University of Virginia Library

V. 18

SANITARY FACILITIES

V.18.1

CLEANLINESS AND GODLINESS

A word must be said about the contrivances which in both
medieval and modern Anglo Saxon literature are referred
to with the evasive designations "garderobe," "privy," or
"rere-dorter,"[655] and in the explanatory titles of the Plan
of St. Gall are varyingly designated as exitus, exitus necessarius,
necessariū, and requisitum naturae. On first inspection
the subject is somewhat bewildering, since in certain areas
of the Plan provisions for this facility are made with a
profuseness that exceeds any comparable modern standards
of hygiene, while in others they appear to be wholly
overlooked.

A more judicious examination discloses that the measure
of attention lavished on the privies by the designer of the
Plan of St. Gall is directly related to the rank or administrative
status that their beneficiaries hold in the monastic
polity. The subject has both social and philosophical implications
and throws some light upon the history of western
hygiene.

V.18.2

TWO BASIC TYPES OF PRIVIES

INDIVIDUAL PRIVIES

Individual privies directly attached to the house or an
apartment, containing either one or more toilet seats, are
at the disposition of visiting noblemen (fig. 495A) and those
monastic functionaries who, because of their specific responsibilities,
must live in separate quarters outside the
claustrum, viz., the Porter (fig. 495B), the master of the
Outer School (fig. 495B), the master of the novices,
(fig. 495C), the chief physician (fig. 495D). They are
also installed for small groups of regular monks who are
not part of the monastic community, such as the visiting
monks (fig. 495E), and those being segregated for health
reasons, such as the sick novices (fig. 495C) or the acutely
ill patients in the House of the Physicians (fig. 495D).

COMMUNAL PRIVIES

Apart from these private toilets directly attached to the
bedrooms of their respective users, there are others installed
in greater quantities in separate outhouses located
directly behind the buildings they serve. The largest
among these is the privy for the servants at the House for
Distinguished Guests (fig. 496A). It is 10 feet wide, 45
feet long, and contains eighteen toilet seats. Next in size
is the privy for the students of the Outer School, which

measures 10 feet by 37½ feet and is furnished with fifteen
seats (fig. 496B). Then follows in order of decreasing magnitude:
the privy of the House for Bloodletting, with seven
seats (fig. 496C); the privy of the Abbot's House, with six
seats (fig. 496D); and the privies of the Novitiate and the
Infirmary, each with six seats (fig. 496E). The Monks'
Privy (fig. 497) falls into a category by itself; like the other
collective privies of the Plan, it is a separate house, but it
does not have their narrow, elongated floor plan; instead, it
is almost square. It measures 30 feet by 40 feet, provides
for a total of nine seats (sedilia), a stand for a lantern
(lucerna), and three other facilities of oblong shape, whose
function remains unexplained.

DIFFERENT ORIGINS

The small individual privies of the distinguished guests
and the higher monastic officials (fig. 495, A-E) doubtlessly,
have their prototypes in the vernacular architecture of the
upper strata of Carolingian society. The longhouse for the
servants of the distinguished guests, the students of the
Outer School, and other smaller monastic groups (figs.
496, A-E), I would be inclined to derive from Roman and
medieval military architecture, although I cannot support
this hypothesis with any tangible archaeological evidence.
The square shape of the Monk's Privy is somewhat reminiscent
of that of the Roman public latrine, but may
actually not be in any ancestral relation to the latter, and
may owe its squarish shape to the desire to add to the single
row of toilet seats such other facilities as a urinal or troughs
with water for washing hands.

V.18.3

SANITARY FACILITIES OF THE PLAN
IN THE LIGHT OF ANCIENT
AND MODERN STANDARDS OF HYGIENE

The sanitary installations of the Plan of St. Gall raise the
interesting question of environmental hygiene in a planned
medieval community of men that can be placed into proper
historical perspective only if analyzed in comparison with
ancient and modern facilities of this type.

