5. Saint Julian of the Apocalypse
5
Saint Julian of the Apocalypse
DIANE WATT
The Solitary in her Community
In both the earlier A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and the longer A Revelation of Love,1 Julian of Norwich relates that she was denied a specific revelation concerning the spiritual destiny of a close friend or relative:
And when God allemightye hadde shewed me plentyouslye and fully of his goodnesse, I desired of a certaine person that I loved howe it shulde be with hire. And in this desire I letted myselfe, for I was noght taught in this time. And than was I answerde in my reson, als it ware be a frendfulle meen: ‘Take it generally, and behalde the curtaysy of thy lorde God as he shewes it to the. For it is mare worshippe to God to behalde him in alle than in any specialle thinge.’ I assented, and therwith I lered that it is mare wyrshippe to God to knawe alle thinge in generalle than to like in anythinge in specialle. And if I shulde do wisely efter this techinge, I shulde nought be glad for nathinge in specialle, na desesed for na manere of thinge, for alle shalle be wele. (Vision, 16.12–21)
From the passage in A Vision alone, it might be inferred that Julian is seeking information about whether or not this woman will go to heaven. In A Revelation, this passage is subtly reworded so that we no longer know that the person is female: ‘I desired to wit of a serteyn creature that I loved if it shulde continue in good leving, which I hoped by the grace of God was begonne’ (Revelation, 35.2–3). At the same time, however, we are given additional information about her: evidently, like Julian, she has committed her life to divine service in some way. And the nature of Julian’s request is also specified, since it is now clear that she is enquiring about her friend’s state of grace in her lifetime, rather than after her death. Both versions agree, however, that Julian was denied this knowledge on the grounds that it was a ‘specialle thinge’ (Vision, 16.17; Revelation, 35.7), or as A Revelation puts it, a ‘singular desyer’ (Revelation, 35.4), a desire to know about an individual rather than a general truth. In A Vision, this moment of comprehension is immediately followed by a revelation that Julian herself ‘shulde sinne’ (Vision, 16.22), one that she is not yet ready to comprehend, but which emphasizes her relationship with her fellow believers and humankind in general. The context in A Revelation changes, but in referring to the woman as a ‘creature’ (Revelation, 35.2), a term unmarked by gender which Julian increasingly uses to refer to herself, she stresses the similarities between their experiences. She thus underlines her message that the fate of one Christian is in a sense the fate of all.
This relatively minor episode has received little critical attention hitherto, but it raises a number of questions about Julian’s vocation, her status within her own community at the time of her showings and her relationship to other women visionaries in the English medieval tradition.2 There is an influential strand of scholarship that argues that Julian of Norwich should not be located within a specifically feminine mystical and prophetic tradition. According to this viewpoint, despite her identification with the Virgin Mary in both versions of her work, and her extended discussion in A Revelation of Love of Christ as mother, Julian’s theology and writing transcends her sex.3 This argument, in fact, has a solid foundation: in Julian’s own works. In transforming A Vision into A Revelation, Julian herself stresses the universality of her message, and represents herself not as ‘a woman, lewed, febille, and freylle’ (Vision, 6.36–37), but as a Christian sinner, a creature, an everyman. In this essay, however, I consider what happens if we ignore Julian’s redirection in A Revelation and explore her relationship to other women prophets in England in the later Middle Ages, focusing particularly on both the recluse, then nun and, later, prioress, Christina of Markyate (c.1096–after 1155), and Julian’s younger East Anglian lay contemporary, Margery Kempe (c.1373–after 1439).
