); height of gallery roof, 12 feet
(1 rod); height of drum, 24 feet (2 rods).

The height of the pyramidal roof of the octagon, in this
context (the original pyramid has disappeared) can only
have measured 2 rods = 24 feet. The total height from the
ground to the apex of the structure, accordingly would be
9 rods = 108 feet.

This is not the time to go into the structural aesthetics of
this important building.[388] But I cannot forego the pleasure
of remarking on the implications Hugot's findings had with
regard to our own work. First of all, it removed whatever
residual doubt Ernest Born and I may still have entertained
concerning the correctness of our interpretation of the Plan
of St. Gall. Second, it added new weight to the arguments
which we have advanced in a preceding chapter concerning
the provenance of the original scheme from sources close
to the Court School as well as to Bishop Hildebold, the
titular head of that school (791-819).

Bishop Hildebold's church at Cologne, as has been shown
in a preceding chapter, served as model for the Church of
the Plan of St. Gall.[389] The site organization methods, which
Leo Hugot has shown were used for the Palace of Aachen,
are greatly akin in spirit to those which we have shown to
have been used in the layout of the Plan of St. Gall. This
kinship suggests that the designer of the latter was not only
familiar with, but in all likelihood inspired by the former.
He might even have had access to the original drawings
used for the Palace grounds and its buildings.

The importance of Leo Hugot's findings about the
modular construction methods used in the layout of
Charlemagne's Palace at Aachen can hardly be overemphasized.
It is here for the first time in the history of
medieval (and possibly Western) architecture and site
organization that not only the grounds, but also the most
important building on these grounds, the Palace Chapel,
are controlled by a binding and all-pervasive rule of modular
prime relationships. We shall return to this problem
later on in a discussion of the possible historical roots of
this concept.[390]

[ILLUSTRATION]

AACHEN, PALACE CHAPEL. TRIBUNE

DETAIL, BRONZE RAILING, CA. 800

Eight such railings, each 4 feet high and nearly 14 feet long, were each cast in one piece:
an astonishing accomplishment of the Carolingian Renaissance. Roman grille work patterns,
Byzantine acanthus leaves, and Hiberno-Saxon scroll-and-grid motifs are subsumed in
a sophisticated medieval linearism.

[ILLUSTRATION]

71.X AACHEN: THE CITY CENTER. A CADASTRAL PLAN AFTER 1800 WITH
CHARLEMAGNE'S PALACE GROUNDS

Superimposed in red are the grounds and buildings of Charlemagne's Palace as well as the reconstructed street
system of the Roman town of Aquae Granis (redrawn in part by Ernest Born, after Hugot, 1965, fig. 1 facing
p. 534, and with the aid of Hugot's original drawing which he generously made available to us for that
purpose).

Like most Roman towns or military camps this settlement was internally divided into four quarters by two
main arterials intersecting each other at right angles. The course of these, as Leo Hugot has shown, are
recognizable in the street alignment of the modern city of Aachen. They are: from north to south, the
alignment Kockerell Strasse—Klostergasse and Kleine Marschier Strasse (A-B); from west to east, the
alignment Jakob Strasse and Grosse Koln-Strasse (C-D). The latter was part of a Roman road that led from
Herleen to Kornelismünster into the Eifel Mountains; the former of a road that connected Liège with Julich
and Cologne.

The city of Aachen (French: Aix-la-Chapelle; Italian: Aquisgrana) owes its name to a Celtic settlement and
sanctuary that had sprung up in the vicinity of a cluster of sulphur hot springs which the Romans after their
conquest of this territory, in the first century A.D. converted into a watering place for legionaries, pensioners,
and other civilians visiting or settling there for recreational purposes or for reasons of health. The Romans
referred to this location as Aquae Granis = "the Waters of Granus" (a Celtic deity worshipped in connection
with hot springs). In ancient times, as well as in the Middle Ages and up to our own days, this kind of spring
was believed to have a curative effect on such afflictions as gout, arthritis and scrofula.

At the collapse of the Roman empire the city of Aquae Granis was destroyed (presumably around 375) but the
life of the native population appears to have continued. King Pepin bathed in the springs of Aachen in 765
and ordered the baths to be cleaned. Charlemagne signed deeds in AQUIS PALATIO PUBLICO in 768 and 769,
and between 777 and 786 rebuilt and enlarged his father's palace. The site became his favourite winter
residence from 794 onwards, a date which marks the turning point from ambulant government to rule from a
central seat of government, at least during the winter months, the summers continuing to be taken up by
warfare. Charlemagne furnished the site with a royal Audience Hall and a monumental Palace Chapel (fig.
71.Z), a residence for himself (location and details of construction unknown) as well as a considerable number
of lesser buildings to house his court as well as his bodyguards.

The Palace, as was to be expected, gave rise to the growth of a vast cluster of subsidiary establishments,
mainly to the north and to the west of the royal court, and acquired the appearance of the town when all of
these VICI, together with the Palace, were surrounded in 1172-1176 with a wall by order of Emperor Frederic
Barbarossa.

[ILLUSTRATION]

71.Y SITE PLAN OF THE EMPEROR'S AUDIENCE HALL AND THE PALACE CHAPEL AT AACHEN,
BUILT BETWEEN 796 and 804

KEY TO NUMBERS OF PLAN

1. THE PALACE CHAPEL

2. ATRIUM

3. NORTHERN ANNEX

Metatorium where the emperor changed his attire before entering the chapel

4. SOUTHERN ANNEX

Secretarium for assembly of the clergy and the holding of synods in contemporary sources referred to as In Laterano

5. THE EMPEROR'S AUDIENCE HALL

6. ENTRANCE HALL at ground level connects the OUTER COURT with the INNER COURT

7. BARRACKS for the emperor's guard

Superimposed on Hugot's drawing of a part of the Emperor's Palace at Aachen is shown the rectangular schematism on which its plan is
based. The basic module, as Hugot's dimensional survey of the site has demonstrated, measures 12 feet. Seven basic modules comprise one
major unit. The length of the plan is 7 major units, plus 2 basic modules for the east-west street, plus 1 basic unit for the projection of the
north apse of the Emperor's Audience Hall. Thus the length of the rectangle is 7 × 7 plus 3 units, or 52 units; its width is 4 × 7 units plus
2 units, or 30 units—a rectangle 624 feet long by 360 feet wide.

