University of Virginia Library

V. 16

FACILITIES FOR BAKING
AND BREWING[543]

V.16.1

SYMBIOSIS OF BAKING & BREWING

In large medieval monasteries, the community's baking
and brewing facilities were almost without exception installed
in the same building. This is an intrinsically medieval
arrangement that has no parallels in Greco-Roman life.
Up to the time of the second Macedonian War (200 B.C.197
B.C.), Pliny informs us, the women of Rome used to
bake their bread themselves in their homes,[544] as had been
customary in the country since the remotest times, and
continued to be among the peasants for ages to come. The
flour was ground in mills operated by mules or by slaves.[545]
From 180 B.C. onward, however, as Rome began to develop
into a megalopolis with multistory apartment houses, the
millers began to usurp the task of baking, because the
architecture of the city and the social conditions of their
inhabitants no longer permitted each family to operate its
own oven. Baking became a professional activity and its
association with milling gave rise to the appearance of
shops, where both of these operations were combined.[546] A
typical example of this industrial symbiosis is a house in
Pompeii, the plan of which is shown in fig. 460. The forward
half of this establishment, facing the street, is a typical
Roman atrium house (1) with the rooms ranged peripherally
around a central court. The rearward part consists
of a court with millstones and baking troughs (2); a baking
oven (3); a room for storing flour (4); a room for kneading
and leavening dough (5); a shop for selling the finished
product (6). This tradition of combining milling and baking
in one and the same shop was not adopted by the Middle

[ILLUSTRATION]

460.X ROME. MUSEO CHIARAMONTI. MONUMENT OF P. NONIUS ZETHUS, OSTIA (LATE IST CENT.)

[courtesy of the Archivo Fotografica dei Musei Vaticani]

This large slab of marble (1.37 × .46 × .75m) imitates the form of a sarcophagus with two rows of conical sockets in the upper surface to receive
incinerary urns. Reliefs illustrate the symbiosis of the trades of milling and baking in Roman life. In the center of a framed panel, the inscription,
resolved of its abbreviations, reads:

PUBLIUS NONIUS ZETHUS AUGUSTALIS
FECIT SIBI ET
NONIAE HILARAE CONLIBERTAE
NONIAE PUBLI LIBERTAE PELAGIAE CONJUGI
PUBLIUS NONIUS HERECLIO

My colleague, Arthur E. Gordon, translates:

Publius Nonius Zethus, an Augustalis, has made [this monument] for himself and nonia hilaria
his fellow freedwoman, [and] Nonia Pelagia, freedwoman of Publius, his wife.—Publius Nonius Hereclio

The donkey in the lyre-shaped wooden trace, the hourglass-shaped mill and its meta and catillus are typical in form (cf. figs. 441. B, 442); an
assortment of standing containers of different capacities are doubtless measures for grain and flour, with additional containers hung on the wall.
A sieve is also depicted, and two or three wooden battens used to level flour or grain to the rim of the container into which it was poured.
The dating of the monument to the end of the 1st century A.D., Gordon informs me, is suggested by both style of writing and Zethus's title,
"AUGUSTALIS," which in the late 1st or early 2nd century was changed to "SEXVIR" or "SEVIR AUGUSTALIS" (see Russel Meiggs,
Roman Ostia, 1960, p. 217, and Wolfgang Helbig's Führer durch die öffentlichen Sammlungen Klassischer Altertümer
in Rom, I, 1963, 245, No. 316.)

Ages. Milling, by increasing its efficiency through water
power, became a highly specialized professional function
and a privilege jealously guarded by the feudatory who
owned the land and the stream over which the mill was
raised.[547] Baking was dissociated from this craft and entered
instead into a symbiosis with brewing—at least in all those
cases where there was a need for the production of bread
and beer in quantities that required using industrial
techniques, as inevitably was so in a monastic community—
and this association lead to the creation of a new architectural
entity: the monastic bake and brew house.

An impressive example of such a dual-purpose structure,
dating from the end of the eleventh century, is portrayed
on the plan of the waterworks of Christchurch Monastery
(fig. 461), drawn up by the engineer Wibert around 1165.[548]
Measuring approximately 40 by 170 feet (its foundations
can still be traced[549] ), this installation was more than twice
the length of the Monks' Bake and Brew House on the
Plan of St. Gall (fig. 462). Inscriptions tell us that half of
the building was used for brewing (bracium) and the other
half for baking (pistrinum). Precisely when the association
of these two crafts came about historically I do not know.
On the Plan of St. Gall it is an accomplished fact. The
paradigmatic character of the Plan may well have contributed
greatly to the adoption and continuance of this
architectural solution in later monastic planning.