Critics are still undecided about whether Julian was a nun or a laywoman at the time of her showings in 1373. What does seem probable is that she was not yet an anchoress. From her description in A Vision, her sickbed (where she was tended by her mother and other companions, and to which was summoned her priest to attend her death, and who came accompanied by a boy) could be in a room in either a convent or a domestic home. Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins are of the view that Julian of Norwich was a nun from the Benedictine convent of Carrow in Norwich, where she would have been consecrated as a young girl.4 One piece of evidence that they cite in support of their argument is a reference in the showings to Christ thanking Julian for her ‘service’ in her youth (Vision, 8.53; cf. Revelation, 14.1). Benedicta Ward, on the other hand, sees Julian as a laywoman at the time of her visions, and suggests that she was a widow and had had children.5 I have argued elsewhere for another possibility: that Julian, aged thirty at the time of her visions, was single and childless, either living in her parents’ home or in service with another family.6 The obvious comparison to draw here is with Elisabeth Paston (1429–1488), daughter of Agnes and William Paston I, who did not marry until she was almost thirty.7
The fact that Julian chooses to tell us so little about herself, her background, her life experiences and her relationships with others means that what she does say takes on enormous significance. Julian only mentions a handful of people in her writings: the priest who comes to her sickbed, the boy at his side, a man of religion to whom she first mentions her visions, her mother, and the woman about whose fate she seeks assurances from God. Who was this devout woman who, like Julian, devoted herself to divine service? Was she a nun (a sister in Julian’s own convent perhaps), an anchoress, or a vowess or other pious laywoman? Was she a relative (an aunt, sister, cousin, even Julian’s own mother or, just conceivably, her child)? Could she even have been Julian’s companion or servant (we know from the evidence of later wills that Julian had female servants after she entered the anchorhold)?8 And what does Julian’s intercession on her friend’s behalf reveal about Julian’s status in her own community, whether religious or lay? Was Julian, at the time of the visions in 1373, already regarded as a holy woman, approached by others with prayers and petitions and for spiritual reassurance because her reputation was established and well known? In other words, did she ask God about this woman’s spiritual state because she had in turn been asked to do so by the woman herself? Or had Julian in her former service to God simply shared her devotions, rituals and prayers with another like-minded woman, so that when she received her showings she remembered this woman, and for her own peace of mind petitioned God on her behalf?
Felicity Riddy has argued that ‘to see Julian as a solitary is to ignore a central feature of her self-representation, which is relational’.9 In this essay I want to take Riddy’s view further, and suggest that, whatever the reality of Julian’s life before (and indeed after) her showings, she was never isolated, but – in her role as holy woman and intercessory – always part of a larger spiritual community and tradition. To understand this role, then, we have to look at other examples of late medieval English visionaries. One interesting comparison is with Christina of Markyate. Christina not only received revelations from God concerning her own spiritual state, but also, crucially, was blessed with a gift of prophecy, which enabled her to give guidance to those around her. She was able, for example, to predict whether or not the sick would recover from their illnesses (Life of Christina of Markyate, pp. 140–3 and 146–9).10 She also warned people about their wrongdoings and had insight into the sins that they kept hidden in their hearts (Life, pp. 134–5, 140–1 and 190–1). Much closer to Julian is, of course, Margery Kempe. Margery Kempe shared with Christina of Markyate an ability to foretell future events, and she was also able to reveal whether the sick would be healed or if their illnesses would prove fatal (The Book of Margery Kempe, ch. 23, pp. 53–4).11 She too could see the secrets of people’s hearts, discern true piety from hypocrisy, and suggest how sinners might reform their lives (e.g. Book, ch. 24, pp. 55–8). Her gift of prophecy gained her many followers and the dying called for her to be with them in their final hours to help them prepare for judgement (Book, ch. 72, pp. 172–3). It is exactly this sort of tradition – a tradition not exclusively female, but often associated with women – into which Julian’s request concerning her companion falls. Even before her 1373 illness and showings, it would appear that Julian saw her own long-established service to God as encompassing a prophetic and intercessory role.
