Notes
Notes
example, attitudes to the Jews. As a footnote, in her one reference to the Jews (chapter 33), Julian is ambiguous. She admits to seeing nothing
"specified" about them in her visions but "nonetheless" follows the conventional assumption that that they were collectively responsible for Jesus' death and therefore were condemned, unless "converted by grace."
Returning to the notion of humanity sharing in God's "performing," in the Short Text, chapter vi, Julian affirms the vital importance of the practice of love among Christians. This would, at the very least, have directly countered the schism in the Church and other expressions of mutual condemnation.
It is in this unity of love that the life consists of all men who will be saved. For God is everything that is good, and God has made everything that is made, and God loves everything that he has made, and if any man or woman withdraws his love from any of his fellow Christians, he does not love at all, because he had not love towards all. And so in such times he is in danger, because he is not at peace; and anyone who has general love for his fellow
Christians has love towards everything which is. For in mankind which will be saved is comprehended all, that is, all that is made and the maker of all; for God is in man, and so in man is all. And he who thus generally loves all his fellow Christians loves all, and he who loves thus is safe.
Notes 1 For an overall study of context and interpretation in relation to the history of Christian spirituality and classic texts, see Philip Sheldrake, Spirituality and History: Questions of Interpretation and Method, Revised edition, London:
SPCK/Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995, especially Chapters 3 and 7.
2 I am grateful to Fr Christopher Wood, the current parish priest of St Julian's
Church, for informing me about the contemporary consensus in Norwich about Julian as a widow and bereaved mother as well as for information about the Carrow Psalter and devotion to St Julian of Le Mans.
3 Both the Colledge & Walsh and the Watson & Jenkins scholarly editions agree on 13 (xiii) May whereas the recent edition by Windeatt reads it as 8 (viii) May. This remains unclear and depends on which manuscript you read.
4 See the comments in Nicholas Watson & Jacqueline Jenkins, eds., The Writings of Julian of Norwich, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2006, Introduction, p 4.
5 See Norman Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich 1370–1532, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies: Studies & Texts 66, 1984.
Julian in Context
6 See Watson & Jenkins, The Writings of Julian of Norwich, Appendix B, pp 431–435.
7 For the most commonly used modern translation from the Middle English, see B.A. Windeatt, ed., The Book of Margery Kempe, London:
Penguin Classics, 1985.
8 See Conrad Pepler, The English Religious Heritage, London: Blackfriars, 1958, p 306.
9 See Edmund Colledge & James Walsh, eds., A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1978. For the list of scriptural citations and allusions, see Part Two, pp 779ff. For a more general overview of Julian's supposed scriptural and theological sources, see Part One, pp 43–59.
10 For these speculations and their justification, see the extensive book by the founder of the Episcopalian monastic Order of Julian, Fr John‐Julian
OJN, The Complete Julian of Norwich, Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2009, especially pp 21–27. For Tanner's comments about bequests continuing until 1429, see his The Church in Late Medieval Norwich
1370–1532, Appendix 7, p 200, note 29.
11 See A. Barratt, "Lordship, Service and Worship in Julian of Norwich" in E.A. James, ed., The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Exeter
Symposium VII, Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004, pp 177–188.
12 See, for example, Kim Phillips, "Femininities and the Gentry in Late Medieval East Anglia: Ways of Being," in Liz Herbert McAvoy, ed.,
A Companion to Julian of Norwich, Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008, pp 19–31.
13 See Phillips, p 27.
14 See E. A Jones, "Anchoritic Aspects of Julian of Norwich," in McAvoy, ed., Companion to Julian of Norwich, pp 75–87, especially p 78.
15 Tanner, p 27.
16 See Benedicta Ward, "Julian the Solitary," in Kenneth Leech & Sister Benedicta Ward, Julian Reconsidered, Oxford: SLG Press, 1988, pp 11–29.
17 I am grateful to Nicholas Watson for pointing out to me the conventional nature of this image.
18 On this point see, for example, Barry Windeatt, "Julian's Second Thoughts:
The Long Text Tradition," in Liz Herbert McAvoy, ed., A Companion to Julian of Norwich, Cambridge: D.S.Brewer, 2008, pp 101–115.
19 See Nicholas Watson, "The Composition of Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Love," in Speculum 68, 1993, pp 637–683. See also the Introduction to Watson & Jenkins, eds., The Writings of Julian of Norwich, pp 1–4.
20 For general historical overviews, see A.R. Myers, England in the Late Middle Ages, London: Penguin Books, 1981; Rosemary Horrox &
W. Mark Ormrod, A Social History of England 1200–1500, Cambridge:
Notes
Cambridge University Press, 2006; W. Mark Ormrod, Political Life in Medieval England 1300–1450, London: Macmillan, 1995; Miri Rubin,
The Hollow Crown: A History of Britain in the Late Middle Ages, London: Penguin Books, 2005; Gerard Harris, Shaping the Nation:
England 1360–1461, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. For specific connections between this period and the English mystics, including
Julian, see Joan M. Nuth, God's Lovers in an Age of Anxiety: The Medieval English Mystics, London: Darton, Longman & Todd/
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001, Chapter 1 "The Historical Framework," pp 13–33.
