VI.6
INTERIM REPORT
Excavations beneath the Pavement of the Church of St. Gall
Conducted by Dr. H. R. Sennhauser, 1964-1966
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.
The Plan of St. Gall
TAILPIECE
END OF VOLUME II
