ANNIE SUTHERLAND
At the very outset of the Short Text of her Revelations,1 Julian of Norwich tells us:
I desirede thre graces be the gifte of God. The first was to have minde of Cristes passion. The seconde was bodelye syekenes. And the thrid was to have of Goddes gifte thre woundes. (Vision, 1.1–3)
Within the context of late medieval affective spirituality, the first of these requests seems entirely conventional, yet Julian positions it explicitly outside the devotional framework of the Church:
Notwithstandinge that I leeved sadlye alle the peynes of Criste as halye kyrke shewes and teches […] noughtwithstondinge alle this trewe beleve, I desirede a bodilye sight, wharein I might have more knawinge of bodelye paines of oure lorde oure savioure. (Vision, 1.9–14)2
Although the second request is expressed in extreme terms (‘I wolde that this bodilye syekenes might have beene so harde as to the dede’: Vision, 1.21–2) and is without exact contemporary parallel, in its emphasis on physical mortification it does not sound entirely out of keeping with the trends of contemporary spirituality.3 Julian, however, is quick to tell us that:
This two desires of the passion and of the seekenes, I desirede thame with a condition. For methought that it passede the comene course of prayers.
(Vision, 1.30–1)4
She does not apply this ‘condition’ to her third request (for the wounds of ‘contrition’, ‘compassion’ and ‘wilfulle langinge to God’: Vision, 1.40–1) and that she does not claim her desire for this third grace ‘passede the comene course of prayers’ is perhaps because the states of contrition, compassion and the longing for God are such staples of the late medieval devotional life.5
According to Julian, however, a visionary experience of the Passion beyond the ‘techinge of haly kyrke’ and a physical illness ‘so harde as to the dede’ cannot be defined by the terminology of contemporary devotion. Nor, she infers, can her desire for these graces be judged to fall within the boundaries of ‘comene’ intercessory practice. It is precisely this relationship between Julian’s visionary experience and the patterns of contemporary prayer (specifically liturgical and quasi-liturgical) which I explore in this essay, suggesting that, while wider intercessory and meditative practices can shed some light on Julian’s literary and liturgical affinities, there are inevitably aspects of her devotional life and language which remain idiosyncratic and enigmatic.6
Throughout A Vision and A Revelation, we find sustained emphasis on the importance and efficacy of prayer. In A Vision we are told that ‘it is Goddis wille that we pray’ and that prayer ‘anes the saule to God’ (Vision, 19.30–4). And in A Revelation Christ tells Julian that all ‘living prayer’ is pleasing to him; we should, he says, ‘pray interly’ and ‘continually’ (Revelation, 41.33–40) in order to reach that state of unity which is ‘the fruit and the ende of oure prayer’ (Revelation, 42.7). However, it is only in A Vision that these reflections on prayer are tied to any specific liturgical practice and, even then, this is achieved by reference to only the most generic of intercessory models:
For in this oure lorde lered me […] to hafe of Goddes gifte faith, hope, and charite, and kepe us therein to oure lives ende. And in this we say Pater noster, Ave, and Crede with devotion, as God wille giffe it. (Vision, 19.6–8)7
Indeed, while recognition of the value of continual prayer is central to Julian’s mystical enterprise, any sustained description of the precise form which that prayer might take is less important.8 In fact, one is often left with the impression that the most meaningful prayer is that of silent, unscripted contemplation, ‘an high, unperceivable prayer’ (Revelation, 43.18).9
Yet we do know that the physical ritual of spoken prayer was significant to Julian. When, in Section 23 of her Vision, she is visited by the ‘fende’ ‘with his heete and with his stinke’, she comforts herself by setting her eyes on the cross and tells us that ‘my tunge I occupied with speche of Cristes passion and rehersinge of the faith of haly kyrke’ (Vision, 23.12–13; italics mine), by which, perhaps, we are to understand that she recited such prayers as the aforementioned ‘Pater noster, Ave, and Crede’.10 Narrating the same occurrence in the longer Revelation, Julian again emphasizes the reassuringly physical nature of spoken prayer:
And oure good lorde God gave me grace mightily to trust in him, and to comfort my soule with bodely spech, as I shulde have done to another person that had been traveyled. (Revelation, 69. 8–10; italics mine)11
However, given Julian’s silence as to what exactly her ‘bodely’ prayer entails, it is left to us to speculate on what form her intercessions might have taken and on the liturgical (and quasi-liturgical) background that might inform her writings.