What captures our attention is the prevailing scheme of numerical and space relationships. The sacred numbers 3, 4, and 7, with 10, 12,
and 40, represent values of measurement that govern or control lines and critical grid relationships and are suffused into the fabric of the
plan to form interrelated kinships. For example, the length of the plan, 52 units, saturated with 75 [(7 × 7) + 3] is the sum of 40 plus 12.
The width of the plan, 30 units, is the product of 3 × 10 and, with 12 as a multiplier, creates 360 feet [(3 + 3 + 3) × 40]. Such a collection
of NUMERI SACRI offers striking evidence of the presence of sacred numbers as a dominating influence in the mind of the Carolingian
planner at the heart of the Empire, at this period in the development of western civilization. The aesthetic consequences of this pervasive
geometric and numerical schematism is another and different problem. Too, it is not without interest that the 3-4-5 triangular relationship
for the formation of a right angle is consonant with the 12-foot grid and would facilitate, in the field, layout for building foundations. In
monumental building schemes in particular, and all building in general, this would be advantageous to both the architect and his director
and construction foreman on the site.

Thus, rectangular schematism, identifiable with esoteric sacred numbers, was well-tailored in some respects to the practical needs of a
builder whose responsibilities, far removed from finely woven webs of theology, were characterized by mundane objectives, intolerant of
hocus-pocus.

E. B.

[ILLUSTRATION]

71.Za AACHEN, PALACE CHAPEL, BUILT BETWEEN 796 and 804

PLAN AND ELEVATIONS BY LEO HUGOT
GRID SUPERIMPOSED BY AUTHORS

The interesting and developmentally crucial significance of Leo Hugot's discovery of modular principles governing the organization of the Palace
Chapel at Aachen is its demonstration, by implication, that even a centrally planned Carolingian building cannot escape the power of
transformation which, at the age of Charlemagne, converts the Early Christian basilica into a modular structure.

The design of the Palace Chapel at Aachen is based on that of the church of San Vitale at Ravenna, begun around 532 and finished in 546.
In both buildings the shape and composition of the primary spaces as well as the formation of the basic morphological features are essentially the
same. In each case a tall octagonal center space with fenestrated and dome-surmounted drum is encircled by a peripheral envelope of outer
spaces, which, although internally divided into two stories (ambulatory and gallery) are, in their combined height, lower than the center space.
In each case the drum with its dome rests on eight huge arches, rising from piers erected in the eight angles of the octagon (cf. fig. 162.B).

These are the basic compositional and structural features. Yet in style and spatial concept the two buildings differ distinctly. In San Vitale the
shell separating the octagon from its spatial perimeter is made up of semicircular niches that billow out into the body of ambulatory and gallery.
Despite their intensive perforation (three arched openings on each level) these curved niches, together with the piers to which they are attached,
are aesthetically perceived as a continuous sheet of masonry stretched around the center space. The movement is encircling, not divisive, and the
enveloped space, being uninvaded by any of the enveloping features, retains its full corporeal solidity and homogeneity. It is sculpture springing
from a concept of spatial mass akin in spirit to the monolithic self-containment of the component spaces of the Early Christian basilica (Cf.
figs. 174 and 177.A-C).

The stylistic and conceptual archetype and prototype of this manner of molding space is the Roman Pantheon, a body of incomparable globular
perfection and beauty contained in a masonry shell of simple cylindrical shape whose surfaces pass in unbroken planar continuity into those of
the semicircular dome by which it is surmounted, with no intrusion at any point. The camera—one-eyed and stationary—is incapable of
capturing this quality of style, but Giovanni Piranesi, with his uncanny sensitivity for such matters, has portrayed it with great perspicuity in a
series of masterful engravings.

The design of the Palace Chapel at Aachen by contrast is based upon the concept of spatial divisibility. This quality is strikingly reflected in the
manner in which the eight component surfaces of the octagon meet and connect with one another. Instead of billowing niches swinging inward and
outward, yet never losing their encircling hold, the Chapel's straight surfaces, separated by sharp lines, rise in undisrupted ascent from the
ground to the apex of the vault by which it is covered. The dome over the octagon of San Vitale is circular (or nearly so) and therefore
detaches itself distinctly from the octagonal shape of the body of space lying beneath it, the transition from octagonal drum to circle of the dome
being achieved by means of squinches. It rests or hovers like a protective lid over the space it covers. The dome over the octagon of the Palace
Chapel, by contrast—a cloister vault, not a hemicycle!—is segmented into eight separate parts, like the eight sides of the octagonal shell that
supports it. The emphasis thus is shifted from connecting surfaces to separating lines. In Aachen, for this reason, the center space conveys the
feeling of being "sliced" or "sliceable" rather than "whole" and "rounded." It could aesthetically be defined as an aggregate of triangular
prisms, meeting with their sharp inner edges in the center axis of the building. This is divisive Carolingian modularity: the conceptual equivalent
of the modular square division of the Carolingian basilica (figs. 166-173); medieval divisionalism versus Classical corporeality.

The differences are discernible with even more striking sharpness in the structural articulation of the outer spaces. In San Vitale, ambulatory
and gallery were covered by timber roofs formed by continuous sequences of beams or trusses all lying on the same level, and therefore visually
perceived as flat and continuous annular planes (the present vaults are medieval; see Krautheimer, 1965, 170). In the Palace Chapel at Aachen
the same spaces are covered, on ground floor level by groin vaults of alternating square and triangular shape; and on gallery level, by rampant
barrel vaults alternating with sharply defined triangular spaces. This is cellular medieval organization of space, springing from the same
conceptual sources that in the longitudinal layout of the basilica lead to the arch-framed bay division of the Romanesque and the Gothic
(fig. 177); and for more visual demonstration, Horn and Born, Viator, 1975, figs. 38, 39.A-B.

