Late in the twelfth century an unknown monk at the monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland took an old unwieldy parchment with a drawing on one side and folded it upon itself, reducing its size to onesixteenth of what it had been. Upon fourteen frames on the unused side and one frame on the side with the drawing, he then wrote a text of the Life of St. Martin. Since the folded parchment was manageable in size, and given its new (...) content, it was probably placed among the other manuscripts in the famous library of St. Gall. In this fashion the drawing that we know as the Plan of St. Gall was allowed to survive. (shrink)