Julian's Norwich
Julian's Norwich
This became a religious best‐seller during the latter part of the century and on into the fifteenth century.
Julian's Norwich Throughout the late Middle Ages, Norwich was one of the half dozen leading English cities. There are suggestions that its population may have been as large as twenty five thousand in the 1330s but that it was reduced to about eight thousand after the Black Death.21 By about 1500 Norwich was the second city after London, with around ten thousand inhabitants.
The city was also the regional capital of one of the most prosperous, and also artistically sophisticated, parts of England. The port of Norwich was connected by the River Wensum to the sea and there were vibrant trade links between the city and both the Low Countries and the Rhineland. It is notable that the port of Norwich expanded during the Hundred Years'
War because the South coast ports were more exposed. Thus Norwich became one of the main gateways to England, served by roads and waterways to London and to the North of England. There was a significant expansion of the wool and the cloth trade during this period with Norwich as a major export center. Interestingly, Julian of Norwich seems particularly aware of the textures of cloth and of colours which she describes with precision. It has even been suggested that Julian's image "I saw God in a pointe" (chapter 11) may refer to needle‐point (or lace‐ point), with "a pointe" representing a stitch.22 This is highly speculative, as is the reaction of some people that Julian's family may have been involved in the cloth trade or that it reflects the fact that stitching or lace‐making were common activities of anchoresses.
Apart from regular trading connections between the port of Norwich, Flanders, and the Netherlands, there was increasing immigration into Norwich by Flemish cloth workers and merchants. It seems that a small community of Flemish and Dutch merchants with families may have lived in Norwich during Julian's time. References to a Netherlandish community in the city and in wider Norfolk in the late Middle Ages also appear in the records of Norwich, Lynn, Great Yarmouth, and in the Norfolk Records Office. For example, a certain John Asger, "once a merchant of Bruges" according to the memorial in St Lawrence's Church
Norwich, was sheriff in 1416 and became Mayor of Norwich in 1426. His son, also called John, apparently born in the Netherlands, seems to have owned the tenement in which one of the quasi‐Beguine groups in Norwich lived from the early 1430s. It seems that both father and son died in 1436. Another Asger (or Asgar) called Robert seems to have been city treasurer in 1415–1416. Asgars appear in documents as late as 1475.
Julian in Context
This may indicate that generations of the same Flemish family not only resided in the city but also held civic office.
These North Sea connections link with questions about the possible influences of Flemish and Rhineland spirituality. Opinions about this differ. In general terms, the Church was institutionally strong and varied in late medieval Norwich. There were some fifty parishes, a large cathedral run by a community of Benedictine monks, a Benedictine convent at Carrow just outside the city, several colleges of secular clergy living together, several hospitals run by brethren who led a conventual life, four friaries representing the major Orders (Franciscan, Augustinian,
Dominican, and Carmelite), and possibly one or two other smaller mendicant groups, plus a significant number of anchorites and anchoresses at different points. Interestingly, the Benedictine‐run cathedral had one of the best libraries in England and was reported to be a center of lively theological debate. Additionally, the house of Augustinian (or Austin)
Friars across the lane from Julian's anchorhold also had a significant library and was a studium or house of studies for the order. There is some evidence that outsiders such as Julian could borrow books from such libraries.23
From the 1430s there were also up to three small groups of women who resembled Continental Beguines. This would seem to postdate Julian.
However, more recently it has been suggested that a group of such women lived in a house in the churchyard of St Peter Hungate at a time before Julian disappears from the records. The medieval building survives as a restaurant, "The Briton's Arms," on Elm Hill. It is possible that these groups were sponsored by the local Flemish and Dutch merchant community. Norwich seems to have been the only English city where such groups existed. What is not so clear is whether, and to what degree, the spirituality associated with Flanders and the Netherlands played a role in late medieval Norwich. More generally, there was a widespread development of lay spirituality as well as new spiritual movements in the late medieval Church. These particularly flourished in cities like Norwich.
Thus, apart from the clerical, monastic, mendicant, and quasi‐Beguine groups, Norwich boasted a number of lay confraternities and spiritually imbued craft guilds as well as a range of other activities that offered a significant spiritual ethos to the newly wealthy and educated city laity. In that sense the lay Christians of late medieval Norwich had a wide range of spiritual and religious resources.24
As an appendix to the growing importance during the late Middle Ages of Norwich as a port and international trading center, it is interesting to note the power of Julian's imagery of the sea in chapter 10. This chapter is what is described as the second showing or revelation in which Julian is taught about God's desire that we should see the divine presence, albeit