University of Virginia Library

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.