2 Introduction
INTRODUCTION
kind', are not to be taken from the library unless they are duplicates.
This suggests that Julian might have been able to borrow from her neighbours a spare copy of, say, Chaucer's Boethius, or of Piers Plowman.
George Kane in his edition of that work furnished evidence of monastic owners of its manuscripts, to which A. I. Doyle was able to add;97 and Chaucer too was read in monasteries. One of the two known copies of Disce Mori is MS Jesus College, Oxford 39, written for Dorothy Slyghe, a Birgettine nun of Syon; on p. 623, where the text is dealing with 'impediments in the love of God and contemplation' and compares guilty lovers to 'a |>eef to a |)eef and dronken of })is sweet poison', a contemporary hand has annotated: of which poison, if ye lust more to rede, seep be storie of Troilus, Creseide and Diomede.98
The intellectual life of the local Franciscans benefited greatly from the establishment in their convent by Benedict XII of one of the Order's seven English studio, genemlia, to which promising students could be sent from many parts of Europe. Nicholas of Assisi's notes of lectures and disputations which he heard there c. 1337 still survive, and in 1406 and 1407 the Franciscans John of Westphalia, John of Austria and Theodoric of Saxony were ordained in the city.99 C. 1370, Peter of Candia was at the Norwich studium before he went on to Oxford. He ended his days as the short-lived Alexander V, known for his learning and piety;100 and some of his devotional poems are known.101 Though their modern editor has no high opinion of them, 'Fratres peramabiles, ob afnorem Christi / Comedamus paritcr sine vultu tristi' is a charming exaniple of the 'sancta hilaritas' which marks the verses which, in Peter's age, Franciscan poets in England were composing in Latin,
French and English. Among the Norwich Carmelites there was William Southfield, to whom Margery Kempe went for direction — she calls him
'a good man and a holy leuer';102 and John Bale (who had himself been a Carmelite friar in the city) wrote 'Homo simplex erat, sed incredibile devotione preditus'103 — Walter Diss, called 'one of the most famous
Cambridge doctors of his age', a royal confessor and a great preacher 97 Reviewing Kane in English Studies 43 (1962), 55-58.
98 This information was kindly supplied by Michael Sargent.
99 Tanner, 57, 74.
100 Ibid., 74.
101 W. Lampen: 'Prosae seu Poemata Petri de Candia'.
102 The Book of Margery Kempe, 41.
103 Ibid., 374.
VII NORWICH IN JULIAN'S AGE
against heresy, who died in 1404 and was buried among his Norwich brethren,104 Thomas Bradley alias Scrope, whose eccentric pieties and evangelism as early as the 14205 had provoked his provincial, Thomas
Netter of Walden, (Bradley thereafter lived at the Norwich friary as an anchorite, later becoming bishop of Dromore and a papal legate),105 and John Thorpe, 'sacre theologie doctor', 'maistre en divinitie',106 whomjohn Bale called 'doctor ingeniosus' and credited with Scriptural and other writings.107 Though the city's Dominicans seem to have lacked the numbers, and, it may be, the distinction of the other three friaries, there were among them men such as John Somerton,108 author of a series of sermons per annum.
It is easy to perceive how men of such attainments must have contributed to the spiritual and intellectual life of the place, and the links which they could provide with thought and letters in the capital and the universities, in England and abroad. Tanner's analysis of Norwich wills shows us the bequest of such books as Augustine's Confessions, Bernard's
'Meditations', 'Sermones Bonaventure de sanctis', Boethius, an 'English St. Bridget' (a lay bequest), Dieta salutis,m 'Le Doctrine of the Herte',110
'evangelia' (both these lay bequests), Formula novidorum,111 Gregory's Dialogues, Hugh of St. Victor's De daustro anime, 'Liber vocatum
Hylton' (a lay bequest), Petrarch's De remediis utriusque fortune,112 and 'Liber vocatus a vangeler'.113 Julian, we can be certain, lived in a society in which spiritual books were prized and read.
But because there were others concerned with the life of the spirit in such propinquity, we must not assume that she knew them, consulted with them, received books from them. It is very evident that she was a learned woman, but we do not know how or from whom she acquired her learning. Of her historicity, it has been shown, there can be no doubt; but none the less, she remains an enigmatic figure. Her parentage, birth, education, the circumstances under which she was enclosed,
104 Bale, Anglorum Heliades (MS BM Harley 3838), f. 86V; Emden, Cambridge, 188.
105 MS BM Harley 211 (a valuable Norwich Carmelite collection of pastoral and devotional material), f. igi v; Eubel, 2 146; J. Tait: 'Scrope, Thomas' (DNB).
106 E. F. Jacob: The Register of Henry Chic/iele, 2 143, 149, two Norwich wills of i May and 2 June, 1477, kindly pointed out by Keith Egan.
