University of Virginia Library

III.1.30

CELLAR AND LARDER

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

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

Cellar

LAYOUT, DESIGN, AND DIMENSIONS
OF CASKS

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

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

[ILLUSTRATION]

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

[by courtesy of the Laudesmuseum, Trier]

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

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

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

THE BARRELS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

An invention of the Celts

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

[ILLUSTRATION]

KONZ (CONTIONACUM)

241.B PERSPECTIVE RECONSTRUCTION

[by courtesy of the Landesmuseum, Trier]

241.A PLAN 1:600

[by courtesy of the Landesmuseum, Trier]

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

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

Egyptian & Greco-Roman methods of storing wine

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

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

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

The barrel: constructional & viticultural advantages

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

The oldest extant barrel and the earliest
visual representations

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

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

[ILLUSTRATION]

242. KLOOSTERBERG (near Plasmolen)

MOOK, LIMBURG, THE NETHERLANDS

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

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

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

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

ET HIC TRAHUNT CARRUM CUM VINO ET
ARMIS.

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

THE MEASURE OF WINE AND BEER ALLOWED TO
THE MONKS

Conflicting views among the early fathers

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

No difference in alcoholic content between ancient
and modern wines

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

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

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

[ILLUSTRATION]

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

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

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

[ILLUSTRATION]

244. CANTERBURY, ENGLAND

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

[same period; after Clapham, 1955]

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

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

The Carolingian inflation of capacity measures

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

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

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

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

[ILLUSTRATION]

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

OPENING WORDS OF ST. MARK GOSPELS

[by courtesy of the Trustees of Trinity College]

[ILLUSTRATION]

246. PLAN OF ST. GALL

DIAGRAM SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRINCIPAL BUILDING MASSES

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

[ILLUSTRATION]

247. PLAN OF ST. GALL. NOVITIATE AND INFIRMARY

PLAN. AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

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

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

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

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

ARE THE BARRELS DRAWN TO SCALE AND
SCALED TO NEED?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ILLUSTRATION]

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

248.A CROSS SECTION THROUGH CLOISTER AND CHAPEL LOOKING WEST

248.B WEST ELEVATION

AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

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

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

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

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

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

3. If the daily allowance was 0.7 liters:

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

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

CONCLUSION

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

LACK OF FACILITIES FOR THE PRESSING
OF GRAPES

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

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

Larder

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

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

[ILLUSTRATION]

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

249.B LONGITUDINAL SECTION THROUGH CHAPELS LOOKING SOUTH

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

AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

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

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

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

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

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