University of Virginia Library

VI

THE PLAN OF ST. GALL
& ITS EFFECT ON LATHER
MONASTIC PLANNING
TRADITION AND CHANGE

INTRODUCTION

THE sections that follow deal in a tentative form with the effect that the ideas embodied in the Plan of St. Gall
had upon later monastic planning. An exhaustive treatment of such effects would require a separate book; nevertheless
we will attempt to illuminate the question by concentrating on a selected group of later monasteries and by
discussing only certain basic aspects of a far larger and more subtle complex of problems. Foremost in consideration
are three questions that have always been of concern to the historian of monastic planning:

• 1. To what extent did Abbot Gozbert and his successors adhere to the Plan when they rebuilt the monastery
  of St. Gall from 830 onwards?

• 2. Did the concepts embodied in the Plan establish a tradition?

• 3. If this was the case, to what extent was this tradition modified by innovations deriving from new customs
  in the Cluniac, autonomous Benedictine, and Cistercian monasteries of the eleventh and twelfth centuries?

FOR the treatment of the first of these three questions I am responsible. The examination of the two others,
discussed in chapters 2 through 5, is based on a master's thesis written by Carolyn Malone and completed in
time to allow its results to be included in this book. The research embodied in these chapters and its presentation
are hers. I have made some minor additions, including all of the extended figure captions. We conclude with a
brief Epilogue, and a review of excavations beneath Gozbert's church, based on a report by architect Dr. H. R.
Sennhauer, in charge of excavations.

W. H.

[ILLUSTRATION]

506.A ST. GALL SITE OF THE FORMER MONASTERY WITH ITS PRESENT BUILDINGS

AIR VIEW FROM NORTHWEST LOOKING SOUTHEAST

The Carolingian church and virtually all other monastic buildings were completely rebuilt between 1755 and 1767/68, but the street pattern
and alignment of houses clustering around the church even today reflect, with amazing accuracy, the boundaries of the original monastery site.
The Baroque church is co-axial with the three preceding medieval churches (see fig. 513.A-B) and almost identical with them in width and
overall length. Double-apsed like the church of the Plan of St. Gall, it is, like the latter, without façade. By contrast its towers, flanking the
apse at the eastern end of the building, do not guard the western entrances to the church, but rather signal to the outside world the location of
the high altar and the relics of St. Gall.

[ILLUSTRATION]

506.B ST. GALL. SITE OF THE FORMER MONASTERY WITH ITS PRESENT BUILDINGS

AIR VIEW FROM SOUTHEAST LOOKING NORTHWEST

The primary reason for construction of the present church owed to the sack of the monastery in 1712 by the Protestant citizenry of Zürich and
Bern. The reconstruction was undertaken with palatial magnificence, and a breathtaking aesthetic exuberance that derived its vitality from a
new alliance of the landed aristocracy of Europe with Catholicism.

In the wake of this accord spread one of the most lavish architectural styles of all ages. The designers of the new church endeavored to reconcile
the directionalism of the traditional western church with a concept of centrality by arresting its longitudinal flow midway in the swirl of a
domed rotunda, and by merging nave and aisles into a single undulating body of space.

[ILLUSTRATION]

507. MELCHIOR FRANK.

1596 DIE LOBLICH * STAT * SANT GALLEN * SAMBT * DEM FURSTLICHEN * CLOSTR

ST. GALL, VIEW OF THE CITY FROM THE EAST. ETCHING ON IRON (40 × 61cm)

[Courtesy of the St. Gall Historical Museum]

The etching portrays with great precision the wedge-shaped boundaries of the elevated site (lower left quadrant) on which St. Gall founded his original cell.
The site owed its distinctive shape to the courses of two converging streams, the Steinach, skirting the monastery to the south, and the Irabach, forming its
northern boundary. The river escarpments not only sharply delineated the boundaries of the monastery site, but also afforded, at least initially, a good
measure of natural protection. Even in Abbot Gozbert's day (816-836) the monastery appears to have been enclosed only by wattle fences.

The earliest settlement of serfs and tenants grew up on the north side of the monastery where the ground was level. Its dependence on the abbey is
permanently engraved into the architecture of the city by the semicircular course of its streets, that even today hug the contours of the monastery grounds.
Search for urban freedom strained the relationship of abbey and city throughout the entire Middle Ages and reached a first climax in 1475 when the city
purchased its independence from the abbey at a cost of 7000 guilders. During the Reformation (commencing in 1524), abbot and monks were forced into
exile but were allowed to return when the power of the citizens was temporarily weakened by warfare with Kapel.

Increasing conflicts culminated, in 1567, in the erection of a separation wall that segregated the territory of the city from that of the abbey, and thereby
froze into permanency the confessional division brought about by the Reformation. Henceforward, city and abbey led their separate lives politically,
culturally, and economically. In 1798 the abbey was divested of all its temporal possessions. Total supression came in 1805. In 1847 the church became
the seat of a bishopric.

Melchior Frank's etching is a so-called Planprospekt, a perspective from the air based on measurements taken on the ground. The plate is lost; the only
known print is held in the Historiches Museum, St. Gall.

VI. 1

REBUILDING OF THE
MONASTERY OF ST. GALL BY
ABBOT GOZBERT & HIS
SUCCESSORS
FROM A.D. 830 ONWARD

VI.I.I

HARDEGGER'S CONTRIBUTION

Up to the middle of the eighteenth century, the church
which Abbot Gozbert built between 830 and 837 was still
essentially intact, except for its transept and choir. From
1755 onwards, however, not only the church itself but
most of the conventual buildings as well were torn
down to make room for the magnificent and stately rococo
buildings that form the pride of modern St. Gall (figs. 505
and 506). The street pattern and the alignment of the
houses that cluster around the abbey retain with astonishing
precision the shape of the original site, but of the Carolingian
buildings that once rose on this precinct not a single
stone appears to be left above ground level. A satisfactory
answer to the question of whether, or to what extent,
Abbot Gozbert and his successors adhered to the Plan of
St. Gall as they rebuilt the monastery could only be found
through a systematic program of excavations, for which at
present there does not appear to exist a glimmer of hope.[1]
If we are nevertheless not entirely ignorant about Gozbert's
work, this is due to the existence of a precious set of
architectural drawings made early in the eighteenth century
when much of the Carolingian work was still discernible.
These late drawings have been brilliantly analyzed by
August Hardegger, first in a dissertation published in
1917,[2] and a few years later in a volume of the Baudenkmäler
der Stadt St. Gallen, which Hardegger wrote in
cooperation with architect Salomon Schlatter and Traugott
Schiess.[3] It is to the imaginative, yet sober and cautious
reasoning displayed in these studies, that we owe whatever
tangible knowledge can be gleaned from the available
sources about the design and layout of the monastery
rebuilt by Abbot Gozbert and his successors.

VI.1.2

THE CHURCH

The dedicatory inscription of the Plan and the general
historical context in which it was made leave no doubt that
the Plan was drawn upon the request of Abbot Gozbert
(816-836) of St. Gall for the purpose of giving him guidance
in rebuilding his monastery.[4] Gozbert began this
project in 830 by demolishing the church which Abbot
Otmar had built toward the middle of the preceding
century.[5] The work on the new church proceeded so
rapidly that it could be dedicated in 837.[6]

Gozbert's church was gutted by fires in 937, 1314, and
1418 but the bulk of the walls, the clerestories of the nave
and their supporting arcades apparently were not signally
affected by these events.[7] By contrast, the transept and the
choir were completely rebuilt by the Abbots Eglolf and
Ulrich VIII, from 1439-83.[8] It is in the form it had then
attained that the church is portrayed on the oldest bird's-eye
views of the city: in a woodcut dated 1545 by Heinrich
Vogtherr, in an etching on iron by Melchior Frank, dated
1596 (fig. 507), in an engraving of essentially the same
view by Matthaeus Merian, published in 1638 (fig. 509X),
as well as in several other drawings, the most important of
which are a pen drawing of 1666 and a large drawing on
parchment of 1671.[9]

In 1712 the abbey was ransacked by the Protestants and
the monks were expelled.[10] When they returned a few
years later it was painfully clear that extensive restorations
would have to be undertaken. In anticipation of that event
some detailed architectural surveys were made. In 1717
architect Johannes Caspar Glattburger surveyed the church
and recorded its dimensions.[11] Two years later Pater Gabriel
Hecht made a scale-drawn plan of the entire monastery
site, dated September 17, 1719 (fig. 510). In 1725-26 he
added to this a set of no less than fourteen architectural
drawings, in which he set forth how he thought the damaged
church and other monastic buildings should be renovated.[12]

[ILLUSTRATION]

508. ST. GALL. ABBEY AS IT APPEARED ABOUT 1642. BIRD'S-EYE VIEW FROM THE EAST

DETAIL OF A MODEL OF THE CITY OF ST. GALL

ST. GALL, HISTORISCHES MUSEUM [photo: Horn]

Three of these drawings, reproduced in figures 511A-C,
render the condition of the still surviving parts of the
medieval church with great precision and show that what
Hecht had in mind was not so much a reconstruction as a
superficial modernization of the then existing work. Hecht
proposed that the gothic choir be retained in its entirety.
He added some baroque touches in surface treatment by
superimposing a new columnar order upon the exterior
elevation of the choir. In the interior he modernized the
Gothic supports but otherwise retained the structure as he
found it, leaving its Gothic vaults and windows wholly
untouched. In the nave, likewise, he does not appear to
have undertaken any radical changes. Hardegger is convinced
that the arcades and the superincumbent clerestories
of the nave which Hecht had before his eyes as he made his
drawings were in essence still those of Abbot Gozbert's
church (compare fig. 511A and B with fig. 512B and C).
He feels that Hecht proposed to retain the intercolumniation
of Gozbert's church and confined himself to simply
increasing the heights in this part of the building. The only
truly new feature in his proposal was the conversion of the
two nave bays lying next to the choir into a pseudotransept
surmounted by a dome, and the introduction on each of
the two long sides of the church of a continuous system of
chapels. For the rest he confined himself to superimposing
upon the existing work a decorative relief of surface
features, designed in the prevailing taste of the period.
This included in the the interior the complete encasing of
Gozbert's arcade columns in baroque shaped piers.

Although Hecht's design proposals had no effect on the
actual course of events, which took a radical turn a quarter
of a century later, they are of incomparable historical
value because they embody with amazing accuracy the
record of what was then still left, or could then be discerned,
of Gozbert's church. In analyzing this material, Hardegger
came to the following conclusions concerning Gozbert's
church and its relation to the Plan of St. Gall:

1. As stipulated in the explanatory legends of the Plan
of St. Gall, Abbot Gozbert assigned to the nave of his
church a width of 40 feet and to each of his aisles a width
of 20 feet—dimensions which also are in conformity with
the manner in which the Church is drawn on the Plan.

2. In full compliance with the intercolumnar titles of
the Plan, but in deviation from the drawing (in which the

[ILLUSTRATION]

509. ST. GALL. ABBEY AS IT APPEARED ABOUT 1642. BIRD'S EYE VIEW FROM THE SOUTHEAST

DETAIL OF A MODEL OF THE CITY OF ST. GALL

ST. GALL HISTORISCHES MUSEUM [photo: Horn]

columns are spaced at intervals of 20 feet) he assigns to the
arcades an intercolumnar span of 12 feet.

3. In full compliance with the great axial title of the
Church of the Plan, but again in deviation from the
drawing (where the church is shown to have a length of
more than 300 feet) he reduced the length of the church to
200 feet. He attained this goal by drastic changes in the
design of the nave of the church, but retained the layout of
transept and choir virtually in the form in which it was
shown on the Plan.

Hardegger's supporting evidence for these conclusions is
presented below.

CONCERNING THE WIDTH AND THE LENGTH
OF GOZBERT'S CHURCH

According to the scale-drawn plan made by Father Gabriel
Hecht, in 1725-26 the nave of the medieval church had a
length of 155 feet. Its clear inner width was 46 feet, that of
the aisles 23 feet. The two clerestories rested on sixteen
piers, each 3 feet square. They were placed at intervals of
17 feet (measured on center) and had between them a clear
arcade span of 14 feet.[13] Hardegger could establish that
Gabriel Hecht, in measuring the medieval building as well
as in laying out his own drawings availed himself of the
so-called Württemberg foot[14] which had a unit value of
28.6 cm., and consequently was considerably smaller than
the foot used in drafting the Plan of St. Gall. Hardegger
thought that the architect who drew the Plan of St. Gall
scaled his layout with a foot that formed an equivalent of
33.3 cm.[15] Converted to this scale, the measurements
recorded by Gabriel Hecht would read as follows: length
of nave: 133 feet; clear width of nave: 40 feet; clear width
of aisles: 20 feet; clear span of the arcade openings: 12 feet.
This in complete harmony with the dimensions stipulated
in the explanatory titles of the Plan of St. Gall, with one
difference only: the builders of Gozbert's church interpreted

[ILLUSTRATION]

509.X MATTHAEUS MERIAN. ABBEY AND CITY OF ST. GALL. BIRD'S-EYE VIEW FROM THE EAST

ETCHING: 20.7 × 31.2cm. FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1638 & BASED ON THE MELCHIOR FRANK ETCHING, FIG. 507

Merian's etching defines with great clarity the tripartite division of the post-medieval city; the abbey, the upper, and the lower town all
separated from one another by high girdle walls. The city by now had grown to more than six times the ground area of the monastery in the
shadow of which it had arisen. The wedge-shaped boundaries of the rise of land on which the monastery was built are distinctive. (For
identification of the parts of the Church with its staggered roof levels, see caption to fig. 513.)

Noteworthy among the medieval buildings east of the Church are: the circular chapel of St. Gallus (built 958-971) and north of it St. Peter's
chapel, the oldest sanctuary on the grounds and dating from before the incumbency of Abbot Gozbert. East of it and in axial prolongation lies
St. Catherine's chapel, where the monk Tutilo was buried in 912, and that served as chapel for the abbot's palace. (The latter, a tall building
north of St. Catherine's, is not identical with the PALATIUM built by Grimoald, abbot from 841-872, and gutted by fire in 1418; it may have
been located further west.

[ILLUSTRATION]

509.Y JOHANNES ZUBER, CADASTRAL PLAN
OF THE CITY OF ST. GALL & ENVIRONS, 1835.

[scale of figure 509.Y as shown, about 1:11,500]

ST. GALL, STADTBIBLIOTHEK, CH 9000. SIZE OF ORIGINAL: 53 × 746m

[By courtesy of the Stadtbibliothek]

The plan carries the title GRUNDRISS DER STADT ST. GALLEN NEBST DER
UMGEBUNG AUFGENOMMEN VON

JOH. ZUBER. LITHOGRAPHIE VON HELM UND SOHN, ST. GALLEN, 1835.