Centrally planned buildings do not lend themselves with the same ease to modular division and, for that reason, are not part of the mainstream
of medieval development. One hundred and fifty years after the construction of the Palace Chapel, a sophisticated Florentine architect created in the
Baptistery of that city, a synthesis between classical and medieval, disclosing that even south of the Alps materials inherited from antiquity are
reshaped in a similar manner (cf. Horn, 1938, 99-155; reprinted 1973).

[ILLUSTRATION]

71.Zc FRONT ELEVATION

[ILLUSTRATION]

71.Zb SIDE ELEVATION

I. 15

THE PROBLEM OF SCALE AND
FUNCTION

I.15.1

SCHEMATIC DRAWING OR
BUILDING PLAN?

The practical effect of the mensuration system employed
in the Plan of St. Gall was that it provided its users with a
scale that enabled them to convert the dimensions of each
building as shown on the parchment into the dimensions
which were to obtain on the ground with virtually no
margin of error. Ernest Born and I had ample opportunity
to test this aspect of the Plan, when preparing the working
drawings for the three-dimensional reconstruction of the
monastery and its buildings put on display in the Council
of Europe Exhibition "Charlemagne," at Aachen in the
summer of 1965.[391] We encountered no major obstacles in
our task of converting its simple linear projection into
scale-true working drawings and these drawings would in
fact have been detailed enough to enable a modern team of
masons and carpenters to rebuild the monastery in its full
dimensions.

In this regard, namely the scale-consistent transferability
of its dimensions from parchment to ground, the Plan must
be defined as a building plan and not as a schematic drawing.[392]

One might, however, entertain some doubt as to
whether this definition can be applied with equal assurance
in other respects. It has been shown above[393] that the Plan
leaves us in the dark about such important details as the
nature of the materials which were to be used in the construction
of individual buildings, the thickness of their
walls and such constructional details as would have had to
be defined had the walls been shown in thickness. This
leaves a vast body of unanswered technical questions,
especially tantalizing in the case of the guest and service
buildings, whose make-up has confused and puzzled
scholars for over a century. Yet here, in particular, we must
refrain from projecting our own historical ignorance into
the mind of the Carolingian mason or carpenter who studied
the Plan in preparing himself for a particular building
project. Our analysis of the guest and service buildings[394] is
painful evidence of the fact that today we can identify the
design and constructional make-up of these buildings only
through a laborious process of historical research. A
Carolingian mason or master carpenter would have settled
this task instantaneously in a single intuitive response the
moment he laid eyes on the Plan, because he would have
recognized the building type as a variant of the house in
which he himself was born and lived, and could thus have
translated its design automatically into structural realities.

The excellent state of preservation of the Plan of St. Gall
suggests that it was rarely, if ever, carried to the building
site. Anyone who has been involved in building a house
knows to what wear and tear drawings used in actual construction
are exposed. It would be inclined to think that the
Plan of St. Gall never left the monastic library or the
abbot's reception room. Its primary practical function
probably was to form the basis for a vast body of verbal
building directives. It could also have served as the prototype
for many other necessary drawings, laid out at a larger
scale and in greater detail, which have not survived due to
attrition caused by their being used on the construction
site. I would consider it a highly hazardous historical inference
to conclude from the linear rendering of the walls
on the Plan of St. Gall that scale-consistent architectural
drawings defining walls in thickness and articulating other
structural details implicit in this type of rendering, did
not exist in Carolingian times.[395] I believe that drawings
of this kind existed at all times, and would find it hard to
presume that a building as sophisticated as the Palace
Chapel at Aachen would have been constructed on purely
verbal directives, without the aid of detailed plans and
elevations.

A UNION OF SCHEMATISM & REALISM

In stressing the "realistic" aspects of the Plan of St.
Gall, however, I do not wish to convey the impression that
the Plan is entirely free of "schematicisms." The Plan is
schematic in many respects. It is schematic in that all of the
monastery's buildings are inscribed into a site of perfect
regularity: an oblong whose sides correspond to the proportion
3:4. It is schematic in the sense that this oblong is
divided into subordinate areas of comparable regularity
within which the houses are rigidly aligned, as in the layout
of the insulae of a Roman city—conditions, of course, that
in actual construction would have to be modified to adjust
to the topographical peculiarities of a given site. Again,
the Plan is schematic in the emphasis which it places on
modular relationship rather than straight numerical sequences.
The largeness of the standard module (2½ feet)
was bound to introduce a touch of geometric stylization in
the rendering of many of the smaller objects, whose normal
dimensions could only be expressed by using fractions
of modules. If the customary length of a Carolingian bed
was 6 feet and 4 inches (as is standard today), the drafter
of the Plan was faced with the alternatives of assigning it a
value of two modules, or 5 feet, (which would have made
the bed 16 inches too short for a fully grown man) or
assigning it a value of three modules, or 7½ feet, (which
made it 18 inches larger than necessary). In taking the
more generous alternative[396] he not only protected the monks
from being crowded into beds where sleep would have been
a torture, but also provided the builder with a margin of
safety for the indispensable head- and footboards.

The size of the beds reveals a principle that can be observed
in many other areas of the Plan. Wherever the real
dimensions of a small object fell short of the standard
module of 2½ feet, the designer rounded such objects off
to the next higher module—never the lower one. This was
his method of making sure that a building, when actually
constructed, could in fact accommodate the appurtenances
with which it was to be equipped. It was his method, also,
of providing for a safety margin of space for the thickness
of the masonry walls, which on the Plan itself were rendered
as simple lines.

Because of the dimensional restraint that the largeness of
the standard module imposed upon the rendering of small
objects, the dimensions at this lower order of magnitude
must not be interpreted too literally. I am singling out as
another typical example the millstones (molae) in the Mill
(fig. 438). Their diameter of three standard modules (7½
feet) appears to be too large, even within the highly
advanced technology of a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery.
We cannot infer from the manner in which these
stones were drawn that they were meant to have had the
full diameter of 7½ feet. Their intended size could have
been at any reasonable point above two modules, or 5 feet,
and below three modules.[397] There are other touches of
draftsmanship that are "schematic" rather than "realistic,"
such as the wide interstices between benches and
tables in the Monks' Refectory (fig. 211) and in the House
for Distinguished Guests (fig. 396).