107 Emden, Cambridge, 586.
101 Blomefield: Norfolk,\ 728.
109 Among surviving manuscripts are Lambeth Palace 457 and 483.
110 Cf. Sr. Mary Patrick Candon, ed.: The Doctrine of the Hert.
111 P. Jolliffe: Check-List, items 0.5, £.14, H.2, 1.4, 0.4, O.6, 0.10.
112 Ibid.,J.g.
113 Tanner, 329-330.
INTRODUCTION
her associates and directors thereafter, the date of her death — none of this is known to us. She resembles Hilton and the author of the Cloud; and we may be content that this is so. Were we furnished with the plethora of biographical information which exists for Rolle, that might have served, in her case as it has in his, as an obstacle between us and all that she set store by, the showings in which God revealed to her secrets of his being.
That Julian wore her learning so lightly, that she is so insistent (especially in her first edition) on her untutored simplicity, suggests, certainly, that she knew that it would be impolitic to set herself up as a bluestocking, but also that she herself had little use for bluestockings.
One of the present editors some years ago provoked irate criticism when he adverted to Margery Kempe's story,114 of her meeting with Richard Caister, the saintly parish priest of St. Stephen's, Norwich, who said, according to Margery, 'God bless my soul —what could a woman find to say about our Lord's love that would take an hour or two?' The observation, 'those who indulge in the kind of speculation which forms so much of the scholarship of Hope Allen and her school, assuming that because A and B both lived in C one of them must have "influenced" the other, would do well to ponder Richard's evident indifference to the Frauenbewegung of which Julian and Margery are held to be such outstanding English members',115 was not well received.116 But Caister's will, made on 27 March, 1420,117 confirms the impression we may form from Margery's story. He appoints three Norwich priests as his executors. Ten pounds are left for two antiphoners for his own church, and the rest of his goods are for the poor, those of his own parish to be preferred. Drily he remarks that canon law defines that 'the goods of the Church are the goods of the poor'. There are no bequests to solitaries, Julian or anyone else, or to their servants, nothing for the religious orders, no careful provisions for prayers for his own soul, no treasured devotional manuals or pious books to be passed on. Caister, we may surmise, would have been the same holy man had he lived on a mountain top instead of in the Norwich of his days. Nor can we be sure that every man and woman dedicated to the solitary life would edify
114 The Booh of Margery Kempe, 38 e.s.
115 E. Colledge: 'Margery Kempe' (in Pre-Reformation English Spirituality, ed. J. Walsh,
221).
116 By E. I. Watkin, reviewing Pre-Reformation English Spirituality (Downside Review 84,
1966, 99-102).
117 Norfolk and Norwich Records Office REG/ 4 Liber 8, f. 135'. We are indebted to Frank Sayer for identifying Caister's will and having it copied for us.
VIII JULIAN'S INTELLECTUAL FORMATION
others as we have seen that Julian did. According to Tanner's evidence, there was after her time a marked increase in their numbers in Norwich. 'At any given time between the 14205 and the 14705 there were probably at least eight hermits and anchorites'.118 This may have been through her example; but we must not deduce too much. Some such persons seemed only to batten on the vapidities of 'enthusiasm'.
Elsewhere the editors have already described how St. John of Bridlington — who died six years after Julian's revelations — once visited an anchoress near Richmond in Yorkshire, hoping for spiritual consolation from her, but cut the conversation short and left, saying that he had come to talk with her of the grace and goodness of God, when she began to tell him of her Vision' of an eagle bearing in his beak a scroll written with Rhesus est amor meus' (a device beloved of many such enthusiasts), and that John himself was her eagle. Such women evidently did little more than trade in pious flattery. We may be sure that they would receive from Richard Caister, and, indeed, from Julian too, as short shrift as John of Bridlington gave his illuminata.119
VIII JULIAN'S INTELLECTUAL FORMATION
In considering this matter, we must begin with her knowledge of Scripture. Elsewhere120 the editors have already described the enquiries they instituted and the expert advice they received, through which they were led to the inescapable conclusion that before she began to compose the short text, Julian already knew all the Vulgate; especially, she can be seen to be deeply familiar with all four gospels, the Pauline and Johannine epistles and Hebrews, the Psalms, the sapiential books and Deutero-Isaias. We can only make conjectures about how she acquired her Latin and her learning, for she is as reticent about this as over every other part of her external life; but of such conjectures, the most probable (at which she seems herself in several places to hint) is that when young — that is, in her teens — she entered a religious house, and that she was still there after February, 1393, when she was in her fiftieth year. Only after the completion of the long text, we believe, did she occupy the anchorhold at St. Julian's church and embrace the solitary, enclosed life121 to which, Roger Reed's will shows, she was vowed in the following year. If Julian had been a nun before her enclosure, she was
118 Tanner, 117.
119 E. Colledge and J. Walsh: Following the Saints, 3 769.
120 'Editing Julian of Norwich's Revelations'.