[ILLUSTRATION]

509.Z DETAIL Central portion of St. Gall with the cathedral (shown at about 1:11,500)

source: STADT S. GALLEN, 1964, 1:5000 Art Institut Orell Füssli AG Zurich, 1964

[ILLUSTRATION]

510. PATER GABRIEL HECHT. "ICHNOGRAPHIA"

MEASURED PLAN OF THE MONASTERY OF ST. GALL DATED A.D. SEPTEMBER 1719 ST. GALL, STIFTSARCHIV

KARTEN UND PLÄNE, M.83

[By courtesy of the Stiftsarchiv]

The disposition of church and cloister are basically the same as those shown on the etching of Melchior Frank (fig. 507), except that the church
was enlarged westward in 1623-26 by two bays that absorbed the space formerly occupied by St. Michael's chapel. All of the smaller chapels to
the east of the Church (St. Gall, Holy Sepulchre, St. Peter's, St. Catherine's) were demolished during a building campaign undertaken by
Abbot Gallus II Alt in 1666-1671. He erected a long wing of domestic facilities east of the church (nos. 18-25) including a new dining room
and audience hall for the abbot (no. 18) and a new chapel for St. Gall (no. 19), new lodgings for the porter (no. 20) and beyond the passage
beneath the porter's lodging, servants' quarters, a bakery, and a pharmacy (nos. 21-25). The old but decaying abbot's palace remained at its
original site (no. 48) but the site of St. Peter's and St. Catherine's was now occupied by a carriage house (no. 32).

[ILLUSTRATION]

511.A PATER GABRIEL HECHT. MEASURED PLAN OF THE ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. GALL, 1725-26,

WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR MODIFICATION

ORIGINAL FORMERLY ST. GALL STIFTSBIBLIOTHEK,

Evacuated and lost during World War II [after Hardegger, 1917, plate facing p. 4]

Gabriel Hecht retains the church of Otmar, the nave and aisles of Gozbert's church, as well as Eglolf's choir. He adds on either flank of the church
two continuous rows of chapels, and converts the last two bays of the nave into a pseudo-transept surmounted by a tower.

these dimensions as clear spans, whereas the designer
of the Plan worked with a 40-foot square, the corners of
which coincided with the center of every second arcade
support. Being composed of nine arcades of spans of 12
feet on center, the nave of the Plan of St. Gall would have
had a clear inner length of 108 feet. If one adds to this the
thickness of the eight piers, each of which was 3 feet square,
one arrives at a clear inner length of 132 feet, which corresponds
within a margin of error of only 1 foot to the layout
of the church measured by Gabriel Hecht. To place this
figure into proper historical perspective, the reader must
be reminded of the fact that Abbot Gozbert's church was
two bays shorter than the church which Father Gabriel
had before him. Before 1623 the two westernmost bays of
the church were taken up by an open porch, surmounted by
a chapel that was dedicated to St. Michael (fig. 513). This
chapel was built after Gozbert's death as a connecting link
between the main church and the church of St. Otmar.
Consecrated in 867, it was taken down to make room for
an enlargement of the monastery church by two additional
bays when the chapel of St. Otmar was rebuilt, between
1623 and 1626.[16] If one subtracts the length of these two
added bays (34 Württemberg feet or 23 Carolingian feet)
from the total length of the nave (155 Württemberg feet or
133 Carolingian feet) one arrives at an original length of
121 Württemberg feet or 105 Carolingian feet. This comes
as close to the 108 feet of the nave of the Plan as one could
expect, in absence of any more tangible archaeological
information. It left 95 more feet of the total length of 200

[ILLUSTRATION]

511.B PATER GABRIEL HECHT. LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. GALL, 1725-26,

WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR MODIFICATION. FORMERLY ST. GALL STIFTSBIBLIOTHEK

Evacuated and lost during World War II [after Hardegger, 1917, plate facing p. 5]

feet to accommodate the transept, the presbytery and the
apse.[17]

CONCERNING THE LAYOUT OF THE TRANSEPT
AND THE CHOIR OF GOZBERT'S CHURCH

In examining the drawings of Gabriel Hecht, Hardegger
observed that the dimensions of the choir built by the
abbots Eglolf and Ulrich VIII between 1439 and 1483
corresponded almost precisely to the layout of the eastern
portion of the Church of the Plan.[18] He felt convinced
that the masonry of Eglolf's choir followed the lines of the
Carolingian work (figure 512A-C). Eglolf apparently had
simply merged the space of the crossing of Gozbert's church
with that of its presbytery, converting them into the nave
of a choir whose aisles extended to the eastern end of the
church, but did not project laterally beyond the body of
Gozbert's church. The new choir absorbed in its mass
the subsidiary spaces which in the church of the Plan
accommodated Scriptorium and Library.

Hardegger's observations were keen and his argument
is persuasive. One fails to understand why he had so little
influence on the controversy generated by those who tried
to resolve, in retrospect, what a Carolingian architect might
have done had he redrawn the Church of the Plan in the
light of the corrective measurements given in its explanatory
titles.[19] To leave choir and transept intact made sense
in functional terms: it was here that the monks were
stationed during their religious services for a total of four
hours each day.[20] To effect the required reduction of
space by changing the dispositions of the nave also made
sense, for here the loss of space was incurred not by the
monks, but by the laymen, who attended only a fraction of

[ILLUSTRATION]

511.C PATER GABRIEL HECHT. EXTERIOR ELEVATION OF THE ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. GALL, 1725-26,

WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR MODIFICATION. FORMERLY ST. GALL STIFTSBIBLIOTHEK

Evacuated and lost during World War II [after Hardegger, 1917, plate facing p. 18]

the total cycle of services held in the church, and even those
not on a regular schedule.

VI.1.3

THE CLOISTER

It is clear that the cloister lay to the south of the church
where it still is today (although completely rebuilt), and it
is equally clear that the dormitory occupied the upper level
of the eastern range which adjoined the southern transept
arm precisely as on the Plan of St. Gall. This can be
inferred from Ekkehart's account of the ignominous visit
which Abbot Ruodman of Reichenau paid to the monastery
of St. Gall under the cover of night and the description
of the complicated route which he had to take in order to
get from the cloister to the monks' privy.[21] From the same

[ILLUSTRATION]

ST. GALL. ABBEY CHURCH. SUCCESSIVE STAGES

512.B

512.A

A.

PLAN OF ABBOT GOZBERT'S CHURCH OF 830-837 AS RECONSTRUCTED BY AUGUST HARDEGGER

[after Hardegger, 1917, plate facing p. 521]

B.

PLAN OF THE ABBEY CHURCH AS RECORDED BY PATER GABRIEL HECHT IN 1725-26

[after Hardegger, loc. cit.]

[ILLUSTRATION]

512.C ST. GALL. ABBEY CHURCH. LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF 1626-1756 AS RECONSTRUCTED BY

AUGUST HARDEGGER ON THE BASIS OF GABRIEL HECHT'S DRAWINGS OF 1725-26 (FIGS. 511.A-C)

[after Hardegger, 1922, 139]

FIGURES 512. A, B, C ARE SAME SCALE (CA.1:700)

Bays 3-9 of the nave and aisles were built by Gozbert and are the oldest parts, dating from 830-837. Otmar's church, dedicated 24
September 867, located west of Gozbert's church was originally separated from it by an entrance hall surmounted by St. Michael's chapel
which was dedicated 25 September 867 (cf. figs. 513.A-B, and figs. 507-509). The choir was entirely built by Eglolf, 1439-1483, on a ground
area co-extensive with the transept and choir of Gozbert's church that had been damaged by fire in 1418. In 1623-26 St. Michael's chapel
was demolished and Gozbert's church was enlarged westward by two bays, thus extending it all the way to Otmar's church.

passage we also learn that the parlor (auditorium) was near
the entrance of the church, as we would expect it to be in
the light of the Plan of St. Gall. Ekkehart IV mentions a
warming room (pyrale) in a context which suggests that in
the tenth and early eleventh century it was used for disciplinary
actions traditionally undertaken during chapter
meetings.[22] In the same chapter he also implies that the
washhouse (lavatorium) was reached from the warming
room; in fact the text seems to suggest that it was part of
this room. In departure from the Plan of St. Gall, however,
the Scriptorium was not on the north side of the church
but next to the pyrale.[23]

We know nothing about the location of the refectory
or the cellar but there is no reason to presume that they
were laid out in a manner other than that proposed on the
Plan. The Carolingian refectory and dormitory perished
in the great fire of 1418 and were completely rebuilt by
Abbot Eglolf (1427-1442).[24]

VI.1.4

EXTRA-CLAUSTRAL BUILDINGS

Ekkehart's account of the fire of 937[25] discloses that the
Outer School was located north of the church on a lot
which corresponded closely to the site it occupies on the
Plan of St Gall. The fire was set by a vindictive student in
the attic of the schoolhouse and was carried by the north
wind on to the roofs of the church and of the cloister.

[ILLUSTRATION]

ST. GALL ABBEY CHURCH. CONDITION OF 1439 TO 1525

513.B

513.A

RECONSTRUCTION BY AUGUST HARDEGGER, BASED ON FRANK, 1507, AND HECHT, 1725-26

[after Hardegger, 1922, 69]

Reading from west to east: church of St. Otmar and St. Michael's chapel (above entrance to Gozbert's church), both dating 867; Gozbert's
church, 830-37; Eglolf's choir, 1439-1483; Hartmut's tower (SCHULTURM) near entrance to church, 872-883; tower of Ulrich (VI) von Sax
(FESTERTURM), 1204-1220. The four-storied building in the background (HELL) built by Abbot Ulrich Rösch, 1463-1491 (not shown on the
plan), was probably a guesthouse. (Dates after Otmar refer to tenure of abbots.)

[ILLUSTRATION]

514. THE PLAN OF ST. GALL IMPOSED ON A CADASTRAL PLAN OF ST. GALL OF 1965

RED DRAWING, PLAN OF ST. GALL, SHOWN 1/8 ORIGINAL SIZE (1:1536) IMPOSED ON CADASTRAL PLAN AT SAME SCALE

Even a cursory glance at the shape of the site to which the monastery was confined discloses that it could not have been an easy task to
attempt literally to superimpose the rectangular scheme of the Plan of St. Gall upon so irregular a plot. The superimposition emphazises the
ideal character of the Plan and foreshadows adjustments that, in ensuing centuries, were to be made in many other places where the topography
of a particular site prevented complete realization of the ideal monastery of the Plan.

In order to be built on this particular site, as foreseen on the Plan, the Great Collective Workshop, the Granary, the houses for fowl and their
keepers, the Gardener's House, most of the Monks' Vegetable Garden, and even a corner of the cemetery, would have had to lie across the
gorge of the Steinach, that at its lowest point lay some 50 feet lower than the monastery ground level. (cf. caption, figure 505, and similar
superimpositions made by Hardegger, 1922, 22, fig. 3; and Edelmann, 1962, 289.) This drawing also shows that the ground area of the Baroque
church of St. Gall is congruent not only with that of the church as originally conceived on the Plan but also with the surface area the entire
aggregate the medieval churches had attained after Otmar's church had been added to Gozbert's church (cf. fig. 513).

On the Plan of St. Gall the Abbot's House is located
east of the Outer School in axial prolongation of the northern
transept arm of the Church. The palace (palatium),
built by Abbot Grimoald (841-847) with the aid of masons
from the imperial court (palatini magistri) was also to the
north of the church although further eastward. A deed
of 1414 reveals that it was furnished with a solarium; as is
stipulated on the Plan of St. Gall. Like most of the other
buildings it was gutted by the fire of 1418 and subsequently
completely reroofed as well as rebuilt internally by Abbot
Henry IV and his successor Eglolf (1427-43).[26] On the
Ichnographia drawn by Gabriel Hecht in 1719, (fig. 510),
and in the bird's-eye view of the city of St. Gall issued by
Melchior Frank in 1595 (fig. 507), as well as on the anonymous
city view of 1666,[27] this rebuilt variant of the
Carolingian palace is truthfully portrayed.

The original cemetery of the monks was east of the
monastery church between the chapel of St. Peter's and
the Steinach River[28] on precisely the same location in
which it was shown on the Plan of St. Gall; and St.
Peter's itself[29] (perhaps in conjunction with St. Catherine's
chapel) lay on the site that on the Plan is occupied by a
double chapel that served as oratories for the novices and
the sick. It consisted, as can be inferred from the city view
of Melchior Frank (fig. 507) and several other drawings, of
three contiguous building masses of varying width and
height arranged along the same axis.

Here our knowledge of the position of the offices of the
Carolingian monastery ends. Whatever evidence survives
of their original disposition is hidden in the ground. The
city and the canton of St. Gall, not to speak of the Confederation
of Switzerland, whose support would be needed
in a project of this magnitude, have not faced as yet the
challenge of clarifying this important historical problem
through a program (long overdue) of systematic excavations.

In the meantime it must be underscored that in those
cases for which historical evidence is available, the layout
of Gozbert's monastery appears to have conformed with
the scheme of the Plan. This condition may even have
applied to most of the unknown sectors of the site, except
for the Hen and Goose Houses in the southeastern corner
of the Plan. Their location is in conflict with the relief of
the actual plateau on which the abbey rose. Here the steep
embankment of the Steinach River, that swings sharply
toward the north, would have called for adjustments that
might also have affected some of the neighboring buildings.
A glance at the city view of Melchior Frank (fig. 507) and
the photographs of the monastery site, forming part of the
magnificent model reconstruction of the city of St. Gall,
made in 1919-22 by architect Salomon Schlatter (figs. 508
and 509) reveals this condition with great clarity. In
figure 514 we have superimposed the course of the river
and other boundaries of the monastery site upon the scheme
of the Plan. The axis of the church is given by its still-existing
crypt. The superimposition shows that between
the church and the Steinach there is sufficient room for all
of the buildings that on the Plan are located to the south of
the Church. The houses for the animals and their keepers to
the west of the Church, could easily have been accommodated
in the great area that now is occupied by the St.
Gallus Platz.[30] The original entrance to the monastery was
in the west, as it is on the Plan of St. Gall, through the
Gallustor (later: Grüner Turm).[31] The only truly distinctive
difference between the scheme of the Plan and the actual
monastery was that Gozbert's church did not terminate
with an apse in the west—understandably so because in
St. Gall, St. Peter, to whom this apse is dedicated on the
Plan, had already a sanctuary of his own.[32] In the Abbey of
St. Gall, instead, this area was occupied by a chapel
dedicated to St. Otmar and connected with the church by
an open porch that was surmounted by an oratory dedicated
to St. Michael (fig. 513). St. Otmar's chapel was built by
Abbot Grimald and consecrated on September 24, 867 by
Bishop Salomon.[33] It rose on the space that was released on
the actual building site by the reduction of the church as
originally drawn on the Plan from 300 to 200 feet. The only
point in which Hardegger failed was that in his reconstruction
drawings of Gozbert's church (fig. 512A) he did not
remain faithful to his own argument but allowed the two
transept arms to project beyond the masonry of the Gothic
choir (obviously in the desire to make them more fully
conform with the Plan). H. R. Sennhauser informs me that
this was not borne out by excavations conducted under the
pavement of the present church, which showed that the
circumference walls of the Gothic choir rose indeed, as
Hardegger had postulated, on the foundations of the
corresponding Carolingian work (see below, pp. 358-59).

[ILLUSTRATION]

FRANCISC (FRANZISKA, FRANSISQUE)

A favorite weapon of the Franks, wielded with great dexterity as a battle axe, often hurled.

