Julian in Norwich
Medieval Norwich was a vibrant, exciting and cosmopolitan place. Through much of its history it was England’s second city, and it still has more medieval churches than any other city north of the Alps. In Julian’s lifetime it was at the heart of the primary mercantile area in the country, and covered an area larger than London. It was dominated by the castle (built around 1100 under the Normans) and the cathedral (which was finished around 1145). Norwich became important in terms of trade due to the rich supply of wool gathered from the Norfolk sheepwalks.1 It had a warehouse for the Hanseatic League (the countries crossing from the Baltic to the North Sea), and goods crossed freely from the River Wensum to Northern Europe.
Its streets were peppered with guilds, monasteries and friaries, so ideas, money and information could change hands freely. The major ecclesiastical buildings in the city were the cathedral and its attached Benedictine Priory, which boasted one of the richest libraries in the country. Yet there were also representatives from the diverse spectrum of fourteenth-century religious groups in Norwich, from Dominicans to Franciscans, with evidence for some less common orders, such as the Beguines. These were semi-monastic laywomen, who emulated the example of Christ by caring for the sick, embracing poverty and devoting themselves to prayer. They were closely associated with the cloth industry of the Low Countries, so their presence in Norwich during Julian’s lifetime was no doubt a result of close trade links between the city and Flanders. Although they were outside the traditional monastic orders, the Beguines may have influenced Julian’s spirituality, given their origins as laywomen who rejected their traditional roles in favour of devoting themselves to following Christ’s example. Julian certainly implies she was aware of the Beguines’ focus on caring for the sick in her Revelations, but this could also simply be something she was exposed to while living in the world and tending to friends and family afflicted by illness.
We can position Julian firmly within the busy streets of Norwich. There are a number of references to ‘Julian the anchorite, living next to Saint Julian’s Church in Norwich’, so we have historical evidence to work from. One Richard Reed bequeathed two shillings to ‘Julian anchorite’, while Thomas Emund, in 1404, leaves twelve pence to Julian and eight pence to Sara, who was ‘living with her’.2 This was probably her maid, who would have had access to her via a smaller cell attached to Julian’s. She would tend to the anchoress’s physical needs, providing her with food, drink and clothing, cleaning the cell and removing any waste. She may also have brought Julian books and writing material, and arranged visitors to her cell. Her maid was her link with the outside world, and Sara no doubt also brought news and gossip to Julian.
It is important to remember where Julian’s cell was located. It was on the main thoroughfare through Norwich, close to the docks and also the ‘red-light district’. Her curtained window offered people the opportunity to speak with her, confide in her and learn from her. In some ways Julian’s role as anchorite crossed over with that of social worker or agony aunt, in that she provided advice and support for those who sought her out. Julian would have encountered all manner of people, from poverty-stricken prostitutes to nobility. In the face of this varied spectrum of humanity, Julian does not seem to have been judgemental. Instead she declares in the text that there is no evil, no sin, no judge other than God. There is goodness and love in everyone.
Julian’s age (she lived a long life for the time), experience and mystical revelations made her someone to be sought out for both practical and spiritual advice. Many would have visited her cell in order to speak with her through the black curtain of her window, which faced on to the street. One such visitor was another female writer of the time, who, fortunately for us, kept a record of her experience.
Julian and Margery
Some time around 1413, shortly before her death when she would have been over seventy, Julian was visited by Margery Kempe, a noblewoman from nearby King’s Lynn. Margery attests to this in her own work, The Book of Margery Kempe, which is another remarkable survival from this time and place: the earliest surviving autobiography in English. ‘And then she [Margery] was commanded by our Lord to go to an anchoress in the same city who was called Dame Julian.’3 There was a thirty-year age difference between the two women, and Margery was no doubt seeking the wise counsel of an older visionary to find validation of her own experiences.
Following the birth of the first of fourteen children, Margery Kempe had been afflicted with suicidal thoughts and uncontrollable tears, which made her a difficult character for the established Church to contain. After the birth of her last child, she managed to convince her husband to agree to a celibate marriage, and instead imagined herself married to Christ. On the one hand, her copious crying, tendency to collapse in public places, and visions were all possibly mystical experiences. However, unlike Julian, Margery was very public about her mysticism; and her many travels, both around the country and across Christendom on pilgrimage, made her a more obvious problem. Margery visited Julian at a point in her life when she had already been on the receiving end of harsh criticism for her visions, and she was no doubt seeking support from a fellow female mystic.