As Ancrene Wisse informs us, the life of the anchoress was dominated by prayerful interaction with God. Not only would the anchoress have followed a pattern of private devotions (a point to which this chapter will return), but it is also very probable that she would have been closely familiar with the ecclesiastical liturgy celebrated on a daily basis in the church adjoining her cell. Indeed, echoes of liturgical language and syntax can be heard throughout both of Julian’s texts.12 Most obviously, Julian’s prose recalls the phrasing of the Pater Noster with which she would have been familiar by means of private devotion and public liturgy.13 But given the centrality, in Julian’s experience, of the Passion of the incarnate Christ, it is not surprising that many of her liturgical echoes can be traced back to the Canon and Order of the Mass and to the liturgy of Holy Week.14 To take just one example, we might note that on more than one occasion in A Revelation we find the syntactical structure ‘by … in’ and ‘in … by’ used in articulating our relationship with Christ. So, in Chapter 4 we read:
The trinity is our maker, the trinity is our keper, the trinity is our everlasting lover, the trinity is our endlesse joy and our blisse, by our lord Jesu Christ and in our lord Jesu Christ. (Revelation, 4.8–10; italics mine)
And in Chapter 55, Julian tells us that she:
saw that Crist, us alle having in him that shall be saved by him, wurshipfully presenteth his fader in heven with us. (Revelation, 55.2–3; italics mine)
Although such a prepositional articulation of our relationship with Christ recalls partially the tripartite division found in Romans 11:36 (‘For of him, and by him, and in him are all things’), it may well be that Julian has in mind the wording of the Canon of the Mass, recorded thus in the Sarum Missal:
Per ipsum. Et cum ipso. Et in ipso. Est tibi deo patri omnipotenti. in unitate spiritus sancti omnis honor et gloria.15
It is, however, typical of Julian that she does not reproduce exactly the tripartite liturgical formula, but replaces it with a bipartite structure, echoing contextual material allusively rather than duplicating it straightforwardly.
Of course, the location of such liturgical echoes presupposes that Julian possessed a degree of Latinity, and I do not think that this presupposition is necessarily problematic. For although we need not (and probably should not) imagine a fluently Latinate Julian, it seems highly unlikely that an anchoress fed on a daily basis with the traditions of the liturgy would not have ingested something of its language. Further, it may well have been that at some point Julian benefited from clerical or monastic help in ‘decoding’ the liturgy, and that this assistance proved of continual support in her development of liturgical understanding.16
For Julian’s writings do not simply echo liturgical language and syntax; they could also be argued to demonstrate a grasp of doctrinal issues highlighted through biblical readings used in the liturgical calendar. Far from insignificant in this context is Julian’s recognition of the importance of the fact that Christ died only once. Foregrounded in the New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews (‘Neither by the blood of goats, or of calves, but by his own blood, [he] entered once into the holies, having obtained eternal redemption … we are sanctified by the oblation of the body of Jesus Christ once’; Hebrews 9:12 and 10:10), Julian echoes such thought in both A Vision (‘For I wate wel that he suffrede nought botte anes’: Vision, 10.24–5) and A Revelation (‘… the swete manhode of Crist might suffer but onse’: Revelation, 22.28).
The Sarum Missal records that Hebrews 9:11–15 was one of the Passion Sunday readings and it is perfectly possible that Julian’s familiarity with its theological resonances was prompted by its liturgical positioning immediately prior to Holy Week.17 In both A Vision and A Revelation, however, Julian seems to wrestle with the singularity of the Passion; recognizing that Christ’s one sacrifice is sufficient, she also suggests that in his infinite love Christ would willingly have suffered (and indeed, died) more than once:
And in these wordes – ‘If I might suffer more, I wolde suffer more’ – I saw sothly that as often as he might die, as often he wolde, and love shulde never let him have rest tille he had done it. (Revelation, 22.21–3; cf. Vision, 12.19–22)18
In wrestling thus with Christ’s willingness to suffer more than the necessary once, it may be that Julian is influenced by the dual linear and circular impetus of the liturgy. Taking us from Advent to the end of the Trinity sequence by means of a progressing calendar, the liturgy emphasizes a divinity whose actions can be located in linear, historical time. And this is a linearity of which Julian reveals herself to be aware:
All that he hath done for us, and doeth, and ever shalle, was never cost ne charge to him ne might be, but only that he did in oure manhede, beginning at the swete incarnation, and lasting to the blessed uprising on Ester morow.
