Julian's World: Religion and Church
Julian in Context
and the concessions rescinded. In East Anglia, to which the rebellion had spread, the Bishop of Norwich Hugh Despenser defeated the rebels.
Eventually troubles in the North and West Country were also confronted and order restored.
As if war, government incompetence, and social injustice were not enough, the fourteenth century also saw serious famine throughout
Europe. This was followed by plague, known as the Black Death, which hit England in 1348 and again in 1361–1362, 1368–1369, and during the 1370s: all during Julian of Norwich's lifetime. Indeed, as we have seen, the speculation about Julian as widow points either to the wars or to the plague as the likely cause of the possible loss of a husband and children.
Julian's World: Religion and Church The plagues and famines led to some superstitious reactions. The devil was seen to be at work, as is hinted in Julian's texts (for example, Short
Text, chapter xxi or Long Text, chapter 13). Or, in the face of the loss of half the population of Europe in the Black Death, the Jews (collectively blamed for the death of Jesus) were treated as scapegoats and accused of deliberately spreading the disease by, for example, poisoning water wells.
Of course, the city of Norwich was already associated with the supposed twelfth‐century martyrdom of William of Norwich, a 12‐year‐old boy, who was killed and was believed to have been murdered by Jews. He subsequently became the object of a religious cult. The situation of Jews in Norwich had particular complications in that they were French‐speaking. They were therefore closely associated in people's minds with the relatively recently established, and resented, Norman ruling class. The boy William's family were Anglo‐Saxon.
More generally, the plague was seen as God's punishment for sin, for example in Langland's Piers Plowman. This fitted into a widespread emphasis in fourteenth‐century religion on eternal punishment, fear of which was fuelled by much of the preaching to which lay people were exposed. Catechesis was predominantly about sin and salvation and the bishops were rigorous in their promotion of individual confession to a priest. Not surprisingly, fear of God's wrath was a determining feature in many people's relationship with the divine. The notion of love and mercy
(except in the narrow sense of forgiveness of sin if people repented) was in short supply. Apart from other considerations, this is what makes
Julian's theology and spiritual message so radical.
On a broader front, the Western Church was in chaos during Julian's lifetime. Between 1309 and 1377 the Frenchman Pope Clement V and then a succession of seven Popes left Rome and lived in Avignon in
Julian's World: Religion and Church
France. This so‐called "Babylonian Captivity" was also associated with scandalous luxury and the marketing of Church jobs. In 1377, the last of the Avignon popes, Gregory XI, returned to Rome, supposedly inspired by the words of the woman mystic, Catherine of Siena. He died the following year and an Italian reformer, Urban VI, was elected to succeed him. This provoked a revolt among the Cardinals who elected another
Frenchman who returned to Avignon. This led to the so‐called Great Schism which split the Western Church and lasted until 1418 when it was ended by the Council of Constance.
England seems not to have been strongly influenced by the Continental heretical religious movements such as the so‐called heresy of the Free
Spirit. However, in the later fourteenth century John Wycliffe, priest, Oxford theologian, and in 1361 Master of Balliol College, indirectly inspired a religious rebellion in England known as Lollardy. Slowly he became disenchanted with the state of the Church and eventually advocated its complete overhaul, structurally and doctrinally. He opposed hierarchical styles of authority, clerical models of priesthood, and certain popular devotions associated with indulgences and money, such as veneration of images. He promoted the vernacular bible, came to see scripture as the sole authority in doctrine and morals, and eventually adopted the doctrine of predestination, promoted a reformed sacramental theology as well as a reformed liturgy, attacked monasticism, and eventually advocated the end of the papacy. However, even though condemned and forced to leave Oxford, he paradoxically retained the parish living of Lutterworth in Lincolnshire where he lived until his death in 1384. His followers, known as Lollards, were not academics but proceeded by way of popular preaching and the promotion of the English bible. They became associated with social reform and the priest, John Ball, who inspired the 1381 Peasants Revolt preached Lollardy even though
Wycliffe himself opposed the rebellion. Lollardy survived into the fifteenth century when it eventually became an underground movement which arguably blended into English Protestantism at the time of the Reformation.
The Bishop of Norwich from 1370 until 1406, and thus during Julian's adulthood, was Henry Despenser. He became a leading figure in the persecution of the Lollards and in advocating the death penalty for convicted heretics. This was enforced after the accession of Henry IV in 1399. The so‐called "Lollard Pit" in Norwich, where Lollards were burnt at the stake, was very close to Julian's anchorhold. While Julian's texts were written before executions began she would surely have been well aware of the developing Lollard controversy while writing the Long Text. This may partly explain Julian's concern to indicate that she believed "as Holy
Church teaches."
Julian in Context
On a more upbeat note, the period of Julian's lifetime was also one of the increasing "laicization" of spirituality and access by lay people to spiritual texts, the bible, and other religious material. As we shall see in Chapter 2, Julian's writings can be characterized as "vernacular theology."
In broad terms, as noted in the Introduction, this is symptomatic of a growing "age of the vernacular" in which Julian sits alongside the literary giants Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland. The concept of the "age of the vernacular" has several dimensions. At its most basic, it implied the gradual shift from writing literature in Latin or Norman‐French to writing in English. Since the Norman Conquest of England in the eleventh century, "English" in its original Anglo‐Saxon and then Middle
English forms had ceased to be an acceptable literary language and became effectively the spoken language of the common people. The move back to literary English also implied social and cultural changes whereby a descendent of the language of the defeated Anglo‐Saxons gradually became the language of the crown and the administration.
Finally, the "age of the vernacular" also implied a growing democratization of ideas and the availability of, for example, religious literature to an increasingly educated and literate laity.
Middle English was known for its alternate spellings and pronunciation depending on the dialect used in different parts of the country.
Because English was formed of many languages, standardization has been an on‐going issue. Modern English came into being as standardized
Middle English – that is, the preferred dialect of the crown, the court, and the civil administration. The key dialect was from East Midlands which eventually spread to London. This contained Danish forms not often used in the North or the South of the country because the Danes settled heavily in the Midlands. Examples are the work of Geoffrey
Chaucer, John Wycliffe's translation of the New Testament, and William Caxton, the first printer. French ceased to be the official legal language of England in 1362. A few decades later, King Henry IV (1399–1413) did not speak in Norman‐French.
However, from roughly 1200 onwards there was a growing use of various vernacular languages across Europe and not merely in England. This speaks of other developments in Church and wider society. These include the growing accessibility of written material to lay people, the increasing role of women as writers and the expansion of the notion of "theology" beyond formally structured expositions of abstract ideas to embrace personal experience, for example via visionary literature or poetry. There was also the availability of manuals of instruction (or catechisms) in English aimed at enhancing lay people's grasp of the Christian faith. One example is the text known as the Lay Folks Catechism, sponsored by Archbishop Thoresby of York in the middle of the fourteenth century.