University of Virginia Library

V. 9

OUTER SCHOOL & THE LODGING
OF THE SCHOOLMASTER

V.9.1

THE MONASTERY'S EDUCATIONAL
TASKS

ROYAL DIRECTIVES

Be it known, therefore, to your devotion pleasing to God, that we,
together with our faithful, have considered it to be useful that the
bishoprics and monasteries entrusted by the favor of Christ to our
control, in addition to the order of monastic life and the intercourse
of holy religion, in the culture of letters also ought to be zealous
in teaching those who by the gift of God are able to learn, according
to the capacity of each individual, so that just as the observance of
the rule imparts order and grace to honesty of morals, so also zeal
in teaching and learning may do the same for sentences, so that
those who desire to please God by living rightly should not neglect
Him also by speaking correctly.[346]

Thus wrote Charlemagne to Abbot Baugulf of Fulda in
a letter drafted by Alcuin, probably in 784 or 785. In a
second issue of the same letter, made out to Archbishop
Angilram of Metz, the emperor adds the admonition:

The letter from which these sentences are quoted,
Charlemagne's famous epistola de litteris collendis,[347] is one
of the first of a series of royal directives assigning to the
episcopal and monastic schools of the Frankish kingdom
an active role in education. It is one of the cornerstones of
that programmatic revival of both theological and classical
studies in which Charles took an intense personal interest
and which ushered in the Carolingian Renascence. One of
Charles's specific concerns was the intellectual formation of
the youth who were to form the core of the coming generation
of priests and clerics. In a great circular directive of
789, the admonitio generalis,[348] he ruled that the children of
free laymen be admitted to the monastic schools, and that
reading classes be established for the young (scolae legentium
puerorum) in which the psalms, music, chant, the calendar
of the religious festivals, grammar, and the creeds of the
faith be taught.[349] In the pursuit of these as well as the
more general aims of his educational reform, the emperor
systematically enlarged the body of his personal entourage
by adding to the old nucleus of administrative officers of
the Palace distinguished scholars from England, Ireland,
Italy, and Spain, thus setting up at the court itself a school
of learning that could be used as a model for the other
schools in his realm.[350]

The close relationship that existed between so many
medieval rulers and their leading bishops and abbots was
due in no small measure to friendships struck up between
these rulers and their former fellow students and teachers
during their education in monastic schools.[351] Some monasteries
were understandably proud of these connections, as
may be gathered from a boastful passage in Hariulf's
Chronicle of St.-Riquier:

STRESSES LEADING TO DIVISION INTO
INNER AND OUTER SCHOOLS

The stresses that these new educational obligations imposed
upon monastic seclusion were great and must have
been in debate at the second synod of Aachen which passed
the perplexing resolution, "There shall be no other school
in the monastery than that which is used for the instruction
of the future monks."[353] I have already had occasion to point
out that it could not have been the intent of this ruling to
relieve the monasteries entirely from their share in the intellectual
training of the secular youth, which would have
been a complete reversal of the educational policies promoted
by Charlemagne. Rather it was the expression of a
conflict which in practice was settled by the division of the
monastic educational system into an "inner" and an "outer"
school, the former for the training of the future monks, the
latter for the instruction of those who planned to enter upon
the career of the secular clergy and of such laymen, poor
or noble, whose education was entrusted to monastic
teachers. The former was located in the cloister; the latter
outside it, at a place where it would not intrude on monastic
privacy. This is precisely the manner in which this problem
was settled on the Plan of St. Gall. The inner school is in
the cloister of the Novices,[354] the Outer School lies between
the House for Distinguished Guests and the Abbot's House,
i.e., in a tract which in all other respects held a transitional
position between the monastic and secular world. Unlike
the schola interior, which remained essentially confined to
elementary learning, the schola exterior developed quickly
into a school for advanced study.[355]

[ILLUSTRATION]

407. PLAN OF ST. GALL. THE OUTER SCHOOL

The simple map reveals with almost startling clarity the centrality of the site of St. Gall in the Frankish Empire. The dicta of Charlemagne
regarding education of clerics and children of free laymen were embodied on the Plan in the Outer School, where it was intended the Empire's
most outstanding teachers should profess and the nation's intellectual leaders be trained. Provided with bedroom cubicles, two classrooms, and
an annexed privy, the Outer School lacks a kitchen; perhaps students dined in the House for Distinguished Guests when it was unoccupied,
or perhaps took a meal in the Monks' Refectory, seated at the lower end of the hall.

