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

In the Middle Ages swine and sheep were the chief
animals raised for meat. Many monasteries maintained
large herds of both, often under the supervision of the
monks themselves. Swine and sheep were also favorite
items of tithing. In the deeds of the monastery of St. Gall,
published by Hermann Wartmann, sucklings, yearlings,
and fully fattened sows are often part of the regular deliveries
from villagers and other tenants. In calculating these
tithes, a distinction was made between the heavy winter
swine, which had been fattened on acorns and beechnuts
while out to pasture in the forest, and the leaner and
less desirable summer swine. In years when the weather

294

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. HOUSE FOR GOATS AND GOATHERDS

489.

489.X SITE PLAN

The House for Goat and Goatherds (36) lies next to that for cattle and cowherds (37) and in the same row of buildings. Its layout is identical
with that of the House for Sheep and Shepherds (35) north of it, that for swine and their herdsmen (39) west of it, and the House for Servants
from Outlying Estates (38), whose reconstruction (below, p. 157, fig. 403. A-D) is applicable to all of these installations of the Plan.

These structures are straightforward examples of what in our previous discussion we have referred to as the "standard house" of the Plan of St.
Gall (i.e., Variant 4; see above, p. 85, fig. 334). Ranged side by side in two rows, with a sense of symmetry that clearly had a classical touch,
they appear to us almost as a village arranged by the ordering mind of an urban planner. For earlier and later examples of non-monastic
clusters of this type, see figures 259, 335, and 336.

295

[ILLUSTRATION]

490. UTRECHT PSALTER (CA. 830). PSALM XXII (23)

UTRECHT UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, CODEX 32, fol. 45r (detail)

[Courtesy of Utrecht University Library]

The five goats grazing on a hillside are part of a larger scene; it includes a herd of cattle and flock of sheep by the banks of a stream, to
illustrate verses 1 and 2 of the psalm: "The Lord is my shepherd . . . . "

The pen-and-ink depiction of these goats, two of which rise on their hind legs reaching as high as they can to crop the choice leaves, and
snapping at each other in their greed, is a display of posture and behavior so distinctively of goats that it places this scene among the outstanding
pictorial accomplishments of the Carolingian Renascence—a stunning revival in the scriptorium of Reims (816-835) of a type of pictorial
illusionism that even in Late Antiquity was practised only by artists of the greatest skill and accomplishment.

favored the fattening of swine, the tithe was exacted in
kind; in years when the growth was lean, the monks preferred
the corresponding value in currency or in sheep
(quando esca est porcum solido valentem I, et quando esca
non est arietum bonum).[647] A vital prerequisite for the raising
of herds of swine by the monastery itself was the possession
of forests, which might be placed under the care of "monastic
foresters" (forestarii). A guarded copse of wood, reserved
for the specific purpose of fattening swine (quaedam silvula
ob porcorum pastum custodiebatur), is mentioned in the
Life of St. Gall and was apparently the scene of a number
of miracles, all of which perhaps tends to stress the idea
that this branch of the monastery's agricultural economy
held no insignificant place.[648]

Although the meat from quadrupeds was a staple in the
diet of the monastery's serfs and workmen, for the monks
themselves it was allowed only in their early childhood and
in times of illness.[649] This rule appears to have been violated
with such frequency, however, that the monastery of St.
Gall itself, toward the end of the tenth century, drew upon
itself the anger and criticism of Abbot Ruodman (972-986)
of the neighboring monastery of Reichenau. Ruodman's
critical testimony before the Emperor Otto II resulted in a
number of imperial investigations into the conditions at

296

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. HOUSE FOR SWINE AND SWINEHERDS

491.

491.X SITE PLAN

In medieval illustrated calendars, the slaughtering of swine at the onset of winter, when pasture in the nearby woods became impossible, was a
favorite subject for portrayal for the month of December. In a monastic community, only those sows and boars were wintered that would
produce the litter of animals to be raised in the subsequent year. Carcasses of the slaughtered pigs were intended to be hung in the Monks'
Larder; for a realistic description of how this was done, see I, 305-307, and Adalhard's directives in the Customs of Corbie, in the chapter
devoted to swine (translated, III, 118f.)

297

[ILLUSTRATION]

492. UTRECHT PSALTER (CA. 830). PSALM LXXIX (80)

UTRECHT, UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, CODEX 32, fol. 47r (detail)

[Courtesy of the Utrecht University Library]

The picture, drawn in the most delicate scatter of lines, depicts the powerful bulk of a large boar devouring the boughs of a spiraling vine. It is
an illustration to the lament of the Psalmist over his people having fallen in God's disfavor: "Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou
hast cast out the heathen and planted it" (verse 8); "The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly
cedars" (verse 10); "Why hast thou then broken down her hedges so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her? The boar out of the
wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it" (verses 12-13).

St. Gall. Ekkehart, in his Casus sancti Galli, does not overlook
the opportunity to describe these investigations with
color and tendentious distortion.[650]

[647]

Wartmann, I, 1863, 58, No. 58, and 120, No. 506. Cf. Bikel,
1914, 11.

[648]

Vita sancti Galli, chap. 61, ed. Meyer von Knonau, 1870, 82.

[649]

Cf. I, 277, 313, 314; and above, p. 264.

[650]

Ekkeharti (IV.) Casus sancti Galli, chaps. 91ff, ed. Meyer von
Knonau, 1877, 332ff; ed. Helbling, 1958, 164ff. (See especially chap.
100).