121 For a fuller statement of our reasons for this conjecture, see the same article.
INTRODUCTION
not the only one in the locality living so. In the administration of the goods of Katherine Samson, 18 July, 1417, she is described as 'monialis ordinis sancti Bernardi recluse apud ecclesiam omnium sanctorum in parochia de Sowth lenne', that is Lynn All Saints in the Norwich archdeaconry;122 and MS Bodley 73, f. 5iv, in a list of Carmelites buried at Norwich, has: Domma Emma carmelita reclusa et soror in religione obiit anno domini 1422 2a decembris,123 although this probably means, like John Bale's reports in Anglorum Heliades124 of Thomas Netter's proselytizing activities, no more than that such women as Emma, before or after enclosure as anchoresses, took the Order's habit and vows.125
An objection which has often been made to the possibility thatjulian was a nun at the time of her sickness is that she describes how she was ministered to, when she was thought to be dying, by a secular priest.
But it was by no means the rule that nuns and anchoresses were invariably served as chaplains by religious priests; for many isolated nunneries and anchorholds, such a rule would have been impractical.
Aelred counsels his enclosed sister to choose as confessor either a religious or a secular, provided he be of suitable age and disposition.12fi
The Benedictine women's abbeys at Shaftesbury, Wherwell, Wilton and Winchester supported each four prebendary canons; and Eileen Power considered that 'these prebends were doubtless originally intended for the maintenance of resident chaplains'.l27 The Prioress in the Canterbury Tales was accompanied by three priests;128 and when the Host addresses one of them as 'Sir John',129 he indicates that this was no religious.
Where Julian had been a nun we have no means of knowing. It has often been suggested that this was at Carrow, the house of Benedictine nuns just outside the Norwich walls which was the patron of the St.
Julian's living. This may be so, but it is uncertain. What is however beyond any doubt is that when young Julian had received an exceptionally good grounding in Latin, in Scripture and in the liberal arts, and that thereafter she was able and permitted to read widely in Latin and vernacular spiritual classics. Reference to the annotations to the 122 A. Watkin: Inventory of Church Goods, 2 208.
123 This information was kindly communicated by Keith Egan.
124 MS BM Harley 3838, f. 37.
125 J. Smet, art.: 'Carmelites — (Sisters) (NCE 3 121).
126 De imtitutione indusarum 6 (A. Hoste and C. H. Talbot, ed.: Aelredi Rievallemis opera omnia, i 642).
127 Medieval English Nunneries, 144.
128 F. N. Robinson, ed.: Complete Works of Chaucer, 21.
129 Ibid., 237.
VIII JULIAN'S INTELLECTUAL FORMATION
short and long texts will show the evidence on which this opinion is based. She shows knowledge of such great masters as Augustine and Gregory; and she seems to have become deeply influenced, as she composed the 'second edition' of the long text, by William of St. Thierry, not only through his Golden Epistle, but also by other of his works, in her day known only in learned circles. Furthermore, her writing, in the long text especially, constantly displays remarkable congruity of both thought and language with contemporary English writings: notably The Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God, The Cloud of Unknowing and The Scale of Perfection and their ancillary treatises, and Chaucer's Boethius. When we add to this the evidence, exhibited in detail in the annotations, that she was a highly accomplished rhetorician who could employ with ease the terms and concepts of the philosophers, only one deduction is possible: she must, early in life, have attracted the benevolent attention of some scholar or scholars who perceived her spiritual and intellectual gifts, and passed on to her the learning of the schools.
She is at some pains, in the short text particularly, to present us with a misleading picture of herself as a simple and unlearned woman, the humble recipient of unmerited graces. Partly this was dictated by true
Christian humility, partly by an exceptionally sound theology of grace, partly by a wholly comprehensible wish not unnecessarily to antagonize her critics by any parade of erudition. But she does not conceal from readers who will pay her the attention she deserves that the sancta sirnplicitas which was indeed hers in no way is incompatible with the intellectual profundity and subtlety which informs all that she writes. Her book is a great monument to the Western monastic traditions of lectio divina of which she was heiress; and the learning she had inherited began and continued in the loving, prayerful study and memorization of sacred Scripture.
In many places, the annotations show, she is making her own translations direct from the Vulgate; and sometimes she furnishes a reference. Thus, it has already been demonstrated,130 when in the short text she writes: Swilke paynes Isawe that alle es to litellepaty can telle or saye, for itt maye nou^te be tolde, botte ylke saule aftere the sayinge of saynte Pawle schulde feele in hyrn pat in Criste Jhesu (234.23), she is providing an exact reproduction of the Latin syntax of Philippians 2.5: Hoc enim sentite in vobis quod et in Christo lesu. But even when no such reference is provided, some of her uses of Scripture are instantly recognizable.