THE PUBLIC ROMAN LATRINE

The public Roman latrine consisted of a large space,
usually square (fig. 499) but often trapezoidal or semicircular
(fig. 500A), or a combination of such shapes (fig.
500B). The seats were ranged along the walls all around
the periphery of the building, leaving everyone fully
exposed to the view of the others, with sufficient floor
space in between for people to congregate in amicable
conversation. Channels beneath the seats, flushed by running
water diverted from the aqueducts, drained into the
public sewer system. The seating capacity of these buildings
could attain substantial proportions. The gymnasium of the
city of Philippi had a latrine with fifty seats. In the market
of Miletus there was one with forty (fig. 499A-B); in the

[ILLUSTRATION]

497. PLAN OF ST. GALL

MONKS' PRIVY

Comparison with later monastic architecture (figs. 501-503 and 516-520)
suggests that the Monks' Privy was level with the Dormitory, a relationship we
misinterpreted in the Aachen model of the Plan in 1965, and have corrected
here. Waste was either to accumulate in a cesspool at ground level, later to be
used as fertilizer in the garden nearby; or, less likely, flushed away by a water
channel.

The Privy is 30 feet wide, 40 feet long (12 modules wide by 16 long) and has
9 toilet seats and 3 stands serving as urinals or washbasins. In these measurements,
multiples of 3, 4, and 10 may indicate the pervasiveness of the concept of
sacred numbers even in so humble a facility.

Agora of Athens, one with sixty-four.[656] The Romans seemingly
had settled this public need with the same flair with
which they engineered a world-wide system of roads, constructed
their aqueducts, and installed grandiose systems
for metropolitan sewage disposal—engineering feats so
great and new in concept that the Greek philosopher
Strabo (b. 63 B.C.) could remark that "if the Greeks had the
repute of aiming most happily in the founding of cities, in
that they aimed at beauty, strength of position, and the
availability of harbours and productive soil, the Romans
had the best foresight in . . . the construction of roads and
aqueducts, and of sewers that could wash out the filth of the
city into the Tiber."[657]

Yet as magnificent as all this appears on first sight, in
terms of effective environmental hygiene, it was far from
providing a satisfactory solution to the sewage disposal
needed in the larger Roman cities. Besides the public
latrines, only the houses of the patricians were linked to the
metropolitan water system. The inhabitants of the tenements,
where the remaining two million Romans lived, had
to carry their domestic ordure in pots to a sewage vat under
the stairwell, bring it to nearby cesspits (with which Rome
was riddled), or take recourse to the even more primitive
method of simply dumping their offal from the windows
into the street. Much of Rome wallowed in filth.[658]

RATIO OF TOILET SEATS TO NUMBER OF USERS

On the Plan of St. Gall

If one analyzes on the Plan of St. Gall the ratio between
the number of toilet seats provided for the disposal of
human waste and the number of potential users, one
arrives at the startling conclusion that the standards of
sanitary hygiene in a medieval monastery of the time of
Louis the Pious were far advanced not only over those of
any of their classical proto- or antitypes, but—with the
sole exception of modern de luxe hotels—even conspicuously
superior to common standards of modern sanitation.

The House for Distinguished Guests, as we saw, had
bedding facilities for eight noblemen and eighteen servants.
Since the bedrooms for the noblemen were equipped with
their own privies, the eighteen seats of the outhouse must
have been the reserve of the eighteen servants.[659] They were
set up at a ratio of 1:1. On the level of the court this appears
to have been the norm. The royal guesthouse of the
monastery of Cluny, a facility which was designed for the
accommodation of seventy guests, was furnished with the
same number of toilet seats.[660] The Outer School of the
Plan of St. Gall, designed for an occupancy of probably
twenty-four students, has an outhouse equipped with fifteen
seats (fig. 496B),[661] which yields a ratio of 1:1.6. The
House for Bloodletting, probably never occupied simultaneously
by more than twelve monks,[662] has seven seats (fig.
496C); it therefore had a probable ratio of 1:1.7. The
Abbot's House with a bedding capacity of eight[663] has six
toilet seats (fig. 496D), yielding a ratio of 1:1.3. And the
dormitories of the Novitiate and the Infirmary, each of
which appear to have been designed for an occupancy of
twelve persons,[664] are provided with an outhouse equipped
with six seats, corresponding to a ratio of 1:2.