As is characteristic of Margery, her main focus in her conversations with Julian was herself. She presents the anchorite with tales of her experiences, her ‘compunction, contrition, sweetness and devotion, compassion with holy meditation and high contemplation, and full many holy speeches and conversations that our Lord had spoken to her soul, and many wonderful revelations.’ Margery dictated her life to a scribe, who seems to have captured the dialogue between the two women in a remarkable way. Julian’s voice comes through in her response to Margery. She is positive and delighted by the visions, but cautions Margery with her characteristic balance and restraint: ‘As long as it was not contrary to the worship of God and the benefit of her fellow-Christians; for, if it was, then it was not the inspiration of a good spirit but of an evil spirit’.
As in Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love, Margery’s book reports Julian’s reference to the recipient of visions as a simple ‘creature’. The themes that preoccupy the anchoress recur in The Book of Margery Kempe, with a focus on sin and forgiveness, a rejection of earthly concerns and a focus on the love of God. Margery emphasizes her own concerns, of course, stating that Julian encouraged her with ‘weeping so plenteously that the tears may not be counted’, and stressing that the scorn she receives is an indication of her merit. This single passage reveals a good deal about both women, and also indicates how receptive the medieval female memory could be to orated speech and instruction.
Given the mystical nature of her visions, her openly unconventional behaviour and her habit of preaching on her travels, Margery was in danger of being burnt as a heretic. She is another female writer whose work was nearly lost, but again we are fortunate to have such a fascinating surviving document of a medieval laywoman’s life and times. Her account adds flesh to Julian’s in terms of historical and social context. She grew up in Kings Lynn, which was an important Norfolk port like Norwich. She was from a grand noble family, and married John Kempe, who was from a prosperous mercantile family. Unlike Julian, however, Margery’s account is firmly rooted in her earthly life. The reader learns how her visions were prompted by a severe illness (possibly post-natal depression) suffered after the birth of a child. Her account brings medieval Norfolk to life, with its colourful characters and important locations at the heart of her narrative.
She has a very different approach from Julian in terms of her writing style as well. While Julian’s text is full of desire, Margery displays a deeper obsession with passion and sexuality. She states she wants to be punished for a ‘sin’ she wished to confess, which may have been adultery, and there is a continuing obsession with forgiveness throughout the text. In describing her visions she illustrates a sexually fuelled relationship between her and Christ. They have a conversation after which he ‘ravishes her soul’. Naturally, she was worried her visions could be coming either from God or from the devil, and this is something she discusses with Julian. This was a problem underlying medieval women’s visions; they are unable to discern their origins, and to determine whether they are from good or evil sources. It was in a vision that Christ told her to see Julian, and the reassurance of this wise, elderly visionary must have been a great comfort to the worldly, vocal, socially engaged Margery.
Julian was known for her exemplary life rather than her visions, which she most probably kept secret during her time in her cell. She did not ‘trade’ on them, like Margery, who was paid to pray for people, was welcomed to dine in great houses wherever she travelled, and treated like a celebrity. This notoriety was not easy for Margery at times. She travelled widely on pilgrimage, without her husband, and was abused and vilified by fellow travellers. More seriously, she was bordering on heresy by publically preaching her visions and ideas. She had a particularly difficult encounter with the Bishop of Lincoln, who tried to question her for Lollardy (see pp. 27–9) because she travelled about and preached.
The persecution that Margery experienced may provide another dimension on the anchoritic life Julian chose. Within her cell she was largely protected from accusations of preaching and heresy, she did not have to be judged by those she encountered and she could record her visions for herself, rather than relying on scribes as Margery did. Of the two writers, Margery has aged worse. Her love of pilgrimage, indulgences and her vociferous mysticism has meant that her book seems firmly rooted in the religion, society and politics of fourteenth-century Norwich. Margery has not been made a saint, despite the reputation she crafted during her lifetime. She was very much of her world, while Julian seems to transcend it. There is an almost remarkable absence of historical references in Revelations of Divine Love. Julian lived through turbulent times, but her work moves beyond the politics and issues that surrounded her, in search of more eternal truths.
The Black Death and fourteenth-century politics
It is possible to read Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love without understanding the times in which she wrote. The image of her that is repeated in stained-glass windows and mass-produced icons is of a woman in a wimple, perhaps dressed a nun, often with a cat at her feet, engrossed in reading and contemplation – a lasting vision of a calm life removed from chaos. However, her text becomes all the more remarkable in terms of its optimism and reflection of an all-loving, all-forgiving God when considered against the dramatic backdrop of late fourteenth-century religion, politics and conflict.
