2 Introduction
INTRODUCTION
(cf. 625.53 note), contemplative vision fades and the human frame feels the weight of its weakness:
... whan we falle agayne to oure selfe by hevynes and gostely blynesse and felynge of paynes gostely and bodely by oure fragylyte (625.53).
Her reflection continues in chapter 65 with a conclusion which is implicit in her aphorism 'Seeking is as good as beholding':
For he wylle we kepe this trustly, Jjat we be as seker in hope of the blysse of hevyn whyle we are here as we shalle be in suerte when we ar there
(627.4).
Her use of the words here and there is a clear indication of how much at home she feels herself in the contemplative tradition of the twelfth century.308 Chatillon cites as a key text for the understanding of this vocabulary a passage from Caesarius of Aries, probably in Julian's time attributed to Augustine:309 'Salvator noster ... ascendit in caelum; non ergo turbemur in terra; ibi sit mens, et hie erit quies. Ascendamus cum
Christo interim in corde. Cum dies eius promissus advenerit, sequemur et corpore'. All the other texts used by Chatillon to demonstrate the meaning of 'here' and 'there' and 'meanwhile', Augustine, Alcuin (via
Thomas Aquinas), Bernard and William of St. Thierry, stress the various points made by Julian: joy in the Holy Spirit as one is mindful of the blessings to come, and the tolerance of present tribulation (Bernard); the persevering prayer of petition (Alcuin); the steadfast belief in the divine promise through the illumination of the Word (William); and, finally, the reference by Augustine to the Mystical Body': 'Membra mea estote, si ascendere vultis in caelum ... In hoc ergo ipsi interim roboremur, in hoc votis omnibus aestuemus'.310 It is this last point which Julian develops in her own way, by referring back to her final statement on God's motherhood, on the contemplative disposition of a child of God, that total trust of which the elements are love, joy, reverence and humility.
And euer the more likyng and joye bat we take in this sekernesse, with reverence and meeknes, the better lyketh him. For as it was shewed, this reverence bat I meane is a holy curtious drede of our lorde to which meekenes is knyt; and that is that a creatur see be lord meruelous great and her selfe mervelous litle (628.7).
301 F. Chatillon: 'Hie, ibi, interim'.
309 Ibid. 194, note i.
310 Sermo 263, De ascensione Domini, PL 38 1210.
IX. 17 REVELATION XV
Then, once again, she sees Mary as the type of the perfect contemplative and the image of the Church at prayer (cf. 628.7 note). Here Julian returns to the spiritual tropology initiated by Gregory: 'Omnipotens
Deus, qui nee in magnis tenditur nee in minimis angustatur, sic de tota simul Ecclesia loquitur, ac si de una anima loquatur; Et saepe quod ab eo de una anima dicitur, nil obstat si de tota simul Ecclesia intellegatur'.311 Thus she writes:
It is gods wyll that I see my selfe as much bound to hym in loue as if he had done for me all bat he hath done; and thus shuld everie sowle thynke in regard of his louer. That is to say, the charyte of god makyth in vs such a vnitie that when it is truly seen, no man can parte them selfe from other.
And thus ought ech sowle to thynke bat god hath done for hym all that he hath done (628.16).
All the revelations, like the whole of Scripture, shewith he to make vs to loue him, and likyn him (629.22). Again, it is Gregory who writes: 'mira atque ineffabilis sacri eloquii virtus agnoscitur, cum superno amore legends animus penetratur'.312
Now Julian, as she comes to the end of Revelation XV in the long text, is looking both ahead and backwards to her experiential fear of the evil one, and she is desirous, for her readers' sake as well as for her own, to place the matter in perspective. There is only one true fear, as she will tell us later, and that is the 'lovely dread' which dwells in brotherhood with the divine love poured out in our hearts (cf. 673.20 e.s.) At this point, it may be, she wishes to prepare her readers to share her own fearful experience. So she uses all her rhetorical skill to make the point that all diabolic fears have a hallucinatory and transitory quality about them, no matter how much they may move us and confuse us. They are a part of our normal experience of inadequacy and suffering, which as soone as we may, passe we lightly over (630.29).
So Julian concludes the first part of her showings; the first fifteen revelations divide themselves, both chronologically and psychologically, from the last vision. And here she reminds us that the assurance which God's gift of hope confers is very much hers, as she reflects at this point upon the contemplative graces of more than twenty years (cf. 631.3537).
J" In Hiezechihelem II, 2, ed. M. Adriaen, 235.
312 Ibid. I 7, ed. Adriaen, 88.
INTRODUCTION
18 Revelation XVI Julian had written that the first fifteen revelations lasted until after three o'clock in the afternoon, tylle it was none of pe day or paste (631.39 and note). Now, at the beginning of chapter 66, she tells us that the goode lorde shewde the xvj revelation on the nyght folowyng (632.3). She is careful to explain what happened in the interval. As soon as the long showings came to an end, although she felt certain that she was not now going to die, she was afflicted with a deep spiritual desolation, and also with the return of the physical pain which had accompanied her sickness, and with its concomitant mental anguish:
And sodeynly all my body was fulfyllyd with sycknes lyke as it was before, and I was as baryn and as drye as I had nevyr had comfort but lytylle, and as a wrech mornyd hevyly for feelyng of my bodely paynes, and for fautyng of comforte gostly and bodely (632.11).
Whilst she was in this state, she was visited by a religious. Whether he was a priest or not she does not say; but the conjecture that he was would be fair, because, it seems, she thought of making her confession to him when she saw his reactions to her brief allusion to the imaginative vision of the bleeding crucifix, which vision, as she had just told him, she was at that moment inclined to consider a hallucination:
And when I saw that he toke it so sadly and with so grete reverence, I waxsyd full grettly ashamyd, and wolde a bene shryvyn (633.22).
At all events, he must have been in her confidence for her to have mentioned the matter to him at all. His immediate tendency to take seriously her remark that it had seemed to her that the crucifix was covered in blood is also an indication that he knew her well and was prepared to give credence to what she might say: he waxsed all sad, and merveylyd ... and I thought: this man takyth sadly the lest worde that I myght sey, that sawe no more ttierof(6^. 19). Nor was he inclined to believe her when she said that she had lost her wits — he lugh lowde and enterlye (266.8).
This disbelief overcame her only momentarily; almost as soon as she had spoken, she repented it, and she calls it a grett synne and a grett vnkyndnesse, even whilst she accepts the cause, forfoly offelyng of a lytylle bodely payne (634.31). After this visit, the experience of contrition which followed it and her continuing prayer of trust in God's mercy, she fell asleep as night came on, which, at that time of the year, would be between nine and ten o'clock. In chapter 67 she relates how, during that night, she had the nightmare about the devil being on the point of choking her. This visitation is followed by grete reste and peas', and whilst
IX. 18 REVELATION XVI
she was lying there, without sycknesse of body or drede of conscience (638.25), the sixteenth revelation began, as she describes in chapter 68. As the revelation develops, it moves through all Julian's various classification of her sights, and it is succeeded by 'a showing of words'. At the end, when she 'saw no more', she experienced a further assault of diabolic temptation, which she endured for what was left of the night:
And thus he occupyed me alle that nyght and on J>e morow tylle it was about pryme day (651.11 and note).