In modern building codes

To place these figures into proper perspective from the
point of view of environmental sanitation, it may be pointed
out that the latest U.S. Army Field Manual 21-10 on
Military Sanitation prescribes eight toilet seats for every
100 men.[665] In World War II, it was ten seats for every
200 men.[666] The Uniform Housing Code of 1961 in section
H 505 recommends for hotels one toilet seat per ten
guests;[667] and the California Administrative Code, Title 17,
as of 1966 stipulates that in camps, toilets should be provided
at the ratio of one toilet seat per fifteen occupants of
the camp.[668] The luxury of modern hotels, where each

[ILLUSTRATION]

498. OSTIA. ROMAN PUBLIC LATRINE (4TH CENT. A.D.)

This latrine, part of a larger campaign, was built when the forum baths of Ostia were restored in the 4th century. It is among the best preserved
Roman latrines. Facilities of this type, preceded by a vestibule and entered, as here, by a revolving door were by preference built near the forum
or near baths. This latrine had seats of marble over a water-flushed channel.

In private Roman homes the privy was always next to or in the kitchen, making it possible for one drainage ditch to service both, and the bath
as well. Movable receptacles were often installed beneath chairs and placed in the street at night, the waste to be collected by the CONDUCTOR
FORICORUM. Amphoras serving as public urinals were posted by the fullers throughout the streets; their content was used in the process of
cleaning cloth.

bedroom is provided with a private bath and a private
toilet, is of relatively recent date. Even today in the majority
of smaller European hotels an entire floor is served by a
single privy at the end of the corridor. The ratio between
available seats and their potential occupants varies anywhere
between 1:10 to 1:30. In the light of these statistics,
the hygiene of the monastery shown on the Plan of St. Gall
must be proclaimed to be superior to that prevailing under
average conditions in most Western countries today. They
fall short only if measured against conditions prevalent in
the most elegant, modern hotels.

The most conservative arrangement on the Plan of St.
Gall is the privy of the regular monks, which is furnished
with nine toilets serving a total of seventy-seven monks,
thus yielding a ratio of 1:8.5. Yet even this is still considerably
more generous than the ratio of 1:12 stipulated today
in the sanitary code of the U.S. Army.

[ILLUSTRATION]

MILETOS, ASIA MINOR, WEST COAST NEAR SAMOS

499.B PERSPECTIVE, CUTAWAY

499.C TRANSVERSE SECTION

499.A PLAN

NORTH MARKET HALL. PUBLIC LATRINE (3rd-4th cent.)

The latrine seats were cut into marble slabs and were placed over a water channel. The
44 keyhole-shaped seats aligned with a slot in the vertical face of the bank of seats to
allow the user access for cleansing. An open channel cut into the slightly slanting marble
floor in front of and parallel to the seats carried water for cleansing the hands (after
von Gerkan, 1922, 18, figs., 20-21).

V.18.4

SUPERIOR STANDARDS OF SANITATION:
COLLECTIVE PLANNING AND
CHRISTIAN RETICENCE

THE MONASTERY: A PLANNED SOCIETY

The basic ecological reason for these comparatively high
standards of monastic sanitation are easy to define: in
contrast to the medieval or classical city, whose growth was
subject to pressures beyond the control of its inhabitants,
the monastery was a planned society. Its population was
stable, and in general not subject to unexpected fluctuations.[669]
The same care that was used in regulating the
spiritual life of the community, therefore, could also be
applied to the organization of its physical environment.