Hidden Secrets: Apocalyptic Visions, the Last Things
and Julian’s Thirteenth Revelation
In the thirty-third chapter of A Revelation of Love, part of her Thirteenth Revelation, Julian recalls another, related, showing that she was, at first, denied – in this case a general rather than a specific revelation, concerning the fate of sinners after their deaths:
And yit in this I desyered as I durste that I might have had full sight of hel and of purgatory. But it was not my mening to take prefe of onything that longeth to oure faith. For I beleved sothfastly that hel and purgatory is for the same ende that holy church techeth for. But my mening was that I might have seen for lerning in alle thing that longeth to my faith, wherby I might live the more to Goddes wurshippe and to my profite. And for ought that I culde desyer, I ne culde se of this right nought. (Revelation, 33.1–7)
Julian is here careful to emphasis the orthodoxy of enquiries (she does not intend them as a test) and of her showings – absence thereof – and their implications. She goes on to remind the reader that she knows that ‘the deville is reproved of God and endlessly dampned’ (Revelation, 33.7–8), as are those ‘that be of the devilles condition in this life’ (Revelation, 33.9) and the Jews who put Christ to death and were not converted (Revelation, 33.17–19). At the same time, however, she does not specify any who are damned eternally apart from the devil himself, keeping alive the possibility that before the final judgement salvation remains open to all. This implication makes her assertion ‘But I saw not sinne’ near the beginning of the Thirteenth Revelation seem all the more bold (Revelation, 27.22).
A significant strand of medieval prophecy is the vision of the otherworld or revelation of the last things: heaven, hell and purgatory. These visions draw on the imagery of Scripture and, in particular, the Book of Revelation. Apocalyptic descriptions of the sufferings of intransigent bishops and kings are found, for example, in the revelations of Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), Bridget of Sweden (1303–1373) and Catherine of Siena (1347–1380). Moreover, the relevance of such visions to nuns, for whom saying prayers for the dead was an important duty, is manifest. In England in the twelfth century, Aelred of Rievaulx reported that the sisters of Watton in Yorkshire were ‘often taken in ineffable raptures’ and would offer prayers for their dead sisters until they were granted a vision to assure them of their salvation.12 However, laywomen might also experience similar revelations concerning whether the living would go to heaven, hell or purgatory and have visions of the otherworld and the fate of the dead. Even while she was still living in her parents’ house, Christina of Markyate received assurances not only of her own salvation, but also of those close to her (Life, pp. 78–9). These continued, of course, when she became a recluse and once she had taken her vows (e.g. Life, pp. 158–9 and 178–83).
In direct contrast to Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe received revelations concerning the fate of the dead and was able to advise friends and relatives of the deceased on how the sufferings of those in purgatory could be reduced by pious acts, such as almsgiving (Book, ch. 19, pp. 46–7 and ch. 23, pp. 53–4). Yet, while she rejoiced in knowing who would be saved, her revelations concerning the damned caused her such distress and despair that, despite the Lord’s warnings, she convinced herself that she was experiencing diabolic delusions:
Sche wolde not heryn it ne beleuyn þat it was God þat schewyd hir swech thyngys & put it owt of hir mende as mech as sche myth. Owr Lord blamyd hir þer-for & badde hir beleuyn þat it was hys hy mercy & hys goodnesse to schewyn hir hys preuy cownselys, seying to hir mende, ‘Dowtyr, þu must as wel heryn of þe dampnyd as of þe sauyed.’ Sche wolde ʒeuyn no credens to þe cownsel of God but raþar leuyd it was euvyl spiryt for to deceyuyn hir.
(Book, ch. 59, p. 144; cf. ch. 23, pp. 54–5)
As a result, God punished her for her lack of faith. Elsewhere, Christ acknowledges Margery Kempe’s prayers for the salvation of:
alle laʒerys, & […] alle presonerys […] alle lecherows men & women […] alle Iewys & Saraʒenys & alle hethyn pepil […] alle þe pepil þat is now in þis worlde leuyng & […] alle þo þat arn for to come in-to þis worldys ende.
