Prior[156] indicates a similar break of continuity in the building of York Minster. The west front and the nave were in course of construction, when the Black Death appeared, and the result is a makeshift wood vaulting to the nave. Then the building of the choir was delayed for twelve years, till a.d. 1361, and in its structure the flowing lines of the Decorated style, seen in the west front, have given place to the formal stiffness of the Perpendicular.
In London the effect is much less conspicuous than in the northern parts of England, perhaps because it was easier to replenish the supply of masons in the metropolis than elsewhere. The building of St. Stephen’s Chapel in Westminster and the completion of the Abbey cloisters seem to have proceeded continuously, and with no change of style, throughout the Black Death and the following years: and the same is the case with Gloucester Cathedral.
Prior considers that the Black Death played a leading part in the superseding of the Decorated by the Perpendicular type, and in the diffusion of the latter from its Gloucester home throughout England. The lack of builders led to masons passing from one district to another, removing them from the conditions of local stone favourable to their best work and to originality of style. The inevitable result was that the architectural style easiest of expression in any form of stone was bound to prevail, and that style was the Perpendicular. Examples of this transformation in the years following close on the Black Death are numerous, in the nave and cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral, in the west front of Winchester Cathedral, and elsewhere.
The same stereotyped monotony, the same continuous decline in the skill of execution, the same obvious diminution of interest in the craft of the artificer, as is seen in the building construction, are manifest also in the figure-sculpture and traceries of the period. The variation of artistic expression, that in the two preceding centuries had progressed steadily from strength to strength, comes to an abrupt cessation, and is content with the incessant repetition of inanimate models.
‘The figure-sculpture[157] of the later mediaeval church under such conditions grew to be especially of the shop, according to pattern and not of fresh adventure. It no longer took its place in the business of the building-yard, but was provided for—not worked—in the building. The constructing mason left niches for statues, and on occasion worked bosses with subject relief, cornices with ‘angel’ sculpture, and gargoyles with ‘devil’ sculpture. But this figure work was not essential, and a whole majestic piece of architecture in Perpendicular style might rise from the ground and never ask for the craft of the figure-sculptor at all. The works of the imager were now in effect furniture, which could be bought in the city and added to the building at any time. Accordingly statues and reliefs ceased, in fifteenth century practice, to be carved immediately by the mason upon the building: they became outside works conceived in no intimate relation to it.’
Gasquet maintains that a similar breach of continuity may be observed in the manufacture of stained glass, and that there is a noticeable change in style after the Black Death. Speaking broadly, the styles of stained glass correspond to the styles of architecture, but in each case are a little later: so that the contention comes to this, that there is an unbridged gap between the late Decorated and early Perpendicular. Yet one cannot but recall the ante-chapel windows of New College, Oxford, and the east window of Gloucester Cathedral, in each of which the transition from Decorated to Perpendicular is apparent.
CHAPTER VIII
For three centuries and more after the Black Death plague was endemic throughout central and southern Europe, and its presence is indelibly recorded in the productions of contemporary art. Dances of Death, plague banners, votive and commemorative paintings, and actual representations of plague scenes all bear silent testimony to the abiding presence of the enemy within the gates. Memento mori, with its dismal foreboding, was the appropriate motto of the age. Innocent III in his De Contemptu Mundi had said the last word on the misery of human existence, and the shame and degradation of the human body, polluted and polluting, long before the Black Death: but henceforward the gloom that haunted the soul of this great successor of St. Peter seems to diffuse itself throughout the world.