VI. 2

THE MONASTERY OF CLUNY,
BUILT BY
ABBOT ODILO, 994-1048

VI.2.1

ITS DESCRIPTION IN THE SO-CALLED
CUSTOMS OF FARFA

Our first complete description of the layout of a Benedictine
monastery later than the Plan of St. Gall is found
in a chapter of the so-called Customs of Farfa (Consuetudines
Farfenses) written between 1030 and 1048.[34]
These customs were believed to pertain to the monastery
of Farfa near Rome, until Dom Ursmer Berlière and Dom
Hildephonsus Schuster showed that they were the customs
of Cluny recording the layout of the monastery built by
Abbot Odilo of Cluny (994-1048).[35] The chapter of the
Farfa text with which we are here concerned falls into two
parts: a description of the layout of the claustral range of
buildings, and a description of the layout of buildings
located peripherally around this complex.[36] Since it forms
the basis for conclusions set forth on the pages that follow,
we feel compelled to quote it verbatim:

[ILLUSTRATION]

LUTTRELL PSALTER

The Psalter, dating ca. 1340, appears to have only these three owls (border ornament, fol.
177v) among its illustrations. They are redrawn here as line interpretations the same size as
the originals.

THE FARFA TEXT HAS BEEN COMPOSED WITH TRANSLATION IN "PARALLEL TEXT" STYLE

I. Ecclesiae longitudinis CXL pedes, altitudinis XL et tres, fenestrae
vitreae CLXta. Capitulum vero XL et V pedes longitudinis, latitudinis
XXXta et IIIIor. Ad oriente fenestrae IIIIor; contra septemtrionem
tres. Contra occidentem XIIci balcones, et per unumquemque afixe in eis
duae columnae. Auditorium XXXta pedes longitudinis; camera vero
nonaginta pedes longitudinis. Dormitorium longitudinis Ctū LXta
pedes, latitudinis XXXta et IIIIor. Omnes vero fenestrae vitreae, quae
in eo sunt XCta et VIIte et omnes habent in altitudine staturam
hominis, quantum se potest extendere usque ad summitatem digiti,
latitudinis vero pedes duo et semissem unum; altitudinis murorum XXti
tres pedes. Latrina[37] LXXtē pedes longitudinis, latitudinis XXti et
tres; sellae XL et quinque in ipsa domo ordinatae sunt, et per
unamquamque sellam aptata est fenestrula in muro altitudinis pedes duo,
latitudinis semissem unum, et super ipsas sellulas compositas strues[38]
lignorum, et, super ipsas constructionem lignorum facte sunt fenestrae
Xcē et VIItē, altitudinis tres pedes, latitudinis pedem et semissem.
Calefactorium XXtt et Ve, pedes latitudinis, longitudinis eademque
mensura.[39] A janua ecclesiae usque ad hostium calefactorii pedes
LXXV. Refectorium longitudinis pedes LXXXXta, latitudinis XXV;
altitudinem murorum XXtt tres, fenestrae vitreae, quae in eo sunt ex
utraque parte octo, et omnes habent altitudinis pedes V, latitudinis tres.
Coquina regularis XXXta pedes longitudine, et latitudine XXtt et V.
Coquina laicorum eademque mensura. Cellarii vero longitudo LXXta,
latitudo LXta pedes.

Aelemosynarum quippe cella pedes latitudinis Xcē, longitudinis
LXta ad similitudinem[40] latitudinis cellarii. Galilea longitudinis LXta
et quinque pedes et duae turraes ipsius galileae in fronte constitute; et
subter ipsas atrium est ubi laici stant, ut non impediant processionem.
A porta meridiana usque ad portam aquilonarium pedes CCLXXXta.
Sacristiae pedes longitudinis L et VIII cum turre, quae, in capite ejus
constituta est. Oratorium sanctae mariae longitudinis XL et quinque
pedes, latitudines XXti, murorum altitudinis XXti et tres pedes.
Prima cellula informorum latitudinem XX et VIItē pedes, longitudinem
XX et tres cum lectis octo et sellulis totidem in porticum juxta
murum ipsius cellulae de foris, et claustra praedictae cellulae habet
latitudinis pedes XIIci. Secunda cellula similiter per omnia est coaptata.
Tertia eodemque modo. Similiter etiam et quarta. Quinta sit
minori ubi conveniant infirmi ad lavandum pedes die sabbatorum: vel
illi fratres, qui exusti sunt ad mutandum. Sexta cellula praeparata[41] sit
ubi famuli servientes illis lavent scutellulas, et omnia utensilia. Juxta
galileam constructum debet esse palatium longitudinis Ctū XXXta et
Ve pedes, latitudinis XXXta, ad recipiendum omnes supervenientes
homines, qui cum equitibus adventaverint monasterio. Ex una
parte ipsius domus sunt praeparata XLta lecta et totidem pulvilli ex
pallio ubi requiescant viri tantum, cum latrinis XLta. Ex alia namque
parte ordinati sunt lectuli XXXta ubi comitisse vel aliae honestae
mulieres pausent cum latrinis XXXta, ubi solae ipsae suas indigerias
procurent. In medio autem ipsius palatiis affixae sint mense sicuti
refectorii tabulae, ubi aedant tam viri quam mulieres.

In festivitatibus magnis sit ipsa domus adornata cum cortinis et
palliis et bamcalibus in sedilibus ipsorum. In fronte ipsius sit alia
domus longitudinis pedes XLta et V, latitudinis XXXta. Nam ipsius
longitudo pertingant usque ad sacristiam, et ibi sedeant omnes sartores
atque sutores ad suendum, quod camerarius[42] eis praecipit. Et ut praeparatam
habeant ibi tabulam longitudinis XXXta pedes, et alia tabula
afixa sit cum ea, quarum latitudo ambarum tabularum habeat VIItē
pedes. Nam inter istam mansionem et sacristiam atque aecclesiam, nec
non et galilaeam sit cimiterium, ubi laici sepeliantur. Ad porta meridiana
usque ad portam VIItem trionalem contra occidentem sit constructa
domus longitudinis CCtū LXXXta pedes, latitudinis XXti et V,
et ibi constituantur stabule equorum per mansiunculas partitas, et
desuper sit solarium, ubi famuli aedant atque dormiant, et mensas
habeant ibi ordinatas longitudinis LXXXta pedes, latitudinis vero
IIIIor. Et quotquot ex adventantibus non possunt reficere ad illam
mansionem, quam superius diximus, reficiant ad istam. Et in capite
ipsius mansionis sit locus aptitatus, ubi conveniant omnes illi homines,
qui absque equitibus deveniunt, et caritatem ex cibo atque potum in
quantum convenientia fuerit ibi recipiant ab elemosynario fratre. Extra
refectorium namque fratrum LXta pedum in capite latrine sint cryptae
XIIci, et todidem dolii praeparati, ubi temporibus constitutis balnea
fratribus praeparentur; et post istam positionem construator cella
novitiorum, et sit angulata in quadrimodis, videlicet prima ut meditent,
in secunda reficiant, in tertia dormiant, in quarta latrina ex latere.
Justa istam sit depositam alia cella, ubi aurifices vel inclusores seu vitrei
magistri conveniant ad faciendam ipsam artem. Inter cryptas et cellas
novitiorum atque aurificum habeant domum longitudinis Ctum, XXti et
quinque pedes, latitudinis vero XXti et quinque et ejus longitudo perveniat
usque ad pistrinum.[43] Ipsum namque in longitudinem cum turrem,
quae in capite ejus constructa est, LXXta pedes, latitudinis XXti.

END OF PARALLEL TEXT TREATMENT

(After Albers, Cons. Mon, I, 1937-39)

I. The length of the church is 140 feet, the height 43 feet, with 160
glass windows. The chapter house is 45 feet long, 34 feet wide with
four windows on the east, three on the north. On the west are
twelve arches with two columns affixed to each. The inner parlor is
30 feet long. The camera, 90 feet long. The dormitory is 160 feet
long, 34 feet wide. All the windows are glass, 97 in total, as tall as a
man extending his arm, and 2½ feet wide. The walls are 23 feet
high. The latrine is 70 feet long, 23 feet wide. In that building there
have been arranged 45 seats with a small window above each seat,
2 feet high, ½ foot wide. Above those seats is built a wooden structure
and above this wooden construction, there are 17 windows,
3 feet high, 1½ feet wide. The warming room is 25 feet wide, and
the same in length. From the door of the church to the door of the
warming room there are 75 feet. The refectory is 90 feet long, 25
feet wide. The height of the walls is 23 feet; there are glass windows,
eight on each side, 5 feet high and 3 feet wide. The monks' kitchen
is 30 feet long, 25 feet wide. The lay kitchen has the same dimensions.
The cellar is 70 feet long, 60 feet wide. The almonry is 10
feet wide, 60 feet long, the same width as the cellar. The narthex is
65 feet long with two towers placed in front of it. Underneath is an
atrium where the laity stand so as not to impede the processions.
From the south entrance to the north, there are 280 feet. The length
of the sacristy is 58 feet with the tower, which is at its head. The

chapel of St. Mary is 45 feet long and 20 feet wide; its walls are 23
feet high. The first cell of the sick is 27 feet wide and 23 feet long
with eight beds and as many seats outside in the portico of that cell,
and the cloister of that cell is 12 feet wide. The second cell is the
same in all respects. Also the third and the fourth. Let a fifth be
smaller, where the sick might come to wash their feet on the
sabbath, or those brothers who have been burnt to change [their
bandages]. A sixth cell should be prepared where the servants attending
them can wash the pans and all the utensils. Near the narthex
must be built a house for distinguished guests 135 feet long, 30 feet
wide, to receive all the visitors who, along with their squires, shall
come to the monastery. On one side of that house have been prepared
forty beds and as many straw matresses for the repose of as
many men, and forty latrines. On the other side have been arranged
thirty beds where countesses or other noble women can rest, with
thirty latrines where alone they can see to their needs. In the center
of that lodging there should be placed tables like those of the
refectory, where both the men and the women can eat.

During the great holidays that house should be decorated with
curtains and drapes and bench coverings. In front of that house let
there be another, 45 feet long, 30 feet wide. Its length should reach
clear to the sacristy, and in it should sit all the cobblers and tailors,
who sew what the chamberlain tells them. They should have there a
table 30 feet long, and another table joined to it. Both tables should
be 7 feet wide. Between that house and the sacristy and the church
and also the narthex there should be a cemetery for the burial of the
lay. From the south gate to the north gate let there be built on the
west a house 280 feet long, 25 feet wide for the separate stalls of the
horses, and above that a solarium where the servants can eat and
sleep. They should have tables 80 feet long, 4 feet wide, and when
they cannot feed some of the visitors at the above-mentioned
building, they should feed them at this one. At the head of that
building let there be a place where those can come together who
arrive without squires and there receive from the alms brother
sufficient charity in the form of food and drink. Outside of the
refectory of the brothers 60 feet from its head twelve latrines should
be dug and as many baths, where at fixed times the brothers can
bathe. After that location let the cell of the novices be built and it
should be divided off into four parts: in the first they might meditate;
in the second, ear; in the third, sleep; and the fourth have a
latrine on the side. Next to that one let there be built another cell
where the goldsmiths or jewelers or glaziers come for their craft.
Between the latrines and the cells of the novices and of the goldsmiths
they should have a house 125 feet long, 25 feet wide and its
length should extend to the bakery. Its length including the tower
at its head is 70 feet, its width, 20 feet.

[ILLUSTRATION]

515. CLUNY. PLAN OF MONASTERY ABOUT 1050

REDRAWN FROM CONANT, VARIOUS VERSIONS

Cluny sprang from a nucleus of five or six monasteries united by its first abbot,
Berno (909-927). Under the leadership of Abbot Odo (927-942) and his
successors, and vigorously supported by the Papal See, Cluny became the
center of an order that included, by about 1150, no fewer than 314 monasteries
all over Europe as well as the Holy Land.

The fabric of Cluny was almost utterly destroyed during the French Revolution.
Through intimate knowledge of the topography and archaeology of the site,
superior draftsmanship, and an ingenious synthesis of historical sources,
Kenneth John Conant has reconstructed the various stages of the architecture of
this great center of monastic reform, thus making a major contribution to its
visual history.

The church of this plan, Cluny II, was built by Abbot Mayeul around
954-981, perhaps over the court of the original villa given to its monks in 910.
The adjoining conventual buildings were erected ca. 991-1048 by Abbot Odilo,
replacing Mayeul's claustrum. Conant believes that Odilo rebuilt the east and
west ranges of the cloister outside Mayeul's buildings, thus taking them out of
alignment with the transept and façade of Mayeul's church, thereby forming the
peculiar L-shaped bend of the northern cloister walk where it clears the transept.
Insertion of a chapter house in the east range, together with the small size of
both Odilo's cloister yard and Mayeul's church caused extension of the east
range beyond the limits of the cloister square—a feature that in the 12th century
became widespread among independent Benedictine churches of England (figs.
516, 518); and standard among 12th-century Cistercian houses (figs. 519-521).

Attempts to convert the prose account of the monastery
described in the Consuetudines Farfenses into a graphic
reconstruction were made by Julius von Schlosser in 1889,
by Georg Hager in 1901, and by A. W. Clapham in 1934.[44]
The views set forth by these scholars have been expanded
and refined by Kenneth John Conant in a series of studies
published over a period of nearly thirty years.[45] Schlosser
felt that the Latin text was confused, ambiguous, and
disconnected, and consequently assumed that the description
of the buildings around the cloister followed no logical
order. He had overlooked the dimensional clues in the
text which could help to clarify the order.[46] Hager made use
of these clues and, by grouping buildings of identical widths
together, discovered that the author of the text describes
the monastery in a continuous order away from the church
and clockwise around the compound of the cloister, describing
first the east range, then the south range, and finally
the west range. Hager noted that the resulting order coincided
with the layout of later monasteries, in particular that
of the Abbey of St. Peter and Paul of Hirsau, which he used
as a model for his reconstruction.[47]

Conant focused upon the task of superimposing the order
of buildings recorded in the Farfa text upon the actual
building site of the monastery of Cluny, and in doing so,
demonstrated that the Farfa text was compatible with the
topography of Cluny. Conant published his findings in a
number of plans; the latest in 1965 (fig. 515) and 1968.
In developing these schemes he depended upon a plan of
the monastery of Cluny drawn up between 1700 and 1710
(now in the Musée Ochier), and to some extent on the
results of his excavations conducted from 1928 onwards
with the permission of the French authorities under the
auspices of the Medieval Academy of America.

The Farfa description discloses that the monastery built
toward the middle of the eleventh century by Odilo of
Cluny was, in its basic features, still like the layout of the
buildings shown on the Plan of St. Gall. There are of course
some modifications—most notably the introduction of a
separate chapter house at the head of the east range—but
these changes remain within the framework set forth on
the Plan of St. Gall.