130 E. Collcdge and J. Walsh: 'Editing Julian of Norwich's Revelations'.
INTRODUCTION
When she writes: And as to thys (her inability to accept that 'all manner of thing shall be well') / had no other answere in shewyng of oure lorde but thys: That pat is vnpossible to the is nott vnpossible to me (425.48), she expects her readers to discern that what she is reporting is no locution spoken to her individually, but her recollection of the applicability to her problem of Luke 18.26-27. In chapter 51 of the long text, writing: alle is the manhode ofCryst,for he is the heed, and we be his membris, to whych membris the day and pe tyme is vnknowyn whan every passyng wo and sorow shall haue an eende, and the everlastyng joy and blysse shall be fulfyllyd, whych day and tyme for to see, all the company of hevyn longyth (537.256), she is constructing a mosaic of New Testament allusions which begins with a direct borrowing from I Corinthians 12.12. A little further on, reflecting on Icind made' and 'substantial kind unmade', when she observes: whan god shulde make mannes body, he take the slyme of the erth, whych is a mater medelyd and gaderyd of alle bodely thynges, and therof he made mannes body (558.42), she is combining the Genesis account of the creation of Adam with the lore of the mediaeval physiologists.
Some of her many conflations of several different Scriptural texts seem to be carefully contrived. In chapter 15, And in the tyme of joy I myght haue seyde with seynt Paule: Nothyng shalle departe me fro the charyte of Crist; and in the payne I myght haue seyd with seynt Peter: Lorde, saue me, I peryssch (355.18, a compar taken over with little rewriting from the short text; cf. 231.33) appears knowingly to combine Matthew's account of Peter's rescue from drowning with the story in all the synoptic gospels of the disciples' appeal to the sleeping Jesus. But, naturally, Julian depended for her knowledge of the Bible on texts which were often faulty. In chapter 50 we have the exclamatio: Goode lorde, I see the that thou arte very truth, and I know truly pat we syn grevously all day and be moch blame wurthy (510.7), a plain allusion to the conflation of Proverbs 24.16, 'Septies enim cadet iustus', with Psalm 118.164: 'Septies in die laudem dixi tibi,' an error common in mediaeval Bible-manuscripts.
Once we have come to rely on the authority with which she uses Scripture, we can elucidate passages where her teaching can have been clear only to those who shared her knowledge. She writes, in chapter
12, of the Precious Blood: For it is most plentuous, as it is most precious, and that by the vertu of the blessyd godhead (343.17). The annotation calls this
'another example of the way in which Julian brings together popular devotion and her own Scriptural and theological learning', as she alludes to I John 5.6-8. In chapter 51 we read: and within hym an hey ward long and brode, all full of endlesse hevynlynes (523.125), but the meaning here has escaped those who did not perceive the allusion to
VIII JULIAN'S INTELLECTUAL FORMATION
such places in Scripture as 'susceptor meus et refugium meum' (Psalm 58.17), 'elevator meus et refugium meum' (II Kings 22.3). And in one of her many references to the 'Harrowing of Hell', when she writes: and whan he was ther, than he reysyd vppe the grett root oute of the depe depnesse, whych ryghtfully was knyt to hym in hey hevyn (542.300), there is a deft and complex evocation of the numerous texts in both Testaments which celebrate the Redeemer as the 'flos de radice Jesse'. If the author of the carol, 'O of Jesse thow holy rote', cited in the annotation, ever read or heard this passage from Julian's book, he would at once have understood its import, because he also had inherited the same monastic traditions. Without some knowledge of them, her book will remain closed.
It has already been suggested that one obstacle to acceptance of Julian as a proficient scholar has been a too willing credence in her own account of herself as 'a woman that could no letter'. If those who have sought to represent her in this light had been more familiar with the conventions of rhetoric, and, especially, with the rhetoricians' employment of captatio benevoientiae,131 they might not have been so easily deceived. But when critics have attempted to use such a sentence as 7 conseyvede treulye and myghttyllye that itt was hym selfe that schewyd it me with owtyn any meenn ; and than I sayde: Benedicite dominus (210.15) as a demonstration that its writer knew no Latin grammar, they have betrayed their own lack of it. In truth we are still sadly ill-informed, largely for want of evidence, about the higher education of women in later mediaeval England:132 but for the fourteenth century the Revelations are proof that it was possible for one woman to master the learning of past ages, and to acquire their skills, to present her thought in modes traditionally acceptable and comprehensible.
