Julian's Education and Previous Life
Julian's Education and Previous Life
gather together her insights in a focused way. The more contentious, and ultimately insoluble, question is what kind of education Julian had, and what life she led, before entering the anchorhold and what connection this had to her initial visionary experience.
Julian's Education and Previous Life Julian claims to be "simple" and "unlettered" – or, as in the Sloane manuscripts, "a simple creature that cowde no letter." However, the internal evidence of her writings suggests otherwise and that Julian was a person of profound intellect. For example, her Long Text is meticulously organized and manifests literary skills that rank her as a pioneer of English prose, quite apart from the substantial theology. This would make her own self‐judgment perhaps an exercise in humility, or self‐protection against any accusation of female impropriety in claiming theological‐ teaching authority, or a way of underlining that what was of value was
God‐given rather than the product of her own capacities, or a combination of all of these.
Over 50 years ago, the Dominican writer Conrad Pepler suggested that Julian was familiar with Thomas Aquinas.8 In their 1978 scholarly edition of Julian's texts, Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, as we shall see in the next chapter, promoted Julian as someone with an extensive knowledge of theological sources who could therefore be seen as on a par with medieval male theologians. First of all, they offer a massive list of scriptural citations or scriptural echoes and more generally evidence of Julian's own translations from the Latin Vulgate which suggests that she had a good grounding in Latin. They also suggest that Julian was aware of classical rhetoric. Beyond that they suggest that she had read widely in the spiritual classics, both in the vernacular and in Latin. Finally, they argue that Julian shows a good knowledge of the theology of Augustine and Gregory the Great and seems to have been influenced by The Golden
Epistle of the Cistercian William of St Thierry and more generally by Cistercian monastic writings.9 More recent scholars, including me, while acknowledging Julian's scriptural and theological capacities, mainly consider Colledge's and Walsh's extensive list of works that she had read to be over‐exaggerated. I have already suggested that they felt the need to justify the notion that a medieval woman could be considered to be a serious theologian.
To summarize, in my judgment, Julian was certainly literate, able to read and write in Middle English, and maybe with some capacity to read Latin.
Before considering how she accessed whatever theological texts she did read, the more immediate question is how she was educated and where.
Julian in Context
Some commentators conclude that Julian was a member of the lesser gentry or even of the aristocracy. This would have made for easier access to education and have provided Julian with the means to support herself financially as an anchoress. Specifically, one local Norwich historian in the 1950s detected from available records that there was a prominent woman named "Julian" whose dates seem consistent with what we know or can surmise about Julian of Norwich. This is someone called Lady
Julian Erpingham, sister of Sir Thomas Erpingham who, among other things, fought at Agincourt and was a close friend of Henry V. The Erpinghams were a notably devout family with close connections to the Dominicans, St Julian's Church, and Carrow Priory. Lady Julian married
Roger Hauteyn who was killed in 1373 (the year of the "showings"), leaving her childless. It would seem likely that she moved back to her family home close to St Julian's Church. If she was indeed our "Julian of Norwich" this may be where she had her near‐fatal illness surrounded by her family. However, according to further researches by Fr John‐Julian, a recent writer on Julian of Norwich, it seems that Julian Erpingham subsequently remarried someone called Sir John Phelip and had three children, the last of whom was born in 1389 when her second husband also died. In my view, these details make Lady Erpingham's identification with Julian of Norwich less likely. However, Fr John‐Julian also points out that in the late Middle Ages the children of the gentry were often sent away to be raised and educated elsewhere. On this basis, Julian would have been free to become an anchoress around 1393. However, an additional problem with this theory is that if Julian of Norwich is to be identified with Lady
Erpingham she would have died in 1414. Unfortunately, this does not fit with the evidence provided by the surviving wills, already mentioned, one of which is dated 1416. In addition, Norman Tanner suggests that Julian was probably still alive in 1429 because bequests to an anchoress of St Julian's Church, admittedly unnamed, continue to that date.10
However, there are also problems with Tanner's suggestion because if Julian was still living in 1429 she would then have been 86 years of age – remarkable at that time.