VI.2.2

LAYOUT OF THE
CLAUSTRAL BUILDINGS

As on the Plan of St. Gall, the cloister at Cluny lies to
the south of the church. The east range contains the
dormitory and its annexes; the south range, the refectory
and the kitchens; the west range, the cellar and the parlor.[48]

EAST RANGE

In Cluny, as on the Plan, the monks' dormitory (dormitorium)
occupies the second floor of the east range. The Farfa
text describes it as 160 feet long and 34 feet wide, with walls
reaching to a height of 23 feet. But in the space below the
dormitory some important innovations have been made.
On the Plan of St. Gall, this entire space is occupied by the
Monks' Warming Room coextensive with the dormitory of
40 feet by 85 feet overhead. In Cluny, this space is internally
divided into a chapter house (45 feet long and 34 feet wide);
an auditorium (30 feet long); and a camera (90 feet long).
The Monks' Warming Room (calefactorium) has been reduced
at Cluny to a surface area of only 25 feet by 25 feet
and shifted into the south range. This amounts to complete
reassignment of the space beneath the dormitory, a modification
for which an explanation will later be offered.[49]

Chapter house

In the monastery shown on the Plan of St. Gall the chapter
meetings were held in the northern cloister walk, which
was made wider (15 feet) than the other three walks (12½
feet) and furnished with benches.[50] The same arrangement,
as has been shown above, prevailed at Fontanella, which
might indicate that the cloister walk next to the church was
the common location for the capitulum in Carolingian
times.[51] Attempts made by Hager and others to show that
a separate chapter house existed at Jumièges in the seventh
century, at Reichenau in 780, at Fontanella by 823-833,
and in the monastery of St. Gall after 830, can be shown to
be based on faulty textual exegesis, and in one case on the
use of a corrupted text.[52]

To use the northern cloister walk for chapter meetings,
however, had disadvantages. Although warmed by the
rays of the sun in the winter, when the arc of sun is in
the southern hemisphere, and sheltered from the north
wind by the church, the open cloister walk offered little
protection from inclement weather. The physical discomforts
endured in the winter or on rainy days must have
called early for a more protected location for the chapter
meetings.

Certain passages in the Casus Sancti Galli of Ekkehart IV
(980-1060) suggest that in the abbey of St. Gall chapter
meetings were then held in the Monks' Warming Room.
It is quite possible that the special room for chapter meetings
at Cluny II owes its existence at the head of the east
range to the desire to convert into a separate space a portion
of the former warming room that in the earlier days had
served temporarily for chapter meetings during inclement
weather. Ekkehart mentions that on the order of the abbot,
a raging monk was punished during a chapter meeting by
being "bound to a column of the warming room and
harshly beaten," (ad columpnam piralis ligatus acerrime virgis
caeditur).[53] Another passage indicates that the pyrale was
the traditional place for punishment in the monastery,
since it was there that the whip was kept.[54] Punishment
was traditionally carried out in the chapter house in the
Middle Ages. This practice seems already to have been
current in the time of Ekkehart IV, since a text from
Paderborn of 1023 explicitly states that punishment was
administered in the chapter house.[55]

Inner parlor

Its name (auditorium) in the Farfa description suggests that
it served as an area where monks might talk to one another
when silence was being observed in the rest of the cloister.[56]

Supply room

The largest architectural entity in the east range after the
dormitory is a space 90 feet long and 34 feet wide which in
the Farfa text is designated as camera, that is, "store-" or
"supply room".[57] It is too far away from the kitchen to be
interpreted as a pantry or larder. Since the Farfa description
lacks any reference to a vestiary in which the clothes
of the monks are kept, it is possible that this room was a
storehouse for clothing and such other material necessities
that were furnished by the camerarius (chamberlain) who
was in charge of the workmen and craftsmen. On the Plan
of St. Gall, the monks' clothing was kept, and perhaps even
tailored, in the large vestiary which formed a second story
over the refectory (40 feet by 100 feet). Since the generous
clothing allowance provided by the synod of Aachen in
816 was adopted by Cluny, the storeroom for clothing would
need to be about the same size as that of the Vestiary on
the Plan of St. Gall.[58]

One of the primary changes necessitated by the inclusion
of the chapter house and inner parlor in the east range was
that these additions made this range along with its annexes
(the monks' bath and privy) extend southward well beyond
the cloister square. In other respects, the relative position
of the dormitory, privy, and bathhouse are identical with
those on the Plan of St. Gall.

SOUTH RANGE

In both the Plan of St. Gall and Cluny II the refectory
formed the principal mass of the south range, although at
Cluny the refectory was apparently a building of one storey.
It is 90 feet long, 25 feet wide, and 23 feet high. At Cluny
as on the Plan, the monks' kitchen (coquina regularis) lies
at the western end of the refectory in the corner between
refectory and cellar; but at Cluny there is also a kitchen
for laymen (coquina laicorum) not found on the Plan of
St. Gall. The dimensions of the two kitchens of Cluny
are the same, 25 feet by 30 feet. Since the Farfa description
of the house for noblemen and of the hospice for paupers
does not include any reference to kitchens, the coquina
laicorum may represent a consolidation of the formerly
autonomous kitchens of these two houses.[59]

The dimensions of the calefactory at Cluny indicate that
it was part of the south range. It has the same width as the
refectory, 25 feet, distinctly narrower than the buildings
of the dormitory range, which are 34 feet wide. The sequence
of the account suggests that the calefactory was at
the eastern end of the south range. This is a solution
different from that of the Plan of St. Gall, but at the same
time, the position of the calefactory at Cluny next to the
east range might suggest a development from its earlier
position under the dormitory in the east range on the Plan
of St. Gall.[60]

WEST RANGE

At Cluny II, as on the Plan of St. Gall, the cellar (cellarium)
forms the principal building of the west range. It is 70 feet
long and 60 feet wide. Next to it lies a long and narrow
room which the Farfa text designates "aelemosynarum."
This room is 10 feet wide and 60 feet long; its name suggests
that it served as an area in which the almoner administered
to the needs of transient paupers. An inscription on the
Plan of St. Gall indicates that a room of similar shape and
nearly the same dimensions (15 feet by 47½ feet) performed
the triple function of serving as "an exit and entrance to
the cloister," as a Parlor "where the monks could converse
with guests" and as "the place where the feet [of the
visiting pilgrims] were washed" (exitus & introitus ante
claustrū ad colloquendum cum hospitibus & ad mandatū faci-
endū).[61] A passage in chapter 46 of book II of the Customs
of Farfa reveals that it was in connection with the ritual of
the mandatum that the visiting paupers received their customary
ration of wine and bread (justitiam vini et libram
panis);[62] and in a complete description of this ritual

found in the first book of these customs, explains that
the place where the paupers' feet are washed, is "in the
cloister to the side of the church" (in claustro juxta eccles-
iam)[63] which indicates that the eleemosynarium at Cluny was
located in the same relative position as the Parlor on the
Plan of St. Gall, and also served some of the same
functions.[64]

A parlor or auditorium is not mentioned in the Farfa
text, but appears in the two passages of the Ordo Cluniacensis,
written around 1086. In one of these the claustral
prior is admonished to "go through the whole cloister
beginning at the door of the auditorium, carefully checking
that the eleemosynarium is closed and locked" (Claustrum
incipiens ad ostium auditorii, sollicite observans quatenus
Eleemosynaria sit clausa et obserata).[65] In the other, the
door of the eleemosynarium is mentioned next to "that other
door through which those who come from outside enter
the cloister" (ad ostium . . . Elemosynariae, et ad illud, per
quod de foris venientium est ingressus in claustrum.[66] Both
passages suggest that auditorium and eleemosynarium were
two different areas. Architecturally this could have been
accomplished in two ways: either by relegating the function
of the parlor to a separate space, or by dividing the
oblong eleemosynarium internally into two areas accessible
by separate doors, one used as parlor, or auditorium, for
the reception of guests, the other for the washing of the
feet and the distribution of alms. In the former case one
would have to assume a separate room immediately to the
north of the eleemosynarium, perhaps in the court around
the galilee where Conant indicates a room for the Porter.

VI.2.3

LAYOUT OF THE
EXTRA-CLAUSTRAL BUILDINGS

As on the Plan, the infirmary lies east of the church, the
houses for the guests to the west and northwest, and the
houses of the workmen to the south of the cloister.

AREA EAST OF THE CONVENTUAL BUILDINGS

In Cluny, as on the Plan of St. Gall, this tract contains the
monk's cemetery as well as the monks' infirmary. The
infirmary itself consists of four rooms, each 27 feet wide
and 23 feet long plus two additional rooms a little smaller
than the others. In one of these the sick brothers came to
wash their feet on Saturdays; in the other, attending
servants cleaned the pans and all the other utensils of the
sick brothers. The Farfa text does not refer to an infirmary
chapel; however, a chapel 45 feet long, 20 feet wide, and
23 feet high (oratorium sanctae Mariae) which could have
served this function is mentioned immediately before the
infirmary in the text. There is no further evidence to either
confirm or disprove this assumption.

In departure from the layout shown in the eastern tract
of the Plan of St. Gall, the novitiate has been separated
from the infirmary and moved to a site south of the east
range. As on the Plan, however, the novitiate may still
have been arranged peripherally around a cloister yard, as
Conant suggests in his latest plan. The Farfa text describes
it as composed of four parts: "In the first they meditate;
in the second they eat; in the third they sleep; in the fourth
there is a latrine on the side" (prima ut meditent, in secunda
reficiant, in tertia dormiant, in quarta latrina ex latere).

AREA SOUTH OF THE CONVENTUAL COMPLEX

Again, there are striking similarities between the Plan of
St. Gall and Cluny II. The bakery (pistrinum) lies to the
south of the monks' kitchen. The dimensions, including
the bulk of a tower that stands at the head of the bakery,
are listed as 20 feet by 70 feet. As on the Plan, the work and
living quarters for the workmen and craftsmen are arranged
along the southern edge of the monastery to the north of
the bakery. They are accommodated in a building (domus)
125 feet long and 25 feet wide.[67] The goldsmiths, jewelers
or glaziers (aurifices, vel inclusores, seu vitrei magistri) had
their own cell, the dimensions of which are not listed in the
Farfa text. The principal house for workmen does not
include facilities for tailors and shoemakers. Their workshops
are located north of the cloister. This arrangement
differs distinctly from that on the Plan of St. Gall.

AREA NORTH OF THE CLOISTER

The workshop for tailors and shoemakers (sartores atque
sutores) occupied a building 45 feet long and 30 feet wide
which extended clear to the sacristy on the north side of
the church. The sacristy is 58 feet long and has at its head
a tower (turris). Alfred Clapham proposed that the sacristy
and the house for the tailors and shoemakers might have
been installed in the masonry of the church of Cluny I,
the western half being converted into the workshop, the
eastern half into the sacristy.[68] —a hypothesis that Conant
finds plausible.[69] On the Plan of St. Gall this was the site
for the Abbot's House. A house for the abbot is not mentioned
at any place in the Farfa description.

The absence of a house for the abbot seems due to a
change in the rules concerning the abbot's sleeping accommodations.
The Customs of Udalric, written about 1085,
specifically state that the bed of the abbot was located in
the middle of the monks' dormitory and that it was the
abbot who gave the signal to get up in the morning: In
medio dormitorii est lectus eius prope murum; sonitum ipse
facit quo fratres diluculo ad surgendum excitantur.[70] Since
the Farfa text fails to mention an abbot's house, this
practice must already have been in effect during the
abbacy of Odilo (995-1049). The beginnings of this development
can be observed in the tenth century monasteries of
Moyen Moutier and Leittlich. In each of these monasteries
the abbot's house was attached to the monks' cloister. To
eliminate the abbot's house entirely, thus to draw him
bodily into the community of sleeping monks, was the
ultimate step. It was the enforcement of a policy proposed
as early as 816 at the synod of Aachen, but revoked at the
synod of 817.[71]

AREA WEST OF THE CONVENTUAL COMPLEX

The Farfa text is quite explicit concerning the location and
use of the buildings which lie to the west of the church and
near the gate of the monastery. Again, the analogies with
the Plan of St. Gall are striking. Both on the Plan and at
Cluny this is the location of the houses in which the
monastery's visitors are received. On the Plan of St. Gall
these consisted of a House for Distinguished Guests, a
House for the Vassals and Knights who travel in the
Emperor's Following, a House for Visiting Servants, and
the Hospice for Pilgrims and Paupers.[72] The monastery of
Cluny, according to the Farfa text, provides for a house with
bedding and eating space for forty noblemen and thirty
noblewomen, a house for the horses of the visiting noblemen,
and a house for pilgrims and paupers. The relative
location of these facilities, in both instances, appears to be
the same.

The house for the forty noblemen and the thirty noblewomen
at Cluny has been discussed in detail in a preceding
chapter.[73] It belongs to the same building tradition as the
House for Horses and Oxen on the Plan of St. Gall, and its
two privies, which accommodated seventy toilet seats, forty
for men and thirty for women, reflect the highest standard
of medieval sanitation.[74]

The house for the horses and servants who travel in the
following of the distinguished guests extends from the
north gate to the south gate. It is 25 feet wide and has an
impressive length of 280 feet. The ground floor accommodates
the horses of the traveling guests and for that purpose
is divided into stalls (per mansiunculas partitas). Above the
stable there is a sunroom (solarium) where the servants
eat and sleep. This room is furnished with at least two
ranges of tables 80 feet long and 4 feet wide.[75]

The dimensions of the house for pilgrims and paupers
are not listed in the Farfa text. The building is simply
referred to as "the place where those can come together who
ride without squires and there receive from the almsbrother
sufficient charity in the form of food and drink" (locus . . .
ubi conveniant omnes illi homines, qui absque equitibus
deveniunt, et caritatem ex cibo atque potum . . . ibi recepiant
ab elemosynario fratre). The text tells us that it lies at the
head of the house for horses and servants, but does not
reveal whether this means to the south or north of it.
Conant placed it as the northern end of the stables. The
relative location of these facilities for guests, consequently,
appears to be like that on the Plan of St. Gall.

The Farfa text says nothing about any houses for livestock
and their keepers but the topography allows for a
forecourt of considerable dimensions precisely at the place
where one should expect them in the light of the Plan of
St. Gall.

IRREGULAR SHAPE OF ODILO'S CLOISTER YARD

The original concept of the Plan of St. Gall was that the
Church should be 80 feet wide and 300 feet long, but an
explanatory title inscribed in the longitudinal axis of the
Church directs that in actual construction it should be
reduced to 200 feet.[76] The church of Cluny II, built by
Abbot Mayeul between 965 and 981, was only 140 feet
long (Ecclesia longitudinis CXL pedes).[77]

Conant believes that the timbered houses in which Abbot
Mayeul lodged the monks of Cluny lay further inward than
Odilo's conventual buildings, and that when Odilo constructed
the new masonry ranges he located them outside
and around the original structures.[78] If this assumption is
correct, the old cloister yard of Cluny would have been
considerably smaller than the cloister yard of the Plan of
St. Gall (only about 75 feet square, as compared to the 100
by 102½ feet of the Plan or the 100 by 100 feet stipulated

by Hildemar as the acceptable minimum).[79] Should the
original dormitory of the monks indeed have been located
inside of Odilo's masonry ranges, the original dormitory
of Cluny would have been in axial prolongation of the
transept of Mayeul's church, i.e., in the same relative
position in which it is shown on the Plan of St. Gall. Moving
his claustral ranges further out, Odilo would have
brought the cloister yard of Cluny back to the dimensional
standards set by the Plan of St. Gall but at the same time
would have created an irregularly shaped cloister yard, in
which the east range was separated from the transept. This
solution had no lasting effect on later monastic planning.[80]
It may very well have been the outcome of special local
conditions, namely the inordinate smallness of Mayeul's
church and original cloister which could only be overcome
by disconnecting dormitory and transept.[81]

VI.2.4

CONCLUSIONS

Schlosser's and Hager's analyses of the Farfa text, Clapham's
attempt to apply it to the monastery of Cluny, and
Conant's reconciliation of this text with the actual topography
of the monastery of Cluny, make it clear that the
monastery constructed by Abbot Odilo of Cluny (995-1049)
was, in its principal dispositions, a reflection of the scheme
displayed on the Plan of St. Gall. There are certain modifications,
some of which can be traced to a change in custom.
But the fundamentals remain unaltered. The historical
weight of this observation becomes apparent only if one
realizes that the layout of the monastery shown on the Plan
of St. Gall was by no means the only Carolingian or early
medieval arrangement available for imitation.

