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

In the light of this abundant and clear evidence, Keller's
and Lenoir's opinion that the mills of St. Gall were hand-operated
mechanisms seems quite open to debate. What
Keller had in mind, I should think, was the kind of hand
mill that is depicted in a German manuscript of the fourteenth
century (fig. 446), reproduced by Bennet and

231

[ILLUSTRATION]

446. MEDIEVAL HAND MILL

The drawing, from a German 14th-cent. manuscript, shows a mill
derivative of the hand-operated Roman mill (fig. 440. A, B) that
survived the advent of the watermill.

[ILLUSTRATION]

447. HAUSBUCH MASTER. MILLING APPARATUS

CA. 1480

[after Bossert and Stork, 1912, pl. 46]

Although the drawing is rendered in the clumsy perspective of a
Middle Rhenish master of the pre-Dürer period, it portrays the
milling mechanism with great factual accuracy. The pen and ink
drawing appears in a manuscript written and illustrated by an
official who in 15th-century Germany was called "Büchsenmeister"
—master of firearms. Of relatively high social standing, such a
personage would today hold a position comparable with civil or
military engineer. (The manuscript is the property of Fürst
Waldburg-Wolfegg-Waldsee.)

232

[ILLUSTRATION]

448.B, C PLAN OF ST. GALL. MILL

AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION. GROUND PLAN

Waterpower for the Mill and Mortar of the Plan of St. Gall is a viable proposal; we have therefore reconstructed the mechanisms as water driven, for these reasons:
As regards the millstones, their size, at a literal diameter of 7½ feet, would tend to eliminate the possibility of hand operation. Their depiction on the Plan lacks any
indication of drive systems, but that lack is consistent with other such omissions where practicalities, to be left to a master craftsman to execute, have been eliminated in
favor of clarity of scale and function.

The alignment of mills and mortar on the southern edge of the Plan site would facilitate use of water power assuming that a stream existed on the site and could be
channeled down a gradient sufficient to provide it (cf. I, 68-69 and fig. 53). Abundant documentary evidence shows that from the end of the 5th century onward and
with increasing frequency in succeeding centuries, monastic mills of transalpine Europe were water powered; finally, references to animal-driven mills in these some
sources are almost entirely lacking (see above, p. 228, fig. 442 caption).

We have already discussed the question of why the Romans, although they had it, made scant use of the water mill; whereas the young barbarian nations of the north
adopted and diffused it with enthusiasm. To reasons already set forth we suggest here, as a factor so far overlooked, that the strongest impetus for the phenomenal spread
of waterpower in the early Middle Ages came not from the secular world but from the ascendancy of Benedictine monasticism.

The records of many abbots show that extensive monastic estates included mills located far outside the immediate vicinity of the monastery; Gozbert himself doubtless
would have controlled several beyond the two proposed by the Plan for the monastery. Adalhard records that Corbie's bakeries had to produce 450 one-pound loaves
each day, for which the monastery drew on an annual volume of 5,475 modii of grain from 15 mills, each of six millstones, all of which had to be maintained in good
working order (see III, 106-107). And the abbey of St.-Germain-des-Prés had several times again that number of mills (see Horn, 1975, 248ff, for details and sources.)

Building and operating such facilities required impressive capital investment dependent on ownership of great acreage and an unparalleled degree of managerial
competence. The monastic school-trained leaders of the period brought to the vast monastic holdings the ingenuity and spirit of radical innovation that necessity alone
would have made welcome. In addition, the monastries and their high officials had the pressing moral committment to free the monks from long hours of arduous
physical labor, in order to further the Opus Dei. By contrast the secular world, lacking intellectual advantages, integrated physical resources, administrative unity, and
religious incentives, lagged behing the great monastries in technical innovation; as in most labor-intensive societies, medieval secular institutions tended toward
conservatism.

