THE MAIN HOUSE
Layout and function
The general purpose of the House for Distinguished
Guests is defined by a hexameter which reads:
domus
Haec quoque hospitibus parta est quoque suspicientis[311]
This building, too, serves for the reception of guests
The conjunction quoque suggests that the building holds a
position of secondary importance with regard to another
facility for guests, which can only be the Hospice for Pilgrims
and Paupers. The modest slant of this verse is obviously
a reflection of the warning given by St. Benedict
that the hospitality accorded to the poor lies on a higher
plane of religious devotion than that extended to the rich.[312]
But the profuse attention lavished on the internal layout of
the House for Distinguished Guests tends to defy this
thought.
The House is 67½ feet long and 55 feet wide. It has as its
principal room a large rectangular hall, which its explanatory
title defines as the "dining hall of the guests" (domus
hospitū ad prandendum). Access to this is gained through a
"vestibule" (
ingressus) which lies in the middle of the
southern aisle of the house. The dining hall has in its center
a large quadrangular "fireplace" (
locus foci) and in the
corners, ranged all around the circumference, benches and
"tables" (
mensae), plus two "cupboards" (
toregmata[313]
) for
the storage of cups and tableware. Under the lean-to's at
each of the narrow ends of the house there are the "bedrooms"
for the distinguished guests (
caminatae cum lectis),
four in all, each furnished with its own corner fireplace and
its own projecting privy (
necessariü). The rooms to the left
and right of the entrance in the southern aisle of the house
serve as "quarters for the servants" (
cubilia seruitorum),
while two corresponding rooms in the northern aisle are
used as "stables for the horses" (
stabula caballorum). Their
cribs (
praesepia) are arranged against the outer walls. A
small vestibule between the two stables gives access to a
covered passage that leads to a large privy (
exitus neces-
sarius). The latter covers a surface area of 10 by 45 feet and
is furnished with no fewer than eighteen toilet seats—an
indication of the extraordinary sanitary precautions that,
at the time of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, must have
been taken for the persons who traveled in the emperor's
immediate entourage.
[314]
I have already drawn attention to the fact that the stables
for the horses have no direct access from the exterior. The
entire house has only one entrance, and in order to reach
their stables the horses had to be led through the central
dining hall. This suggests that all the rooms of the house
were on ground level and that the floor of the center room
was made of stamped clay rather than of a boarding of wood.
The large open fireplace in the center of the dining room
makes it unequivocably clear that this house was not a
double-storied structure.[315]
[ILLUSTRATION]
406.B
By making the center hall of this building 45 feet wide by 60 feet long, the drafters of the Plan pushed the structural capabilities of the aisled
Germanic all-purpose house to its limits. Spans of 45 feet, rare even in church construction, were unheard-of in domestic architecture. We
know of only one other medieval building of even comparable dimensions: the barn of the abbey grange of Parçay-Meslay, France (figs. 352-355)
at a width of 80 feet. But the vast roof of that barn is supported, not by the traditional two, but by four rows of freestanding inner posts.
We do not believe that the roof of the House for Knights and Vassals could have been supported successfully by less posting and have therefore
introduced in our reconstruction two additional rows of posts, that reduce the center span of the inner hall from 45 to a more conventional
27 feet.
Incorporating the doubled rows of posting is not in conflict with methods of architectural rendering employed by the drafters of the Plan.
They were not concerned with constructional details, but primarily with establishing the boundaries of each building on the site in terms of its
function and its components. The size of a royal retinue—including its servants, grooms, bodyguard, as well as the principals themselves—
justifies the tentative identification of this house.
In this, as in other buildings of the Plan, details of construction engineering were left to be resolved by the ingenuity of a master builder who
would determine in what ways a building conceived for the purpose of housing up to 40 men and 30 horses, and their attendants, could be
realized as functional architecture. The interaction of planners with builders is elsewhere attested on the Plan, wherever features obviously
intended and needed are absent: staircases, doors and windows, and others (see I. 13, 65ff).
