title | : | Revelations of Divine Love, Translated From British Library Additional MS 37790 : The Motherhood of God : an Excerpt, Translated From British Library MS Sloane 2477 Library of Medieval Women, 1369-9652
author | : | Julian.; Beer, Frances.
publisher | : | Boydell & Brewer Ltd.
isbn10 | asin | : | 0859914534
print isbn13 | : | 9780859914536
ebook isbn13 | : | 9780585250540
language | : | English
subject |  | Mysticism--England--History--Middle Ages, 600-1500, Love--Religious aspects--Christianity.
publication date | : | 1998
lcc | : | BV4832.2.J8513 1998eb
ddc | : | 242
subject | : | Mysticism--England--History--Middle Ages, 600-1500, Love--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Page i

Library of Medieval Women

Julian of Norwich

Revelations of Divine Love
The Motherhood of God
An Excerpt

Page ii

Library of Medieval Women

ISSN 1369-9652

Series Editor: Jane Chance

Already published

Christine de Pizan's Letter of Othea to Hector, Jane Chance, 1990

The Writings of Margaret of Oingt, Medieval Prioress and Mystic, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, 1990

Saint Bride and her Book: Birgitta of Sweden's Revelations, Julia Bolton Holloway, 1992

The Memoirs of Helene Kottanner (14391440), Maya Bijvoet Williamson, 1998

The Writings of Teresa de Cartagena, Dayle Seidenspinner-Núñez, 1998

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Julian of Norwich

Revelations of Divine Love
Translated from British Library Additional MS 37790

The Motherhood of God
An Excerpt
Translated from British Library MS Sloane 2477

with Introduction, Interpretive Essay and Bibliography

Frances Beer
York University, Toronto

D.S. BREWER

Page iv

Translation and Editorial matter © Frances Beer 1998

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner

First published 1998
D. S. Brewer, Cambridge

ISBN 0 85991 453 4

D.S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604-4126, USA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Julian, of Norwich, b. 1343.
[Revelations of divine love.    English]
Revelations of divine love  :  the short text, translated from
British Library Additional MS 37790  :  The motherhood of God  :  an
excerpt, translated from British Library MS Sloane 2477 / with
introduction, interpretive essay, and bibliography [by] Frances Beer.
p.    cm.  (Library of medieval women, ISSN 1369-9652)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-85991-453-4 (pbk.  :  alk. paper)
1. Mysticism  England  History  Middle Ages, 600 -1500.
2. Love  Religious aspects  Christianity.    I. Beer, Frances
II. Julian, of Norwich, b. 1343. Motherhood of God. English.    III. Title.
IV. Series.
BV4832.2.J8513    1998b
242-dc21                                                        97-40649

This publication is printed on acid-free paper

Printed in Great Britain by Athenæum Press Ltd, Gateshead, Tyne & Wear

Page v

Contents

Preface

vii

Introduction

Background

1

The 14th-Century Mystical Context

4

Julian's Temptation

16

The Importance of the Short Text

19

Revelations of Divine Love

25

Appendix: The Motherhood of God

61

Interpretive Essay

71

Bibliography

81

Index

91

Page vii

Preface

Julian of Norwich would be deemed an extraordinary figure at any time. As the pre-eminent woman writer of the Middle English period, she is all the more remarkable, and considerable attention has justly been paid to her Revelations of Divine Love in recent years. The Revelations, in which she describes and discusses a sequence of mystical visions, exists in two quite different versions, the short and the long text, composed some twenty years apart. Existing translations and scholarly attention have both tended to focus on the later version, much the longer and more complex of the two, while the earlier version has not been accorded the attention it deserves as an independent composition. Not only does the short text, set down soon after her dramatic visionary experiences, record them in more immediate and personal detail, but its structure is clear and balanced, making the account more accessible and, it could be argued, more successful as a literary achievement. Certainly the short text is the only feasible introduction to Julian studies, whether for the undergraduate student or the interested lay reader. For such reasons a 'free-standing' scholarly translation of the short text is called for one which gives proper attention to its stature in the 14th-century theological and mystical context, to what it reveals to us of Julian as a person, and to its particular literary value.

In the Introduction these questions are addressed more fully. Having argued (and, I hope, established) the merit of the short text as an independent composition, I have nonetheless decided to include Julian's astonishing discussion, from the later version, of the motherhood of God (Appendix A). I believe this inclusion to be warranted for several reasons. Most obviously, it is this portion of Julian's work for which she is currently best known outside of medieval/theological circles; it is also perhaps the single most immediately graspable illustration of her independence as a theologian, although to be sure evidence of this characteristic can be found throughout her work. In the concluding Interpretive Essay I have chosen to discuss the political/feminist implications of the short text, as being of concern to readers interested in women's studies, as well as to those specializing in the

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study of the Middle Ages. It would simply not do justice to Julian's feminism to disregard her treatment of the motherhood theme, which also serves to confirm the egalitarianism, the rejection of dualism and hierarchy, and the universalist implications that are found in the short text, and that are the main focus of the Essay.

By arguing the special worth of the short text I do not in any way intend to discourage readers from going on to subsequent study of the longer version; rather I mean to emphasize the importance of starting at the beginning, of first becoming acquainted with Julian the individual, as she first and most lucidly reaches out to us and to her fellow Christians.

I would like to express particular thanks to Jane Chance, Partricia Watson, and my father, Samuel Beer, for their valuable suggestions regarding the Introduction, translation, and Interpretive Essay; and to David, Denis, Jessica and Kitty for their welcome encouragement along the way.

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Introduction

Background

Julian of Norwich was the author of the Revelations of Divine Love, a mystical treatise recognized as one of the great masterpieces of 14th-century devotional literature. Based on a series of sixteen visions experienced in her thirty-first year, the Revelations exists in two versions designated for simplicity's sake as the short and long text. The short text upon which this translation is based was probably set down soon after 1373, when she was granted the visions, or "showings." It records them in careful detail, also including vivid accounts of the illness which preceded, and perhaps precipitated, them (II), and of an assault by the devil, who twice tries to tempt her to despair (XXI, XXIII).¹

Earlier in her life she had asked God for three gifts: a closer experience of the passion; a physical illness; and three "wounds" "the wound of contrition, the wound of compassion, and the wound of earnest longing for God" (I). In the course of the revelations, it seems that all three of Julian's wishes were granted, but the immediate experience began with the onset of the near-fatal illness for which she had previously prayed (II). At the end of a week her "body was without feeling from the midst downward.'' Believing her death to be imminent, the friends at her bedside sent for her curate, "to be with [her] when [she] died." He placed a crucifix close by her, upon which she set her eyes. The room around her grew dark. As she describes it,

¹ Roman numerals in round brackets refer to the 25 chapter divisions in BL MS 37790, which are marked by the scribe's large, ornate capitals. There is no way of knowing whether Julian's original version included these breaks; some make more sense than others. In the absence of other evidence, however, and to facilitate cross-reference with existing editions and studies of the short text, they have been retained in this translation. In the text itself, I have signalled the start of each revelation by arabic numerals in square brackets, as [1], [2], etc.; it should be noted that the actual numbering of the revelations does not occur in the short text, but has been inferred by reference to Julian's later version.

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"the feeling in the upper part of my body began to die. My hands fell down . . ., my head settled to one side. . . I thought I was truly at the point of death." But her pain suddenly disappeared, and the first revelation, in which the head of the crucifix at her bedside began to bleed, commenced. Her description of this vision is the most detailed of any in her account, occupying five chapters (III-VII). She later specifies that it "began early in the morning, about four o'clock"; the next fourteen revelations followed "steadily on in regular and due order," with the sixteenth being shown sometime the following night (Wolters 1966, 180181).

Throughout the short text, Julian's comments on the divine truths which were shown are closely linked to what she actually saw and heard in each revelation. In succeeding years Julian's memory of her visions was "renewed by the subsequent enlightenment and touch of the same Spirit." Then, as the result of "inner enlightenment, after twenty years. . .from the time of the revelation," Julian received what seems to have been a divine adjuration to "consider all the details and circumstances" of one of her visions and she "began to understand that every revelation was full of deep secrets. . .inner significance." These factors seem to have combined to initiate the composition of the long text a greatly augmented version of the first account, which includes a number of revelations not previously described (and so probably experienced sometime during the intervening twenty years),² and extensive allegorical interpretations of the showings: "I assented wholeheartedly and eagerly, and began to to give close attention to all the points and details that had been shown at the time'' (Wolters 1966; 180, 143, 144).

As well as by the addition of this new material, the later version has been altered by the removal of many personal references, and by the reorganization or rewriting of certain passages (Beer 1978, 2225;

² Perhaps the most important of these additions is Julian's discussion of the Motherhood of God, a translation of which can be found in Appendix A. A few others are the "wonderful illustration" of the lord and the servant (Wolters 1966, ch. 51), which reveals the grateful love of God for the humble, willing and loyal soul; a fuller description of the drops of blood, which "rolled down from [Christ's] garland like beads . . . : their abundance [was] like the drops of water that fall from the eaves after a heavy shower . . . ; their roundness as they spread out on his forehead were like the scales of herring"; an amplification at the close of the second revela-

(footnote continued on next page)

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Windeatt 3, 78). For those wishing a personal sense of Julian, these alterations would be regrettable, if by them we had been deprived of the freshness and immediacy of the short text. Fortunately we have both versions (though there is but one surviving manuscript of Julian's first account), so we can get a sense of her as an individual from the earlier one, and of her greater spritual maturity from the later. Although Grace Jantzen has recently published a thorough spiritual biography (1987), very few actual facts about Julian's life are known; thus it is all the more important that we have access to the personal details of the short text (discussed more fully at the end of this Introduction). She tells us that she was "thirty and a half winters old" at the time of her illness early May, 1373 so we can conclude that she was born late in 1342; references to her in local wills (Jacob and Johnson II, 95; Reynolds 1952, 18n.) indicate that she must have lived at least until 1416, when she would have been 73 or 74. As a child she may have been educated at a school for girls run by Benedictine nuns (Blomefield 524), and she may later have joined a religious order, though it seems likely that she was still living at home when she experienced the revelations, since her mother and friends are by her sickbed, and her curate is sent for when they think she is in need of the last rites (II, VII, VII, VIII, X).

From the text (I) and from Margery Kempe, who visited her, we know that Julian eventually became a recluse, or anchoress. Her choice of this vocation, highly esteemed in the 13th and 14th centuries in England, meant that she formally withdrew from the world and lived in a cell attached to a church, in her case, St. Julian's, belonging to the Benedictine nuns of Carrow; the solemn service for enclosure was comparable to the mass for the dead, and meant that henceforth the anchoress would be committed to an arduous life of solitary prayer and meditation (Clay 93 ff.; Shepherd xxxiv ff.). Still, Julian seems to have been considered an important part of her community, being

(footnote continued from previous page)

tion: "on another occasion I was led in imagination down on to the sea-bed, and there I saw green hills and valleys looking as though they were moss-covered, with seaweed and sand. This I understood to mean that if a man or woman were under-sea and saw God ever present with him (as indeed God is) he would be safe in body and soul, and take no hurt" (Wolters 1966, 72, 77).

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remembered, as we have seen, in local wills, and sought out as a spiritual advisor, as Margery recounts.³

Although Julian describes herself as ignorant (VI) (her actual word is "leued", which in addition to 'ignorant' could be translated as 'simple', 'unlettered', 'lay' (not clerical), 'common' or 'worthless'), her work suggests otherwise. That she was both a modest and private person might suffice to explain her use of this term; certainly she did not want her readers to be distracted by her as intermediary:

Whatever I say about myself is meant to include all my fellow Christians. . .Therefore I entreat you for God's sake. . . to disregard the wretched sinful creature to whom this vision was shown; and firmly, wisely, lovingly and meekly behold God who, in his courteous love and endless goodness, would show it generally as a comfort to us all (VI).

Reynolds (1958, xxii) has demonstrated Julian's command of a range of traditional rhetorical devices, which she uses with ease and grace throughout the Revelations, and which imply some degree of education.⁴ That she was well-read is also suggested by her evident familiarity with the ideas common to other 14th-century English spritual writers Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, and the anonymous author of the Cloud of Unknowing.⁵

The 14th-Century Mystical Context

Because the parallels, as well as the differences, between Julian and Rolle, Hilton and the Cloud, are so revealing and because it is essential to give serious consideration to the theological elements of the Revelations I have chosen to discuss some of Julian's key points in relation to their work. These points include her description of the

³ Margery was given to violent fits of weeping, and was the object of contempt; Julian consoled her by pointing out that " 'tears torment the devil more than do the pains of hell,' " and " 'the more spite, shame and reproof you suffer in the world, the greater is your merit in the eyes of God' " (Margery's account is found in Meech and Allen's edition of her Book, 4243).

⁴ Reynolds particularly notes the devices of alliteration, synonymous phrases, repetition and antithesis. See also Colledge and Walsh (1975).

⁵ Molinari (9) also sees Julian as reflecting the influence of the earlier monastic age, "from the sixth century to the twelfth,. . . from St Benedict to St Bernard,. . . [as well as] St Gregory and St Anselm."

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three types of visions she received; her treatment of the concept of 'reformation' of the soul through prayer and compassion; and her understanding of sin. The similarities confirm her centrality in the 14th-century mystical tradition, while the differences show her individuality: her special, optimistic understanding of the intimate, loving relationship between the soul and God; her ability to describe difficult theoretical and mystical material in the most accessible, immediate, 'real' terms; her love for her fellow-Christians and her commitment to share all she has seen with them.

1. The 3 stages. The identification of three levels of mystical experience is traditional, recalling both Augustine (corporeal, imaginative, intellectual) and Dionysius (purgation, illumination, perfection).⁶ Julian, too, identifies three different types of visions by which she was shown the "blessed teaching of our lord God . . .by bodily sight, by words formed in my understanding, and by ghostly sight" (VII). And at the end of her work she stresses her commitment to record in as much detail as possible all she has seen: "I have described the bodily sights as accurately as I can, and I have repeated the words exactly as our lord presented them to me. I have recounted the ghostly sights partially, but can never fully describe them" (XXIII). Julian's three types seem to reflect both a continuum and a hierarchy: while the truths contained in each revelation are all reflections of divine love, the "bodily'' sights are 'easier', more accessible; the "ghostly" the most exalted, while the "words formed" provide a reassuring transition from the first to the third stage.

