VISUAL DISPLAY
In certain places the scribe makes use of a bold capitalis rustica rather than the delicate minuscule in which the majority
of the textual annotations are written. Here again he proceeds with discretion. Only buildings or areas that rank high in
the architectural ecology of the monastery are singled out for this distinction. Capitalized titles occur in ten places; five of
them in the context of the church: the widely spaced axial title that defines what its length should be; a hexameter that
defines the function of the presbytery; two hexameters in the western, and one in the eastern atrium. Outside of the church
capitalis rustica is found in the following places: In the bold meter that explains the function of the road of access to church
and monastery; in the word ECCLESIA written along the axis of the building that contains the chapels for the novices
and the sick; in the word HORTUS inscribed into the outer paths of the Monks' Vegetable Garden (in widely spaced
letters); and in the two hexameters that explain the purpose of the two circular enclosures for the hens and the geese.
The choice of capitals for designating the Monks' Vegetable Garden and the enclosures for hens and geese is perhaps a
little surprising. In the two latter cases one might suspect that the scribe, faced with two magnificently free circular spaces
exuberantly let himself go. But in the case of the Monks' Vegetable Garden the use of capitals could not have been motivated
by the same reason, since the space available there is poorly suited to an inscription in capital letters. Might the
emphasis in both cases have something to do with the important place the produce of the garden and of the chicken yard
held in the monks' diet, and the fact that the flesh of chicken was the only meat of any living creature except fish permitted
on the monks' table?[65]