Yet when allowance is made for all of these factors, full
emphasis must be placed on the observation that the Plan
is not schematic to the point that any of the practical
requirements of the buildings had to be sacrificed in order
to conform to overriding standards of modular geometricity.
In fact one of the most surprising and truly remarkable
features of the Plan is that despite its modular schematism
it is extremely "realistic"—realistic in the sense that the
dimensions of its rooms and installations are designed with
an acute awareness of the space needed to carry out their
designated function. In the copious literature on the Plan
of St. Gall this fact has been almost completely overlooked,
yet detailed analysis shows that wherever a building served
a practical function it was designed to be large enough to
guarantee that that function could be performed adequately.
Where it has been designed slightly larger than
required (in general by a carefully calculated fraction) the
space allowed is never blatantly excessive.

There is no doubt in my mind that the architect who
developed the scheme of the monastery based his work
upon a clearly formulated population plan and adhered to
this program with punctilious care as he worked out the
dimensions of the respective buildings. A count of the beds
of the monks and the various monastic officials discloses
that the monastery shown on the Plan of St. Gall was
designed to accommodate between 100 and 110 religiosi.[398]
There are two buildings on the Plan in which it had to be
possible for all of the monks (with the exception, perhaps,
of the few who were in charge of the novices) to assemble
at the same time. In both places the seating arrangement is
worked out to allow room for all of the brothers, leaving
some extra seats for visitors.

The normal sitting space required by a fully grown man
while eating at a table is an area 2½ feet wide; this is what
he would need today and what we can safely expect him to
have needed in the Middle Ages. At this ratio the benches
and tables in the Refectory (fig. 211) could seat a total of
120 monks.[399]

The Refectory, accordingly, can accommodate all of the
100 to 110 brothers in a single sitting and allow, in addition,
for an extra sixteen seats to take care of an unexpected
fluctuation, as well as the normal increase during the great
religious festivals of Christmas, Pentecost, and Easter when
the novices were permitted to join their elders. There is also
a table for visiting monks with a bench capable of seating
six; this corresponds exactly to the number of beds that
are shown in the lodging for the Visiting Monks.[400]

The same realistic awareness of spatial needs is disclosed
in the layout of the benches in the Church, on which the
monks were seated during the hours of divine services. The
long semicircular bench in the apse and the forechoir
seats forty-eight monks (fig. 99); sixteen monks can be
seated on the freestanding benches for specially trained
singers in the crossing; eighteen on the wall benches of the
southern transept arm; twenty on the wall benches of the
northern transept arm; and five on each of the two freestanding
benches of the transept arms. Total: 112.[401]

Another example of the draftsman's keen and consistent
apprehension of the spatial realities involved may be found
in the House for Distinguished Guests (fig. 396).[402] The
number of toilet seats for servants in the House for

Distinguished Guests (again, providing for a sitting area of
2½ feet per person) is identical with the number of beds
that could be placed in the servants' sleeping quarters. The
bedrooms of the noblemen with private toilet facilities are
furnished with four beds at each end of the house. The two
stables for their horses under the northern aisle of the
house, each with a surface area of 30 × 12½ feet, can
accommodate four horses each, allowing in addition to the
required standing space sufficient extra space for taking the
horses in and out and for feeding them, yet not much more
than was needed for that purpose.

The same exacting attention to spatial needs can be
observed in the layout of the buildings that contain the
kitchens, the baths, the baking and brewing facilities,[403] the
mills and the mortars—but most conspicuously in the layout
of the Monks' Dormitory. This building, as we have
seen,[404] was designed to accommodate seventy-seven beds.
Its dimensions (85 × 40 feet) are calculated to perform
this task to perfection. Even the dimensions of the barrels in
the Monks' Cellar, as will be shown later on, are based on
an accurate statistical estimate of the annual storage needs
for alcoholic beverages proportionate to the community of
the size of the monastery shown on the Plan—as well as the
precise volume of cooperage required to meet these needs.[405]

[ILLUSTRATION]

71.B KASTEL KÜNZIG, PASSAU, GERMANY

ROMAN MILITARY CAMP (90-120). PLAN

[after Schönberger, in Limesforschungen II, 1962]

Buildings 1-4, 6-9, 18 barracks (ten contubernia = one centuria), 11 house of
commandant, 13 supplies; 17, 21 water tanks, 12 principia, 14 hospital,
19, 20 stables, 5, 10, 15, 16 purpose unknown.

[ILLUSTRATION]

71.A SCHEMATIC PLAN OF A ROMAN CASTRUM

[after Rave, 1958, 38, fig. 28]

I. 16

THE PLAN
AND THE ROMAN CASTRUM

A connection between the layouts of the Plan of St. Gall
and the Roman castrum (fig. 71A-B) was proposed by Karl
G. Stephani (1903)[406] and by Joseph Gantner (1936).[407] It was
rejected by Franz Oelmann (1923/24)[408] and Hans Reinhardt
(1937 and 1952),[409] but was vigorously reaffirmed by Rave
(1958).[410] A closer inspection shows that neither of these
theories can be wholly disproved or fully accepted. There
are some obvious similarities: the oblong shape of the site,
and the fact that both the castrum and the monastery were
enclosures in which a considerable number of men found
shelter in a carefully ordered conglomerate of houses. But
the functional and spiritual objectives of each of these
architectural organisms were different and called for different
solutions in the spatial connections and separations of
its constituent architectural components.

