Notes
Love is God's Meaning
empower her with an urgency to pass on those teachings to a wider audience.
The implication is that the compassion of God for us will lead to our growing compassion for others as we are drawn ever more deeply into the life of God‐as‐Trinity.19 By implication the hope is that the impact on all those touched by Julian's teaching will be a similar deepening of compassion for God's creation and for fellow humans within each of whom, without exception, dwells the divine presence.
Notes 1 See, for example, Brant Pelphrey, Christ Our Mother: Julian of Norwich, Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1989, p 103.
2 See Ewart Cousins, "The Humanity and Passion of Christ," especially pp 386–389, in Jill Raitt, ed., Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul/New York:
Crossroads Publishing, 1987.
3 See Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987, pp 120, 199–200, 207, 209, 211–212.
4 Although the Middle English "pointe" is translated by Colledge & Walsh as "an instant of time" (p 197) the chapter overall is more suggestive of a spatial image. "By which vision I saw that he is present in all things." "For he is at the centre of everything."
5 See the helpful analysis in Joan M. Nuth, Wisdom's Daughter: The Theology of Julian of Norwich, New York: Crossroad, 1991, pp 89–94.
6 Of course it may also be the case that Julian was perfectly clear about the implications of the "showing." The struggle to maintain a balance with the Church's teaching may have been a rhetorical device to avoid accusations of heresy.
7 See, for example, Roger Haight, The Experience and Language of Grace, New York: Paulist Press, 1979.
8 For example, Elizabeth Dreyer, "The Trinitarian Theology of Julian of Norwich," in Studies in Spirituality volume 4, 1994, pp 79–93.
9 Julian uses the Middle English words "moder" or its associated terms "moderhede" and "moderly" some 83 times in the Long Text. Of these, nine refer to Mary and four to "Holy Church." The remainder refer to Jesus Christ, God, or the Trinity. See Jennifer P. Heimmel, "God is Our
Mother": Julian of Norwich and The Medieval Image of Christian Feminine Divinity, Salzburg: Instituut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik,
1982, pp 50–51.
10 See, for example, Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, Berkeley, CA: University of California
Notes Press, 1982, Chapter 4 and the listing of other sources in the critical edition of Julian, Colledge & Walsh, eds., A Book of Showings, pp 151–162.
11 See Jantzen, op. cit., pp 117–118. The original reference is to "Ancrene Wisse," in Anne Savage & Nicholas Watson, eds., Anchoritic Spirituality,
The Classics of Western Spirituality, New York: Paulist Press, 1991, Part IV, p 132 & Part VI, p 182.
12 Ritamary Bradley, Julian's Way: A Practical Commentary on Julian of Norwich, London: Harper Collins, 1992, p 146.
13 On the medieval understanding of blood as a person's life and on the mother giving literally of her own flesh in giving birth, see Caroline
Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion, New York: Zone Books, 1992,
Chapter III "The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages," p 97.
14 See, for example, Kerrie Hide, Gifted Origins to Graced Fulfillment: The Soteriology of Julian of Norwich, Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2001,
Chapter 7.
15 On this point see Julia Lamm, "Revelation as Exposure in Julian of Norwich's Showings," in Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality volume 5, issue 1, 2005, pp 54–78.
16 While the connection Julian makes between the lordship image and the motherhood of God is noted by several scholars, the "feminization" of lordship and authority does not seem to have been explicitly drawn out.
See, for example, Catherine Innes‐Parker, "Subversion and Conformity in Julian's Revelation: Authority, Vision and the Motherhood of God," in Mystics Quarterly volume XXIII, issue 2, March 1997, pp 7–35 at p 21.
17 Nuth, pp 74–79, suggests that Julian's usage is closer to texts such as the Ancrene Riwle (or Wisse) that designate "courtaysye" as a Christian virtue of giving pleasure to others. This is perhaps to miss the point that the conventions of courtly love and of spiritual love were not unconnected!
18 See the comments of Brant Pelphrey in Love Was His Meaning: The Theology and Mysticism of Julian of Norwich, Salzburg: Instituut für
Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1982, p 106 & n 5.
19 See Margaret Ann Palliser, Christ Our Mother of Mercy: Divine Mercy and Compassion in the Theology of the Showings of Julian of Norwich,
Berlin: de Gruyter, 1992, Chapter 5 (B) "Jesus Christ: The Compassion of God and Our Compassion."