Julian lived through the aftermath one of the most extraordinary moments in human history – the Black Death, 1348–9. The effect on the population of England was devastating, with areas of the country unable to recover to pre-plague numbers for many centuries. East Anglia was the county worst hit by the Black Death, because of the constant stream of trading ships, bringing with them infected rats and people. It is estimated that in Norwich 7,000 of the 12,000 inhabitants died.4 It turned the social spectrum on its head with its lack of concern for class; the three strands of medieval society – nobility, religious and peasantry – were hit equally hard.
The feudal system that had been in place for centuries was unsettled as a depleted peasantry could now demand better pay in the face of a dwindling workforce. Julian sets her Revelations firmly within the medieval feudal structure, referring to God as her ‘lord’, and a society where a ‘lord’ would not condescend to care for his ‘servant’. Yet she includes an interesting reversal of this relationship in her parable of a lord and servant, which frustrates the established situation, with a lord lovingly rewarding his servant. So even in her text the transformation of the status quo is emerging. A social system that had been in place throughout Western Europe was beginning to unravel, and people were finding their lives turned upside down by death and uncertainty.
But the Black Death was not the only plague to afflict the people of Norwich. In 1361 another 23 per cent of an already decimated population was wiped out, and this plague was a form that was particularly virulent among children. It continued to hit the forlorn city four times between 1369 and 1387. Julian would have experienced all of these plagues throughout her life, and it was possibly the cause of the life-threatening illness that instigated her visions. Certainly she was affected by the sight of plague victims, describing in characteristically abstract term the horrendous effects of the illness:
At this time I saw a body lying on the earth, a body which looked dismal and ugly, without shape and form, as it were a swollen, heaving mass of stinking mire.
(Chapter 64)
Yet despite the horrors surrounding her, and the fact that many people she would have known and loved were carried away by the plague, Julian wrote a book that is singularly optimistic, hopeful and finds a positive path through suffering. With death carts trundling down King Street, past her cell, Julian would never have felt far from reminders of the transience of life and inevitability of death.
The physical suffering brought about through plague, famine and failed harvests during Julian’s lifetime erupted into political turmoil in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. The attempts by a royal official to collect poll taxes in Essex turned into violence, and rallied by the sermons of John Ball, angry representatives from all sections of society headed for London. Led by Wat Tyler, the men of Essex and Kent descended on London, demanding the removal of unfair taxes, an end to serfdom and the removal of corrupt government officials. In the rioting that ensued, prisons were opened, law books were burned and the Savoy Palace, home of John of Gaunt, was destroyed. The Chancellor, Simon Sudbury, was beheaded on Tower Hill, and the revolt was quelled only by the personal intervention of young King Richard II, then just fourteen years old.
In Norwich the same issues that led the men of nearby Kent and Essex to march on London had provoked riots and chaos throughout Norfolk. Geoffrey Litster led a band of rebels to Norwich Castle, which they pillaged while Litster feasted. It took the intervention of Bishop Henry Despenser to suppress the violence. He travelled to Norwich with an armed force, and defeated the rebels in the Battle of North Walsham. Despenser led the assault himself, gaining the title of ‘The Fighting Bishop’. He then personally oversaw the trial and execution of Litster, who was hung, drawn and quartered. He did restore calm to the city of Norwich, but he did so with an iron fist. This is the very bishop who would have validated Julian’s request to enter the anchor-hold. Despite the fact that Julian herself does not comment on the political and social upheaval of her time, she would have been close to the events physically, as the monasteries and convents around the Church of St Julian and all across the city were plundered. She would have heard the rioting around her, and no doubt feared for her own safety.
Political upheaval close to home was mirrored abroad. The Hundred Years War with France, which raged from 1337 to 1453, had wide-reaching effects on England. French raids on southern English coastal towns were destructive, the military elite was occupied abroad, and trade was affected by difficult relations across the Channel. In terms of trade, Norwich fared relatively well, since the River Wensum provided a safe port on the Eastern coast, which meant merchants from Flanders and Northern Europe could still buy English produce and bring continental goods and ideas. However, with much of the male population of Norwich involved in Edward III’s campaigns abroad, the city was lacking strong leadership at a time of economic and social unrest.