Julian had pondered well her own experiences, and the insights they had given her into the problems of demonology. She used her own knowledge of diabolic temptation and illusion, and her theological reflections on their impact upon the Christian life, particularly upon the life of contemplation, not only as a link between the first fifteen revelations and the last great showing on the mystery of divine indwelling. Margery Kempe reports Julian as saying:
God and |>e deuyl ben euyrmor contraryows, and J>ei xal neuyr dwellyn to gedyr in on place, and J>e devyl hath no powyr in a mannys sowle.313
This is an obvious allusion to the sixteenth revelation, and to her subsequent contemplative insights. Here, in her narrative of the revelation, she employs those insights to bring together all the words which God had formed in her understanding (cf. 666.3). The locutions had been reported in a variety of forms and rhetorical figures, but the most direct and manifest seem to be on the two occasions when the Lord
'formed' words in her soul (cf. 227.27-28, 346.6-7) or 'showed words'
(cf. 269.23-24, 645.53-55), 'without voice and without opening of lips'.
Thus she writes, at the end of the sixteenth revelation:
And ryght as in the furst worde J>at oure good lorde shewde, menyng his blessyd passyon: Here with is the fende ovyr come, ryght so he seyde in the last worde with full tru feytfullnes, menyng vs alle: Thou shah not be ovyr come (646.60; and cf. 269.29).
Julian was aware, just as was Margery Kempe in her own illiterate and enthusiastic fashion, that the evil spirit can occasion imaginary fantasies which might be mistaken for imaginative visions; but she had also grasped, whilst she was recording in her short text these two primary locutions to form an indusio, the teaching, specifically Johannine, on the victory achieved by the sacrifice of the Passion in the struggle against 313 Book of Margery Kempe, 43.
INTRODUCTION
the principalities and powers of evil. 'Now', says Christ as he goes to the Passion, 'the prince of the world will be cast out' (John 12.31). 'Now the prince of this world comes ...' (ibid. 14.30). 'In this world you will have distress, but have confidence; I have overcome the world' (ibid.
16.33). This is Julian's precise point as she reflects on her final locution:
He seyde nott: Thou shalt not be trobelyd, thou shall not be traveyled, thou shalle not be dyssesyd; but he seyde: Thou shalt not be ovyrcom
(647.68).
As Heinrich Schlier has noted,314 the terms Victory' and 'overcome' are peculiar to the Johannine writings, and are employed in three ways.
First, the overcoming of the world of which Jesus speaks at the Last Supper is a victory over death, darkness and distress (0At0i£, pressura, which Julian properly renders as 'trybulacyons', 647.67), of which the fiend, the enemy, is the prince. Julian knows from John's Gospel, as well as from her revelations, thatjesus by his Passion has overcome this
'world' (346.7). Despite her lack of personal experience of so much that is evil, she is well aware through the writings of Paul and John that this struggle is of cosmic proportions. In the light of the parable of the lord and the servant she can write of this conflict, which she sees as the primaeval opposition, older even than Adam's sin:
For wyckydnesse hath ben sufferyd to ryse contrary to J>at goodnesse; and the goodnesse of mercy and grace contraryed agaynst that wyckydnesse and turnyd all to goodnesse and wurshyppe to all that shall be savyd
(589-5)She knows that from now until the end of time, God's chosen will have to endure the consequences of the struggle:
Holy chyrch shalle be shakyd in sorow and anguyssch and trybulacion in this worlde as men shakyth a cloth in the wynde (408.6); and she also knows that it will be only at the parousia that the victory will be final and all-embracing, when we shalle alle sey with one voyce: Lorde, blessyd mott thou be, for it is thus, it is wele (729.14).
Secondly,John teaches that those who have true faith in Jesus as Son of God participate in the power of his Passion, and overcome the world: This is the victory which overcomes the world, our faith' (I John
314 Principalities and Powers, 63 note 58.
IX. 18 REVELATION XVI
5.4). For Julian, those who will be saved possess this faith; they are born of God, who is their Father and mother:
Oure feyth is a lyght, kyndly comyng of oure endlesse day that is oure fader, god, in whych lyght oure moder, Cryst, and oure good lorde the holy gost ledyth vs in this passyng lyfe (723.14).
This is why Julian anguishes so greatly over her momentary lapse of faith, and treats it with such seriousness. It is on the 'children of unbelief that the 'prince of the power of the air' is at work (cf. Ephesians
2.2).
Finally, the verb 'to overcome' has a special application to those who overcome the devil by the supreme witness of their lives (cf. Apocalypse
5.5, 7.14, 12.11). So Julian, who had asked for the grace of suffering with the dying Christ and of a sickness which might seem as if mortal, desired to share this combat — 'all the dreads and temptations of fiends' (287.27).
In Revelation V, Julian had written that she was shown the devil's total impotence (cf. 346.8-347.10). Her language there, in chapter 13, resembles that of Paul in his letter to the Colossians: '... despoiling the principalities and powers, he has confidently exposed them in open showing, triumphing over them in himself (that is, on the Cross —
Colossians 2.15). And when she writes of the devil's malice and wrath and sore travail (347.10-18), she has in mind John's imagery: '... the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has but a short time' (Apocalypse 12.12). Schlier, as he reflects on New
Testament teaching about the 'principalities and powers', writes of the sacrifices of Christians for the sake of truth, justice and peace, that struggle against the forces of evil which John calls 'the patience of the saints', who *keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus' in the conflict with the great beast (Apocalypse 14.9-12). He goes on: The enemy is powerless against this sacrifice ... He is passed over in this sacrifice as though he no longer existed, and indeed, for the man who accepts sacrifice, he is no more'.315 That appears to be exactly the point which Julian makes, as she reflects on this topic in chapter 33: I vndentond pat alle the creatures pat be of the devylles condiscion ... ther is no more mencyon made of them before god and alle his holyn then of the devylle (428.11).
Such souls may just as well not exist.
Thus, Julian's belief in the devil is firmly rooted in Scripture; and 315 Ibid., 62.
INTRODUCTION
when she insists that temptations against faith (cf. 637.20-638.23) and hope (cf. 687.30-688.41) come from him, she is merely echoing Paul and John in their cosmic visions of the struggle between death and life, light and darkness, good and evil. As Lefevre has pointed out, Hebrews
2.9-14 provides us with a summary of New Testament teaching on Christ's victory over the devil: The power of evil is powerlessness. All the devil can do is only trickery and mirage ... death and sin are annihilated by the Cross and the Resurrection. It was by the grace of God that Jesus submitted himself to death; by his death he brought the devil to nothing'.316 This is Julian's theological position, too, in all that she has to say of 'the fiend'. It was Christians of her calibre that Paul had in mind when he wrote: 'I would have you be wise in good and simple in evil; and may the God of peace speedily crush Satan under your feet'
(Romans 16.19-20).
As she describes her nightmare (635.2-638.26) and the temptations which she endured after the sixteenth revelation (648.2-651.13), Julian can still betray the agitation which she then suffered; but, apart from this, all that she writes on the theology of the devil and temptation is a model of restraint, and is of impeccable orthodoxy. She shows none of the self-consciousness, so common in her time, of those who, considering themselves chosen souls, expect frequently to be harrassed by the fiend. There is nothing in Julian's experience which remotely resembles, for example, the pretensions of Mechtild of Hackborn, when she writes:
The feende trauaylede fulle ofte this holye maydene ande goddes seruaunte with temptaciouns als he is wonte to greve ande noye alle thoo that be deuowte to God. Ande £>an itt felle on a daye that God hadde gyffen here plenteuoslye his grace, ande that same daye when oure lorde hadde doone a grete benefete to here sowle, J>an comme preuelye the feende to tempte here. Ande he putte in here herte suche a drede of hevynesse, and putte in here mynde to thenke that the gyfte whilke sche hadd come nought of god.317
On the contrary Julian is concerned to minimize the role of demonic activity in the life of the contemplative. It is remarkable that although the revelations show her so concerned with the enigma of sin and damnation, no mention is made of the sin of the angels. She can personify
316 'Angel or Monster?' in Satan, ed. B. de Jesus-Marie, 66.