Reference to the Appendix will show that this is so. There the editors have described each of the rhetorical figures which Julian employs, giving first its definition, from Ad Herennium or from some other ancient or modern authority, and then supplying examples, from the Revelations and, usually, from the Vulgate and from Chaucer's Boethius. Had Julian known no other books than these, they would have sufficed; and if the suggestion that an enclosed nun or anchoress might have read Chaucer be regarded as frivolous, the evidence, already mentioned, that the nuns
131 See E. Colledge and J. Walsh: julienne de Norwich.'
132 N. Orme, in English Schools in the Middle Ages, has been unable to add more than a little to Eileen Power's treatment of this topic. It tells us much of the material he has found that he subdivides his first chapter as: The clergy', 'Kings and princes', 'Nobility and gentry', 'Administrators and lawyers', 'Merchants, craftsmen, artisans', 'Villeins',
'Women'.
INTRODUCTION
of Syon Abbey were familiar with Troiius and Criseyde should be considered.
It is by no means suggested that as a rhetorician Julian was either pioneer or innovator. If she read with perception such treatises as the Ancrene Riwle,"3 as she seems to have done, or A Talking of the Love of God,134 as she may have done,135 if she listened with attention, as she must have done, to 'men of Holy Church' embellishing their sermons with colores (long before the friars first arrived, Eadmer had written in admiration of Anselm's preaching skills: 'And when we say that he admonished, or instructed, or taught these things, he did it not as others are wont to teach, but far differently; he set forth each point with familiar examples in daily life, supporting them with the evidence of solid reason, and leaving them in the minds of his hearers, stripped of all ambiguity'136), if, presently, she read Chaucer's translation137 with understanding for its techniques, she would know that what she was attempting in her presentation of the showings would take its due place in an already honourable tradition.
The experts tell us that Chaucer was at work on his translation of Boethius c. 1380, that is, at the time when Julian may be presumed to have been considering the problems which she must solve in the composition of her long text (if, that is, the short text itself were already published, which we do not know). Chaucer's problems were not dissimilar. Either writer was called upon to render into contemporary
English matter which might seem intractable: in Chaucer's case, Boethius' haunting and evocative rhythms and metres, in Julian's, the processe of her visions and locutions, and her own given insights, often of a profundity which, she tells us, seemed as if it would defeat her powers of language. They were both rescued from their dilemma by rhetoric,
Chaucer more easily than Julian, since he was turning into English another man's colores, whereas she was adapting to her own ends literary devices few of which anyone before Chaucer had attempted to employ in her native language. We can see at once how deeply the problem had engaged her when we observe how often she anglicizes the rhetoricians' technical vocabulary, as the author of the Riwle before her had begun
133 For a discussion of rhetoric in the Riwle, see G. Shepherd: Ancrene Wisse, Ixv-lxxiii.
134 See Lois K. Smedick: 'Cursus in Middle English'.
135 Cf. 469.16, 470.34, notes.
136 R. W. Southern: The Life of St. Anselm, 56. Shepherd's admirable introduction to the Wisse drew our attention to this.
137 There is a somewhat perfunctory consideration of Chaucer's use in Boethius of rhetoric by Margaret Schlauch: The Art of Chaucer's Prose' (in D. S. Brewer, ed.:
Chaucer and Chaucerian*, 14-163).
VIII JULIAN'S INTELLECTUAL FORMATION
to do.138 She shows that she knows the logical purpose of concessio when she writes: ... me behovede nedes grawnte (226.7 and note). She understands precisely the function of exemplum, which she calls example
(313'35> 5*3-3 and notes). She variously designates oppositio contrariorum as contrarytes (372.25), contraryousnes (501.12), contrarys (550.55, 659.4), con~ trarious (687.23). A propositio she names profyr (370.6, and cf. 385.35); and ratiodnatio is called a resonn (263.17, and cf. 325.12, 365.58, 461.19). The theological-rhetorical 'appropriation' gives her the past participle propred (593.40) and the abstract noun propyrte (493.34).
It is evident from the short text that Julian's study of rhetoric and her familiarity with its colores, as she had observed them in the Vulgate and elsewhere, had begun long before she wrote down her first account of her visions. There she employs two figures (211.24, 259.17 and notes) which she reproduces unaltered in the long text; and she uses adnorninatio (259.17), chiasmus (238.15, 276.20), complexio (213.16, 249.2), conduplicatio (211.24), continuatio (247.18), conversio (204.43, 220.25,
235-39, 244.56, 248.28, 271.26, 272.42, 274.19), exdamatio (271.26), gradatio (238.15), membmm (268.4), oppositio (214.29, 222.50, 224.11,
231-33, 238.15, 239.14, 254.10, 256.43, 263.12, 268.4, 272.45), ratiodnatio (212.10), repetitio, initial (206.52, 211.24, 220.25, 221.32,
221.38, 239.14, 240.24, 248.28, 249.5, 252.3, 263.11, 263.12, 265.51) and medial (204.43, 216.49, 220.25, 221.32), similiter cadens (257.14), tautologia (268.14), and traductio (217.8, 244.56, 251.31, 254.10, 259.17).
She is skilled in the construction of compares, as can be seen throughout.