V.16.2

THE NEED TO MAINTAIN AN ACTIVE
YEAST CULTURE

There are some functional requirements shared by brewing
and baking that could readily dictate that facilities
for the two tasks be installed beneath the same roof.
Both processes depend on the maintenance of an active
yeast culture and the successful completion of a yeast
cycle, each of which requires a temperature that can be
held above 75°F and by consequence, an architectural
ambient capable of furnishing this condition. Yeast is the
indispensable ingredient without which the bread could not
rise nor the beer ferment. The genesis and maintenance of
a yeast culture, or "sponge," must have been a primary
consideration and cause for concern among those whose
duty it was to furnish the daily bread requirements of the
monastery. When the monastery population of St. Gall
was at full complement, nearly 300 loaves daily were to be
produced by the monks' bakery.[550] In today's terms, the
amount of yeast required to cause such a bulk of flour to
rise must have been considerable—the monks did not have
modern dried yeast, but must have had to maintain and
daily replenish a potent yeast culture and reserve in a good-sized
crock, cauldron or bin, to assure the rising of the new
bread from one day to the next.

The life of a yeast culture is tenacious enough, for the
organism survives even long-term freezing, but it is
quiescent below lukewarm temperatures, and will not instigate
fermentation in beer, nor cause bread to rise steadily
at temperatures much below 80°F. The oven in the bake
house provided that continuance of temperature. Its temperature
rose and declined with the rhythm of the baking
cycle but it was never cold so long as the requirements of
the full community demanded fresh bread daily. For this
reason, the Bake and Brew House maintained a rather
predictable range of temperature throughout the year and
thus afforded a basic precondition for the production of
both bread and beer. To effectively use a large oven such
as the one in the monks' bakery presupposes that it was
warmed, even between firings, by a small banked fire in
its interior. Were it allowed to cool completely and then be
reheated rapidly in daily succession, only a short time would
pass before the oven and its chimney stack would crack
and disintegrate from the effects of too-rapid expansion
and contraction (thermal shock). On the other hand, by
being prewarmed the oven could be heated to temperatures
high enough to bake bread in a relatively short time (at a
probable internal loading-time heat of 700°F) without
straining its thermal tolerance. Keeping the fire alive from
one baking to the next would have made it possible to
"control" the air temperature of the Monks' Bake and
Brew House merely as a side effect of properly tending a
large oven in daily use, thus maintaining an ambient in
which a successful brewing fermentation cycle could be
virtually assured all year round.

V.16.3

DUPLICATION OF DESIGN
AND EQUIPMENT

SUBTLE DIFFERENTIATIONS IN DESIGN

In the monastery shown on the Plan of St. Gall there are
three bake and brew houses, one for the Monks, one for
the House for Distinguished Guests and one for the House
for Pilgrims and Paupers (figs. 462-464). The maker of
the Plan was sensitive to varying demands upon the baking
and brewing facilities in the St. Gall community. While
the layout, design, and equipment of the three bake and
brew houses of the Plan are virtually identical, planned
variations exist in both size and details, in order to accommodate
different traffic through each installation.

The differences are subtle yet persuasively illustrate the
compositional flexibility of this house type and its ability
to adapt with ease to specific needs by an addition to the
principal space of one or several peripheral rooms. The
Bake and Brew House of the Pilgrims and Paupers, with

[ILLUSTRATION]

461. CANTERBURY. PLAN OF WATERWORKS FOR CHRISTCHURCH MONASTERY

DRAWN ABOUT 1165

DETAIL SHOWING MONKS' BAKE AND BREW HOUSE

[by courtesy of the Trustees of Trinity College Library, Cambridge University]

The drafters of the Plan of St. Gall considered the association of the crafts of baking and brewing to be both ideal and a practical necessity.
The Christchurch drawing demonstrates, together with many other documentary and archaeological sources, that this association became a
standard trait of monastic architecture in the ensuing two centuries. The plan of the waterworks of Christchurch, Canterbury, shows the
conventual buildings in the state they attained under Bishop Lanfranc (d. 1089), after the Saxon church and monastery were destroyed by fire
in 1067.

The bake and brewhouse of this new monastery was built in the large open court (CURIA), to the north of the claustral compound. It was a
large rectangular building, 40 feet wide and 170 feet long, running with axis parallel to the precinct and city walls bounding the monastery to
the north at a distance of 70 and 100 feet respectively. The building was divided transversely by an internal wall into two unequal sections; the
western and larger of these, covering a surface area of 40 by 110 feet served as Brewhouse (BRACINUM), the eastern and smaller one, measuring
40 by 60 feet, as Bakery (PISTRINUM). A few feet to the east and co-axial with the bake and brewhouse, stood a granary (GRANARIUM)
which, because of its small dimensions, (40 by 40 feet) can only have been a brewers' granary; it is in fact thus referred to in documents of 1803
and 1313 (granarium in bracino, pro novo bracino cum granario; cf. Willis, 1968, 150). Christchurch Monastery had only one bake and
brewhouse. The Plan of St. Gall shows three (figs. 461-463) but the surface area of the Canterbury facility (6,800 square feet) almost equals
the combined surface area of the brewhouses of the Plan (7,120 square feet).