317 Halligan, 345.
IX. 18 REVELATION XVI
wrath (505.9) without mentioning, as does the C/owd-author,318 the evil spirit; and in her account of Adam's fall, in the parable (521.100), and of the Harrowing of Hell (534.224), there is no mention of Satan or of devils, whereas in every other contemporary treatment of these themes they are the protagonists. Though in times of sickness or depression fear of the fiend seems to have been prominent in her consciousness
(e.g. 291.31, 370.4, 687.29 e.s.), that fear is elsewhere merely catalogued with all the other 'doubtful dreads' (629.23 e.s.); and she can write with serenity that fear of ghostly enemies is profitable, along with dread of pain and bodily death, as a point of entry into contrition: for man that is harde of slepe of synne, he is nott able for Jje tyme to receyue J)e softe comforte of the holy goste, tylle he hayth vndertaken this drede of payne of bodely deth and of gostly enemys. And this drede steryth vs to seke comfort and mercy of god; and thus this drede helpyth vs as an entre, and abyllyth vs to haue contrycion by £>e blessydfulle touchyng of J>e holy gost (671.7).
And in the long text she is content to suppress the short text's gloss on II Corinthians 11, when she had preferred her advice on dealing with 'doubtful dread', presumably because she herself had never seen the devil so disguised (cf. 276.16 e.s. and notes).
In their annotation to chapter 67, the editors have canvassed the opinion that, writing some twenty years after the event, Julian may in the long text have embellished out of her imagination the 'ugly showing made while she slept'. The short text merely has:
And in my slepe atte the begynnynge me thought the fende sette hym in my throte and walde hafe strangelede me, botte he myght nought. Than I woke out of my slepe (267.26).
It is possible, for example, that the detail, 'his hair was as red as rust', originates in the remark in the Ancrene Riwle about 'the devil called
Rufinus who is Belial's brother';319 in the contemporary Seinte Marherete the demon in the likeness of a black man calls his dead brother
'Rufines', but refuses to tell his own name.320 Given, however,Julian's scrupulous care to record as exactly as she can all that she saw and no more, and what seems to be her gift of total recall, we may think it more probable that as she ponders again with compunction her lack of "* A Treatise of Discretion of Spirits; Hodgson, Deonise, 83.
319 Salu, 108.
320 Ed. Mack, 30.
INTRODUCTION
faith, the dream, the consequence of her unbelief, returns to her in all its vividness. What she is describing is, according to Heinrich Spitta, in his work Die Schlafund Tmumzustdnde der menschlichen Seele, the classic demon of nightmare:
The apparition of a kobold or a monster, squatting on the chest of the sleeper, moving nearer and nearer to his throat and threatening to strangle him ... It is so clear and so evident that it causes great anguish ...
The sleeper tries in vain to defend himself against this horrible apparition; he tries to cry out, but his voice is strangled in his throat, his limbs seem paralyzed, sweat pours from him, his hands are like ice. Suddenly he comes to with a cry, to fall back again on his bed, exhausted, but with the relieved feeling that he has just escaped from imminent danger of death.321
Whatever naivety we may see in the faith of Julian and her contemporaries in devils (we may recall, for example, the C/owd-author's credence in the stories of the 'disciples of necromancy'),322 for the Catholic 'the existence of angels cannot be disputed in view of the conciliar declarations';323 for instance, it was defined at Lateran IV that 'diabolus enim et alii daemones a Deo quidem natura creati sunt boni, sed ipsi per se facti sunt mali. Homo vero diaboli suggestione peccavit'.324 For the rest, Julian shows herself to be singularly free from what Francois Vandenbroucke has called the 'fievre satanique' from which he sees the Western Church suffering from c. 1300 for the next four centuries.32S He singles out a description by Suso, in the Horologium sapientiae, of hell and the activities there of the demons, and comments:
'One perceives here a very lively imagination, and one may ask how much of this is true vision, how much pure literary fiction'.326
The additions in the long text — she there calls the dream a 'showing', and writes that in all this tyme / trustyd to be savyd and kepte by pe mercy of god. And owe curtesse lorde gaue me grace to wake(6$6.12)— indicate that Julian ascribes a preternatural quality to the nightmare. It is in the order of an imaginative vision. So is the smoke, accompanied by the great heat and the foul stench, perceptible to her alone, just as the 121 Qjioted by Yolande Jacobi in 'Dream Demons', Satan, 268. When she wrote, Dr.
Jacobi was assistant to C. G. Jung.
522 Hodgson, Cloud, 103.
323 K. Rahner, 'Angel', in Sacramentum mundi I, 32.
324 Denzinger-Schonmetzer, 800.
325 'Demon en Occident', DSp 3 225 e.s.
324 Ibid., 226.
IX. 18 REVELATION XVI
'bodily talking' (648.4) is in the order of a locution. In describing all this, Julian has confidence that her readers will believe that her senses were physically assailed by these phenomena, which were part of the diabolical temptation:
The stynch was so vyle and so paynfulle, and bodely heet also dredfull and traveylous (648.3).
The vividness of her description of the *bodily talking' — ... semyng to me as they scornyd byddyng of bedys whych are seyde boystosly with moch faylyng devout intendyng and wyse diligence, the whych we owe to god in oure prayer (648.8) — makes the same demands on our credence. Here againjulian is not simply relying on the canonized fables known to monastic tradition (abundant examples of which are cited in the annotations to these chapters); she can appeal to reputable theological opinion, such as that of Thomas
Aquinas, who cites Augustine as answering with a vigorous affirmative his question: 'Utrum daemones possint homines seducere per aliqua miracula?'327 Aquinas observes: '... daemon potest mutare phantasiam hominis, et etiam sensus corporeos, ut aliquid videatur aliter quam sit'; and he goes on to refer to De civitate Dei, and to Augustine's opinion there that the devil '... phantasticum hominis, quod etiam in cogitando, sive somniando per rerum innumerabilium genera variatur, velut corporatum in alicuius animalis effigie sensibus apparet alienis ... quia daemon, qui in phantasia unius hominis format aliquam speciem, ipse etiam potest similem speciem alterius sensibus offerre'.328
When, however, all this is said, we must recall that in the more informed of the popular devotions of her time, it was held that such demonic illusions, whether of the night-time or of the noon-day devil, were temptations primarily against faith, and called for the sort of prayers which are found, for example, in MS Ushaw 10:
Ex omnipotencia patris:
O swytte blyssyd lade, as thow arte moste myght nexte god in hewyn and in herthe, I beseke J>e so, be present and defende me fro my gostely enmys in the howre of my dethe.
Aue Maria.
Ex sapiencia filij:
O glorius lady, as thow arte moste wytty nexte god in hewyn and in her327 Summa theologiae 1.114.4.
"' Ibid., ad 2.
INTRODUCTION
the, I beseke J>e so, be present and kype me in J>e ryghte fathe of holy kyrke in Jie owre of my dethe.
Aue Maria.
And in MS Cambridge University Library Ff.6.8, on an originally blank leaf there is an addition in a hand of the fifteenth century:
O thou blessyd virgyne Mary, Cristes moder dere and glor(i)ose mediatrice betwyx god and man, ... atte that tyme that my syght shal be agrevyd with the blak howuyng of deth, that I shal not mowe meve my tonge to clepe after helpe, and my harte quake for drede of enemyes of helle, and al my body ful of angwysshe of peyne of deth ... vouchesafe
J>an to have pety on me, with praying to thi son that my acousours have noo powere ouer me ...
So it was that Julian's experience of diabolic temptations had its desired effect: she was able to place all her revelations upon the ground of her faith:
But wytt it now, that is to seye, now thou seest it. This was seyde nott onely for the same tyme, but also to sett there vpon the grounde of my feyth, where he seyeth anone folowyng: But take it, and lerne it, and kepe thee ther in, and comfort the ther with, and trust therto, and thou shall nott be ovyr com (653.36).
