Notes
Prayer: A Journey of Desire
suffering Christ and to share in his compassion for all people. Again, in this spiritual process, Julian turns away from self‐preoccupation to focus her care on the others, her "evenchristen," for whom she writes her text and for whom she believes her teachings are intended. Finally, in the third wound, longing, she finds a single‐mindedness that drives her onwards to seek God's presence and also to desire to communicate to others her radical message of God's unshakable love.
Notes 1 See Edmund Colledge & James Walsh, eds., A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1978, Part One, p 116.
2 See Ritamary Bradley, Julian's Way: A Practical Commentary on Julian of Norwich, London: Harper Collins, 1992, "Julian at Prayer," p 27 with Ritamary Bradley's additional references to other scholars.
3 See James Walsh, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing, Classics of Western Spirituality series, New York: Paulist Press, 1981.
4 See Colledge & Walsh, A Book of Showings, Part One, Introduction, pp 119 & 120.
5 See the scholarly edition of Barry Windeatt, ed., Julian of Norwich:
Revelations of Divine Love, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, pp 241–242, note to Chapter 43, line 38.
6 On the origin of the notion of spiritual senses, especially in Origen, see Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992 edition, especially pp 67–70 & 93–94. For a general summary of the notion of "spiritual senses" see Philip Sheldrake "Senses, spiritual," in Philip Sheldrake, ed.,
The New SCM Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, London: SCM Press, 2005 (in the USA, The New Westminster Dictionary of Christian
Spirituality, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005).
7 For some reflections on Julian's possible references to the liturgy, see Annie Sutherland, "Julian of Norwich and the Liturgy," in Liz Herbert
McAvoy, ed., A Companion to Julian of Norwich, Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2008, pp 88–98.
8 For example, Bernard McGinn, The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism 1350–1550, New York: Herder & Herder/Crossroad, 2012, Chapter 12
"Julian of Norwich: 'Love is oure lords mening'," p 470.
9 On prayer and intermediaries, see McGinn, The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism 1350–1550, p 466.
10 On this point, see Barry Windeatt, "Julian's Second Thoughts: The Long Text Tradition," Chapter 8, pp 101–115, especially p 111, in McAvoy, ed.,
A Companion to Julian of Norwich.
Notes 11 See, for example, Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast:
The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1987, pp 208–218; also Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth Century Saints and their Religious
Milieu, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984, pp 1–3.
12 See P. Lasko & N.J. Morgan, eds., Medieval Art in East Anglia 1300–1530, London: Thames & Hudson, 1974. Also see references in Denise
Nowakowski Baker, Julian of Norwich's Showings: From Vision to Book, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp 40–44 and in Barry
Windeatt, ed., Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love, Oxford World Classics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, p xxii.
13 See Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich, 2nd edition, London: SPCK, 2000, Chapter 4 "Julian's Prayers." Also for shifts in medieval spirituality, not least a growing focus on the humanity of Jesus Christ, see Philip
Sheldrake, Spirituality: A Brief History, 2nd edition, Oxford: Wiley‐ Blackwell, 2013, Chapter 4 "Spirituality in the City 1150–1450," especially pp 83–84.
14 See Windeatt, ed., Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love, Oxford World Classics, p xvii.
15 On the tradition of lectio divina, and its systematization in the Middle Ages, see Philip Sheldrake, Spirituality: A Brief History, 2nd edition,
Oxford: Wiley‐Blackwell, 2013, pp 42, 62, & 66–67. For a modern translation of Guigo's Ladder of Monks, see E. Colledge & J. Walsh, eds.,
Guigo II: The Ladder of Monks & Twelve Meditations, New York:
Doubleday Images Books, 1978.
16 See Javier Melloni, The Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola in the Western Tradition, English translation, Leominster: Gracewing, 2000, p 20–34.
17 See Denise Nowakowski Baker, Julian of Norwich's Showings: From Vision to Book, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp 40–51.
18 See Denys Turner, Julian of Norwich, Theologian, New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2011, pp 135–136.
Conclusion According to Julian's own description in the final chapter 86 of A Revelation of Love, or the Long Text, the heart of her teaching was that God's "meaning" was love.
And from the time that it was revealed, I desired many times to know in what was our Lord's meaning. And fifteen years after and more, I was answered in spiritual understanding, and it was said:
What, do you wish to know your Lord's meaning in this thing?
Know it well, love was his meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love.
What did he reveal to you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For love. Remain in this, and you will know more of the same. But you will never know different, without end.
This affirmation is the climax and conclusion of Julian's text and the teaching she believes she has been mandated to pass on to her "evenchristen." However, the affirmation of love is more than simply the conclusion.
It also provides the overall interpretative key to Julian's text. In that sense God's "meaning" is the heart of God's revelation to Julian and this is reflected throughout her teaching.
In this Conclusion to my study of Julian's theology, it is important to emphasize two things. First, echoing my comments in the Introduction, what I have tried to do is to outline as faithfully as I can Julian's own theological vision and teaching within its historical context. I have not sought to use Julian's text as a starting point for my own theological speculations provoked by reading her. Second, I also want to underline that even though I have studied and taught Julian's writings for over 30 years I discover something new each time I read her. Sometimes this is an aspect of her thought that I had previously overlooked and at other times I understand certain familiar things in a new way. For this reason
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.
Conclusion
my study of Julian's theology is necessarily provisional and, echoing Julian's statement in her final chapter 86, is begun but is not finally completed.
Once again, it is important to ask what kind of text Julian actually wrote. In terms of Julian's own approach to her writings, neither the Short Text nor the Long Text is simply a work of devotion, a record or spiritual diary of her mystical experiences. On the other hand, in particular reference to the Long Text, this is not an abstract theological treatise.
As we have seen, it is undoubtedly a work of theology in three ways. It is mystical theology in the sense that its reflections are based on an immediacy of presence to God and on an inward experience of God as opposed to being an attempt to systematically analyze and define the nature of God. It is also a work of vernacular theology in the sense of being a response to the growing interest in religious ideas and desire for spiritual teaching among an increasingly literate fourteenth‐century laity. Julian explicitly aims her writing at "mine evenchristen" or "my fellow
Christians" rather than at a more limited audience of clerics, monastics, or theological teachers. Finally, and arising from this, Julian's text has an explicitly pastoral purpose. In that sense it is an exercise in practical‐ pastoral theology because Julian believed that she had been granted an important message about the nature of God, about how we are to understand material creation and human nature, and about how God relates in practice to the human condition with all its weaknesses and flaws. This pastoral vision was undoubtedly deeply challenging in the context of Julian's times but Julian also saw it as urgent and potentially transformative.
There is an intimate interconnection between Julian's own personal struggles and what she came to teach. Julian regularly asks how her inherited and traditional beliefs, as taught by "Holy Church," fit with her interior revelations and the insights and knowledge that these brought to her. This tension must have been particularly sharp at a time when the hierarchical and clerical institution often appeared to be anything but holy! Julian is consistently honest about these struggles throughout her reflections in the context of her desire to communicate a pastoral message to her fellow Christians.
For Julian, part of her attempt to be faithful was to call Christians back to their fundamental ideals. "Holy Church," as "mine evenchristen," was the whole Christian community rather than merely an often dysfunctional institution and hierarchy. One striking example is Julian's teaching on the centrality and inclusivity of Christian love. This must have been a challenging – and, arguably, intentional – message in the context of war, social unrest, the fear of heresy, the Great Schism in the Western Church, and multiple examples of mutual condemnation and rejection. Thus, in