2 Introduction
INTRODUCTION
Here, too, Julian reinforces the teaching of this revelation on contemplative life and prayer. Hers is a spirituality of consolation: periods of dryness or desolation are not meant to be prolonged. The prayer of petition for union is readily heard, if we are prepared to vse the condition of a chylde (605.45). Our mourning and weeping (plainly, she was thinking of the Salve Regina) will be quickly answered by a mother's ruth and pytte (607.54). Again, her devotion is rooted in her understanding of Christ in his self-identification with his Church:
... he wylle J>at we take vs myghtly to the feyth of holy chyrch, and fynd there oure deerworthy mother in solas and trew vnderstandyng with all J>e blessyd comonn (607.57; and see 607.57, 59, notes).
There is great difference, in devotional tone and temper, between Julian, who can see how in the motherhood of Jesus the unity of the whole
Church is necessarily preserved, so that she can draw the conclusion And therfore a suer thyng it is, a good and a gracious to wylle mekly and myghtly be fastenyd and onyd to oure moder holy church, that is Crist
Jhesu (607.61), and the language, say, of Aelred of Rievaulx, when he writes That a man may not succumb to carnal concupiscence, let him turn his whole affection to the attraction of the Lord's flesh'.300 (Aelred is, of course, writing here for beginners. There is much in common between his allegorical vision of Christ in 'Adam's tunic' — we must remember how greatly daring he was to use what Talbot has called the 'fatal word',301 in an age still scandalized by Peter Abelard's unacceptable solutions to the problems of the Hypostatic Union, whereas in Julian's time the controversy had become ancient history, so that she could safely write about the servant's kyrtell which is Adam's flesh — as he draws out the contemplative meaning of 'the Word was made flesh', and Julian's account of the parable of the lord and his servant.) Even as she writes of Jesus as 'nurse' and 'mother', notions which had joined the 'main stream of popular piety' more than a century before,302 she is not reflecting, as that piety did, merely imaginative meditation about the Son's human nature; her thoughts on the topic show us that it had been granted to her to penetrate the mystery of the triune God in prolonged contemplation.
300 A. Squire: Aelred of Rievaulx, 47, quoting the Speculum caritatis.
301 C. H. Talbot: Sermones inediti, 22.
302 A. Squire: Aelred of Rievaulx, 47.
IX. 16 REVELATION XIV
In chapter 62, as she draws to the end of her final redaction of Revelation XIV, Julian returns, in a highly figured summary, to the three chief lessons of the parable. First, the servant was shown for Adam in his falling, to make there by to be vnderstonde how god beholdyth alle manne and his fallyng (522.102); secondly, the servant was shown for God's Son, with his power, wisdom and goodness (cf. 534.230, 537.254256); and thirdly it was shown that Jesus is our keeper in our time of falling (547.11 e.s.). This summary reflection leads into another of wider scope. Behind the parable of the lord and the servant is the revelation of the being and working of God, one and three, the concept of all creation as emanation from and return to the divine being, processus — reditus, firmly based on Scripture, and the reditus is perceived as salvation through grace:
And alle kyndes that he hath made to fiowe out of hym tp werke his wylle, it shulde be restoryd and brought agayne in to hym by saluacion of man throw the werkyng of grace (611.15).
Here she sees, it would seem, through the eyes of William of St. Thierry (himself indebted to Gregory of Nyssa) in his De natura corporis et animae.
All created things find their integration in the creature man, whose royalty is a participation in the sovereign being of God: 'Omnipotentis enim naturae imaginem fieri, quid est alius quam continuo regalem conditam fuisse naturam?'303 This man is, of course, Christ who is also
God; to him we (that is, the Church in the anagogical sense) are all fastened by nature and grace: we be all bounde to god for kynd, and we be bounde to god for grace (612.22). This is the quality and extent of his motherhood; all is known in him, and he in us. It is one of Julian's extraordinary gifts that she is able to take up the phrase yv£>& aeavtov, with all its mediaeval philosophical and theological implications, and express it in devotional language.
Julian had written early in the showing:
Prayer onyth the soule to god, for though the soule be evyr lyke to god in kynde and in substannce restoryd by grace, it is ofte vnlike in condescion by synne of mannes perty (475.2).
