2. ‘A recluse atte Norwyche’: Images of Medieval Norwich and Julian’s Revelations
2
‘A recluse atte Norwyche’:
Images of Medieval Norwich and Julian’s Revelations
CATE GUNN
We know nothing conclusive about Julian’s early life, but she indicates that she had been devout since her youth; if Julian’s childhood and youth had been spent in Norwich, how would the experiences of her early life have fed her devotional life and possibly informed her visions? Among the evidence that Norman Tanner cites in support of his claim that Norwich may have been ‘Europe’s most religious city’1 is the number of hermits and anchorites supported by the city in the high Middle Ages. Pre-eminent among these anchorites is Julian herself, the ‘star attraction’2 of the spiritual life of Norwich. But it is possible to look at the situation another way: while Julian may be proof of the religiosity of Norwich, could it be that the religious atmosphere, devotional practices and imagery of Norwich made Julian’s spirituality possible and inspired her writing? The very buildings manifested both the economic importance and religious significance of the city: the magnificent Norman Cathedral challenged the dominance of the Castle; the splendid church of St Peter Mancroft overshadowed the marketplace. Every day in the city was punctuated by the ringing of bells of nearly sixty churches,3 and the chanting and singing in religious houses provided a counterpoint to the noise and bustle of the marketplace. The impact of religion was auditory, olfactory and, above all, visual.
Every ‘major European development in the practice of institutional religion’ from the Benedictine monastic cathedral to the ‘Great Hospital’ of St Giles and the secular college of St Mary in the Fields was represented in Norwich;4 the most important new movement in the high Middle Ages was that of the mendicant friars, all four major orders of which had houses in Norwich. Both Dominicans and Franciscans were dedicated to preaching to the people and used techniques such as colourful narrative stories or exempla to attract lay audiences; sermons were an important way of educating and inspiring people both religious and lay. One of the few pieces of information Julian gives about her early life is that she heard ‘a man telle of halye kyrke of the storye of Sainte Cecille’ (Vision, 1.36),5 presumably in a sermon. Julian may have been a nun at Carrow Priory, whose large church was used for preaching by resident and visiting clergy.6 The story of Saint Cecilia recalled by Julian is contained in the famous Legenda Aurea, a collection of stories and exempla written by the Dominican Jacobus de Voragine. The Dominican church Julian may have known was destroyed by fire in 1413, but the large church built in the mid-fifteenth century is still standing, and the great size of its nave, as well as the preaching yard outside, are witnesses to the importance of the Dominicans’ preaching mission in Norwich. The friars also provided intellectual stimulation; the Dominican friary ranked as a studium to which brethren were sent for further training from all parts of England. The Benedictine cathedral priory also had a reputation for learning, with one of the finest libraries in medieval England and a school for oblates, as well as having some responsibility for the grammar school.7 Carrow Priory also had a library.8
The experience of religion in the fourteenth century, however, was much more than cerebral: Miri Rubin has described the intensely sensory nature of the Eucharist for lay people – incorporating sight, sound and smell,9 while Eamon Duffy has written of the impact of images on the devotions and religious practices of late medieval England.10 Michael Camille has suggested that images are ‘taken for granted in our society’ and that ‘[w]e probably see more of these in one day than a medieval person might see in a whole lifetime’.11 But in one important area, the medieval person certainly encountered the colour and forms of images: where churches now present bare stone or whitewash, the medieval church was alive with murals and painted statues. Imagery was a part of everyday life – and the everyday world was incorporated into religious imagery. The Despencer retable, an altar piece made for Norwich Cathedral in the late fourteenth century, sets the Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection among people – citizens of Norwich – clothed in late fourteenth-century dress. When Julian saw Christ dying on the cross and his flesh turning pale there was ‘a dry, harre wind’ blowing (Revelation, 16.10). Watson and Jenkins note that this is not a standard detail of Passion accounts but ‘a cold east wind from the North Sea might have been a feature of many Good Fridays in fourteenth-century Norwich’.12 Robert Flood has also suggested that the ‘sea grounde’ with hills and dales, wrack and gravel (Revelation, 10.16–17) is reminiscent of the Yare valley east of Norwich;13 whilst Flood tends to interpret Julian’s visions in terms of her physical environment too literally, we should not ignore that environment. Like the painter of the Despencer retable, Julian, in many ways, imagined the Crucifixion as taking place in Norwich.
