2 Introduction
INTRODUCTION
ness, with what we know of her thought and doctrine from the Revelations. She told Margery 'to be obedient to the will of our Lord
God, and to carry out with all her powers whatever he might put into her soul, if it were not contrary to his glory and the profit of her fellow
Christians, for if it were it could not be the prompting of a good spirit... The Holy Spirit never inspires anything contrary to love, for if he did he would be in opposition to his own self, for he is all love'.81 In the Revelations she tells us that when she expected to die, she willingly accepted this if her life could no longer be to the glory of God (290.14); and she insists that the revelations were given to her not for her own merits but so that they might be Tor the profytte of many oder' (5220.1718).
As in the Revelations, her counselling to Margery frequently alludes to Scripture. The Spirit 'inspires a soul to perfect chastity, for chaste livers are called the temple of the Holy Spirit',82 which is quoting directly I Corinthians 6.19. The Spirit makes a soul steadfast in true faith, but 'a man who is double in soul is always unstable and unsteadfast in all his ways',83 again a direct quotation, of James 1.8. Anyone must believe firmly that the Spirit dwells in his soul who has received such 'tokens'.
Hope Allen, editing Margery's Book, pointed out how often mediaeval writers on 'discretion', 'discernment of spirits', call such manifestations of special grace signa; and Julian uses the same terminology when she writes that she was divinely assured that though her visions were transient, the increase of faith they brought would persist, outlasting any such signa, Tor he lefte with me neyther sygne ne tokyn where by I myght know it' (652.19-20).
More than this, 'when God visits a creature with tears of contrition, devotion or compassion, the creature must and should believe that the Holy Spirit is in his soul'. It can hardly be fortuitous that Margery's reporting here of Julian's words, '... be grace bat God put in hir sowle of compunccyon, contricyon, swetnesse and deuocyn, compassyon wyth holy meditacyon .. ,'84 repeats so closely the language of the first chapter of The Chastising of God's Children (where the author interpolates into his translation of Suso's Horologium sapientiae the following phrases from Bonaventure's Evangelii sancti Lucae expositio in cap. x): 'E>anne comen so many mery meditacions, wib plente of teeris: teeris of contricion, teeris
81 Ibid., 42.
82 Ibid., 42, 278.
83 Ibid., 43, 279.
84 Ibid., 43, 279.
VI JULIAN: BIOGRAPHICAL DATA
of compunccion, teeris of compassion, teris of loue and deuocion .. .',85 when the present writers have in several places (e.g. 321.2, 343.10,
346.6, 353.30) indicated the probability that Julian, before she came to write her second version, had become familiar with the Chastising.
Equally close is the parallel between Julian's reported counsel, that the devil has no power over a man's soul, for Holy Writ says that the soul of a just man is the throne of God, and the sentence in the English prose Qui habitat (sometimes, though with small probability, ascribed to Walter Hilton): 'For J>e wyse mon seij) pat pe soule of a righwys mon is heuene and J)e sege of vr lord'.86 Though Hope Allen suggested that there is no Scriptural authority for Julian's citation, it is probably a conflation of Proverbs 25.5: Take away wickedness from the face of the king, and his throne shall be established with justice', Ezechiel 37.27-28;
'And my tabernacle shall be with them, and I will be their God ... when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them forever', II Corinthians 6.16:
'For you are the temple of the living God', and Apocalypse 21.3:
'Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them'.
Again, in several places (e.g. 411.31-32, 425.43-44) it has been suggested that Julian may have known the English prose Qyi habitat and Bonum est, and Margery's reporting seems to confirm this. The Revelations offer further evidence that when Julian uses Scripture she relies largely on her memory. In chapter 15 of the long text, on one of the occasions when she quotes the actual words of the New Testament, she is not at all concerned with chapter and verse. The citation from St. Paul, 'Nothynge shalle departe me fro the charyte of Crist/ is a conflation of Romans
8.35 and 39; and when she says with St. Peter, 'Lorde, saue me' (Matthew 14.30), she adds 'I peryssch', the cry of the apostles in the storm
(Matthew 8.25). In one place, Margery too suggests that Julian had in mind this same narrative, where she recounts that she said: 'He Jjat is euyr dowtyng is lyke to £>e flood of J>e see, £e whech is mevyd and born abowte wyth pe wynd, and J>at man is not lyche to receyuen J>e syftys of God'.87 The analogy is common and ancient. In The Book of Privy Counselling and An Epistle of Discretion of Stirrings69 the author of The Cloud of Unknowing compares the soul and its trials with a boat on a stormy sea; and far more illuminating than Owst's somewhat banal account of the 85 Chastising, 100, 265.