Reinhardt has drawn attention to the fact that the Plan
lacks the disposition most characteristic of the Roman

[ILLUSTRATION]

72. PLAN OF A CAROLINGIAN VILLA

ST. GERVAIS, GENEVA. Excavated in 1927, 1940, 1950

[Redrawn from Blondel, 1954, 214, fig. 143]

castrum, namely the two central arterials intersecting each
other at right angles.[411] This is correct. An axial system of
roads giving access to gates for speedy entry and exit on
all four sides was vital to the operation of a military camp.
In a medieval monastery this would not only have been
useless, it would have violated the principle of physical and
spiritual seclusion on which the life of the monks was
based.[412] The cloister of the monks, entirely inaccessible to
the layman, forms a castrum within the castrum. And the
entire area between this inner fortress and the monastery's
outer wall is characterized not so much by its web of connecting
roads, as by its carefully calculated system of
separating fences.[413] In fact, one may go so far as to contend
that there is no internal system of roads at all, but rather a
carefully ordered sequence of courts or yards with passages
leading from one to another through the separating fences.
The Church, the Monks' Parlor, and the houses for the
guests were the only buildings in the entire settlement
where monks and seculars met under the same roof.[414] Yet
even in the Church the areas for the monks were carefully
segregated from those that were accessible to seculars;[415]
and in the Parlor and the guest houses their coming together
was allowed only upon the special occasions when a
monk was visited by his relatives, or for performing such

[ILLUSTRATION]

DORESTAD, NETHERLANDS

73.A

73.B

The Dorestad site is adjacent to Wijk-bij-Duurstede, a village close by the Lek and
Kromme Rijn. The CASTELLUM proper forms a small protrusion on the west side of a
large, long, and narrow walled enclosure, tillable, and a holding space for animals [site
plan]. Within the CASTELLUM compound the SALA plan closely resembles the hollow square
plan of certain buildings of the Plan of St. Gall. The church stands alone in its church yard,
accessible to those within and without the compound. The configuration of layout, as ensemble,
well organized, but loose and free, is innocent of resemblance to formal or traditional pattern
of architectural planning. There is no trace of CASTRUM or geometric discipline.

Carolingian CASTELLUM with royal hall, in use after 725 and 863 [after Holwerda, 1930, 63, fig. 51]

ceremonial duties as washing the feet of guests[416] and
serving meals to them.[417]

Even after making due allowance for all these differences,
which are clearly conditioned by the disparate functions of
a monastery and a Roman military camp, there still remains
the possibility of an influence of the latter upon the formation
of the Plan of St. Gall. The oblong shape of the monastery
site, together with the orderly arrangement of the
houses in parallel rows on sites of rigidly rectangular form
is indeed reminiscent of the grid plan of the Roman
castrum or, for that matter, of the grid-planned Roman
city. The adoption of such features in the Plan of St. Gall
might have come about in any of three possible ways, or
even by all three in conjunction: first, through direct contact
with ruins of Roman camps or towns, which were still
extant in the ninth century both south and north of the
Alps;[418] second, indirectly through the influence that the
Roman grid plan had exerted on the Early Christian
monasteries of Syria and North Africa;[419] and third, through
the influence that the rectangular layout of the Roman
castrum had already exercised on certain secular Carolingian
fortifications. I am thinking of such sites as the
recently excavated Carolingian villa of Saint-Gervais in
Geneva, Switzerland (fig. 72),[420] the fortified Carolingian
camp of Dorestad, Holland (fig. 73),[421] and the medieval
castellum of Sabatz (formerly Hungary; fig. 74),[422] which
looks like a three-dimensional reconstruction of the camp
of Dorestad.

Yet even in these military positions, the similarity to the
Roman castrum amounts to little more than the oblong
shape of the site and its system of defensive towers. For the
rest these fortifications have already assumed the tripartite
internal division of the medieval castle, with its successive
stages of defensive retreat from an outer bailey into a forecourt
(curticula) and from the fore-court into the inner
court (curtis). In a conspicuous way the economic and
spiritual objectives of the monastery called for a similar
internal differentiation of the monastic compound: an
outer court for the raising of livestock (the majority of the
tract lies to the west of the Church), an intermediate court
for the reception of visitors and the performance of the
basic labors and crafts by the serfs, and a secluded inner
enclosure, comprised of Church and Claustrum where the
monks, in spiritual and social retreat, were engaged in the
service of God (opus Dei).

The order and regularity exhibited in the grouping of the
basic building masses, through the entire Plan, has an
undeniably classical flavor; the intricate methods of measurement
by which they are obtained are medieval.[423] The
design of the Church and all of the claustral structures is
unthinkable without Rome.[424] But the houses of the serfs
and visitors which are grouped around this complex have
their roots in the vernacular architecture of the north,[425] as
will be shown in the second volume of this work.

[ILLUSTRATION]

74. SABATZ-ON-THE-SAU. MEDIEVAL FORTIFIED CASTELLUM

SAVAC ON THE SAVA, YUGOSLAVIA (FORMERLY HUNGARY). From Hartmann Schedel, Liber Chronicarum, Nuremberg, 1493, fol. CCLIII

At the confluence of the Sau and a tributary, old Sabatz lay ringed by forbidding defenses.
Two main entrances led through the circumvallation into the fort; by land through a large
gate (top center), by bridge through a tower gate (bottom center). The outermost walls of
woven wattle ran between four towers (one not shown). The riverbanks, staked with a
threatening array of sharpened poles, made of utmost difficulty any approach by men in
boats, or war machinery.

The fort's outer bailey held two rows of timber-framed houses and a heavily fortified
stronghold of rectangular plan, surrounded by a moat let in from the river. Passage from
bailey to inner fort was through an ingenious center-privoted gate designed for easy passage
of foot or mounted troops. Its flanking spiked timber fence formed a triangular staging area
before the castle proper.

Within its moat the castle lay in two separated parts. The forecourt, beyond the horsemen's
gate over a moat bridge, was enclosed by wattle walls between four towers. An inner
gate led from forecourt to castle proper by a second bridge and gate. The inner, larger
castle was defended by bastioned walls (possibly timber, possibly coursed massonry) along
the moat, and by wattle walls running between towers within it—another ring of defense.
The level of the innermost fortress and its massive keep was apparently raised above that
of forecourt and bailey.

The general arrangement—timber structures surrounding a complex of masonry—
somewhat recalls that of the Plan of St. Gall.

[ILLUSTRATION]

16 HOW THE WORK OF GOD IS TO BE PERFORMED
IN THE DAYTIME

XVI QUALITER DIVINA OPERA PER DIEM AGANTUR

Ut ait propheta: Septies in die laudem dixi tibi

qui septenarius sacratus numerus a nobis sic implebitur . . .

The prophet saith: Seven times a day I have given praise to thee.