This was exacerbated by cataclysmic change within the Church. In 1377, just four years after Julian had received her visions, and a decade or so before she would enter her cell as an anchorite, the Great Western Schism began. For some seventy years the papacy had been based in Avignon, as a Frenchman, Pope Clement V, sought to bind it more closely to the Holy Roman Empire. Seven successive French popes reigned in Avignon, and the papacy fell increasingly under the control of the French court. Yet in 1377 the last French pope, Gregory XI, returned the papacy to Rome. He didn’t live for long, dying the following year, and the Church was plunged into a new set of conflicts as rival popes took up position in Avignon and Rome. This wasn’t simply destructive in terms of the unity and reputation of the Christian Church. The Schism forced nations and individuals to choose between the rival claimants, and Western Europe was subsequently split along new lines of loyalty to one or other pope.
Bishop Henry Despenser himself took to the front line of this conflict, leading an army of men from Norfolk in support of the Roman claimant. They were lured to crusade by the promise of papal indulgences and the hope of grabbing gold on the Continent. This meant the Church in Norwich, already battered by years of plague, was rudderless. The crusades were ultimately fruitless, and the few who survived, including Bishop Despenser, eventually returned to Norwich humiliated and beaten. At its very highest levels the established Church was seen as corrupt, money-grabbing and violent. And as the Church’s leadership continued to flounder, it also found itself challenged at grass-roots level by a growing religious movement that would unsettle communities from the inside, leading ultimately to the Protestant Reformation.
Lollardy and printing
At the end of the fourteenth century the established Church was in disarray. A leading Oxford scholar in Julian’s time, John Wycliffe, introduced an alternative set of ideas for disenchanted, disenfranchised Christians. He attacked the luxury of the priesthood, the selling of indulgences, the veneration of the saints and the very existence of the papacy. Alongside this, he also translated the Bible directly from the Vulgate into English; a radical step, which meant people could access the Scriptures themselves, without the intervention of priests. These ideas were to form the basis of the Protestant Reformation some century and a half later, and his followers would become known as Lollards. That Wycliffe’s version of the Bible in English gained great popularity is attested to by the large number of surviving copies – over 150 partial or complete versions, despite the fact that it was a dangerous book to own.
The Peasants’ Revolt coincided with a climax in Wycliffe’s life and ministry. In the following year, 1382, a remarkable synod was called by the Archbishop of Canterbury to rule on Wycliffe’s propositions. An earthquake occurred during the synod (hence it becoming known as ‘The Earthquake Synod’), and this was interpreted as God trying to purge London of Lollard heresies. Of the twenty-four propositions attributed to Wycliffe, ten were declared heretical, and fourteen erroneous. This meant that Lollards could now be prosecuted and executed as heretics. It was deemed illegal to own a copy of Wycliffe’s Bible, while his many treatises began to change hands secretly.
Unlike Julian, Wycliffe wrote frequently and passionately about contemporary events such is the Black Death. With the loss of many clergy to plague, Wycliffe felt that the spiritual guidance of the people was now in the hands of ill-educated and morally corrupt individuals. He had powerful and influential supporters, including the Queen Mother, Joan of Kent. Wycliffe argued for ‘the invisible church of the elect’, a universal church with greater inclusion and sense of salvation. His Lollard followers argued that only God could forgive sin, so confession was unnecessary, and that the worship of relics, as well as bread and wine through the act of transubstantiation, was idolatrous.
The threat these ideas posed to the established Church was huge. Lollards were rounded up across the country and burned as heretics, particularly after the De Haeretico Comburendo act of 1401. In Norwich the ‘Heresy Trials’ led to many deaths, and the site of execution, Lollard’s Pit, was right by Julian’s cell. Documents of the trials survive, and indicate that a number of women in particular were persecuted. Julian’s contemporary and fellow Norfolk female writer, Margery Kempe, was accused of Lollardy a number of times; but Margery was no Lollard. She held to pilgrimage, devotion to the saints, the sacredness of the sacraments, and even survived much of her life on indulgence payments. Yet because she travelled around ‘preaching’, she was in danger of such accusations. Julian managed to avoid this through being an anchoress, and through her continual assertions that she followed ‘true doctrine’:
But in all things I believe as Holy Church teaches, for I perceived this whole blessed revelation of our Lord as unified in God’s sight, and I never understood anything from it that bewilders me or keeps me from the true teaching of Holy Church.