(Book, ch. 84, p. 204)
Also quite distinct from Julian of Norwich’s showings is A Revelation of Purgatory, written in the first half of the fifteenth century by a visionary of Winchester, in all probability a lay anchoress, as Mary C. Erler has recently argued; this gives a graphic account of the pains endured by the dreamer’s friend, a sister of Nunnaminster called Margaret:13
And þan me þoʒt þer came out oþer two deuelles, of þe which one hadde sharp rasours, and he ferd as he wold al to-kyt hyr fleishe, and so he didde to my syght. And me þoʒt he pared away al hyr lyppis, and he toke a grete hoke of iren and smote þroʒ-out hyr hert, and þat oþer devill melted lede and brymstone and al maner stynkynge venym that man myʒt thynk.14
It also provides detailed instructions about what prayers, pilgrimages and masses will speed her into heaven.
Julian of Norwich’s showings are clearly related to but distinct from these visions of the otherworld. Like Margery Kempe, she is pained by the knowledge of damnation. In her Thirteenth Revelation in Section Fourteen of A Vision, she wonders about the damage brought about by sin: ‘“A, goode lorde, howe might alle be wele for the grete harme that is comon by sinne to thy creatures?”‘ (Vision, 14.2–3). As part of the answer (which endorses the notion of the felix culpa or fortunate fall), Julian is granted understanding that there are two types [‘parties’] of truth:
The ta party is oure saviour and oure salvation. This blissed party is open and clere and faire and light and plentious. For alle mankinde that is of goode wille or that shalle be es comprehended in this partye. Hereto ere we bidden of God and drawen and consayled and lered inwardlye be the haly gaste and outwarde by haly kyrke by the same grace […] The tother parte is spared fra us and hidde: that is to saye, alle that is beside oure salvation. For this is oure lordes prive consayles, and it langes to the ryalle lordeship of God for to have his prive consayles in pees, and it langes to his servantes for obedience and reverence nought to wille witte his councelle. Oure lorde has pite and compassion of us, for that sum creatures makes tham so besy therin. And I am seker if we wiste howe mekille we shulde plese him and ese oureselfe for to lefe it, we walde.
(Vision, 14.15–30; cf. Revelation, 30.1–15)
Margery Kempe, who is described in her Book as one of ‘owyr Lordys owyn secretarijs whech he hath indued wyth lofe’ (Book, ch. 28, p. 71), clearly envisages herself as a divine councillor, who, as we have seen, has access to his ‘preuy cownselys’. Julian of Norwich draws on similar imagery of contemporary secular kingship.15 But, in contrast to Margery Kempe, she contends that God’s servants, Christians such as herself, should not seek access to his confidences, and that attempts to do so are ill-advised, inappropriate and displeasing to God. Knowledge pertaining to salvation is available to all Christians, including Julian; that which is not is locked away. It is, then, a crucial aspect of Julian’s self-identification as mystic and visionary that her knowledge of divine things is partial and restricted.
In the longer version of the Thirteenth Revelation, the concern with divine secrets and what can and cannot be known by those living remains a central focus. In Chapter 27 of A Revelation of Love, Julian, returning to the question of why God allows sin, refers to ‘an high, mervelous previte hid in God, which privite he shalle openly make knowen to us in heven’ (Revelation, 27.33–34). This leads, in Chapter 32, to a startling apocalyptic prophecy:
There is a deed the which the blissful trinite shalle do in the last day, as to my sight. And what the deed shall be and how it shall be done, it is unknowen of alle creatures which are beneth Crist, and shall be tille whan it shalle be done. The goodnesse and the love of our lorde God wille that we witte that it shall be. And the might and the wisdom of him, by the same love, wille heyle it and hide it fro us, what it shalle be and how it shalle be done […] This is the gret deed ordained of oure lorde God fro without beginning, tresured and hid in his blessed brest, only knowen to himselfe, by which deed he shalle make all thing wele. For right as the blessed trinite made alle thing of nought, right so the same blessed trinite shalle make wele alle that is not welle. (Revelation, 32.19–30)
Because the specific nature of this deed remains unknown to Julian, she continues to struggle with the Christian doctrine ‘that many creatures shall be dampned’ (Revelation, 32.33–4), namely the fallen angels, heathens and Christians who die outside the state of charity (Revelation, 32.34–7). Despite her repeated insistence that she believes as Holy Church teaches, she nevertheless intimates that universal salvation may yet become a reality.16 Alluding to Luke 18.26–7 (‘And they that heard it said, who then can be saved …’), Julian is reassured by the Lord, ‘ “That that is unpossible to the is not unpossible to me” ‘ (Revelation, 32.41–2). The absence of a showing of a general hell seems implicitly to admit the theologically radical – and heterodox – possibility that, in Julian’s understanding, hell does not exist.