(Revelation, 23.15–17)
But in providing us with a repeated pattern of meditative celebration and lament, the liturgy reminds us of a God who, in his perpetual activity, lies beyond the conventions of linear time. Indeed, this is a dual impetus which is particularly apparent in the context of the Passion. For while Julian would have encountered the full liturgy of Holy Week only once a year, she would have heard and watched the vivid Eucharistic enactment of Christ’s death on a much more regular basis.
Of further significance in the context of Julian’s familiarity with the liturgy of Holy Week is A Vision’s allusion to the words of St Paul in Philippians 2:5 (‘For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus’). Claiming that the ‘shewinge of Criste paines filled me fulle of paines’, Julian states, ‘Botte ilke saule, aftere the sayinge of Sainte Paule, shulde “feele in him that in Criste Jhesu” ’ (Vision, 10.22–3).
In suggesting that an appropriate response to Christ’s Passion involves such Pauline empathy, she echoes Palm Sunday’s vivid processional recollection of the entry into Jerusalem, one of the culminating points of which was (and is) a reading from Philippians 2:5–11, followed by St Matthew’s account of the Passion. Indeed, this Philippians passage also informs A Revelation’s example of the lord and servant, wherein we learn that the humble servant, whom the lord loves greatly, is to be ‘hyely and blissefully rewarded without end, above that he shulde have be if he had not fallen’ (Revelation, 51.48–9).19 Further, a servant whose fall is preceded by his sudden ‘stert[ing] and runn[ing] in gret hast for love to do his lordes wille’ might be understood to recall Christ in his humble yet dramatic entry into Jerusalem prior to his crucifixion (Revelation, 51.1–12).
From the entry of Christ into Jerusalem (celebrated on Palm Sunday) to the death of Christ on the cross (mourned on Good Friday), the liturgy of Holy Week gives us a vivid sense of the chronology of the Passion.20 This is a chronology which would also have been impressed upon Julian if, as is surely likely, she had followed her own pattern of private liturgical devotion in addition to following the public liturgy of the Church. For late-medieval Primers, apparently intended for personal use, not only built their devotions around the conventional seven daily offices, but were also frequently accompanied by the Hours of the Cross, encouraging very specific and directed meditation on the narrative sequence of Christ’s Passion.21
Indeed, a chronological awareness of this narrative seems to lie at the heart of much Middle English writing on the Passion. Turning our attention away from the formal sequences of the ecclesiastical liturgy and towards the devotions outlined in those quasi-liturgical texts which proliferated in the later Middle Ages, again we find ourselves asked repeatedly to consider the unfolding drama of Christ’s sacrifice. Take, for example, The Privity of the Passion (the northern English abbreviated version of Johannes de Caulibus’ Meditationes Vitae Christi) which instructs its audience, ‘Begynne nowe thy meditacyone at the be-gynnynge of Cristes passyone and pursue it feruently to þe laste Ende’,22 and which, drawing on the tradition of the Hours of the Cross, facilitates such meditation by dividing the events of the Passion according to the liturgical hours.23 In fact, so thoroughgoing is The Privity’s assimilation of the crucifixion narrative to liturgical time that it reverses the hierarchy between biblically recorded event and liturgically ordered recollection of that event. Rather than simply offering us the seven hours as a meditatively convenient means of recalling and ordering the events of the passion, it presents Christ’s Passion as having been suffered within liturgical time:
Thow haste now herde me reherse here þe manere of his crucyfyenge, his passione and his bitternes, and his rewefull dede, the wilke he sufferde in þe houre of vndrone and of none […] And nowe I will reherse the schortely whate be-fell aftyr þat he was dede at þe houre of none &c. (Italics mine)24
Without claiming that Julian was necessarily familiar with this particular text, it is nevertheless abundantly clear that she lived and prayed in a devotional environment which encouraged a vivid awareness of the chronology of the Passion.
That Julian was alert to schematic trends in meditation is suggested by her retrospective division of her Passion-based revelations into five categories:
For oure curteyse lorde shewed his passion to me in five manneres: of which the furst is the bleding of the hede, the seconde is discolouring of his blessed face, the thirde is the plentous bleding of the body in seming of scorging, the fourth is the depe drying – theyse four as it is before saide for the paines of the passion – and the fifte is this that was shewed for the joy and the blisse of the passion.