(Short Text, Chapter 6)
Heresy is a thought crime – it goes on inside of people. Julian would have been aware that she might have been under surveillance, particularly as the Bishop of Norwich, Henry Despenser, was one of the most aggressive traditionalists. Julian is very careful in her work to accord with orthodox Catholic teaching of her time. However, her attitudes towards the forgiveness of sin, salvation for all and the relative exclusion of the saints in favour of direct communion with Christ, may indicate that she was aware of Wycliffe’s treatises. In common with many Lollards of her time, Julian connected with the human Jesus, seeing association with the divine as something a ‘simple, unlettered creature’ could achieve. What’s more, by writing in the vernacular – English – Julian could be seen as part of a broader movement towards sharing ideas, not just with a few Latin-speakers, but with many.
The ideas of Wycliffe and his Lollard supporters would have gained greater distribution through another remarkable fourteenth-century development: the invention of the printing press. It is impossible to overestimate the significance of this in terms of widening access to ideas and information. We today are living through a revolution: the digital revolution. Historians in a century or so will look to the invention of the computer, internet and mobile phone, and see the broader cultural and intellectual changes this revolution brought about. We are in the midst of it, so are still to discover the full implications of global communication and instant access to information. But we have the benefit of hindsight with regard to the printing press.
While Johannes Gutenberg is credited with the invention of the printing press around 1440, he in fact perfected a form of printed text that was already in circulation in Julian’s lifetime. Block printing had become common in Europe for creating patterns on fabric by 1300, and woodblock images and texts began to be distributed widely. They most probably appeared in Norwich in the late fourteenth century through trade with Northern Europe. The rise in printing coincided with the increased availability of paper, and gradually texts moved away from handwritten manuscripts on vellum, towards cheaper and easily reproduced alternatives. So ideas were moving out of the hands of the few, into the hands of the many.
This was a revolution. The seeds had been sown in earlier centuries, as scribes had branched out beyond monastic scriptoriums into secular workshops, producing handwritten texts faster and more efficiently than their religious counterparts. But with printing, ideas and information could move out of centres of religious influence, into the hands of the masses. As the Black Death and Peasants’ Revolt were unsettling the social structure of fourteenth-century England, so printing was transforming its intellectual and spiritual structure. While Julian pre-dates Gutenberg’s movable type printing press by a decade or so, she would have been aware that intellectual change was sparking technological development. People outside the court, the Church or the universities could start to share ideas, and her little handwritten book of Revelations was created during this exciting moment of change.
What is truly remarkable about Julian is her decision to avoid referencing all these enormous social, political and religious events in her work. She navigates a path through Revelations of Divine Love that looks beyond the turmoil outside her anchor-hold, and sees a set of universal truths that can provide hope at a time of darkness and despair. It is tempting to see the words Julian offers in her book as a condensed form of the counsel she would provide through her curtained window out on to King Street. But despite death, destruction, riots, war and religious anarchy, Julian maintained a hopeful message. Her book is so unique because of, and in spite of, the wider issues of her time.
Wise women have always had a role to play within communities, and Julian could have provided a welcome well of supportive words and consolation for the residents of Norwich through its many hardships. That she could take this role at a time when heretics were being burned for preaching, teaching and spreading religious ideas suggests that she was brave yet sensible. She shared her ideas, yet never came into conflict with religious authorities. One way she did this was most probably to keep her written text with her within her cell, working on it over the course of many decades, and keeping it secret. For a woman to write at all in this era was dangerous, but to write on religious matters at a time of religious turmoil was potentially deadly. But write Julian did.
Julian’s education
In her text Julian describes herself as ‘a simple, unlettered being’, and it seems that she had not received a broad education in the strict sense of the word. She writes in the vernacular – English – which constitutes a wonderful survival for students of English literature, but a problem for theologians, since Latin was the language of the Church. Nevertheless, such contemporaries as Richard Rolle and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing also chose English as the most suitable language for recording mystical revelations. The use of the vernacular in these cases was established as a precedent by writers such as Bridget of Sweden, but it also suggests that one’s mother tongue is the language best suited for attempting to express the inexpressible.
Opinions on Julian’s education range widely, from her being a master of Latin and even Hebrew, to not being able to read at all. It is likely that she had a very basic education before she entered her cell, and yet her time as an anchorite allowed her to develop her reading and writing skills, alongside her theological knowledge. Listening to the priest through the window of her anchor-hold facing on to the church would have exposed her to the Latin mass, as well as the ideas spoken during sermons from the pulpit. She may have had access to books (although even the wealthiest households may only have had about twenty-five at most), brought to her by visitors, but there is little evidence that she had developed a thorough understanding of Latin, since at the two points she quotes in Latin directly she gets the grammar wrong.
