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TY - ELEC
A1 - Dabbs, Thomas
ED - Jenstad, Janelle
T1 - St. Paul’s Cross
T2 - The Map of Early Modern London
ET - 7.0
PY - 2022
DA - 2022/05/05
CY - Victoria
PB - University of Victoria
LA - English
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/STPA6.htm
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/xml/standalone/STPA6.xml
ER -
Paul’s Cross Churchyard, also known as the Cross Yard, is the area on the northeast side of St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was one of the principal bookselling areas in early modern London.
St. Paul’s Cathedral was—and remains—an important church in London. In
Farringdon Within Ward shares parts of its eastern and southern borders with the western and northern boundaries of Castle Baynard Ward. This ward is called
The city of London, not to be confused with the allegorical character (
Located in Farringdon Within Ward, Ludgate was a gate built by the Romans (Carlin and Belcher 80). for his owne honor
(Stow 1:1).
Cheapside Street, one of the most important streets in early modern London, ran east-west between the Great Conduit at the foot of Old Jewry to the Little Conduit by St. Paul’s churchyard. The terminus of all the northbound streets from the river, the broad expanse of Cheapside Street separated the northern wards from the southern wards. It was lined with buildings three, four, and even five stories tall, whose shopfronts were open to the light and set out with attractive displays of luxury commodities (Weinreb and Hibbert 148). Cheapside Street was the centre of London’s wealth, with many
The Paul’s Cross outdoor preaching station is located in Paul’s Cross Churchyard on the northeast side of St. Paul’s Cathedral. During the early modern period, Paul’s Cross was a site of drama, since the interfaith conflicts of the time were addressed from the pulpit. These sermons were presented by prominent Reformation figures including
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The Julian calendar with the calendar year beginning on 25 March. This was the calendar used in the British Empire until September 1752.
The Gregorian calendar, used in the British Empire from September 1752. Sometimes
referred to as
The Anno Mundi (year of the world
) calendar is based on the supposed date of the
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Regnal dates are given as the number of years into the reign of a particular monarch.
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Project Manager, 2022-present. Research Assistant, 2020-2022. Molly Rothwell was an undergraduate student at the University of Victoria, with a double major in English and History. During her time at MoEML, Molly primarily worked on encoding and transcribing the 1598 and 1633 editions of Stow’s
Project Manager, 2020-2021. Assistant Project Manager, 2019-2020. Research Assistant, 2018-2020. Kate LeBere completed her BA (Hons.) in History and English at the University of Victoria in 2020. She published papers in
Programmer, 2018-present. Junior Programmer, 2015-2017. Research Assistant, 2014-2017. Joey Takeda was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in the Department of English (Science and Technology research stream). He completed his BA honours in English (with a minor in Women’s Studies) at the University of Victoria in 2016. His primary research interests included diasporic and indigenous Canadian and American literature, critical theory, cultural studies, and the digital humanities.
Data Manager, 2015-2016. Research Assistant, 2013-2015. Tye completed his undergraduate honours degree in English at the University of Victoria in 2015.
Director of Pedagogy and Outreach, 2015–2020. Associate Project Director, 2015. Assistant Project Director, 2013-2014. MoEML Research Fellow, 2013. Kim McLean-Fiander comes to
Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of
Thomas Dabbs is a MoEML contributor.
Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC). Martin ported the MOL project from its original PHP incarnation to a pure eXist database implementation in the fall of 2011. Since then, he has been lead programmer on the project and has also been responsible for maintaining the project schemas. He was a co-applicant on MoEML’s 2012 SSHRC Insight Grant.
Writer and Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Father of
Bishop of Worcester
Bishop of Rochester
Martyrologist. Author of
Printer and historian.
King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine
Historian and author of
Bishop of Winchester
Archbishop of Canterbury
Sixth Earl of Leicester. Led a rebellion against
Bishop of London
Bishop of London
Bishop of Exeter
Bishop of Worcester
Bishop of Salisbury
Archbishop of Canterbury
Bishop of Bath and Wells
Bishop of St. Asaph
German professor of theology, priest, author, and composer. Key figure of the Protestant Reformation.
Protestant reformer.
Painter.
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The Paul’s Cross outdoor preaching station is located in Paul’s Cross Churchyard on the northeast side of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
The name Paul’s Cross is drawn from the name of the cathedral precinct it is located in. The
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
can be reckoned among the most influential of all public venues in early modern period(Kirby 1). In
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
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
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).
In the late fifteenth century the distressed Paul’s Cross was rebuilt under the auspices of 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
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
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, times of great sickness
when so many die together
(Latimer 276). On a strikingly personal note, 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,
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
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 (a more reasonable crowd of half that size
it would approximate roughly 3% of London’s population at certain high-profile preaching events (
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