(Revelation, 23.6–11)
While the basis of this division is not solely chronological (seeming rather to reflect a shifting and kaleidoscopic perspective on the body of Christ), it does recall the sequential emphasis of contemporary devotion. And this sequential emphasis is recalled elsewhere in both A Vision and A Revelation, in which Julian’s showings focus first on the bleeding, crowned head of Christ, and second on ‘a parte of his passion: dispite, spitting, solewing, and buffeting, and many languring paines’ (Revelation, 10.2–3; cf. Vision, 8.2–3). They turn then to a consideration of Christ’s ‘scorging […] with sharpe smitinges all about the sweete body’ (Revelation, 12.2–3; cf. Vision, 8.21–2), before exploring ‘a parte of his passion nere his dying’ (Revelation, 16.1; cf. Vision, 10.1). This exploration is followed by Christ leading ‘forth the understanding of his creature by the […] wound into his sid’ (Revelation, 24.2–3) and then, by his looking ‘downe on the right side’ and bringing to Julian’s mind ‘where our lady stode in the time of his passion’ (Revelation, 25.1–3).25
Such divisions recall the devotional categories of texts such as the ‘Meditations on the Passion’, ascribed to Richard Rolle, and The Privity of the Passion. In the former, for example, the speaker thanks Christ for ‘al þat shame and anguyshe þat þou suffred when þay spitten in to þy face’, for ‘þat shame and shendshipe þat þou suffreddeste in þy buffetynge’, for his scourging ‘ful stronge and smert’ and for ‘al þat blode þat þou so plenteuously bled in þy coronynge’.26 And in the latter, we are asked to meditate at Prime on Christ’s beating ‘withe scharpe knotty schourges’ and on how ‘his heued was thurghe-prikkede with scha[r]pe thornes thurghe his blesside brayne […] and beholde his blyssede face all rynnande with rede blode’. At Midday, we are asked to consider the sorrow of his mother, and at None ‘þe howre of his ded’.27
Yet, given this devotional and liturgical context, what is remarkable about Julian’s writings is the manner in which they resist, even subvert, a straightforwardly chronological reading of Christ’s death. Perhaps most notably, Julian does not provide us (and neither is she herself provided) with any introduction to the suffering body of Christ; making no mention of the Last Supper, the betrayal, the questioning or the bearing of the cross, she tells us simply that during her first revelation she was ‘sodeynlye’ confronted with Christ’s bleeding head:
And in this, sodenly I saw the red bloud trekile downe from under the garlande, hote and freshely, plentuously and lively, right as it was in the time that the garland of thornes was pressed on his blessed head.
(Revelation, 4.1–3; Vision, 3.10–12)
Such a sudden and sharply focused ‘close up’ on the suffering Christ is set in stark relief by the wealth of preparatory meditation recommended in contemporary quasi-liturgical material and foregrounded explicitly in the liturgy itself, and serves to emphasize Julian’s very particular position in late-medieval devotion. It is particularly noteworthy that at no point does she see, envisage or narrate the act of crucifixion. Indeed, she moves from a consideration of Christ’s ‘scorging’ (Revelation, 12.2–3; Vision, 8.21–2), endured prior to his crucifixion, to the showing of ‘a parte of his passion nere his dying’ and a reference to his position on the ‘rode’ (Revelation, 16.1–10) without any allusion to the Crucifixion itself.28 That she should make no mention of this event is all the more striking when one considers the prominence granted it in contemporary devotional material such as The Privity: ‘… as wode mene they threwe hym wyde opyne one þe crosse, and strenede oute his armes with gret violence on euery side’.29
Even more remarkable is the fact that, although Julian makes reference to Christ having died (‘For that same time that oure blessed saviour died upon the rode, it was a dry, harre wind, wonder colde as to my sight’ (Revelation, 16.9–11),30 she states unequivocally that she did not witness this death:
And I loked after the departing with alle my mightes and wende to have seen the body all dead. But I saw him not so. And right in the same time that methought by seming that the life might no lenger last, and the shewing of the ende behoved nedes to be nye – sodenly, I beholding in the same crosse, he changed in blisseful chere. (Revelation, 21.5–9)
The bold idiosyncrasy of this claim is all the more dramatic when viewed in the light of the liturgy of the Mass and of Holy Week, and when situated beside devotional traditions enshrined in such late medieval treatises as A Talking of the Love of God: ‘A: swete Ihesu deore lemmon. Nou þou diʒest for me hongynge on Rode tre. & letest þin hed falle doun. þat del hit is to se’.31
