St. Paul’s Cross

Location

The Paul’s Cross outdoor preaching station is located in Paul’s Cross Churchyard on the northeast side of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Stow lists it among the sites in Farringdon Within Ward (Stow 1598, sig. S6v). Paul’s Cross is at the epicenter of the London bookselling industry, and by the end of the Elizabethan period, the pulpit was encompassed by popular bookshops. Paul’s Cross Churchyard is adjacent, physically and culturally, to Paul’s Walk, the enormous and bustling cathedral nave, where the public came to hear news and gossip.1 The pulpit is a prominent feature on the well-trodden passageway from Ludgate to Cheapside (or the reverse), through Paul’s Cross Churchyard.

Etymology

The name Paul’s Cross is drawn from the name of the cathedral precinct it is located in. The cross as a name for an outdoor pulpit would signal the Cross of Christ and also a place of crossing. A crossing carries the meaning of an actual ambulatory crossing, and of course the idea of crossing holds the metaphorical concept of crossing from this life to the next in Christian and classical thought.
The St. Paul’s precinct c. 1500 (Keene, Burns, and Saint 42). Printed with the permission of the Yale University Press.
The St. Paul’s precinct c. 1500 (Keene, Burns, and Saint 42). Printed with the permission of the Yale University Press.

Significance

During the early modern period the Paul’s Cross pulpit was the site of fiery sermons and controversial public proclamations. Because of the Paul’s Cross’s location in the northeast churchyard next to the great cathedral church of London, it became the most influential cathedral cross in England. During the Elizabethan period, Paul’s Cross stood as a center, arguably the exact center, for religious public broadcasting in the City of London. The unsettling sermons of reform preached from that site helped to forge the unsteady religious alliances that we now call the Elizabethan settlement. In his introduction to Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion in England, 1520-1640, Torrance Kirby asserts that Paul’s Cross can be reckoned among the most influential of all public venues in early modern period (Kirby 1). In Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558-1642, Mary Morrissey holds that, in the sixteenth century, the Paul’s Cross was second only to the court pulpits in its potential to influence ecclesiastical policy, and that it surpassed the court pulpits in its capacity to reach a wide, non-elite audience (Morrissey 2). Morrissey’s observation is strongly supported by recent reconstructions of the pulpit and churchyard at the Virtual Paul’s Cross Project. The VPCP team has produced images and auditory of this location that vividly demonstrate its suitability for large and sometimes unruly public gatherings, both in terms of space and in terms of the aural advantages of its position in the L-shaped area between the cathedral choir and north transept (Virtual Paul’s Cross Project).
Paul’s Cross Churchyard (Virtual Paul’s Cross Project). Design by John Stephens.
Paul’s Cross Churchyard (Virtual Paul’s Cross Project). Design by John Stephens.