If it is thought that the editors are attributing to Julian skills which she did not possess, because of their own subjective interpretations of her texts (Lois Smedick recently defended herself with ability against such a contention), heed should be paid to the opening of chapter xv in the first version, where she writes:
And thus oure goode lorde answerde to alle the questyons and doutes that I myght make, sayande fullc comfortabelye on this wyse: I wille make alle thynge wele, I schalle make alle thynge wele, I maye make alle thynge wele and I can make alle thynge wele; and J>owe schalle se J?at thy selfe, that alle thynge schalle be wele. There he says he maye, I vndyrstande for the fadere; and pere he says he can, I vndyrstande for the sonne; and per he says: I wille, I vnderstande for the hali gaste; and pere he says: I schalle,
I vndirstande for the vnyte of the blyssede trinyte, thre persones in a trewthe; and there he says: Thowe schalle se thy selfe, I vndyrstande the anynge of alle mankynde that schalle be sayfe in to the blysfulle trinyte
(249.1; and cf. 417.2 e.s. and notes).
138 See Shepherd's introduction.
INTRODUCTION
In the long text this is preserved unaltered, except that there the auxiliary verbs are ordered in the first sentence as she probably wrote them. No more striking instance could be found of the conscious deliberation with which she uses such figures to give clarity to her theology as she expounds the revelations.
But when in this regard we contrast the composition of the short text and that of the long, we see that in the interval she had fully mastered not only a wider range of colons — articulus, commoratio, commutatio, condusio, conjlatio, contentio, correctio, definitio, descriptio, disjunctio, dissolutio, distributio, indusio, interpretatio, notatio, personi/icatio, sermocinatio, similitudo, transitio — but the very essence of the rhetoricians' art, the ability to think and to feel in accordance with the classical models. She had become a complete mistress of expolitio and of the argumentatio perfedissima.
This is best shown in the long text's chapter 38. In the short text she had written:
Also god schewed me that syn is na schame, bot wirschippe to mann (255-17), and all that she had offered there as demonstration of this paradox were her reflections on the 'great penitents', David and the others. Now, in the long text, she sees the need better to establish the truth of the statement, and she has acquired the theological and philosophical equipment to do this. She uses her remark as a propositio:
And god schewed that synne shalle be no shame, but wurshype to man, and proceeds with consummate ability to construct the rest of the argumentatio. The ratio follows: for ryght as to every synne is answeryng a payne by truth / ryght so for every synne to the same soule is gevyn a blysse by loue, using repetitio, initial (for ryght ... ryght so) and medial (to every synne ...for every synne), and oppositio (a payne by truth ...a blysse by loue). The rationis confirmatio is:
Ryght as dyuerse synnes be ponysschyd with dyuers paynes / after that it be greuous / ryght so shalle they be rewardyd with dyvers joyes in hevyn / for theyr victories / after as the synne haue ben paynfulle and sorowfulle to the soule in erth, continuing the repetitio (Ryght as ... ryght so) and elaborating the oppositio
(dyuers synnes ... dyuers paynes ... dyvers joyes in hevyn ... in erth). Next is the exornatio:
VIII JULIAN'S INTELLECTUAL FORMATION
For the soule that shalle come to hevyn / is so precyous to god and the place so wurshypfulle / that the goodnes of god sufferyth nevyr / that soule to synne fynally J>at shalle come ther; and the complexio concludes:
But what synners they are that so shalbe rewarded / is made knowen in holy church in erth and also in heaven / by over passyng worshypes (445.2-446. is?), in which the allusion to the ecclesia militant and ecclesia triumphant shows the force of the oppositio which recurs throughout the figure, and perfects the argumentatio by its demonstration that the Church on earth venerates David and other repentant sinners of the Old Testament, and has raised to its altars such men and women as Mary Magdalene, Peter,
Paul, Thomas,John of Beverley. The Church does not conceal their former sinfulness; Alle is turned them to worshyppe. The greatness of their sins is the measure of their contrition and of their glory.
In both versions Julian is careful to insist that this illumination was a part of the showing: for in this sight mynn vnderstandynge was lyftyd vp in to hevenn (255.18, repeated verbatim 446.12); but in the long text the mendon of John of Beverley (suppressed, we must assume, in the short text, for when she wri tes god callyd hym seynt Johnn of Beverley, pleynly as we do, and pat with afulle glade and swet chere, 447.24, she must mean that a part of the revelation was the rehearsing of the penitents' names) leads her to a typical homespun exemplum with which to extend and clinch the argumentatio, that what she is teaching, 'that sin shall be no shame but honour to a repentant sinner', is proved in John's case by the miracles which God constantly performs at his shrine. In Julian's age all England was awed by his cult, which would reach its height when Henry V attributed the victory at Agincourt to his intercessions; but her purpose in alluding to it is theological.