[ILLUSTRATION]

408.A PLAN OF ST. GALL. OUTER SCHOOL. PLAN. AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

Cubicles in the aisles and lean-to's of this building reflect more clearly than the room divisions in other guest and service structures the bay
division of the aisled Germanic all-purpose house, from which these buildings of the Plan historically derive.

Explanatory titles identify the cubicles of the Outer School as students' bedrooms, and the large central common hall as the area for teaching
and study. This hall is divided into two classrooms by a freestanding median wall partition. Each is furnished with its own fireplace, and above
these in the roof ridge are lanterns (TESTU) serving as smoke escape and to admit light and air. The small squares in the students' cubicles are
unexplained. It is tempting to interpret them as study tables; but similar squares in the two divisions of the central hall suggest that there
should be openings in the roof to admit light. We have thus reconstructed them in this sense, as dormer windows.

DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS

In the ninth and tenth centuries in the monastery of St.
Gall, these schools produced some of the greatest teachers
of the period, the lives and works of whom Ekkehart IV
describes in his Casus sancti Galli with as much detail and
color as those of the greatest abbots.[356] From Ekkehart's
account we also learn that the Outer School of the monastery
of St. Gall lay to the north of the Church, at almost
the same location it occupies on the Plan of St. Gall; for
in his description of the fire of 937 Ekkehart relates how the
dry shingles of the burning roof of the school were blown
by the north wind onto the church tower and ignited its
roof.[357]

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. OUTER SCHOOL. LONGITUDINAL SECTION, NORTH ELEVATION

408.B

408.C

[ILLUSTRATION]

408.D PLAN OF ST. GALL. OUTER SCHOOL. SOUTH ELEVATION

The Outer School could have been built entirely in timber (as was traditional for this type of building) or—because of the high social standing
of many of its occupants, its proximity to the Abbot's House, as well as its need for ample lighting—in the mixed technique which we propose
for the House for Distinguished Guests (figs. 397-399). Masonry would have had the additional advantage of permitting fenestration in the
outer walls of the building.

Adding to this 24-student potential capacity the 12 oblates and novices trained in the Inner School, the 36-student capacity provided for by
facilities on the Plan of St. Gall proves far fewer than the total of 100 students that was Angilbert's pride at St. Riquier ("centum pueros in
hoc sancto loco in scolam congregare studuimus"; Angilberti Abbatis de ecclesia Centulensi Libellus, G. Waitz, ed., Mon.
Germ. hist., Scriptores, XV:1, Hannover 1887, 173-79).

V.9.2

THE OUTER SCHOOL

LAYOUT & MEANING OF EXPLANATORY TITLES

The Outer School of the Plan (fig. 407) is surrounded by a
fence which is designated with the hexameter:

Measuring 70 feet in length and 55 feet in width, its surface
area exceeds that of the House for the Distinguished Guests
by a slight margin. The building consists of a large rectangular
hall, inscribed with the title domus communis
scolae id÷ uacationis. The interpretation of this title is
controversial. Keller, Willis, Campion, Leclercq, and Reinhardt
transcribed the abbreviation id÷ wrongly as idem
and interpreted the term uacatio as "recreation," thus translating
the line as "the common-room of the school and
place for recreation."[358] Meier transcribed id÷ correctly as
id est[359] and proposed uacatio is simply a Latinization of the
Greek word σχολή, which came into use in the Latin world
in republican times as the designation for higher studies in
literature, grammar and rhetoric.[360] He interprets the title
accordingly as "the common hall for the school, i.e. the
place of study." The term uacatio is not used in the Rule
of St. Benedict, but to judge by the frequency with which
it appears in Hildemar's commentary to the Rule (written
around 845) it must have been fashionable in the Carolingian
period. Hildemar employs it no fewer than fifteen

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. OUTER SCHOOL. TRANSVERSE SECTION, EAST ELEVATION

408.E

408.F

As with most other buildings of its type, the Outer School has one entrance; access to all its peripheral rooms including the privy can be gained
only through the central hall. The privy has 15 seats. Comparing the ratio of seats available per number of occupants in other buildings of this
class would suggest that each student cubicle was occupied by two persons.

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. LODGING OF THE MASTER OF THE OUTER SCHOOL

409.