Revelation XVI,Julian tells us, was condusyon and confirmation to all the xv (632.4); and it is also the climax of what may be called her mystical experience. She indicates clearly that it was shewde ... by gostely syghte
(666.2) when she writes: And then oure good lorde opynnyd my gostely eye and shewde me my soule ... (639.2). At first glance the revelation appears to be simply a bodily sight, an imaginative vision of Jesus dressed as a king and seated on a throne, closely resembling (as Molinari has noted329)
Teresa of Avila's celebrated meditation on the mystery of the divine indwelling:
And now let us imagine that we have within us a palace of priceless worth, built entirely of gold and precious stones — a palace, in short, fit for so great a Lord. Imagine that it is partly your doing that this palace should be what it is — and this is really true, for there is no building so beautiful as a soul that is pure and full of virtues, and, the greater these virtues are, the more brilliantly do the stones shine. Imagine that within the palace dwells this great king, who has vouchsafed to become your father, and who is seated upon a throne of supreme price, namely, your heart.330
329 Julian of Norwich, 162.
130 Ibid., citing the E. Allison Peers translation.
IX. 18 REVELATION XVI
Julian, however, is trying to find words and images to express what for her is ineffable: And for the gostely syghte, I haue seyde some dele, but I may nevyrJulie telle it (666.6). So she uses the phrase 'as it were', and writes of Jesus as clothyd solemply in wurschyppes (640.8). She also substitutes in the long text / vnderstode pat it is a wurschypfulle cytte for the short text's me thought it was a wirschipfulle cite (268.4), presumably in order to make it plain that she is seeking to describe the special insight into the mystery which was granted to her.
In chapter 52 of the long text she has already neatly summarized, as she began to draw out her Trinitarian reflections concerning the allegory of the lord and the servant, what her revelations and the faith of the Church (Scripture and tradition) teach her about the divine presence, that relationship which must find its human expression in unitive prayer:
... he wyll we trust that he is lastyngly with vs, and that in thre manner.
He is with vs in hevyn, very man in his owne person, vs vpdrawyng; and that was shewd in be gostely thyrst. And he is with vs in erth, vs ledyng; and that was shewde in be thyrde, wher I saw god in a poynt. And he is with vs in oure soule, endlesly wonnyng, rewlyng and gemyng vs; and that was shewde in the xvi, as I shalle sey (549.34).
It is with this third mode of presence that this final revelation concerns itself. It is indeed a 'conclusion and confirmation', in that it depends for its understanding upon her careful and informed elaboration of the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation. It has recently been observed that the richest context for theological reflection on the mystery of the indwelling is the doctrine of the Trinity, particularly with regard to 'missions' and 'processions':
The Trinitarian context ... illumines better the mystery of man in his immediate relation with the Trinitarian mystery, and it makes more evident the unity of our theological knowledge, as it refers spiritual theology to the revelation of the deepest mystery of God."'
This is why the sixteenth revelation, in the long text, changes character dramatically, to show Julian contemplating the delight of the Trinity as the Word is made flesh, its homelyest home and ... endlesse dwellyng
(641.16). This is surely an echo of Wisdom's words: I was with him forming all things, and was delighted every day ... and my delights were to be with the children of men' (Proverbs 8.30-31). In this, Julian writes, he shewde the lykyng that he hath of the makyng ofmannes soule; for as wele as the 331 Roberto Moretti: 'Inhabitation', DSp 7 1745.
INTRODUCTION
fader myght make a creature, and as wele as pe son myght make a creature, so wele wolde pe holy gost that mannys soule were made, and so it was done
(641.17). Plainly, just as the prologue to John's gospel is full of allusion to the Genesis creation-narrative, so here Julian, treating ostensibly of the creation on the sixth day of human kind, is developing and relating three themes: man's creation, God's delight in his creation, and the Trinity's delight in the Incarnation, as she alludes to Genesis, to the sapiential books and to the Johannine prologue. And so it was done ... et factum est ita ... et verbum carofactum est. This echo presentsjulian with an indusio which is deeply theological. As Moretti has written: The Biblical vision of the relations between God and man finds, in the Trinitarian indwelling, its most perfect expression'.332 The same author remarks that in the New Testament, the mystery of divine indwelling is presented under two distinct though closely-connected aspects: one is static, the other dynamic. In the static aspect, the mystery is considered as union, in the fulfilment of knowledge and love. But it is also viewed dynamically; there is concern for the process of sanctification, of assimilation, where the action of the Holy Spirit receives close attention. In the short text, Julian seems to have restricted herself to the first consideration, again presumably because the activity of the Trinity, and especially the appropriation to the Holy Spirit of the 'working of grace', only became clear to her through her later understanding of the parable. Now, as well as expressing her delight in all that is static in the revelation — And this was a singulere ioye and a blis to me that I sawe hym sitte, for the behaldynge of this sittynge schewed to me sikernes of his endelesse dwellynge (268.19) — she is able to use an exemplum which was provided at the time of the showing, but was suppressed in the short text. It belongs to the group which seem to derive from the great exemplum of the lord and the servant (cf. e.g. 313.35 e.s., and note), but it serves her here to recall the activity of the Holy Spirit (the 'lordship') in detaching us from the things of earth and bringing us up above. And he wylle that oure hartes be myghtly reysed aboue pe depnesse ofpe erth and alle veyne sorowes, and enjoye in hym (644.43).
The context also of the mirror-image:
And the saule that thus behaldys, it makys it lyke to hym that is behaldene, and anes in reste and in pees (268.17),
132 Ibid. 1744.
IX. 18 REVELATION XVI
is significantly different in the long text. There, Julian adds by hys grace (645.50). The vision has become anagogical contemplation in the technical sense. Though the text which appears to be foremost in Julian's mind is Pauline (cf. 644.49 note), she is contemplating, under the impulse of the grace she receives as she recalls the showing, the otium quietis which is the bliss of heaven,333 and in this experiencing a foretaste of God's own endless joy: 'We shall be like to him, because we shall see him as he is' (I John 3.2). The grace is also one of enlightenment: he 3awe me knowyng truly £at it was he J>at shewde me alle before (645-51); whereas in the short text she had simply written / knewe sothfastly
(268.21).
Thus the locution which follows becomes a confirmation of all that faith and grace have taught her in the twenty years which she devoted to the love of learning, and to the desire for that God who has revealed himself in Christ to all will be saved, saved from all harm and for all bliss, through Christ:
... ryght so he seyde in the last worde with full tru feytfullnes, menyng vs alle: Thou shall not be ovyr come (646.62).
The short text at this point shows her still in the sort of trouble and distress which, the locution had indicated, might be her lot:
He sayde nought: I>ou salle not be tempestyd, thowe schalle not be trauayled, J>ou schalle not be desesed; bot he sayde: t>ou schalle noust be ouercommen (269.37).
There, she apostrophized sin because, like the C/owd-author, she was experiencing the sorrow of the contemplative,334 the heavy burden of herself, but also because the revelations are at an end, and she has not yet seen this truth in the, whych arte my god, my maker in whom I desyer to se alle truth (512.27). So she had ended the apostrophe with an ejaculatory prayer against the evil one: God schelde vs alle fra the. Amen pour charyte
(271.35). Now her life of prayer and study enables her to see matters quite differently. She is well content that the sight should have passed; faith has sought and brought understanding of the living truth: whych blessyd shewyng thefeyth kepyth with his owne good wylle and his grace (652.18).
So, in the long text, she recalls that with the final locution which 333 J. Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 84.