* The entire plan of Canterbury is shown in vol. I, 70, fig. 52.A.

only one aisle attached to its main space, was at 1,350
square feet (figs. 463 and 392-393) the smallest of the
installations, serving a constant but modest number of
travellers who received from the monks a fare almost as
simple as their own. On the other hand, the Bake and
Brew House for Distinguished Guests (figs. 396, 400, and
464), although only used occasionally, was at 2,636 square
feet the same size as the Bake and Brew House of the
Monks. This provision of a seemingly too-large space may
be accounted for by the recognition that a large progress
of nobles and their retainers might at times approach the
number of resident monks, with the added complication
of more sophisticated dietary demands of the worldly.

The baking and brewing facilities of the two guest
houses, for example, include cooking facilities, an acknowledgement
of the differing dietary requirements for guests
and monks. Thus, it is seen that the need for three separate
bake and brew houses in the monastery was unavoidable,
because of the different diets involved for the three classes
of men—fuedal lords, paupers and monks—who were to
be served by these separate facilities. Differentiation in the
type and quality of bread is well attested.[551] It is not unreasonable
to assume that similar distinctions entailed the
production of different types and qualities of beer. In an
article dealing with hops and its history Charles Dimont
points out that "it was the monks who began the classification
of beer by its strength into prima, secunda, and
tertia (which simplified into the categories `X', `XX'
and `XXX', are used even today) and that this tradition
of producing different qualities of beer was carried on in
the universities and colleges which brewed their own
specialities such as `Chancellor', `Audit', and `Archdeacon'."[552]

The Bake and Brew House for Distinguished Guests is
provided with additional space, apparently for storage, in
the form of two lean-to's on the entrance side. Despite the
larger numbers it served, the oven of this installation is
no larger than that in the Bake and Brew House for Pilgrims
and Paupers; at 7½ feet it is smaller in diameter by
one fourth than the monks' oven (dia. = 10 feet), but
therefore more quickly and easily brought to baking heat
after standing cold during periods of disuse. The relation
in the subordinate installations of baking to brewing
facilities is such that the ovens could have served to control
the temperatures for successful brewing, as was likely done
in the Monks' Bake and Brew House, a discussion of which
follows.

V.16.4

THE MONKS' BAKE AND BREW HOUSE

We have already dealt with the bake and brew houses for
the pilgrims and paupers and for the distinguished guests
in connection with the two houses to which they are
attached.[553] The Monks' Bake and Brew House, largest of
the three, remains to be discussed (fig. 462).

The Monks' Bake and Brew House lies south of the
Monks' Kitchen and is connected to the latter by a covered
passageway that allowed the monks to go back and forth
between these two installations without violating the terms
of claustral seclusion. The House is 42½ feet wide and 75
feet long. It has an aisle on each long side and a narrow
lean-to at the east end. The general purpose of the building
is explained, surprisingly in unspecific terms, by a hexameter
running parallel to the entrance side: Here the
brothers' viands shall be taken care of with thoughtful
concern (hic uictus fr̄m̄ cura tract & tur honesta).

The aisle that faces the Kitchen contains two "bedrooms
for the servants" (uernarum repausationes). Uerna, a
term that appears only in this place on the Plan, is probably,
as Leclercq suggests,[554] the name for a serf, who because he
was born on the monastic domain and had been attached
to the monastery since birth, was treated, if not as a monk,
at least as a brother of inferior rank rather than as a
domestic.

THE BAKERY

The term PISTRINUM

A small vestibule left between the two bedrooms of the
servants gives access to the "brothers' bakery" (pistrinū
fr̄m̄). It occupies the eastern half of the house and its center
space forms an area 22½ feet wide and 32½ feet long.

