ABBEY

Canonical dwelling, enjoying autonomy, governed by an abbot, and housing at least 12 monks. The great Abbeys of Europe grew out of the caves, abandoned tombs, and mud huts of the hermits, first established in the desert by St. Anthony of Egypt (3d-4th centuries). The founders of the earliest monasteries were the hermits who attracted disciples, their huts clustering around that of the solitary. St. Pachomius (c.290-346) introduced a simple order by laying out these huts in rows and erecting community buildings surrounded by a wall. He also devised a single, self-contained building, with cells for the monks, as a novitiate community life before attempting the the hermitical. Eventually the conventual life superseded the hermitical. Its adoption by St. Benedict (6th century) and the spread of monasticism under the influence of his rule standardized the housing of the monks by standardizing their life. At first Roman villa, its buildings arranged around a quadrangle, was adapted to monastic life, the form varying with local conditions and customs. The initial buildings included oratory, dormitory, refectory, kitchens, infirmary, and conference room. As the monks also worked the fields, cultivated the arts, and plied various trades, barns, stables, and workshop were added. The large abbeys became self contained cities. The abbeys became extremely beautiful and imposing structures, passing from the architecture of the Roman basilica trough Romanesque to Gothic. Each bore the place name of its location, whether in the wilderness or in the city; some also bore the name of the founder or of a saint whose relics were there.

Consult Braufels, Wolfgang, Monasteries of Western Europe: The Architecture of the Orders (1973); Hogg, Gary, Priories and Abbeys of England (1972); Vale, Edmund, Abbies and Priories (1956); Wright, Geoffery, Abbeys and Priories (1971).

Walter H. Turner

AALTO (äl’tō), ALVAR (1889-1976)

Finnish architect and furniture designer and exponent-with his wife and collaborator, Aino (died 1949)-of the so-called International style of architecture. Educated entirely in Finland, he became world famous in the 1930's for his severely functional work there. For a decade after the outbreak of World War II he lived partly in the United States, where he taught, and designed a striking dormitory, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After returning to Finland, he produced increasingly lyrical designs, often incorporating elements of the landscape, culminating in the vast combination symphony hall-conference center in Helsinki called Finlandia Hall, site of the European Security Conference in 1975.

"A"

A, first letter of the English alphabet, whose Semitic ancestor also stood first in its alphabet. The Semitic letter was apparently derived from the ox, of which it originally was intended to be a picture.

In the spelling of words, a is always a vowel in any position-as in at, pat, villa-but the pronunciation varies greatly; other letters and letter-groups have the same sound (Nineveh). In words of direct Germanic inheritance (e.g., that) a usually represents an older o (Greek tode,"that"). The reverse relationship appears in the Mid- Western pronunciation of o (hot, dog) as a variety of a sound.

In Greek the letter was called alpha (Arabic alif); the Romans learned to call it ah (perhaps as English in father) from Etruscan usage. The modern languages of Europe generally still so call it, but English a regular series of changes produced a (as in home)

JOSHUA WHATMOUGH