86 Wallner, 37.
87 The Book of Margery Kempe, 42.
88 Hodgson, Cloud, 167-168.
89 Hodgson, Deonise, 64.
INTRODUCTION
simile's English history is the series of patristic authorities, cited by Cornelius a Lapide, who make the stormy sea of Matthew 8.23 e.s. signify temptation, doubt and fears, Christ asleep in the boat the soul which relies solely on God.
In her interview with Margery,Julian gives other interesting evidence of her knowledge of such spiritual classics. 'St. Paul says that the Spirit asks for us with indescribable lamentations and weepings' — this is
Romans 8.26 — 'and if we respond to this our tears cannot be numbered ... No evil spirit can give these tokens, for Jerome says that tears torment the devil more than the pains of hell'. Here Hope Allen argued with great ingenuity that we have a conflation (probably Julian's own) of two sources cited in the English Speculum Christiani: 'Jerome: Prayers please God but tears constrain him ... Bernard: Tears of a sinner torment the devil more than every kind of torture'.90
Julian's closing words are of encouragement and optimism. '"I pray that God may grant you perseverance. Put all your trust in God and do not fear what the world may say, for the more sorrow and shame and reproof that you receive in the world" (plainly, Julian here is recalling such Gospel texts as Luke 6.22-23, and John 15.18) "the more is your merit in the sight of God. You need patience, for in that you will preserve your soul" (which is Luke 21.19)'.
Only a perversely captious critic would deny authenticity to this account. It is filled, like all her Book, with Margery's morbid selfengrossment; it is evident that the many days of their 'holy dalliance' were occupied in talk about Margery and her favours, not about Juliaji. But this itself shows precisely what the Revelations tell us, that Julian regarded herself as no more than a humble, anonymous, unworthy recipient of unmerited favours. The story reveals all Margery's knowing judgment of others; she had recourse to Julian as an acknowledged expert (and here we have the testimony of Thomas
Emund's will that as early as 1404 her fame was spreading); and she can hardly have been disappointed. She shows us Julian as skilled in Scripture, in spiritual theology and in the literature of 'discernment'. Faced with Margery's babblings, Julian reiterates some of her cardinal teachings, the impotence of the devil, the indwelling in man of his loving Lord; and she returns the classic answer of probatio: 'By your fruits they will know you'. She tells Margery what the other, indeed, seems to have learned well: 'Do you want to know what is our Lord's meaning? Love is his meaning'.
90 The Book of Margery Kernpe, 43, 279.
VII NORWICH IN JULIAN'S AGE
VII NORWICH IN JULIAN'S AGE
In Julian's day, Norwich was second only to London in population and wealth, and, of the provincial centres, only Lincoln possibly had more parish churches.91 There were three colleges of secular priests, St.
Mary in the Fields, only one hundred yards from St. Peter Mancroft, owners of the hospital's advowson, whose parishioners were to rebuild it so splendidly in the mid-fifteenth century, St. Giles' Hospital and the Carnary College. At the end of the fifteenth century, St. Mary's had a community of fourteen priests, St. Gile's a master, five fellows and three stipendiary priests, Carnary College a master and probably three other priests. The cathedral was a Benedictine priory; there, as in such other great monastery-cathedrals as Canterbury and Durham, conventual life was supported by exceptional prestige and opulence, and the Norwich library was one of the finest in late mediaeval England, considerably enriched by Adam Easton's bequest of his own collection, brought there from Rome in six great barrels in 1407.92 Adam had died as a Roman curial cardinal, but when Julian was a girl he was 0ne of two young Norwich monks whose preaching campaigns were being promoted by the priory,93 the other, also dividing his time between Norwich and his studies in Oxford, being Thomas Brinton, later to become one of Rochester's celebrated Benedictine preacher-bishops.94
All four orders of friars had been attracted to the city by its wealth and the opportunities it offered for pastoral work. It is worth remarking that the handsome house of the Austin Friars stood in Conisford across the lane from St. Julian's anchorhold. There, too, must have been a fine library, to house which in the fifteenth century a rich devotee, widow of a Norwich mayor, provided a new building.95 In this house the Augustinian theologian Roger Twiford, 'said to have flourished c.
1390', lived and worked.96 The rules promulgated by the prior general of the Augustinians on 3 February, 1456, for the administration of the London Austin Friars library, also recently rebuilt, which may be taken as normative, provide that books, 'especially those of a speculative
91 Much of the information in this section is derived from Norman Tanner's valuable study, Po/ndar Religion in Norwich ... 1370-1532.
92 Ibid., 75.
93 W. A. Pantin: English JMack Monks, 3 28-29.
94 Sr. Mary Aquinas Devlin: The Sermons of Thomas Brinton.
95 F. Roth: English Austin Friars, i 374-375.
94 B. Hackett: 'Spiritual Life', 452-455.