Now in the last chapter, 63, she returns to the point of union and disunion, with a variation on the words she has used in chapter 59 to describe goodness (with mercy and grace) and wickedness as ad303 PL 180 717, and seeJ.-M. Dechanet: Aux sources de la spiritualite de Guillaume de
Saint-Thierry, 28.
INTRODUCTION
versaries. Here the antagonists are kynd (which is all good andfeyer in it selfe — 614.3) and synne, Kynd here stands for alle kyndes that he hath made to flowe out of hym to werke his wylle (611.15), and grace again is the restorative, now seen also as destructive of all that prevents the reditus, the return to God. She seems to be making the point that sin is not merely transgression of a divine commandment; its malice consists in its being against human nature:
For it (sin) is contraryous to our feyer kynde; for as verely as synne is vnclene, as trewly synne is vnkynde (615.15).
But it is the loving soul that will see this malice; and it will tend to be overcome by its burden. Again Julian moves with dexterity from what appears to be abstract theological speculation into 'Franciscan' devotional language as she counsels us to have recourse in such a dilemma to oure derewurthy mother, and he shall all besprynkyl vs in his precious blode, and make oure soule full softe and fulle mylde (615.20).
Alternation between meditative reflection and devotion is the pattern of this chapter, in a last recapitulation of the motherhood in its
Trinitarian relations and its Christological operation which is followed by a pictorial image of this theological statement: the chief virtue of a child is true trust, which is the golden mean between despair and presumption:
... kyndly the chylde dyspeyreth nott of the moders loue, kyndely the chylde presumyth nott of it selfe (617.38).
The chapter ends with the anagogical contemplation of this child with its parents in eternity:
And than shalle J>e blysse of oure moderheed in Crist be new to begynne in the joyes of oure fader god, whych new begynnyng shall last, without end new begynnyng (618.47).
17 Revelation XV At the end of her account of this fifteenth showing in her short text,
Julian had written And here was ane ende of alle pat oure lorde schewed me that daye (265.59). In this long text she is more exact in her recollection, telling us of the length of time which the showings occupied and when they began and ended:
Of whych xv shewynges |je furst beganne erly in J>e mornynge, aboute the oure of iiij, and it lastyd shewyng by processe, fulle feyer and soberly, eche folowyng other, tylle it was none of $e day or paste (631.37).
IX. 17 REVELATION XV
The statement is not without its psychological significance. Though she knew that she was the object of a direct supernatural intervention (as has been noticed, she offers us objective evidence for her statement that her sickness had brought her to the point of death, and tells us that she suddenly felt as hole ... as ever I was befor — 292.36; cf. 291.34, 292.35 notes, and Introduction, supra, IX 2, 'Criteria of Analysis'), it cannot be doubted that twelve hours of intense concentration, coupled with the alternation of spiritual consolation and desolation, culminating in the mental perplexity which accompanied the showing of the parable, must have greatly taxed her mentally and physically. All this appears to be part of pe woo that is here (619.6) to which she alludes at the beginning of this revelation. It is noteworthy, too, that when she reports the locution which is the substance of the long text,
Sodeynly them shake be taken from all thy payne, from alle thy sycknesse, from alle thy dyseses and fro alle thy woo ... (620.14), there is the phrase from alle thy sycknesse which is not found in the corresponding short text (cf. 263.10).
Her situation at this moment was very much that of Gregory the Great, as he describes it at the beginning of his Dialogues,304 where he admits that he awaits his death with longing, as a blessed release which would deliver him from the pains of this exile and admit him to the joys for which he was created. This is the 'wound of desire' which characterizes the whole of Gregory's spiritual theology, the same wound for which Julian had in the past prayed with such fervour. The locution, which is an answer to her present prayer in which she experiences once again the mingling of joy and woe, is heavy with Scriptural allusions.
The most significant among them is perhaps the implied reference to the vision of heaven in the Apocalypse, God's dwelling among men, when there will be no more weeping nor mourning. This is also the text which she seems to have had in mind as the account of the revelation begins and she writes of the 'new beginning without end'.