History

The history of the Paul’s Cross pulpit ranges from well before the early modern period until the second quarter of the seventeenth century, and it is a history of popular assembly and public spectacle. The pulpit and surrounding churchyard comprise what might be described as a free form site for dramatic and even volatile church and political events, standing as it does in an open outdoor space beyond the rituals and strictures of the cathedral sanctuary. Paul’s Cross has been connected with the rebellious quasi-populism of Simon de Montfort, with public confessions of sorcery, with the pageantry of kings, with high-profile attacks on church doctrine, and with those who ardently defended the true church in its various forms (Kirby 77).
Paul’s Cross and other such pulpits were arguably the descendants of pre-Norman preaching stations that were erected to memorialize places where a populace had converted to Christianity (MacLure 5).2 Throughout the Middle Ages these pulpits were not uncommon additions to established churches, though Paul’s Cross is unique, positioned as it was within the City of London (Simpson 149). There may have been activity at Paul’s Cross as early as the twelfth century, and there is documentation of folk-moots, or hundred courts, in Paul’s Cross Churchyard during the extended, thirteenth-century reign of Henry III (MacLure 5). Mary Morrissey indicates that the cross was being used as a pulpit at least by 1387 (Morrissey 8).
In the late fifteenth century the distressed Paul’s Cross was rebuilt under the auspices of Thomas Kempe, then Bishop of London. According to John Stow, Paul’s Cross was constructed of timber on a stone foundation, and the roof from which the cross extended was made of lead (Stow 1598, sig. S6v). E. Beresford holds that the new cross had such imposing grandeur and grace of form that it became one of the outstanding decorative features of the whole city of London (Beresford 23). This assessment, though suspiciously hyperbolic, is supported by the John Gipkyn’s diptych of 1616 and its curious rendering of Paul’s Cross:
A sermon preached in the presence of King James at Paul’s Cross. By permission of the Society of Antiquaries, London.
A sermon preached in the presence of King James at Paul’s Cross. By permission of the Society of Antiquaries, London.
The pulpit was built for permanence and prominence, and it encouraged stateliness in spectacle, albeit it was often the seat of condemnation and outrage. Famously, during the Tudor period, Paul’s Cross hosted emotionally charged public gatherings, and a fiery speech from the cross could incite a riot. As legend has it, a speech from the Paul’s Cross provoked the Evil May Day riots in 1517. In another riotous event, if we are to believe John Foxe and others, there was an impromptu demonstration in the art of knife throwing at a speaker during a sermon (Foxe 11223).
Such events were carried out in a churchyard that remained the ground for common and sometimes mass burial into the seventeenth century. Preaching about the shameful and uneasy relationship between the living and the dead in this locale, Hugh Latimer complained in a sermon that too many people were buried in Paul’s Cross Churchyard, particularly at times of great sickness when so many die together (Latimer 276). On a strikingly personal note, Latimer added that when I have been there in some mornings to hear the sermons, I have felt such an ill favored, unwholesome savour, that I was the worse for it a great while after (Latimer 276).
The nineteenth-century historian of St. Paul’s Cathedral, W. Sparrow Simpson, points out that, before the reformed church, Bulls and Papal edicts were read from Paul’s Cross and heretics were denounced, heresies abjured, ex-communications published, great political changes made known to the people, penances performed (Simpson 152). Paul’s Cross arguably served as the first great public theatre in Tudor London, as it hosted what might be called religious reality shows. Public confessions were a staple of the Paul’s Cross preaching event, and they required blocking and costumes. Lost souls were brought before the cross to repent, and they were sometimes struck by the ordained while asked for more or better recantation. MacLure notes how the penitent would at times be ushered before the Cross in plain view of the audience, wearing a white sheet, carrying faggots and a taper (MacLure 16). Paul’s Cross itself was not the preferred spot for public executions, although there were executions in the churchyard (Morrissey 107). It was, however, the preferred site for book mutilations and burnings. The theologian, Reginald Pecock, reportedly had his books burned there in the mid-fifteenth century. Martin Luther’s books were said to have been burnt there during a sermon in 1521. In 1543, Thomas Beccon, who later became a Paul’s Cross preacher, was reportedly required to tear his naughty books to pieces in front of a Paul’s Cross audience (MacLure 8).
During the early modern period, the drama at Paul’s Cross intensified as the standing hostilities between Rome and reform remained, and new and intractable interfaith conflicts emerged and were addressed from the pulpit. These sermons took on a new dramatic flare, presented as they were by such prominent Reformation figures as Stephen Gardiner, Miles Coverdale, Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, Gilbert Bourne, Edmund Grindal, Matthew Parker, John Jewel, John Foxe, Edwin Sandys, and John Donne, to name only a few. These sermons were delivered to large and engaged audiences within a populace that was growing more literate and that had more immediate access to the often hot religious print material that flowed around and through these events, most directly from the growing number of bookshops that surrounded Paul’s Cross Churchyard. A fine recreation of the environment and acoustics of a Paul’s Cross pulpit sermon, in this case the famous Gunpowder Plot sermon by John Donne, can be found at the Virtual Paul’s Cross Project.
During this period, audiences could indeed be quite large at Paul’s Cross events, with estimated crowds of 6,000 and even more in one report. One doubts the accuracy of these estimations, but they suggest big numbers and mass participation (Virtual Paul’s Cross Project). The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project team has suggested that even with a more reasonable crowd of half that size it would approximate roughly 3% of London’s population at certain high-profile preaching events (Virtual Paul’s Cross Project).
The new Elizabethan public amphitheatres were built to hold up to 3,000 people, though this exact number is difficult to confirm (Gurr 25). Indeed, MacLure connects Paul’s Cross with the public amphitheatres that were constructed during and after the Elizabethan period. He remarks that at Paul’s Cross, the sermons, proclamations, processions, and penances were all theatrical, after comparing the Gipkin scene at Paul’s Cross to the Elizabethan theatre, with its groundlings and notables, pit and galleries, and, in the midst, the pulpit as stage (MacLure 4). Toward the end of the sixteenth century, the pulpit was encircled by a low dwarf wall, which in effect made a room on the inside near the preacher where those willing to pay a fee could sit and hear the sermon in this special space (Morrissey 8-9). Such a space was similar to the seating on stage afforded to influential patrons at certain theatres in London.
Paul’s Cross was not only used for sermons but also for political proclamations, though, as Morrissey has shown, one cannot parse the religious from the political during this time. And the religion from all quarters was often hot religion. From the early years of the Elizabethan period well into the Jacobean period, there would have been a shared knowledge of the deep (and perhaps spurious in places) history of Paul’s Cross from such sources as the chronicles of Richard Grafton and the more prevalent John Stow. Perhaps because it could not withstand the rise of Puritan distain, or perhaps because the area simply lost pertinence, Paul’s Cross was taken down at some point between 1634 and 1643 (Morrissey 354).