334 Hodgson, Cloud, 157.
INTRODUCTION
followed her lapse of faith and her first temptations, he shewde hyt all ageene within my soule, with more fullehed with the blessyd lyght of his precyous loue (653.31). God in his mystery has become the light of her life; and this is faith, as she will write when she brings her book to a close:
Oure feyth is a lyght, kyndly comyng of oure endlesse day that is oure fader, god, in whych lyght oure moder, Cryst, and oure good lorde the holy gost ledyth vs in this passyng lyfe (723.14).
In chapter 71 of the long text, Julian continues her protracted reflection on the final locution, and on what the saying teaches about the relationship between the showings and the faith. By faith, here she means both the power of understanding God's word, the spiritualis intelligentia, and all that the word expresses, the mysteries of the faith.
The power is weakened and the content of faith is obscured, not only because we see now only 'through a glass in a dark manner ... in part'
(I Corinthians 13.12, a text which is clearly in her mind), but also by the hostile presence of evil in ourselves and in our world, oure gostely enemys within and withoute 654.7). She goes on to add:
And there fore oure precyous louer helpyth vs with goostely lyghte and tru techyng on dyuerse manner within and withoute, where by bat we may know hym (654.7).
The ghostly enemies at least include wicked spirits (she seems indifferent about the use of singular or plural when she refers to the devil) but she has nothing to say of the activities of good spirits; as she will tell us later, / beleue and vnderstonde the mynystradon of holy angelys, as clarkes telle, but it was not shewde me (710. 22). / it am, the trynyte (590.16). / it am that holy chyrch prechyth the and techyth the (597.34). So it is that for the contemplative, faith and vision reflect one another, until faith receives the reward it deserves (cf. 656.16).
This working of faith and grace she now connects with God's three ways of looking at his creature, always 'wij> his mercyful i3e'.335 So she can chart the progress of her revelations: of the incarnate Word suffering and dying (Revelations I, II, V and VIII); of the lord, the Father, looking on the servant, the Son, in his falling, in which servant are all who will be saved — pitte and ruth and compassion, and this shewyth he to all his loiters with sekernesse of kepyng that hath nede to his mercy (657.28); and, finally, the joyful face of Christ glorified, which she first saw in the ninth revelation (cf. 382.3 e.s.), but which was oftenest shewyd and longeste
335 Ibid., 132, where the author is quoting Gregory; ibid., 204.
IX. 18 REVELATION XVI
contynuyd (657.31). The first two in this life are comyn cherys (657.36); the third is known only through infused contemplative grace, by gracyous toucchyng ofswete lyghtenyng of goostly lyfe (658.38). This is what the Cloudauthor calls the higher part of contemplative life,"6 and what Hilton means by 'reforming in feeling'.
In chapter 72, having concluded her reflections on the final locution, Julian appears to be reviewing what she had written at this point in the short text, the apostrophe to sin. She now feels able to confront the problem:
... in what manner that I saw synne deedly in the creatures whych shulde nott dye for synne, but lyue in the joye of god with oute ende (659.2).
She is of course in the first place writing of the penitent-saints whom she had seen in the great revelation of the divine compassion (chapter 38), of all the predestined to salvation, and also of those who are his lovers and trust in his promises. With regard to these last, she speaks in the language of William of St. Thierry and the author of the Cloud (cf.
660.15 note), and she has in mind the text The souls of the just are in the hands of the Lord, and the torments of death will not touch them ... they seemed to die ... but they are at peace' (Wisdom 3.1-4); and this is the same oppositio contrariorum which she herself is using throughout this chapter, as she again joins together the two elements of compunction, sorrow and hatred for sin, and an increasing desire for God:
... evyr the more clerly that the soule seeyth the blyssefull chere by grace of lovyng, the mor it longyth to se it in fulhed, that is to sey in his owne lycknes ... for in bat precious syght ther may no woo abyde nor wele feyle
(661.23).
She seems to be praying even as she writes; the sorrow which flows from the contemplation of her own sinfulness, as that which prevents her from seeing God's face, becomes the spiritual weeping which is the gift of tears:
... yett shuld we nevyr leue mornyng ne of gostely wepyng, bat is to sey of paynfull longyng, tyll whan we se verely the feyer blessedfull chere of oure maker (664.45).
And she refers again to Revelation XII, when she saw him in his glory, and was first taught that our soul will never be at peace or rest until it
"• ibid. 31.
INTRODUCTION
comes into him who is the fulness of joy and true life (cf. 402.3 e.s.). So at last she feels that the question she posed in chapter 50 has been placed in its entire context and thoroughly elucidated, not only in the showings and all that she has been taught, but also through her continuing prayer of faith.
One task remains for her to perform. She must try in a practical way to set out more fully all that she has learned through her visions for the sake of those pat for goddes loue hate synne and dyspose them to do goddes wylle
(667.15). In the short text at this point, she had first given a general description of wretchedness, observing that, if someone deliberately choose what is not good, he is loving sin — if, indeed, there be any such
— and his pain is greater than all pains. She seems in fact to be addressing those who love God and hate sin, but yet sometimes fall into the sin they hate by frelty or vnkynnynge (272.52). In the long text she firmly abides by what God had shown her of sins in particular; vnpacyens or slouth ... dispeyer or doughtfulle drede (666.9) are both part of the frailty and ignorance referred to in the short text. As she had written in chapter 27, God had given her a general sight of sin, 'all that is not good' (cf. 405.15 e.s) She repeats this here in chapter 73, and adds: but in specyall he shewde noone but theyse ij (666.12) — that is, impatience and despair. Hence it is of these alone that she wishes to write. Impatience or 'grudging' is for her serious, because she sees it as a refusal to imitate
Christ's own meekness and patience in his Passion, a rejection of his invitation, 'Come to me, all you who labour ...' (Matthew 11.28-29). The doughtfulle drede she makes oblique allusion to, in the Trinitarian context which she has pondered so long and so lovingly. 'Doubtful dread' is to refuse to share the life of the Trinity in faith, to refuse the Spirit who is the love of the Father for the Son, of the Son for the Father: that he is alle loue and will do alle, there we fayle (668.30; in the short text, this observation is not made to apply universally, but only to 'many men and women' — 274.19. Now her experience has shown her that she is one with all her brethren in their sin). 'Doubtful dread' is for her synonymous with the guilt she feels because we holde nott cure promise nor kepe oure clennes that cure lorde settyth vs in, but fall oftymes in to so moche wrechydnes that shame it is to say it
(668.35)Guilt for past sins and infidelities can often masquerade under the colour of humility, a fault to which religious are traditionally prone.
There is only one true humility, and that is God's own, revealed in the incarnate Word, who comes to us out of love, to share with us his
IX. 18 REVELATION XVI
Father's strength and his own wisdom:
For loue makyth myght and wysdom fulle meke to vs; for ryght as by J>e curtesy of god he forgetyth oure synne after the tyme that we repent vs, so wylle he that we forgett oure synne as agaynst oure vnskylfulle hevynesse and oure doughtfulle dredes (670.44).
So Julian offers us her own exegesis of Paul's oppositiones in I Corinthians i. 25: 'For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men'.
Chapter 74, which treats of love and fear, shows us two different aspects of Julian's ability as theologian. First she deliberately uses
Scriptural and patristic allusions (cf. the annotations to pp. 671-672) to draw the necessary distinctions between the schoolmen's timor initialis, timor serviliter servilis and timor filialis or castus. But then, basing her contemplative thought on I John 4.18, and, perhaps, on Augustine's exegesis (cf. 673.17 note), she uses all her rhetorical and lyrical skills to describe how reverent dread can come to mean that experiential knowledge of the triune God granted to his chosen as a foretaste of the vision of the blessed, that special awareness of the fulfilment, now in time, of the promise of divine indwelling: 'We shall come to him and make our home with him' (John 14.21, 23). She is also, however, describing the process of contemplative purification which demands a progressive self-discernment. In the short text she had written in general terms of the gift of discretion which enables us to unmask the devil, when he disguises himself as an angel of light (cf. 277.26 e.s.).
