The Plan of St. Gall a study of the architecture & economy of & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery |
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DISPOSAL OF WASTE BY WATER:
AN URBAN, NOT A RURAL PRACTICE |
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 | The Plan of St. Gall |  |
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
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
Lobbensium which lists the following among the accomplishments
of Abbot Levinus (twelfth century):
He built a new but more elegant room of sewers, joined to the dormitory,
in the place of the old one (literally: from the old one);
which room, below cleansed from filth by incessantly running
water, he made more honorable above for the necessary use with
seats furnished by suitable beauty.[688]
Gesta Abbatum Lobbensium chap. 23, ed. Arndt in Mon. Germ.
Hist., Scriptores, XXI, 1869, 326-27: "Domum cloacarum dormitorio
coniunctam de veteri novam opere elegantiori aedificavit, ut Quam acqua
indeficienter pretercurrens inferius sordibus mundam rederet forma competens
superius aptatis sedibus honestam usui necessario facerit."
| The Plan of St. Gall | |