Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/147

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OF THE MONASTERY OF ST. GALL.
105

cated a square with a small circle in the middle, by which, as in the cloisters, we may understand a quadrangular parterre, with a tree or a well, (or as Von Arx thinks, a small house.)

On the north side the cloister is bounded by the chapel of the sick monks and that of the novices, which, as already examined, is under the same roof as the former, but completely separated from it. It is arranged as follows: a vestibule or ante-chapel at the west end is surrounded on three sides by a long bench against the walls, and entered by a door from the cloisters. The fourth or eastern side is a screen, with a door in the middle that admits to the choir, which has two benches or little forms, "formulæe," in it, and lastly two steps ascend from the choir to the platform of the apse, in the centre of which stands an isolated altar.

To the west of this convent of the novices, but separated from it by a road, stands the kitchen which is appropriated to them, "coquina eorundem," in the middle of which the fire-hearth is introduced. Adjoining to it and under the same roof is a bath-room, "balueatorum," with four cauldrons, two benches, and a fire-place (?) in the middle of the room.

The Outer School.

The school-house is near the abbot's dwelling, and is surrounded by a fence[1]. It is a building about seventy feet by fifty-three. This consists of a large apartment in. the middle, divided by a screen or partition into two, about twenty-five feet square each. Round these are placed a series of fourteen small rooms, which open into the larger ones, two of them also having outer doors, and thus serving as vestibules. The rest of these little rooms are termed the dwellings of the scholars, "hic mansiunculæ scolasticorum." The inscription which runs across the central rooms marks them as the common-room of the school and place of recreation, "domus communis scholæa idem vacationis" A small square in the centre of each is inscribed "testudo." I have already endeavoured to shew that this probably indicates the fire-place, with an open lantern over it. Each of the scholar's rooms has a square, but this is probably a table. No furniture of any other kind is indicated hi this house[2].

  1. ↑ The fences bear the inscription "Hæec quoque septa premunt discentis vota juventæ.
  2. ↑ I have substituted the above article as the school in place of one by Keller, which describes the building as having a
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