But can a trend which led directly to the towers of Worcester, the west front of Beverley Minster or the nave of Canterbury, possibly be cited as evidence of inferior artistry? To suggest that the Perpendicular style was no more than a degenerate variant on the traditional Decorated would show a derisory misunderstanding of one of the noblest schools of English architecture. Nor should the significance of the Black Death be over-stated in an artistic revolution which had started twenty years before and which the calamities of the mid-fourteenth century checked but could not extinguish. The transept and choir of Gloucester, the cradle of Perpendicular, were completed in 1332 and, though the Black Death introduced economic and social factors which diffused the new fashion more widely, it would be misleading to suggest that those were of prime importance. ‘Perpendicular’, wrote Mr Harvey, ‘was not the outcome of poverty and failure, but of riches and success. Only to a comparatively slight extent was its course changed by the coming of the Black Death, which did but accelerate a movement already in being.’{492} Many architectural historians would today put its significance more emphatically, but no bald statement of cause and effect can do justice to the complexity of the subject.
The plague not only depopulates and kills, it gnaws the moral stamina and frequently destroys it entirely; thus the sudden demoralisation of Roman society from the period of Mark Antony may be explained by the Oriental plague… In such epidemics the best were invariably carried off and the survivors deteriorated morally.
Times of plague are always those in which the bestial and diabolical side of human nature gains the upper hand. Nor is it necessary to be superstitious or even pious to look upon great plagues as a conflict of the terrestrial forces with the development of mankind…
It may reasonably be felt that Niebuhr was pitching it a little high. It is, to say the least, extravagant to describe as ‘bestial and diabolical, the selfish manoeuvres of the frightened and the hysterical. It is also patently unfair to the many thousands who met the Black Death with courage and charity. But though Niebuhr’s words may seem fantastical he still had a valid and important point. Any history of the Black Death which ignored its impact on the minds of its victims would be notably incomplete. It was an impact whose effects endured. The resilience of mankind is perpetually astonishing and within only a few years the horrors of the plague had been thrust from the forefront of their minds. But no one can live through a catastrophe so devastating and so inexplicable without retaining for ever the scars of his experience.
It is a truism to say that, in the Middle Ages, a man’s mental health and the public and private morality to which he deferred was inextricably involved with his relationship with the Church. His faith was unquestioning and his psychological dependence upon its institutions complete. Any blow suffered by the Church was a direct blow to his own morale. Any discussion of his state of mind after the Black Death must start by considering how far the condition of the Church had been modified by the events of the preceding years. There can be little doubt that it had changed, and changed almost exclusively for the worse.