It should be mentioned in this context that the term
pistrinum is used exclusively as a designation for "bakery"
on the Plan of St. Gall, and never in the sense of "mill,"
its original classical meaning.[555] The equipment with which
the spaces that carry this designation on the Plan are
furnished offers the proof (figs. 462-464). Hildemar, who
touches on the matter of bake houses in his commentary
of chapter 66 of the Rule, makes some interesting etymological
comments about this term: "Pistrinum," he says,
"is the equivalent of pilistrinum, because in the early days
people used to crush grain with the aid of a pestle (pilo)
for which reason the ancients did not call them grinders
(molitores) but crushers (pistores), i.e., people engaged in
the crushing of grain (pinsores) for there were no mill stones
(molae) in use at that time, but grain was crushed with
pestles."[556]

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. MONKS' BAKE AND BREW HOUSE

462.X

THE SYMBIOTIC SCHEME IN PLANNING

The efficiency internal to the Plan of St. Gall is nowhere better demonstrated
than in the relationships among the Brewers' Granary, Mortars,
Mills, Drying Kiln, and Monks' Bake and Brewhouse. The traffic patterns
demonstrate with what economy of movement raw material, grain—bulky
and heavy even after threshing—could be moved from the Brewers' Granary
to facilities where it was further refined, and finally into the Brewhouse
where the end product, beer, was produced. Similar efficiency of movement
existed between the Mill, the Bakehouse, and the Monks' Kitchen.
However, planning for isolation of the monks' sanctum takes precedence over
convenience where monastery met the world. See fig. 463.X, p. 256.

SITE PLAN

The makers of the Plan devoted extraordinary attention to the visual detail and verbal instruction for this house, for it lay, in a most
immediate sense, at the physical heart of the monastic complex, as the Church lay at its spiritual heart. The technology of this house is among
the most highly elaborated and least abstract of all facilities of the Plan that existed to support daily life in the monastery.

The close proximity of facilities for processing raw material (grain), refining it (Drying Kiln, 29; Mortar; 28; Mill, 27), and using it in the
Monks' Bake and Brewhouse assumes intense daily use—transporting sheaved grain, sacking threshed grain, carrying it after processing to
bakery or brewery, carrying end products, new bread and new beer, to their destinations.

All the starting points and termini for these processes are found in a very small area relative to the size of the whole site of the Plan. Each day
some major part of the cycles and processes for brewing and baking would be set in motion by monks assigned to such chores. The traffic in
numbers of men, to say nothing of their burdens—grain, buckets, barrows, sacks, baked bread—achieved a density of use and compaction
nowhere else found in the Plan. The planning of the associated facilities would therefore be highly specific, with little assumed and nothing left
to improvisation that would affect efficiency adversely. In this small area of the overall site, the makers of the Plan demonstrated their
thoroughness and ingenuity as administrators and architects.

The term is fascinating, since its shifting values reflect
the entire history of grain preparation from the mortar-and-pestle
stage to the milling stage, and thence by an associative
leap (because bread was often baked near the mill)
from the building in which grain was ground into flour to
the facility where bread was baked.

Layout and equipment

The principal piece of equipment in the Bake House is
the large oven (caminus) which is installed in the southern
aisle of the house directly opposite the entrance. The oven
has a diameter of 10 feet, and is serviced from the main
room of the bakery. This room is furnished with a continuous
course of tables or shelves running in a U-formation
around three of its four walls. The total linear length of
this shelf is 62½ feet. Its depth is 2½ feet. Thus it provides
an ample general work space that could have been used
variously for any number of purposes in the course of
breadmaking.

Next to the oven and in the same aisle with it there is
a trough (alueolus) 12½ feet long and 2½ feet wide. The
space under the lean-to at the east end of the house serves
as a "storage bin for flour" (repositio farinae); this area is
7½ feet wide and 30 feet long. The Plan shows no doors
giving access either to the flour bin or to the room with the
kneading trough—one of the few genuine oversights on
the Plan.[557]

In the axis of the center space, and almost equidistant
from their edges to the shelves that line the room on three
sides, are two rectangles that together form an area 6¼ feet
wide and 10 feet long. A similar but smaller object is found
in the corresponding space in the bakery of the House for
Distinguished Guests. In the bakery of the Hospice for
Pilgrims and Paupers, however, this space is occupied by
the kitchen stove[558] that seemingly displaces to the brew
house an oblong surface that probably corresponds to the
same pieces found in the center of the bakeries of the other
two houses. Unfortunately the Plan does not provide any
explanatory titles that would enable us to identify the
nature, construction, or function of the objects designated
by these rectangles. This is somewhat surprising because
similar objects situated in the outer aisles are clearly identified
with titles that not only explain their shape or form
(alueolus, trough) but also their function (locus conspergendi,
the place where the dough is mixed; and ineruendae
pastae locus, the place where flour is mingled [with water].)

There is no doubt that the large rectangles in the side
aisles of the bake house were the troughs in which the
dough was first mixed. Good baking practice would require
that the yeast sponge be added to the dough at this beginning
stage, and it is quite possible that after being vigorously
mixed, it was likewise here that the dough was allowed to
enter its first stage of rising. The warmth of the enclosure
near the oven, already fired by a considerable heat, would
significantly aid the rising process in the large mass of
dough.