The cloister of Jumièges (Gemeticum), founded by Philibert
around 650, had dormitory, refectory, and cellar installed
in one two-storey building 50 feet wide and with an
unheard-of length of 290 feet. Refectory and cellar shared
its ground floor; the dormitory extended the entire length
of the upper storey.[82]

The triangular cloister yard of Angilbert's monastery at
St. Riquier (Centula), built 790-799 (figs. 196-197) shows
that the square was by no means the only form available
for the layout of a Carolingian cloister yard. In the monastery
of Fulda, built by Ratger between 817 and 822, in the
cathedral of Cologne, built by Bishop Hildebold between
800 and 819, and even in the master monastery of Inden,
built from 815 onwards by Louis the Pious for Benedict of
Aniane, the monks' cloister was to the west, not to the south
of the church. In the case of Cologne, the cloister was not
even square, but of trapezoid form.[83]

Yet another arrangement different from that set forth on
the Plan of St. Gall was the layout of the monastery of St.
Wandrille (Fontanella). Here the conventual buildings
built by abbots Gervold (787-806) and Ansegis (823-833)
lay to the north of the church. The refectory and the cellar
were in the east range, the dormitory in the west, and the
domus in the north (fig. 520A).[84]

The analysis of Cluny II as described in the Farfa text
discloses, however, that it was the arrangements seen on
the Plan of St. Gall which became the guiding pattern for
later monastic plans. This may be due to the fact that the
arrangement of the monastic offices which appears on the
Plan of St. Gall was more practical than any of the other
arrangements. The location of the cloister to the south of
the church, the warmest side in the winter, was especially
desirable in northern countries. The dormitory and the
warming room of the monks were conveniently located in
the east range, near their choir in the church where they
spent at least four hours each day, beginning with a service
held at two o'clock in the morning. The refectory and the
kitchen with their activities were isolated in the south
range, the area farthest from the church. The cellar was
placed in the west range, facing the outer court from which
it took provisions. The location of the medical services and
of the novitiate to the secluded eastern tract of the monastery,
the houses for the workmen to the south with easy
access to water, the livestock and their keepers in the large
courtyard to the west, the houses for the guests near the
gate of the monastery—all of this made perfect sense in
terms of monastic planning.

The affiliation of the Plan of St. Gall with the reform of
Benedict of Aniane, however, may have been the most
important reason for the survival of this layout in later
monastic planning.[85] The prime objective of this movement—viz.,
to establish binding rules regulating even the
smallest details of monastic life—was never forgotten,
especially since the resolutions made during the two great
reform synods of Aachen had been promulgated by Louis
the Pious as public laws.[86] The capitularies of the emperor
contained a clause instructing the attending bishops and
abbots to make these new ordinances known to their monks,
and Louis the Pious appointed inspectors to see that all
monasteries observed these customs. The monastery of
Inden was to serve as a training ground for monks whose
task it became to go out and insure compliance throughout
the empire with the unity of customs established at
Aachen.[87]

The transmission of the missionary ideals of the synods
to the monastery of Cluny can be traced through a series of
monastic foundations in direct lineage from Benedict of
Aniane to Cluny. Benedict himself, under the direction
of Louis the Pious, sent twenty monks to the newly founded
Abbey of St.-Savin in Poitou.[88] St.-Savin escaped the
ravages by the Normans in the second half of the ninth
century and maintained the regularity of its monastic life.
Around 870 the monks of St.-Savin restored the ancient
abbey of St.-Martin-les-Autun, and with it, reasons Watkin
Williams, "would have arrived the spirit of the Concordia
regularis and the observances prescribed at the councils of
Aachen."[89] Consequently, from St.-Savin to St.-Martin-les-Autun,
and from there to Baume-les-Messieurs, the
parentage of Cluny can be traced to Benedict of Aniane.

Dom Bruno Albers has further established, on the basis of
textual similarities, that the Ordo Qualiter of Benedict of
Aniane and the Capitula of 817 were passed to Baume-les-Messieurs
and then to Cluny.[90] This was the traditional
heritage professed by Cluniac monks. According to John,
the biographer and friend of Odo, second abbot of Cluny,
"Euticius instituted those customs which have hitherto
been observed in our monasteries" (Benedict of Aniane's
baptismal name was Witiza, or Euticius in Latin).[91]

It is self-evident that such an important issue as the
layout and order of the buildings in which the monks and
their serfs were housed would have been part of this overriding
preoccupation with uniformity of custom. The layout
of the monastery of Cluny, as described in the Farfa
text, discloses that in the middle of the eleventh century the
arrangements set forth on the Plan of St. Gall were indeed
alive. But in precisely what manner this tradition was bequeathed
to Cluny may never be ascertained. We are
unfortunately completely ignorant of the layout of the
cloisters in the chain of abbeys which leads from Benedict
of Aniane to Berno of Cluny. The seventeenth-century
engravings of St.-Savin and St.-Martin-les-Autun cannot
be trusted to give reliable information on the early medieval
layout, since both of these monasteries were extensively
rebuilt in the later Middle Ages.[92]

VI. 3

LAYOUT OF THE BENEDICTINE
MONASTERY FROM
THE LATE ELEVENTH TO THE
THIRTEENTH CENTURY

VI.3.1

ENGLISH SOURCES

All of the monasteries discussed on the pages which
follow are English, because in England the archaeological
record is more reliable and richer than elsewhere in
Europe. The suppression of monastic life by Henry VIII
from 1538 onward halted rebuilding; and the existing or
excavated remains reflect the original dispositions more
closely than do the Continental monasteries, most of which
were extensively renovated from the fifteenth century onward
and remained in continuous use up to the French
Revolution. No claim for completeness is made. The observations
set forth are based on a survey of the remains of
not more than twenty-one Cluniac and autonomous
Benedictine monasteries of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. The Clunaic abbeys are Lewes, Castle Acre,
Thetford, and Much Wenlock; the autonomous abbeys:
Battle, Bardney, Christchurch, Canterbury, Gloucester,
St. Albans, Ely, St. Augustine's Canterbury, Westminster,
Rochester, Durham, Bury St. Edmunds, Peterborough,
Norwich, Winchester, Reading, Worcester, and Finchale.[93]
This sampling, admittedly, is small when viewed against
the total of Benedictine monasteries flourishing at this time.
Yet their comparison conveys a surprisingly uniform picture.
They disclose that the layout adopted at Cluny was
transmitted to the English houses and became traditional.

* * * * * * * * * *

[ILLUSTRATION]

516. LINCOLNSHIRE, ENGLAND. BARDNEY ABBEY.
GROUND-LEVEL PLAN

Founded towards the close of the 7th century, wrecked by the Danes in the 9th, re-established in
1087 after the Conquest, Bardney Abbey from 1115 onward and with aid of royal grants, was
completely rebuilt as an independent house under the immediate protection of the Crown, by
Walter of Ghent, son of the Conqueror's friend and nephew, Gilbert of Ghent.

Following a standard pattern, building began with construction of the choir and the southern
flank of the church, to allow the cloister to be set against it. The cloister was enclosed in the
course of the 12th century in this sequence: chapterhouse, refectory, dorter and privy—the two
latter structures over undercrofts which, together with their superstructure, projected far beyond
the cloister square—a feature parallel with developmental changes that occurred at about the
same time in the layout of Cistercian monasteries (see pp. 349ff). Refectory and cellar (like their
counterparts on the Plan of St. Gall) took up the entire length of the south and west ranges; but
the cellar (in contrast to the Plan of St. Gall) accommodated on its second storey the abbot's
lodging. An aisled guest house and an aisled infirmary were added in the 13th century, the
former to the south and the latter to the east of the cloister square.

[redrawn from Harold Brakspear, 1922, frontispiece]

VI.3.2

TRADITION

Many autonomous Benedictine monasteries adopted the
customs of Cluny. Christchurch, Canterbury, for instance,
was built by Lanfranc, who was previously prior of the
Abbey of Bec in Normandy. The customs of Bec are true
to the earlier customs of Cluny which William of Volpiano
brought to Fécamp and other northern monasteries at the
beginning of the eleventh century. The monastic constitutions
which Lanfranc later wrote are similar to the customs
composed under Odilo between 1030 and 1048.[94] There was
continual interaction between Cluny and the autonomous
English houses and in many cases Cluny must have transmitted
the reform ideas promulgated at Aachen.

Earlier ties, however, also connect the English monasteries
with the synods of Aachen. The monastic revival
begun by Dunstan in the second half of the tenth century
was based on the continental monastic tradition of Benedict
of Aniane.[95] While in exile Dunstan took refuge in the monastery
of Blandium at Ghent in 954. Around 970 a synod
under Dunstan's guidance was called at Winchester to
establish a common way of life for English monasteries
under the patronage of King Edgar. The procedure and
provisions of the meeting consciously imitated those of the
synod at Aachen, directed by Benedict of Aniane in 817
under the auspices of Louis the Pious. In the presence of
monks from Fleury and Ghent the Regularis Concordia, a
code based on the Ordo Qualiter and the Rule for Canons
and Capitula of Aachen, was drawn up.[96] About forty monasteries
were founded under this revival between 957 and
the Conquest, but no architectural remains seem to indicate
the arrangement of the conventual buildings before the last
phase of this revival during the reign of Edward the Confessor.
At this time both the style of Norman architecture
(exemplified by Westminster Abbey, consecrated in 1065)
as well as the typical institutions of Norman monasticism,
that clearly characterize post-Conquest England, were
already established.[97]

In the Post-Conquest English Benedictine monasteries
of the eleventh and twelfth century, the east range of the
cloister contains the dormitory; the south range, the refectory;
and the west range, the cellar, as on the Plan of St.
Gall and at Cluny II.

These relationships have become traditional and binding.
Whenever the site permitted in the few examples that
remain the peripheral houses and workshops were arranged
as they were on the Plan of St. Gall. The entrance to the
monastery is usually to the west of church and cloister. The
mill and bake house are adjacent to the kitchen, as on the
plan of the waterworks of Christchurch, Canterbury (Kent),
shown above in figure 52. The infirmary, its chapel and
cemetery are to the east of the cloister, as can be seen at
Christchurch and at Bardney Abbey, Lincolnshire, (fig.
516).

In some particulars the English plans reflect the arrangement
on the Plan of St. Gall even more closely than Cluny
II. In all of these monasteries the east range of the cloister
is aligned with the southern transept-arm and the cloister
forms a regular square. Whenever the location of the
twelfth century kitchen is known, as on the Canterbury
plan (fig. 52), it is isolated from the refectory and connected
with the south range by passageways, as it was on the
Plan of St. Gall; while at Cluny II it may have been part
of that range. As at St. Gall, there is only one kitchen;
Cluny had two.

Other aspects seem closer to the Plan of St. Gall, but
they are not well enough established to allow generalization.
In some English monasteries such as Thetford (fig. 517),
part of the undercroft of the dormitory may still have served
as the warming room, but it is considerably reduced
in area and pushed to the southern part of the range.
There is some indication that in later English monasteries
night stairs connected the dormitory with the southern
transept arm of the church, as it did on the Plan of St. Gall.
In Cluny (fig. 515) such a connection probably would not
have existed if the east range, as Conant assumes, was
severed from the transept. In Cistercian planning the night
stairs reappear in the place where they were indicated on
the Plan of St. Gall. Since the elements that Cistercian
planning have in common with the Plan of St. Gall could
only have been transmitted by later Benedictine monasteries,
they must have been more common in Benedictine
planning than present remains indicate.[98]

Our survey of English monastery plans also reveals that
the dimensions of the cloister square comply with the standards
set by the Plan of St. Gall and with the stipulation
made by Hildemar of Corbie (ca. 845) that a cloister yard
should never be less than 100 feet square.[99] In the Benedictine
and Cluniac English monasteries the cloister yard, as a
rule, is not smaller than this, though it is sometimes larger.[100]

[ILLUSTRATION]

517. NORFOLK, ENGLAND. THETFORD PRIORY (1103-1104). PLAN

[after Raby and Reynolds, 1946]

The priory was founded by Cluniac monks from Lewes. Its conventual buildings, constructed clockwise around the cloister yard between the
years 1107 and 1140, consisted in the east of chapter house, day stairs to the dormitory, a passage for access to the infirmary grounds, and a
building of two stories, accommodating over an undercroft (that later was partitioned into parlor and warming room), the monks' dormitory and
privy, the two latter (as in Bardney) reaching considerably beyond the south range. South and west range accommodate in the traditional
manner the refectory, kitchen, cellar, and outer parlor.

These basic similarities between the English monasteries
and the Plan of St. Gall remain constant wherever the
natural conditions of the site permit. When exceptions occur
they can be explained either by the topography or by restrictions
imposed by the architectural surroundings.[101] In
England such irregularities are more common in Benedictine
than in Cistercian monasteries because the Benedictines
rarely had a virgin site on which to build and were
often settled near cities, while the Cistercians chose isolated
areas, a fact which may be primarily responsible for
what, in contrast to Cistercian conformism, appears to be
a lack of uniformity in Benedictine planning.

VI.3.3

INNOVATIONS

CHAPTER HOUSE

Certain innovations made at Cluny became an integral part
of the later Benedictine tradition and remained in permanent
departure from the solution set forth on the Plan of
St. Gall. The most notable of these is the inclusion in the
east range of a separate chapter house.[102] Once conceived, the
separate chapter house could not be abandoned because of
its functional advantages. To place the chapter house at the
northern end of the east range, however, brought with it
certain complications. As long as it remained confined to
the ground floor, the dormitory overhead could still be
connected directly with the transept by means of night
stairs. But if the space of the chapter house extended upwards
through the entire height of the east range, arrangements
had to be made to connect the dormitory with the
church by special passageways; or the night stairs had to be
abandoned altogether.[103]

INNER PARLOR

A second permanent innovation adopted by the Benedictine
monasteries was the inclusion of an inner parlor in
the east range, directly adjacent to the chapter house. Although
this inner parlor is referred to by name in several
Benedictine and Cluniac customs, its function is not stated.[104]
An auditorium is first mentioned in the Farfa description
of 1043.[105] Later in the eleventh century it is mentioned in
the tours of the claustral prior at Cluny and Hirsau.
Bernard's account of the claustral prior's tour at Cluny in
his Ordo Cluniacensis refers to a parlatorium in the same
context that the otherwise similar tour in the Consuetudines
of Hirsau refers to the auditorium.[106] This designates the
inner parlor in the east range as a place for talking and
listening.

