A Look at the Work of Walter Horn and Ernest Born

The Plan of St. Gall: A Study of the Architecture & Economy of, & Life in a Paradigmatic Carolingian Monastery is comprised of three volumes of work on over 1,000 pages. The work concentrates on providing a detailed visual representation of the major components outlined in the St. Gall Manuscript. The authors, Walter Horn and Ernest Born, provide imagery from their original study of their interpretation and research into the document encased within these oversized volumes. Walter Horn writes,

"The Plan of St.Gall gathers as in a lens an image of the whole of Carolingian life. Product of the first synthetic encounter between Antiquity and the new civilization of the Barbarian north, it testifies the first pervasive alliance between Church and State in this nascent world, and the first successful, educational,and economic, of the ideal monasticism which in Antiquity had taken its start as a counter culture." (Volume I, Acknowledgements)



-Stefan Berry

Information Sources:

"The Plan of St. Gall." 1983.http://www.stgallplan.org/en/horn_born.htm (accessed Jan, 12, 2010).