At the end of A Revelation Julian talks about how, on the Day of Judgement, for all who are saved, pain and sorrow will pass away: ‘And not only we shalle receive the same blisse that soules afore have had in heven, but also we shall receive a new, which plentuously shalle beflowe oute of God into us and fulfille us’ (Revelation, 75.15–17). Again the language is apocalyptic, echoing the Book of Revelation 21.1, ‘And I saw a new heaven and a new earth …’. This bliss appears to be associated with the fulfilment of Julian’s prophecy in Chapter 32 concerning the ‘gret deed’ (Revelation, 32.27).17 Julian goes on to describe the dread that will accompany this bliss, so that ‘the pillours of heven shulle tremelle and quake’ and ultimately ‘alle heven, alle erth, shall tremelle and quake whan the pillers shall tremelle and quake’ (Revelation, 75.24–5 and 38–9).
Julian’s apocalyptic visions are, then, concerned with salvation rather than with damnation. But Julian’s showings are also concealings. What God does not reveal to Julian is, she implies, even more important than what he does. Whereas the visions and revelations of Christina of Markyate, Margery Kempe and the anonymous visionary of The Revelation of Purgatory affirm traditional salvation theology, Julian’s showings challenge it. Her repeated references to the teaching of Holy Church, her repeated insistences that she is only talking about those who will be saved, are carefully and crucially included to protect her from accusations of heresy.
Communities of Believers and Readers
Neither Christina of Markyate nor Margery Kempe were isolated seers; rather, both were members of communities of ecstatics within (and to some extent outside of) the societies in which they moved; and in the case of Margery Kempe, this community included Julian of Norwich herself. Christina of Markyate was one to whom others came for advice and spiritual help in times of need, but others around her shared her gift of prophecy, including Roger the hermit, with whom she lived for some years, and Sueno, canon of Huntingdon (Life, pp. 82–3, 96–7, 100–1 and 106–9). Some members of her circle were granted visions, such as her closest associate for many years, Geoffrey, abbot of St Albans (Life, pp. 152–5). Similar observations can be made about Margery Kempe, three centuries later. During her lifetime, Norwich was a centre of religious enthusiasm, orthodox as well as heretical, and Margery Kempe was not on her own. In her Book, Margery Kempe describes her introduction to Richard Caister, vicar of St Stephen’s Church in Norwich, to whom were ascribed miracles and great works in his lifetime and who after his death in 1420 was revered as a popular saint (Book, pp. 38–40, 147, and 320 n. 142/29–31). Margery confided in him at length about her revelations, even prophesying his death (Book, pp. 39–40), and he, in turn, supported her against her enemies. She also consulted William Southfield, a Norwich Carmelite, whom she describes as ‘a good man and an holy leuar,’ and of whom it is recorded elsewhere that he received divine visitations (Book, ch. 18, p. 41 and p. 278 n. 41/2sq). The anchorite of the Friar Preachers in Lynn, who acted as one of her principal confessors, is reported to have encouraged her in her pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He foresaw, in considerably accurate detail, ‘be þe spiryt of prophecye,’ some of the tribulations and blessings she would experience (Book, ch. 18, pp. 44; ch. 21, p. 60 and ch. 30, pp. 76–7). He is also represented by Margery Kempe as skilled in the discernment of spirits; she confided her revelations to him when she dared do so to no other ‘for he cowde most skyl in swech thyngys’(Book, ch. 21, p. 50; cf. ch. 18. pp. 44–5).