Twelfth-century customs outside the Benedictine order
further explain the exact use of the auditorium. Cistercian
customs describe the auditorium as the place where monastic
officials could converse privately with one or two monks,
where the prior made work assignments, and handed out
tools for the day's work after the chapter meeting, and
where the master of the novices could instruct new novices.[107]
The Liber Ordinis S. Victoris Parisiensis further specifies
that in this order of canons the auditorium or locutorium,
as it is called in this text, was particularly used for briefly
talking about any business that could neither be signified
(probably referring to sign language) nor put off until the
time of the locutio, but the Liber emphasizes that no one
could talk there without permission from a high member of
the order.[108] It explicitly states that no stranger may be led
into this "regular locutorium" and also mentions rules for
the "other locutorium," thus distinguishing between the
locutorium or auditorium in the east range and the auditorium
in the west range, which, as on the Plan of St. Gall, served
as reception room for visitors. The auditorium in the east
range of the twelfth-century cloister is thus defined as a
place where claustral silence could be broken to discuss
necessary business. This had probably been its role since
its beginning.

[ILLUSTRATION]

518. NORFOLK, ENGLAND. CASTLE ACRE PRIORY (CA. 1090). PLAN

[after MINISTRY OF PUBLIC WORKS, ANCIENT MONUMENTS AND HISTORICAL BUILDINGS (Raby and Reynolds), 1952]

The church of the priory was finished by 1110, some 20 years after it was founded. The cloister, built around 1150, consisted in the east of an
apsed chapter house, day stairs to the upper level of a two-storied building, the undercroft of which supported the dormitory floor by a central
row of columns. This entire range, like the corresponding ranges at Bardney and Thetford (figs. 516-517), projected far beyond the south range
and terminated in the monks' latrine. The south range contained a small warming room, refectory, and kitchen. The west range consisted of a
building of two stories accommodating cellar and parlor below, and the prior's lodging and other rooms above.

Although silence was at all times considered a basic
monastic virtue it had not always been as severely enforced
as it was by the Cluniacs, the later autonomous Benedictines,
and the Cistercians. St. Benedict, in dealing with this
problem, referred to it as taciturnitas rather than silentium.[109]
He designated three regular periods of absolute silence; but
for the rest of the time only excessive loquacity was forbidden.
The same relative freedom of speech, except at
certain regulated periods, is evident in the monastic customs
of the eighth and ninth centuries. The rule of ordinary
silence is in fact so relaxed that a consuetudinary from
Corbie of around 826 permits conversation during the midday
rest in the summer, provided that it does not bother
those who sit and read in bed; should there be any need for
sustained talk the monks must simply go outside and conduct
their business there. In the same text they are instructed
not to yell from a distance because of the noise.[110] Under
relaxed conditions like these there was no need for a special
room in which the ordinary claustral silence could be
broken. No such area, consequently, is set aside on the Plan
of St. Gall.

Joseph Semmler has pointed out that it was not until the
tenth century that the monks began to practice strict silence
during the days of the great religious festivals. This trend
toward increased enforcement of silence is true of the reformed
German monasteries, the English monasteries that
adopted the reform of Dunstan, and it is also true in particular
for Cluny.[111]

In the eleventh century men like Peter Damian (9881072),
inspired by the same ideals of reform as Cluny,
wrote impassioned letters against unnecessary talking and
forcefully recommended greater silence.[112] At Cluny, as the
number and length of the breaks in silence were progressively
reduced, as absolute silence was required even in the
workshops, a sign language was developed to maintain the
necessary communication.[113] The auditorium in the east
range, first mentioned in the Farfa description, provided an
area for talking aloud and may well owe its existence to the
pressure of increasing claustral silence. Like the sign language
it might also have originated at Cluny. Just as the
sign language was adopted by nearly all the later medieval
monasteries, the auditorium in the east range became an
integral part of all later Benedictine and Cistercian planning.[114]

NOVITIATE

Another innovation made at Cluny that seems to have been
permanently adopted in later monastic planning was the
transfer of the novitiate to a location more closely related to
the quarters of the regular monks. The Constitutions of
Lanfranc reflect a growing tendency to integrate the novices
with the regular monks in the eleventh century English
Benedictine monasteries: "The novice shall sleep in the
cell of the novices, or, if the monastery have no such special
cell, in the dormitory.[115] "He shall be taken into the church
and a place assigned to him. From the church he shall be
taken to the dormitory and the place shown him where he
is to rest, and he shall be taken beyond the dormitory, and
the cells shown him to which he is to repair when nature's
ways demand it . . . on that day the novice shall follow, and
a seat in the refectory shall be assigned."[116] These passages
by Lanfranc suggest that in the late eleventh and twelfth
century there was not always a separate building for the
novices and that they often shared the buildings of the
regular monks. In the English plans there is no indication
of a special court of building set aside for novices.

The novices were probably often integrated with the
monks for economic reasons and perhaps also because there
were not as many oblati in the eleventh and twelfth centuries
as there were in the ninth century. According to
David Knowles, despite Lanfranc's attempts to perpetuate
the age-old institution of child oblation, it was everywhere
on the decline fifty years after his death.[117]

ABBOT'S HOUSE

As at Cluny, so in the autonomous English Benedictine
houses: a change in customs was responsible for the disappearance
of a separate house for the abbot. But this issue
remained controversial, as it had been in the days of St.
Benedict of Aniane.[118] Like the Customs of Udalric, the
Constitutions of Lanfranc[119] reveal that the abbot slept in the
dormitory: "In the early morning no one shall dare to make
a sound as long as (the abbot) is in bed asleep."[120] Yet by
1150 all but a very few abbots in England had removed to

quarters of their own.[121] Brakspear, in his survey of English
abbots' houses, discloses that by the thirteenth century the
abbot, as on the Plan of St. Gall, is once more provided
with a separate building, usually connected to the outer
parlor with guest houses next to it. This is the case at
Battle and Castle Acre (fig. 518).[122]

WARMING ROOM

Other changes made at Cluny, like the moving of the
warming room from the east range to the south range, may
have also occurred in some English Cluniac and autonomous
Benedictine houses, but in other cases the warming room
may have remained in the east range as on the Plan of St.
Gall, although it was reduced in size. In the Cluniac priory
of Thetford, indications of a fireplace suggest that the
warming room may have been located in the southern half
of the east range.[123] But in many other Benedictine monasteries
an area in the east range is designated as the warming
room solely by analogy with a passage in the Rites of Durham
of 1593 indicating that the warming room was located
in the east range at that time.[124] Although the sixteenth-century
location might reflect an earlier arrangement, this
source cannot be used as compelling proof that the warming
room occupied this position in the twelfth century.

Bernard's description of the course followed by the
claustral prior in the Ordo Cluniacensis of 1086 indicates
that the warming room in the eastern extremity of the south
range at Cluny also served as a passage to the novitiate
which was located to the south of the cloister.[125] In most
English plans this area between the east range and the
refectory in the south range also forms a passage between
the cloister yard and the area to the south. In cases like
Finchale, where the area is only 5 feet wide, it could have
served only as a passage, but in others, such as Lewes or
Castle Acre, where it is 25 feet wide, it could have served
the additional function of warming room as did the 25-foot
space in the same position at Cluny.[126] If this area at Castle
Acre had been intended solely as a passage, it probably
would have been made no more than 10 feet wide, as the
passage in the east range was. It can, however, only be
concluded that insufficient evidence makes it impossible to
determine with certainty the location of the warming room
in eleventh- and twelfth-century English monasteries. It is
possible that the location varied from place to place.

Whether the warming room was in the south range as at
Cluny (fig. 515) or in the southern half of the east range, as
it may have been at Thetford (fig. 517), its area is greatly
reduced in size from the area of the warming room which
covered the entire ground floor of the east range on the
Plan of St. Gall. At Thetford it would have occupied an
area of no more than three bays. A comparison of the relative
areas of the warming rooms of St. Gall (7), Cluny (1.3),
Thetford (2.5), and Castle Acre (1.2) shows that St. Gall
is two and one-half to five times larger.[127]

Mettler suggested that the reduction in size met the new
demands of asceticism of the Cluniac reform.[128] Although
the smaller area could have been due to a change in ideals,
it may also simply have resulted from changes in other
parts of the east range. In the ninth century, according to
Adalhard, the warming room served as a place where the
monks could meet for conversation at certain hours.[129] Passages
in Ekkehardus IV, as has been previously pointed
out, indicate that in the early eleventh century the warming
room, at least at St. Gall, served also as a chapter house.[130]
After separate rooms (the new chapter house and an inner
auditorium) had been provided for these functions, it may
have seemed that a large room was no longer necessary.

A change in the heating methods between the ninth and
the eleventh century also may have influenced the reduction
in size. Harold Brakspear suggested that the scarcity of
fireplaces in English monasteries is due to the fact "that in
Benedictine houses there was no fireplace in the commonhouse,
but that in cold weather it was lighted on the floor
or in a brazier and the smoke was allowed to find its way
out of the windows, as was usual in domestic halls."[131] The
hypocaust system seen on the Plan of St. Gall could heat a
large area; an open fire on the floor could not.[132] With the
method that Brakspear suggests a smaller room could be
more easily heated. This method of heating might also
explain why in some cases, as at Cluny II, the warming
room was moved from the east to the south range. There
was usually no upper story in the southern range so nothing
prevented the smoke from escaping directly through an
opening or louver in the roof. Such a louver would not have
been possible if the warming room were beneath the dormitory.
Moving the warming room to the south range may
have also reduced the chance of the dormitory catching fire.
At any rate, the arrangement set forth on the Plan of St.
Gall was altered, and the new position of the warming
room at Cluny and in some English monasteries was also
adopted in Cistercian monasteries.

VI. 4

LAYOUT OF THE CISTERCIAN
MONASTERY IN THE TWELFTH
AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES

VI.4.1

CONTINUITY WITH
THE BENEDICTINE ARRANGEMENT

The tendency in the earliest Cistercian monasteries was
to follow the Benedictine cloister layout, changing it as
little as possible, and it is only later in adapting to new
needs that the layout is altered.

The Cistercians did not originate as a movement in
opposition to that of the Benedictines, not even in opposition
to their own house.[133] The group of twenty that left
Molesme in 1098 wished only to observe more strictly the
Rule of St. Benedict for themselves and naturally retained
the traditional cloister layout that they had known as
Benedictine monks.

Accordingly, the location of officinae in the Cistercian
cloister remains essentially that developed by the Benedictines
in the eleventh century. Article 55 of the Ecclesiastica
Officia of the Consuetudines Cistercienses of 1134, which
mentions the areas that should be sprinkled with holy
water each Sunday, sets forth the following order: church,
chapter house, inner parlor (auditorium), dormitory, warming
room, refectory, kitchen, and cellar.[134] Except for the
omission of the storehouse (camera), this list is the same
as that given in the Farfa description of the conventual
buildings at Cluny.

The typical Cistercian east range as seen for example on
the plan of Kirkstall Abbey, West Riding, (fig. 519), like
the Cluniac plan of Castle Acre Priory (fig. 518), includes
from north to south on the ground floor a chapter house,
parlor (auditorium), stairs to the dormitory, passage to the
infirmary, and an additional room on the south end which
may have served as a supply room, as it did at Cluny, or as
the novitiate.[135] As in the Benedictine plan, the dormitory
forms the second story of the east range and opens into the
latrine, which is at right angles to its south end.

Two features commonly appearing in the Cistercian east
range which also appeared on the Plan of St. Gall and which
may have appeared in Benedictine planning, are direct
communication from the dormitory to the church by night
stairs and the location of the sacristy near the south transept.

The Cistercian abbot, like the eleventh-century Benedictine
abbot, was at first required to sleep in the monks'
dormitory.[136] Only later in the thirteenth century did he have
a house of his own. This was usually located between the
monks' cloister and the infirmary to the east, as at Kirkstall
(fig. 519) and Fountains (fig. 520) and so was further removed
from the outside world than was the Benedictine
abbot's house.

The location of the peripheral buildings also tends to
perpetuate the Benedictine arrangement. In the 1708 plan
of Clairvaux, for example, the infirmary is still to the east
of the cloister, the guest houses and stables to the northwest,
and the mills and workshops to the south.[137] Whenever
possible, the traditional arrangements first set forth on the
Plan of St. Gall still appear. Only as a response to new needs
is the layout changed.

VI.4.2

ADAPTATION OF THE WEST RANGE
FOR LAY BROTHERS

The Cistercians stressed St. Benedict's ruling that the
monastery should be self-sustaining and further proposed
to live entirely on produce cultivated by their own members.[138]
Towards this goal manual labor was re-established
as a basic monastic obligation for the monks. But, in order
to maintain the economic independence of the monastery
and attend to outlying farms without interfering with the
monks' full observance of the rule within the monastery,
lay brothers were attached to the monastic body.

The introduction of the lay brothers as a permanent segment
of the monastic community was the innovation which
most significantly affected the layout of the Cistercian monastery.

[ILLUSTRATION]

WEST RIDING, YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND. KIRKSTALL ABBEY. PLAN

519.B

KIRKSTALL ABBEY. SITE PLAN 1:8,000

519.A

Most of the church and all primary claustral structures
date from 1152-1175. Its rapid construction and
unusually complete preservation made Kirkstall,
among Cistercian ruins of England, an exciting visual
experience.

The east range is virtually identical with corresponding
ranges at Bardney, Thetford, and Castle Acre. On
the ground floor are: chapter house (originally con-
tained within the range, but in the 13th century expan-
ded eastward), parlor, day stairs to dormitory,
passageway to buildings lying east of the cloister, and
an undercroft of uncertain purpose. The dormitory
extended over the entire length of this range, termina-
ting in the south with the monks' latrine. In the south
range the refectory, initially parallel to the southern
cloister walk, was soon after completion repositioned at
right angles, thus allowing installation of a warming
room to its east, and a kitchen-brewhouse to its west.

The new refectory, originally of one storey, was in the
15th century divided into two levels, the lower serving
as a MISERICORD (where meat was served in violation
of the original rules). The west range, like its eastern
counterpart, was formed by a two-storey building,
accommodating in the undercroft cellar and refectory of
the lay brothers, and overhead their dormitory that
extended the entire length of the range, terminating in
the south with the latrine attached at an oblique angle
over a water channel. An infirmary hall and a guest
house were added in the 13th century, the former to the
east and the latter at some distance west of the cloister.

Lay brothers had existed in other orders, but only
in the Cistercian order were they instituted in a form and
to an extent that called for special housing within the inner
cloister.[139] Since the lay brothers often outnumbered the
monks, a large area was needed to shelter and feed them.[140]
The lay brothers' daily schedule differed greatly from that
of the monks; accordingly they needed a place apart where
they would not interfere with the monks' routine. Like the
monks, the lay brothers were required to sleep in a common
dormitory, eat the same food, and attend required mass at
regular hours each day. Their quarters needed to be within
easy access of the church and their refectory close to the
kitchen which they shared with the monks.