Despite declaring herself ‘unlettered’ (which may mean she knew no Latin or French), Julian would have been exposed to a range of languages in Norwich. It is important to remember the literacy rates at this point in England. Only about 20 per cent of men would have been able to read and write, while the rates for women would have been much lower. Yet the city of Norwich housed one of the busiest ports in the country, and people came to trade there from the Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy. The marketplace would have been awash with different dialects, and from her cell on the main thoroughfare, Julian would have heard many languages from the people passing by. It is also important to remember that mystics were valued for the unadulterated access they received to the divine. By seeming uneducated and untrained in the nuances of theology, Julian would be adding credence to the innocence and veracity of her visions. She received them as a ‘simple creature’, not someone trained in a university, monastery or cathedral school, or versed in French or Latin.
She certainly went to great lengths in her text to stress she was no teacher (although this may also be a defence against accusations of preaching that were made against Lollards):
But God forbid that you should say, or take it, that I am a teacher, for I do not mean that, nor did I ever mean that.
(Short Text, Chapter 6)
When she states that she ‘cowde no lettre’, this may mean that when she entered the anchor-hold she couldn’t read and write. Internal evidence in both the Short and Long Texts of Julian suggest that this was possibly an exaggeration, and she did have at least a basic education by the time she was an adult. Perhaps she gained this at the nearby Carrow Abbey, one of the most famous convents in the country, and the convent responsible for the church in which Julian was enclosed. While she was most probably never a nun there, Carrow did run a boarding school for the sons and daughters of noble families in Norwich, providing an education and board up to around the age of ten. Here she could have learnt to read, perhaps a little French, and would have been exposed to some Latin. However, the many years she spent holed up in her anchorite cell would have provided the opportunity to hone these skills.
However she received the education and ideas that are clearly evinced in Revelations of Divine Love, it does seem that the work, its arrangement and its words are her own. While Margery Kempe dictated her book to a scribe, the structure of Julian’s work, and the ways in which she weaves her thoughts together across sections, suggest that it is all her own conception. The rhetoric she employs is not of the sophisticated type employed in universities or monasteries, but she develops a unique writing style that is powerful and effective. Her use of repetition, particularly in patterns of three, are perhaps self-taught or derived from sermons she had heard, yet she gives them a potency that many other writers do not master. This adaptation of rhetoric is mirrored in her theology.
Unlike many writers in the fourteenth century, Julian would not have been trained in the liberal arts and would not have scrutinized theological texts, as her male contemporary mystic Richard Rolle did at Oxford University. Nevertheless, while apparently anti-theological at points, steeped instead in experiential understanding of the divine through revelation, Julian’s text displays a clear grasp of leading theological arguments.5 She echoes the ideas of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, to name but two. While she had probably not read much of their work, these authors were the bedrocks of fourteenth-century spirituality, so faithful attention to the words of the priest through her cell window and discussion with educated visitors may have been sufficient to provide her with a sound theological basis for her text.
The ability to retain and repeat information from memory was much stronger in the medieval period, since fewer people depended on written records as reminders. This is clear from Margery Kempe’s recorded account to her scribe of meeting Julian, which captures the anchoress’s style and phrases extremely well. Julian may also have had an excellent memory, not just for subject matter but also for nuance. In addition to hearing theological ideas, she may have been lent books from the Augustinian Abbey across the road from her cell, which she would have read thoroughly and digested. But she would not have had access to the same amount of texts, ideas and debates that many of her male contemporaries could boast.
Her own intellect and brilliance did a lot of the hard work. With a set of sixteen vivid and endlessly unfolding revelations to contemplate, and the relative peace and security of an anchorite’s cell to contemplate within, Julian took time to develop her ideas in her own unique way. Her lack of formal education may in fact be the reason why her text is so unlike any others written at the time, since she was writing something original, personal and heartfelt. At the core of the text there is calm and steadiness, brought about no doubt by the stability of place she committed to when she took anchoritic vows. Unaffected by doctrinal nuance and the heady rush of academic discourse, hers is a work that operates on a different level. It rises above day-to-day concerns, theological debate and religious nitpicking, creating instead a more cosmic, timeless view of Christian spirituality. One woman’s experiences, and one woman’s interpretation of them; yet they can still speak across the centuries.