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.
Guests received as Christ, with a kitchen of their own
Receive every guest as Christ, the poor and pilgrims with the greatest care; give the abbot and the guests a kitchen of their own, so that guests arriving at unexpected hours do not disturb the brothers; lodge them in a guest house apart, in the care of a God-fearing brother.
Hospitality is a duty of the Rule, but so is the peace of the cloister, and the plan of the monastery reconciles them by separation. The abbot, who eats with the guests, has his own house; guests of rank lodge in one house with its own kitchen, bakery and brewery; pilgrims and paupers in another by the entrance, also with its own. On the Plan of St Gall the first two stand north of the church, the hospice for the poor near the gate on the south-west, all outside the cloister.
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, “Guests received as Christ, with a kitchen of their own”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/benedict-guests. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.