Here in the long text she has recourse to the child-mother image, but with all the weight of her teaching on God's motherhood to give it substance, as she appeals to God's everlasting goodness, and uses the Scriptural verb 'cleave' (675.38). It is Paul who sums up the whole tradition of God's loving commerce with his people as he writes: Qui adhaeret domino unus spiritus est (I Corinthians 6.17). And Julian's chapter ends with a refutation, beautifully composed and expressed, of Peter
Abelard's condemned proposition, 'Quod etiam castus timor excludatur a futura vita':337
For the kynde propyrte of drede whych we haue in this lyfe by the gracious werkyng of the holy gost, the same shall be in hevyn afore god, gentylle, curteyse, fulle swete; and thus we shalle in loue be homely and nere to god, and we in drede be gentylle and curtesse to god, and both in one manner, lyke evyn (676.43).
337 Denzinger-Schonmetzer, 735.
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 75 is perhaps Julian's most polished and precise theological reflection on the Trinitarian economy. It is based on Revelation IX, the intellectual vision which follows the locution Arte thou well apayd that I sufferydfor thee?, when she tells us that my vnderstandyng was leftyd vppe in to hevyn (382.2, 7 e.s.), and on Revelation XIII, the long text's development of the theme of Christ's 'ghostly thirst1 (417.2 e.s.) This is monastic theology at its finest, and it has much in common with the principle which, Dumontier writes, 'furnishes the supreme explanation of the spirituality of St. Bernard, Dens movet desiderans*. The God who is desired and loved becomes a God of desire and love'.338 Bernard uses the same Trinitarian and image-theology; and he too is writing of those who will be saved: 'Bernard affirms that the Father expects us and desires us ... there is the same desire in the Son, avid for us, rejoicing in us, eager for the day when he will enjoy the reward of his labours'.339
This is precisely Julian's anagogy (cf. 679.11-680.15). Bernard adds:
'Expectat nos et spiritus sanctus: caritas et benignitas in qua praedestinati sumus ab aeterno; nee dubium quin praedestinationem suam velit impleri'. 34° This is in a sermon for Christmas Eve; and Julian, too, is recalling what she has been shown of the mother of the Christchild in the time of his conception (483.5 e.s.), the quality of her reverent dread in a contemplation which anticipates the awesome joy of the Beatific Vision: it longyth to be worthy maieste of god thus to be beholde of his creatures dredfully tremelyng and quakyng, for moch more of joy endlesly merveylyng of the greatnesse of god, be maker, and of the lest parte of alle £at is made. For be beholdyng of this makyth creature mervelous meke and mylde (681.31).
In chapter 76Julian proceeds to argue that this reverent dread is the antithesis, the oppositio of sin. She recalls that God has shown her only those souls who dread him — our Lady and the procession of penitentsaints, those who truly have received the teaching of the Holy Spirit; for it is the Lord's promise that he will teach us all truth (John 16.13). Such souls hate sin more than any pain (the ratio), for they contemplate pe kyndnesse of oure lorde Jhesu (the rationis confirmatio). It is thus God's will that we pray to him for this teaching, in the consummate unitive prayer of petition for the Spirit of God (cf. Luke 11.13); and this is the exornatio of her argument (684.8-685.11).
331 Saint Bernard et la Bible, 39.
139 Ibid., 40.
340 Ibid., 40 and note 4.
IX. 18 REVELATION XVI
What follows, on how we are to behave when confronted with other men's sins (685.13 e.s.), seems to reflect Julian's experience as a spiritual director. Again, she constructs an argumentatio perfectissima (cf.
685.13 note). She implies in her exornatio that the counsellor is expected to share the fatherhood (and motherhood) of God. He must look upon the feyerhede of god, and behold his neighbour's sin with contrycion with him, with compassion on hym, and with holy desyer to god for hym (686.17).
These are the very gifts for which she had asked, before the revelations began, the three wounds of true contrition, kind compassion and earnest longing for God. Now she sees them as the components of reverent dread; and we see another measure of her spiritual stature. She knows how the graces she had asked for and had been given can be used, not merely for her own profit, but for the pastoral comforting and strengthening of other souls.
In the final section of this chapter, she rehearses how the contemplative penitent should exercise his faith, hope and charity when he is assailed by doubtful dread. Again, this is written in her capacity as a spiritual counsellor; she is speaking of and to J)e creatures bat haue gevyn them selfe to serve oure lorde with inwarde beholdyng of his blessydfulle goodnesse (688.36).
At the end of chapter 76, Julian has insisted that doubtful dread is a diabolic temptation; and this leads her to reflect again on what she has seen of the enmyte of the fende (689.2) in chapter 77. As she writes of the devil's envy, she shares the cosmic view of the Book of Wisdom: the devil represents all wicked spirits and all wickedness, all that is corrupt in human nature. They did not know the secrets of God, nor did they hope for the wages of jus dee, nor did they esteem the honour of holy souls. For God created man incorruptible, and he made him to the image of his own likeness; but by the envy of the devil death came into the world' (Wisdom 2.22-24). Julian then proceeds to a contemplative review of the relationship of the Trinity, the natura creatrix, with fallen man (690.14-15). Just as in the previous chapter she imagined the tempter speaking (687.32 e.s.), so here she has the penitent resisting the temptation, not with the neurotic self-castigation which we find, for example, in the contemporary English version of the Stimulus amoris,341 but with a gentle, peaceful contemplation in faith of Father, Son and Spirit:
J41 Kirchberger, Goad, 56-57.
INTRODUCTION
I knowe wele I haue deservyde payne; but oure lorde is almyghty, and may ponyssch me myghtly, and he is all wysdom, and can ponyssch me wysely, and he is alle goodnesse, and lovyth me tendyrly. And in this beholdyng it is spedfulle to vs to abyde (690.16; and cf. ibid. note).
Again she stresses that sorrow for sin, which is the beginning of reverent dread, is not only a compound of the gifts of the fear of the Lord and of hope, as the Cloud-author notes in his Epistle of Prayer,342 but is based on the humility which she perceived so clearly in the soul of Mary at prayer. These are the virtues which constitute interior penance, the signs of the change of heart which will be the sinner's response to God's desire for him. Julian saw no other:
For that pennance that man takyth vppon hym selfe, it was nott shewde me; that is to sey, it was not shewde me specyfyed. But this was shewde specially and hyghly and with fulle louely chere, that we shulde mekely and pacyently bere and suffer Jjat pennawnce Jjat god hym selfe gevyth vs, with mynde of hys blessyd passion (693.26).
Some commentators have seen, in Julian's statement, This place is pry son, this lyfe is pennannce(6g^.^i),3. veiled allusion to her state as an anchoress, especially as the sentiment closely resembles what the author of the Ancrene Riwle writes to his anchoresses. The present editors have offered arguments for another opinion.343 In any case,Julian is here writing in the much wider context of the infinite depths of the Lord's compassion, as he turns his face to the world of men which is in process of being purified and enlightened by the Spirit, Treed', as Paul writes, 'from the servitude of corruption to the freedom of the glory of God's sons'
(Romans 8.21), the bliss of heaven. Julian reminds us here that the first revelations of Christ's sufferings made her 'choose him mightily for her heaven' (cf. 694.47 and note); and she has come to know by experience that though he is souereyn homelyhed (695.54), he is also mighty and dreadful, for all creation has its being in him.