Margery Kempe’s account of her meeting with Julian, by now, of course, an anchoress, is justifiably well known. According to this account, Margery Kempe approached ‘Dame Ielyan’ on the instructions of the Lord (Book, ch. 18. p. 42). The meeting took place in around 1413, when Julian would have been seventy and Margery Kempe forty. Margery Kempe makes no mention of Julian’s visionary writings, which has led critics to speculate about whether she had read or even knew of them.18 Instead she describes how she confided to Julian her spiritual feelings, meditations, conversations with the Lord and revelations ‘to wetyn yf þer wer any deceyte in hem, for þe ankres was expert in swech thyngys & good cownsel cowd ʒeuyn’ (Book, ch. 18, p. 42). Julian is represented not as a mystic or visionary, but as one knowledgeable about the discernment of spirits. Kempe relates Julian’s circumspect but encouraging words, which include the assurance that ‘þe sowle of a rytful man is þe sete of God, & so I trust, syster, þat ʒe ben,’ and a prayer that she may be granted perseverance and patience in the face of hostility (Book, ch. 18, p. 43). Kempe records that she and Julian conversed about God for the ‘many days þat þei were to-gedyr’ (Book, ch. 18, p. 43). Nevertheless, in recounting this episode she concentrates on Julian’s side of the exchange. This is in line with what she reveals of her encounter with William Southfield, whom she also consults to find out if ‘sche wer dysceyued be any illusyons or not’ (Book, ch. 18, p. 41); here, too, her own words are not recorded in detail. However, it contrasts with what we are told of the revelations concerning the Virgin Mary that she confides to her anchorite confessor in Chapter 21 (Book, ch. 21, p. 50).19 Even more strikingly, it contrasts with the extended account of her visions that she confesses to Richard Caister, including those ‘boþen of qwyk & of ded & of hys own self’ (Book, ch. 17, p. 39).
It is possible that here The Book simply avoids duplication, and that the reader is meant to assume that Margery Kempe revealed similar things to Julian of Norwich and William Southfield as to her confessor and Richard Caister. But had Margery Kempe consulted Julian of Norwich about her revelations concerning the fate of the living and the dead, as she did Richard Caister, Julian would surely have advised her to dismiss them. Because, in Chapter 36 of A Revelation, Julian of Norwich reveals that when ‘we by oure foly turne us to the beholding of the reproved’ (Revelation 36.37–8), Christ redirects his children to contemplate him. It is not unfeasible, then, that Margery Kempe would have been circumspect in what she confided to Julian; in other words, that she was, if only at times, careful to avoid conflict or debate with those within her community whose support she sought.
Margery Kempe’s account of her meeting with Julian of Norwich is revealing about the spiritual community of which both women were part, a spiritual community for which prophetic knowledge of judgement and salvation had considerable urgency. It also tells us something about the status of Julian in her local community of Norwich in her own lifetime, and specifically in the decades after she first received her showings. Here we see a Julian who is respected by her peers, and particularly by another visionary who perhaps wants to present herself as Julian’s heir, but certainly wants to seek her authorization. Margery Kempe, for one, sees herself as part of the same social and pious community as Julian – a community centred on the city of Norwich and its spiritual networks and vibrant religious culture – and as part of the same visionary tradition. But Margery Kempe also appears to be sensitive to the differences between herself and Julian. She seems to be aware that, while both emerge from a prophetic tradition that is concerned with the last things, the doctrine of damnation and the fate of the souls of the dead, their showings and beliefs diverge in important respects.