The main point of interest, we believe, in our investigation of this particular building is that the prevailing building type of the Plan of St. Gall,
the three-aisled hall—without loss of the essence of its character—adapts with ease and dignity and possibly with some elegance, to a building of
relatively inordinate size through the device of adding an aisle between the central main space of the nave, and each of the lean-to side aisles.
In effect, a five-aisled hall is thus formed (see fig. 354.A, B, Parçay-Meslay, and Les Halles, Côte St. André, Isère, France).
Materials and mode of construction
In contrast to the Abbot's House,[316]
whose typological
roots lie in the South, the House for Distinguished Guests,
as has been demonstrated, is a descendant of a strictly
Northern building type. It may have been built entirely
in wood, or it may have had its circumference walls constructed
in masonry. In our reconstructions (figs. 397-399)
we have chosen this latter solution in order to demonstrate
the possibility of mixed materials on this higher social level
of building. In the interior the roof must have been supported
by two parallel rows of wooden posts, framed into
weight- and thrust-resisting trusses with the aid of tie
beams and post plates. If the roof belonged to the purlin
family of roofs, its basic design cannot have differed greatly
from what we have suggested in figures 397 and 398. For
the thirteenth century this type of roof is well attested, at
least on the Continent, as has been demonstrated by the
examples discussed above on pages 88ff. It may have been
as common in Carolingian times.
That royal timber houses with masonry walls existed in
Carolingian times is known through the Brevium exempla,
for it is doubtlessly to this mixture of materials that the
author of this work refers, when describing the domus
regalis of one of his anonymous crown estates as a house that
was "externally built in stone, and inside all in timber"
(exterius ex lapide et interius ex ligno bene constructam).[317]
Separation of common & private rooms
The internal layout of the House for Distinguished
Guests (fig. 398) is historically of particular interest, as it
shows that at the beginning of the ninth century the timbered
royal hall was sufficiently partitioned internally to
allow the lord to withdraw from the ranks of his followers
to the privacy of separate bedrooms. Dining was still a
communal function. But the establishment of individual
fireplaces with chimneys in the lord's private chambers
made the latter independent from the open fire in the floor
of the hall. Architecturally speaking, this means that the
private bedrooms under the lean-to's at each end of the
hall could have been screened off from the rest of the
building, not only by vertical wall partitions (as they most
certainly were), but also by their own individual ceilings.
If ceilings were installed, the walls required windows,
since ceilings would have deprived the bedrooms of the
principal source of light for the house—the louver over the
fireplace in the ridge of the roof of the hall. The quarters
of the servants, on the other hand, cannot have been provided
with ceilings, since they depended for warmth on the
heat furnished by the communal fire in the center hall.
Housing capacity
The House for Distinguished Guests can accommodate
eight visitors of rank in four separate rooms, each of which
is furnished with two beds, two benches, and a corner
fireplace.[318]
These are the rooms for the emperor, the empress,
or any other members of the imperial family who
accompanied the emperor on his travels, and some of the
highest ranking ministers and councilors who were part of
the emperor's permanent staff. The rooms for the servants
in the southern aisle of the house have a bedding capacity
for eighteen men. This is the number of beds of standard
size that could be set up for the servants if they were ranged
peripherally along the walls of their rooms (nine in each).
Eighteen also happens to be the number of toilet seats
available in the servant's privy. The two stables in the
northern aisle of the house can accommodate four horses
each (figuring for each horse a standing area 5 feet wide and
7½ feet long). These must have been the mounts of the distinguished
guests, since their number corresponds exactly
to the number of beds available in the latter's private
chambers.
Even the seating capacity of the dining room is closely
correlated with the total number of men who can be accommodated
in the House for Distinguished Guests. The
eastern or upper end of the hall is furnished with two short
straight tables, each capable of seating four of the eight
distinguished guests (if we attribute to each of them a sitting
area 2½ feet wide). The western or lower end has longer,
L-shaped tables with sufficient sitting space to take care of
the eighteen servants.