This account of Julian as rhetorician in no way exhausts the catalogue of her literary abilities. Her use of alliteration (e.g. 541.289,
615.20) and of rhyme (e.g. 437.21-22) has often been remarked on;139 and one should also observe the ease with which in places (e.g. 387.49 and note, 729.11 and note) she raises the emotional level of her writing by employing markedly metrical structures. Nowhere do we find that she subordinates sense to sound; and her willingness to jettison one of 139 The most recent examination of such matters is that by R. K. Stone. Cf. note 74, supra.
INTRODUCTION
the most striking figures in her short text (271.26-36) as no longer fully corresponding with her insights has already been remarked. In this respect as in so many others, she shows that she had wholly freed herself of the influence of Richard Rolle and his school. But, born six years before he died, spending her childhood in the aftermath of the Black
Death, in a land ringing with prophecies of woe and doom, in the intellectual and moral ferment so vividly and painfully described for us in Piers Plowman, she would be remarkable if not eccentric if her book did not show some traces of all this; and they are to be found.
They are shown by her opening words: / desyrede thre graces be the gyfte of god. The fyrst was to have mynde of Cryste es passionn. The seconnde was bodelye syeknes, and the thryd was to haue ofgoddys gyfte thre wonndys (201.6).
In the annotations to this and comparable passages, the editors have shown how close Julian is to the temper of such devotional writings as the Stimulus amoris, Suso's Horologium, the Fifteen Oes (and many other anonymous, frequently still unpublished prayers and meditations in Latin, English and French), and to the immensely popular recension,
The Privity of the Passion, of the Meditationes vitae Christi spuriously attributed to Bonaventure. M0 Elsewhere141 they have pointed out how close Julian is, describing these early aspirations to take an active part in the Passion of her Lord, to some of Bonaventure's genuine writings, and to that whole body of meditative prose and verse, Latin and vernacular, spread all over Western Christendom, which we may call
'Franciscan'. (So to describe it is not to ignore the impetus given to discursive meditation on the life and death of Christ by writings earlier than Francis himself, such as the genuine and spurious works circulating under Anselm's name, or the contributions to such literature made by writers such as Richard Rolle and Henry Suso, who were not friars minor.) A recent critic has also remarked142 how deeply susceptible Julian is to the influence of pious art-objects; and the editors have described143 the evidence which shows how richly furnished were the Norwich churches with such objects. Douglas Gray and Rosemary Woolf144 have made important contributions to our understanding of how 'Franciscan' such visual art was, as also was the popular literature it inspired,
140 Cf. e.g. 201.6, 201.12-202.13, 202.23, 205.51 and notes.
141 In 'Editing Julian of Norwich's Revelations', 142 Douglas Gray: Themes and Images.
143 In 'Editing Julian of Norwich's Revelations'.
144 The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968).
VIII JULIAN'S INTELLECTUAL FORMATION
even though some of its outstanding surviving examples, such as the (to us) gruesomely illustrated Carthusian MS BM Add. 37049, were not produced by or for Francis's followers. It is in this tradition that Julian is writing:
Me thought I wolde haue bene that tyme with Mary Mawdeleyne and with othere that were Crystes loverse, that I myght have sene bodylye the passionn of oure lorde that he sufferede for me, that I myght have sufferede with hym as othere dyd that lovyd hym, not withstandynge that I leevyd sadlye alle the peynes of Cryste as halye kyrke schewys and techys, and also the payntyngys of crycyfexes that er made be the grace of god aftere the techynge of haly kyrke to the lyknes of Crystes passyonn, als farfurthe as man ys witte maye reche (201.11).
In the annotations to this passage it is observed that the reason for the suppression in the long text (cf. 286.12) of its conclusion, the observation on the utility of devotional art, may be that the Lollard controversy about this, active when Julian was first writing, had by the 13905 abated. We can see that her position in this matter is that of moderation. In contrast to Margery Kempe's hysterical outpourings in a Norwich church at the sight of a pieta™ — the image, and Margery's reaction to it, evidently resembled closely those described in De arte lacrimandi146 —Julian makes the important reservation, als farfurthe as man ys witte maye reche \ and the editors have observed that here she makes the Ancrene Riwle's distinction, as elucidated by G. V. Smithers, between object and imitation or representation. This is an important witness to her own self-knowledge. She has asked for the grace of suffering, and for a vision of the Passion, so that she might in some form share in it, but not to increase her faith that Christ did suffer. Her faith is founded on the Church's teachings, and her imaginative awareness has been formed by such art objects, inadequate though she knows them to be.