Indeed, Julian’s writings are characterized by the manner in which they allow Christ’s Passion to fade in and out of narrative focus.32 For example, startled by the first revelation’s dramatic visualization of Christ’s bleeding head, Julian tells us that she was equally ‘sodeinly’ (Revelation, 4.6) drawn into a consideration of the nature of the Trinity, which led to a vision of the young Virgin Mary ‘ghostly in bodily likenes’ (Revelation, 4.25).33 At the beginning of Chapter 5, she refers back briefly to ‘this sight of the head bleeding’ as providing a context for her ‘ghostly sight of [Christ’s] homely loving’ (Revelation, 5.1–2), but it is not until Chapter 7 that we are presented once more with a vividly focused image of the suffering Christ: ‘The gret droppes of blode felle downe fro under the garlonde like pelottes, seming as it had comen oute of the veines’ (Revelation, 7.10–12).34 Such fading in and out of focus contributes to our sense of the Passion in both texts as surprisingly decontextualized. Not only does Julian resist presenting us with a consistently observed narrative, but she does not allow us much sense of Christ’s suffering as having been endured in a particular place, at the hands of particular people. In her relative silence as to the environment of the Passion (the most that she tells us is that it was cold and wet), Julian does not recall the biblically inspired awareness of location exhibited in the liturgy of Holy Week, and evades the precision of contemporary devotional references to, for example, ‘the mount of Caluarie’.35 Further, in speaking of the pain inflicted on Christ (‘dispite, spitting, solewing, and buffeting’; Revelation, 10.2–3) without mentioning those who inflicted it, the Revelations distinguish themselves from the contemporary trend of naming and demonizing the Jews.36 And that this is an unconventional omission of which Julian is aware is suggested in Chapter 33 of A Revelation, when she tells us:
For I had sight of the passion of Crist in diverse shewing: in the furst, in the secunde, in the fourth, and in the eighth, as it is before saide, wherin I had in part feling of the sorow of oure lady and of his tru frendes that saw his paines. But I saw not so properly specified the Jewes that did him to deth.
(Revelation, 33.14–18)37
In thus implicitly acknowledging – while withstanding – the trends of contemporary devotion, Julian allows her visions to focus on the suffering Christ (albeit ‘swemly, and darkely’: Revelation, 10.8) to the exclusion of all distractions. In so doing, she emphasizes to us the arguably quite deliberate idiosyncrasy of her visionary experience.
It is in Chapter 6 of A Revelation that we might be said to reach the heart of Julian’s devotional and intercessory theory and practice. Having recounted her first revelation, inspired by Christ’s coronation with a ‘garland of thornes’ (Revelation, 4.3), Julian is led to reflect on ‘the custome of our prayer’ and tells us that she sees ‘how that we use, for unknowing of love, to make many meanes’ (Revelation, 6.2–4). In other words, she suggests that we are distracted in our intercessions by unnecessary attention to the mediating devices by which we might worship God. She elaborates thus on these ‘meanes’:
We pray to God for his holy flesh and for his precious bloud, his holy passion, his dereworthy death and worshipful woundes: and all the blessed kindnes and the endlesse life that we have of all this, it is of his goodnes. And we pray him for his sweete mothers love that him bare: and all the helpe that we have of her, it is of his goodnes. And we pray for his holy crosse that he died on: and all the helpe and all the vertu that we have of that crosse, it is of his goodnes. And on the same wise, all the helpe that we have of special saintes, and of all the blessed company of heaven, the dereworthy love and the holy endles frenshipe that we have of them, it is of his goodnes. (Revelation, 6.9–18; italics mine)
In elaborating thus, only to emphasize repeatedly the simplicity of God’s goodness which lies at the true centre of prayerful living, Julian seems to suggest that the Passion-based, Marian and hagiographic emphases of contemporary devotion are complicating distractions.38 However, having established and affirmed the divine ‘goodnes’ which is the goal of all intercessory practice, Julian expresses herself content that we should use the ‘meanes’ which ‘God of his goodnes hath ordained’, [o]f which the chiefe and principal meane is the blessed kinde that he toke of the maiden’ (Revelation, 6.19–21). She concludes: ‘Wherfor it pleseth him that we seke him and worshippe him by meanes, understanding and knowing that he is the goodnes of all’ (Revelation, 6.22–4). In a characteristically careful manoeuvre, Julian has at once distanced herself from the intercessory conventions of affective devotion while at the same time registering the appropriateness of meditative devices (‘meanes’) when deployed within an overarching awareness of the fundamental ‘goodnes’ of God. And it is this dual awareness of the mystical life as surpassing the ‘comene course of prayers’ while remaining appropriately modulated by its conventions that renders Julian’s voice so liturgically and devotionally allusive, yet at the same time so uniquely distinctive.