Gregory of Tours leaves as an anecdote about Abbot Ursus that constitutes the first documentary evidence of a monastic mill. After relating that "on account of this
[water mill] the work that formerly had to be done by many monks could now be accomplished by a single brother," Gregory repeats a dialogue between Ursus and
Sichlerius, a Visigoth and nobleman whose land bordered the abbey's, and who had seen first hand the installation of the new mill and its sluices:

"Covetous to acquire the mill, he told the abbot, `Give me this mill, to become my property, and I shall give you, in return, whatever you ask for,' Replied the Abbot:
`It was only with the greatest of pain, on account of our poverty, that we were able to install this mill; and now we cannot give it to you lest our brethren die of
hunger.' Sichlerius retorted: `If you wish to give it to me by your own free will, I shall be grateful. Otherwise I will take it by force, or build another mill, for which I
shall divert the water from your sluice; and in this way it will no longer be able to turn your wheel.' The abbot replied, `You will not do what God shall not permit you
to do, you will not take it at all!' Sichlerius, in ire, did what he had threatened to do, but because of divine intervention, the water failed to turn the wheels of his
mill." Thus the intransigent noble was defeated.

The story, embodying all the social dichotomies between secular and religious spheres, is symptomatic and may have remained so for the most of the Middle Ages.
Ingenuity and initiative, in addition to divine justice, were clearly on the side of the abbot.

233

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. MILL

448.D LONGITUDINAL SECTION

448.E TRANSVERSE SECTION

AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

Elton.[494] It is obvious that two hand-operated units of this
type could never have produced the volume of flour needed
in a settlement the size of that represented on the Plan of
St. Gall. Hand-operated mills, because they were subject
to the limitations of manual operation, were bound to be
small. Yet the millstones of the Plan are not only large,
they seem colossal. They are drawn at a diameter of 7½ feet.
Even if the representation is not literal,[495] such weight and
volume could not possibly have been set in motion by manual
operation. There are other factors suggesting water power.
The drafter of the Plan, as we have seen, did not consider it
part of his task to include a delineation of the monastery's
water system, but he was not oblivious to the fact that
buildings requiring water power would have to be located
in places to which water could easily be conducted. This is
clearly indicated by the way he carefully aligned all the
buildings and activities requiring water along the edge of

234

[ILLUSTRATION]

449.C LUTTRELL PSALTER (1340). LONDON, BRITISH MUSEUM. ADD. MS. 42130, FOL. 207

BY COURTESY OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM

A cook tends his kettles and his assistant wields choppers; at the right a third man macerates some substance with a long pestle in a large
container. It is not clear whether he is pounding meat (as Millar, 1932, 49, thought), crushing grain, or churning butter.

the monastery in a manner that, were a water source available,
it could have been channeled to serve all of them
efficiently.[496]

[494]

Bennet and Elton, I, 1898, 163. For modern parallels of this type of
hand mill, see Meringer, 1909, 166-67.

[495]

This dimension should not be taken too literally. The maker of the
Plan, as has been previously shown, defined all pieces of equipment and
furniture as multiples of the 2½-foot module. When a piece of equipment
did not fit into this graduation, he rounded off its dimensions to
the next higher modular value, never to the lower one. If the diameter of
the millstone is rendered as three 2½-foot modules (7½ feet), this means
that it was larger than two 2½-foot modules (5 feet), but not necessarily
as large as three 2½-foot modules (7½ feet). It could have been at any
reasonable point between 5 feet and 7½ feet. (Cf. our discussion of the
dimensions of the beds in the Monk's Dormitory I, 89-90, as well
as the general analysis of the scale and construction method used in
designing the Plan, I, 77ff).

I have not been able to find any reliable information on the size of
medieval millstones. The average diameter may not have been more
than 4 feet. But monastic millstones, because of the immense volume
of bread to be baked per day, (in Corbie 420 one-pound loaves daily!
cf. III, p. 106) they are likely to have been considerably larger. In the
summer of 1969 while traveling in Yugoslavia, I saw a millstone 6 feet
in diameter, unfortunately in a place the name of which I have forgotten,
but later on, on the same trip, in the medieval granary of the Abbey of
Le Thoronet in Provence, I came across a millstone with a diameter of
5 feet, 5 inches (it is visible in the interior view of that building, reproduced
on p. 88 of Père M. A. Dimier's L'Art Cistercien, published in
1962).

[496]

With regard to the hydrographical patterns of the site see my
remarks on the waterways of the Plan, I, 68-70. The general problem
of the application of water-power to industry during the Middle Ages
has been dealt with by Prof. Bradford B. Blaine of Scripps College, in a
doctoral thesis submitted at the University of California at Los Angeles in
1966, and will form the subject of a forthcoming book by Prof. Blaine,
entitled Water-Power in Medieval Industry.