We shall observe this sacred number of seven

The illustration, here reproduced at original size, is taken from "Early English
Manuscripts in Facsimile," vol. XV, The Rule of St. Benedict (Oxford,
Bodleian Library, Hatton 48, ed. D. H. Farmer, University of Reading). The
passage in Latin and English translation is from McCann (See Bibliography,
vol. III).

Other illustrations from THE RULE appear on pages 329, 330, 332, 333, 334, 336,
338, 340, 344, and 345.

See also caption for unical initials, page 329 and NOTE ON THE HATTON 48 INSCRIPTION
ILLUSTRATIONS, page 345.

I. 17

NUMERI SACRI

3 4 7 10 12 40

Throughout the Middle Ages sacred numbers, conceived
as an expression of divine order pervading the created
world, formed an integral part of theological and secular
thought.[427] Recent studies have shown, with increasing
strength of evidence, that they played an important role in
the thinking of medieval architects.[428] The Plan of St. Gall
confirms these findings. It offers persuasive proof that
sacred numbers were a decisive factor in the conceptual
organization of the Plan as a whole, the proportioning of
its major building sites and the dimensioning of the
individual buildings. Throughout the entire width and
length of the Plan there are signs of the recurrent use of
certain favorite numbers, in both the manipulation of
straight numerical sequences as well as the management of
a variety of modular scale relationships.

Predominant in the mind of the designing architect, as
this analysis will show, are the numbers three, four, seven,
ten, twelve, and forty—all associated with eminently sacred
connotations.

THREE: This holiest of all holy numbers is encountered
in a variety of pagan religions where triads of deities
acquired a pre-eminent position.[429] The Babylonian triad

Anu, Bel, and Ena; the Indian triad Brahma, Vishnu, and
Siva; the Greco-Roman triad Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva
found a Christian counterpart in the doctrine of the Holy
Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Both the Old and
New Testaments abound with references to the sacredness
of this number. God created the world by dividing it into
its three constituent parts, land, water, and air. He spoke to
Moses in the desert of Sinai on the third day of the third
month and gave the law on the same day. Christ was
tempted thrice and spent three days in the tomb. In the
Christian liturgy the number is reflected in such devotional
formulae as the triple Agnus dei, the triple Mea culpa, the
triple Dominus non sum dignus, that have parallels in the
Greek and Roman ritual (triple libation, triple pronunciation
of the mystical words, triple circumambulation,
lustratoria and others).

On the Plan of St. Gall the number three is used in the
organization of the basic site divisions (figs. 75 and 76).
There is an eastern tract, a central tract, and a western tract
(fig. 75). The central tract, which has twice the surface area
of tract 1 and 2, is internally divided into a straight plot on

[ILLUSTRATION]

76. PLAN OF ST. GALL

TRIPARTITE DIVISION OF CENTER TRACT

1. NORTHERN PLOT. A rectangular strip of land, accommodating
facilities that form an intermediary zone between the monastery and
the outside world (for its internal subdivisions see fig. 75.C).

2. CENTER PLOT. A P-shaped tract of land accommodating the
Church and the houses for the Monks (Dormitory, Refectory and
Cellar), the latter ranged peripherally around an open court
attached to the southern flank of the Church, and rigidly secluded
from all other areas of the monastery site.

3. SOUTHERN PLOT. An L-shaped area to the south and west of the
Monks' Cloister, with houses for subsidiary monastic activities (for
its internal subdivisions see fig. 77.C).

[ILLUSTRATION]

77. PLAN OF ST. GALL

GROUPING OF BUILDINGS IN THREES

The Northern Plot accommodates (1) The House of the Abbot, who
as the holder of a vast web of manorial estates, was the monastery's
primary link with the outside world; (2) the Outer School, where the
secular clergy and the sons of noblemen were trained; and (3) The
House for Distinguished Guests, where the emperor and his travelling
entourage were received. The Southern Plot accommodates in the
stem of the L-shaped site (1) the Granary; (2) the Great Collective
Workshop; (3) The Monks' Bake and Brewhouse, Mill and Mortar.
In the foot of the L are (1) the Hospice for Pilgrim's and Paupers,
(2) the workshops and quarters for Coopers and Wheelwrights; and
(3) The Houses for Oxen and their Keepers.

[ILLUSTRATION]

77.X PLAN OF ST. GALL

THE SUPERMODULE AS UNITS OF THREE & FOUR

The role of the numbers 3 and 4 (and their multiple 12) in the
layout of the entire monastery site, which in its totality is composed
of twelve 160 foot ( = 4 × 40) squares, arranged in three columns
from left to right, and four columns from top to bottom—a layout in
which the patristic tradition of sacred numbers fuses with a new
Carolingian aesthetic based on modular relationships.

the northern side of the Plan, a P-shaped plot in the center,
and an L-shaped plot to the south (fig. 76). The northern
plot is internally divided into three building sites (Abbot's
House, Outer School, House for Distinguished Guests),
the L-shaped plot to the south is comprised of six building
sites—three in the vertical stem of the L (Granary, Great
Collective Workshop, Monks' Bake and Brew House) and
three in the horizontal bar (Hospice for Pilgrims and
Paupers, House for Coopers and Wheelwrights, House for
Horses and Oxen; fig. 77).

The number three, as I have shown in my analysis of the
scale and construction methods used in designing the Plan,
played an important role in the arrangement of the 40-foot
squares that determined the layout of Church and Claustrum,
as well as the 160-foot squares that formed the basis
for the calculation of the overall dimensions of the monastery
site.[430] The Church is inscribed into a grid of squares,
three 40-foot units wide and nine 40-foot units long (fig.
61); the cloister into a grid of squares three units wide and

six units long. The entire settlement is developed within a
grid of 160-foot squares, three units wide and four units long
(fig. 63).

Three multiplied by itself is nine. This figure, apart from
the instance just mentioned, is reflected in the nine interstices
of the nave arcades (fig. 55) and the two rows of

planting beds in the Monks' Vegetable Garden (fig. 64).