The Norwich in which Julian lived was full of the sights, sounds and smells of religion, and these must have had an effect upon her spirituality; although her writings convey a deep theological understanding and spiritual concern, the visions she describes are intensely sensory. Towards the end of her vision, the devil came to Julian, with his dreadful heat, stench and noise (Vision, 23.1–6). Overall, however, the experience was primarily visual; like many Christian mystics, Julian wrote of seeing God. Augustine wrote that ‘sight is the principal sense by which knowledge is acquired’;14 perception was the paradigm of knowledge, and metaphors of illumination and vision were used to express intellectual and spiritual knowledge.15
Images played an important role in the regular devotional practices of lay people also. The ubiquity of Gregory the Great’s dictum that ‘a picture is displayed in churches on this account, in order that those who do not know letters may at least read by seeing on the walls what they are unable to read in books’16 can be distracting – it prevents us from apprehending what the real function of imagery in the churches of the Middle Ages was.17 Lawrence Duggan has argued persuasively that we must already know what pictures represent for them to be meaningful, and suggests that pictures are read to deepen knowledge of what is already known and perhaps to gain new insight, rather than for new information.18 Richard Marks, in his exploration of the use and function of imagery in parish churches in late-medieval England, suggests a move away from a concern with the didactic purpose of images as ‘pictorial “texts” ‘ towards a more affective function, stimulating personal piety.19 In the early fifteenth-century English dialogue Dives and Pauper it is argued that images are used to recall the Passion of Christ and the saints, and to stir people to devotion as well as to be a book for the unlearned.20 Reginald Pecock, defending the use of images against the attacks of the Lollards, argued that one purpose of images was that they acted ‘as rememoratijf signes of God and of hise benefetis, and of his holi lijf and passioun’.21 I want to suggest that the images she was familiar with may have acted as rememorative signs for Julian.
Julian’s younger contemporary, also from East Anglia, Margery Kempe, was certainly stirred to devotion by images. She was reminded of the passion of our Lord by a crucifix she saw in Leicester which ‘was petowsly poyntyd & lamentabyl to be-heldyn’.22 She was also moved by a pietà in Norwich at the sight of which she felt compelled to cry. She was gently rebuked by her companion who reminded her that Jesus had been long dead, to which Margery replied that ‘hys deth is as fresch to me as he had deyd þis same day, & so me thynkyth it awt to be to ʒow & to alle Cristen pepil. We awt euyr to han mende of hys kendnes & euyr thynkyn of þe dolful deth þat he deyd for vs.’23 This serves as a good explanation of the role of images of the Passion, such as crucifixes and pietàs, in the high Middle Ages: they served to remind the viewer that Jesus died for them, and that his death was a present necessity for their redemption. The iconography of the pietà – Mary with the dead Christ in her lap – developed in the fourteenth century and combined the representation of Mary as grieving mother with her ‘role as mediatrix for mankind’.24 It is not clear whether the church in which Margery saw the pietà was St Stephen’s, which she had just left after a crying fit; there were pietàs in the churches of the Austin Friars and the Greyfriars which were the objects of devotion for people outside the mendicant communities,25 and at the end of the fourteenth century an image of the pietà in Norwich Cathedral was attracting oblations.26
In her vision, Julian saw Mary ‘gastelye in bodilye lyekenes’ as ‘a simpille maidene and a meeke, yonge of age’ (Vision, 4.22); later she is shown Mary as she was as she conceived, in her sorrow under the cross and ‘as sho is nowe, in likinge, wirshippe, and joye’ (Vision, 13.21). Julian saw Mary in her eleventh revelation at the right side of Christ and the editors note that ‘In late medieval painting and sculpture Mary is usually depicted on the right side of the cross, from Christ’s perspective’.27 However, what Christ shows to Julian is more than Mary at the Crucifixion: he shows his love for her, and it is through this love that he loves all humanity. Mary is not only the simple maiden, she is also seen in the manner of the Assumption and Coronation as the Queen of Heaven (Revelation, 25.33–4).