If we turn to thinking about the reception of Julian of Norwich’s showings, it is interesting to consider whether those who read Julian’s A Vision, and in particular A Revelation, placed much emphasis on her universalist apocalypticism, or whether they, like Margery Kempe, chose to ignore it. The evidence of the reception of Julian’s work is patchy, and it is analyzed more fully elsewhere in this volume, so here I focus on two seventeenth-century fragments produced by recusant nuns on the continent.20 Both of these fragments refer to the prophetic Thirteenth Revelation of the longer text of Julian’s work. In the first, written by Margaret Gascoigne, a nun of Cambrai in the 1630s, the sentence ‘ “Lette me alone, my deare worthy childe, intende (or attende) to me, I am inough to thee; rejoice in thy Saviour and Salvation” ‘ (the lines come from Revelation, 36.39–40) becomes, alongside ‘ “thou my God art inough to me” ‘ (Revelation, 5.31–32), the basis for a meditation on personal salvation.21 Gascoigne acknowledges her debt to the book of revelations of ‘Julian the Ankress of Norwich’, but her own concern is not the possibility of universal salvation or a questioning of why sin is allowed to exist, so much as a fear of her own sinfulness and its consequences. As she puts it, ‘it seemeth to my naturall judgement that my case is almost damnable’.22 In contrast, in the second fragment, which appears in the Upholland Manuscript, and was written by an anonymous nun of Cambrai, more of Julian’s text is preserved, including warnings against ‘seeking and desiring to know and understand the secrets of allmighty god’.23 This text, headed ‘SAINT JULIAN’,24 extracts and paraphrases the Thirteenth Revelation of Julian’s longer version, and gains particular prophetic power in a context of Catholic persecution: ‘Holy Church shall be shaked in sorrow and anguish, and tribulation in this world, as a man shaketh a cloath in the wind’.25 Yet even here, the text is edited and reworked to remove the strongest assertions of universalist apocalypticism. There is no reference to Julian not seeing sin, no great deed to be done on the last day, and no struggle to understand damnation.26
Conclusion
Julian of Norwich’s A Vision and A Revelation are both indebted to a tradition of medieval prophecy that encompasses apocalyptic revelation and visions of heaven, hell and purgatory. Julian acknowledges her own assumption that, like women visionaries such as Christina of Markyate or Margery Kempe, she will receive such showings, and she will be able to determine the fate of the living and the dead. But she also distances herself from such traditions and expectations when she asserts that she is denied specific knowledge concerning her friend, and that she sees neither sin nor hell. Instead she develops her own far more theologically daring universalist apocalypticism. Indeed, it might be argued that Julian’s universalist beliefs evolve from her early anxieties about the fate of her friend. Margery Kempe’s account of her meeting with Julian of Norwich may reveal in its omissions and silences her awareness of the chasm between their respective beliefs and practices and, unusually, her unwillingness to confront this. Later recusant nuns also struggled to reconcile the implications of Julian’s showings, and especially of her Thirteenth Revelation as it appears in the longer text, with their own faith and experience. When Julian, at the end of A Revelation, announces ‘This boke is begonne by Goddes gifte and his grace, but it is not yet performed, as to my sight’ (Revelation, 86.1–2), she suggests that it is neither completed nor perfected. Thus, she entrusts it to her readers to ‘perform’, whom she invites to pray with her ‘for charite’ (Revelation, 86.2). In so doing, she rhetorically places the book into the hands of her spiritual community, now and in the future. Yet, at the same time, she relocates it within the medieval prophetic tradition. For these lines also convey the idea that the book will only be completed and perfected with the fulfilment of its predictions on the Day of Judgment. Ultimately, ‘Saint’ Julian’s prophecies concerning the great deed and other secrets cannot be fully ‘performed’ until the Apocalypse itself.
1 All in-text references to the Short Text and Long Text (hereafter cited as either A Vision or A Revelation) are by section or chapter and line to The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, ed. Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins (Turnhout, 2006).