DIFFERENCE IN
UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTS

There are other reasons, moreover, of a deeper and more
philosophical nature that made it necessary for this side
of life to be carefully ordered. The classical civilizations
of Greece and Rome, affirmative in their response to the
human organism and the pleasures derived from it, reacted
to the problem of evacuation of human waste with the
same naturalness with which they responded to the phenomenon
of eating or breathing. To the Christian mind,
taught to "chastise the body" and to "deny the desires of
the flesh,"[670] it was, by contrast, an indignity inflicted upon
man because his soul was condemned to reside in a body.
This different concept is as manifest in the terminology
used to define this physiological inevitability as it is in the
layout of the building devised for its accommodation. The
classical languages are clear, descriptive, and to the point
on this matter.[671] The monastic language, as one is not
surprised to find, is reticent but not prudish. St. Benedict
coined the evasive phrase ad necessaria naturae exire ("to
go out for the necessities of nature")[672] which becomes the
base for numerous insignificant variations subsequently
used, such as necessitas fratrum,[673] corporis necessaria,[674] corporea
necessitas naturae,[675] necessitas naturae;[676] or the variants
necessarium, exitus necessarius, or requisitum naturae used on
the Plan of St. Gall—a terminology designed to express the
inescapable condition of the function it denotes.

The needs to which he attends in the privy were not
only the lowest of all activities in which a monk was bound
to engage, but were also a source of mortal danger. The
light shown on the Plan of St. Gall as an obligatory piece of
equipment in the Monks' Privy is a precautionary measure
aimed at more than merely protecting the monks from
stumbling in a physical sense.[677] Besides his bed and his
bath, this was the only other place where, by no fault of his
own, he could not avoid bodily contact with himself. Like
the temptations of the dormitory and of the bathhouse, the
temptations of the privy could only be met with the most
stringent of directives for conditions and time of use—

especially strict in the case of the younger monks. We learn
more about these from Carolingian commentaries to the
Rule of St. Benedict than from the Rule itself.[678]

ARCHITECTURAL IMPLICATIONS

It is clear that this change in attitude would also have
its effect on the architectural layout of the monastic privy.
The amphitheater-style layout of the public Roman latrine
with its convivial sociability had no chance of survival in
this new environment. The prescribed and proper deportment
of the monk required that he draw his cowl over his
head, so as not to be recognized.[679] To expose himself
freely to the view of others, or be exposed to theirs, would
have been an act of blasphemy. This is unquestionably the
reason why the seats of the monastic privies of the Middle
Ages were stretched out in a single line in an elongated
structure that had more the character of a corridor than of
a room, and where any propensity toward social intercourse
was frustrated by the establishment of separating
cross partitions.

V.18.5

MEDIEVAL PARALLELS

MONKS' LATRINE IN THE MONASTERY OF CLUNY II

The longhouse became the preferred medieval form for
monastic latrines. The earliest prose description of this
type of building known to me is that of the monks' latrine
in the monastery of Cluny II. The author of the Consuetudines
Farfenses, writing around 1043, defines it as follows:

[ILLUSTRATION]

500. PIAZZA ARMERINA. PROVINCE OF ENNA,
SICILY

VILLA OF EMPEROR MAXIMIANUS, †310 A.D.

[Redrawn from Gentili & Bandinelli, 1956]

1:600

The villa, probably an imperial hunting lodge, consisted of clusters of rectangular and
curved-wall buildings laid out on shifting axes around a large galleried court containing
a fountain. Its most prominent architectural features are the emperor's audience hall
(BASILICA) at the eastern end of the court, his dining hall (TRICLINIUM) to the north,
and an elaborate cold and warm water bath (FRIGIDARIUM, TEPIDARIUM) at the
southeastern corner of the complex near its entrance. The residential quarters lay to the
south side of the court and audience hall.

The latrines were judiciously sited: a large one next to the baths, probably the first to
be used by returning hunters, and a smaller one near the living quarters, in a wedge-shaped
space between QUADRIPORTICUS and thermal installations. Their amphitheatrical
layout allowed users to attend to their needs in full view of everyone else—a
reflection of the unihibited affirmation with which the ancients responded to the body's
natural functions, and an attitude quite opposed to the reticent privacy and hierarchical
social segregation with which these facilities are treated in the repressing ambience of a
medieval monastery.

