The Plan of St. Gall a study of the architecture & economy of & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery |
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MONASTIC ECONOMY AND WATER POWER
UNDER ST. FRUCTUOSUS |
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 | The Plan of St. Gall |  |
MONASTIC ECONOMY AND WATER POWER
UNDER ST. FRUCTUOSUS
The date of the hammer is unknown.[523]
Local tradition PERSPECTIVE VIEW [redrawn after Meringer, 1909, fig. 35] Meringer interpreted the two trip-hammers of the Mortar House of
ascribes it to "Romanesque period" (edad romanica).
454. PLAN OF ST. GALL. TILT-HAMMER
the Plan as being activated by a cam block formed on a single
timber extending, as part of an axle shaft, from the hub of the
waterwheel.
have been an integral part of the monastic economy of the
time of San Fructuosus (d. 665).[524]
This view is not so
455. SPECHTSHART. FLORES MUSICAE
STRASSBOURG, 1488, fol. 7v
[courtesy of the University Library, Freiburg i. Br., Germany]
The woodcut shows an iron forge with a water-powered tilt-hammer
activated by a cylindrical cam block mounted on the axle of a waterwheel.
Two blacksmiths forge iron on an anvil with the hammer's
aid; behind them Pythagoras weighs hammers. In the background,
Tubal chisels musical notes into a column, representing Pythagorean
philosophical preoccupation with order, number, and harmony of the
spheres of the Ptolemaic universe (cf. I, 231, fig. 187).
seventh century, as has been shown in the preceding
chapter, was the great century of systematic application of
water power to milling in the economy of coenobitic
monachism.[525] The development was spurred by the need to
provide great quantities of flour for the sustenance of large
numbers of men whose religious activities required that they
be freed from certain common forms of labor, in order to
devote themselves to the more serious task of serving God
in prayer and chant. It is not an unreasonable conjecture
that the same need may also have fostered the invention or
adoption of the cam which made it possible to harness water
for tasks requiring the crushing blow of a rising and falling
mechanical hammer. It is quite possible that this idea (or
its adoption) was first conceived in connection with iron
works where the brutal blow of a hydraulic stamp offered
advantages highly superior to those that could be derived
from its use in the lighter task of crushing grain or of
fulling cloth. The banks of the rivers in the mountains of
Eastern Leon, where San Fructuosus founded his first
monasteries, carry iron deposits important enough to be
mentioned by Pliny the Elder and other Roman writers;[526]
numerous localities in this area, now in ruins or deserted,
carry even today the name herrería (iron forge).[527]
The Fructuosan monastic economy formed an ideal
ambiance for the invention of such a power mechanism. It
created a sudden and vast demand for agricultural tools by
converting virtually overnight deserted valleys into densely
populated rural communities, formed not only by the
multitude of monks that settled in the monastery itself, but
in addition by a veritable army of secular followers who
were allowed to establish themselves as tenants in the vast
stretches of land which the monastery owned in the valleys
and mountains around it. Among them were members of
the former household of San Fructuosus (whose paternal
inheritance was enormous), magnates from the royal court
with their entire families, soldiers from the Visigothic
army who fell under the spell of the saint, and in a mystical
commotion that had no precedent, followed him in such
numbers that their chieftains found themselves compelled
to legislate against such wholesale desertion of the army
and flight into the country.[528]
A blacksmith capable of
converting ore into iron with the aid of water power and
shaping it into usable tools could meet the demands created
by such a sudden population increase in the country, and the
456. MUNICH, BAYERISCHE STAATSBIBLIOTHEK. MS. LAT. 197, fol. 10r
ATTRIBUTED TO AN ANONYMOUS ENGINEER OF THE HUSSITE WARS, CA. 1472-1486[529]
An annotation in Old High German explains the mechanism of this vertical-pestle stamp mill: "Item das is ain stampff damit man pulver
stost unn dye stampff gent all drey in ain loch, ainer auf der ander ab" (Item: This is a mortar for pounding powder, and all three pestles drop
into a hole, one after another).
VALLEY OF COMPLUDO, LEÓN, SPAIN. MEDIEVAL IRON FORGE & WATER-POWERED TRIP-HAMMER,
WITH FORGE BLOWER ASSOCIATED WITH FLUME. Date of the initial installation unknown,
concept possibly dating from Visigothic period. See caption above.
457.A
PERSPECTIVE VIEW
In 1975 we paid another visit to the Compludo
forge and discovered that the trip-hammer we
first inspected in 1970 was being rebuilt, and the
waterwheel replaced by a slightly sturdier one.
The hammer had been moved to the outside yard
to serve as a template for its replacement. The
sturdy cammed trunk, strongest member of the
mechanism and subject to great torsional strain,
was considered in good enough condition to serve
another span in the life of the hammer. It had
earlier been reinforced lengthwise by iron bars
banded to it with iron hoops.
The carpenter directing the work was convinced
that in continuous use, wheel and hammer would
need replacement every 40 years, the main trunk
every century. He shared local belief that the
mechanism is medieval and would tend to retain
its original design for a virtually indefinite span
of time, even though its components were
periodically renewed.
These drawings were made with aid of measurements
taken in 1975. They do not show the
apparatus governing the flow of water to the
wheel and thus the speed of the hammer's
action. For rough sketches of that mechanism
and the means by which air is drafted into the
forge furnace, a function also associated with the
flow of water to the wheel race, we still depend
exclusively on the drawing published by
Gonzáles (1966, 46) and reproduced by Horn
(1975, 245).
457.B
457.C
457.D
to the adoption of devices facilitating their production.
The Romans, it is generally conceded, did not make any
use of water-powered trip-hammers transmitting the
rotational movement of the wheel and its axle into the
vertical beat of a recumbent hammer by means of cogs.
China, unquestionably is the prime inventor. But the Plan
of St. Gall attests that at the beginning of the ninth century
such mechanisms were, even in the West, well known and
widely employed. This seems to vitiate the theory of its
westward diffusion by Marco Polo and suggests that the
knowledge of this invention came to Europe in the wake of
contact established with the Far East, in the fourth and
fifth centuries A.D. by the invasion of the Huns and other
Asiatic tribes, with whom the Visigoths were in close, and
often mortal, association over long periods of time.
In an earlier study (Horn, 1975, 254 note 13) I expressed the hope
that radiocarbon analysis of the timbers of axle, hammer, and waterwheel
might in the future help establish the age of the hammer. Returning to
the site in 1974, I discovered that all these timbers were in process of
being replaced. The carpenter in charge of the work held the view that
because of the heavy strain imposed upon these members when in daily
operation, such repairs would have to be made every 40 to 50 years. This
does not militate against the assumption of a medieval origin for the
mechanism on this site.
"La [herrería] de Compludo signe siendo un monumento vivo, casi
intacto, que bien pudo connocer los tiemposos frutusianos." Gonzáles,
op. cit., 44.
Gonzáles, loc. cit., lists one in the vicinity of Vega de Valcarce;
another one in Puente Petra (near Oencia); a third one in Marciel (near
Quintana de Fuseros) which gave its name, Ferreria, to a village that has
since disappeared; a fourth one in Paradaseca. In a fifth, the herreria of
Montes (near San Clemente de Valdueza) the stamping mechanism is so
well preserved as to permit its reconstruction.
| The Plan of St. Gall | |