One object which evidently had deeply and lastingly impressed her in her early years was the Vernicle, which, according to the legend as it had developed by her time,147 was the kerchief with which the compassionate Veronica' had wiped the face of the suffering Saviour on the Via Dolorosa, which had miraculously received the impression of his
145 The Book of Margery Kempe, 145.
146 Ed. R. E. Garrett. Cf. Rosemary Woolf, The English Religious Lyric, 258-259.
147 For discussions and bibliographies, cf. K. Pearson: Die Fronica; E. von Dobschiitz:
Christrubilder;j. R. Hulbert: "Some Medieval Advertisements of Rome'; E. Breitenbach:
'Israhel van Meckenem's Man of Sorrows'.
INTRODUCTION
pitiful countenance, and which was now preserved in St. Peter's at Rome, where the faithful venerating it could gain indulgence, three thousand years to the natives of the city, nine thousand to cisalpine and twelve thousand to transalpine pilgrims. The Augustinian John
Waldeby had enlivened his sermons with accounts of this relic after he returned from Rome in 1354.l48 Hulbert calls The Stacyons of Rome no more than a versified liber indulgentiarum; and from the early printed text of such a liber which he quotes, and which carefully specifies the days in the year when the relic is displayed and the indulgence may be gained,149 it is very evident that Waldeby's confrere of the next century,
John Capgrave, however much he may have been praised for the accuracy of his observations and transcriptions when he too visited the city, is in his Solace of Pilgrims merely translating or copying from another such liber. 15° Hulbert describes such literature as 'Part of an organized propaganda to attract pilgrims to Rome', and argues very persuasively that the Church and the city suffered throughout the fourteenth century, when the popes' absence in Avignon attracted fewer of the faithful to Rome. However disparate the origins (seemingly for the most part Byzantine) of the legend and of the various traits of the vera ikon may be, it seems to have been in Rome that they coalesced;151 and by Julian's time, in England as throughout the West, the image and its accompanying texts were appearing in pious manuals. In MS Fitzwilliam 55, f. 122V, there is a very fine miniature of the Vernicle followed by:
Salue sancta fades nostri redemptoris in qua nitet species diuini splendoris inpressa panniculo (n)iuei cando-(f. i23r)ris dataque Veronice signum ob amoris ...i52 and the same hymn is incorporated in the 'Office of the Vernicle'.153 In MS BM Royal 17 A xxvii (a composite, the devotional section c. 1400), there is, f. 72
V, a drawing of two angels displaying the extended Vernicle, with:
148 Margaret J. Morrin: John Waldeby, O.S.A. (ca. 1315-1372)', 21.
149 'Some Medieval Advertisements', 403-405.
150 C. A. Mills, ed.: Ye Solace of Pilgrimes, 63.
151 Die Fronica, 9.
152 Cf. Chevalier, Repertorium, no. 18189. A similar miniature and text are in MS
Harley 211, f. 141'.
'" Cf. C. Wordsworth: Home Eboracenses, 174-175.
VIII JULIAN'S INTELLECTUAL FORMATION
0 vernacule I honoure him and the pat be made porow his preuite. / (f. 73') t>o cloth he set to his face pe prent laft pere porow his grace.
His moth his nose his ine to, his herd his here did al so.
Schulde me for al pat in my Hue 1 haue singud with wittis fiue; namlich with mout of sclaunduring, fals othus and bakbiting, and made loste with toung al so.
Of sunnus pat I haue do, lord of heuen for 3eue it me porow syht of pe figur pat I here se.154
Whether Julian had learned from such manuals of the legend and its representation, or from such sources as the 'Legend of Pope Gregory'155 or the 'Arma Christi',156 it is clear that she knew the essentials and ignored what was irrelevant.
Her account of her visions of the face of the suffering Saviour begins where she tells, in chapter ii of the short text, how the priest brought with him a crucifix and urged her to look on it. However reluctantly, she did as he said, and set her eyes on the face of the image. Everything except the crucifix grew dark and ugly, 'as if it had been much occupied with fiends' (208.23-209.37, with which the long text agrees). It is suggested that this last detail is a reminiscence of mediaeval crucifixion iconography, or of apocryphal accounts of the devil assailing the crucified Christ. In chapter iii she describes how blood suddenly began to flow from under the crown of thorns; she does not say here that this does not refer to the crucifix brought by the priest, and in her later account of her conversation with the religious who visited her (266.9, and cf. 633.17), she specifies that it was the crosse that stode atte my bedde feete. We may recall the frequency in Julian's age of legends of crucifixes which spoke, moved, bled.1$7 In chapter v she
154 Cf. Brown and Robbins: Index, no. 2577, which lists fifteen manuscripts. Robbins and Cutler, Supplement, add two more.
155 See Breitenbach, 25 and note 13, for the statement that this legend was propagated in the late fourteenth century, along with the identification of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme as the scene of the miracle, by the Carthusians, trying to raise funds for their new Charterhouse there.
154 See R. Berliner: 'Arma Christi', with its lavish notes and bibliography.
157 See E. Colledge, The Legend of St. Thomas Aquinas' (in A. Maurer, ed.: St.
Thomas Aquinas), 24-25.