NEW OR UNUSUAL HEATING DEVICES
Because of the number of men it had to sustain, the monastery
must have played a significant role in acceptance and
diffusion of new or unusual heating devices. The primordial
and common way of heating houses north of the Alps from
the Stone Age onward, was the open fireplace that burned
in the middle of the living room emitting its smoke through
an opening in the roof that was protected by a lantern.
This device, as our analysis will show, appears in all of the
guest and service buildings of the Plan of St. Gall.[211]
But
the Plan of St. Gall teaches us also that an exemplary
monastery of the time of Louis the Pious was provided
with two further methods for heating. In one of them the
heat is generated by a furnace (caminus) built against
one of the outer walls of the building, conducted into trenches
beneath the floor and from there released through
openings in the room above. This method—an obvious derivative
of the Roman hypocaust system—was capable of
producing an even flow of heat for large spaces and therefore
used for rooms where the entire community of monks
and novices slept or worked together.[212]
In the other one,
found in the lodgings of the higher ranking members of the
monastic community as well as in the private bedrooms of
the distinguished guests, the heat was produced by a hooded
corner fireplace (caminata) that emitted its smoke through
a chimney stack.[213]
Both these systems are highly sophisticated
and have no parallels in the secular early medieval
world, save for a few isolated occurrences on the highest
social levels, namely in the palaces of kings.[214]
