York Minster's Nave: The Cologne Connection

Abstract

Within the stylistic development of English Gothic architecture of the late thirteenth century, the nave of York Minster stands quite apart for its clear continental orientation. Only the great western window and the high vault-both inserted after the structural completion of the nave-conform to the standards of the Decorated Style that dominated English ecclesiastical buildings around 1300. The architecture of the nave itself has generally been regarded as an offspring of the French Rayonnant Gothic, although no specific building could be positively identified as its source; comparisons have dealt exclusively with individual architectural features instead of the system as a whole. Cologne Cathedral, however, never hitherto considered a possible source of influence for York Minster's nave, resembles the English church more than any French cathedral and accordingly must be taken as its main and perhaps only source of inspiration. This German orientation of York, unusual as it is in the history of English architecture, has its parallel in some rather close historical connections between the English court and the German emperor and, notably, his archchancellors, the archbishops of Cologne.