1 All references to the Short Text (A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman) and to the Long Text (A Revelation of Love) will be taken from The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, ed. Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins (Turnhout, 2006).
2 Julian deletes this comparison between her visionary desire and the teaching of the Church from the corresponding chapter of the Revelation of Love (2.5–16).
3 It should be noted that such emphasis on physical mortification is not entirely characteristic of Julian’s writings. See, for example, Revelation, 6.33–7.
4 This is expressed more carefully in A Revelation, which deletes any suggestion that Julian’s prayers go beyond or surpass conventional practice (‘For methought this was not the commune use of prayer’; Revelation, 2.29).
5 These three wounds remain exempt from any condition in A Revelation: see 2.36–7. Denise Nowakowski Baker makes a similar point regarding the conventionality of Julian’s third request. See Denise Nowakowski Baker, Julian of Norwich’s Showings: From Vision to Book (Princeton, 1994), pp. 21–2.
6 By ‘quasi-liturgical’ I mean those texts which draw on the sequences of the liturgy in encouraging private and personal devotional experience.
7 Edmund Colledge and James Walsh suggest in their edition of Julian’s texts that Julian is ‘probably alluding to the people’s devotions during Mass: ‘In the Lay Folk’s Mass Book they are directed to recite the Our Father, Hail Mary and Creed at the beginning of Mass … during the offertory … at the elevation … and at the end of Mass’: A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, ed. Edmund College and James Walsh, 2 vols (Toronto, 1978), p. 258. This is possible, but as Watson and Jenkins point out more straightforwardly, these are simply ‘the three prayers all Christians were supposed to know’: Writings, ed. Watson and Jenkins, p. 102.
8 It may be that, in her apparent lack of attention to the precise form that prayer should take, Julian is reacting against the literary extravagance of some medieval intercessory practice. See, for example, the comments in Edmund of Abingdon’s The Mirror of Holy Church, where the Pater Noster is lauded as surpassing other, more extravagant prayers; ‘And þare-fore a hundrethe thousande er dyssayuede with multyplicacione of wordes and of Orysouns; ffor when þay wene þat þay hafe grete deuocyone, þane hafe þai a fulle fleschely lykynge, ffor-thy þat ilk a fleschely lykynge delytes þame kyndely in swylke turnede langage. and þare-fore I walde þat þou war warre, ffor I say þe sykerly þat it es a foule lychery for to delyte þe in rymes and slyke gulyardy.’ See C. Horstmann (ed.), Yorkshire Writers – Richard Rolle of Hampole and His Followers, new edition with preface by A. C. Bartlett (Cambridge, 1999), vol. I, p. 232. All references will be to this revised edition.
9 It is possible that in the lack of detail as to how exactly she prayed, Julian is protecting herself against accusations of pride. Bear in mind, for example, the comments found in the anonymous late-medieval devotional compilation þe Holy Boke Gratia Dei: ‘þas deuocions þat þou has thorugh grace sterand be noght knowyn of oþer, hide þaim in þat þou mai with will & dede for drede of vany-glorie’. See þe Holy Boke Gratia Dei, in Richard Rolle and þe holy Boke Gratia Dei, ed. Sister Mary Luke Arntz (Salzburg, 1981), p. 109, ll. 25–7.
10 In both A Vision and A Revelation, the fiend is presented as ‘jangeling’ as though he were two men: ‘And alle was softe mutteringe, and I understode nought whate thay saide’; Vision, 23.5–6; cp. Revelation, 69.341–5. One might interpret the fiend’s incomprehensible noise as a parody of the ordered and devout ‘rehersinge’ of liturgical prayer. Watson and Jenkins make a similar point in Writings, p. 340.
11 In this narration in A Revelation, it is noteworthy that the ‘feende’ scorns ‘bidding of bedes which are saide boistosly with mouth, failing devout intending and wise diligence, the which we owe to God in oure prayer’ (Revelation, 69.7–8). Presumably, Julian’s ‘bodely spech’ is accompanied by appropriately ‘devout intending’.