For vs behovyth verely to see pat of oure selfe we are ryght nought but synne and wrechydnesse (698.18). As Julian continues, in these concluding chapters, to set down the practical spiritual counsel which is the authentic fruit of her intellectual visions of the Trinity and the incarnate Word, it has become her special concern to expose the heresy of Pelagianism and its watered-down version, semi-Pelagianism, which has always contaminated the atmosphere of consecrated life in the Church. The dif342 Reynolds, xxxiii.
343 'Editing Julian of Norwich', 417-420.
IX. 18 REVELATION XVI
ference between those who are hyghest and nerest with god and the leste and the lowest qftho that shalle be savyd (699.27), among whom she is happy to count herself in hope, is simply a matter of degree. All sinfulness is unlikeness to God; and in the clarity of contemplative vision, the distinctions of the moral theologians between sin and imperfection, between mortal and venial sin cease to have relevance. 1 am needy and poor' (Psalm 69.6). Julian echoes the Psalmist's sentiment, and applies it to all God's children, even those who appear to be specially favoured with contemplative graces:
And herof was I lerned, though J>at we be hyely lyftyd in to contemplacyon by the specialle gyfte of oure lorde, yett vs behovyth nedys therwith to haue knowyng and syght of oure synne and of oure febylnes; for without this knowyng we may not haue trew meknesse, and withoutyn this we may nott be safe (700.34).
Another such contemplative was St. Bernard, as he pondered, with Julian, the oppositio contrariorum he found within himself 'by the sweet gracious light of God himself:
Through his good gift, then, I can sometimes think about my soul. And it seems to me that I find there two contraries. If I examine it truly, as it is in itself and with all that comes from itself, I can see nothing more than this. Is it necessary to make a catalogue of its miseries, except to say that it is weighed down with sins, shrouded in darkness ...?344
But for him, as for Julian, 'there is another opinion of us hidden in the heart of God':
It is thus that you console, in your fatherly love, him whom you have brought to nothing by your truth, that he might grow to greatness in your heart who was so straitly confined in his own.345
Bernard is speaking of his God, who is the head of his body, the Church.
Julian, too, who begins chapter 78 with yet another rendering of the Trinitarian formula, ex Patre, per Filium, in Sancto Spiritu (cf. 696.6697.14 and note), knows that it is only of his gift that we see the whole truth of our need of him in our nothingness:
Than are we moch bounde to god, that he wylle hym selfe for loue shewe it vs, in tyme of mercy and of grace (701.41).
'For whatever things were written were written for our teaching, that through patience and the comfort of the Scriptures we might have
144 In dedicatione ecdesiae V; Sermones, ed. J. Leclercq and H. M. Rochais, 2 390.
345 Ibid., 391.
INTRODUCTION
hope' (Romans 15.4). As Julian in chapter 79 looks back over the long and complex revelation on the divine compassion (cf. 404.2 e.s.), she finds that it simply reinforces her knowledge of the sacred Scriptures, which she summarizes in one sentence which alludes to Paul:
Alle this homely shewynge of oure curteyse lorde, it is a louely lesson and a swete gracious techyng of hym selfe, in comforthyng of oure soule
(704.22).
She had at first agonized, when lie shewde me pat I shulde synne (702.2), over the prospect of her personal infidelity, rather as did the apostles
('Is it I, Lord?') when the Lord said 'One of you is about to betray me'
(Matthew 26.21). But now she has lived with and through her faithlessness, to find that God outreaches her with the endleshed and the vnchanngeabylte of his loue, and also his grete goodnesse and his gracious inwardely kepyng (703.16). This is a hope and a comfort which she shares with all God's people, his Church for which hope is the persevering response to his quality of mercy (cf. 702.5-703.8). To this hope belongs the patience which we need to have with ourselves in times of darkness, whan we be fallen by freelte or blyndnes (705.31); and Julian shows how patient endurance, commended and cultivated in the spirituality of the Old Testament as well as the New,346 is related to the Lord's own patient longing for us, as was shown in the allegory of the lord and the servant. She had written that to her the servant's most astonishing pain was that he leye aloone (516.28). But even so she saw the lord abydyng the servant whom he sent oute (531.202), which she now knows to be the 'office and the working' here on earth (706.41) of the Spirit of both the Father and the Son.
In chapter 80, as she continues to instruct us on how God sees us and keeps us in our sinful human condition, Julian turns her attention to what she has learned about ministry, the ministry of Christ in his
Church, that ministry which for us (and this applies with especial force to the contemplative) is primarily the worship of the Father by Christ in us, and their gaining for us, with the Spirit, our salvation. All the powers and gifts which we have received are designed to achieve this purpose, which is the reason for our existence; and they reflect the Trinitarian mystery:
By thre thynges man stondyth in this lyfe, by whych iij god is wurschyppyd and we be sped, kepte and savyd (707.2).
346 C. Spicq: 'Hupomone — Patientia'.
IX. 18 REVELATION XVI
Through our higher powers of knowing and loving, through the teaching which Christ imparts in his word to the Church, through the sacramental presence of his Spirit, we are drawn into collaboration with God himself; 'we are God's fellow-workers' (I Corinthians 3.9).
But, as always for Julian, it is God revealed in Christ who is the object of this contemplation, without which there is no ministry for his followers:
Crist aloone dyd alle the grett werkes that longyth to oure saluation, and none but he; and ryghte so he aloone doth now in the last end, that is to sey he dwellyth here in vs, and rewlyth vs, and gemyth vs in this lyvyng, and brynggyth vs to his blesse (708.14), where that ministry will have its fulfilment. It is a service as personal as the washing of the apostles' feet (John 13.4-8): so farforth that yf ther were none such soule in erth but one, he shulle be with that alle aloone, tylle he had brought it vppe to his blesse (709.19).
As Paul writes, in the same context of Christ's indwelling, 'he loved me and delivered himself for me' (Galatians 2.20).
I beleue and vnderstonde the mynystracion of holy angelys, as clarkes telle, but it was not shewde me (710.22).
As the annotations to this passage indicate, Julian is showing a more than passing acquaintance with the body of Dionysian speculation which, by the mid-fourteenth century, was firmly entrenched in monastic theology. By far the most prolific commentator on the pseudo-Dionysian corpus, Thomas Callus (or 'Vercellensis', as he came to be known to the later mediaeval exegetes), whose habit it was to gloss the Canticle of Canticles with the teaching of Denis's Mystical
Theology, solved to his own satisfaction the problem to which Julian alludes when she writes: hym selfe is nerest and mekest, hyghest and lowest, and doyth all, and not onely alle that vs nedyth, but also he doyth alle that is wurschippefulle to oure joy in hevyn (710.23).
Christ is the one mediator, and with his Father and his Spirit 'cometh down to us to the lowest part of our need' (306.38). So Gallus writes of the hierarchies of the human mind (Julian's 'kindly reason') which Christ unifies and sanctifies, and thus he dispenses with any essential mediation through the angelic hierarchies.3*7 If we had to classify the 347 J. Walsh: Thomas Callus et 1'effort contemplatif, 20 e.s.
INTRODUCTION
totality of Julian's teaching, we should have to speak of a 'mystique de la lumiere' rather than 'de la tenebre'.348 However, we must at the same time observe the assurance with which Julian handles the key theological concept of processus — reditus (cf. e.g. 577.14 e.s.), which Aquinas made common currency in the thirteenth century, and her mastery of the influential Dionysian teaching in the Divine Names on the doctrine of appropriation (see notes to 722.2, 5, 723.8), though it must again be emphasized that she does not here reveal her sources, either directly or indirectly.
