Virtual Paul's Cross Project

May 9, 2013 2:14 PM

On November 5, 1622, the poet and clergyman John Donne continued the tradition begun by Lancelot Andrewes of delivering a Gunpower Day sermon before the monarch. What would it have been like to hear a sermon like this delivered outdoors at St. Paul's Cross? The Virtual Paul's Cross Website tries to answer that question. Drawing on contemporary evidence from paintings, written records, and Donne's own manuscripts, the site offers both visual and audio reconstructions of the site (including a fly-through of the model), the sermon, and how the sermon might have sounded from multiple vantage points.
posted by thomas j wise (7 comments total)

Drawing on contemporary evidence from paintings, written records, and Donne's own manuscripts, the site offers both visual and audio reconstructions of the site (including a fly-through of the model), the sermon, and how the sermon might have sounded from multiple vantage points.

I don't care how good your research is, when thou hast done, thou hast not done--seems like the guy always has more.
posted by resurrexit at 2:25 PM on May 9, 2013

It's somehow daunting to think that there might ever have been an assemblage of speakers of English who could have been counted on, in a single hearing over a period of two solid hours, all without an accompanying text, to follow the thread of a succession of passages such as this:

The booke is certainly the prophet Jeremies: and certainly a distinct booke; but whether the booke be a history, or a prophecy, whether Jeremie lament that, which he had seene, or that which he forsees, calamities past, or future calamities, things donne, or things to be donne, is a question which hath exercisd and busied divers expositors. But as we say of the parable of Diues and Lazarus, that it is an historicall parable, and a parabolicall history, some such persons there were, and some such things were really donne, but some other things were figuratively, Symbolically, parabolically added, so we say of Jeremies lamentations, it is a propheticall history, and it is a historicall prophecy; some of these sad occasions of these lamentations were past, when he writt, and some were to come after: for we may not despise the testimonie of the Chalde paraphrasts who were the first that illustrated the Bible in that Nation, nor of Saint: Hierome: who was much conuersant with the Bible, and with that Nation, nor of Josephus who had iustly so much estimation in that Nation, nor of those later Rabbins who were the learnedest of that Nation, who are all of opinion, that Jeremy: writt these lamentations after he sawe some declinations in that state in the death of Josiah, and so the booke is Historicall, but when he onely foresaw, their transportation into Babilon, and before that calamity fell vpon them, and so it is propheticall.

posted by jamjam at 4:19 PM on May 9, 2013

If Samuel L. Jackson or Ellen DeGeneris read it, my butt would be as iron.
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:53 PM on May 9, 2013

Is Virtual Paul more like Ron Paul or Rand Paul?
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:43 PM on May 9, 2013

You know, a "Gunpower Day sermon" is a helluva lot different from a "Gunpowder Day sermon".

Glad to see it was the latter.
posted by IAmBroom at 12:17 PM on May 10, 2013

When I was thinking of answering an AskMe about Donne's poem The Curse, in order to counter imputations of misogyny, I ran into this anecdote:

...he fell in love with Egerton's niece Anne More. They were married just before Christmas[6] in 1601, against the wishes of both Egerton and George More, who was Lieutenant of the Tower and Anne's father. This wedding ruined Donne's career and earned him a short stay in Fleet Prison, along with Samuel Brooke, who married them,[13] and the man who acted as a witness to the wedding. Donne was released when the marriage was proven valid, and he soon secured the release of the other two. Walton tells us that when Donne wrote to his wife to tell her about losing his post, he wrote after his name: John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done.

and felt at the time that he must have written "John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-donne" instead, and it was oddly satisfying to have this post tend to confirm it.
posted by jamjam at 6:55 PM on May 10, 2013

Oi, the typo.
posted by thomas j wise at 4:38 AM on May 11, 2013