Carnivalesque 44
Right Honourable and Noble Senatours,
I here present you with a Catalogue, or Black Bill of the Errours, Heresies, Blasphemies and Practices of the early modern Bloggers of this time, broached and acted within these two last months in the Blogosphere: I much fear lest the subject matter of this Catalogue may prove unto England (unlesse some speedy and effectual course be taken to prevent it) like the Bill of Divorce given to Israel.
Now the Errours, Heresies, Blasphemies in this Catalogue particularised, may be referred to six heads or sorts of Bloggers, 1. Sailors and Explorers, 2. Precursors, 3. Writers, 4. Readers, 5. Soldiers, 6. Past-times.
Sailors and explorers
There is one Rachel Leow, who preaches both in Cambridge and New-England. On her going to New-England, she hath preached about the Carta Marina, a 1539 chart created by the Swedish priest Olaus Magnaus.
Meanwhile there is one new Blogger at Chronologi Citationes, whose Sermon on the early Stuart navy hath attracted much comment.
Precursors
There is one Blogger, called only Vic, who comes out of Jane Austen’s World, who has lately printed a Discourse on advice columns and agony aunts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
There is one Holly Tucker, who dwells at Wonders and Marvels. Very Erroneous, Strange Doctrines are vented there continually. The latest Preaching is of early midwifery.
There is a Blogger who lives in a place of Sunlit Water, who hath preached the heretical doctrine of a missing day in sixteenth-century Europe, eliminated by a Papal Bull.
Writers
There is in the Dutch Republic one Kristine Steenbergh, who hath given publick Lectures on Shakespeare biography and cultural history.
There is another Blogger, one Morgan Pitelka, who preaches about the creation of the soul in pre-modern Japan.
There is a third, named Jem Webster, who dwells on a Gaudy Gilded Stage, and talks of the eighteenth-century actor and writer Thomas Holcroft.
Readers
There is in New-England one Sarah Werner, who hath been publishing Scandalous and Malignant Bookes. Most recent are three posts about a book originally owned by Frances Wolfreston, and what the marginalia can tell us about her and subsequent owners.
There is also in New-England another Scandalous preacher named Whitney Anne Trettien, who hath preached on the links between the book and the body. This heresy has been repeated by Kristine Steenbergh, in a Sermon on the body in the library.
I have been informed for certain that she hath also been speaking ungodly lectures about the potential pitfalls of digital history for early modern scholars.
Soldiers
There is one Edward Vallance, a most Radical preacher, who hath preached about the upstart soldier and sectary Oliver Cromwell. He has gathered a host of sermons about Old Noll, in what the heretics are now calling a Carnivale of Blogs.
Past-times
There is a noted Blogger, one Roy Booth, whose Lectures are now replaced by Sermons about training parrots to perform music in eighteenth-century England.
Cardinal Wolsey, who I presumeth still dwells at Hampton Court, has taken as his subject historical re-enactors, reviewing Tim Moore’s book I Believe In Yesterday.
There is a collection of Scandalous preachers, who come together at Blogging the Renaissance. I hath heard reports of a most malignant Sermon on Robert Dover and the Cotswold Games, early modern England’s equivalent to the Olympics.
FINIS
With apologies to Thomas Edwards, who must be rolling in his grave as you read this. For more on Edwards and Gangraena, see:
- Wikipedia
- Internet Archive
- Ann Hughes’s wonderful Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (most of which can be read online at Google Books)
Thanks to everyone who sent in nominations. Carnivalesque 45 – an ancient/medieval edition – will be up in November at The Cranky Professor.
Mercurius Politicus 