The visions Julian received were initiated by the crucifix held before her as she lay close to death. The church of St Edward and St Julian, to which Julian was attached as an anchorite, is recorded as having two ‘portable’ (portatilis) crosses in 1368.28 Julian’s ‘parson’ who attended her when she was believed to be dying brought such a cross, probably with a painted figure of Christ on it,29 and set it before her, saying: ‘Doughter, I have brought the the image of thy savioure. Loke thereupon, and comforthe the therewith in reverence of him that diede for the and me’ (Vision, 2.22–4). The words he is recorded as saying in the later Revelation are slightly different (Revelation, 3.19–20), but both state that the image should be a comfort to the dying woman; it is a reminder that her saviour died for her redemption. Christopher Abbott points out that ‘The church presents the crucifix to Julian precisely to activate and support her faith in Christ as saviour and redeemer.’30 This scene is similar to that illustrated in the guides of a good death, Artes moriendi,31 and recalls the grace Julian had desired in order that she may experience not only the pains but also the ‘dredes and tempestes of feyndes’ that would prepare her for when she was really dying (Vision, 1.27).
By the Middle Ages, the cross was the most important of Christian symbols. From the early tradition of presenting the cross as ‘a statement of divine victory’32 it had become a memorial of the Passion of the human Jesus, and in late-medieval piety in particular there was a desire to imaginatively participate in that Passion: through the cross, Christ became present to the devout viewer. For Julian the cross was at the heart of her spirituality; as an anchoress the crucifix would have been a constant presence in her cell, as it was for the sister of Aelred and the anchoresses for whom the thirteenth-century Ancrene Wisse was written (an English work Julian may have known). Aelred wrote in the De Institutione Inclusorum: ‘On your altar let it be enough for you to have a representation of our Saviour hanging on the Cross; that will bring before your mind his passion for you to imitate’.33
The representation of the Crucifixion became increasingly affective during the high Middle Ages; a more dynamic representation of the suffering of Christ stressed his agony and intensified the emotional response of the viewer.34 Denise Nowakowski Baker has suggested that ‘undoubtedly Julian was familiar with the conventions of depicting the crucified Christ in affective spirituality’,35 and gives as an example a wall painting from St Faith’s Priory in Horsham, near Norwich. Baker suggests that while the depictions of the Passion and Crucifixion ‘shaped what Julian saw’, it was the narrative provided by meditative exercises and the visualization induced by such meditation, rather than devotional art, that was the ‘catalyst for her visions’.36
Julian’s intellectual achievement is now recognized, as is the spirituality of her writing; but is it possible that the religious imagery she encountered could also have informed her spirituality? Paul Binski argues that depictions of the Crucifixion should not be seen as secondary to, or dependent on, changes in the discourse about the Passion; while ‘certain aspects of crucifixion imagery had a distinct discursive basis’37 the imagery itself could constitute a new understanding and signification, promoting and propelling the discourse. There may be a fear that, by discussing the affectivity of Julian’s response and the emotionally charged visual content of her revelations, we may detract from her intellectual achievement and somehow be complicit in the dismissal of her as a weak and feeble woman, prey to visions and imaginings. Benedicta Ward insists that the Revelations are ‘not … a description of the Crucified written to invoke pity and repentance; they are not in the tradition of the Stabat Mater, they are serious theology of the love that is God’.38 I would question the implied absoluteness of the distinction between the affectivity of descriptions of the Crucifixion in the late medieval affective tradition, represented by the Stabat Mater, with its portrayal of the suffering of Mary witnessing the painful death of her son, and the ‘serious theology’ of Julian’s Revelations. Pity and theology are not mutually exclusive. Images themselves can have intellectual content; in a recent paper, Bernard McGinn has questioned the inevitability of a tension between theology and iconography which has been posited by some art historians; by reference to Hildegard of Bingen, Joachim of Fiore and Henry Suso he argues for the importance of the illustrations they commissioned and directed within their theology. McGinn points out that Julian of Norwich ‘did not feel compelled to illustrate, or to commission others to illustrate, the visions that God had given [her]’,39 but the visual importance of Julian’s revelation and theology is indisputable; it is as though her whole being is rapt up in her gaze on the vision of God.