To convert the bulk of dough into a multitude of loaves
required a different setting: large surfaces sprinkled with
flour where the mass could be broken up, kneaded, divided
and weighed into uniform batches, and shaped into loaves.
All these purposes could have been served by the large
rectangular surfaces in the center of the bakery, or, if these
rectangles were actually troughs, the work could have been
done on the shelves that lined the central space on three
sides. After the loaves were shaped and before they were
placed in the oven for baking, they probably went through
a second stage of rising.[559]

The reconstruction of the equipment used in baking
poses no problem. We have already discussed the oven
together with other heating units shown on the Plan.[560]
Their form was established early and until very recent times
did not undergo any significant changes. The same can
also probably be said about bakers' troughs, a good medieval
example of which is shown in figure 388.

I am inclined to believe that in medieval ovens, the
firing and baking chamber were one and the same unit—as
they were still in the earlier decades of this century in the
bakeries of the German village where I spent my childhood.
There the ovens were heated by wood, as was done
in the Middle Ages. When the right temperature was
reached, the coals were raked out to make room for the
loaves, and the bread was baked as the oven temperature
entered its descending cycle.

The daily allowance of bread

The daily ration of bread allowed to each monk was
fixed by St. Benedict:

[ILLUSTRATION]

464. PLAN OF ST. GALL. KITCHEN, BAKE & BREWHOUSE FOR DISTINGUISHED GUESTS

463.X SITE PLAN

[ILLUSTRATION]

463. PLAN OF ST. GALL. KITCHEN, BAKE & BREWHOUSE FOR PILGRIMS AND PAUPERS

Of three baking and brewing houses on the Plan, that of the monks is largest; but it
includes, besides purely functional space, two rooms for servants' sleeping quarters
and a lean-to for storing flour. Servants attached to houses for pilgrims and distinguished
guests lodged in their respective main buildings, not in the bakeries. The size
of the Bake and Brewhouse for Distinguished Guests is augmented by its separate
larder and kitchen; but when areas used solely for baking and brewing are compared,
it will be seen that the differences in size among the three like facilities are minor.
The essential replication of facilities for baking and brewing, both in function and
in the layout of each, apparently marks both traditional juxtapositions and
recognition of the combined bakery-brewery plan to adapt to efficient service for a
widely varying number of people—on the Plan from as few as twelve pilgrims to
as many as 300 monks if the population ever reached its full complement.

Routes between grain supply (Mills, Mortars, Brewers' Granary) and breweries
of pilgrims' and guests' facilities are highly circuitous and lie right through the
western paradise of the Church. But traffic of burdened servants in this most public
area of the site would hardly have presented an interruption. The sacrifice in
efficiency in this pattern was regained in maintaining the desired segregation
between worldly and claustral activities.

e. PORTER'S LODGING

f. PORCH ACCESS TO HOUSE FOR DISTINGUISHED GUESTS

i. LODGING, MASTER OF HOSPICE FOR PILGRIMS & PAUPERS

h. PORCH ACCESS TO HOSPICE FOR PILGRIMS & PAUPERS

9. MONKS' BAKE & BREWHOUSE

10. KITCHEN, BAKE & BREWHOUSE FOR DISTINGUISHED GUESTS

30. BREWERS' GRANARY, ETC.

31. HOSPICE FOR PILGRIMS & PAUPERS

32. KITCHEN, BAKE & BREWHOUSE FOR PILGRIMS & PAUPERS

28. MORTAR

29. DRYING KILN

Charlemagne, in trying to establish the exact weight of
this pound, learned from Abbot Theodomar of Monte
Cassino that in St. Benedict's own monastery bread was
baked in loaves weighing four pounds and divisible into
four quarter sections, weighing a pound each: "This
weight," the Abbot assures the emperor, "just as it was
instituted by the Father himself, is found at this place."[562]
The Roman pound was the equivalent of 326 grams.
Charlemagne increased it by one fourth of its former size,
sometime before 779, which brought it up an equivalent of
406 grams.[563] The Synod of 817 defined the weight of one
pound as corresponding to 30 solidi of a value equivalent to
12 denarii.[564]

Adalhard distinguishes between "bread of mixed grain"
(panos de mixtura factos) and that "made of wheat or
spelt" (de frumento uel spelta). The former was issued to
the paupers; the latter, to visiting vassals and clergymen
on pilgrimage.[565] He gives a complete account of the daily
and yearly bread consumption in the monastery of Corbie,
specifies the quantity of flour needed to produce that volume,

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. MONKS' BAKE AND BREW HOUSE. AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