FOUR: The number four was associated, both in pagan
and Christian times with the basic divisions of matter,
time, and space: the four humors of the body, the four
winds, the four seasons, the four rivers of paradise, the
four cardinal virtues, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse,
the four main prophets, and the four evangelists.[435]

On the Plan of St. Gall it determines the internal layout
of the most important building site, namely the P-shaped
central plot of land that accommodates the Church and the
three principal claustral structures. Moreover, it played a
crucial role in the calculation of all the basic modular values
used in constructing the Plan.[436]

SEVEN: In Sumerian and Babylonian times this figure
was associated with celestial bodies and spiritual forces:
the seven planets, the seven evil spirits, the seven levels of
the ziggurat and others.[437] In the biblical tradition, St. Augustine
writes, it was used to express "the whole or completeness
of anything." God created the world in seven days and
on the last of these, the seventh, he "did not wish to
sanctify his creation by any of his words but, rather by his
rest."[438]

[ILLUSTRATION]

78. PLAN OF ST. GALL

GROUPING OF BUILDINGS AS FOUR IN CENTRAL TRACT

A concept of classical beauty, in which function and number
symbolism fuse in the grouping of the four principal structures of the
monastery and its central and most vital core: Church (1),
Dormitory (2), Refectory (3), and Cellar (4).

[ILLUSTRATION]

79. PLAN OF ST. GALL

GROUPING OF BUILDINGS AS SEVEN IN CENTRAL TRACT

The same group of buildings, counted with all subsidiary structures,
result in the number 7, arrived at by the inclusion of the Monks'
Latrine (5), their Laundry and Bathhouse (6), and Kitchen (7).

[ILLUSTRATION]

80. PLAN OF ST. GALL

GROUPING OF BUILDINGS (WITH OPEN AREAS) IN SEVEN
AND TWELVE

The eastern tract (a) consists of medical facilities (1, 2, 3),
Novitiate and Infirmary (4), their respective bathhouses and
kitchens (5, 6), the Cemetery (7), Monks' Vegetable Garden and
the house for the gardener and crew (8, 9), and facilities for fowl
and their keepers (11, 12).

The western tract (b) consists of houses for monastic livestock and
their keepers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5); house for serfs and vassals, and servants
in the emperor's train (6, 7).

In the later Christian tradition all human life is ordered
by series of seven. There are seven capital sins, seven
virtues, seven sacraments, seven requests in the Pater
Noster. Each man passes through seven ages, and the
world itself will last no more than seven periods.[439] In
monastic life the number is observed in the seven daily
services to which the monks are held (Lauds, Prime, Terce,
Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline).[440]

On the Plan of St. Gall the numeral is reflected in the
seven buildings that form the cloister (three major and four
minor; fig. 79), the seven houses that lie in the western tract
of the monastery (fig. 80), the seven steps (septem gradus) by
which the presbytery is raised above the crossing (fig. 99),

the seven desks for the scribes in the scriptorium (fig. 99),
the seven tables in the Monks' Refectory (fig. 211), the seven
beds that are located in the abbot's dormitory (fig. 251)
besides that of the abbot and the seventy-seven beds in the
Monks' Dormitory (fig. 208).

TEN: "This number signifies perfection, in an even
fuller sense," St. Augustine writes, "because it is composed
of the number seven, which embraces all created
things, and the number three which stands for the Holy
Trinity."[445] It found its most significant embodiment in the
Ten Commandments, composed of three precepts pertaining
to the love of God and seven to the love of neighbors;[446]
and it is reflected in Hebraic liturgy in the ten shores
of Egypt, the ten ropes of the tent of the tabernacle, the
height of the cherubs in the temple (ten cubits) and the ten
horns of the apocalyptic beast. It was on the tenth day that
Christ ascended to heaven.[447] Ten is the number that forms
the basis of the decimal system and it is the universal ten
of the Pythagoreans.

All the principal dimensions of the Plan and those of
many of its larger subdivisions can be interpreted as
multiples of ten. The Church in the form in which it is
drawn has a length of 300 feet.[448] An axial revisionary title
suggests that in actual construction this should be reduced
to 200 feet.[449] The cloister yard, including its walks, has a
surface area of 100 by 100 feet.[450] The square with the
savin tree in the center measures 20 by 20 feet.[451] Ten is the
basic factor in all of the larger modules used in designing

[ILLUSTRATION]

80.X PLAN OF ST. GALL

THE ALTARS OF THE PLAN: A TRINITY OF SEVENS

This figure illustrates the use of the numbers 3, 4, and 7 in the
grouping of the altars in the various churches of the Plan. In number
they total 21 (3 × 7).

There are many more instances of the use of these numbers through
the entire length and width of the Plan, for a fuller discussion and
further illustration of which we refer to the article cited in note 3,
p. 119, above.

THE DELINEATED CROSSES OF THE PLAN

Twelve crosses, no more, no less, are delineated on the Plan. First is the great cross
of the Monks' Cemetery and Orchard. Within the Church a cross symbol marks
the Ambo, the remaining cross symbols mark ten of the 21 altars, four in each aisle,
two on the nave axis.

the Plan. Multiplied by four it yields the 40-foot square,[452]
and again by four the 160-foot square.[453] The number finds
specific mention in the explanatory title that defines the
distance (pedes denos) between the piers that support the
covered porch of the semicircular atrium that gives access
to the Church.[454]

TWELVE: The number twelve formed the basis of the
Sumerian and Babylonian numerical system, which was
duodecimal (the twelve signs of the zodiac, the twelve
months of the year, the twelve hours of the day). It played
a significant role in the number symbolism of the Jews (the
twelve gates of paradise, the twelve tribes of Israel, the
twelve bronze calves) and the Christians (the twelve
apostles, the twelve stars around the head of the apocalyptic
woman, the twelve days from Christ's birth to Epiphany).