2 In this article I revisit, develop and revise my brief discussion of Julian of Norwich in the context of Margery Kempe and other medieval women prophets in Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 28–33. Some paragraphs and sentences have been borrowed and adapted from that analysis. I am grateful to Boydell and Brewer for permission to reuse this material.
3 See, for example, the claim that ‘the references to mothering and pregnancy in A Revelation are theological, not autobiographical’, in Writings, ed. Watson and Jenkins, p. 4.
4 Writings, ed. Watson and Jenkins, p. 4.
5 Benedicta Ward, ‘Julian the Solitary’, in Julian Reconsidered, ed. Kenneth Leech and Benedicta Ward (Oxford, 1988), pp. 11–35.
6 Diane Watt, Medieval Women’s Writing: Works By and For Women in England, 1100–1500 (Cambridge, 2007), ch. 4.
7 See my discussion of this in The Paston Women: Selected Letters, ed. Diane Watt (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 4–5.
8 See Writings, ed. Watson and Jenkins, Appendix B, pp. 431–5.
9 Felicity Riddy, ‘“Women Talking About The Things of God”: A Late Medieval Sub-Culture’, in Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500, ed. Carol M. Meale (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 104–27 (115).
10 All in-text references (hereafter Life) are to The Life of Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth Century Recluse, ed. and trans. C. H. Talbot (Oxford, 1959; repr. Toronto, 1998).
11 All in-text references (hereafter Book) are to The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen, EETS o.s. 212 (Oxford, 1940; repr. 1997).
12 Giles Constable, ‘Ælred of Rievaulx and the Nun of Watton: An Episode in the Early History of the Gilbertine Order’, in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford, 1978), pp. 205–26 (206); see also Sharon Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth Century England (Chapel Hill, NC, 1988), pp. 106–11.
13 Mary C. Erler, ‘ “A Revelation of Purgatory” (1422): Reform and the Politics of Female Visions,’ Viator 38 (2007), pp. 321–45 (324–5). Erler offers an important re-evaluation of the text, which stresses that its attacks on ecclesiastical corruption operate within an orthodox framework. Erler also stresses the importance of women’s friendship and female intercession.
14 A Revelation of Purgatory by an Unknown Fifteenth-Century Woman Visionary: Introduction, Critical Text and Translation, ed. Marta Powell Harley, Studies in Women and Religion 18 (Lewiston, NY, 1985), p. 67.
15 See Writings, ed. Watson and Jenkins, p. 94, l. 25n, where the editors observe that ‘the expected word here would be [not “prive” but] “privetes”, which often means “heavenly secrets” ‘. As we will see, ‘privetes’ is used by Julian elsewhere.
16 Nicholas Watson, ‘Visions of Inclusion: Universal Salvation and Vernacular Theology in Pre-Reformation England’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27 (1997), pp. 145–87; pp. 160–6.
17 Writings, ed. Watson and Jenkins, p. 360, ll. 15–17n.
18 But see the discussions in Watt, Medieval Women’s Writing, ch. 4; and Writings, ed. Watson and Jenkins, pp. 12–13.
19 According to a scribal note, Chapter 22 is misplaced and should be read before Chapter 17, in other words, in the context of Kempe’s accounts of her consultations with Caister, Southfield and Julian: Book, ch. 16, p. 38.
20 Both are also considered briefly by Elisabeth Dutton in her essay later in this volume.
21 Writings, ed. Watson and Jenkins, Appendix D.1, pp. 443–4 and 441 and passim.
22 Ibid., Appendix D.1, pp. 440–1.
23 Ibid., Appendix D.2, p. 447; this phrase is an addition to Revelation 30.
24 Ibid., Appendix D.2, p. 446.
25 Ibid., Appendix D.2, p. 446 (cf. Revelation 28.4–6).
26 Ibid., Appendix D.2, pp. 446–8, and note especially the cuts to Revelation 27 and 32.