Sensory overload in St Gallen

Kalpana Sunder

Plaster cherubs, each representing subjects from medicine to geography, the smell of old wood, flamboyant paintings on the ceiling — all this adorns the most ethereal library of medieval Abbey. The library, an architectural feast, lies in the small town of St Gallen, near Zurich. The abbey, which started as a small place of worship by an Irish monk, grew into a spectacular complex.

Long ago, monks followed the Rule of Benedict, which lay down that their day should include prayer, learning and reading. The library used to have an area where monk scribes would copy biblical texts and manuscripts painstakingly. Slowly, illustrations became part of the books and even a catalogue of books in the collection was made.

It was thanks to the efforts of a local doctor called Vadian that a library was established and the abbey opened its own printing press in 1633. Today the showstopper Abbey Library (a Unesco Heritage site) decorated in a Baroque Rococo style dates back to the 1760s. The spectacular library happens to be the world’s oldest monastic library. Though the monastery was dissolved in 1805, it was decided to retain the library.

Before one enters the spectacular library, one has to don thick felt slippers to protect the floors made from more than 30 kinds of wood like cherry, fir and walnut. At the entrance is a sign in Greek that reads “medicine for the soul”. 

The hall was built in 1758 with stuccoes and frescoes done by local artists. The curved reading room is a Baroque masterpiece, with wood-panelled bookshelves flanked by columns, and handsome stuccoes of the earliest church councils on the ceilings. 

Suffused sunlight from 34 windows, streams into the magnificent room with two levels of bookshelves, loaded with more than 1,70,000 biblical and leather-bound books. A gargantuan globe based on a Mercator map, showing the four known continents as of 1571, stands in a corner.

There are medieval manuscripts and old tomes covering topics from architecture and botany to medicine. Glass cases hold fine illuminated manuscripts. There are fading parchments. There’s first example of an architectural plan on parchment, an old treatise on Latin grammar, a monastery rule in the year 600 that monks should ‘read daily’, a fourth century narrative of the Trojan War, antique musical scripts and handwritten manuscripts from as early as the sixth century.

The library has survived many tumultuous events in the past — ranging from fire to invaders and the Reformation. The most surprising thing about the medieval library is that it’s still a functioning library where people can borrow books. However, the rule says that only the books printed after 1900 can be borrowed. Books printed before this can only be viewed in the reading room; the  process of digitisation of some of the oldest documents is on.