On the Plan of St. Gall it is reflected in the twelve subdivisions
of the East tract (fig. 80), the twelve cubicles for
the students of the Outer School (fig. 407), and the twelve

feet (bis senos pedes) assigned to the interstices of the
arcades of the Church in one of the revisionary titles of the
Plan.[456]

FORTY: "I think that life itself is represented by the
number forty. . . . Not without reason did the Lord remain
on this earty forty days, after his resurrection, when he
conversed with his disciples in this life."[457] For ages this
number, as I have already had occasion to point out in a
preceding chapter, had been associated in the biblical
tradition with periods of expectation and penitence.[458] It is
the value assigned to the width of the nave of the Church
of the Plan[459] and forms the basis of the grid of squares that
determines the proportions of Church and Claustrum[460] as
well as the dimensions of the entire monastery site.[461] It is
a crucial figure both for the planimetric organization of the
monastery site and for the proportions of the Church and
the claustral buildings.

This is an enumeration of the most obvious incidence of
the use of sacred numbers in the design of the Plan. There
are others,[462] but perhaps one should not belabor the point.
Before abandoning the subject, nevertheless, attention
must be drawn to the existence of a broad range of different
manifestations of number symbolism on the Plan of St.
Gall, not so easily detected by the eye of modern students
of the Plan, and least of all by those who were reared in the
metric system. I am referring to all such cases where sacred
numbers are manipulated in modular, rather than in
straight, numerical sequence. The outer boundaries of the
monastery site, as has been shown in a preceding chapter,
were established in the proportion 3:4,[463] laid down with
the aid of a regular straightedge, on which these lengths
were 30 and 40 Carolingian inches.[464] The corresponding
distance on the ground was 480 and 640 feet,[465] both
multiples of forty. The entire monastery site discloses itself
to be inscribed into a grid of twelve (=3 × 4) supermodules,
each representing a surface area of 160 × 160
feet.[466] This area was internally composed of sixteen 40-foot
squares. On the Carolingian straightedge, with the aid of

which these dimensions were scaled on the Plan, this
supermodule corresponded to 10 × 10 inches.[467]

In our analysis of the scale and construction method used
in designing the Plan we have shown that all of those installations
of the Plan that were too small to be expressed as
multiples of 40 feet (width of the nave of the Church) were
designed as multiples of a standard module obtained by
halving forty, four times in succession, and thus arriving
at a base value of 2½ feet, perhaps equivalent to an actual
Carolingian "pace."[468] A modular sequence formed by
multiples of 2½ produces such imperfect numbers as 7½,
12½, 17½, 22½, 27½. These graduations appear peculiar to
anyone who is accustomed to think in sequences of full
numbers, but become meaningful once it is understood
that on the Carolingian straightedge used by the designer
in scaling the Plan, 7½ corresponded to three; 12½ to five;
and 17½ to seven standard modules. Typical examples are
the two enclosures, one of which serves as Henhouse, the

other as the Goosehouse (fig. 466). They are formed by
concentric circles, struck to diameters of 12½, 27½, and 42½
feet. On the scale used by the designer these values corresponded
to five, seven, and seventeen standard modules.
The House of the Fowlkeepers, which lies in the middle
between these two installations, covers a surface area of 35
feet by 42½ feet. On the straight edge these values corresponded
to fourteen (= twice seven) and seventeen (= ten
plus seven) standard modules. Examples like these could be
multiplied by scores of others.

On the Plan of St. Gall, thus, we must conclude that
number symbolism is used on different levels: the modular
graduations of the Carolingian straightedge with the aid
of which the Plan was drawn, the number of feet which
corresponded to this module on the ground[470] and the
number of actual Carolingian inches that furnished the
actual frame of reference for that modular scale. The author
of the Plan of St. Gall could switch from any one of these
three levels of thinking to any other with the same ease with
which a modern Anglo-Saxon carpenter switches from the
straight numerical sequence used in listing multiples of feet,
through the duodecimal system used in designating inches,
to the sixteen divisions used in designating fractions of
inches. Numbers meaningful in one system may be replete
with symbolism in any of the others.

In drawing attention to the use of sacred numbers in the
design of the Plan of St. Gall, we must emphasize that the
conceptual attitude reflected in this system should under
no circumstances be confused with the principle of carefully
regulated modular relationships discussed in our
chapter on the scale and construction methods used in the
Plan (above, p. 77ff). They have different historical roots
and different historical implications.

Number symbolism is cultural material of old vintage
transmitted to the age of Charlemagne in the form that it
had attained in the writings of the early Church Fathers.
It was the product of theological and biblical speculation
and an expression of the belief that the created world was
held together by a divinely ordered system of numerical
relationships, and that the continuance of life depended on
the perpetuation of that system. Sacred numbers, judiciously
selected, could be used for aesthetic purposes but
had in themselves no binding aesthetic implications. Of the
six intensely holy numbers used by the author of the Plan
(i.e., the numerals 3, 4, 7, 10, 12, and 40) four are not in any
modular relationship to one another (e.g., 3, 4, 7, and 10);
and 3, 7, and 12 are not in any modular relationship to 40,
the number holding the key position in the aesthetic
organization of the Plan. Only 4 and 10 are modules of this
crucial figure, 40. It is in the establishment of a coherent

aesthetic system between these three—4, 10, 40—and the
consistent application of that system to the layout of the
entire monastery site that a new principle of spatial composition
emerges in western architecture and planning. We
shall return to this subject in our discussion of the cultural
roots and architectural implications of the square schematism
of the Plan of St. Gall (below, pp. 212ff).

[ILLUSTRATION]

81. ROME. ST. PAUL'S OUTSIDE THE WALLS, A.D. 385

INTERIOR VIEW LOOKING EAST, FROM AN ENGRAVING BY GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI, 1749

[after G. B. Piranesi, OPERE, 27 vols., Rome, 1756-1807; Vol. 16, Pl. 9. Size of original: 16¼ × 24 inches]

With the incomparable sensitivity which he manifested for the specific stylistic qualities of the great monuments of Roman, Greek, and Early
Christian architecture, Piranesi here recreates the simple blocklike quality of the spaces of an Early Christian basilica.

The arcades are not wide enough to let the space flow between nave and aisles; the roof trusses likewise are so narrowly spaced that their
tie-beams appear to be part of a continuous plane forming the ceiling. Walls, pavement and roof, despite their perforations, thus act aesthetically
like the sides of a box, bounding in straight planes the solid unbroken mass of the space they envelop: a huge monolithic void, solid and
undisturbed.