Although the first revelation seems to operate simultaneously on both the first and third levels "at the same time as I saw this bodily sight, our lord showed me a spiritual vision of his matchless love" (IV) many of the sixteen showings can be seen as fitting exclusively

⁶ Molinari (60 ff.) compares Julian's three types of revelations to Augustine's scheme (as described in De Genesi ad litteram); Wolters, however, argues that "this straight-jacket does not suit Julian, who, in blissful ignorance that the last word had been said by the greatest of the Latin Fathers, described her visions in her own fashion, and with her own terminology" (1966, 30). I might add that Julian's decision to use "her own terminology" does not necessarily indicate "blissful ignorance."

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into one or another of these categories. In revelations 2, 4, and 8, for example, Julian describes herself as seeing actual physical images of the crucified Christ: "after this, I saw with bodily sight the face of the crucifix that hung before me"; "as I beheld, I saw the body bleeding profusely" (VIII); "I saw his sweet face as it was [near his death] dry and bloodless with a deadly pallor" (X). At the other extreme, revelations 3, 6, and 7 are wholly ghostly, or spiritual imageless: "I saw God in a point in my understanding" (VIII); "God showed me three degrees of bliss''; "our lord revealed an exalted spiritual joy which filled my soul with an abiding security" (IX).

Revelations 5, 9 and 10 correspond to the second category, as Julian describes the process "without voice and without opening of lips, these words were formed in my soul" (VIII). In these situations Julian not only 'hears' but is able to reply: "Then our lord asked, 'Are you pleased that I suffered for you?' 'Yea, good lord,' I said, 'Gramercy. . .' 'If you are pleased,' said our lord, 'then so am I' " (XII). The last six showings are essentially spiritual, yet in them Christ also speaks to her, frequently offering comfort: " 'all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.' These words were shown full tenderly. . . " (XIII). Reassuring Julian after the glorious sixteenth, which reveals the soul as kingdom with Christ enthroned in its midst, he "showed me words, . . . without opening of lips, gently and gravely saying, 'Be assured what you experienced today was no delirium. Accept it, believe it, and cling to it; and you shall not be overcome'" (XXII).

What in the works of Julian's 14th-century counterparts can usefully be compared to her three stages? Richard Rolle (c.13001349) was a prolific, eccentric Yorkshire hermit who composed the partially autobiographical Fire of Love in 1343. In the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters of this work he describes three types of spiritual joy calor, canor and dulcor, or heat, song and sweetness which he experienced in his youth. Nearly three years after he had dedicated himself to the solitary life, while "sitting in a certain chapel" engaged in prayer, "I felt within myself an unusually pleasant heat . . . , more fervent and pleasant than I had ever known" (Wolters 1972, 93). Some months later, "a conscious and incredibly sweet warmth kindled in me and I knew the infusion and understanding of heavenly, spiritual sounds." And then, "I heard, above my head it seemed, the joyful ring of psalmody. . . . In my prayer I was reaching out to heaven with heartfelt longing,"

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when I became aware. . . of a symphony of song, and in myself I sensed a corresponding harmony at once wholly delectable and heavenly. . . Then and there my thinking itself turned into melodious song. . .The effect of this inner sweetness was that I began to sing what previously I had spoken; only I sang inwardly, and that for my Creator.

Heat is "when the mind is truly ablaze with eternal love, and the heart similarly feels itself burning. . ."; song is "when there is in the soul. . .a sweet feeling of heavenly praise. . ., when the mind is in thrall to sweetest harmony"; from heat and song spring the third, ''for unspeakable sweetness is present too" (8990).

Like Julian, Richard was filled with joy that God should grant him such gifts, and like her he deduced that "they are not given for merit, but freely to whomsoever Christ wills." The fact that he specifies a chronological sequence in the Fire seems to indicate that these three phenomena correspond to stages of mystical love, the last of which is the most exalted. The stages are not wholly distinct, however, since the feeling of sweetness also involves heat and spiritual sounds; and the apprehension of heavenly song, inner sweetness as well: "Fervour and song bring marvellous delight to a soul, just as they can themselves be the product of very great sweetness" (90). To this extent, then, Rolle's stages could be compared to Julian's, whose "words formed" often accompany her bodily sights, and may also be heard in the course of her ghostly visions. But Rolle here uses exclusively sensory terms to describe his experiences; and there does not seem to be a clear division between the states of heat and sweetness, as there is between Julian's bodily and ghostly visions.

In Ego dormio, a later epistle addressed to a disciple, Rolle does identify three stages to be followed in the pursuit of the contemplative ideal; but the first two stages center on practical advice: obey the ten commandments, avoid the seven deadly sins, renounce the world. If this advice is followed, the third stage, the "contemplative life," marked by delight and comfort, may be achieved; the heart will be drawn upwards, "so that the eye of your heart may gaze into heaven." In his final epistle, The Form of Living, Rolle holds out the possibility of "singular love. . . the highest and most wonderful to attain . . . he or she who is in this degree [of love] can as easily feel the fire of love burning in their soul as you can feel your finger burn if you put it in the fire" (R.S. Allen 1988, 134 ff., 153 ff.). Despite Richard's pas-

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sionate statement of the power of love in the tenth chapter of the Form, he still is bound by the sensual image; even his singular love does not seem quite to match the spiritual understanding of divine love that ultimately distinguishes Julian's Revelations, and his descriptions of all three phenomena lack the specificity of Julian's account.

Walter Hilton (1340-1396), an Augustinian canon (and perhaps at one point a hermit himself), wrote The Ladder of Perfection as a guidebook for an anchoress, probably in the last third of the 14th century his work indicates a knowledge of the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing, which is thought to have been composed sometime between 1345 and 1386. It is thus possible that Julian was familiar with both works; indeed Hilton's might have been of particular interest to her when she was making her decision to become an anchoress herself. Although Hilton describes the process of moving upwards towards mystical union, and the means of achieving it, he does not claim to have had the experience personally; thus we would not expect the Ladder to have the immediacy of Julian's work. "In the contemplative life," he states, "there are three degrees":

The first degree consists in knowledge of God and of spiritual matters. It is reached through the use of reason, through the teachings of others, and by the study of Holy Scriptures. . . The second degree of contemplation consists principally in loving God, and does not depend upon intellectual light in spiritual matters. This degree is commonly felt by simple, unlearned folk who give themselves completely to devotion. . .

It may be marked by "spiritual fervour at the thought of Christ's Passion," by "great trust in God's goodness and mercy," by "fear and awe" of God's judgments. Or, in the second degree, the contemplative may "feel his heart detach itself from all earthly things, all its powers uniting to reach up to our Lord in fervent desire and spiritual ecstacy" (Sherley-Price 3, 5). While Julian must have passed through the first of these stages, it is not the subject of her Revelations. Such a reaching up to God as Hilton describes in the second degree may have given rise to her original three wishes, and his previous criteria particularly the "spiritual fervour'' and "great trust" may be compared to the feelings that accompanied her "bodily" contemplation of the bleeding head and body of the crucified Christ.

Hilton's third degree of contemplation, which he says "is the highest attainable in this life, [consisting] of both knowledge and

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love," invites comparison to Julian's third, "ghostly" stage, as described in the Revelations. According to Hilton, in the third degree, "the soul. . .is caught up out of its bodily senses":

The grace of God then illumines the mind to see all truth that is, God and spiritual things in Him with a soft, sweet, burning love. . . For a while the soul becomes united to God in an ecstacy of love,. . . then God and the soul are no longer two, but one: not, indeed, in nature but in spirit.

This degree is satisfying "to the spiritual faculties, for it is more interior, more spiritual, more noble, and more wonderful [than the second degree]. . .This is the illumination of the understanding coupled with the joys of His love. . ." (7, 8). Like Julian and Rolle, Hilton sees the third degree as including elements of the first and second, and recognizes that this transient experience cannot be had without grace; but he argues that "it is an especial favour, [and] none but a contemplative may possess it in all its fullness" (9). However, he provides no particulars as to the content of this exalted experience as might be expected of one who has not shared it. Thus, while his description of the second and third degrees may be seen to correlate approximately with Julian's three stages, there is no real basis for detailed comparison. Hilton believes that if the steps set out in the Ladder are followed, such heights may be attained, and Julian's experience seems to confirm this. But again the striking difference is between Hilton's abstract, even vague, allusion to "soft, sweet, burning love" in the third stage the most explicit he gets and the minute detail which characterizes Julian's account of her spiritual revelations.

2. Reformation. Hilton asserts that before a soul can achieve the higher states of contemplation it must undergo what he calls "reformation," a process by which the soul regains its lost likeness to God. The joy and delight, but also the tears and grief, felt in the second degree "scour and cleanse the soul from all stains of sin, and cause it to melt with wonderful love for Jesus Christ, so that it becomes obedient, responsible, and ready to do God's will." The third degree may only be "achieved when the soul is restored to the likeness of Jesus and filled with all virtues. . . [Then] the soul becomes united to God in an ecstacy of love, and is conformed to the likeness of the Trinity" (Sherley-Price 5, 7). Thus the effect of sin is to disfigure the soul:

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In its original state the soul, made in the image of God, was beautiful and glorious, filled with burning love and spiritual light. But through the sin of Adam it was disfigured and deformed into a different likeness,. . . and fell into a grievous darkness and a perverted longing for this wretched life (113).

The permanent reformation of the soul cannot take place in this lifetime; temporary reformation, however, is possible, and can be achieved through contrition, confession, penance. Souls "who have been distorted from God's likeness by mortal sin . . . cannot be restored to His likeness except through the sacrament of Penance" (121 ff.).

Although in her discussion of prayer she does not use Hilton's term, Julian's understanding of the process seems to include the concept of reformation. "Prayer unites the soul with God," she says;

for though the soul is always like God in nature and in substance, it is often unlike in condition, as a result of sin. Prayer when the soul's will conforms to God's likens the soul to God, and so it comes to resemble God in condition as well as in nature (XIX).⁷

Like Hilton, Julian speaks of the need for contrition, confession, and the healing "medicine" of penance "especially with regard to the deadly sins" (XVII) but she does not link them as directly as does Hilton with the process of reformation. As seen in the passage just quoted from the fourteenth revelation it is the action of prayer, according to which our will is united with God's, that brings this about. "I am the ground of your beseeching," he explains to Julian;

"First it is my will that you have it; then I make you want it; then I make you ask for it.". . . Thus he teaches us to pray, . . . for everything that is done shall be done, whether we pray for it or not. The love of God is so great that he considers us to be partners in his good deed; and so he moves us to pray for what he wants us to do (XIX).

Julian's understanding of prayer shows her special sense of the reciprocal nature of the bond between the soul and God; indeed, it seems clear that God has first sought the love of the soul, has longed for the

⁷ Here Julian differs significantly from Hilton; when he describes the union of the soul with God, he says they are one "not, indeed, in nature, but in spirit" (Sherley-Price 8, my italics).

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union the re-union that results when the soul regains its divine likeness. Her sense of fallen man as corrupt and mired in cupidity (Hilton's "perverted longing for this wretched life") is strikingly faint. Thus it is important to reiterate her view, quoted above, that although sin renders the soul unlike God in condition, we are still like him in nature. "In each soul who shall be saved," she says,

is a natural will that has never assented to sin, and never shall: . . . there is a pure will in the higher part [of the soul] that is ever good, and is no more capable of desiring evil than the persons of the holy trinity (XVII).

Though penance is important in countering the effects of sin, Julian's understanding of reformation focuses rather on the twinning of wills that is the essence of prayer, and reflects a benevolent view both of man and of God. Despite original sin, the higher portion of our will remains uncorrupted, retains its purity and its divine likeness. God's bond with the soul is based on a love that is tender and co-operative: he makes us pray for what he in fact wants us to have; he wants us to be his "partners." Julian's clarity in describing the operation of prayer, and her emphasis on the uncorrupted "higher part" of the soul, distinguish her account from Hilton's.

Like the Ladder, The Cloud of Unknowing is a guide written for an anchoress, but unlike Hilton its anonymous author was himself a mystic. His work is striking in its insistence on the rejection of intellectual activity. Although reason is one of the major faculties of the soul, and is necessary to distinguish good from evil, it is not sufficient for true union with God, and can be dangerous: thoughts, or ideas, can "become evil when, inflated by pride, intellectual curiosity, and egoism, they corrupt your mind"; "this is why I urge you to dismiss every clever or subtle thought no matter how holy or valuable" (Johnston 57, 59). So in fact two clouds are urged: one of "forgetting," one of "unknowing." Through the former, the contemplative leaves behind both earthly attachments and "discursive thought''; through the latter, contact with God may be achieved precisely because God cannot be known unless the rational is transcended. That is, God is reached only after a period waiting in "darkness" a lack of knowing and through a "blind" act of loving: "the very heart of this work is nothing else but a naked intent towards God for his own sake" (80). It is by means of love alone that the soul may be healed and the cloud of unknowing pierced. Love stirs the soul

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"to do God's will with a certain inevitability against which it is useless to struggle" (23). Love is the essence of contemplative prayer, defined in the Cloud as "simply a reverent, conscious openness to God. . . . When we intend to pray for goodness let all our thought and desire be contained in the one small word 'God.' Nothing else and no other words are needed" (98). This view of prayer meditation on a single word seems very different from Julian's understanding of the affectionate co-operation between God and the soul, reflected in the shared conversation of her revelations. Yet in the Cloud the alignment of the will with God's also amounts to a kind of reformation, an essential part of the effort to regain a prelapsarian image of the divine.