The east range belonged traditionally to the monks. No
written source designates which part of the cloister housed
the lay brothers, but the cloister buildings themselves indicate
that the traditional Benedictine west range was adapted
for this purpose.[141] In order to accommodate the large number
of lay brothers, the Cistercian west range was extended
beyond the cloister square to the south and arranged to
nearly duplicate the monks' living facilities in the east
range. The lay brothers' dormitory occupied the entire
second floor of the west range; their latrine was located at
an angle to its south end. The ground floor of the west
range was divided in the center by a passage. The area to
the left of this passage was usually the cellar, traditionally
located in the west range of the cloister. To the right of the
passage was the lay brothers' refectory. The lay brothers
not only had their own refectory, dormitory and latrine, but
usually had a separate infirmary to the west. In some cases
they may even have had a separate warming room and
auditorium.[142] Except for the fact that lay brothers and
monks were served from the same kitchen, there actually
existed two monasteries in one, parallel to each other, one
on the east and the other on the west side of the cloister
yard, with little contact between the two.[143]

In some monasteries, such as Kirkstall (fig. 519), an
open lane of almost twice the width of the monks' cloister
walk lay between the west range and the monks' cloister,
from which it was cut off by a solid masonry wall. In other
monasteries the west range lay directly along the west walk
of the monks' cloister. The two arrangements exist side by
side, but the west range separated by a lane may possibly
be the older type since it exists in the first monasteries of
the order, Clairvaux and Citeaux.[144] The two types are constructed
concurrently, as for example at Roche Abbey
(Yorkshire) and Byland Abbey (Yorkshire) and a general
reason for the development of the two types has not been
determined.[145] The lane for the lay brothers may have originated
as a small cloister yard, since it is twice as wide as
would have been necessary for it to serve only as a passage
to the church. In some monasteries, such as the one at
Byland, it was even fitted with stone benches. In monasteries
without a lane the lay brothers would have merely
congregated in the area west of their quarters to which
exterior day stairs gave access, as at Fountains (fig. 520).

The introduction of a special lane for the lay brothers
at the place which in the Benedictine plan was occupied by
the western cloister walk in a certain sense insulated the
outer parlor from the monks' cloister. Although no Cistercian
document mentions an entrance or an outer parlor
where the monks could meet with seculars, one or two
bays, as can be seen at Kirkstall (fig. 519) and at Fountains
(fig. 520), are usually divided off from the cellar on the
north end of the west range next to the church, and must
have served this traditional purpose. In order to pass from
the outer parlor to the door near the south end of the lay
brothers' lane, which gave access to the inner cloister at
Kirkstall and at Clairvaux (fig. 521), it was necessary to
cross the length of the lay brothers' lane. The lay brothers'
lane thus separated the cloister from the place in which the
monk had contact with seculars. And in the same way the
lay brothers' quarters themselves acted as a buffer between
the monks and the outside world.

VI.4.3

RESULTING ALTERATIONS
IN THE SOUTH RANGE

The accommodation of the west range for the lay brothers
not only complicated the traditional plan of the west range,
but also altered the shape of the south side of the cloister.
In the earliest Cistercian monasteries the monks' refectory

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN: FOUNTAINS ABBEY

520.A

520.B

YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND

Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, XV(1900),
& Fountains Abbey (Hodges), 1904

"There is no other place in the country in which the mind can so readily evoke
the picture of 13th-century monastic life, and the eye the picture of the vast
extent and yet the crispness and freshness of Cistercian architecture in the wild
North Country forests."—N. Pevsner, THE BUILDINGS OF ENGLAND,
YORKSHIRE, THE WEST RIDING, London, 1959, 203-04.

At Fountains Abbey the conventional Cistercian scheme was transformed into
one of the most amazing examples of architectural site planning of which there
is record or remains. Here a vast monastic complex, in reach a thousand feet
long, embraces the River Skell as it flows gently north and eastward to the Ure,
in an architectural composition in which monastery structures rose from
foundations laid in the stream bed, and other buildings daringly straddled the
channeled Skell in an extraordinary work of applied hydraulics and structural
engineering. We know of no other monastic planning like Fountains, married to
the waters of a river, where monumental symmetry of church and cloister blends
harmoniously with oblique oxial configurations, akew to the nave, to conform to
the winding stream.

In the abbey's final state, complex functional relations of internal planning and
composition of buildings, courts, yards, and galleries are resolved with effortless
ease and beauty, giving no hint of deception where sophisticated mastery of
planning blends structures, water site, and natural setting into one of the great
works of art of medieval England. The accomplishment of Fountains is the more
remarkable a feat of human ingenuity for the site, anything but ideal, was
inconvenient of access and too narrow to accommodate the eventual complement
of buildings comprising the monastery.

Fountains was founded in 1132 by discontented monks of St. Mary's Abbey,
York, who established themselves in the wild, densely wooded valley of the Skell
by raising some wooden huts and a timbered oratory. Its permanent buildings,
constructed when funds became available, belong to three distinct periods:
The church was built between 1135 and 1147. It originally had a rectangular
choir that gave way, in the 13th century, to a new and larger presbytery terminating
in a second transept.

Between 1147 and 1179 were built all three claustral ranges and, west of the
cloister in a bend of the Skell, two guest houses as well as the lay brothers'
infirmary, the latter bridging the stream and connecting with their dormitory by
a latrine also built over the river.

Between 1243 and 1247 the new choir of the church and an entire cluster of
buildings were erected east of the cloister; most notable among them the monks'
infirmary, an aisled building 190 feet long and 80 feet wide, and like the lay
brothers' infirmary, bridging the stream.

The western approach to the monastery is breathtaking. The valley is blocked in
its entire width by a two-storey structure 307 feet long and 40 feet wide that
extends from the facade of the church full course across the river. In the under-croft
of this building are cellar and refectory of the lay brothers; above is their
dormitory. The location of this wing and all other claustral structures is in full
accord with general Cistercian standards: refectory in the south range at right
angles to the cloister yard and flanked by kitchen and warming room; the kitchen
placed so it can serve both monks and lay brothers; chapterhouse in the east
range at right angles to the cloister yard; above it the dormitory but coaxial
with the transcept over an undercroft that overshoots the south range nearly as
much as the refectory; two latrines attached to the dormitory at right angles. An
incomprehensible peculiarity is the abbot's lodging (1135-1147) built across the
eastern end of the two latrines. Between it and the monks' infirmary lies the
MISERICORD and eating hall, where sick monks, if their conditions warranted,
could be served meat.

The abbey was dissolved in 1539 and came into secular hands. Its present
excellent state of preservation owes to the fact that in 1768 it became part of the
grounds of Studley Royal, whose owner, William Aislabie, "with arrogant self-confidence
and stupendous success" used its remains "as the obligatory ruin in a
landscape garden, in which temples of fame and piety and other garden ornaments
were not lacking either" (Pevsner, loc. cit.).

lay parallel to the southern cloister walk, as was traditional
in Benedictine abbeys, but by at least the third quarter of
the twelfth century, the axis of the refectory had been rotated
ninety degrees so that it came to lie at right angles to
the southern cloister walk.

In Benedictine monasteries, as at Cluny, it was possible
to place the refectory parallel to the southern cloister walk
and still include the warming room and the kitchen on the
same axis, because the southern range could be extended
westward without limitation. In some English Benedictine
monasteries the kitchen was taken out of the range and
moved south of the refectory. In Cistercian monasteries,
however, one kitchen served both the lay brothers and the
monks. The Cistercians preferred to keep this kitchen
within the south range, between the refectory of the monks
and that of the lay brothers. From this position, food could
be more quickly and easily served to both refectories than
would have been possible had the kitchen stood outside the
cloister.[146] The Cistercians also kept the warming room
in the south range as it was at Cluny and in some Benedictine
houses. But the south range of the Cistercian plan,
unlike that of the Benedictines, could not be extended to
the south since here its path was blocked by the quarters
for the lay brothers.

Seeing a specific site, such as Kirkstall Abbey (fig. 519),
illustrates the problem which the Cistercians faced. In the
original south range of 1152 the axis of the refectory was
parallel to the cloister walk in the traditional east-west
orientation, but in 1182 it was turned by ninety degrees so
as to run from north to south. The southern range of 1152,
with the refectory aligned east and west, was 105 feet long
and 30 feet wide. The refectory itself was 70 feet long; to the
west of the refectory stood a kitchen 19 feet long and to the
east was an area 16½ feet long that was probably the warming
room.[147] The total length of the second refectory, warming
room and kitchen of 1182 was 174 feet. Given the desired
size of the new buildings, the axis of the refectory of 1182
could not have been placed east and west. Even if the
Cistercians at Kirkstall had wished to extend the proposed
south range across the lay brothers' lane, which provided
25 feet more to the west, it would still have been 45 feet

[ILLUSTRATION]

AUBE, FRANCE. CLAIRVAUX ABBEY

521.A VIEW FROM SOUTH

521.B PLAN

ENGRAVINGS OF DOM MILLEY, 1708

PARIS, CABINET DES ESTAMPES,

Topgraphie de la France, Aube, Bar-sur-Aube, fols 27 and 29.

[by courtesy of the Cabinet des Estampes]

Founded in 1115 by Stephen Harding, the abbey CLARA VALLIS,
through Bernard of Clairvaux's efforts and unique reputation, rose
to spectacular heights and soon accommodated 700 monks and lay brothers.
It became one of the most famous monasteries of the occident, with eighty
daughter affiliations and sixty-six nunneries, spread over twelve different
countries. The order owed its wealth and rapid expansion to a new concept
of labor, in which responsibilities of agricultural management and
exploitation of its rich lands were transmitted to a vast force of lay
brothers, thus making the monastery independent of the work of tenants
and serfs, as well as the duties of assuming care for the latter's livelihood.
A first settlement and church (MONASTERIUM VETUS) dedicated in 1115
had to be replaced as early as 1135-1145 because of the community's rapid
growth. The new monastery (MONASTERIUM NOVUM) was built in the
broader section of the valley, immediately to the east of the original site.
Its square choir and square transept chapels exercised a profound influence
on the layout of the churches of Clairvaux's daughter houses; but these
fixtures were replaced between 1154 and 1174 by a new and larger choir
with circular apse and radiating chapels (cf. Jean Dorothy Owens, "Early
Cistercian architecture in Burgundy: The Bernardian Plan," Master's
Thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1971).

The abbey was secularized in 1792 and during the next three decades
was reduced to a shambles, some of the remaining buildings being used as
a prison for women. The church itself was systematically dismantled in
1819. We are nevertheless fortunate in being able to form a clear picture
of the architectural and topographical layout of the monastery by means
of a plan and two superb engravings drawn in 1708 by Dom Milley, at a
time when the monastery was still substantially in the form it had
acquired by the end of the 12th century. The church on these engravings
is shown in the state it had attained in 1154-1174; but the cloister, with
its refectory at right angles to the south range and its east and west
ranges projecting boldly beyond the boundaries of the cloister square,
belong to the period of 1135-1145, and served as a model for the
claustral layout of many of the English monasteries discussed on the
preceding pages.

*

NOTE ON THE SCALE OF THE PLAN

The graphic scale of the engraving reads Scala mensoria Centum Hexapedarum. The
old French measure of length, the hexapedarum or toise, 6 pied de roi, was equivalent
to 2.135 yards or 1.949 meters. The pied de roi may be taken as 1.066 feet. The
asterisks by the right margin of the plan mark intervals of 500 feet, the symbols in
the left margin, 100 meters.

PLAN SHOWN AT SCALE 1:4500

too long. To keep all the buildings in the south range and
yet provide space for a sufficient increase in size, the only
possible solution was to rotate the refectory so that its
short end abutted the south cloister walk. In this way the
surface area of the kitchen and warming room at Kirkstall
could be doubled, ten hundred square feet could be added
to the refectory, and the layman's lane could still be kept
open to the south.

At Clairvaux (fig. 521) the axis of the refectory is shown
at right angles to the southern range in the plan of the
monastery drawn in 1708 by Dom Milley.[148] The second
abbey of Clairvaux was begun in 1135 on a new site when
the first abbey of 1116 became too small. The work was
far enough along by 1145 for a first consecration of the
church.[149] At that time all of the principal claustral structures
must also have been in place since the first book of the
Vita Prima whose author died in 1147 or 1148 referred to
the transfer of the monastery to its new site as an accomplished
fact.[150] If Dom Milley's plan reflects the building
campaign before Saint Bernard's death in 1153, as Paul
Jeulin believes, the ninety-degree turn of the refectory was
undertaken at Clairvaux toward the middle of the twelfth
century, long before the change can be demonstrated at
Kirkstall.[151] In England the earliest known example of a
refectory facing the south walk with its narrow end is that
of 1170-79 at Fountains Abbey[152] (fig. 520). If the innovation
was made at Clairvaux by the middle of the century it
is strange that it would not have been copied by the closely
affiliated English monasteries before the third quarter of the
century. In the planning of the new monastery of Clairvaux,
however, the documented aim was to provide for future
expansion to accommodate the daily increasing number of
brothers, and the new north-south orientation of the Cistercian
refectory would be in accord with this goal.[153] In
its new position the refectory, like the dormitories of the
monks and lay brothers, offered the possibility of future
expansion to the south of the cloister.[154]

Since the time of the Plan of St. Gall the east range and
the west range had been extended southward beyond the
south range of the cloister. This blocked any possibility
of extending the south range along its axis either eastward
or westward. The reorganization of the east and west
ranges required that the warming room and the kitchen be
accommodated in the south range; the only way to provide
enough space along the southern cloister walk was to turn
the refectory to a north and south axis. In the Cistercian
cloister plan three parallel arms now extended to the south
of the simple cloister square seen on the Plan of St. Gall.

The inner cloister had also been opened up in order to
gain a freer interaction with the buildings around it. On
the Plan of St. Gall it was connected with the rest of the
complex at only one point, the entrance through the parlor
in the west range. Efficient communication demands more
openings in the claustral block. In the Benedictine and
Cistercian monastic plans of the twelfth century, a passage
between the auditorium and camera of the east range connects
the monks' cloister directly with the infirmary to the
east. Between the east range and the refectory another
passage opens the cloister to the south.[155] These passages
are often aligned with the south and east walks of the
cloister, giving a new feeling of spatial expansion to the
cloister. Moreover, the covered walks joining the monks'
cloister and the infirmary, as can be seen on the Plan of
Christchurch, Canterbury, and at Kirkstall (figs. 52 and
519), actually form a new courtyard and thus extend the
enclosed claustral area to which the monks have access.
In the Cistercian plan, as at Fountains (fig. 520), the extensions
of the east range, west range, and refectory beyond
the cloister to the south enclose on three sides two southern
court-like areas which, perhaps, were also used as additional
claustral space.[156]

VI. 5

CONCLUSION

The paradigmatic arrangement embodied in the Plan of
St. Gall was altered by later Benedictines and Cistercians
responding to the interactions of new spiritual objectives
with practical adjustments to changing physical demands.
In the eleventh century, in the face of a rigorous reinterpretation
of the Benedictine Rule, the auditorium was added

to the ground floor in the east range, the result of an
increased concern for claustral silence. To avoid the implications
of privilege, the abbot was no longer permitted
separate quarters but more completely led a life in common
with the monks, sleeping in their dormitory. In the twelfth
century, the Cistercians introduced a large lay-brother
population into regular monastic life in order to maintain
a self-sustaining monastery without compromising religious
aims. This burden of population made necessary the remodeling
and extension of the west range with the consequent
alteration of the south range.

