“Meere Strangers”

Abstract

In the shadow of the great cathedral, paper moved. It had emerged from printing presses behind shop fronts, been carried through crowded city streets, changed hands in the churchyard and great aisle, and from there returned to the streets, almost as through the church inhaled information into its precincts and then exhaled it back into the city in the form of paper and its echo, gossip. In early modern London, St. Paul’s was not just a seat of spiritual power; it was also a hub of the profane and worldly, a great emporium of science and slander, and an engine of political and intellectual ferment. No single fact illustrated this more than the sheer volume of printed materials that circulated in and out of the cathedral and the surrounding closes and yards.