The preponderant influence of Gregory through the tradition is evident in her reflection on this locution, although the form in which she couches it, the ratiocinatio, has become typically her own, as she draws out the quality of the patience which must be a part of the affective and effective desire for God. It is Gregory who teaches that 'if desire for God is ardent, it is also patient. It grows under the trial of time. One must learn to wait for God in order to love him more, and to take ad304 Umberto Moricca: Gregorii Magni dialogi libri IV, 14-15-
INTRODUCTION
vantage of the passage of time to become ever more open to his infinite plenitude'.305 Leclercq has observed of Gregory: 'Everyone in fact had read him and lived by him'.306 It is highly probable that this is true of Julian. But one would not wish to adduce this passage as evidence of that, or say more than that the lines which follow the locution,
And also god wylle that whyle the soule is in the body, it seeme to it selfe }>at it is evyr at |>e poynte to be takyn (622.27), are in themselves evidence that Julian had read the Cloud-author's Epistle of Prayer, which offers precisely the same counsel.307
Thus far in this revelation (619.5-622.30) there has been almost verbatim agreement with the short text (263.1-264.25). Now, however,
Julian adds a short parabolic picture, which, though it is an exemplum in the strict sense, is introduced by the rubric And in thys tyme I sawe
(622.31). In other words, this belongs to the objective content of the revelations, so that, once again, the question arises, why was it suppressed in the short text? Several reasons suggest themselves. Firstly, this vision of a body whych ... shewde heuy and feerfulle and with oute shape and forme, as it were a swylge stynkyng myrre forces Julian out of her normal delicacy and restraint, as she describes the miseries of the flesh (see
622.31 note). Secondly, her feeling about this is much the same as when in Revelation II she described the dreadful face of the dying Christ.
There she had written:
This secounde shewyng was so lowe and so little and so symple that my spirytes were in great traveyle in the beholdyng, mornyng, dredfull and longyng; for I was some tyme in a feer wheder it was a shewyng or none
(327.32, and see note).
Considering this similar showing 'in bodily likeness', she may have wondered whether it was merely the product of an imagination affected by pain, sickness and desolation. Thirdly, as with her great exemplum, the parable of the lord and the servant, she may have been unsure, at the time when she wrote down the short text, of the techniques of Scriptural interpretation which she had needed another twenty years to master. So now she explains the details of this exemplum, and how it helps, by its sharpness of contraries, to lead to that contemplation of the evangelical promise of 'the glory that is to come', which reveals
305 Moralia XXVI 34, PL 76 386, quoted by J. Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 32.
306 The Love of Learning, 32.
307 Hodgson, Deonise, 48.
IX. 17 REVELATION XV
once more the Lord's merciful compassion, in his preservation of us and his promises to us (cf. 624.40-42). De Lubac has written of the rupture which Dionysian influence tended to introduce into the tradition, a dissociation between the invisibilia and thefutura, between the life of unitive prayer and meditation of the Scriptures. Julian, who here shows her familiarity with Dionysian terminology —
It is goddys wylle that we sett l>e poynt of oure thought in this blesfulle beholdyng (624.49) — at the same time rejects the Dionysian anagogy which wishes to leave behind the order of visions, preferring that of 'pure contemplation'.
For her, the grace of contemplation is related firmly to her vision. So she continues:
... as oftyme as we may and as long tyme kepe vs ther in with his grace, for this is a blesfulle contemplacion to the soule that is ladde of god, and fulle moch to his wurschyppe for the tyme J>at it lastyth (625.50).
The similarity between the bodily sight in this revelation and the face of the dying Christ which reminded her of the Vernicle in Rome in Revelation II (cf. 327.36) has already been remarked. Nor does the resemblance cease there. She had also written in the long text of the two workynges that may be seen in this vision. That one is sekyng; the other is beholdyng (334.83), and of this seeking she had added:
It is gods wil that we haue iij thynges in our sekyng of his 3efte. The furst is that we seke wyllfully and besyly withou3te slowth, as it may be with his grace, gladly and merely without vnresonable hevynesse and veyne sorow; the seconde Jjat we abyde hym stedfastely for his loue, withouste gronyng and stryvyng agaynst hym, in to our lyvys ende, for it shall last but a whyle. The iij is that we truste in hym myghtely, of fulle and tru feyth, for it is his wille J>at we know that he shall aper sodenly and blyssydefully to all his lovers (334.87).
When rightly understood, during the time that God wishes us to wait for his coming in hope, this is as good as contemplating. This teaching is now confirmed, in the long-text version of Revelation XV, by the locution and the vision of the example which accompanies it. The trust in his promise is the spiritual energy of contemplative reflection on the evangelical word: 'I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he be dead, will live' (John 11.25), particularly in those times when, as the great spiritual masters of the West consistently teach