[ILLUSTRATION]

501. CLUNY II. MONKS' PRIVY (ODILO'S MONASTERY, 994-1049). PLAN

AFTER DESCRIPTION IN THE CONSUETUDINES FARFENSES

The location of the latrine at Cluny is ascertained by excavation of its foundations. It lay at right angles to the monks' dormitory at a distance
of about 1·50m from it, and was accessible through its southern gable wall by a connecting bridge at dormitory level. The dormitory itself
occupied the upper level of a long structure that bounded the claustral complex to the east. For more detail, see Conant's reconstruction of the
layout of Cluny II shown in fig. 515, and his description of Odilo's work in Conant, 1968, 59-67.

THE MONKS' LATRINE OF CHRISTCHURCH
MONASTERY AT CANTERBURY

An early graphical portrayal of such a latrine is the Norman
necessarium shown on the famous plan of the waterworks
of the monastery of Christchurch, Canterbury
(fig. 502), drawn around 1165 by Wibert or one of his
assistants.[681] The foundations and lower portions of the
walls of this privy survive (fig. 503). It was 145 feet long
and 25 feet wide (internal measurements) and in its original
form contained fifty-five toilet seats in a single room, at
intervals of 2 feet, 7 inches, measuring the seats on their
centers. The seats were supported by fifty-three transverse
arches which bridged a fosse flushed by running water.[682]

OTHER MONASTIC PRIVIES
AND WATER-FLUSHED CHANNELS FOR WASTE

The remains of many other structures of this kind, dating
from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, may be found
in other English monasteries, such as Kirkstall, Fountains,
Lewes Priory, Rievaulx, Roche, and Byland; an unusually
fine Continental specimen exists in the Abbey of Maubuisson.[683]

[ILLUSTRATION]

502. CHRISTCHURCH, CANTERBURY, ENGLAND, PLAN OF WATERWORKS (CA. 1165)

MONKS' PRIVY (DETAIL, ACTUAL SIZE)

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

The plan, probably drawn by Wibert (d. 1167), who engineered the system, shows the privy lying at the southern side of the CURIA at right
angles to the Norman dormitory (DORMITORIUM). With an external length of 155 feet (more than double the length of the monks' privy at
Cluny), and a height of 35 feet, it was an imposing structure.

The artist took license in portraying the Christchurch privy as a detached building; remaining fragments of the masonry of dormitory and
privy show that in reality a portion of its western gable wall butted against the dormitory and was accessible from it through a connecting
vestibule (fig. 503.A).

The privy was water-flushed down its length by means of a drainage ditch that, on the drawing, is shown to run parallel to and outside the
structure; in actuality this channel passed beneath it (fig. 503. B, C) and emptied into the fosse of the city wall.

After the dissolution of the monasteries in England by Henry VIII, the privy was converted into a common hall for minor canons and officers
of the choir. So it remained with slight modifications until 1850, when it was taken down. Some of the masonry of the fosse and many of the
arches that supported the privy seats (fig. 503.C) are part of the surviving ruins and can still be seen.

The complete plan of the Christchurch waterworks is reproduced in Volume I of this work, pp. 70-71, and is part of a discussion of schematic
waterways as they might apply to Christchurch; the discussion includes a schematic speculation of watercourses that might be applicable to the
St. Gall site (I, 72, and 74, fig. 53).

[ILLUSTRATION]

503.A CANTERBURY, CHRISTCHURCH MONASTERY, MONKS' PRIVY. PLAN

[after Willis, 1868, fig. 12]

The designations are misleading. The "Third Dormitory" was not a hall for sleeping, but a latrine. The "Second Dormitory" may have served
as sleeping quarters for certain conventual officers, such as sacristan, chamberlain, cellerar, and superior.