It is clear from Julian’s description that the cross held before her had on it a figure of the dying Christ. It was the image of the dying Christ that inspired Julian’s visions: she experienced a visceral understanding of his suffering. While her understanding of his redemptive sacrifice was spiritual and theological, her quest for this understanding was provoked by the affectus of the image. In the Eighth Revelation, Julian wrote of three ways of ‘beholding of his blessed passion’ (Revelation, 21.1–2); beholding is more than seeing: it suggests observing and examining in order to come to an understanding, but the understanding is initiated in a visual apprehension. Julian saw the suffering of Jesus, and from that came to an understanding of his Passion and its meaning for ‘us’: that is, her fellow Christians (Revelation, 21.12–13). Through suffering with Christ, they will come to share his bliss in heaven. The other manners of ‘beholding’ are to do with ‘the love that made him to suffer’ (Revelation, 22.37–8), and ‘the joy and the blisse that maketh him to like it’ (Revelation, 23.6); Julian has moved beyond the observation of the Passion to an understanding of its purpose and teleology.
The triad of three beholdings is typical of much of Julian’s writing: her understanding of theology is underpinned by an awareness of God as a trinity. As part of these three beholdings, she is shown three heavens; in the first heaven she ‘saw in Crist that the father is’ (Revelation, 22.11). This seems to recall a verse from St John’s Gospel: ‘Jesus saith … no man cometh unto the father, but by me’ (John 14:6). In the First Revelation, Julian understood the Trinity in the suffering of Christ: ‘For wher Jhesu appireth the blessede trinity is understand, as to my sight’ (Revelation, 4.11–12).40 Julian’s theology was rooted in her incarnational spirituality, but over the years, as she contemplated her vision, she came to understand Jesus as embracing the Trinity.
The Trinity is an abstract concept and depicting it was theologically and technically difficult. Alexandra Barratt, who explores its iconography and the relevance of that imagery in the essay which follows this one, focuses primarily on manuscript illustrations but, as she points out, Norwich Cathedral was dedicated to the Holy Trinity. There would, therefore, have been a patronal image of the Trinity in the Cathedral, probably standing to the north of the High Altar,41 that Julian may well have seen. Roberta Gilchrist refers to the High Altar as the ‘location of the sacred’ and although the laity were prohibited from the presbytery, the pilgrims’ route through the ambulatory took them behind the altar, from where they could view relics.42 Francis Blomefield suggests that the image was on the rood loft; he also describes the image as being of the ‘Throne of Grace’ type: ‘the Almighty Father … being blasphemously represented by a weak old man; the Blessed Redeemer on the Cross, between his knees, and the Eternal Spirit, by a dove, on his breast’.43 This form of the Trinity is found on the signet ring of William Alnwick as Bishop of Norwich in the fifteenth century.44 What may be the earliest depiction of the Throne of Grace Trinity, possibly dating from the end of the eleventh century, has been recently uncovered in a painting above the chancel arch in St Mary’s Church, Houghton, less than twenty-five miles west of Norwich.45 In the church of Long Melford in Suffolk, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, the patronal image was housed in a ‘goodly gilt tabernacle’ to the north of the High Altar. It is described by the recusant churchwarden in his account of the church immediately before the Reformation as ‘one fair large gilt image of the Holy Trinity’,46 which suggests a single image incorporating all three persons. Also in Long Melford church, there is still a medieval glass painting depicting the Trinity as three hares’ heads, sharing three ears between them.
The image of the Holy Trinity in Norwich Cathedral was accorded due reverence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: basins containing wax tapers burned continually before it.47 The image was treated as a spectacle: in 1404 a jewel was bought for the body of Christ to be displayed at the feasts of the Holy Trinity and Corpus Christi, and in the sixteenth century gold shoes were made for the Trinity, and a tunic and crown were placed upon the second person of the Trinity ‘at fit times’.48 The elaborate costume of the second person – Christ – seems to be at odds with the usual portrayal of the Trinity as the ‘Throne of Grace’ where Christ is shown crucified and wearing only a loin-cloth. The image was at the High Altar, which received a steady income of donations, almost impervious to the fashions that came and went for other shrines in the cathedral. In the fourteenth century, these were the largest annual donations, amounting to over thirty pounds in 1386.49 Offerings were boosted by papal indulgences,50 and those living in the diocese were encouraged to visit the cathedral. Records of the heresy trials in Norwich show that Johannes Fynche was required to offer a wax candle weighing a pound to the image of the Holy Trinity in the cathedral in penance for the offence he had given to God and the Church.51 Margery Kempe offered at the Trinity in Norwich as part of her preparations for pilgrimage to the Holy Land; she also offered ‘in þe worshep of þe Trinite whan sche come to Norwych’ on her return.52 There is no suggestion that Margery thought the image of the Holy Trinity was thaumaturgic; rather, offering at it was one of a number of necessary tasks to be undertaken before embarking on a pilgrimage, and in thanksgiving on her return: it was part of her regular devotional life.