Notes

  1. See Gossip at Paul’s Walking. (KL)
  2. Schofield marks the church as a folkmoot (Schofield). (TD)

References

  • Citation

    Beresford, E. St. Paul’s Cathedral. Enyclopedia Britannica, 1925. Print.

    This item is cited in the following documents:

  • Carlone, Dominic. Gossip at Paul’s Walking. The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 7.0, edited by Janelle Jenstad, U of Victoria, 05 May 2022, mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/GOSS2.htm.
  • Citation

    Foxe, John. Actes and monuments of matters most speciall and memorable, happenyng in the Church with an vniuersall history of the same, wherein is set forth at large the whole race and course of the Church, from the primitiue age to these latter tymes of ours, with the bloudy times, horrible troubles, and great persecutions agaynst the true martyrs of Christ, sought and wrought as well by heathen emperours, as nowe lately practised by Romish prelates, especially in this realme of England and Scotland. Newly reuised and recognised, partly also augmented, and now the fourth time agayne published and recommended to the studious reader, by the author (through the helpe of Christ our Lord) Iohn Foxe, which desireth thee good reader to helpe him with thy prayer. London: Iohn Daye, 1583. 11225.

    This item is cited in the following documents:

  • Citation

    Gurr, Andrew. Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. Print.

    This item is cited in the following documents:

  • Citation

    Keene, Derek, Arthur Burns, and Andrew Saint, eds. St Paul’s: The Cathedral Church of London 604–2004. London: Yale UP, 2004. Print.

    This item is cited in the following documents:

  • Citation

    Kirby, Torrance. Persuasion and Conversion: Essays on Religion, Politics, and the Public. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Print.

    This item is cited in the following documents:

  • Citation

    Kirby, Torrance and P. G. Stanwood, ed. Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion in England, 1520-1640. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Print.

    This item is cited in the following documents:

  • Citation

    Latimer, Hugh. Burial of the Dead. Select Sermons by Hugh Latimer. Boston: Hilliard, Gray, and Company, 1832. Remediated by Google Books.

    This item is cited in the following documents:

  • Citation

    MacLure, Millar. The Paul’s Cross Sermons: 1534-1642. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1958. Print.

    This item is cited in the following documents:

  • Citation

    Morrissey, Mary. Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.

    This item is cited in the following documents:

  • Citation

    Schofield, John. St. Paul’s Cathedral Before Wren. London: English Heritage, 2011. Print.

    This item is cited in the following documents:

  • Citation

    Simpson, W. Sparrow. Chapters in the History of Old S. Paul’s. London: Elliot Stock, 1881. Print.

    This item is cited in the following documents:

  • Citation

    Wall, John N., ed. Virtual Paul’s Cross Project. North Carolina State U. http://vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu/.

Cite this page

MLA citation

Dabbs, Thomas. St. Paul’s Cross The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 7.0, edited by Janelle Jenstad, U of Victoria, 05 May 2022, mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/STPA6.htm.

Chicago citation

Dabbs, Thomas. St. Paul’s Cross The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 7.0. Ed. Janelle Jenstad. Victoria: University of Victoria. Accessed May 05, 2022. mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/STPA6.htm.

APA citation

Dabbs, T. 2022. St. Paul’s Cross In J. Jenstad (Ed), The Map of Early Modern London (Edition 7.0). Victoria: University of Victoria. Retrieved from https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/editions/7.0/STPA6.htm.

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Provider: University of Victoria
Database: The Map of Early Modern London
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TEI citation

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