21 See Barry Windeatt, ed., Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, p xvi.
22 See Ritamary Bradley, Julian's Way: A Practical Commentary on Julian of Norwich, London: Harper Collins, 1992, p 95.
23 See Windeatt, Julian of Norwich, pp xvii–xviii.
24 For an extensive overview of religion in medieval Norwich, see the thorough and reliable book by the English Jesuit medieval historian,
Norman Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich 1370–1532, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1984. For a more general overview, see Cariole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson, eds.,
Medieval Norwich, London/New York: Hambledon (Palgrave Macmillan), 2004. For specific details of the monastic and other religious houses in Norwich, see David Knowles & R. Neville Hadcock,
Medieval Religious Houses, England & Wales, Harlow: Longman, 1971.
25 See Mavis Mate, Women in Medieval English Society, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001. See also Judith M. Bennett & Ruth Mazo Karras, eds., Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval
Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
26 See Anne Savage & Nicholas Watson, eds., Anchoritic Spirituality:
Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1991, especially pages 68–69 and 77.
27 For this quotation from Gerson's De examinatione doctrinam, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High
Middle Ages, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982, pp 135–136.
28 See, for example, Frances Beer, Julian of Norwich: Revelations; Motherhood of God, Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1998, Interpretive Essay, pp 71–80; also her Women and Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages,
Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1992, Introduction pp 1–13; also Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich, 2nd edition, London: SPCK, 2000, pp xi–xiv.
29 For details of both of these possible influences on Julian see Denise Nowakowski Baker, Julian of Norwich's Showings: From Vision to Book,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, Chapter 2 "From Visualisation to Vision: Meditation and the Bodily Showings," pp 40–62.
Julian in Context
30 On this point, see Nuth, God's Lovers in an Age of Anxiety: The Medieval English Mystics, p 101. For a broad study of continental women visionaries, see Elizabeth A. Petroff, ed., Medieval Women's Visionary
Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
31 For some positive but tentative comments, see Jantzen, Julian of Norwich, pp 61–70.
32 See Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984,
Chapter IV "Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother: Some themes of Twelfth‐Century Cistercian Writing," pp 110–169.
33 On English spirituality, see Nuth, God's Lovers in an Age of Anxiety, pp 15–23 & Gordon Mursell, English Spirituality: From Earliest Times to 1700, London: SPCK/Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press,
2001, especially Chapter 4 "The Quest for the Suffering Jesus: Late Medieval Spirituality (1300–1500)."
34 For a modern translation of Rolle's English writings, see Rosamund S.Allen, ed., Richard Rolle – The English Writings, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist
Press, 1989.
35 For a modern translation, see John P.H. Clark & Rosemary Dorward, eds., Walter Hilton – The Scale of Perfection, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1991.
36 For a modern translation of these works, see James Walsh, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing, Mahwah:NJ: Paulist Press, 1981 and James Walsh, ed., The Pursuit of Wisdom and Other Works, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist
Press, 1988.
37 For a modern translation, see Savage & Watson, Anchoritic Spirituality – Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works.
38 On the post‐war reconstruction, see John‐Julian, The Complete Julian of Norwich, p 38. On the demolition of the original anchorhold, see also
Colledge & Walsh, Julian of Norwich: Showings, Introduction p 18, and for a full reference to the work of Francis Blomefield, see their A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, volume 1, pp 11–12.
39 For an overview of the anchoritic life, see Jantzen, Julian of Norwich, Chapter 3, "The Life of an Anchoress."
Chapter 2 Julian's Theology Why should Julian be considered as a theologian rather than simply as a spiritual writer or as a "mystic"? The famous mid‐twentieth century monastic writer Thomas Merton was clear that Julian of Norwich was not only the greatest of the fourteenth‐century English mystics but was also, in his judgment, one of the greatest English theologians of all times.1
Scholars nowadays acknowledge that Julian's texts are neither solely a record of her mystical visionary experiences nor essentially devotional in tone and purpose. Rather, particularly in her Long Text, Julian offers substantial, innovative, and important theological reflections aimed at teaching a wide audience of her fellow Christians.
Apart from developing my judgment that Julian is to be considered as an important theological writer, in this chapter I also wish to underline the difference between exploring theological themes provoked by reading Julian and offering a study of Julian's own theology. The purpose of this book is to do the latter. My aim, in a positive sense, is to provide a critical study of the range of Julian's theology rather than a purely descriptive survey. What is the nature of Julian's theology, its genre, purpose, and projected audience?
The questions of purpose and intended audience are central to this issue.
In her book of essays The Kindness of God, Cambridge theologian Janet Martin Soskice notes that, in the continuing popular enthusiasm for Julian as a great mystical writer, the importance of her text as a work of theology is frequently underplayed or even entirely overlooked. This suggests that many people are instinctively reacting against a widespread perception that theology is simply "sclerotic pronouncements."2 Soskice also implicitly outlines the difference between Julian and classic systematic or philosophical theology. Julian's style may appear to be "rambling" but it is deliberately so. Indeed, Soskice prefers the term "recursive." The point is that Julian's writing in her Long Text is not meant to be a logical, architectonic exposition of doctrine. Rather she seeks to draw the reader into the text and its purpose in such a way as to make the reader a "fellow traveller into the mystery of the love of God."3
Julian of Norwich: "In God's Sight" – Her Theology in Context, First Edition. Philip Sheldrake.
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.