Number and composition of officers of state
in the emperor's train
There are no conclusive studies on the number or composition
of the officers of state who accompanied the emperor
on his travels.[319]
From Hincmar's account of Adalhard
of Corbie's De Ordine Imperii,[320]
it appears that the central
administrative body of the Carolingian court consisted of a
staff of six leading functionaries, who by the very definition
of their office were part and parcel of the emperor's personal
entourage, viz., the Seneschal (senescalcus, literally,
"the old servant") who was in charge of provisions and
especially those of the royal table; the Butler (buticularius),
responsible for drink; the Chamberlain (
camerarius) in
charge of lodging and the royal treasury; the Constable
(
comes stabuli) in charge of horses and all other means of
transportation; the Count Palatine (
comes palatinus), the
primary officer in charge of the empire's judiciary administration;
and last but not least, the Arch Chaplain (
summus
capellanus), the emperor's primary advisor in ecclesiastical
and educational matters, whose office later became absorbed
in that of the Chancellor (
summus sacri palatii cancellarius).
[321]
Readiness for action involving the state and the imperial
household in its entirety would have required the presence
of all these men. But it is well known that the holders of
these offices were often away from the court in the summer
on special missions.
[322]
The House for Distinguished Guests,
nevertheless, would have been equipped to accommodate
all these men besides the emperor himself, plus his wife or
one of his children. How many members of his family he
was wont to have with him when traveling is another
question for which we have no ready answer. "Charlemagne,"
we are told by Einhard, "cared so deeply for the
training of his children that he never took his meal without
them when he was at home, and never made a journey
without them."
[323]
Although this could scarcely have applied
to all the seven sons and daughters
[324]
that Einhard ascribes
to Charlemagne, it would still suggest that the traveling
emperor was frequently accompanied by one or another of
his sons and daughters.
[325]
When Louis the Pious stayed in
St. Gall in 857, his sons Karlmann and Karl III were with
him.
[326]
This is about all that seems to be known on this
subject.
The Plan of St. Gall may actually help us here to close a
gap of knowledge. It discloses that at the time of Louis the
Pious a monastery was expected to be capable of taking care
of a royal party consisting of eight dignitaries of state or
members of the imperial family, their mounts, and eighteen
of their personal servants. In later centuries the figure may
have been considerably larger. The Consuetudinary of
Farfa—in reality the customs of Cluny (written between
1030 and 1048)—prescribed for that monastery a guest
house for forty male and thirty female members of the
emperor's train, plus a stable capable of sheltering some
150 horses.
[327]
Yet conditions at Cluny were probably
unusual. A fulcrum of revival and reform among the
monasteries of France and unbelievably rich, the abbey
was already well on its way toward wedging itself as an
arbitrating spiritual force into the interplay between the
secular and the ecclesiastical powers of the period.
Other supporting forces
Even in the ninth century, nevertheless, a guest house
with a bedding capacity of eight distinguished guests, their
horses, and eighteen of their servants, is not likely to have
been capable of accommodating the whole of the emperor's
permanent train. To be protected, the king needed a bodyguard.
Such a guard of mounted knights would not necessarily
have had to be very large, yet it is unlikely to have
consisted of fewer than twenty or thirty men. They, too, and
their horses would have to be provided with quarters. One
would have to expect, additionally, a small train of wagons
with emergency rations, kitchens, tents, and other equipment
indispensable to the movement of the court. This
involved another troup of servants who would also have to
be sheltered. The Plan of St. Gall shows two buildings that
may have performed that function, located at the gate of the
monastery in the immediate vicinity of the House for Distinguished
Guests. But before we turn to them, some attention
must be paid to the kitchen, bake, and brewing facilities
of the House for Distinguished Guests.
