Order the church as a single path: a colonnaded atrium, a narthex, the long nave drawn toward the altar, and the apse framed by a triumphal arch at the end of the axis.
Everything necessary within the enclosure
Build the monastery, if possible, so that everything it needs (water, a mill, a garden and the various crafts) is inside the enclosure, so that the monks need not wander outside, which does their souls no good; and set a wise old monk at the gate, with a cell beside it.
This short passage turned the monastery into a town. Because the monks were to stay within, the enclosure had to hold a whole economy: mill, bakehouse, brewhouse, workshops for every craft, granaries, gardens, orchards and animal houses, with servants and craftsmen to run them. The Plan of St Gall shows the result: some forty buildings round the church.
The gate became the one point of contact with the world, kept by the porter, who greets every knock with a blessing. Guests, pilgrims and the poor were received there and lodged apart from the cloister, which remained the monks’ private heart.
Related rules
To make a square of half the area of another, join the mid-points of its sides: the rotated square so drawn has exactly half the area. Repeat to halve again.
side of inscribed square = s ⁄ √2 · area = ½ s²
End the choir in a semicircle of piers; wrap an aisle (the ambulatory) around it, and open a ring of chapels off the ambulatory, each with its own altar and windows, so that the east end steps down in tiers of roofs and buttresses.
Put the hall at the heart of the house and enter it at one end, by a passage running through the house from front door to back door, screened from the hall. Open the buttery, the pantry and, between them, the way to the kitchen off that passage, at the hall’s lower end; put the family’s parlour, and the great chamber over it, beyond the hall’s upper end, where the high table stands.
Lay out the church as an Early Christian basilica (a tall nave lit from above, lower aisles on either side, a sanctuary ending in an apse to the east) and cross it with a transept, so that the plan becomes a Latin cross with a tower over the crossing.
Let the square of the crossing set the measure of the whole church: the nave and transept arms are multiples of it, each nave bay is a square of the same size, and each aisle bay a square one quarter its area.
nave bay = crossing square; aisle bay = ¼ of it; nave length = n squares
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Everything necessary within the enclosure”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/benedict-enclosure. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.