Rolle also sees love as the agent of reformation, as it transforms "the desire into the loved thing itself. . . . Every lover is assimilated to his beloved: love makes the loving one like what he loves" (99 -100). When the love-object is divine, this seems to constitute a qualitatively different sort of reformation than Hilton's: "our love for [Christ]," says Rolle, "changes us into his own likeness" (56; my italics). Similarly, Julian's desire for a more intense experience of the passion, and for a painful illness, can be seen as a longing to become Christ-like through a process of sympathetic identification. Her eighth revelation describes Christ's extreme suffering, "when he was near death":

This vision of [his] pain filled me with pain . . . Here I saw a great oneness between Christ and us, for when he was in pain, so were we (X).

Our pain is important because it can bring about an identification with Christ; for Julian the action, or essence, of this sort of reformation is compassion, rather than contrition for past sins, or penance. Here Julian's optimism is pronounced, as she 'makes sense' of pain, an inescapable element of human experience. It is possible to understand through her explanation that the suffering of this world can have a positive effect, as it stimulates our sympathy for Christ, and his for us.

3. Sin. The benevolence of Julian's view of man and God does not, of course, preclude a recognition of sin or of the devil. Her view of all creation as positive, including her intimations as to the eventual possibility of universal salvation "In the end it will be all charity . . . Therefore when Judgement is pronounced and we are all brought up to heaven, we shall see clearly . . . " (Wolters 1966, 210) may be

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seen as monistic,⁸ in that the devil's "strength is entirely locked in God's hand," and sin has no actual being.

Julian's fifth revelation begins with the words, "herewith is the fiend overcome":

Our lord showed me a part of the fiend's malice and his utter powerlessness; and he showed me that his own passion brings about the defeat of the fiend. . . . He has as much sorrow when God gives him leave to work as when he does nothing, because he may never do as ill as he wishes . . . I saw our lord scorn his malice, and set him at nought (VIII).

Although the devil does exist, and indeed later assaults Julian (XXI, XXIII), he has essentially been rendered impotent, and is only able to continue with his work because God allows it; his temptations are part of a larger divine plan.

At the start of the thirteenth revelation, Julian wonders about sin, as it is the only obstacle between the soul and God: "If sin had not existed, . . . we would all have been pure and like our lord"; so why, she asks "by the great prescient wisdom of God, [was it] not prevented?" Jesus answers, simply, "Sin has a purpose" (XIII), and this purpose becomes clear in the following few chapters.

Adam's sin, the "greatest harm," made possible the reparation of the crucifixion, and thus the overcoming of the fiend. More generally, sin activates Christ's compassion for us, and ours for our fellow Christians. Acceptance of the apparent paradox that, despite sin, somehow "all shall be well," teaches both humility and trust (XIV). When followed by repentance, sin can, in heaven, be "turned to honor" (XVII). The pain caused by sin is "the sharpest scourge with which any soul may be beaten. . . [It] batters and breaks both men and women"; but through the action of the holy ghost, bitterness turns to hope, "their wounds begin to heal and their souls to awaken'' (XVII). Thus sin can serve a positive function; but "as by his courteous love God forgets our sins as soon as we repent, so does he wish us to forget them, and all our sorrow . . ."(XXIV).

"Sin is neither action nor pleasure . . . but [it is] when a soul willingly chooses the pain of sin as its god. . ." The pain of sin seems

⁸ See The Oxford English Dictionary (c.): "[Monism is] the doctrine that there is only one Supreme Being, as opp. to the belief in a Good and an Evil Principle as co-ordinate powers"; hence the opposite of dualism.

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"the hardest hell, since the soul is without God.. . ." So while sin is the cause of separation between God and the soul it is what 'happens' when the soul's will is directed away from God's it has no being. Thus, writes Julian triumphantly after the sixteenth revelation,

Ah! wretched sin! What are you? You are nothing. For I saw that God is every thing; I did not see you. When I saw that God has created all things, I did not see you . . . Thus I am sure that you have no existence

(XXIII).

Hilton agrees with Julian on the questions of the fiend's powerlessness and the non-being of sin. Although a man may be exposed to such "violent and consuming temptations to impurity or greed [or to spiritual sins such as doubt or despair]" that he may think they cannot be withstood, he should "stand firm awhile" since it is "by God's permission [that] the devil does this" (41-42). And, "sin is nothing other than lack of God.'' However, Hilton has a more active sense of the sinful propensities of the soul than Julian:

vain thoughts throng into your mind . . . [The] dark and painful image of your own soul . . . is entirely enveloped in the black cloak of sin pride, anger, spiritual indolence, covetousness, gluttony, and lust. This is . . . the image of sin (6465).

According to this image, the dark, deformed soul, itself so inclined to corruption, would seem to offer fertile ground to the fiend. Such a view accords with Hilton's earlier emphasis on the centrality of penance in the process of reformation.

Perhaps in contrast it is not surprising that the Cloud does not give much attention to sin. Penance is necessary if the conscience is to be "purified . . . of all particular sins," though the heart can only be fully healed by "the work of love" (64, 85):

when you have done your best to amend your life, give yourself in earnest to the contemplative work. And if your past sins or the temptation to new ones should plague your mind, forming an obstacle between you and God, crush them beneath your feet and bravely step beyond them. Try to bury the thought of these deeds beneath the thick cloud of forgetting . . . (88).

Like Julian, the author of the Cloud sees sin as an obstacle; excessive concentration upon past sins can perpetuate the separation between the soul and God: "Attend to tomorrow and let yesterday be" (47). No degree of self-inflicted penance can match the effect of love:

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Fast as much as you like, watch far into the night, . . . yes, chastise your body with every discipline and you would still gain nothing . . . For the contemplative work of love is the best part (64).

If, on the other hand, "you fix your love on [God], fogetting all else, the saints and angels rejoice . . . though the devils will rage and ceaselessly conspire to thwart you" (48). While the Cloud agrees with Julian on the importance of forgetting past sins, it does not provide as clear or satisfying an explanation as to why God allows sin, or how it can work positively within the scheme of salvation.

Rolle's view of sin includes inordinate attachment to earthly pleasure, which blocks the "voluntary stirring of thought" towards God, and which will lead to the death of the soul:

Robes and riches rot in the ditch,  . . .
Luxuries and love-tokens very soon will stink,
Their wealth and their possessions will pull them down to death.

When it comes to the 'spiritual' sins, he is particularly aware of the dangers of pride, hypocrisy and false humility; it is all too common for outwardly pious figures to be secretly consumed by these qualities. The three main 'categories' of sin of heart, mouth and deed may be offset, respectively, by sorrow, shrift, and satisfaction. But "where tears well up there will be kindled the fire of the Holy Spirit": the surest way to burn away the corrosion, or rust, of sin is through the fire of love (R.S. Allen 134 ff., 143 ff.).⁹ And when the soul truly loves God, "the desires of the flesh . . . lie virtually dead. It means death to evil longings for the man who surrenders himself to contemplation" (Wolters 1972, 78).

Rolle has an active sense of the power of the devil who may take many forms, depending on the particular susceptibility of the soul he is trying to win over. When Richard was a young man, the devil appeared in "the form of a certain [very beautiful young woman, who] tried to subvert [him] with the cords of illicit desire":

without delay or speech, she placed herself beside me . . . ; fearing lest she should entice me to evil, I said I would rise . . . But she held me so strongly that I could neither speak nor move my hand

⁹ Although Rolle does not stress penance in the epistles, he earlier wrote a work on Job, the purpose of which H.E. Allen says was to inspire the penitential response: "[it might seem that] he wrote Job . . . to prove that he understood the needs of the sinner" (137).

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[to make the sign of the cross]. Whereupon I perceived that not a woman, but the devil in the form of a woman, was tempting me (Comper 305).

In contrast, when writing to his disciple, an anchoress, he warns her that "the Devil tempts men and women who are solitary and alone in a way that is ingenious and sly," perhaps appearing in the form of an "angel of light" who claims he has come to take the soul to heaven (R.S. Allen 153 ff.). Here the temptation is aimed at the solitary's inclination to pride, a weakness to which Julian does not seem susceptible in her case the devil's assault is based on an attempt to arouse fear and hopelessness.

Julian's Temptation

Julian's own trial comes towards the end of the revelations, when she is exhausted by the ordeal of her illness, and perhaps by the intensity of the visions themselves:

I sank back into myself [after the fifteenth showing], and into my bodily sickness . . . I sighed and mourned on account of the physical pain that I felt, and thought it most irksome that I should live any longer. Because of giving in to my pain, and the failure of my spiritual feeling, I was as barren and dry as if I had had but little comfort before (XXI).¹⁰

She falls asleep, and "as I slept, it seemed that the fiend took me by the throat and tried to strangle me, but was not able to. Then I awoke, barely alive . . . [and] with great heat and a foul stench, a little smoke came through the door. . . . I realized it was the devil, come to tempt me." After the last revelation,

¹⁰ This state of weakness, in which Julian feels "barren and dry," could be seen as a version of the "Dark Night," in which, like Jesus on the cross (St. Mark 15.34), the soul may feel it has been abandoned by God: "The consciousness which had, in Illumination, sunned itself in the sense of the Divine Presence, now suffers under an equally intense sense of the Divine Absence"; "Intermittent periods of spiritual fatigue or 'aridity' . . . the oncoming gloom of the Dark Night . . . may be . . . experienced at intervals during the Illuminated life" (Underhill 1955, 170, 241, 380 ff.). See also Julian's seventh revelation (IX): " . . . our lord revealed an exalted spiritual joy which filled my soul with an abiding security . . . Then I was overcome and left alone in such sad weariness at myself . . . that I scarcely had patience to live . . . Then the pain recurred, and then the joy and gladness, then the one and then the other, I suppose about twenty times.''

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the fiend returned, with his heat and his stench, and caused me great anxiety, as the smell was so vile and disgusting, and the bodily heat so frightening . . . I could hear a kind of chattering and talking, as between two people . . . Theirs was a soft muttering, so I could not understand what they were saying it all seemed designed to turn me to despair (XXIII).¹¹

Julian uses all the resources at her disposal to survive these assaults:

At once I recalled what our lord had showed me that day . . . and clung to it for comfort . . . I trusted earnestly in God, comforting my soul with actual speech . . . I fixed my eyes on the cross . . . ; I busied my tongue with speaking about Christ's passion and reciting the beliefs of holy church; and I fastened my heart on God with all the trust and all the power that I possessed (XXI, XXIII).

Julian's energetic defense is based on an evocation of the crucifixion and all it has revealed to her of divine love. In the fifth revelation she had been shown that the fiend is overcome by the passion, and this is triumphantly affirmed at the conclusion of her own temptation: "I scorned [him]" as she had seen God do in the fifth "and thus by virtue of Christ's passion I was delivered . . . in this way is the fiend overcome, as Christ had before declared" (XXIII).

It is not surprising that the devil should try to tempt Julian to despair, which is a kind of spiritual sloth this seems the only one of the seven deadly sins to which she is susceptible.¹² Although she has described herself as a "wretched sinful creature" (VI), the only weakness she has shown in the course of the Revelations is a "giving in to [her]

¹¹ Although the account of the devil's assault is abbreviated in the long text, Julian adds an intriguing description of his physical appearance: "I thought the Fiend had me by the throat, putting his face very near mine. It was like a young man's face, and long and extraordinarily lean: I never saw the like. The colour was the red of a tilestone newly fired, and there were black spots like freckles, dirtier than the tilestone. His hair was rust red, clipped in front, with sidelocks hanging over his cheeks. He grinned at me with a sly grimace, thereby revealing white teeth . . . There was no proper shape to his body or hands, but with his paws he held me by the throat and would have strangled me if he could "(Wolters 1966, 182).

¹² A species of accidia, or sloth, this sin is defined by Chaucer's Parson (X, 692) as "wanhope, that is despair of the mercy of God, that comes sometimes from too much sorrow, and sometimes from too much fear." Between her illness and the devil's assault, Julian would seem to have had her share of both.

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pain," as she describes it, and a "failure of spiritual feeling," which left her "as barren and dry as if [she] had had but little comfort before." However briefly, her faith did falter, and this caused her to doubt the validity of her revelations. When a religious at her bedside asked how she fared, "I said that I had raved":

. . . as a fool I had let my faith pass from my mind. Lo, what a wretch I was! It was most unnatural, and a great sin, that in response to a little bodily pain I should so foolishly have forsaken the comfort of our lord's blessed showing (XXI).

In her last two chapters, following the sixteenth revelation and after the final assault by the fiend, Julian provides some additional information that seems of particular relevance to her failure:

God showed me two kinds of sickness that we have, of which he would like us to be cured. One is impatience, since we bear our distress and our pain heavily. The other is despair, or doubtful dread . . . These two most afflict and try us . . . these are the two secret sins by which we are most beset (XXIV; my italics).

Like despair, impatience is a species of sloth according to Julian's own gloss in the long text.¹³ As always, Julian sees God's message as having meaning for all her fellow Christians; yet clearly these are the sins which trouble her as an individual she has in fact just described them in the passage that precedes the temptation (XXI).

In this final spiritual addendum, having assured her that "what you experienced today was no delerium" (XXII), God directs Julian to the 'remedies' for her two kinds of sickness.¹⁴ Impatience can be cured by contemplation of "[our lord's] patience during his cruel passion. . . . He showed himself as an example: it would be a great pleasure to him and an endless profit to us if we too were to bear our pains gladly and lightly" (XXIV). Through ignorance, and a lack of faith in divine love, we fear that God will not forgive our past sins: "this doubtful dread, . . . a species of despair . . . [that] comes from

¹³ "God showed two kinds of spiritual sickness . . . : the first is impatience or sloth...; the second is despair . . . Through our spiritual blindness then, and physical inertia we are most inclined to these two sins" (Wolters 1966, 192).

¹⁴ Conventionally, in medieval treatments of the seven deadly sins, the description of each sin is followed by a list of remediae, by which it may be countered and overcome.

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the enemy and is opposed to truth" (XXV, XXIV), can be overcome by a steadfast confidence in divine love, and by the operation of "reverent dread." While "false dread brings distress and tribulation and anxiety," reverent dread, which "pleases God . . . [and] is both sweet and soft, . . . softens and comforts and pleases and calms" the spirit (XXV).