The establishment of a separate chapter house in the
east range provided a permanent meeting place protected
from inclement weather, a change apparently founded in
practical considerations. Yet the reason for its location as
near as possible to the church may have been hierarchical:
spiritual matters taken up in chapter-house meetings were
second in importance only to those taken up in the church.
However, the decision to open the inner cloister for more
efficient communication with the rest of the complex seems
to have been made for utilitarian reasons and paradoxically,
almost at the expense of the privacy it existed to assure for
spiritual ends.

Other alterations were the results of functional changes.
The separate novitiate seen on the Plan of St. Gall may
have been eliminated because the number of oblati diminished
towards the end of the eleventh century and the
novices could then be more easily included within the
cloister of the monks. The warming room was made smaller
as other officinae that took over functions it had once
served were added to the east range, limiting the space
available for it. And, at the same time, the size of the
warming room may have been reduced to adapt to heating
methods of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, methods
which in fact also influenced its relocation to the south
range of some monasteries.

Yet, when these changes were made, care was taken to
preserve the traditional monastic arrangement. In the
eleventh century the Cluniacs and autonomous Benedictines
subdivided the ground floor of the east range to provide
additional rooms within the established plan instead of
adding new buildings to the basic cloister square. In the
twelfth century the Cistercians, faced with the necessity of
combining two independent living units, again preserved
the four-sided cloister by compressing all the lay brothers'
living facilities into the west range of the cloister. When
this solution in turn crowded the south range, the Cistercians
turned the refectory ninety degrees in order to keep
the traditional sequence of officinae in the south range, yet
still retaining the interior cloister square framed by four
enclosing walls.

Although additions were made to each range of the
cloister, the essential function of each side remained that
seen on the Plan of St. Gall. The east range housed the
monk. In the south range his food was prepared and served.
The west range provided and stored his daily sustenance.
Upon the north, the church sheltered his cloister. Respect
for tradition is a characteristic feature of monastic life; as
with customs, the claustral arrangement was respected and
preserved. Once perfected, the arrangement became traditional
and was altered only within the larger understanding
encompassed by tradition.

EPILOGUE

Superbly executed, and possibly the most accomplished architectural creation of the age of
Charlemagne, the Plan of St. Gall owes its existence to a striving for cultural unity that pervaded the whole of
Carolingian life: unity embodied in a common language, Latin; a common belief, Christianity; a common legal and spiritual
authority vested in the offices of Emperor and Pope; and unity of monastic custom and observance.

It was the search for unity in the conduct of monastic practice—unitas regulae—that by inner necessity also required
creation of an ideal scheme to standardize and guide monastic architecture for the future. That scheme is transmitted to
us in the Plan of St. Gall.

In the new agricultural society that arose north of the Alps the monastery acquired the structure of a vast manorial
estate, including within the monastic enceinte a large contingent of serfs and workmen. This development called for the
establishment of an inner fortress, in which the monks could perform their spiritual offices without being exposed to
contamination by the secular world. The need for such segregation led to the adoption of the four-cornered cloister as a
standard form of monastic housing.

The architectural formula selected to assure this protection—together with that of the church, with which it now
entered into a lasting symbiosis—was Late Antique, but antiquity reshaped in the very process of its revival along
modular spatial concepts that had roots in the North, and harbored the germ for development of an architectural style
(Romanesque and Gothic) without precedent in the Greek, Roman, or Christian worlds.

One of the most striking qualities of the plan that emerged from these historical preconditions is that, although aimed
at the ideal, its features were governed by an overriding awareness of function: the assurance of architectural proximity
where proximity was dictated by need, of separation where separation was a spiritual imperative, of scaling of each
structure to dimensions not larger, but never smaller than required by its intended use.

This acute assessment of the monastery's functional parameters determined that the architectural scheme of the Plan
of St. Gall would exert lasting influence on the future, allowing it to survive under the stress of changes never foreseen
in the original concept.

The layout of the claustral ranges delineated on the Plan of St. Gall was of monumental simplicity: three masonry
buildings of virtually identical length and width, ranged in U-formation around a large open court that was closed on
its fourth side by the massive bulk of the church. These structures were double-storied but otherwise internally
undivided.

In subsequent centuries the dramatic simplicity of this concept was marred by insertion of a chapter house and other
unexpected additions that forced extension of the east and west ranges beyond the boundaries of the cloister square.
The claustral scheme was exposed to further stress when the Cistercians, in re-evaluating manual labor as being a
proper monastic occupation, drew their entire agricultural work force into housing in the west range of the cloister
square. This intrusion of lay brothers into the claustral compound produced a chain reaction in the repartitioning of
space, which could forever have destroyed the unity of the claustral scheme had it not been safeguarded by the ingenuity
of extraordinary modifications: the creation of supplementary spaces in the south range by swinging the refectory
around so as to face the cloister with one narrow end; the use of the same kitchen for both lay brothers and monks;
and the extension of both eastern and western ranges even further beyond the boundaries of the cloister square. In the
grouping of the primary building masses around an open inner court, the original concept still prevailed, but the
philosophical integrity of claustral seclusion was shattered by installation of lay brothers in one of the primary cloister
wings. The artificial partition of the cloister yard into a primary area for monks, and a narrow lane for lay brothers
destroyed aesthetically as well as ideologically the conceptual unity of the original scheme. In the pursuit of these new
goals the church fared no better. Bisected into two visually segregated areas, one for monks, the other for lay brothers,
it lost the unitary beauty of which it was possessed in Carolingian and pre-Cistercian times.

These modifications reflected both an internal change in the relation of monks to lay brothers, as well as a fundamental
change in the relation between monk and society. Under the Carolingian rulers, the monastery had become an
integral part of the agricultural, administrative, and educational fabric of the state. Its economic structure was such as
to guarantee not only the physical sustenance of its own people but also to contribute to the livelihood of thousands, if
not tens of thousands of secular men and women who lived on the monastery's outlying estates, and paid for that
privilege through services rendered in labor and/or the delivery to the abbot of a tenth of their agricultural produce.
The Cistercians, by contrast, tilled their land with their own work force, now installed in the cloister itself or within
walled enclosures of outlying granges. The Order received from these establishments not merely a percentage of their
production, but all of it. This quickly led to great monastic riches, but it lifted the monastery out of the social fabric
state, and in this manner contributed to its own eventual, inevitable, alienation.

[ILLUSTRATION]

MONOGRAM

Drawing from a silver coin, somewhat
enlarged. Boundless imagination and
invention are displayed in the arrangement
of letters comprising the monogram
that dates to the second period of Carolingian
coinage. It appears on the obverse
of the coin and spells KAROLUS (as
illustrated) or KARLUS (in Period I the
spelling is CAROLUS).

The same freedom seen in graphic and
sculptural design in coins of Period II
is paralleled by radical transformations of
this period in concepts of minting money—
changes which created a new monetary
system for Europe for long afterward.
The coinage system reforms established
under Charlemagne constitute the most
important in the monetary history of
Europe.

[ILLUSTRATION]

522. ST. GALL: PLAN OF THE BAROQUE CHURCH

SHOWING EXCAVATIONS OF 1964-1966

WORK PRINT SUPPLIED BY H.R.S.

The areas of work described in the following paragraphs may be located on Dr.
Sennhauser's plan, with which he was kind enough to provide as together with
the information briefly set forth on these two pages.

VI.6

INTERIM REPORT

In summer, 1970, Dr. Hans Rudolf Sennhauser was kind enough to
furnish me an advance report of the results of excavations that he
conducted from 1964 to 1966 under the auspices of the Eidgenössiche
Kommission für Denkmalpflege. The work was prompted by
installation of a new heating system which made accessible the
medieval strata beneath the pavement of the present church of St.
Gall. The full story of the exciting discoveries made during the
investigation will be told in the comprehensive and copiously
illustrated report, now being prepared by the director of the excavations.
I feel deeply obliged to Dr. Sennhauser for permitting me
to touch on some of his most important findings and to illustrate
them with the plan at the left (fig. 522).

EXTENT OF EXCAVATIONS

Access was gained to the area beneath the pavement of the nave and
aisles of the church, as well as to terrain beneath the pavement of
the rotunda. Beneath the aisles of the choir the soil was heavily
disturbed by the Gothic reconstruction. In the nave of the choir the
only accessible portions were those not occupied by the substructure
of the Baroque choir stalls, with the exception of narrow heating
conduits which it was necessary to drill across these areas. Inaccessible
was terrain beneath the Baroque high altar and the sacristy
east of it.

In the church itself and between the foundations of the Gothic
choir and those of the Baroque church lay a rich trove of remains
from earlier churches in a series of strata, each of which could be
clearly associated with building activities known through literary
sources.

Horizons lying above the Gozbert horizon will be fully described
and analyzed in Dr. Sennhauser's report. In this short review,
concerned only with pre-Carolingian and Carolingian horizons, the
Gozbert stratum is used as the site base line (± 0.00 m).

THE GALLUS HORIZON: A.D. 612 (- 1.20M)
THE OTMAR HORIZONS: A.D. 719
(± 0.86M TO - 0.75M)

Below the Gallus stratum, identifiable by its post holes, the terrain
lies undisturbed. Above it two levels of Otmar's work could be
identified by fragments of masonry foundation, but not enough
remained to ascertain the shape of his church.

THE GOZBERT HORIZON: A.D. 830-836
(± 0.00M TO - 0.10M)

A rich record of Gozbert's work remained about 0.80 m above the
lower Otmar horizon. These features were unmistakably identifiable
wherever terrain was accessible, and undisturbed by later work:
foundation trenches for outer walls, for nave arcades, and for a

transverse foundation marking the line where nave and transept
met; a number of capitals and abaci of the Carolingian supports
re-used in the masonry of the Gothic choir foundations.

THE NAVE

The floor and parts of the rising masonry of a circumambient
corridor crypt were also located, the crypt's longitudinal arms connected
in the east by a traverse shaft, in the west by the steps giving
access to this crypt. The floor level of the southern shaft was
- 2.45 m, that of the northern shaft, - 2.40 m to - 2.46 m.

In the middle of the transverse shaft and extending west from it
lay the relatively well-preserved rising masonry of a hall crypt
ca. 5m deep and ca. 7m wide, but the supports and vaults of this
crypt had been demolished and re-used by the builders of the
Baroque church. In the center of the western wall of this hall crypt
was an opening; behind it the masonry of a tapered shaft rose
upward at a gentle slope toward the old base of the sarcophagus of
St. Gall, which in Carolingian times stood on a higher level some
2.00 m west of the crypt. The eastern-oriented end of the sarcophagus
was thus brought in view of the visiting pilgrims.

In the middle of the east wall of the transverse shaft was an
opening and masonry of a window with splayed jambs, the existence
and location of which suggests that the choir of Gozbert's church
had no apse, but may rather have terminated in a straight wall.

UNIDENTIFIABLE FEATURES

No longer identifiable owing to disturbance by work later than
Gozbert, or else inaccessible to excavation, were: location and
shape of the nave arcades of Gozbert's church, their foundations
and rising masonry having been cleared away for re-use in the
Baroque church, as well as supports and vaults of the hall crypt
which were demolished, then renewed by the builders of the
Baroque church. Nor was it possible to determine the position of
Gozbert's high altar, for the terrain west of the sarcophagus of St.
Gall was heavily disturbed by service channels associated with
mechanisms of the Baroque organ. Dr. Sennhauser thinks it possible
that the Carolingian high altar might have been located east of the
tomb of St. Gall on the elevated floor level supported by the vaults
of the crypt.

Lack of access permitted no determination of the foundations of
the eastern crossing piers (if they ever existed) which would have
lain in the substructure of the Baroque choir stalls. The outer surface
of the east wall of the transverse shaft of the corridor crypt, and
the foundations of the apse of Gozbert's church, if there were one,
also lay in terrain unable to be explored because of the superincumbent
high altar and sacristy of the present church.

GOZBERT'S CHURCH AND
THE CHURCH OF THE PLAN OF ST. GALL

Whether, or in what particulars, Gozbert followed the concepts of
the Church of the Plan can only be known when Dr. Sennhauser's
full report is published. From the position and course of the foundation
trenches, however, it may be inferred that the width of Gozbert's
nave was in fact twice the width of each aisle, indicating that
he may have followed closely the instruction of the designers of the
Plan that the nave of the church be 40 and each aisle, 20 feet wide.

THE NAVE

The length of Gozbert's church is not yet known because the shape
and depth of its apse could not be ascertained. Yet, even on the
basis of facts now available, it appears safe to assume that his church
was shorter by roughly one third than the Church as it is drawn on
the Plan. This suggests that Gozbert held to the mandate of the
axial explanatory title of the Church of the Plan directing that it be
200 feet long, rather than the 300 feet shown by the drawing itself.
Excavations revealed it to be indisputable that the contraction was
made in the longitudinal axis of the church, and was accomplished
by a radical shortening of its nave, rather than through diminution
of the liturgically important areas of transept and presbytery. (This
tends to confirm what is set forth in Volume I, p. 180, and above,
pp. 326ff.)

THE CRYPT

Gozbert's rectangular corridor crypt derives directly from the
schema drawn on the Plan. In contrast to it, however, the longitudinal
arms of Gozbert's crypt did not run along the crossing piers,
but were moved against the outer walls of the church. Moreover,
their entrances lay in the aisles, and the arms cross the transept not
on floor level, but below it. This is a great functional improvement
over the Plan's layout, for it considerably enlarges the space available
to monks in the transept, and eliminates disruption of that
space by passages used by laymen as transits. Another notable
innovation is the introduction of a hall crypt from which laymen
could view the tomb of St. Gall.

TRANSEPT AND PRESBYTERY

The location and course of the circumference walls of this entire
eastern body of Gozbert's church disclose that its transept did not
project beyond the outer walls of the longitudinal body of the
church, as Hardegger had already surmised (see p. 326, above). The
loss of space incurred by this amputation would have been compensated
by the spatial gain achieved through transfer of the passages
for laymen from transept level to below it.

There are sound topographical reasons why Gozbert might have
preferred an inner transept to one with extended arms. The terrain
of the site to the south of the church was constricted by the capricious
course of the Steinach River. Gozbert, in studying the Plan,
must quickly have seen that on the high ground remaining between
church and river, he had insufficient space to accommodate, in
addition to the cloister, all the service structures to the south of it.
By not extending the transept beyond the aisles of the church, he
could substantially mitigate inadequacies of space owing to the
topography of the monastery site.

The Church of the Plan has an elevated presbytery to which was
annexed, on north and south, the two-storied structures housing
Scriptorium and Library, Sacristy and Vestry. Dr. Sennhauser
found no trace of foundations or their trenches to confirm any
similar dispositions in Gozbert's church. From later sources it must
be inferred that the Carolingian scriptorium lay to the south of the
church, in the cloister. We must therefore deal with the possibility
that Gozbert's presbytery extended the whole width of the structure,
as it did in the Gothic Church (see fig. 511). If this conjecture is
proved correct, it will reveal that Gozbert thus increased, rather
than diminished, the area around the high altar.

W.H.

[ILLUSTRATION]

SOUTH ELEVATION OF A MONASTERY BUILT IN CONFORMITY WITH THE PARADIGMATIC SCHEME
AS SET FORTH IN THE PLAN OF ST. GALL: AN INTERPRETATION BY W.H. & E.B.

MCMLXXVII

The Plan of St. Gall

TAILPIECE