He said fairly publicly, repeatedly, that he doesn't think there's only one way to God. I think we should also remember that the pulpit is a mouthpiece for political views as well. It's a civic place particularly at St Paul's Cathedral and it pulls across the great outdoor pulpit. He was trying to steer between Catholicism and Puritanism - somewhere in the middle was a very old church of wealth. But what is a great irony, of course, because in Dun's composition of his sermons, he draws on a lot of commentary from Jesuit commentators.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Donne (1573-1631), known now as one of England’s finest poets of love and notable in his own time as an astonishing preacher. He was born a Catholic in a Protestant country and, when he married Anne More without her father's knowledge, Donne lost his job in the government circle and fell into a poverty that only ended once he became a priest in the Church of England. As Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, his sermons were celebrated, perhaps none more than his final one in 1631 when he was plainly in his dying days, as if preaching at his own funeral.
The image above is from a miniature in the Royal Collection and was painted in 1616 by Isaac Oliver (1565-1617)
With
Mary Ann Lund
Associate Professor in Renaissance English Literature at the University of Leicester
Sue Wiseman
Professor of Seventeenth Century Literature at Birkbeck, University of London
And
Hugh Adlington
Professor of English Literature at the University of Birmingham