In all of these establishments the rere-dorters were
cleansed by running water diverted from a natural stream
at some point above the monastery and returned to it with
the waste further down the valley. There is no doubt in
my mind that the majority of the privies shown on the
Plan of St. Gall were cleansed in this manner, although
the author of the Plan refrained from delineating the course
of such a water system. What he had in mind can be
elicited from the fact that the majority of his privies are
sited in such a manner that they could be flushed in
succession by a drainage channel connecting them in a
straight course.[684]

VARIATION IN ARRANGEMENT OF SEATS

An interesting, and possibly common, variation of the
longhouse represented by the rere-dorter of the monastery
of Christchurch in Canterbury (figs. 502-503) was created
by moving the row of toilet seats away from the wall into
the center axis of the building and making each alternate
seat accessible from the opposite side. We have the good
fortune of being able to visualize the furnishings of such a
privy down to its minutest detail because of the survival,
in the Collection of Drawings of the British Museum, of a
set of meticulously measured drawings made by J. G.
Buckler in 1868, before the interior of the longhouse of
New College, Oxford, was gutted to make room for more
modern installations.[685] Although this type does not appear
on the Plan of St. Gall, the furnishings as such may well
reflect a very old tradition. In the annals of New College
the rere-dorter of New College, varyingly referred to as
domicilium necessarium and as "longhouse," was part of the
quadrangle complex built by Bishop Wykeham from 1380
to 1386. It is 16 feet, 2 inches wide and 82 feet long (clear
inner measurements; the external dimensions are 22 feet,
9 inches by 89 feet, 4 inches) and was built two stories
high with walls 3 feet thick. The lower story originally had
no openings and served as a cesspool, which was periodically
cleaned.[686] The upper story, approached by an external
stair, was lit by narrow slit windows with a wide internal
splay. In the axis of the room throughout its entire length

[ILLUSTRATION]

CANTERBURY, CHRISTCHURCH MONASTERY. MONKS' PRIVY

503.B TRANSVERSE SECTION

[after Willis, 1868, fig. 13]

503.C ARCHES SUPPORTING PRIVY SEATS

[after Willis, 1868, fig. 14]

A longitudinal wall separated the lower part of the privy into two portions of unequal width. The southern part, 14 feet wide, was filled with
earth and paved at the top. The northern part, 7 feet wide, formed a fosse bridged over by thin masonry arches, and carried wooden seats and
seat partitions.

there were wooden seats, boxed in by wall partitions at the
rear and to the side, making the seats accessible from
opposite sides in alternate sequence. Figure 504A-D shows
the plan, sections, and exterior view of this structure and a
detailed view of one of the original seats.

The rere-dorters of the monks and lay brothers of Kirkstall
Abbey, Yorkshire, as well as the Monks' privy of the
Abbey of Maubuisson (Seine-et-Oise), had this same axial
arrangement of seats (and there were unquestionably many
others), but unlike the longhouse of New College, Oxford,
these buildings were flushed by running water.[687]

DISPOSAL OF WASTE BY WATER:
AN URBAN, NOT A RURAL PRACTICE

Disposing of human waste by using water power is an idea
monks inherited from the Romans. It was an urban, not a
rural, invention. In a purely agricultural society the nitrogenous
content of this matter was far too valuable a substance
for replenishing the soil to be discarded in a stream.
The monks whose background was rural could not help
being impressed by the skillful engineering that went into
these water systems and lent to a primordial problem of
nature a touch of inventive elegance. Now and then, in
medieval sources, one runs into a passage that seems to

[ILLUSTRATION]

504.A OXFORD UNIVERSITY, NEW COLLEGE

COLLEGE PRIVY BUILT BY BISHOP WYCKHAM BETWEEN 1380 AND 1386

PLAN OF THE UPPER FLOOR. DRAWINGS BY J. G. BUCKLER [504. A, B, C, D, E]

LONDON, BRITISH MUSEUM COLLECTION OF DRAWINGS, ADD. MS. 36437. BY COURTESY OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM

reflect this concept, such as the remark in the Gesta Abbatum
Lobbensium which lists the following among the accomplishments
of Abbot Levinus (twelfth century):

PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS

In other sources one finds undertones of a feeling that
the currents of water so skillfully channeled through the
monastic workshops cleansed the monastery in a deeper
sense than the purely physical; the impressive, and in
parts truly poetic, thirteenth-century description of the
waterways of the monastery of Clairvaux, after a minute
account of all the services that the water rendered to the
various offices and workshops, terminates with:

