Conclusion
Conclusion
to note that Ignatius Loyola derived this meditative practice from earlier medieval sources including the Meditationes vitae Christi by an anonymous thirteenth‐century Franciscan, known as pseudo‐Bonaventure.
This text was known in Julian's England. Indeed, the Passion section of this work was available in a fourteenth‐century Middle English translation known as The Privity of the Passion. The person meditating was advised to "pay attention…carefully to every point [of the Passion scene] as if you were there bodily." Similar recommendations were made by Aelred of Rievaulx in his twelfth‐century text for women anchoresses, De
Institutione Inclusarum. It may well be that Julian's "bodily sights" of the Passion owe something to this meditative tradition. The fact that Julian does not narrate the whole story of Christ's Passion but focuses on particular moments corresponds to the meditative tradition which advises the one praying to stay where they were obtaining spiritual fruit rather than to feel bound to follow through the whole scriptural narrative. In the words of the Jesuit scholar Javier Melloni, this form of meditation, by making one "present," ideally means that the person praying ceases to be a spectator and becomes, spiritually speaking, an "actor." Through this, there is a deepening of "interior knowledge" and perhaps of contemplative "beholding."16 Importantly, the scholar of medieval English Denise
Nowakowski Baker, who supports the possibility that Julian had been influenced by this meditative tradition as well as by the East Anglian school of art, is clear that this does not exclude the potential authenticity of Julian's visionary experience.17
Conclusion Julian's prayers led her to reflect on the meaning of her spiritual experiences and that starting point moved her onward to construct a complete theology. Indeed, as Denys Turner rightly notes, there is no valid distinction between Julian as theologian and Julian as teacher about the spiritual life.18 The love of God manifested in her vision of the wounded Christ becomes the basis for Julian's theology of the salvation of humanity. In this Julian finds a response to her struggles to grasp the meaning of sin and why it was allowed. Human brokenness is met by God's love so that the "wounds" of human beings become a means to achieving a maturity of joy beyond simplistic and ignorant innocence. Julian's early desire for three wounds – contrition, loving compassion, and longing – become the means of a progressive spiritual maturity. In the first wound, contrition,
Julian is led to abandon the self, to turn away from focusing on herself to focusing on God as the center from which all her actions should flow. In the second wound, loving compassion, Julian is led to identify with the