So, through meditation on the passion and on divine love, may Julian be healed of her impatience and doubtful dread. Her honesty has led her to admit her own failure, and in revealing how the sickness of despair may be alleviated, she offers herself as a paradigm to all her readers, making it possible for them to participate in her optimism, to believe that they, too, may be cured: to share her belief that, indeed, "all shall be well" (XIII).

The Importance of the Short Text

Finally, I should like to return in more detail to the reasons the short text deserves its own translation. First, as suggested earlier, it has an immediacy to it that Julian in her later revision chose to smooth over. Through the short text we are able to get a sense of Julian-the-woman, as she received and responded to the visions; self-effacing as she was, it is not surprising that she endeavored to 'edit' herself out of her later version.

Throughout the long text she regularly deletes the individual pronouns "I," "me," "my," and personal phrases such as "it seemed to me" (III), "as he did to me'' (VI), "as it did me" (VII). Her telling explanation as to why the third wish arose "from hearing someone in church tell the story of St. Cecilia" (I) which suggests a sort of identification between a young Julian and the heroic martyr, is omitted. So too is the passage in which she tells how "those who were with her sent for my curate . . . to be with me when I died": he comes, brings with him a child, calls Julian "Daughter," places the crucifix "before [her] face" (II). All these vivid details are gone. Similarly, in the long text Julian deletes the poignant reference to her mother, by the bedside, lifting "her hand to my face, as if to close my eyes, since she thought that I had died" (X), and also that of her own hands and head falling aside, from weakness (II). Her courageous disclaimer "God forbid that you should take me for a teacher . . . [But] ought I to believe, simply because I am a woman, that I should not tell you of God's goodness?" (VI) does not recur in the long text. She

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has tidied up the original spontaneity of the hazel nut passage (II), making it more linear but the excitement, the urgency of the earlier account is lost.¹⁵ Her thrilling "in man is God and so in man is all" (VI) is sanitized to produce the more theologically correct and prudent "in God is all." And so on.

Such alterations are perfectly in keeping with Julian's understanding that the visions are meant "generally," not for her as an individual, and that she must therefore be more careful, more conservative; but through them the original texture and drama of her account are significantly modified.

All too frequently when Julian's work is discussed, the short text is treated as a junior, less authoritative version of the long an immature first draft, standing in relation to the later masterpiece rather as First Impressions (if we had it) would to Pride and Prejudice. I would argue that the relation between the two could better be described in terms of the contrast between Pride and Prejudice and Middlemarch, or perhaps between Mozart and Beethoven. The short text is balanced, terse, elegant, well-structured; the grander long version is overflowing with richness, digression and commentary but for that reason it also exhibits some of those qualities that led Henry James to describe the typical Victorian novel as a "loose baggy monster."

The short text is marked by a notable classical symmetry, the reasons for which become apparent when its structure is examined. The visions themselves come in five major 'clusters':

Revelation 1: chapters III-V;

Revelations 2-8: chapters VIII-IX;

Revelations 9-13: chapters XII-XIII;

Revelations 14 and 15: XIX-XX;

Revelation 16: chapter XXII.

Seven blocks of text, including both autobiographical references and Julian's own responses to the visions, frame and alternate in a regular, rhythmic pattern with these five clusters:

¹⁵ Windeatt (7-8) describes this revision as "a literary improvement of a badly organized passage, . . . [but] the awkwardness of the [earlier] order indeed represents that of life."

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Chapters I and II, which describe her three wishes and her illness;

Chapters VI and VII, which include her 'disclaimer' ("but God forbid that you should take me for a teacher . . . "), and her description of the three kinds of sights ("bodily; words formed; ghostly");

Chapter XI, in which she explains why she chose Jesus "for my heaven . . . whom I saw only in pain at that time";

Chapters XIV-XVIII, which include Julian's discussion of sin and of God's assurance that "all shall be well";

Chapter XXI, in which she describes the return of her sickness, her despair, and the first assault by the fiend;

Chapter XXIIIa, which includes the second assault by the fiend and Julian's apostrophe to sin ("Ah, wretched sin! What are you?"), and concludes with the words "Amen, par charyte";

Chapters XXIIIb-XXV, which include Julian's explanation of wretchedness, the two kinds of sickness, and the four kinds of dread.

A contrapuntal diagram of the short text thus becomes possible. The column on the left includes personal material, and that on the right the actual visions; [A] echoes and expands upon [B]. The account of her experience per se ends with Julian's "Amen, par charyte" mid-way through XXIII; the final block of text stands as a kind of 'coda':

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Several further symmetries bind the whole of the short text together. Three showings of the Virgin (in 1, 8, and 11) punctuate the Revelations, and Mary seems to 'progress' as Julian's understanding grows. In the first revelation the Virgin is shown "in bodily likeness," as she was at the annunciation, "a pure, meek [young] maiden"; then, in the eighth (coinciding with Julian's awareness of her own mother at her bedside, fearing her death), Mary is seen as the grieving mother, in terms of the magnitude of her love for Christ and her pain on his behalf; finally, in the eleventh revelation, she appears in a "spiritual sight . . . exalted, noble and glorious."

At the midpoint of the Revelations (half way through the text itself), Julian shows a newfound ability to confront the Great Paradox: how can sin exist in a world created and governed by an omniscient, omnipotent and all-loving God? We know that this question "why . . . sin was not prevented" had long vexed Julian, and caused her great "mourning and sorrow" (XIII). Yet now she is able not only to understand, but also to explain. At this same point (her disclaimer notwithstanding), she begins the modulation from taught to teacher.¹⁶ Her new understanding of God's love, which first came through the literal crucifix at her bedside, moves towards the final exalted, spiritual vision of Christ in Majesty seated within the soul. In the course of this progression she ceases to be a mere witness, and herself begins to teach: her role becomes active. Thus we have the long explanation of sin (XIII ff.); another of the nature of prayer (XIX); and others, in her coda, of wretchedness, sickness, and dread. Julian's tone is too quiet to speak of a 'crescendo,' but Revelation 16 is clearly a sort of visionary climax, followed by the perhaps equally dramatic physical 'grand finale' in which the fiend returns and is thwarted. The triumph of both is underscored in the concluding apostrophe as Julian reintroduces both the leitmotiv of sin and her glowing certainty that it has no existence. Finally, in her coda, she in effect steps outside of her experience both illness and showings to function independently as a teacher.

Without in any way diminishing the glory of the long text, it will be

¹⁶ Cf. Bradley's "Christ the Teacher in Julian's Showings: The Biblical and Patristic Traditions" (in Glasscoe 1982, 127-42): she argues that for Julian, who portrays herself as "one taught," learning is a process that eventually unites learner and divine teacher.

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clear how different it is from the short text, qualitatively as well as quantitatively, both in the personal deletions and in the voluminous additions; and how worthy Julian's original version, in its immediacy and its compact symmetry, is of being assessed and appreciated in its own right.

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Revelations of Divine Love

The following is a vision shown by the goodness of God to a devout woman, a recluse at Norwich, whose name is Julian and who is still alive in this year of 1413. In this vision are many words both comforting and deeply moving to all who desire to be Christ's lovers.¹

I

I desired three gifts by the grace of God. The first was for an experience of Christ's passion; the second was for a bodily sickness; and the third was to receive, as a gift from God, three wounds.

The first wish came to me devoutly: despite all my awareness of Christ's suffering, by God's grace I wanted more. I wished that I could have been there, with Mary Magdalene and the others who were Christ's lovers, that I might actually have seen the passion our lord endured for me, and have suffered with him, as did those others who loved him.

To be sure, insofar as human understanding may reach, I believed steadfastly in all Christ's pains as they are shown and taught by holy church, and as they are seen in paintings of crucifixes,² made in the likeness of Christ's passion, by the grace of God and according to the teachings of holy church.

¹The following is a vision:. . . These words appear at the start of the Revelations in British Library MS 37790. 1413 is not the date of composition, but the year that this copy of the text was made. At this time Julian would have been 70, hence the reference to her being "still alive." BL 37790, upon which this translation is based, is the only known manuscript of Julian's original account. See note 1 to the Introduction for an explanation of the numbering of the chapters and revelations.

²paintings of crucifixes: Norwich, the second largest city in England in the 14th century, was an active center of church wall-painting; Julian must have been familiar with many of these fine works, to which she here makes specific reference (see W.A. Pantin, English Wall-Paintings of the Fourteenth Century).

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Yet despite this true belief, I wished for a revelation whereby I might have a clearer perception both of the bodily pains of our lord and savior, and of the compassion of our lady and of all those true lovers then and since who have believed in his pains; I wished I had been one of them, and had suffered with them. I sought no further sight or showing from God, until my soul should take leave of my body, for I believed truly that I would be saved. But it was my hope that, as a result of the showing, I would have a truer experience of Christ's passion.

As for the second wish: an earnest³ desire to have, as God's gift, a physical illness, came freely to my mind with contrition, without being sought. I wished that this illness might be as nearly mortal as possible, so that, in the belief I was going to die, I would take all the last rites of holy church. And I wished that everyone who saw me would believe so as well, for I wanted to have none of the physical comforts of earthly life. In this sickness I wished for every kind of bodily and spiritual pain that I would suffer if I were dying all the fears and tribulations caused by fiends, and every other sort of pain, except for the departing of the soul. I hoped this would be a help to me when I did die, for I desired soon to be with my God.

I sought these first two wishes for the experience of the passion and for a sickness conditionally, for it seemed they went beyond the ordinary domain of prayer. And so I said, "Lord, you know what I want. If it is your will that I have it, grant it me; and if it is not your will, be not displeased, for I want only what you do." I wished, in my youth, that I might suffer the illness when I was thirty years old.

The third wish arose from hearing someone in church tell the story of Saint Cecilia.⁴ From this account I understood that she received three sword-wounds in the neck, from which she suffered unto death. Moved by this, I conceived a mighty desire, praying to our lord God

³earnest: Julian's word is "wylfulle," which, though its usage is now negative, then had the connotation of 'voluntary', 'eager'.

⁴the story of St. Cecilia is also recounted by Chaucer's Second Nun in The Canterbury Tales (VIII); before St. Cecilia's death she was reputed to have converted great numbers of pagans. The first attempt to kill her, by suffocation in the bath, met with failure; a Roman soldier subsequently tried to decapitate her, but was by law allowed only three attempts; despite her wounds she lingered three days before dying.

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that he would grant me three wounds in my lifetime: the wound of contrition, the wound of compassion, and the wound of earnest longing for God. Though I had sought the first two wishes conditionally, I asked for the third without qualification. The first two passed from my mind, but the third remained continually.

II

When I was thirty and a half winters old, God sent me a physical illness in which I lay for three days and three nights. On the fourth night I took all the rites of holy church, and did not think that I would live until morning. After this I lingered two days and two nights; on the third night I often thought that I was going to die, as did those who were with me. I was truly sorry at this. The thought of dying seemed hateful, not because of anything in this life that I wanted to live for, nor for anything that I feared, since I trusted in God. But I wanted to live so as to love God better, and for a longer time, that I might, by the grace of that living, have a fuller knowledge and love of God in the bliss of heaven.

Since all the time I might live seemed so slight and so brief in contrast to endless bliss, I thought, Good Lord, is there no further way my living can honor you? Yet I was answered in my reason, and by the feeling of my pains, that I should die. So I assented fully, with all my heart, to God's will.

Thus I endured until morning, by which time my body was without feeling from the midst downward. I was anxious to be set upright, with my head supported by bedclothes, to give my heart more freedom to be at one with God's will, and to allow me to think about him as long as my life should last. Those who were with me sent for my curate, the parson, to be with me when I died. He came, along with a child, and brought a cross with him; by then my eyes had set and I could not speak. The parson placed the cross before my face and said, "Daughter, I have brought you the image of your savior. Look upon it, and comfort yourself with it, in reverence for him who died for you and me."

It seemed to me that I was doing well, since I was looking upwards towards heaven, where I hoped to go. Nevertheless I agreed, if I could, to fix my eyes on the face of the crucifix, so as to postpone the time

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of my ending; for it seemed to me I might endure longer looking straight ahead than upwards. After this my sight began to fail. The chamber was as dark and murky as if it had been night, except for a common lights⁵ that surrounded the image of the cross, though I did not understand how this could be. Everything but the cross was as ugly to me as if it had been inhabited by devils.

After this the feeling in the upper part of my body began to die. My hands fell down on either side, and out of weakness my head settled to one side. The greatest pain that I felt was shortness of breath and failing of life: I thought I was truly at the point of death.

But suddenly my pain departed and I was as well, especially in the upper part of my body, as ever I was before or after. I marvelled at this change, for it seemed to me a mysterious act of God, rather than one of nature. Yet despite this feeling of ease, I did not believe that I could continue to live, nor was the respite a relief to me: since my heart had at last consented, I would rather have been delivered from this world.

III

At once I thought to wish for the second wound, which by our lord's gift and grace I had formerly sought: that he would fill my body with feeling for his blessed passion. I desired his pain to become my pain through compassion, followed by a greater closeness⁶ with God. In this way it seemed that I might, with grace, share his wounds, as I had before wished. Yet from God I sought neither bodily sight, nor any manner of revelation only the compassion that it seemed to me any kind soul⁷ might feel for our lord Jesus, who for love had become a mortal man. I wanted to suffer with him, while living in my mortal body, as God would give me grace.

⁵common light: a 'communal' or 'universal' light, not caused by a physical candle or lamp, perhaps emanating from the crucifix.

⁶greater closeness: Julian's word is "langyng," a form of 'belonging' or 'being connected to'; the hoped-for closeness will proceed from her identification with Christ's passion.

⁷kind soul: Julian's word, "kynde," also has the connotation of 'natural'.

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[1] Suddenly I saw the red blood trickle down from under the garland hot, fresh, plentiful, and lifelike just as I thought it would have done when the garland of thorns was thrust on his blessed head. So both God and man together suffered for me. I understood clearly and with certainty that it was he who showed it to me, without intermediary;⁸ and I said, "Benedicite Dominus!"⁹ I spoke reverently, in a strong voice, and was astonished by the wonderful and marvellous fact of his being so friendly¹⁰ with a sinful creature living in this wretched flesh.