12 I am assuming that Julian had lived as an anchoress for several years prior to her composition of A Revelation. The situation vis à vis A Vision is more ambiguous, but I speculate that it was written at around the time of enclosure.
13 For examples, see A Vision, 15.32–3; and A Revelation, 33.26–7, 43.3, etc.
14 Of course, the Passion had been long regarded as providing the anchoress with appropriate meditative material. See, for example, Goscelin of St Bertin’s late eleventh-century Liber Confortatorius in Goscelin of St. Bertin: The Book of Encouragement and Consolation [Liber Confortatorius] – The Letter of Goscelin to the Recluse Eva, ed. Monika Otter (Cambridge, 2004), Book III, p. 99). See also Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Institutione Inclusarum, ed. John Ayto and Alexandra Barratt, EETS o.s. 287 (Oxford, 1984), ch. 17, pp. 47–51 (The Vernon Manuscript), ch. 14, pp. 21–2 (MS Bodley 423).
15 ‘Through whom, and with whom, and in whom, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honour and glory be to you God, Father Almighty’, in The Sarum Missal edited from Three Early Manuscripts, ed. J. Wickham Legg (Oxford, 1916), p. 224. Unless otherwise specified, all translations from Latin are my own. Since the Sarum Rite was the most widely used liturgy in medieval England, it is this that I have chosen for the purpose of exploring liturgical traces in Julian’s writings.
16 For further exploration of the relationship between Norwich-based recluses and the clergy and religious orders, see Norman Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich 1370–1532 (Toronto, 1984), esp. pp. 62–64. See also p. 33 for brief reference to a kind of ‘personal supervision’ given by one priest to another. It is tempting to speculate that similar ‘supervision’ might have played some part in Julian’s life.
17 Sarum Missal, ed. Wickham Legg, p. 86.
18 In reference to Christ’s words, Watson and Jenkins point out that the liturgy for Good Friday contains the words ‘What more should I do for you and have not done?’ Writings, ed. Watson and Jenkins, p. 194, note on ll. 4–5. See Sarum Missal, ed. Wickham Legg, p. 113. Julian’s Christ seems to offer a theoretical answer this question with ‘If I might suffer more, I wolde suffer more’.
19 For further liturgical background to the Lord and Servant, one might explore Advent’s recollection of Isaiah 42:1–9 (‘Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my servant, in whom my spirit delights …’) and Epiphany’s recollection of Isaiah 52:13 (‘Behold, my servant shall prosper, he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high’). See Sarum Missal, ed. Wickham Legg, p. 16 and p. 39.
20 It is worth noting that Matthew 21:1–9 (the entry of Christ into Jerusalem) is also read on the first Sunday of Advent. Such repetition of biblical narrative highlights the liturgy’s celebration of a God who acts both within and without the linear sequentiality of time.
21 For exploration of the role of such devotions in anchoritic life, see Bella Millett, ‘Ancrene Wisse and the Book of Hours’, in Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England, ed. Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead (Cardiff, 2000), pp. 21–40. If Julian did follow such Primer-based devotions, we cannot be sure that they would have been in English, since vernacular Primers do not seem to have been common much before the fifteenth century. For exploration and exemplification of the Primer see The Prymer or Lay-Folks Prayer Book, ed. H. Littlehales, EETS o.s. 105 and 109 (London, 1895–7).
22 Yorkshire Writers, ed. Horstmann, vol. I, p. 198. See also the edition and translation of The Privity of the Passion, in Cultures of Piety: Medieval Devotional Literature in Translation, ed. A. C. Bartlett and T. H. Bestul (New York, 1999), translation (pp. 85–106) and Middle English (pp. 194–211).
23 For this division according to liturgical hours, see Yorkshire Writers, ed. Horstmann, vol. I, pp. 198–218. Such division of the events of the Passion according to the liturgical hours is, of course, commonplace. See, for example, Goscelin of St Bertin’s Liber Confortatorius, ed. Monika Otter, Book III, p. 99. See also the Meditations on the Passion attributed to Richard Rolle, in Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse, ed. S. Ogilvie-Thomson, EETS 293 (Oxford, 1988), p. 75, ll. 242–5 (Meditation B).
