A Benedictine abbey on the Plan of St Gall: After the Rule of St Benedict and the Plan of St Gall (c. 820–830)

The buildings

Temples and sacred buildings

Works

Palaces

Public buildings

Gardens

Houses

A great Carolingian monastery built as the Plan of St Gall draws it (church in the middle, cloister to the south, guests and school to the north, novices and sick to the east, workshops, mill and farm to the south and west), with its village outside the gate.

The Rule of St Benedict, written in the sixth century, is not an architectural text, but it implies one. The monks sleep together in one dormitory; they eat in silence in a refectory; the sick and the novices live apart; guests have their own kitchen; a porter keeps the gate; and the monastery, if it can, contains everything it needs (water, a mill, a garden, workshops), so that the monks need not wander. After the reforms of 816–817 made the Rule the law of every monastery in the Carolingian empire, the question was how to build it.

The Plan of St Gall, drawn at Reichenau around 820–830 and sent to Abbot Gozbert, is the answer in one drawing: some forty buildings arranged by function round the church. This town follows it closely. The church lies in the centre with its altar to the east, its semicircular forecourt and two free-standing round towers to the west. The cloister, a hundred feet square, lies against the south side of the nave, ringed by the dormitory over the warming room, the refectory and the cellar. North of the church are the abbot’s house, the outer school and the house for distinguished guests; to the east, the novices and the sick in twin cloisters sharing a double chapel, with the physician, the herb garden, the cemetery planted as an orchard and the vegetable garden; to the south and west the kitchens, bakehouses, brewhouses, workshops, mill, granary and animal houses, and by the entrance the hospice for pilgrims and the poor.

Two cautions. The plan shows no enclosing wall, and the low wall here only marks the enclosure the Rule asks for. And no monastery is known to have been built exactly to the plan: it is an ideal, a Carolingian diagram of monastic life, which is why it is so valuable. Outside the gate stands the village of the abbey’s dependants, with its own small church and its fields in strips.

How the town is laid out

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.

One dormitory, next to the church

Let all the monks sleep in one place if their number allows, each in his own bed, clothed and ready to rise, with a light burning until morning; place the dormitory where they can go straight to the church for the night office.

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.

The sick and the novices apart

Give the sick a room set apart and a brother to serve them, with baths when they need them; give the novices a place of their own where they study, eat and sleep under a senior.

The monastery arranged round the church

Put the church in the centre with its altar to the east; the cloister against its south side, ringed by dormitory, refectory and cellar; the abbot, the school and the guests to the north; the novices, the sick and the gardens to the east; the kitchens, workshops, mills, barns and animals to the south and west; the hospice for the poor by the entrance.