The Virtual Paul’s Cross
Project website is now available for exploration;
go here.
The Virtual Paul's Cross Project uses visual and acoustic modeling
technology to recreate the experience of John Donne’s Paul’s Cross sermon for
November 5th, 1622. The Project is supported by a Digital
Humanities Start-Up Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The goal of this project is to integrate what we
know, or can surmise, about the look and sound of this space, destroyed by the
Great Fire of London in 1666, and about the course of activities as they
unfolded on the occasion of a Paul’s Cross sermon, so that we may experience a
major public event of early modern London as it unfolded in real time and in
the context of its original surroundings.
The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project has sought the highest
degree of accuracy in this recreation. To do so, it combines visual imagery
from the 16th and 17th centuries with measurements of
these buildings made during archaeological surveys of their foundations, still
in the ground in today’s London. The
visual presentation also integrates into the appearance of the visual model the
look of a November day in London, with overcast skies and an atmosphere thick
with smoke. The acoustic simulation
recreates the acoustic properties of Paul’s Churchyard, incorporating
information about the dispersive, absorptive or reflective qualities of the
buildings and the spaces between them.
This website allows us to explore the northeast corner of
Paul’s Churchyard, outside St Paul’s Cathedral, in London, on November 5th,
1622, and to hear John Donne’s sermon for Gunpowder Day, all two hours of it,
in the space in which Paul's Cross sermons were originally delivered and in the context of church bells and
the random ambient noises of dogs, birds, horses, and crowds of up to 5,000
people.
In keeping with the desire for authenticity, the text of
Donne’s sermon was taken from a manuscript prepared within days of the sermon’s
original delivery that contains corrections in Donne’s own handwriting. It was
recorded by a professional actor using an original pronunciation script and
interpreting contemporary accounts of Donne’s preaching style.
For John Donne's Paul's Cross sermon for November 5th, 1622
(in 15-minute segments), as heard from 2 different positions in the Churchyard,
go here.
On the website, the user can learn how the visual and
acoustic models were created and explore the political and social background of
Donne’s sermon. In addition to the complete recordings of Donne’s Gunpowder Day
sermon, one can also explore the question of audibility of the unamplified
human voice in Paul’s Churchyard by sampling excerpts from the sermon as heard
from eight different locations across the Churchyard and in the presence of four
different sizes of crowd.
For excerpts of the sermon from eight different locations
and in the presence of different sizes of crowd
go here.
The website also houses an archive of materials that
contributed to the recreation, including visual records of the buildings, high
resolution files of the manuscript and first printed versions of Donne’s sermon
for Gunpowder Day 1622, and contemporary accounts of Donne’s preaching style. In addition, the website includes an acoustic
analysis of the Churchyard, discussion of the challenges of interpreting
historic depictions of the Cathedral and its environs, and a review of the
liturgical context of outdoor preaching in the early modern age.
To see the visual model in detail on a fly around video
go here. This view is especially dramatic if viewed in HD
video and at Full Screen display.
This Project is the work of an international team of
scholars, engineers, actors, and linguists.
In addition to the Project Director, they include David Hill, Associate
Professor of Architecture at NC State University; Joshua Stephens, Jordan Grey, Chelsea Sacks,
and Craig Johnson, graduate students in architecture at NC State
University; John Schofield,
Archaeologist at St Paul’s Cathedral and author of St Paul’s Cathedral Before Wren (2011); David Crystal, linguist;
Ben Crystal, actor; Ben Markham and Matthew Azevedo, acoustic engineers with
Acentech, Inc; and members of the faculty in linguistics and their graduate
students at NC State University, especially professors Walt Wolfram, Erik
Thomas, Robin Dodsworth, and Jeff Mielke.
Wall’s team is now planning a second stage of this Project,
with the goal of completing the visual model of Paul’s Churchyard, including a
complete model of St Paul’s Cathedral as it looked in the early 1620’s, during
John Donne’s tenure as Dean of the cathedral.
This visual model will be the basis for an acoustic model of
the cathedral’s interior, especially the Choir, which will be the site for
restaging a full day of worship services, including Bible readings, prayers,
liturgies from the Book of Common Prayer, sermons, and music composed by the
professional musicians on the cathedral’s staff for performance by the
cathedral’s organist and its choir of men and boys.
They will be competing for our attention, as they did in the
1620’s, with the noise of crowds who gathered in the cathedral’s nave, known as
Paul’s Walk, to see and be seen and to exchange the latest gossip of the day.