465.B LONGITUDINAL SECTION

465.A PLAN

This facility belongs to the third variant of the building type from which the guest and service buildings of the Plan descend: a central hall
with peripheral spaces on three sides (see above, pp. 178ff). The partition wall in the central hall, dividing Bakery from Brewery, was not
structural; in the Bake and Brewhouses for Pilgrims, and for Distinguished Guests, such a divider does not appear. In the Monks' Bake and
Brewhouse the dividing wall allots more floor space to the Bakery, but in fact the work areas for each space were virtually identical. The
location of the partition wall here in effect clears between entryway and oven; the task of loading or unloading loaves could go on without
encumbering the bakers' working space. Certain doors connecting work and storage areas, not shown on the Plan itself, are provided here.

and the sources from which it was obtained.[566] He
cautions the "keeper of the bread" (custos panis) to make
allowance for the yearly fluctuations in the number of
mouths to be fed by providing for a reasonable surplus of
flour in order not to be caught with a shortage, and he
admonishes him at the same time not to bake more for the
brothers than is needed, "lest what is left over should get
too hard." If this were nevertheless allowed to happen,
the old bread would have to be thrown away, and the
supply of bread replenished.[567]

A single cycle of firing and baking

If we presume that St. Benedict's allowance of a daily
pound of bread for each monk applied to the monastery's
serfs as well, the monks' bakery on the Plan of St. Gall
would have to have been capable of producing 250 to 270
pounds of bread per day.[568] An analysis of the dimensions
of its oven and the amount of space required for this output
discloses that this volume of bread could be produced in a
single cycle of firing and baking.[569]

A passage in Ekkehart's Casus sancti Galli, which has
consistently been misconstrued, reads that the monastery
of St. Gall had an oven (clibanum) capable of baking a
thousand loaves of bread at once and a bronze kettle
(lebete eneo) and drying kiln (tarra avenis) capable of
holding one hundred bushels of oats.[570] This is not a
statement of fact, but a passage in a speech by Abbot
Solomon III, which Ekkehart himself refers to as "boastful"
and "fraudulent."[571]

THE BREWERY

From Babylon and Egypt to St. Columban

Beer is a malted beverage that was brewed in Babylon and
Egypt from primordial times[572] but it was held in low esteem
by the wine-loving Greeks and Romans, and because of
this deeply rooted cultural aversion made no imprint whatsoever
on early monastic life, from the literature of which
the terms cerevisa or celia are wholly absent. The drink
acquired significance, however, as monachism spread into
the north and west of Europe where beer has been a
traditional beverage since the remotest times and where wine
was as yet not made in sufficient quantities to take care of
all of the needs of the monks.

Pliny describes caelia, cerea and cerevisia as words of
Celtic origin denoting beverages drunk in his days in
Spain and in Gaul and remarks that its froth was used by
the women of these countries as a cosmetic for the face.[573]
The terms do not occur at any place in the Rule of St.
Benedict. The earliest evidence of the consumption of beer
in a monastic context, to the best of my knowledge, is a
passage in the Life of St. Columban, (543-615) written by
the monk Jonas of Bobbio (ca. 665) which relates that in the
days of Columban, beer was served in the refectory of the
monastery of Luxeuil (founded by St. Columban ca. 590).
In this account cervisia is referred to as a beverage "which
is boiled down from the juice of corn or barley, and which
is used in preference to other beverages by all the nations
in the world—except the Scottish and barbarian nations who
inhabit the ocean—that is in Gaul, Britain, Ireland, Germany
and the other nations, who do not deviate from the
custom of the above."[574]

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. MONKS' BAKE AND BREW HOUSE. AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

465.D LONGITUDINAL SECTION

465.C NORTH ELEVATION

The length of the main space of the Monks' Bake and Brew house, 67½ feet, suggests that its roof was carried by seven trusses dividing the
interior into six bays, each 11 feet deep. Such a division would have been in full accord with the asymmetrical location of the entrance. The
width of the center space, 22½ feet is conventional. Although louvers are not marked on the Plan, their presence is postulated for purely
functional reasons (need for air, light and a means for smoke to escape). Whether the lean-to at the eastern end of the building terminated on
tie beam level or reached all the way up to the ridge of the roof, is impossible to say. We have kept it low, because we saw no functional need
to take it higher.

Basic procedures in the making of beer

Beer is brewed in a number of different ways, resulting
in a variety of different brews. The manufacture of all of
them has certain basic steps in common:

1. First, grain, usually barley, is "malted," i.e., allowed
to steep in water until it begins to germinate, and starches
in the grain undergo chemical changes that produce
sugars.

2. Then the malted grain is mashed and infused in
gradually heated water, the temperatures of which are
raised in stages to 165° or 175°F. This heating arrests the
germination of the malted grain and results in a liquid
known as wort (sweet wort) which retains the natural
sugars and enzymes generated by infusion.