I assumed that our lord Jesus, because of his courteous love, wanted to give me comfort before the time of my temptation for it seemed likely that, with the consent of God and in his keeping, I would be tempted by fiends before I died. With the sight of his blessed passion, and with my inward perception of the godhead, I realized that this was strength enough for me or indeed for any living creature who would be saved to withstand all the fiends of hell and all spiritual enemies.

IV

At the same time as I saw this bodily sight, our lord showed me a spiritual vision of his matchless love. I saw that, for our benefit, he is all that is good and comforting and helpful to us. He is our clothing, who for love wraps and encloses us, embraces and encircles us, clings to us for tender love, that he may never leave us. In this vision I understood truly that he is everything that is good.

To prove this he showed me a little thing the size of a hazel nut lying in the palm of my hand it seemed as round as a ball. I looked at it and thought, What may this be?; and I was answered, generally, "It is all that is made." I wondered how it could endure, for as it was

⁸without intermediary: the idea of 'making contact' with God without the aid of a priest would have met with disapproval from the mainstream clergy. But cf. The Cloud of Unknowing (56): "Whenever you feel drawn by grace to the contemplative work and are determined to do it, simply raise your heart to God with a gentle stirring of love. . . . A naked intent toward God, the desire for him alone, is enough."

⁹Benedicite: a familiar exclamation 'Bless you! or 'Bless us!' (< Latin 2nd pl. imper. of benedicere).

¹⁰friendly: Julian's word is "hamely," which also carries connotations of homeliness, intimacy, familiarity.

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so small it seemed it might easily perish; and I was answered in my mind, ''It lasts and ever shall because God loves it; and so through the love of God does every created thing have its being."

In this little thing I saw three parts: the first is that God made it, the second is that he loves it, the third is that he keeps it. What has this to do with me? In truth, he is the maker, lover, and keeper: and until I am essentially united to him until I am so fastened to him that there is absolutely no created thing between my God and me I can never have love, peace, nor true bliss. And who shall do this deed? Truly, God himself, by his mercy and grace, for this is why he created me.¹¹

Blissfully restored by this sight, God brought our lady to my understanding. I saw her spiritually, yet in bodily likeness, a pure and meek maiden, young of age, in the stature that she was when she conceived. Also God showed me an aspect of her soul's wisdom and truth, wherein I perceived her reverent beholding: as she beheld our God who is her maker, she marvelled with great reverence that he would be born of her, a simple creature of his making that he who was her maker would be born of her who was made. Knowing the greatness of her creator and the littleness of her created self, this wisdom and truth caused her to say meekly to the angel Gabriel, "Lo, here am I, God's handmaiden."¹²

In this vision I saw truly that she is more in worthiness and in perfection than all that God made beneath her, for above her there is nothing created except the blessed manhood of Christ. Beneath our lady St. Mary, God showed the littleness of the creation as small as if it had been a hazel nut; so little I thought it might have perished.

In this blessed revelation God showed me three noughts. The first, of which each man and woman who wishes to live contemplatively should be aware, is that in order to have the love of God which is uncreated, they must liken to nought all that is created. Secondly, those who are stubbornly occupied with worldly business, and continually seek material prosperity, will find no ease of heart and soul in their

¹¹why he created me: God's motive in creating us was love and the desire to be united to us in love. In this Julian seemingly diverges from the more traditional explanation for the creation, which was to refill the heavenly circle depleted by the fall of the rebel angels.

¹²God's handmaiden: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord": Mary's words at the annunciation (St. Luke 1. 38).

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pursuit. The reason for this is that they love and seek satisfaction in something that is so insignificant, in which there is no rest; and they know not God, who is almighty, all wise, all good: and who is true rest. Finally, God wants to be known, and is pleased when we rest ourselves in him. But nought beneath him is sufficient, which is why no soul finds rest until it is noughted¹³ of all that is made. When this is done, for love, so as to have him who is all good, then is the soul able to receive spiritual rest.

V

All the while that our lord showed me these spiritual revelations, I continued to see the physical sight of the plenteous bleeding of the head; and as long as I saw that sight I said, many a time, "Benedicite Dominus." In this first of our lord's showings I understood six things. The first is the tokens of his blissful passion and the plenteous shedding of his precious blood. The second is the maiden, who is his dear mother. The third is the blessed godhead, that ever was and is and ever shall be: almighty, all wise and all loving. The fourth is all that is made; I know the creation is great and fair and large and good yet to me it looked so little because I saw it in the presence of the creator: all creation seems insignificant to a soul who sees the creator. The fifth is that every created thing has been made for love, and is sustained by that same love, and ever shall be without end, as has before been said. The sixth is that God is all that is good, and the goodness in each thing is God.

Our lord showed me all this in the first revelation, and gave me both space and time to behold it. The physical sight ceased, but the spiritual sight remained in my understanding; and I waited in reverent dread, rejoicing in what I had seen, and desiring, as much as I dared, to see more if such was his will or at least the same, for longer.

¹³noughted: cf. the Dionysian concept of the via negativa, which involves emptying, purgation, negation but also liberation of the soul from earthly ties (see OED nought, v.1). The italics in this paragraph, and elsewhere in the text, are mine, added for the sake of clarity.

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VI

Whatever I say about myself is meant to include all my fellow Christians, for I have learned through our lord's spiritual teaching that this is his intention. Therefore I entreat you for God's sake, and counsel you for your own profit, to disregard the wretched sinful creature to whom this vision was shown; and firmly, wisely, lovingly and meekly behold God who, in his courteous love and endless goodness, would show it generally as a comfort to us all. It is God's will and my desire that you who, for your soul's edification, hear or read of this vision and of this teaching of Jesus Christ, should receive it with as much joy and pleasure as if Jesus had shown it to you directly, as he did to me.

As for the showing, I am not good unless I love God the better for it and so may all who receive it with good will and true intent. I wish the same benefit for every one as I first desired for myself which, through God, I felt when first I saw it. For as we are all one, it is common and general, and I know that I saw it for the profit of many another. Truly the vision was not shown me because God loves me more than the least soul that is in grace; I am sure there are many who have received neither showing nor sight beyond the ordinary teaching of holy church, who love God better than I do. If I look singularly to myself, I am as nothing; but in general I am united in charity with all my fellow Christians, and in this oneness of charity stands the life of all mankind who shall be saved. For God is all that is good, and has made all that is made, and loves all that he has made.

If man or woman should withdraw their love from any of their fellows, they love imperfectly, because they love not all;¹⁴ they are not safe, for they are not at peace. But he who loves his fellow Christians in general, loves all that exists; for in mankind who shall be saved is understood all all that is made, and the maker of all. In man is God, and so in man is all. He who loves his fellows in general, loves all; and whoever loves thus is safe. Thus will I love, thus do I love, and thus am I safe, for my meaning derives from the company of my fellow

¹⁴If man or woman . . . : cf. 1 John 4.8,20, "He that loveth not, knoweth not God: for God is charity"; "If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother; he is a liar . . . "

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Christians. The more I love in this way while I am here, the closer I am to the eternal bliss I shall have in heaven, which is God who in his endless love became our brother and suffered for us. I am sure that whoever understands this, should he be in need of comfort, shall be truly taught and greatly comforted.

But God forbid that you should take me for a teacher.¹⁵ Such is not my intention and never has been. I am a woman, ignorant, weak and frail, but I know what I am saying: I have been shown it by the sovereign teacher. In truth, charity moves me to tell it you, for I wish God to be known and my fellow Christians aided, as I would be myself, in the greater hating of sin and loving of God.

Ought I to believe, simply because I am a woman, that I should not tell you of God's goodness? When I saw the vision I also saw that he wants it to be known as you shall clearly see in the matter that follows, if it be well and truly received. Soon you will forget me, a mere wretch; you will cease to notice me, and will behold Jesus who is teacher of all. I speak of those who shall be saved, for during this time God showed me no other. In all matters I believe as holy church teaches, for all aspects of this blessed showing of our lord appeared as one in God's sight, and I saw nothing to confuse me or turn me from the true teaching of holy church.

VII

All this blessed teaching of our lord God was shown me in three ways:¹⁶ by bodily sight, by words formed in my understanding, and by ghostly sight. I may not and can not¹⁷ show you the ghostly sight as openly or as fully as I would like. But I trust that our lord God almighty shall, in his goodness and for love of you, allow you to

¹⁵But God forbid . . . : Julian's disclaimer, which recalls both the contemporary and the biblical injunctions against women as preachers, is discussed in the Interpretive Essay. Cf. Bradley, 'Christ the Teacher in Julian's Showings: the Biblical and Patristic Traditions' (in Glasscoe 1982).

¹⁶in three ways . . . : Julian's 'three ways' are discussed in the Introduction.

¹⁷may not and can not: Julian means not only that she is not able, but also that it is not permitted; cf. Hilton's Angel's Song: "but what that song is may be described by no bodily likeness, for it is ghostly, and above all manner of imagination and man's reason" (Matthews 1963, 140).

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experience it more spiritually and more sweetly than my account allows and so it may be, since we are all one in love.

Throughout I felt a great love towards my fellow Christians, hoping that they might see and know all as I did. Since this sight was shown in general, and not in particular,¹⁸ I wished that it could comfort them as it did me. Of everything that I saw, the greatest comfort to me was that our lord was so friendly and so courteous. This filled my soul with pleasure and security.

Then, because I thought I was going to die, I said to my companions, "Today is doomsday for me" for on the day that a man or woman dies, they are judged as they shall be without end. I said this because I wanted them to love God more, and set the less price on the vanity of the world and to remind them by my example of the shortness of this life. For during all this time I thought I was about to die.

VIII

[2] After this, I saw with bodily sight the face of the crucifix that hung before me. In the face I continually beheld a part of his passion: scorn, spitting, defiling of his body, and buffeting in his blissful face;¹⁹ more grief and pain than I can tell; frequent changing of color; and at one time his blessed face all covered in dry blood. This bodily sight was gloomy and dark, and I desired a stronger light, so as to see more clearly: I was answered in my reason²⁰ that if God wanted to show me more he would, but that I needed no light but him.

[3] After this I saw God in a point in my understanding, by which I saw that he is in all things. I attended carefully, discerning and

¹⁸in general, and not in particular: cf. The Book of Privy Counselling (also by the author of the Cloud of Unknowing) (157), "He did not concentrate on the salvation of any one person in particular, but gave himself without reserve for all."

¹⁹scorn, spitting . . . in his blissful face: cf. St. Matthew 27.30, "And spitting upon him, they took the reed, and struck his head."

²⁰in my reason: by this Julian apparently intends the rational/intellectual part of her mind (OED sb. III, 10); see also ch. II and Revelation 8: "I thought, Are any of hell's torments as painful as this? And I was answered in my reason that . . . despair is greater; but there is no greater bodily pain."

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comprehending in that sight that he also does all that is done. I marvelled at this sight with a soft dread; and I wondered, What is sin? For I saw that God truly does everything, no matter how little. Nothing happens by chance or accident, but through the endless foresight of God's wisdom. From this I had to conclude that everything that is done, is done well. I was sure that God commits no sin: thus it seemed to me that sin must have no being, for in all this sin was not shown to me. Then I realized I should cease my wondering, and attend to what it was our Lord wanted to show me. Later, as I shall recount,²¹ God showed me clearly what sin itself is.

[4] After this, as I beheld, I saw the body bleeding profusely hot, fresh, lifelike just as I had before seen in the head. The bleeding was shown in the wounds of the scourging, and I saw the blood run so plenteously that, if it had actually done so for that long, it would have saturated the bed and flowed beyond it. Out of his tender love for us, God has made the waters on earth plentiful, for our aid and our physical comfort. Yet he prefers that we use his blessed blood to wash ourselves of sin; there is no created liquid that he likes so well to give us, since it is so plenteous, and of our own nature.

[5] After this, before God showed me any words, he allowed me more time to contemplate what I had seen, and all its meaning. Then, without voice and without opening of lips, these words were formed in my soul: "Herewith is the fiend overcome." By these words our lord referred to his passion, as he had shown it me before.

Our lord showed me a part of the fiend's malice²² and his utter powerlessness; and he showed me that his own passion brings about the defeat of the fiend. God revealed that the fiend has the same malice now as he had before the incarnation, but that however hard he labors, he continually sees all chosen souls escape him unharmed, and that is his great sorrow. For whatever God allows him to do will only bring joy to them, and pain and shame to him. He has as much sorrow when God gives him leave to work as when he does nothing, because he

²¹Later, as I shall recount: see the thirteenth revelation.

²²a part of the fiend's malice: cf. the second and eighth revelations, when Julian is shown a part of Christ's passion.

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may never do as ill as he wishes: his strength is entirely locked in God's hand. I saw our lord scorn his malice, and set him at nought; and he wants us to do the same.

Because of this sight I laughed mightily, which made my companions laugh as well. Their laughter was a pleasure to me, though I wished they could have seen as I did; then would they truly have laughed with me. I did not see Christ laugh, but nevertheless it pleases him when, as a comfort to ourselves, we laugh and rejoice in God, because the fiend is overcome.

Then I grew serious, and said, "I see three things: joy, scorn and passion. I see joy that the fiend is overcome; I see scorn because God scorns him, and he shall be scorned; and I see passion, that he is overcome by the suffering and death so passionately sought and endured by our lord Jesus Christ."

[6] After this our lord said, "I thank you for your service and your suffering, especially in your youth."

IX

God showed me three degrees of bliss that each soul who has willingly served him in any degree while on earth shall have in heaven.

The first is the glorious gratitude of our lord God, which the soul shall receive when it is delivered from pain. So exalted and so glorious is this gratitude that the soul feels complete, as if there were no greater bliss. All the pain and suffering that might be endured by all living men would not seem to deserve the thanks that one man who has willingly served God shall receive.

For the second degree, all the blessed creatures in heaven shall see the glorious gratitude of our lord God, who will make the soul's service known to all who are in heaven.

