Complete 3 Volume Set with Specimen Pamphlet. Cloth binding has minor stains from dust.

SUPERBLY EXECUTED AND POSSIBLY THE MOST SIGNIFICANT architectural creation of the Age of Charlemagne, the Plan of St. Gall owes its existence to a striving for cultural unity that pervaded the whole of Carolingian life: unity embodied in a common language, Latin; a common belief, Christianity; a common legal and spiritual authority vested in the offices of Emperor and Pope; and unity of monastic custom. It is the product of a new European society that sprang from the shattered provinces of Rome and unfolded under a succession of extraordinary Frankish rulers working in close alliance with the Papal See. The accomplishment of a great dynastic lineage, this society succeeded in reviving the glory of ancient Rome under the aegis of the greatest Frankish statesman, Charlemagne, crowned Emperor in A.D. 800.

The new social order was based on rural self-sufficiency of which the monasteries were an integral part. Vast monastic estates were superior to their secular counterparts because they embraced within their economic structure a house of religious devotion and schools of learning. The monks who taught in these schools performed the important task of trans- mitting to future generations, in letter and image, the cultural heritage of Antiquity. They trained the intellectual leaders of their time.

The Plan of St. Gall is one of the great creations of that elite. It is the first architectural community plan of Western Europe, produced in an age in which the old and the new were brought together in a magnificent synthesis: the Carolingian renascence.