As Barratt also points out in her own contribution, Julian eschews such pictorial explanations of the Trinity; it may, however, be worth asking whether a depiction of the Trinity – apparently static and hieratic – can in any way be linked to Julian’s understanding of a dynamic Trinity relating with humanity. We should keep in mind Jeffrey Hamburger’s claim that ‘In the context of Christian doctrine, image and text were tied one to the other as Christ’s visible humanity was indissolubly, if mysteriously, linked to his divinity as the Logos.’53 Julian has an eschatological understanding of the Trinity: it will be fully revealed only at the end of time at the final judgement, when the power of the Trinity will make all things well; but in this life we come to an understanding of the Trinity through the incarnate Jesus, whose Crucifixion comprehends the Trinity.
The iconography of the Trinity is very varied; the Throne of Grace incorporates the Crucifixion but occasionally all three figures are represented anthropomorphically side by side.54 In both these forms, God the Father is seated on a throne; Julian states that ‘The sitting of the fader betokeneth the godhede’ (Revelation, 15.232). In the parable of the Lord and Servant in Julian’s Fourteenth Revelation, the lord is sitting in state when he sends the servant – who is both humanity and Christ – out to do his will (Revelation, 51.7–10). The servant falls and is raised again; in the Throne of Grace the figure of Christ is raised up on the cross and supported by God the Father. The relationship between father and son is dynamic rather than static, and Julian interprets it to understand the active engagement of the Trinity with the human soul. Her description of Christ the servant clothed and crowned and seated on a throne beside his father (Revelation, 51.273) does seem to be visually reminiscent of the crowning of the Trinity at the festival of the Holy Trinity, but Julian insists that that the son and father are not sitting ‘as one man sitteth by another in this life – for ther is no such sitting, as to my sight, in the trinite’ (Revelation, 51.275). Julian is rejecting too simplistic a visualisation of the relationship between father and son in heaven in favour of an allegorical understanding of the relationship of the persons of the Trinity.
In exploring the relationship between the Trinity and humanity, Julian frequently uses the term ‘beclosed’, which suggests the visual depiction of the Trinity as three figures enclosed in one image:
We are beclosed in the fader, and we are beclosed in the son, and we are beclosed in the holy gost. And the fader is beclosed in us, the son is beclosed in us, and the holy gost is beclosed in us: all mighty, alle wisdom, and alle goodnesse; one God, one lorde. (Revelation, 54.18–21)
Christ unites divinity and humanity: ‘And thus in Crist oure two kindes be oned. For the trinite is comprehended in Crist’ (Revelation, 57.16–17); Julian emphasizes the co-inherence of the Trinity in Christ55 while the image of the Throne of Grace presents the crucified Christ co-inhering within the Trinity. In painted versions of the Throne of Grace the figures are often enclosed within a mandorla, and three-dimensional images are also framed; a patronal image such as that at Long Melford would be enclosed within a tabernacle. The unity of the image presents a representation of the triune God: three in one. The representation of Christ’s humanity in the Crucifixion and of his divinity ‘sitting in rest in the godhed’ (Revelation, 56.21) are central to Julian’s theology; they are also contained in images of the Holy Trinity such as the one she may have seen in the cathedral in Norwich before her enclosure.
By placing the figure of the human, crucified Christ between the knees of God the Father on the throne of heaven, the Throne of Grace image represents both his humanity and his divinity. Such an image, which probably developed from a crucifixion showing the hand of God, ‘gave prominence to God’s acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice. … The emphasis of the message of the image was not at first on the Trinity but on the Father’s sacrifice of his Son in an expiatory Death, a Death he offered to the world for its redemption’.56 This understanding of the Trinity, with its emphasis on sacrifice and redemption, is in keeping with Julian’s own trinitarian theology. It is, to use a phrase that Julian uses elsewhere in the Revelation, a ‘marvelous medelur’ (Revelation, 52.6–7) of triumph and suffering, which together expressed the paradox of redemption. Julian is struggling to express the ineffable in words, but the rich visual culture of the world she inhabited gave her access to a tradition of allegory which enabled her to transcend the limitations of language.