One of the puzzling aspects of the Plan of St. Gall is
the fact that although its author is scrupulously precise in
the specifications of the privies that answer the needs of
the monks and their noble visitors, the question of privies
is not even raised on the level of the serfs, the workmen,

[ILLUSTRATION]

504.B OXFORD, NEW COLLEGE. LONGITUDINAL SECTION

A strikingly functional and no less sophisticated solution to the problem of monastic sanitation was applied in medieval university life (where
students, while not cloistered, were in minor orders). The carpentry was superb; seats facing opposite sides in alternating sequence offered a
maximum of privacy and comfort without violating the traditional monastic regulation that even while engaged in the most humble of human
pursuits, none may enjoy the privilege of total seclusion.

and the paupers. The absence of privies (or even the
provision of space for such) is most strongly felt in the
case of the Great Collective Workshop and the Hospice for
Pilgrims and Paupers.[690] This is not an oversight, in my
opinion, but a case of social discrimination. From a certain
level downward the designer of the scheme left the solution
of the individual privy to the ingenuity of the builder. In
the case of those structures housing both humans and
animals this poses no problem, as the sanitation of the
human occupants is subject to the same order of cleanliness
that governs good animal husbandry and can be met with
the greatest of ease by an infinite variety of ingenious
improvisations. But in the case of the Great Collective
Workshop and the Hospice for Pilgrims and Paupers, the
absence of privies—or even of the provision of space for

[ILLUSTRATION]

504.C OXFORD, NEW COLLEGE.

EXTERIOR VIEW FROM NEW COLLEGE LANE

them—is more disquieting. The designer simply chose not
to express himself on this issue.

The Consuetudines Farfenses furnishes us with an interesting
literary parallel for this discriminatory planning procedure.
The same text that tells us with firm precision that
the number of toilet seats in the House for Distinguished
Guests should be equal to the number of visitors who can
be bedded in this structure, wastes not a single word on
the subject of privies of the large building—280 feet long
and 25 feet wide—which contains on the ground floor the
stables for the horses of the royal party and on the upper
floor the eating and sleeping quarters of the lower ranking
members of the emperor's train:

[ILLUSTRATION]

504.E DETAIL

END OF PART V

[ILLUSTRATION]

505. ST. GALL. VIEW OF THE CITY FROM THE WEST, IN 1545

HEINRICH VOGTHERR. WOOD ENGRAVING (29.6 × 42cm)

The rendering shows the town and its surroundings from an imagined perspective in the air. Not yet separated, abbey and town are enclosed by a common masonry wall
elaborated by towers, houses, and two main gates. A glimpse of the Bodensee (Lake Constance) orients the view to the northeast.

Dominating the countryside are meadows cleared for bleaching linen, a local industry. The view is crowded with dwellings, farms and outbuildings, an inn, a fort,
barracks and parade ground, an exercise and training yard. The main access road appears smooth and well paved approaching the city's crenellated gate; down the
other, rougher road a carter gallops three span of horses hitched to a drey, laden perhaps with baled linen. A group of buildings amid trees (center, right) suggesting
modest dwellings is situated outside the city walls. By mid-16th century, St. Gall clearly consisted of URBS and SUBURBS, a dichotomy that attested the arrival
of modern times.

The four largest meodows are bisected by the Irabach; its water-course, now underground, formed a natural boundary between town and monastery in the early Middle
Ages. Two mills locate the cascade of the Steinach; its course deflects sharply westward, broken by the escarpment of the monastery site (cf. fig. 514, p. 331.) The
abbey church lies slightly south of the east-west axis of this rise of land, its staggered roofs indicating various steps of construction. Similar views from different angles
(figs. 507, 509.X) confirm the veracity of the rendering.

Photo: Courtesy of Zentralbibliothek, Zürich, Department of Prints and Drawings.
Each of the two extant prints of this subject is somewhat damaged; this image is
made from a photographic composite of them, in order to obtain the best possible
reconstruction.