Even if, for practical reasons, we reject the identification of Julian of Norwich with Lady Julian Erpingham, some other scholars who speculate about her social background favor the gentry or a lower aristocratic milieu. For example, Alexandra Barratt draws attention to Julian's prominent preoccupation with the themes of lordship and service.11
Other writers note that East Anglia in Julian's time was a populous and prosperous region that was home to numerous gentry families.12
The term "gentry" meant people who owned land, controlled villages, or held public office such as being a Justice of the Peace or a Member of Parliament. This is not necessarily the same as ennobled or
Julian's Education and Previous Life
aristocratic. Such people were preoccupied with courtesy and gentility.
However, even if Julian was previously married and was a mother, the traditional gentry "consort" category and preoccupations do not appear to fit. There is no strong indication in her writings of the normal concerns of a consort.13 Another author suggests that the inclusion and naming of Julian's maids in two of the surviving wills is unusual. It may imply that these maids gained a degree of status by association with a gentrified Julian. The same author notes that an anchoress was de facto the head of a small household. Interestingly,
Julian's theodicy revolves around the rhetorical example of a servant (chapter 51) where the servant's eagerness to fulfil the lord's desire is both his undoing and yet the making of him. This, it is suggested, fits with the nature of late medieval social relations where "service" was no longer considered demeaning but was part of a "nexus of obligation, honour, service, love and reward."14
Julian's literacy, whether as a child of Norfolk gentry or a child of the wealthy Norwich merchant class, could have come from being one of the girls educated by the nuns of Carrow Priory. While one or two commentators seem to believe that Carrow did not educate ordinary children but only aspiring nuns, Norman Tanner in his scholarly study of religion in late medieval Norwich is fairly clear that the convent did take in girls as boarders to be educated.15
The more contentious issue concerns how and where Julian acquired her theology. The short answer is that we do not know. It was unusual, but not unprecedented, for a medieval woman to compose theology.
Some commentators have assumed that this necessarily points to Julian having been a nun, presumably of Carrow, before she entered the anchorhold. In this context, Julian's three wishes and God thanking her
"for your service and your labour in your youth" (chapter 14) have been interpreted as a reference to her earlier life as a nun. The problem with this is that it involves a prior assumption that in Julian's time only nuns would be seen as involved in spiritual service and labor. However, this is highly questionable. By the fourteenth century the growing availability and valuation of lay spiritual resources and new spiritual movements, plus a sense that lay Christians could lead an intentional spiritual life through the medium of pious confraternities, undermines any assumption that Julian's three spiritual desires, as well as God's "thanks" for her spiritual work, necessarily points to a prior monastic lifestyle. To return to the question of Julian's theological education, it would also be naïve to assume that being a nun at Carrow guaranteed access to theological books or to theological training. Many medieval nuns were not theologically well‐educated and their grasp of Latin was largely by rote through the regular recitation of the monastic Offices.
Julian in Context
As is typical among medieval women mystical writers, Julian does not cite any sources other than the Bible. This has led to all kinds of speculation. It is true that she seems to know the Bible well but the generous list of biblical parallels in Part Two of the scholarly edition of Colledge and Walsh (pp 779–788) is judged by contemporary scholars to be far too extensive. Equally, College and Walsh over‐estimate a belief in Julian's theological sources, whether patristic or medieval. Modern commentators judge that most of Julian's apparently direct sources are more likely to be general parallels to themes found throughout the mystical tradition rather than anything more explicit.
Rather than assume that, as a putative nun, Julian had access to library resources at Carrow, it is more likely that her theological knowledge, manifested in the Long Text, came via priest advisors while she was an anchoress. This, of course, assumes that she did not complete her Long
Text – indeed, perhaps did not even begin writing it – until she had entered the anchorhold. Such advisors, or theological conversation partners, may have helped obtain books from the important religious libraries in the city. The library of the Benedictine community at the cathedral was one of the best theological collections in the country and this, along with the library of the Augustinian friary close to Julian's anchorhold at St Julian's Church, became well‐known centers of learning in the late Middle Ages.