3. After completion of the infusion process the wort is
transferred to a kettle and to it is added the blossoms of
hops that give beer its characteristic aroma and flavor. This
mixture of wort and hops (hopped wort) is boiled for about
two hours.

4. After this operation is completed the liquid is
cleansed by straining out the hops and sediments, and
filtered into a cask or trough for cooling. At this point
the yeast is added to the wort and fermentation begins.

Beer may be fermented in a variety of ways, but until
relatively recently, the process favored on the Continent
was that of top fermentation, in which the yeast rises to
the top of the fermentation vat and is there skimmed off
when fermentation is complete. Some beers can be drunk
immediately after fermentation is complete. Others, particularly
those made by top fermentation are stored in
casks from two or three weeks to six months. During the
storage period the beer brightens and becomes charged
with carbon dioxide. Beer fermented in this way is stored
in an ambient of 58°-70°F, a condition entirely consonant
with temperatures that could be maintained both in the
Monks' Brew House where fermentation of the beer was
instigated, and in the great cellar used for wine and beer
storage (see I, 292-307).

Layout and equipment

On the Plan of St. Gall, the monks' brewery lies in the
western half of the Monks' Bake and Brew House (fig.
462). It covers the same area as the bakery, but has no
lean-to on the narrow end of the building. The space in
which it is accommodated is marked by the title "Here let
the beer for the brothers be brewed" (hic fr̄ībus conficiat
ceruisa). It is reached from the monks' bakery and has no
separate access from the outside. The monks' brewery is
furnished with all the equipment needed in brewing: a
stove with four ranges for heating water and boiling wort
with hops. The stove is identical in design with the large
stove in the Monks' Kitchen.[575] Around that stove four
round objects are shown—vats or cauldrons, no doubt,
wherein the grain was steeped for malting, and infusion
was done. These could have consisted either of simple
wooden tubs, or of heatable cauldrons or of a combination
of both, and may have been in shape or construction like
any of those shown in figure 387 and 390. The south
aisle of the brew house serves as a cooler. It is furnished
with two troughs and a vat, explained by the inscription
"Here let beer be cooled" (hic col&ur celia). Here the
yeast was added to the worted liquid and fermentation
began. From the cooling troughs unquestionably the beer
was moved to casks in the cellar, and allowed to finish
fermenting and clearing, before it was brought to the table.

Replacement of wine by beer in ratio of 1:2

We have already drawn attention to the fact that wine was
the traditional monastic beverage, beer only a substitute,
and that a ruling of the Synod of 816 directed that if
shortages in wine had to be made up for by beer, this should
be done in the ratio of 1:2.[576] Therefore, if such an emergency
arose, beer would have had to be available in considerable
quantities. Abbot Adalhard of Corbie allows each
visiting pauper a ration of 1.4 liters of beer per day.[577] If
this same amount were issued to the monks and the serfs
of the monastery, this would mean that the monastery
shown on the Plan of St. Gall issued 350 to 400 liters a
day. Over a period of time, this practice would have required
storing a considerable volume of beer. Unlike wine,
beer is not a seasonal product, but can be manufactured
continuously, and in the monastery it probably was manufactured
continuously, like the bread in the nearby bakery.

Today the brewing of beer is almost exclusively in the
hands of commercial firms. Throughout the major part of
the Middle Ages it was a small-scale domestic operation.
Before the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when brewing
first emerged as a commercial venture, the monastery was
probably the only institution where beer was manufactured
on anything like a commercial scale.

Use of hops as a flavoring agent

The explanatory titles of the various bake and brew
houses of the Plan of St. Gall contain no direct reference to
the use of hops as a flavoring agent in the production of
beer, but it is quite possible that a tacit allusion to this
plant is hidden in the second half of the title which defines
the Brewers' Granary as the place "where the cleansed
grain is kept and where what goes to make beer is prepared"
(granarium ubi mandatū frumentum seru&ur & qd ad
ceruisā praeparatur).[578] This granary is ideally located, in
the middle between the Monk's Brewhouse and their
Drying Kiln—which in addition to serving as a facility for
parching fruit and grapes, could also have performed the
function of a monastic oast house.[579]

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. MONKS' BAKE AND BREW HOUSE. AUTHORS' RECONSTRUCTION

465.F WEST ELEVATION

465.E EAST ELEVATION

At the western end of the building the aisles and the center space terminated in a straight line. Under such conditions, the design of the
terminal truss, together with all of its secondary members and infillings, would have been visible for the entire width and height of the structure.
At the opposite end, because of the presence of a lean-to, only the triangular wall section above tie beams could have been exposed to the
exterior. The design of these two sides of the building has a close parallel in the Physicians' House (figs. 413.C and D) except for the different
placement of the entrance.

