The Parable
Parable of a Lord and a Servant
Yet, in the parable of a Lord and a Servant, it may be thought that Julian is somewhat unconventional in idealizing some kind of personal and unbreakable bond between the lord and the servant. So, when the servant fails to return from his errand, he is searched for rather than simply replaced. In that sense, reflecting the equality of the servant Son (the second Adam) with the Lord God, the social inequality of a human lord and servant is radically transgressed. Importantly, therefore, it is the inner Trinitarian relationships and the way these are reflected in the status of humankind before God that become the hermeneutical key to the parable.
The Parable It seems that the narrative of lord and servant formed part of Julian's original visions and inner experience. However, it perplexed her so much that she did not include it in what is known as the Short Text. Julian's perplexity is provoked most strongly by the previous Thirteenth
Revelation where she is led to a new insight about sin and how God views sin. However, having said this, Julian appears to have been challenged as early as her First Revelation or showing, for example as expressed in her chapter 9: "For in mankind which will be saved is comprehended all, that is to say all that is made and the maker of all." Julian's ambiguous reaction is abundantly clear. "I speak of those who will be saved, for at this time
God showed me no one else. But in everything I believe as Holy Church preaches and teaches." Later, in chapter 32 Julian struggles to hold onto
God's promise that "Every kind of thing will be well." This contrasts with her perception that "there are many deeds which in our eyes are so evilly done and lead to such great harm that it seems to us impossible that any good result could ever come of them." Equally, there is "one article of our faith…that many creatures will be damned" such as fallen angels and people who either "die out of faith of Holy Church" or "who live unchristian lives and so die out of God's love."
In the section before the parable, chapter 50, Julian returns to the subject of her continual struggle to balance her consciousness that we sin with her visions and inward understanding (which she believed was given by God) that God imputes no blame to humankind. Apart from the fact that this insight clearly went against her own assumptions,
Julian is deeply concerned about how such an understanding fits with the formal teaching of the Church. Chapter 50 ends with Julian's anguished cry for help. "Ah, Lord Jesus, king of bliss, how shall I be comforted, who will tell me and teach me what I need to know, if I cannot at this time see it in you?"
The Parable
According to the beginning of chapter 51, Julian was answered "very mysteriously" by a "wonderful example of a lord who has a servant." God also "gave me sight for the understanding of them both." Julian indicates that this was shown "doubly"; that is, it was manifested to her on two levels. There was a spiritual vision in bodily form, that is an imaginary vision. Then there was a more spiritual vision without bodily form – a deeper intellectual and spiritual understanding. Equally, Julian summarizes three stages of her understanding and therefore, presumably, of her composition of a final version of the text. "And therefore I must now tell of three attributes through which I have been somewhat consoled." The word "attributes" as used in the Colledge and Walsh modern English edition translates the Middle English words "thre properties," or ways of learning or modes of knowing. The first is the beginning of the teaching received at the time of Julian's original visions. The second is the inward instruction that Julian had received since then. Finally, there is the capacity to see as a whole the essential insight revealed in the parable, "from beginning to end." That is, Julian is enabled to reach a unified sense of the parable and its meaning.
Julian's parable narrates a story of actions but in which every detail of, for example, the stance of the characters, their way of gazing, and their appearance has a specific meaning. The two central characters are a lord and a servant. The lord sits "in rest and in peace" while the servant stands respectfully before the lord, ready to do his bidding. The parable proceeds with the lord sending his servant off on an errand, "to do his will." Out of love the servant rushes away at great speed. However, in his haste he promptly falls into "a slade"– that is a ditch or a hollow. As a result the servant is seriously hurt but "the most mischefe" (the worst damage) that Julian sees in him is that he could not turn his face to look up to see his loving lord who was close by and therefore there was a "failing of comfort." Instead, the servant acted as someone who for the moment was "ful febil and unwise" – that is, weak and stupid – because he could only focus on how badly he felt and the fact that it persisted.
This resulted in seven great pains. These are described in physical and psychological terms and do not appear to echo references in other medieval texts to the seven deadly sins.3 The pains experienced by the servant are severe bruising, clumsiness of his body, weakness caused by these two, being blinded in his reason and perplexed in his mind so that he almost forgot his own love, the fact that he could not rise, the pain of lying alone with no apparent help at hand, and, finally, that the ditch was narrow and comfortless.
Interestingly, the medieval theologian Anselm of Canterbury also used the image of a servant and a ditch in his work Cur Deus Homo. This has led some people to speculate about whether Julian had read the
Parable of a Lord and a Servant
writings of Anselm. Whether she had or not, Anselm and Julian treat the image in wholly different ways. According to Anselm:
Suppose one should assign his slave a certain piece of work and should command him not to throw himself into a ditch, which he points out to him and from which he could not extricate himself; and suppose that the slave, despising his master's command and warning, throws himself into the ditch before pointed out, so as to be utterly unable to accomplish the work assigned; think you that his inability will at all excuse him for not doing his appointed work?4
Not only does the language offer a radically different understanding from Julian both of the nature of God and humanity as well as of their relationship, but in Anselm the servant's fall is an act of disobedience that makes him incapable of performing his tasks. The tone is one of moral culpability and guilt. Julian takes a completely different stance. In her parable the fall into the ditch is not an act of disobedience but the result of excessive desire to please. In that sense, Julian and Anselm also disagree about how they interpret the narrative of Adam's Fall in the Book of Genesis, chapter 3, and its implications for the status before God of humanity in general.5
Julian could not detect any fault in the servant. Nor did the lord impute any kind of blame. The only cause of the servant falling into the ditch was his good will and great desire to serve the lord out of love.
Although he failed, fell, and was deeply wounded, "in spirit" the servant remained as fundamentally good as when he stood before the lord ready to do his will. As Julian notes, during all this time the "loving lord" looks on the servant tenderly rather than with judgment or condemnation. The way the lord looks at the fallen servant has two dimensions. Outwardly it is with compassion and pity. The deeper, inward, level of insight brought Julian to see how the lord rejoices over the noble restoring to which he will bring the servant. Julian then hears the lord put the injuries of the servant in the context of his loving service and ask rhetorically whether it is not reasonable that he should reward the servant for his fright and fear. Indeed, such reward would be better and more honorable for the servant than "his own health could have been." What Julian refers to as "an inward spiritual revelation" of the lord's meaning then led her to understand that the servant's eternal reward would be "above what he would have been if he had not fallen."
Present woe will be turned into endless bliss.
Julian remains in a quandary about how to interpret what she understands to have been revealed to her as the answer to her struggles and