And the third degree is that, as new and as pleasing as this gratitude is when first received, so shall it be without end. This was spoken and shown to me pleasantly and sweetly: the age of every one shall be known in heaven, and each shall be rewarded for his willing service and for his time; in particular the age of those who willingly and freely offer their youth to God is surpassingly rewarded and wondrously thanked.

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[7] After this our lord revealed an exalted spiritual joy which filled my soul with an abiding security; I was greatly reassured, and free of fear. This feeling was so blissful and pleasing that I was at peace, at ease and at rest. Nothing on earth could have grieved me but this joy only lasted a short while. Then I was overcome and left alone in such sad weariness at myself and irksomeness at my life that I scarcely had patience to live. I felt neither ease nor comfort only hope, faith and charity, and of these in truth but little.

However, God soon restored both comfort and rest to my soul, a joyous gladness and security so powerful that no fear or sorrow, no sort of bodily or ghostly pain would have bothered me. Then the pain recurred, and then the joy and the gladness, then the one and then the other,²³ I suppose about twenty times. In joy I might have said, with Paul, "Nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ"; and in pain I might have said, with St. Peter, "Lord save me, I perish."²⁴

This vision's purpose was to teach me the need for each soul to feel this way: sometimes to be in comfort, and other times to fail and be left alone. God wants us to know that he keeps us safe both in well and in woe, and loves us as much in the hard times as the good.²⁵ For the profit of his soul, a man is sometimes left to himself, although sin is not the cause: during this time I was not left alone because I had sinned, nor had I done anything to merit the joy. God freely gives pleasure when he chooses, and other times he leaves us in pain. Both are done for love. He wills that we hold fast to our comfort with all our strength, for joy is endless, while pain passes and shall be brought

²³then the one and then the other: cf. The Book of Privy Counselling (184), "And so he will sometimes go and sometimes come, that by both his presence and his absence he may prepare, educate and fashion you in the secret depths of your spirit for this work of his," and The Ladder of Perfection (6), "But this feeling of fervour does not come at the soul's desire, nor does it often last long, but comes and goes at the will of Him who gives it. . . . When it is withdrawn he should not be too anxious, but firmly persevere in faith and humble hope, waiting patiently until it returns."

²⁴In joy . . . with Paul . . . and in pain . . . with St. Peter: See Romans 8.35, "Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ?" and St. Matthew 8.25, "Lord save us, we perish."

²⁵in the hard times as the good: cf. Isaias 54.7: "For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee."

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to nought. That we succumb to pain in sorrow and mourning is not his will rather we should quickly move on, and cling to that endless joy which is God almighty, our lover and keeper.

X

[8] After this Christ showed me the part of his passion when he was near death. I saw his sweet face as it was then dry and bloodless with a deadly pallor; then, through suffering, still more deathly pale. It turned blue, and then darker blue, as the flesh assumed a more deathlike quality. All the bodily pains that Christ endured were visible in his blessed face, as I then saw it, and particularly in his lips. In them I saw the same four colors,²⁶ though I had earlier seen them as fresh and ruddy, lifelike and pleasing to my sight: to see this sorrowful dying, in which his nose also became clogged and dried, was a sad contrast.

This prolonged ordeal seemed to persist for seven nights, with unrelieved suffering; and it seemed that the drying of Christ's flesh was the greatest and the last pain of his passion. In this drying his words, "I thirst,"²⁷ were brought to my mind. I saw in Christ a double thirst, one physical, the other spiritual. His words referred to his physical thirst; but the meaning of the spiritual thirst was also shown me, as I shall tell later. I understood from the physical thirst that the body lacked moisture, for the blessed flesh and bones were left alone, without blood or water. The blessed body dried over a long period of time with wrenching of the nails; with the weight of the head and body; with the cold wind's blowing, that parched and chilled him more than my heart can think; and with many another pain.

I can describe far too little of the pain that I saw, for it may not be told. Yet each soul, according to the saying of St. Paul, should feel in himself as Jesus Christ did.²⁸ This vision of Christ's pains filled me

²⁶the same four colors: "deadly pallor; . . . more deathly pale, . . . blue, and . . . darker blue" as listed in Julian's two previous sentences.

²⁷I thirst: St. John 19.28, "Afterwards, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished . . . , said: I thirst."

²⁸should feel in himself as Christ did: cf. Philippians 2.5, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Jesus Christ," but also Julian's adaptation of Paul's phrase in ch. IX: "Nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ."

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with pain; I knew that he suffered but once, and yet he wanted to show it again, to fill me with compassion, as I had before requested.

My mother, who stood with the others and watched over me, lifted her hand to my face as if to close my eyes, since she thought that I had died. This would have greatly increased my sorrow, for despite all my pain I would not have been hindered²⁹ from the love I was feeling. During the time of Christ's presence I felt no pain but his; yet as my suffering seemed to surpass any bodily experience, it seemed I had little understood what I had asked for. I thought, Are any of hell's torments as painful as this? And I was answered in my reason that, as it is a spiritual pain, despair is greater; but there is no greater bodily pain. How could any pain be greater than to see him who is all my life, all my bliss, and all my joy endure such suffering?³⁰ Then truly I felt that I loved Christ so much more than myself that it would have been a great ease for me to have died in body.

Herein I saw in part the compassion of our lady St. Mary; she and Christ were so united in love that the greatness of her love caused the magnitude of her pain. As she loved him so much more than all others, so did her pain surpass theirs; and so his disciples and all his true lovers suffered pains greater than their own physical deaths. To judge by my own feeling, I am sure that the least of them loved him more than they did themselves.

Here I saw a great oneness between Christ and us, for when he was in pain, so were we; and all creatures that might, suffered with him. But the pain of those who knew him not was that all created things, even the sun and the moon, withdrew their service;³¹ and they were left in sorrow for the time. Thus those who loved him suffered for love; and those who loved him not suffered for loss of the creation's comfort.

²⁹hindered: i.e. by not being able to continue looking at the cross.

³⁰how could any pain be greater . . . : cf. The Wooing of Our Lord (Savage and Watson 1991, 282), "Ah! how can I live for grief, seeing my beloved upon the cross?" Parallels with The Wooing and Ancrene Wisse suggest that Julian may have been familiar with both these early 13th-century works, written for female solitaries.

³¹the sun and the moon . . . : cf. the creation's response to the crucifixion (St. Matthew 27.45, "Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over the whole earth, until the ninth hour"; also St. Mark 15.33 and St. Luke 23.4445).

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During this time I wanted to look away from the cross, but did not dare, for I was sure that as long as I looked at it I was secure and safe. I would not consent to put my soul in danger, for beside the cross there was no safety, but rather the ugliness of fiends. Then in my reason I received what seemed to be a friendly suggestion: ''Look up to heaven, to his father." With the faith I felt, I realized that there was nothing between the cross and heaven that could harm me, and I should either look upwards or respond. So I said, "No, I may not, for Jesus is my heaven." I answered thus because I would rather have been in pain 'til doomsday than come to heaven otherwise than through him. I knew that he who had bought me so sore would release me when he chose.

XI

Thus for my heaven I chose Jesus, whom I saw only in pain at that time. I wanted no other heaven than him, who shall be my joy when I am there. It has always been a comfort to me that in this time of pain and sorrow I chose Jesus as my heaven.³² And it has been a lesson that I should do so evermore, choosing only him as my heaven, both in well and in woe. My lord Jesus suffered at such length because, in loving oneness, the godhead gave strength to the manhood to endure more pain than all mankind could: not only did he suffer more pain than one man might suffer, but also more than all men, from the first beginning to the last day, might together endure.

No tongue may tell, nor heart fully think, the pain that our savior suffered for us, with regard to his stature as the glorious, highest king, and the shameful, cruel, and painful nature of his death. He who was highest and most worthy was utterly humiliated, wholly despised. Yet the love that made him endure all this is as far above his pain as heaven is above earth. For the pain was a deed done in time by the working of love, but his love was without beginning, and is and ever shall be without any end.

Suddenly, as I was beholding the cross, his countenance became

³²It has always been a comfort to me . . . : Watson (1994) argues that this sentence is evidence of the short version being composed some time after 1373.

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joyous: the changing of his expression changed mine, and I was as glad and cheerful as was possible. Then our lord merrily brought to my mind: "What is the point of your pain and your grief?" And I was completely cheered.

XII

[9] Then our lord asked, "Are you pleased that I suffered for you?" "Yea, good lord," I said, "Gramercy, good lord, blessed may you be." "If you are pleased," said our lord, ''then so am I. It is a joy and a bliss and an endless pleasure to me that ever I suffered the passion for you and if I might suffer more, I would."

With these words my understanding was lifted up into heaven, and there I saw three heavens.³³ I marvelled greatly at this sight, thinking, "I saw three heavens, all through the blessed manhood of Christ; none is more, none is less, none is higher, none is lower; all are alike in bliss."

For the first heaven Christ showed me his father, not in bodily likeness, but in his nature and his will. The operation of the father is that he gives honor to his son, Jesus Christ. This reward is so pleasing to Jesus that no gift of his father could have satisfied him more. The first heaven the pleasure of the father appeared to me as wholly blissful. The son rejoices in all the deeds he has performed for our salvation: we are his not only through his redeeming, but also through the courteous gift of his father. We are his bliss, his reward, his honor, his crown.

What I saw is such a great pleasure to Jesus that he sets all his travail, his hard passion and his cruel and shameful death, at nought. In his words, If I might suffer more I would, I saw truly that if he might die as often for every man who shall be saved as he died once for all, love would never let him rest until he had done so. And when he had done it, he would set it at nought because of love, for it would seem insignificant in comparison to his love.

Gravely he showed me this with these words, If I might suffer more.

³³I saw three heavens: The equality of Julian's three heavens is discussed in the Interpretive Essay. Cf. 2 Corinthians 12.2, "I know a man in Christ . . . , such a one caught up to the third heaven."

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He did not say, If it were needful to suffer more, but If I might suffer more: If he might suffer more, though it was not necessary, still he would do so. The deed of his suffering, for the sake of our salvation, was as fully ordained as possible, and as honorably carried out as Christ was able. And I saw that Christ's bliss was absolute, which it would not be if his deed could more perfectly have been done.

And in these three words, It is a joy, a bliss and an endless pleasure to me, three heavens were shown me: for joy I understood the satisfaction of the father; for bliss, the honor of the son; and for endless pleasure, the holy ghost. The father is satisfied, the son is honored, the holy ghost is pleased. It is Jesus' will that we take heed of the satisfaction the blessed trinity has in our salvation, and, with his grace, be as fully satisfied while we are here. And all this was shown in these words: Are you pleased?

With his other words, If you are pleased then so am I, it was as if Christ had said, This is enough joy and satisfaction for me, and I ask nothing else from my labors but that I might please you. Think also wisely of the greatness of his words, That ever I suffered the passion for you: for in them the love and the pleasure that he had in our salvation is revealed.

XIII

[10] Merrily and gladly our lord looked into his side, and considered, saying these words: "Lo, how I loved you." It was as if he had said, My child, if you cannot contemplate my godhead, look instead at how I let my side be opened and my heart cloven in two³⁴ and all the blood and water therein be let out. As this pleases me, so I wish it to please you. Our lord showed me this to make us glad and merry.

[11] With the same glad expression he looked down to his right, and brought to mind the place our lady stood at the time of his passion. "Would you like to see her?" he asked, and I answered, "Yea, good

³⁴how I let my side be opened and my heart cloven in two: cf. The Wooing of Our Lord (282): "Longinus . . . pierces his side, cleaves the heart. . . . Ah! sweet Jesu, thou openest for me thy heart, . . . for there I may openly see how much thou lovest me."

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lord, gramercy, if it is your will." I had often prayed for this, hoping to see her in bodily likeness. Instead, with these words Jesus showed me a spiritual sight of her. As earlier I had seen her small and innocent, so now he showed her exalted, noble and glorious, pleasing to him above all creatures.

Our lord wills it be known that all who are pleased by him should be pleased by her, by the pleasure he has in her, and she in him. With the words that Jesus spoke, Would you like to see her, and with the spiritual sight that he then gave me, it seemed I felt the greatest possible pleasure. He showed me nothing in particular except for our lady St. Mary; yet her he showed me three times: the first was as she conceived, the second in her sorrow under the cross,³⁵ and the third as she is now in pleasure, honor and joy.

[12] Then our lord showed a more glorious vision of himself than I had yet seen, through which I learned that each contemplative soul³⁶ to whom it is given to seek and look for God, shall see her, and pass unto God by contemplation. After this teaching, our lord friendly, courteous, true and joyful life oft said to me, "It is I who am highest, I whom you love; it is I who pleases you, I whom you serve; it is I for whom you long, and who is your goal; it is I who am all, about whom holy church preaches and teaches; I who before revealed myself to you."³⁷ I record these words only so that each individual, in keeping with the grace that God grants him, may receive them in understanding and in love as our lord intended.

[13] After this, our lord reminded me of the longing that I had earlier felt for him. I realized that there was no obstacle but sin, that this was in general true for us all: If sin had not existed, I thought, we would all have been pure and like our lord, as he created us. Before this time,

³⁵the first was as she conceived, the second in her sorrow . . . : i.e. in the first and eighth revelations.

³⁶each contemplative soul: Julian omits from the long text this condition that seems, however faintly, to suggest a hierarchy amongst God's lovers.

³⁷It is I who am highest . . . : cf. Ancrene Wisse (1994, 183), "Am I not the most beautiful?" asks Christ of his beloved. "Am I not the richest of kings? Am I not the highest born? Am I not the wisest . . . the most courteous . . . the most generous . . . ?"

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I had often in my folly wondered why, by the great prescient wisdom of God, sin was not prevented for then, it seemed to me, all would have been well. This concern, which I ought to have forsaken, arose from great pride,³⁸ and caused me senseless and immoderate mourning and sorrow.

Nevertheless, in this vision Jesus informed me of all that I needed to know. I do not mean to say that I need no more teaching, for our lord, along with this teaching, has left me holy church. And I am hungry and thirsty, needy, sinful and frail; and willingly submit myself to the teaching of holy church, along with all my fellow Christians, until the end of my life.