So, had Julian been a nun before she entered the anchorhold? The short answer is that we cannot possibly know. The supposed evidence is circumstantial and based on certain assumptions. What do the various commentators suggest? Colledge and Walsh in their 1970s scholarly edition of Julian's writings believe she was a nun. Perhaps more surprisingly, the more recent scholarly edition by Watson and Jenkins also suggest that there is "a strong possibility" that she was a nun of Carrow. Joan
Nuth in Wisdom's Daughter, her study of Julian's theology, also suggests that Julian was probably a nun but in her later volume on the English mystics, God's Lovers in an Age of Anxiety: The English Mystics, she is less sure. In her respected study of Julian, Grace Jantzen is inconclusive: saying "yes" to connections to Carrow but admitting that there is "no evidence" that she was a nun. She rightly notes that Julian's writings do not have a nun‐like feel, target all her "fellow Christians" rather than a narrow monastic audience, and make no overt reference to monastic spirituality or to the monastic approach to biblical meditative exegesis known as lectio divina. Insofar as there are echoes of lectio, these are just as likely to have originated in the late medieval "laicization" of the tradition in devotional practices and meditation manuals.
The most compelling presentation of an alternative view that Julian of Norwich had been married and widowed and also had had a child or
Julian's Education and Previous Life
children is paradoxically from Sister Benedicta Ward, a member of a women's monastic community, who is also an Oxford University medieval scholar and Church historian.16 As we have already seen, this viewpoint also corresponds to the contemporary local consensus in the city of Norwich. Although some of the assumptions in Sister
Benedicta's 1988 essay have necessarily been overtaken by more recent scholarship, this does not detract from her other insights. Benedicta
Ward rightly questions assumptions that educated and deeply spiritual writers were naturally nurtured in the monastic tradition. She also notes that there had always been a tradition of non‐monastics becoming solitaries. For example, the famous early thirteenth‐century
Ancrene Wisse text was aimed at three lay women. Benedicta Ward points out that the scribal note at the beginning of the Short Text simply refers to a "devout woman" who is a recluse at Norwich in 1413.
This, the relevant wills, and the testimony of Margery Kempe make no reference to Julian being, or having been, a nun. There is no reference to Julian in the surviving records of Carrow Priory and, like Grace
Jantzen, Benedicta Ward correctly notes that there is absolutely no reference in Julian to monastic formation or practices. Julian's writings do not bear the mark of "the cloister." Rather, her desire for three gifts
(Short Text, chapter i) are fully in line with the devout aspirations of lay people in her times. The descriptions of Julian's initial illness fit better with a household of family and friends where she was visited by "the parson, my curate" with "a little boy" and a cross (Short Text, chapter ii). So Benedicta Ward suggests that Julian was a young widow living in her own household with servants and her mother. The Long
Text, chapters 60 and 61 appear more natural and coherent if we relate them to the actual experience of motherhood – suckling a child at the breast, guarding a child tenderly yet, when it is older, permitting it to be punished for its faults and also allowing it to fall "for its own benefit" – that is, to learn from the experience of getting hurt. Finally,
Benedicta Ward hazards a guess that the powerful and poignant image in Long Text, chapter 64, of "a body lying on the earth…without shape and form," compared to a "pit of stinking mud," that produces a "most beautiful creature, a little child" who then glides up to heaven, may echo her own experience of a child who had died. However, it must be noted that this is only a guess and it may be argued that this imagery of death was conventional at the time.17
In passing, it is notable that there is no evidence of any posthumous cult of Julian of Norwich despite the reputation for both holiness and spiritual wisdom that she must have enjoyed judging by the bequests made to her and the references to her in Margery Kempe's spiritual autobiography.