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

I have expressed the view in previous studies that this
building might have been a large barn or wagon shed,[335] but
I am now inclined to think that it served as quarters for the
emperor's bodyguard. The assumption of a wagon shed is
precluded by the fact—not recognizable to the naked eye
but clearly exposed by the X-rays (fig. 405)—that the only
entrance that gives access to the building is not wide enough
to admit any wagons. Unfortunately, we are not well informed
about the size and composition of the emperor's
bodyguard when he was engaged in travel. In the previously
quoted passage from the Life of Charlemagne, where Einhard
tells that the emperor liked to take his sons and daughters
along on his journeys, Einhard remarks that on such occasions
"his sons would ride at his side and his daughters
follow him, while a number of his bodyguards, detailed for
their protection, brought up the rear."[336] A hint of the total
number involved in such movements might be contained in
a passage of the Chronicle of Hariulf, where it is said that
the abbot and priors of St.-Riquier, when traveling, enjoyed
the protection of the monastery's entire retinue of
110 mounted knights. As the chronicler proudly adds in
this context, when the knights were gathered at St.-Riquier
during the religious festivals, "their presence lent to the
monastery almost the appearance of a royal court,"[337] we
must infer that the emperor himself was wont to turn up
with an even larger escort when visiting the abbey.

Heusinger estimates the traveling emperor's court to
have run into the hundreds.[338] Professor Ganshof would
consider this to be an excessive figure if it were applied to
the Carolingian period.[339] Obviously, the number of men
who made up such a protective guard must have varied
greatly, depending on the political stability at the time of
travel and the distance involved in the journey,[340] but one
might safely expect that an elite guard of some twenty to
thirty men accompanied the emperor wherever he went.
The great anonymous building at the northwestern corner
of the monastery site could easily have accommodated a
detachment of this magnitude, and if necessity demanded,
a detachment several times larger. The natural monastic
traffic flow would call for such a barracks to be located in
that corner rather than anywhere else in the rectangular
site into which the monastery is inscribed.

One wonders whether von Arx's conjecture that the
house might have been used for "guest horses," was pure
fantasy or whether his eye could still decipher somewhere
among the obliterated titles the word caballi.

[335]

Horn, 1962, 110 note 15; and idem, 1958, 8, caption to fig. 16.

[336]

See above, note 46.

[337]

Hariulf, Chronique de l'Abbaye de Saint-Riquier, ed. Lot, 1894,
cf. I, 347. An interesting sidelight on this question is the tabulation
which Meyer von Knonau made in a study of 1872 on the officiales
of the monastery of St. Gall with the aid of the archival resources of this
abbey published by Wartmann. He could establish with certainty that
Abbot Gozbert (816-836) traveled at least on eight different occasions
with his advocatus and five to six further officials, Abbot Bernwick
(837-840) twice with eight officials, and Abbot Grimald (841-872) on
occasion with as many as seven, nine and ten. This information is
gleaned from the signatures attached to deeds which were written in the
course of such travels. The signatures are, of course, confined to those
officials only who by position or rank were qualified to serve as formal
witnesses. The deeds remain silent on the number of servants or knights
who were part of these movements. Ratperti casus s. Galli, ed. Meyer
von Knonau, 1872, Excurs L, 83ff.

[338]

Heusinger, 1923, 62.

[339]

Oral communication. I should like to draw attention, in this context,
to an agreement struck in 1056 between the Abbey of Moutier-en-Der
and the Count of Brienne, according to which the abbey was required
to take care of the count, and ten to fifteen knights of his train, when the
count passed through the country: "et si aliquo modo forte ei contigerit
ut per regionem transeat cum decem aut quindecim militibus, ministerialis
Sancti Petri victum ei prebebit;" see Guerard, II, 1844, Appendix XX,
361. In later centuries the traveling train of feudal magnates attained
considerably larger proportions. Sir Thomas of Berkeley II (12811321)
is said to have had a household and a "standing domestic family"
of more than two hundred persons, knights, esquires, serving men and
pages; and Godfrey Giffard, Bishop of Worcester between 1266 and
1302, is reputed to have had a hundred horses in his traveling court.
(I am gleaning this information from Hilton, 1966, 25; for sources see
ibid., 272, notes 1 and 2).

[340]

When Charlemagne summoned the young King Louis of Aquitaine
to Paderborn during the Saxon war of 808-809, the latter joined him,
according to a good contemporary source "with his entire military
strength" (cum populo omni militari); and four years later, when Louis
traveled to Aachen, upon the news of his father's death, according to
the same source, "he entered upon his journey with as many people as
the perplexity of the time allowed" (cum quanto passa est angustia temporis
populo), "for it was feared that Wala, possessor of the highest rank
with Charles, might plot something underhanded against the emperor"
(Anonymi Vita Hludowici, chap. 4, ed. Rau, I, 1956, 264-65 and chap.
21, ibid., 290-91; cf. also Son of Charlemagne, A Contemporary Life of
Louis the Pious, ed. Allen Cabanis, 1961, 35 and 54.