He answered with these words, saying, "Sin has a purpose."³⁹ With this word, sin, our lord brought to my mind generally all that is not good: the shameful scorn and the utter humiliation that he endured for us in his life and in his dying; and all the pain and suffering of his creatures, whether spiritual or physical, by which we are all noughted, as we should be, in imitation of our master Jesus, until we are wholly purged that is, until we are free of our own mortal flesh, and of all inner desires that are not good.

The beholding of this, with all the pain that ever was or ever shall be, was shown me in a moment, and quickly transformed into comfort, for our good lord did not want my soul to be frightened by this ugly sight. I did not see sin, for I believe it has no manner of substance, nor of being, and can only be known by the pain that it causes; yet as I understand it, this pain does exist for a time, for it purges us and makes us know ourselves and ask for mercy.

It is our lord's will that his passion console us in the face of this pain. Readily and sweetly he comforts all who shall be saved with his words, "But all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." These words were shown full tenderly, without blame to me, or to

³⁸pride: Julian's word is "pryde" but she alludes to the particular species of Superbia, Presumption, which leads us to question God's ways. Chaucer's Parson (X, 402) defines this version of pride as follows: "when a man undertakes an enterprise that he should not or may not do"; Ancrene Wisse (94) describes the fourth whelp of the lion of pride as "Presumtio . . . who takes upon herself more than she can achieve, or interferes with a thing that is not her concern. . . . "

³⁹Sin has a purpose: Julian says that sin is "behovely" of use or benefit.

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anyone who shall be saved. To blame or question God about my sins would be most unnatural, since he does not reproach me for sin. Thus I saw how Christ feels compassion for us because of sin; and as I had earlier been filled with pain and compassion for his suffering, so was I now filled with compassion for all my fellow Christians. I understood that any natural, loving compassion felt by a soul for his fellow Christians is Christ within him.

XIV

Take heed of this, beholding generally:⁴⁰ drearily, mournfully and with great fear I asked our lord, "Ah, good lord, how may all be well, considering the great harm that has come to your creatures through sin?" As far as I dared, I desired to have some clearer explanation, which might relieve my fear. To this our blessed lord answered gently, and with a most loving expression; he showed me that Adam's sin was the greatest harm that ever was done, or ever shall be, until the end of the world; and that this is clearly acknowledged by holy church on earth. Further, he taught me that I should meditate on the glorious reparation,⁴¹ which is incomparably more pleasing to the blessed godhead, and beneficial for our salvation, than ever was Adam's sin harmful. Through this teaching our blessed lord wants us to understand this: By having redressed the greatest harm, I want you to know that I shall also make well all that is lesser.

He gave me this understanding in two parts. The first has to do with our savior and our salvation; this blessed part is open and clear, fair and light and plenteous for all mankind who are of good will, or who shall be, are included in this part. We are bidden to it by God, and by the same grace are led and counselled and instructed inwardly by the holy ghost, and outwardly by holy church. Our lord wants us to be occupied with this first part, taking pleasure in him, as he takes pleasure in us. The more fully we partake of it, humbly and with

⁴⁰beholding generally: cf. "this sight was shown in general," at the end of the first revelation.

⁴¹the glorious reparation: e.g. the crucifixion. Julian's word is "asethe" (< OF asez, < L ad satis), in which the idea of satisfaction is more explicit.

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reverence, the more we deserve thanks from him, and the more we benefit ourselves. Thus may we say, in joy, Our part is our lord.

The second part all that is beyond our personal salvation is withheld from us and hidden. For this is our lord's secret counsel; it is fitting that the royal lordship of God have his counsel in peace, and it is fitting that his servants, out of obedience and reverence, not seek to know his secrets. Our lord feels pity and compassion because some of us are preoccupied with such seeking, and I am sure that if we knew how much we would please him, and ease ourselves, by not doing so, we would. The saints in heaven want to know nothing except what our lord wants to show them, and their charity and their desire is governed by the will of our lord. We ought to aspire to be like them, and then we shall not wish or desire anything but what God wills for us, for his intention is that we should all be as one. Here I was taught that we should take joy only in our blessed savior Jesus, and trust in him for all things.

XV

Thus our good lord answered all my questions and doubts, comforting me with these words: "I may make all things well, I can make all things well, I will make all things well, and I shall make all things well; and you shall see yourself that all shall be well." Where he says I may, I understand the father; where he says I can, I understand the son; where he says I will, I understand the holy ghost; where he says I shall, I understand the unity of the holy trinity, three persons in one truth; and where he says you shall see yourself, I understand the uniting in the blessed trinity of all mankind who shall be saved.

With these five phrases, God will be enclosed in rest and in peace, and thus will the spiritual thirst of Christ come to an end. His ghostly thirst his love longing shall last until judgment day, for we who shall be saved, and who shall be Christ's joy and bliss, will remain here until that time. His thirst, the failure of his bliss, is that he does not have us in him as wholly as he shall then have. All this was revealed in the showing of compassion, which shall cease at doomsday; until then he feels pity and compassion for us, and he longs for us. But his wisdom and his love do not suffer the end to come until the best time.

And in these words, I may make all things well, I understand the

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great comfort of all his works that are yet to come. Even as the blessed trinity created all things out of nothingness, so shall the same blessed trinity make well all that is not well. It is God's will that we have great regard for the deeds he has done, for by them he wants us to comprehend all that he shall do. This he showed with the words, and you shall see yourself that all shall be well, which I understand in two ways: first, I am satisfied that I do not know in particular what he will do; then, I am glad and merry, for I shall. It is God's will that we know in general that all shall be well; yet he only wants us to know it now insofar as it concerns us at this time. Such is the teaching of holy church.

XVI

God showed me the great pleasure he has in all men and women who, with humility and respect, firmly adhere to the preaching and teaching of holy church for he is holy church. He is the foundation and the substance; he is the teaching and the teacher; he is the goal, the center⁴² towards which each true soul strives. He is known, and shall be known, to every soul to whom the holy ghost declares this, and I am sure that all who seek thus shall succeed, for they seek God.

All I have just said, and more that I shall say hereafter, is a comfort against sin. For first,⁴³ when I saw that God does all that is done, I did not see sin and then I saw that all is well. But when God did describe sin, he said, All shall be well.

After God almighty had generously and fully shown me his goodness, I wondered about a certain person whom I loved, and how she was. But by this desire I hindered myself, for my question was not answered. Instead I was advised, as if by a friendly intermediary,⁴⁴ "Take this showing generally, and behold the courtesy of your lord

⁴²center: cf. Boethius, discussing the stability of Providence (Consolation of Philosophy, Book IV, Prose 6): "Consider the example of a number of spheres in orbit around the same central point: the innermost moves towards the simplicity of the center and becomes a kind of hinge about which the outer spheres circle."

⁴³first . . . I did not see sin: i.e. in the third revelation.

⁴⁴friendly intermediary: cf. the start of the first revelation, which is shown without intermediary.

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God as he shows it to you; for it is more honor to God to see him in all things than in any special thing."⁴⁵ I assented, and learned that to understand all things in general is more to God's honor than to care for any one thing in particular; and if I were wisely to follow this teaching, I would be neither pleased nor saddened by any specific thing, for all shall be well.

God had shown me that I would sin, but for the pleasure I had in beholding him I did not readily attend to that revelation. He waited courteously until I did attend, and then brought to my mind, along with my own sins, the sins of all my fellow Christians in general, and not in particular.

XVII

Although our lord showed me that I would sin, in myself alone I understood all. This caused me to feel a soft dread, which our lord answered thus, "I keep you securely." These words were spoken with more love and assurance of spiritual safety than I can or may express; for even as it was before shown that I would sin, so was the comfort the certainty of protection for all my fellow Christians now revealed.

What can make me love my fellow Christians more than to see in God that he loves all who shall be saved, as if all together were a single soul? For in each soul who shall be saved is a natural will that has never assented to sin, and never shall.⁴⁶ As there is a brute will in the lower part that can desire no good, so is there a pure will in the higher part that is ever good, and is no more capable of desiring evil than the persons of the holy trinity. Our lord showed me this in the wholeness

⁴⁵ . . . than in any special thing: cf. The Book of Privy Counselling (162): "Every particular thought of creatures that enters your mind . . . draws you back to your subtle, inquisitive faculties. Then you are no longer totally present to yourself or to your God. . . . "

⁴⁶ . . . that has never assented to sin, and never shall: in this view Julian diverges from church doctrine. Wolters (1966, 37) argues that her view proceeds from the fact that wrath "finds no place in Julian's understanding of God's love." However, it is in accord with what she has been shown as to the 'wholeness' of divine love and the soul's fundamental likeness to God.

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of love that surrounds us in his sight. Indeed, he loves us as well now, while we are here, as he shall when we are there before his blessed face.

Further, God showed me that sin is no shame, but a source of honor. In this showing my understanding was lifted up into heaven; then in truth I was reminded of David, Peter and Paul, Thomas of India and the Magdalene, and of how they are known in the church on earth with their sins to their honor.⁴⁷ It is no shame to them that they have sinned, nor is it in the bliss of heaven, where the tokens of sin are turned to honor. Our lord showed them to me as an example of all the others who shall come thither.

Sin is the sharpest scourge with which any soul may be beaten; this scourge batters and breaks both men and women, humbles them in their own sight so fully that they believe they deserve nothing but to sink into hell. Yet when, through the action of the holy ghost, contrition touches them, bitterness is transformed into hope for God's mercy; and then, as they turn to the life of holy church, their wounds begin to heal and their souls to awaken. The holy ghost leads them willingly to reveal their sins through confession, openly and truly, with sorrow and shame that they have so defiled the fair image of God. Enjoined by their confessors, they then perform penance as ordained by holy church, according to the holy ghost for each of their sins. All sinful souls need to be healed by this medicine, especially with regard to the deadly sins. When they are healed, their sins will be seen by God not as wounds but as honors. To the extent that sin is punished here with contrition and penance, it shall be rewarded in heaven by the courteous love of our lord God almighty, who wills that none who come there shall have suffered in vain. The reward that we shall receive will not be slight, but exalted, glorious, and honorable; so shall all shame be transformed into honor and greater joy. I feel certain that the more each natural soul sees of God's kind and courteous love, the more hateful will sin become.

⁴⁷ . . . with their sins to their honor: David's sin was his passion for Bathsheba, Peter's the denial; Paul assisted in the martyrdom of St. Stephen, Thomas doubted the resurrection, and Mary Magdalene was a great sinner, perhaps a prostitute.

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XVIII

However, if you are inclined to say or believe that, because this is true, it is good to sin in order to have a greater reward, you should beware of this inclination and despise it for it comes from the enemy. Whatever soul willingly succumbs to this temptation can never be saved until he makes amends, as for a mortal sin. If all the pain that is in hell, in purgatory and on earth including death and other sorts of suffering were laid before me, I would choose them all above sin. Sin is so vile and hateful that it may be likened to no pain, unless that pain itself is sin; for everything but sin is good, and nothing is evil except sin. Sin is neither action nor pleasure:⁴⁸ but when a soul willingly chooses the pain of sin as its god, in the end it will have nothing. Such pain seems to me the hardest hell, since the soul is without God, whom it may still have in any other sort of pain.

When it comes to our salvation, God is as eager as he is powerful and wise; for Christ, who has taught us to do good rather than evil, is himself the ground of all Christian law. Thus we can see that he is love itself, and does unto us as he teaches us to do for he wants us to be like him in oneness of endless love, both for ourselves and for our fellow Christians. As his love for us is not broken by our sin, so does he want our love for ourselves and our fellows to be unbroken; rather, we should hate sin utterly, and endlessly love the soul,⁴⁹ even as God loves it. These words that God said⁵⁰ are an endless comfort: I keep you securely.

⁴⁸Sin is neither action nor pleasure: Julian's point is that we do not sin so much in what we may do or wish for, as in the condition of our will, in the consent of the spirit; cf. Chaucer's Parson (X, 3536): " . . . it's good to beware . . . or he'll fall right away into [consenting] to sin. . . . For as surely as a sword separates something in two, consent separates God from man."

⁴⁹we should hate sin utterly and endlessly love the soul: cf. The Ladder of Perfection (79), "But it is a great achievement for a man to be able to love his fellow-Christian in charity, and to be discerning enough to hate his sin and yet love the sinner."

⁵⁰These words that God said: i.e. at the opening of ch. XVII.

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XIX

[14] Our lord's next revelation was about prayer. I saw two conditions in those who pray, which I myself have felt. One is that they will not pray for anything that is not God's will, and to his honor. The other as I have understood from the teaching of holy church is that they firmly and continuously set about asking for that which is his will and his honor. Thus did our lord teach: to have, as his gift, faith, hope and charity, and to protect ourselves with them until our lives' end. For this reason we say, with devotion, as God will grant it, Pater Noster. Ave. Crede. God wants us to pray for all our fellow Christians, and for all manner of men; we should wish for them all the same state of virtue and grace as we desire for ourselves. Yet despite this, our trust is often imperfect. On account of what seems to us our unworthiness, we feel nothing and are not sure that God almighty hears us. After our prayers we are often as barren and dry as we were before,⁵¹ and in this feeling our own folly is the cause of our weakness; I have felt so myself.

To comfort me against such weakness in prayer, our lord quickly brought to my mind, in a clear and lifelike voice, ''I am the ground of your beseeching: first it is my will that you have it; then I make you want it; then I make you ask for it. And if you ask, how could it then be that you would not get what you want?" With the first phrase, and the three that follow, our lord offers great comfort. In the fifth, where he says And if you ask, he reveals the great pleasure and endless reward he will give us when we do ask. And in the sixth phrase, how could it then be that you would not get what you want, he makes a solemn pledge, for we trust not as firmly as we should.