1 Norman Tanner, ‘Religious Practice’, in Medieval Norwich, ed. Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson (London, 2004), pp. 137–55 (137).
2 Ibid., p. 138.
3 Jonathan Finch, ‘The Churches’, in Medieval Norwich, ed. Rawcliffe and Wilson, pp. 49–72 (50 and 58).
4 Christopher Harper-Bill and Carole Rawcliffe, ‘Religious Houses’, in Medieval Norwich, pp. 73–119 (73–4).
5 All quotations will be taken from 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). References to both A Vision and A Revelation will be given in the text with section or chapter and line numbers.
6 Harper-Bill and Rawcliffe, ‘Religious Houses’, p. 98; Watson and Jenkins suggest ‘there is a strong possibility she was a nun at the Benedictine convent at Carrow, a mile from the church of St Julian’s, Conisford, in Norwich, where she was later enclosed as an anchoress’, Writings, p. 4.
7 Norman Tanner, ‘The Cathedral and the City’, in Norwich Cathedral: Church, City and Diocese 1096–1996, ed. Ian Atherton et al. (London, 1996), pp. 255–80 (270–2).
8 Marilyn Oliva, The Convent and the Community in Late Medieval England: Female Monasteries in the Diocese of Norwich, 1350–1540 (Woodbridge, 1998), p. 67.
9 Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 59–63.
10 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400–1580 (New Haven, 1992), pp. 155–63.
11 Michael Camille, ‘The Language of Images in Medieval England, 1200–1400’, in Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200–1400, ed. Jonathan Alexander and Paul Binski (London, 1987), pp. 33–40 (33).
12 Writings, ed. Watson and Jenkins, p. 178.
13 Robert H. Flood, A Description of St Julian’s Church, Norwich and an Account of Dame Julian’s Connection with It (Norwich, 1936), p. 36.
14 ‘Oculi autem sunt ad noscendum in sensibus principes’, Augustine, Confessions, ed. James O’Donnell, 3 vols (Oxford, 1992), I, p. 140; Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (London, 1961), p. 241.
15 Carolly Erickson, The Medieval Vision: Essays in History and Perception (New York, 1976), pp. 42–3.
16 ‘Idcirco enim pictura in ecclesiis adhibetur, ut hi qui litteras nesciunt saltem in parietibus uidendo legant, quae legere in codicus non ualent’. Trans. and quoted by Celia M. Chazelle, ‘Pictures, Books and the Illiterate; Pope Gregory I’s Letters to Serenus of Marseilles’, Word and Image 6 (1990), pp. 138–53 (139).
17 Camille suggests it is ‘a commonplace in our perception of medieval art which requires some rethinking’, in ‘The Language of Images’, p. 33.
18 Lawrence G. Duggan, ‘Was Art Really the “book of the illiterate”?’, Word and Image 5 (1989), pp. 227–51 (243 and 47).
19 Richard Marks, Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Stroud, 2004), p. 18.
20 Dives and Pauper, ed. P. H. Barnum, EETS o.s. 275 (London, 1976), vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 82.
21 Reginald Pecock, The Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy, ed. Churchill Babington, Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain (Kraus reprint, 1966), p. 167; see also Marks, Image and Devotion, p. 16.
22 Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen (Oxford, 1997), ch. 46, p. 111.
23 Ibid., ch. 60, p. 148.
24 Marks, Image and Devotion, p. 123.
25 Harper-Bill and Rawcliffe, ‘Religious Houses’, p. 112.
26 Identified as ‘sancta maria de compassione’ in 1391: John R. Shinners, ‘The Veneration of Saints at Norwich Cathedral in the Fourteenth Century’, Norwich Archaeology 40 (1988), pp. 133–44 (138).
27 Writings, ed. Watson and Jenkins, p. 202.
28 Inventory of Church Goods temp. Edward III (Archdeaconry of Norwich), transcribed by Dom Aelred Watkin, 2 vols (Norfolk Record Society, 1947 and 1948), I, p. 24.
29 See Age of Chivalry, ed. Alexander and Binski, Cat. no. 99, pp. 231–2 and Philip Lindley, Image and Idol: Medieval Sculpture (London, 2001), Cat. no. 19, pp. 38–9.
