The vegetal memory

This article was originally published in April 2014.

More than 1000 years ago, monks on Reichenau Island in Lake Constance developed the concept of the ideal monastery complex and put it down on paper. Today, not far from here, one of the most adventurous construction projects ever undertaken in Europe is being carried out. Employing original hand tools such as chisels, hammers, lathes, axes and other implements, work is proceeding from early April until mid-November.

If everything goes according to the plans of Bert Geurten, the initiator of the Campus Galli project, a complex of buildings will be erected near the southern German town of Messkirch. They will be based on the Carolingian architectural plan from the Abbey of St-Gallen and will fully recreate this exemplary monastery for the first time.

The work is being carried out just as in the Middle Ages. The workers, all volunteers, use the simplest tools and equipment and wear clothes of the period made of flax and leather. Geurten, a 63-year-old German journalist, describes this construction project as “experimental archaeology.” It is expected to take 40 years to complete, and the enterprise hopes to cover most of its costs by collecting entrance fees from visitors.

Even if this complex is never completed, as has been the case with so many ambitious church and monastery projects in the past, Geurten’s enthusiasm for this Middle Age masterpiece shows that the monastery plan continues to captivate us even 1000 years after its conception.

Indeed, back in the year 819 when Abbot Haito of Reichenau is thought to have given the plan as a gift to St-Gallen’s Abbot Gozbert, it served as a source of “stimulation” and inspiration.

Treasures of the Abbey Library

Today, the architectural plan is still located in St-Gallen – albeit no longer in the Imperial Abbey but in the Abbey Library.

There, this document forms the heart of a collection that is among the largest and most valuable in Switzerland. It contains more than 2000 manuscripts and over 1500 incunabula (books printed before 1500) as well as around 170 000 other books. Its treasures include the oldest manuscript in the German language, the Codex Abrogans, a glossary in Latin and Old High German from the eighth century. The library, which has been registered as a UNESCO world cultural heritage site, is impressive not only due to its rich “vegetal memory” (as Umberto Eco lovingly paraphrases books and parchments, well knowing that both the Greek byblos and the Latin liber derive etymologically from the word for “tree bark”). Also, the Baroque Hall, built as part of the Benedictine monastery that was disbanded in 1805, is among the most impressive architectural structures in Switzerland. It was recently the imposing setting for the Science Night event sponsored by Novartis, where Abbey Librarian Cornel Dora and Novartis natural products researcher Frank Petersen talked about the use of knowledge from the past.

This extensive collection, which boasts works written in Middle High German such as the Nibe-lungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs) and Parzival, also contains many books about herbs and early medical compendia that shed light on the state of knowledge in antiquity and the Middle Ages. It is a true treasure chest for researchers such as Alain Touwaide from the Smithsonian Institute, who studies botany and herbology from ancient times, sifting through old manuscripts and books for possible new ingredients.

Among the oldest documents in St-Gallen is a manuscript handed down from the 10th century that is a reproduction, not totally true to the original, of the work De Medicina by Cassius Felix, a physician who lived in North Africa in the fifth century. In addition, the library’s treasures include works such as the Botanicus Sangallensis, an early medieval collection of manuscripts containing various text sources dealing with herbal medicine.

The architectural plan from Reichenau

However, virtually no other work is as important as the Carolingian plan. The draft from Reichenau, which was to serve as an “inspiration” for the well-educated and erudite Benedictine monks, is by no means an impenetrable patchwork that raises more questions than it answers. On the contrary, the plan describes the layout of the monastery in meticulous detail.

In particular, the description of the hospital complex is intriguing and unique: The designers recommended building a hospital for the monks around the herbal garden in the northeast corner of the grounds along with a home for physicians. Baths and a bloodletting house are also part of this quarter and, together with the adjacent vegetable and fruit garden (which would also have served as a cemetery), form a compact area devoted to healthcare and put, for the first time ever, herbology and medicine into a structural context.

Also enlightening are the herbaceous plants whose names are marked on 16 beds. Today, many of these plants – sage, mint, caraway, lovage, fennel, rosemary and roses – are taken for grant-ed as part of the flora in Switzerland, but in the ninth century all of them were imported. Those who drew up the plan left no space for lamb’s lettuce or chives from the region, probably because they considered these to be commonplace.

The fact that the architectural plan provided for such a clearly laid out hospital area was due above all to the strong obligation felt by the members of the Abbey in Reichenau to care for the sick, in accordance with the rules of their order – the Abbey was a Benedictine monastery just like the one in St-Gallen. The founder of the order, St. Benedict, wrote that the sick were to be cared for “as if they were actually themselves Christ … our sick brothers should have their own room and caregivers … and we are to offer the sick a chance to bathe as often as it will do them good … furthermore the sick who are very weak should eat meat to restore their health.”

A love of books and interest in medicine will therefore have been what prompted Reichenau Abbot and poet Walahfrid Strabo to write a didactic poem in the mid-ninth century. In its 444 hexameters, it describes the benefits of the 23 types of vegetables and herbs. Strabo particularly praised fennel because of its effectiveness against whooping cough when “mixed with wine.”

A key link to contemporary medicine

The architectural plan for the monastery as well as Strabo’s poem formed the basis of so-called monastic medicine, which created a key link between the art of medicine in late antiquity and the late Middle Ages that drew its knowledge from Arabic tradition and became an important element of western medicine. Above all, the monks at the Abbey of St-Gallen eagerly collected books and increased their knowledge. Monastery physician Notker II of St-Gallen, who worked in the 10th century, became one of the most-respected doctors of his time. Even if the narratives of healing that Ekkehart IV documents in his collection of “monastery anecdotes” seem somewhat sensational – Notker is supposed to have seen through an attempted deception by Duke Heinrich I of Bavaria, who tried to pass off the urine of a woman as his own – Notker’s achievements were certainly remarkable for the times.

Indeed, the beginnings of modern medicine would not be conceivable without the books about herbs and the pharmacopeias of the Middle Ages. These include books that today are among the treasures of the Abbey Library in St-Gallen, such as the Gart der Gesundheit (Guard-ian of Health) by Johann Wonnecke von Kaub, and the Buch der Natur (Book of Nature) by Konrad von Megenberg. When they were published, these were important works, perhaps even vital to survival, and their beauty can still enchant readers today. This is thanks above all to the care taken to preserve the “vegetal memory,” whether in libraries such as that in St-Gallen, where researchers can search for possible ingredients, or in projects such as that of Bert Geurten in Messkirch which attempt to bring history back to life. After all, as Umberto Eco states in “A declaration of love”: “The book is a form of life insurance, a small anticipation of immortality.”