Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/24

8 church, was to be dedicated to St. Paul, and the eastern one to St. Peter. Between the two choirs is the front and the altar of St. John the Baptist, and on each side are a range of altars dedicated to various saints. Behind both apses are open spaces or paradises (parvis), that to the west is surrounded by an open semi-circular porch, by which the public were to gain access to the church; and on either side of this, but detached, are two circular towers, each with an altar on its summit, one dedicated to the archangel Michael, the other to Gabriel: these were to be reached by circular stairs or inclined planes. No mention is made of bells, and the text would seem to intimate rather that the towers were designed for watch-towers or observatories. The similarity of their position and form to that of the Irish round towers is most remarkable; but whether this was in compliment to the Irish saint to whom the monastery owed its origin, or whether we must look to Ravenna for the type, are questions not easily determined at the present date, for we know far too little as yet of the archæology of the age to speak with certainty on any such questions. It is by no means improbable that the meaning and origin of these and of the Irish towers were the same; but whether it was a form exclusively belonging to a Celtic or Irish race, or common to all churches of that age, is what we cannot now decide from the imperfect data at our command.

On either side of the east end of the church is an apartment, where the transept is usually found; that on the south is the vestry ; on the north is the library, and attached to the church on the same side is the schoolmaster's house , and beyond that the porter's.

All the living-apartments have stoves in the angles, but the dormitory has a most scientific arrangement for heating; the furnace is at, and the smoke is conveyed away by a detached shaft at ; between which there must have been some arrangement of flues beneath the floor for heating the sleeping-apartment of the monks.

Were it not that the evidence is so incontrovertible, we should feel little inclined to fancy that the monasteries of this dark age showed such refinement and such completeness as is here evidenced; for at no period of their history can anything more perfect be found. In the church, especially, the two apses, the number of altars, the crypt and its accompaniments, the sacristy, the library, etc., many of which things have generally been considered as the invention of subsequent ages, are marked out distinctly and clearly, as well-understood and usual arrangements of ecclesiastical edifices. This plan, in fact, refutes at once all the arguments regarding the dates of churches which have been founded on the supposed era of the introduction of these accessories.

By another fortunate coincidence there is a church still standing on the island of Reichenau, in the lake of Constance, within thirty miles of St. Gall, which certainly belongs to this date, and is unaltered in nearly all its principal features. It was finished, or at least dedicated,