30 Christopher Abbott, Julian of Norwich: Autobiography and Theology (Cambridge, 1999), p. 63.
31 See Paul Binski, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (London, 1996; pb 2001), pp. 39–42.
32 Colin Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West: From the Beginning to 1600 (Oxford, 2005), p. 132.
33 ‘Sufficiat tibi in altari tuo saluatoris in cruce pendentis imago, quae passionem suam tibi repraesentet quam imiteris’: Aelred of Rievaulx, De Institutione Inclusorum in Opera Omnia 1, ed. A. Hoste and C. H. Talbot, CCCM, 1 (Brepols, 1971), §26; trans. as ‘Rule of Life for a Recluse’ in Treatises, The Pastoral Prayer, Cistercian Fathers Series 2 (Kalamazoo, MI, 1971), pp. 43–102 (73).
34 Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England 1170–1300 (New Haven, 2004), p. 219.
35 Denise Nowakowski Baker, Julian of Norwich’s Showings: From Vision to Book (Princeton, 1994), p. 40.
36 Ibid., pp. 44 and 51; see also Anne Clark Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers: Representation and Subjectivity in Middle English Devotional Literature (Ithaca, 1995), p. 116.
37 Binski, Becket’s Crown, p. 218.
38 Benedicta Ward, ‘Julian the Solitary’, in Julian Reconsidered, ed. Kenneth Leech and Benedicta Ward (Oxford, 1988), pp. 11–31 (29).
39 Bernard McGinn, ‘Theologians as Trinitarian Iconographers’, in The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Anne-Marie Bouché (Princeton, 2006), pp. 186–207 (187).
40 This passage – and others referring to the Trinity – are not included in the shorter and earlier A Vision; in her essay in this volume, ‘ “No Such Sitting”: Julian Tropes the Trinity’, Alexandra Barratt points out that A Vision makes only two references to the Trinity. See p. 42.
41 William Page (ed.), VCH Norfolk, vol. 2 (1906; rep. for University of London Institute of Historical Research, Folkestone: Dawson, 1975), p. 321.
42 Roberta Gilchrist, Norwich Cathedral Close: The Evolution of the English Cathedral Landscape (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 244–6.
43 It is not clear where Blomefield obtained his information, but clearly the very idea of an image of the Trinity could still give offence in the eighteenth century when Blomefield first wrote his account, The History of the City and County of Norwich, vol. 4 of An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk (London, 1806), pp. 29–30.
44 My thanks to Rosemary Hayes for sending me a picture of this seal.
45 François Bœspflug, La Trinité dans l’Art d’Occident (1400–1460): Sept Chefs-d’Œuvres de la Peinture (Strasbourg, 2000), p. 25; see http://www.saintmaryschurch.org.uk/wallpaintings.htm and http://www.paintedchurch.org/hought.htm, both accessed 20 February 2008.
46 Roger Martin, ‘The State of Melford Church and our Ladie’s Chappel at the East End, as I did know it’, in David Dymond and Clive Paine, The Spoil of Melford Church: The Reformation in a Suffolk Parish (Ipswich, 1992), p. 1.
47 William Page (ed.), VCH Norfolk, p. 322.
48 Ibid., p. 322.
49 Shinners, ‘Veneration of Saints’, p. 135.
50 There was a papal indulgence in 1400 for penitents visiting the three chief altars during the feast of the Holy Trinity: Page (ed.), VCH Norfolk, p. 322.
51 Norman P. Tanner (ed.), Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428–31, Camden Society 4th series 20 (London, 1977), p. 188.
52 Book of Margery Kempe, ch. 26, p. 60 and ch. 43, p. 102.
53 Jeffrey F. Hamburger, ‘The Place of Theology in Medieval Art History: Problems, Positions, Possibilities’, in The Mind’s Eye, pp. 11–31 (24).
54 As Barratt points out in her contribution to this volume, this is ‘extremely dubious from a theological viewpoint’: p. 46.
55 J. P. H. Clark, ‘Nature, Grace and the Trinity in Julian of Norwich’, Downside Review 100 (1982), pp. 203–20 (206).
56 Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, trans. Janet Seligman, 2 vols (London, 1972), 2, The Passion of Jesus Christ, p. 123.