There is sufficient evidence to make it clear that the
hopping of beer was in the early Middle Ages a widespread
monastic practice north of the Alps. In his Administrative
Directives of A.D. 822 Abbot Adalhard of Corbie addresses
himself in detail to the procedures that should control the
tithing of hops and their distribution among the various
monastic officials placed in charge of brewing.[580] He makes
it a point to exempt the miller from making malt or from
growing hops (nec braces faciendo nec humulonem) because
of the weight of his other duties.[581]

Ural-Altaic origins

The origins of the use of hops as a constituent ingredient
in brewing is an intriguing literary and linguistic subject.
E. L. Davis, and others before him, have drawn attention
to the importance given to hops in the folklore of Finland
and the Caucasus region and believed to reflect a cultural
heritage of great antiquity. They thus inferred that hops
were used as an ingredient for beer in the northeast and
east of Europe long before this practice was introduced in
western Europe.[582] In a more recent study, Arnald Steiger
traced the origin of the custom even further eastward.
The earliest word forms for hops (best reflected in Old
Turkish qumlaq), Steiger contends are found in a variety of
Ural-Altaic languages of great antiquity. From there the
term migrated west into the orbit of the Slavic languages
(Old Slavic chǔmelǐ and through the latter into the North
Germanic language groups (Old West Nordic humili) which
transmitted it to the Salian and Ripuarian Franks (Middle
Latin humelo . . . leading to Modern French houblon). This
evidence, Steiger argues, suggests that the practice of
hopping beer originated in Central Asia and was transmitted
from there to Northern and Western Europe by the
Slavs along the linguistic channels indicated by the
migration of the word for hops.[583]

The Greeks knew the plant only in its uncultivated state
(and under a different name), but the Romans grew it in
their vegetable gardens and used it as a flavoring agent for
salads.[584]

Earliest medieval mention of hops

Probably the earliest medieval mention of the plant is a
charter of A.D. 768 in which King Pepin the Short deeded
some hop gardens (homularia) to the monastery of St.Denis.[585]
During the reign of Charlemagne and Louis the
Pious the evidence multiplies. Abbot Ansegis (823-833)
lists amongst the annual deliveries to be made to the Abbey
of St.-Wandrille (Fontanella): "beer made from hops, as
much as is needed" (sicera homulone quantum necessitas
exposcit).[586] Hops were part of the revenues paid to the
Abbey of St.-Germain-des-Prés from several outlying
possessions (The fiscs of Combs-la-Ville, of Marenil and of
Boissy),[587] and the plant is mentioned in various places in
deeds of the abbey of Freisingen, dating from the reign of
Louis and Pious as well as from later periods.[588]

All of these references to the plant, in conjunction with
the detailed directives issued by Abbot Adalhard on the
tithing and internal distribution of hops leave no doubt
that, at the time of Louis the Pious, hops had become a
customary ingredient of beer produced in the transalpine
monasteries of the Empire.[589]

One of the beneficial effects of its admixture, besides the
distinctive flavor it imparted to the brew, was that owing
to its antibiotic properties it prolonged the life of beer
considerably over that of the older and more perishable
ale.[590] This was of great importance when storage in bulk
was required and where transportation was involved—as
they inevitably were in the beer economy of a monastic
settlement.

Contemporary sources make it quite clear that not
all the beer consumed by the monks and their serfs
was brewed inside the monastic enclosure. All the larger
outlying agricultural holdings, and many of the smaller
ones, had their own facilities for brewing. The delivery of
a tenth of their home-brewed beer was a standard procedure
in the tithing of tenants. Records of these tithes
appear in the deeds of the monastery of St. Gall from as
early as the middle of the eighth century. Some of the
tenants had licenses to set up taverns, and many of these
continued to pay for their tenancy through the delivery of
beer even later, when all other forms of tithing in naturalia
had been abolished.[591]

Work in the bake and brew house:
a privilege of the monks

Working in the Bake and Brew House was one of the
manual labors traditionally required of the brothers, and
so specifically stipulated both in the preliminary and the
final resolutions of the First Synod of Aachen (816).[592] The
brothers apparently liked this work, since one of the protests
lodged before the emperor in the same year by the
monks of Fulda about the hardships brought upon them
by Abbot Ratger's excessive building program included the
complaint that it deprived them of their traditional right
to work in the Bake and Brew House (pistrinum and brati-
arium).[593] It does not seem far-fetched to suppose that the
constant warmth of the bakery attracted the brothers to
the chore of breadmaking. During the long northern winters,
when all warmth was leached from the cloister, the
bakery was one of the few places in the community a monk
could work in comfort of body as well as of soul, and
surrounded by the incomparable fragrance of new bread.