When she writes: there I sey he abydyth vs, monyng and mornyng, it menyth alle pe trew felyng pat we haue in cure selfe, in contricion and in compassion, and alle monyng and mornyng for we are nott onyd with oure lorde (710.26), she is certainly treating of the mystery of Christ glorified and yet suffering with his members, as Paul encountered him on the Damascus road (Acts 9.5); and she has already expressed this with theological competence and precision in Revelation XIII:
For as aneynst that Crist is oure hede, he is glorifyed and vnpassible; and as anenst his body, in whych alle his membris be knytt, he is nott 3ett fulle glorifyed ne all vnpassible (419.34).
Here, however, she is offering instruction for contemplative prayer, in which the soul must be prepared to move and to be moved from darkness into light, and to be exposed to the visitations of consolation and desolation, in which he is enabled to experience, in consciousness of his own sinfulness, that compassion for himself which is integral to the gift of loving sorrow, and is destined to become a sharing in the mystery of Christ's suffering compassion.
Julian concludes chapter 80 by recalling that the two particular sins which plague Christ's lovers, despair or doubtful dread, and all that is contained in the last capital sin, accidie, bruise the relationship between him and his Church, whether this concerns one soul or all souls. But she ends by stating firmly that on God's part, the covenant remains unshaken; he is everlastingly faithful:
... lastyngly he is with vs and tendyrly he excusyth vs, and evyr kepyth vs from blame in his syght (712.42).
And the compar, as is noted (712.38 note) emphasizes the Trinitarian nature of the presence. Now, in chapter 81, she reinforces this teaching
341 J. Le Maitre.J. Danielou, R. Roques: 'Contemplation', DSp 2 1830-1911.
IX. 18 REVELATION XVI
by cataloguing the various modes of this presence, with its transcendence as well as its immanence, as they were shown to her in the revelations. It has also been noted how strong is the Johannine influence in this summary (cf. 713.2 note) and the emphasis which she gives to the mode of presence which is his government and guidance of man's spirit from within:
He shewde hym dyuerse tymes reignyng, as it is a fore sayde, but pryncypally in mannes soule; he hath take there his restyng place and his wurschypfulle cytte (714.9).
Yet it is not merely the vocabulary of mediaeval courtesy which Julian is here employing. She is alluding to the Trinitarian glory which Irenaeus long ago had called 'Man fully alive',349 and of which Christ speaks at the end of his high priestly prayer after the Eucharistic supper:'... that they may see my glory which thou hast given me, because thpu hast loved me before the creation of the world... And I have made known thy name to them and shall make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them' (John 17.24, 26).
Rupert of Deutz had pointed out that the phrase 'the love with which thou hast loved me' clearly referred, for the mediaeval exegete, to 'the Holy Spirit, who is that love with which the Son loves the Father and the Father the Son. Plainly and undoubtedly, the love of the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit, so that when Christ says "that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them", it is as if he were to say "that the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, may come to them and may teach them all truth, and when he shall have entered their hearts, I too shall dwell there through faith and through that Spirit of love"'.350
Again, Julian's counsel is practical; the presence is dynamic, and demands mutuality; and the right contemplative response to it is to rejoice that the Spirit is at work in us in our penance:
For he beholdyth vs so tendyrly that he seth alle oure lyvyng here to be penannce; for kynde longyng in vs to hym is a lastyng penannce in vs, whych penannce he werkyth in vs, and mercyfully he helpyth vs to bere it
(715-17)The process is that which Paul calls being 'transformed from glory into glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord' (II Corinthians 3.18), tylle what tyme that we be fulfylled, whan we shulde haue hym to oure mede (716.24).
349 Adversus haereses, ed. Harvey, IV 7.
350 Commentariorum in Johannem XX, ed. Haacke, 710.
INTRODUCTION
The attitudes and dispositions which Julian expects from her readers, as they contemplate with her the indwelling as it has been revealed for them to her in the parable of the lord and the servant, is finely expressed here in one of the several forms of argumentation which she uses with increasing assurance to communicate our Lord's teaching in the showings. He had said to her, at the beginning of Revelation XIII,
Synne is behouely, but alle shalle be wele, and alle shalle be wele, and alle maner of thynge shalle be wele (405.13).
Now she authoritatively refers this inevitability to the contemplative's passive purification, as she makes the Lord say: but for as moch as thou lyvyst nott with out synne, therfore thou arte hevy and sorowfulle, and if thou myghtest lyue without synne, thou woldest suffer for my loue alle the woo that myght come to the, and it is soyth. But be not to moch a grevyd with synne J>at fallyth to ^e agaynste thy wylle (717.4).
She is showing, too, the nature of the movement of this unitive prayer, how the purgative quality of this mourning for our sinfulness, when informed by the virtue of discretion, leads to illumination and then to union, and that these three stages of the interior life, though distinguishable, tend to fuse:
He lovyth vs endlessly, and we synne customeably, and he shewyth it vs fulle myldely (718.11).
In reflecting that she was never shown anyone who in erth ... is contynually kepte fro fallyng (720.27), she is opposing with her sound theology the Quietism which in her day was so rife (cf. 720.27 note). Pierre
Adnes has recently written: 'Even with the saints, half-deliberated faults, spontaneous movements coming from instincts not yet sufficiently controlled, and various weaknesses often attest the persistence of an enfeebled will, the consequences of which have not yet been completely eliminated. This is why they never cease to fear, whilst still firmly hoping for their salvation'.351
This is exactly Julian's position:
For in the beholdyng of god we falle nott, and in |>e beholdyng of oure selfe we stonde nott (720.29).
She then constructs a series of oppositions, in order to illustrate how the progressive knowledge of the self in its sensuality, the lower beholdyng
351 'Impeccabilite', DSp 7 1620.
IX. 18 REVELATION XVI
(721.36), which continues to find its prototype injesus's life in the flesh, is constantly purified and enlightened by what God shows us in contemplation of our life in him, which is the hygher beholdyng (721.35). Thus the process of unitive prayer is always constant, in that it moves from the tropological to the anagogical:
But oure good lorde wylle evyr that we holde vs moch more in J>e beholdyng of the hygher, and nought leue the knowyng of the lower in to the tyme that we be brought vppe aboue (721.38).
Julian had promised to write in these closing chapters of the long text as clearly and fully as she could of the most 'glorified' (cf. 402.3) of her visions. Now she finds herself able, in these last four chapters (83-86) to offer us a summary of the thre propertees of god, in whych the strength and pe effecte of alle pe revelation stondyth (722.2). She writes too, by implication at least, of the spiritual senses with which she has been endowed in order to receive these showings. At the very beginning she had written of her desire for greater mynde andfelynge for Christ's Passion (201.6, 9), and, contemplating the first revelations, she had come to realize that she was being enabled to respond to Paul's exhortation to all Christians:
... botte ylke saule aftere the sayinge of saynte Pawle schulde feele in hym Jat in Criste Jhesu (234.25 and note).
Her syght and ... feelyng (723.11) were her continued response to the Trinitarian communication, the 'touching' of the intellectual visions which she had received. These 'touchings' she now calls lyfe, loue and lyght (722.5). They are the attributes appropriated to all the persons of the Trinity; she had regularly heard the preface of the Trinity sung in the Sunday Masses of ordinary time: 'et in personis proprietas, et in essentia unitas, et in maiestate adoretur aequalitas'. Her reason, the 'higher part' of her soul, wolde be oonyd and devyng to these attributes in oone goodnesse ... with alle pe myghtes (723.8). For this 'higher part', which the author of the Cloud, using the Dionysian terminology which Bonaventure among others had adopted, called pe souereyn poynte of pi spirit?** is the apex both of the affections and of the intelligence, so that Julian behelde with reuerent drede, and hyghly mervelyng in the syght and in feelyng of the swete accorde that oure reson is in god, vnderstandyng that it is l>e hyghest gyfte that we haue receyvyd, and it is growndyd in kynd
(723.10).
352 Privy Counselling; Hodgson, Cloud, 169.