MONASTERY Link 5

The Plan of St. Gall

St. Gall began as a small Irish monastery or "cell," but already by the eighth century it had begun to grow into a major establishment. The famous "Plan of St. Gall" was created for the abbot Gozbert (d. 836) by his friend Heito, the bishop of Basel and the abbot of Reichenau, another Irish monastery located near St. Gall. In the Frankish Church, J. M. Wallace-Hadrill suggests that the monastery's growth was due in part to the frequent visits of Carolingian nobility and that Gozbert requested a building plan from Heito because of this demand. Heito's response was not practical; it is a plan for an ideal monastery, and the plan illustrates the idea of the monastery as a physical plan.

Research questions:

• Is there a relationship between monastic construction and the area in which the monastery is built?
• How does the construction of a particular monastery "evolve" over time?
• What would be the advantages and/or disadvantages of an ideal monastic construction?
• Compare the plan of Irish buildings (in Hughes and Hamlin, on reserve) with the plan of and St. Gall? What kinds of mission suit these different styles?

Our source for the information in the first paragraph is J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, the Frankish Church. (Oxford, 1983, 342-44.)

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