24 Yorkshire Writers, ed. Horstmann, vol. I, p. 207. The Mirror of St Edmund also orders private devotions according to the liturgical hours. Although not as detailed as the Privity in its devotional recommendations, the Mirror does recommend meditation on the Passion at every hour. So, before ‘matyns’, one should think of the birth of Christ and ‘sythyne eftyrwarde of his passione’; before ‘pryme’, one should think of ‘þe passione of Ihesu and of his Ioyfull ryssynge’; before ‘vndrone’, one should think of ‘þe passione and of þe witsondaye’, etc. (Yorkshire Writers, ed. Horstmann, vol. I, p. 235).
25 In A Revelation, the crowned head introduces the first revelation, the ‘dispite, spitting, solewing, and buffeting’ the second. The fourth explores the ‘scorging’ and the eighth considers ‘a parte of his passion nere his dying’. In the tenth, Julian considers the wound in Christ’s side and in the eleventh, Christ points us towards Mary at the foot of the cross.
26 Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse, ed. Ogilvie-Thomson, pp. 69–83 (Meditation B), esp. 72.138–9; 73.177–8; 73.191–2; 75.266–7.
27 Yorkshire Writers, ed. Horstmann, vol. I, pp. 198–218, esp. pp. 203, 204, 206.
28 A Vision does not refer to Christ on the ‘rode’ but does refer to the ‘wringinge of the nailes’ (10.18).
29 Yorkshire Writers, ed. Horstmann, vol. I, p. 205.
30 For the stretching of Christ on the cross, see also the York Play of the Crucifixion in The York Plays, ed. R. Beadle, York Medieval Texts, Second Series (London, 1982). For devotional analogues to this ‘wonder colde’ weather, see, for example, A Talking of the Love of God: ‘þer þow hongedest reuþly. so cold and so blodi, …‘ in A Talkyng of þe Loue of God, ed. Sr. Dr. D. W Westra (The Hague, 1950), p. 52, ll. 10–11; and The Privity: ‘Be-holde hym here besyly thus betyne & all tremlynge for colde: for, as þe gospell sais, þe wedire was colde’ in Yorkshire Writers, ed. Horstmann, vol. I, p. 203. For devotional analogues to the wind, see, for example, the Meditations on the Passion found in Cambridge University Library, MS. Cambr. Ll I. 8: ‘þi heere meuyth with þe wynde clemyd with þe blood’, in Yorkshire Writers, ed. Horstmann, vol. I, p. 85. For further reference to the wind and cold in Julian, see A Revelation, 17.37–9.
31 A Talkyng of þe Loue of God, ed. Westra, p. 52, ll. 12–14.
32 Baker makes similar observations regarding Julian’s episodic and intermittent narration of the Passion. See Julian of Norwich’s Showings, pp. 48–51.
33 These Trinitarian and Marian ruminations are not found in the corresponding Section 3 of A Vision.
34 Like A Revelation, A Vision also speaks of a ‘gastelye sight of [Christ’s] hamly lovinge’ (4.2) and takes its time in returning to ‘the face of the crucifxe that hange before me’ (8.1–2).
35 Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse, ed. Ogilvie-Thomson, p. 66, l. 103 (Meditation A). As well as alluding to the weather, Julian also refers to ‘where our lady stode in the time of his passion’, but she does not expand descriptively on this (Revelation, 25.2–3).
36 For the naming of the Jews in contemporary devotions, see, for example, Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse, ed. Ogilvie-Thomson, p. 65, l. 60 (Meditation A).
37 In addition to the Jews, Pilate also seems to have been a stock character in late-medieval Passion meditation. He is mentioned in A Revelation but it is not within the context of his condemning Christ to death, nor, indeed, within the specific context of the crucifixion. Rather, Pilate is one of two whom Julian mentions as not knowing Christ, the other being ‘Saint Dionisy of France, which was that time a paynim’ (18.21–2).
38 For God as the source of all goodness, see the Order of the Mass: ‘Deus pater fons et origo tocius bonitatis …‘ in Sarum Missal, ed. Wickham Legg, p. 226. In drawing attention to the potential distraction of mediating devices in prayer, Julian has something in common with the Cloud author who emphasizes that the meditations of those ‘þat contynuely worchen in þe werk of þis book’ are ‘as þei were sodein conseites & blynde felynges of þeire owne wrechidnes, or of þe goodness of God, wiþoutyn any menes of redyng or heryng comyng before, & wiþoutyn any specyal beholdyng of any þing vnder God’. The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Treatises, ed. P. Hodgson (Exeter, 1982), ch. 36, 40/15–19.