The Virtual John Donne Project uses digital modeling technology to to enable users to explore the lived religion of England in the early seventeenth century. This site provides quick access to visual and acoustic recreations of worship services and preaching inside St Paul’s Cathedral and in Paul’s Churchyard, as well as inside Trinity Chapel at Lincoln’s Inn, while John Donne was Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral.
Our goal is to recreate worship services in the specific settings of their original performance so they may be experienced as they unfold in real time. To the vast majority of the English the reformed Church of England was defined by the occasions of corporate, liturgical, and sacramental worship they participated in and were formed by. These services brought the private events of their lives — from birth to marriage to death — into the realm of public life.