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

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

p. 310

symbols variously as "a large cupboard, probably for

p. II.146

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

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

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

270

[ILLUSTRATION]

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

SEPARATION OF GOLD AND SILVER WITH AQUA VALENS

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

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

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

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

271

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

[108]

Keller, 1844, 22.

[109]

Ibid., 25.

[110]

Ibid., 26.

[111]

Willis, 1848, 102, 107.

[112]

Stephani, II, 190.

[113]

Lesne, VI, 1943, 46.

[114]

Niermeyer (Med. Lat. lex. min., fasc. 11, 1964, 1032) glosses
toreuma as "couch," "curtain" and "cupboard" with sources for all of
these meanings. "Curtain" I find a little puzzling. But "couch" makes
perfect sense, since the majority of the component parts of such a piece
of furniture (like that of the church bench, shown above p. 152, fig. 100)
were made of pieces of wood turned on the lathe.

The author cited as source for "cupboard" is Ruodlieb, a writer who
had "more than a casual knowledge of Greek", and the passage, in his
courtly eleventh century novel, referred to by Niermeyer is of impeccable
non-ambiguity:

Mensa sublata properat sustollere uasa

Ne mingat catta catulusque coinquinet illa,

sedulus ac lauit, post in toreuma reponit.

which Zeydel translates:

"When the table had been removed, he hurries to clear away the
dishes,

lest the cat urinate on them or the dog soil them.

With care he washes them and then puts them in the closet."

(Ruodlieb, VI, 45-48, ed. Zeydel, 1959, 82-85; on Ruodlieb's proficiency
in Greek, ibid., 23.)

To "be turned" or serve as a container for objects produced on the
turner's lathe appears to be the common denominator for the majority
of the multiple meanings of the term toreuma. But the term was subjected
to considerable strain by its medieval users. Charles Jones draws my
attention to a passage in Einsiedeln Ms. 172, saec. X, a Commentary on
Donatus (ed. Hermann Hagen in Keil, Grammatici Latini, VIII, 1870
(1961), 239, but repunctuated), wherein everything after balteus puerilis
is a marginal addition: "τορεύω Graece torno, inde toreuma dicitur tornatura
uel balteus puerilis—siue id quod eicitur de tornatura uel bullae quae in
stillicidio apparent plauiali tempore. (Ad quorum similitudine calceoli
fiebant nobilium puerorum, per quod designabatur quod, quamdiu his
utebantur, alterius consilio indigebant; nam βουλή Graece consilium, inde
βουλετής consiliarius.) Aliter hami loricarum ita uocantur." Jones translates:
"τορεύω in Greek means `torno.' From this toreuma comes to mean
`turner's ware' [uide Irminonis polypt. i, 34], or `a boy's belt' [balteus
comes also to mean `palisade' (Niermeyer)]—or whatever is derived
from turner's ware, or little balls (bullae) such as the hail that appears in
a downpour during the rainy season. (They fabricate the sabots of
noble boys out of bulbous discs shaped like that; and as long as the
boys wear that kind of sabot, it shows that they still need supervision of
someone else, for βουλή in Greek means `counselling,' hence βουλετής
means `counsellor.') Elsewhere, the studs on breastplates are called
toreuma."

[115]

See Wormald, 1973, 21-22.

[116]

See Schiedlausky, 1956, 13 and Fridolin, 1962.

[117]

Falke, 1924, pl. 27a; and Schmitz, 1957, 31.

[118]

Augst, 1950, 25.

[119]

Kohlhausen, 1955, 142, fig. 121; and Falk, 1924, pl. 26a.

[120]

Kohlhausen, 1955, 141, fig. 120; and Schmitz, 1957, 59.

[121]

Falke, 1924, pl. 26b.

[122]

Ibid., pl. 26c.

[123]

Quennell, 1950/51, 115, fig. 65.