St. Gall

The St. Gall Monastic plan project is creating virtual reality and related digital tools that will allow scholars to explore both the St. Gall Plan (Codex Sangallensis 1092). and to use the Plan as an entry into wider investigations of the study of early medieval monastic architecture and culture.  The project consists of the following elements:

First, we have completed a new high resolution scan of the recto and verso of the plan itself and have made the results available on the Web using Zoomify technology that allows the most detailed examination of the plan and, on its verso, the Vita S. Martini, ever provided.

Second, we have scanned all of the extant two and three dimensional attempts to envision a reconstruction of a monastery based on the plan as Quicktime or static images.

Third we are creating a complex interactive web site that allows the user to explore all possibilities of exactly how the Plan was created from blank vellum to completed plan.

Fourth and most importantly, we are compiling an exhaustive database of resources relating to the plan itself and ninth century monasticism. This database includes:

• “Plan components” (we began by cataloging the 45 main sections of the plan, based on the text of the plan rather than the buildings. Then we created subcomponents, which are subgroups of the 45 sections. We divided up the entire plan so that every section is catalogued down to each symbol. The result is over 1000 separate elements of the plan that can be accessed through searches in the original Latin as well as German and English translations.
• “Related Objects,” that is, digital images of archeological and material culture objects from the Carolingian period.
• Carolingian material culture mentioned in written sources in Latin, English, and German, cross-referenced to both the components of the Plan and to the Related Objects Database.
• An extensive collection of excerpts from contemporary documents that illuminate monastic material culture and architecture.
• Digitized manuscripts from St. Gall and related institutions as well as searchable Latin, English, and German integral versions of the major texts relating to Carolingian monasticism.
• A searchable bibliography of literature on the Plan of St. Gall and Carolingian monastic culture including some whole texts.

Access to these databases will be both through a graphic interface that allows the user to click on all areas and features of the Plan and then drill down to specific texts, objects, and images related to that portion of the Plan as well as through a powerful search engine that will allow the user to explore and integrate all elements of the databases.

The data entry is being done at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at UCLA and will be completed by June, 2007. The technical work is being done at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia and will be completed by December, 2007. A final conference on the state of the study of the St. Gall Plan will be held in St. Gallen in November, 2007/

One can obtain a further sense of the project from our website: http://www.stgallplan.org/index.html. The Data Base can be examined at: http://universe.village.virginia.edu/StGallDB_2.0/