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A PREROGATIVE OF HIGHER-RANKING MEMBERS
OF THE MONASTIC COMMUNITY

In addition to the central open fireplace which forms the
primary—and in the majority of houses, the only—source
of heat, some of the guest and service buildings are provided
with another device for heating individual rooms. Its
symbol is an ovoid loop (fig. 371 A and B) always found in
the corner of a room. In the Abbot's House, it is designated

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL

371.A ABBOT'S HOUSE

371.B HOUSE FOR DISTINGUISHED GUESTS

CORNER FIREPLACES

Corner fireplaces with chimney stacks are installed in double-storied structures and
in houses where the seclusion of separate living or bedrooms deprives occupants of
the heat of the central fireplace (as in the House for Distinguished Guests).

as caminata. Caminata (short, presumably, for camera
caminata) is the medieval word for a room that has its own
fireplace (caminus).[242] In this sense the term is used to indicate
the bedrooms for distinguished guests (caminata cum
lectis; fig. 371B) and the bedroom in the Porter's lodging
(caminata portarii). By contrast, in the Abbot's living room
as well as his bedroom, both of which are heated by corner
fireplaces, the word caminata is inscribed into the interior
of the loop-shaped symbol that indicates the presence of
these heating devices, and therefore must have been used,
in these two instances, as synonyms for caminus, i.e. the fireplace
itself.

Individual fireplaces indicated in this way on the Plan
are found either in buildings having no central hearth, or
in rooms separated from the common hall by wall partitions
for the sake of greater privacy. Such fireplaces were the
prerogative of the higher ranking members of the monastic
polity and of the sick. They are primarily associated with
masonry structures. Besides appearing in the Abbot's
House, they are also found in the living quarters of the
monastic officials next in rank: the Porter, the Master of

the Outer School, the Master of the Novitiate, the Master
of the Infirmary, and the Master of the Hospice for Pilgrims
and Paupers.[243] For reasons of health they occur in
all the sick wards (Novitiate, Infirmary, House for Bloodletting,
House of the Physicians). They are found with less
frequency in the guest and service buildings. Here again
their presence is determined by considerations of rank or
functional necessity. We find them in the bedrooms of the
noblemen in the House for Distinguished Guests, in the
bedrooms of the Physician and the Gardener. Conversely,
they never occur in the buildings that accommodate the
humbler members of the monastic community. They are
completely absent from the houses for the workmen and
craftsmen, the Hospice for Pilgrims and Paupers, and the
houses that shelter serfs or livestock and their keepers.