Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/132

 90 DESCllirTlON OF THE ANCJKNT PLAN exceptions the monastery is composed of thirty-three separate houses, comprising various offices, as well as the residences of the abbot and physician, a hospitium for distinguished guests, and one for the paupers, and lastly a complete series of ftirm buildings. Moreover there is a physic garden, a vegetable garden, and a cemetery, each separately enclosed. To judge by the length and breadth of the church, the entire space oc- cupied by the monastery will be about four hundred and thirty feet square. The draughtsman has not merely given us the disposition of the apartments, but has also delineated the furniture of each room, so that the plan becomes extremely interesting for the elucidation of the domestic habits of the period. Thus, for example, the hospitium for the distinguished guests may be supposed to represent the usual arrangements of a large house for that class of persons. The abbot's house is another variety of the ordinary dwelling-house of the ninth century. The arrangements of the farm buildings, in like manner, must belong as much to the laity as to the ecclesiastical order, so that this curious document is by no means confined to the elucidation of monastic habits. The only part of the details which are not perfectly intelli- gible is a certain square which is delineated in the centre of many of the rooms. The larger buildings, such as the two hos])itia, the school, and the factory, consist of a series of small apartments, which enclose a large quadrangular space in the middle. This quadrangular space is either left un- divided, as in the hospitia, or divided into two, as in the school and factory. But each of these central apartments has a square in the middle. Now in the superior hospitium this square is inscribed " locitsfoci," the fire-hearth. In the pau- pers' hospitium it bears the inscription " testudo'' the roof. When this monastery was built, glass windows were rare, and almost contined to churches. The mode of building, therefore, appears to have assimilated itself to the ancient plan of arrang- ing sleeping chambers and private apartments about one large central room, into which they opened. This central room either rose above the roofs of the others, so as to allow of small open windows like clerestory windows, or else the central room Avas so roofed over as to leave a small square opening in the middle, which admitted light and allowed the smoke of the lire to csca])c. In warm southerly climates, as at Pom-