409.X

The layout of the Schoolmaster's Lodging is almost the same as the Porter's, like the latter consisting of living room, bedroom, and provided
with corner fireplace and private toilet. The bedroom shows the Schoolmaster's bed and two others along the inner wall, suggesting that the
Outer School may have been staffed by three teachers. From the living room a door afforded access to the Church (the parchment is damaged
here) where students and teachers spent some part of each day. The traffic patterns (fig. 409.X) suggest routes between the Lodging, the Church,
and the Outer School; fences separated the students from the guests lodged to the west and assured the Abbot's privacy to the east.

times in a single chapter[361] and in one of these places pauses
to furnish his readers with a regular dictionary definition:
"vacare means to relinquish one thing and to replace it
with some other preoccupation; it is in this sense that he
[St. Benedict] insists, in this chapter that, manual work
being set aside, the time thus released be used for study"
(`Vacare' est enim aliam rem relinquere et aliis insistere rebus,
sicuti in hoc loco relicta exercitatione manuum jubet insistere
lectioni).[362] In accordance with this definition I would translate
the title domus communis scolae, id ÷ uacationis as "the
common hall for learning, i.e., for the time relinquished
from other obligations for the purpose of study."[363]

The hall measures 30 feet by 40 feet and is divided in
half crosswise by a median wall. This partition does not run
clear across the room but has wide passages at either end,
suggesting that it was a low freestanding screen rather than
a massive wall and that the large hall, although each of the
two partitions is provided with its own fireplace and louver
(testu), was conceived of as a single space rather than as two
separate rooms. The fact that the inscription that defines
the purpose of this space runs across the wall partition corroborates
this interpretation.

Ranged peripherally around this center space are twelve
"small dwelling rooms for the students" (mansiunculae
scolasticorum hic),[364] and in the area between them in the
middle of the southern long wall a slightly smaller space
which served as "entrance" (introitus). On the opposite
side a room of like dimensions served as "exit to the outhouse"
(necessarius exitus).

The rooms of the students each measure 12½ feet by 15
feet. They have in the center a small square, which Keller
and Willis interpreted as a table.[365] I am rather inclined to
think that these squares are the designation for dormer
windows in the lower slope of the roof, of the type shown
in the February representation of the Grimani Breviary
(fig. 367). The two louvers over the center space of the
house, although providing adequate lighting for the two
classrooms directly beneath them, would not have furnished
sufficient light for the pursuit of individual studies in the
student cubicles located in the aisles and lean-to's. Additional
light could, of course, also have been provided by
windows in the outer walls of the house, and with special
ease, if the latter were built in masonry. In our reconstruction
(figs. 408A-E) we have demonstrated both these
possibilities, introducing a volume of light that is probably
in excess of what one would reasonably expect to have been
available in the ninth century. Under no circumstances
should the squares in the students' rooms be interpreted
as fireplaces. Open fires in each of these twelve cubicles
would have constituted a fire hazard of the first degree and
would have been without parallel in any known or excavated
example of this construction type. Moreover, although
many of the students who occupied these rooms may well
have been of noble birth, their status as students was
scarcely of sufficient weight to entitle them to a privilege
otherwise accorded only to the highest ranking dignitaries
of the monastic community.[366]

All of the students' rooms are accessible from the main
hall. The doors are so arranged as to serve as entrance not
for one, but for two cubicles. The existence of these doors
and their carefully planned location leaves no doubt that
the students' rooms were separated from the main hall by
partitions. These partitions, however, could not have run
up to the roof of the house, as the cubicles depended for
their warmth on the open fires that burned in the main hall,
and this, in turn, presupposes a free exchange of air between
the main hall and the students' rooms.

NUMBER OF STUDENTS

The Plan gives no clues as to the number of students to
be housed in these rooms. Each mansiuncula might have
been reserved for a single student. But it could easily have
accommodated two; with less comfort, three. The total
number of students, accordingly, would either have been
twelve, twenty-four, or thirty-six. Since the privy of the
Outer School has fifteen toilet seats, the normal number of
students is likely to have exceeded the minimum number
of twelve.

We have already discussed at sufficient length the fact
that the Plan does not tell us where the students ate their
meals and where their food was cooked.

V.9.3

THE SCHOOLMASTER'S LODGING

The Master of the Outer School was not accommodated
in the school building itself, but in a special lodging built
against the northern aisle of the Church, immediately adjacent
to the school. It consists of two rooms, a "living
room" (mansio scolae) furnished with a corner fireplace, a
bench, and a table,[367] and a "withdrawing" room (ejusdē
secretū), furnished with three beds (fig. 409).