Thus our lord wants us both to pray and to trust: his purpose in providing this sixfold explanation is to fortify us against weakness in prayer. God wants us to pray, and with his words inspires us to do so. Since prayer pleases God, he wants us to have trust in our prayers. Prayer puts man at peace with himself, and makes one who was

⁵¹After our prayers we are often . . . barren and dry . . . : cf. The Book of Privy Counselling (183), "A day will come when [the desire for contemplation and the joyful enthusiasm that seizes you] disappear, leaving you, as it were, barren. Gone will be your new fervor, but gone, too your ability to meditate. . . . "

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formerly in strife and travail both calm and humble. Prayer unites the soul with God, for though the soul is always like God in nature and in substance, it is often unlike in condition, as a result of sin. Prayer when the soul's will conforms to God's likens the soul to God, and so it comes to resemble God in condition as well as in nature.

Thus he teaches us to pray, and firmly believe that we shall be granted what we pray for; for everything that is done shall be done, whether we pray for it or not. The love of God is so great that he considers us to be partners in his good deed; and so he moves us to pray for what he wants to do. He will reward us and give us endless satisfaction for whatever prayer or good wish we have through his gift. All this was revealed in his phrase, And if you ask.

With these words, God showed great pleasure and satisfaction, as if though it is he who does it he were greatly beholden to us for each good deed we perform. In order that we should strive to do the things he wants, he seems to say: How could you please me more than by actively, wisely, and freely seeking to do what I wish to be done?

Thus prayer brings about harmony between God and the soul; and when a soul is finally at rest with God it does not need to pray actively, but can reverently contemplate what is shown. Throughout this revelation I was not moved to prayer, but was continually comforted by the thought that when we see God we have what we desire, and there is then no need to pray. When we do not see God, however, we need to pray, both because of this absence and to make ourselves fit for Jesus. When we are tempted, troubled and isolated by anxiety, it is time for us to pray, and to become humble and obedient to God. Unless we are obedient, no manner of prayer will make God responsive to us, though he is ever constant in his love.

When a man is sinning he is so weak and foolish, and so unloving, that he can love neither God nor himself. His greatest misfortune is blindness, for he does not realize this. Then the indivisible love of almighty God, who is ever one, enables him to see himself. He thinks that God is angry with him for his sin, and is moved to appease this wrath through contrition, confession, and other good deeds until such time as he finds peace in his soul and ease of conscience. Then it seems to him that God has forgiven his sins, and it is true. In the soul's sight, God turns towards him, as if he had been in pain or in prison, saying thus: "I am glad you have found peace, for I have

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always loved you, and now love you as you do me." And thus, through prayer and other good deeds that accord with the teaching of holy church, is the soul united with God.

XX

Before this time I had often longed and desired by God's gift to be delivered from the world, and from life; I wished to be with my God in bliss, where I hope truly through his mercy to be without end. Often I thought of the woe that is here, and the happiness and blessed existence that is there. Even if there had been no pain on earth except the absence of our lord God, it sometimes seemed to me more than I could bear. And this made me grieve and actively long to be with him.

[15] Then to encourage me to endure and be patient, God said: "Suddenly you will be taken from all your pain and anxiety, from all your sorrow. You will ascend, and have me as your reward, and be filled with joy and bliss; and you will feel neither pain, nor sickness; neither sorrow, nor dissatisfaction only endless joy and bliss. Why should it then grieve you to suffer a while, since it is my will and my worship?"

In this phrase, Suddenly you will be taken, I saw that God rewards man for the patience he has in abiding God's will; because he is ignorant of the time of his passing, a man must remain patient throughout his lifetime. This is a great advantage, for if he knew when he was to die, his patience would be limited to that time. Also God wills that as long as the soul is in the body it should believe itself always to be on the point of being taken. For all the distress of this life is only a moment, and when we are taken from pain into bliss it shall be as nothing. Therefore our lord said: Why should it then grieve you to suffer a while, since it is my will and my worship?

It is God's will that we accept his commands and his reassurance as completely and as firmly as we can, and that we take our waiting and anxiety as lightly as possible, setting them at nought. For the more lightly we take them, and the less price we set by them on account of love, the less pain we shall feel in enduring them, and the more gratitude for experiencing them.

In this blessed revelation I was truly taught that whoever willingly

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chooses God in this life can be certain that he too is chosen. Know this to be true: God wants us to be as sure of heaven's bliss while we are here as we shall be when we are there. And the more pleasure and joy we find in this certainty, with reverence and humility, the more he is pleased; for had there been none but myself who was to be saved, I am sure he would have done all he has done simply for me.

With this knowledge each soul should forget if it can all created beings, recognizing all God its lover has done for it. It seems to me this should move a soul both to love and please him, and to fear nothing but him for he wants us to know that all the power of our enemy is locked in our friend's hand. A soul who knows this truly shall dread nothing but him whom it loves; any other fears should be classed with physical sickness and suffering and delusions.

If a man is in such pain, sorrow, and anxiety that it seems he can think of nothing but what he is enduring, he should pass lightly over them as soon as he can and set them at nought. Why? Because God wishes to be known. If we knew and loved him, we would have patience and be at peace; whatever he did would please us. Our lord showed me this through his words: Why should it then grieve you to suffer a while, since it is my will and my worship? And this was the end of what he showed me that day.

XXI

After this showing I sank back into myself, and into my bodily sickness. I realized that I was going to live, and as a wretch I sighed and mourned on account of the physical pain that I felt, and thought it most irksome that I should live any longer. Because of giving in to my pain, and the failure of my spiritual feeling, I was as barren and dry as if I had had but little comfort before. Then a religious came to me and asked me how I fared; I said that I had raved that day, and he laughed loud and heartily. I said, "The cross at the foot of my bed has bled abundantly," and with these words he became grave, and was astonished. Immediately I was sore ashamed of my folly, and thought, This man takes seriously the least word that I say, as he says nothing more.

When I saw that he responded gravely, and with such reverence, I felt great shame and would have been confessed. Yet I could not

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confess to a priest, for I thought, "Why should a priest believe me? I did not believe our lord God." I had believed him truly when I saw him, and it was my will and my intention to do so ever after, without end. But as a fool I had let my faith pass from my mind. Lo, what a wretch I was! It was most unnatural, and a great sin, that in response to a little bodily pain I should so foolishly have forsaken the comfort of our lord's blessed showing. In this you can see what I am on my own; but our courteous lord would not desert me.

I lay thus until nightfall, trusting in his mercy, and then fell asleep. As I slept, it seemed that the fiend took me by the throat and tried to strangle me, but was not able to. Then I awoke, barely alive. Seeing this, the people who were with me wet my temples, and my heart was comforted. Then, with great heat and a foul stench, a little smoke came through the door. I said, "Benedicite dominus! Is everything here on fire?", for I imagined that it was an actual fire that would burn us to death. I asked my companions if they had smelled the stench, but they said, No, they smelled nothing. I then exclaimed, "Blessed be God," for I realized it was the devil, come to tempt me. At once I recalled what our lord had revealed to me that day along with all the faith of holy church, for I hold them both to be the same and clung to it for comfort. Immediately the smell vanished, and I was brought to a state of rest and peace, feeling neither sickness of body nor anxiety of conscience.

XXII

[16] After this I stayed awake, and our lord opened my spiritual eyes to reveal my soul in the midst of my heart, as large as if it had been a kingdom. In quality it seemed a noble city; in its midst sat our lord Jesus, both God and man, a fair person of large stature, a noble, exalted lord, clad solemnly in honor. In peace and in rest he sits in the midst of the soul, and rules and governs heaven, earth, and all creation. The manhood dwells in harmony with the godhead, and the godhead rules and governs without instrument or effort. My soul is joyously inhabited by the godhead, which is sovereign might, sovereign wisdom, sovereign goodness. Jesus shall never forsake the place that he occupies in our soul, for in us he finds his most pleasing and comfortable home.

In its endless truth this sight was both delightful and restful, the

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beholding of which while we are on earth is most pleasing to God, and a great help to us. The soul who thus beholds comes to resemble him who is beheld, united in rest and peace. It was a singular joy and bliss to me that I saw him sit, for the beholding of this sitting revealed to me the certainty of his endless dwelling. And I knew in truth that it was he who had shown me all the previous visions.

When I had beheld this with much deliberation, our lord showed me words, as he had before, without voice and without opening of lips, gently and gravely saying, "Be assured what you experienced today was no delirium. Accept it, believe it, and cling to it; and you shall not be overcome." These last words were said to me to convince me absolutely that it was our lord who showed me everything. Even as in his first words, to explain his blessed passion, our lord had said, Herewith is the fiend overcome, so in his last words he said, with utter certainty, You shall not be overcome.

As I have said before, God wishes his teaching and reassurance to be taken generally, for all fellow Christians. His words, You shall not be overcome, were said clearly and forcefully, to provide security and comfort in the face of whatever tribulations may arise. He did not say, you shall not be troubled, or you shall not suffer, or you shall not be distressed. But he did say, You shall not be overcome. God wants us to heed his words and be ever confident of their truth, whether in joy or woe. For as he loves and takes joy in us, so he wills that we love and rejoice and trust fully in him. Thus all shall be well. Soon after this all was hidden from me, and I saw no more.

XXIII

After this the fiend returned, with his heat and his stench, and caused me great anxiety, as the smell was so vile and disgusting, and the bodily heat so frightening and distressing. I could hear a kind of chattering and talking, as between two people, who seemed to be speaking at the same time, as if they were busily holding a meeting. Theirs was a soft muttering, so I could not understand what they were saying it all seemed designed to turn me to despair. But I trusted earnestly in God, comforting my soul with actual speech, as I would have done with someone other than myself who was similarly afflicted.

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My efforts were unlike any ordinary activity. I fixed my eyes on the cross that had previously given me such comfort; I busied my tongue with speaking about Christ's passion and reciting the beliefs of holy church; and I fastened my heart on God with all the trust and all the power that I possessed. And I thought to myself, You are now well occupied; if from this time onward you were to be this busy in keeping yourself from sin it would be a noble and a good occupation. For I firmly believed that if I were safe from sin, then I would be safe from all the fiends of hell and the enemies of my soul. They troubled me all night long, until the morning, about prime.⁵² Then suddenly they departed and were gone; nothing of them remained except their stench, which lingered a while. I scorned them, and thus by virtue of Christ's passion I was delivered from them: in this way is the fiend overcome, as Christ had before declared.

Ah, wretched sin! What are you? You are nothing. For I saw that God is every thing; I did not see you. When I saw that God has created all things, I did not see you. When I saw that God is in each thing, I did not see you. When I saw that God does everything that is done, lesser and greater, I did not see you. And when I saw our lord Jesus sit in our soul so nobly, loving and rejoicing and ruling and governing all he has made, I did not see you. Thus I am sure that you have no existence; and I am sure that all those who love and take pleasure in you, who follow and willingly find their purpose in you, shall be brought to nothingness with you, and endlessly confounded. God protect us all from you. Amen, par charyte.

I should explain what wretchedness is, as I have been taught by the revelation of God. Wretchedness is whatever is not good: the spiritual blindness that we fall into when we first sin, and all that follows from that wretched condition suffering and pain, both physical and spiritual, and whatever is not good on earth or anywhere else. It may be asked, What are we? And I answer, If all that is not good were taken from us, we would be good. When wretchedness is taken from us, God and the soul are united, God and man are one.

What of the earthly things that separate us from God? I answer, In that they assist us they are good; in that they shall perish they are

⁵²prime: OED: the first hour of the day, or, sometimes, sunrise.

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wretchedness. And if a man sets his heart upon them in any other way, he sins. As long as an individual loves sin, if such there be, he is in pain that surpasses all pain. Yet when he loves not sin, but hates it and loves God, all is well. Though through weakness or ignorance of will he may sometimes sin, he who loves so is not lost, but will surely rise again and behold God whom he loves with all his will. God has created whatever man or woman who has been a sinner to be loved; ever he loves, and ever he longs to have our love. And when we mightily and wisely love Jesus, we are in peace.

The blessed teaching of our lord was shown me in three ways, as I have already said: by bodily sight, by words formed in my understanding, and by ghostly sight. I have described the bodily sights as accurately as I can, and I have repeated the words exactly as our lord presented them to me. I have recounted the ghostly sights partially, but can never fully describe them. Still I am moved to say more about the spiritual revelations, if God will grant me grace.

XXIV

God showed me two kinds of sickness that we have, of which he would like us to be cured. One is impatience, since we bear our distress and our pain heavily. The other is despair, or doubtful dread, which I shall explain later. These two most afflict and try us, according to what our lord showed me; that they be amended is most desired by him. I speak of such men and women as, for love of God, hate sin and are disposed to do his will: these are the two secret sins by which we are most beset. It is God's will that they be recognized, and then we shall reject them as we do other sins.

Thus full humbly our lord showed his patience during his cruel passion, and also the joy and pleasure that, for love, he feels because of that passion. He showed himself as an example: it would be a great pleasure to him and an endless profit to us if we too were to bear our pains gladly and lightly. We are troubled by them because of ignorance of love.

Though the persons of the blessed trinity are all equal in property, love was showed most fully to me, because though it is closest to us all, we are blindest in our knowledge of it. Many men and women believe that God is all mighty and may do all, and that he is all wisdom

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and can do all; but that he is all love and will do all there they stop. Such ignorance most hinders God's lovers, for when they begin to hate sin and to amend themselves according to the ordinances of holy church, a dread remains that stirs them to dwell upon themselves and their former sins. Though this is a grievous blindness and weakness, we do not despise it because we think of it as humility. Yet if we recognized it, we would immediately reject it, as we would any other sin with which we are familiar, for it comes from the enemy and is opposed to truth.

Of all the properties of the blessed trinity, God wants us to feel the greatest confidence and pleasure in love, for love makes power and wisdom humble before us. Even as by his courteous love God forgets our sins as soon as we repent, so does he wish us to forget them, and all our sorrow, and all our doubtful dread.

XXV

I saw four kinds of dread. One is the dread that suddenly comes over a man through fright. This dread is good, for it helps to purify him, as does physical illness or any other pain that is not sin: such fright is beneficial, if it is patiently borne. The second is dread of pain, whereby a man is stirred and awakened from the sleep of sin. If a man is sunk in the sleep of sin, he is not able to receive the gentle comfort of the holy ghost until he has experienced this dread of the pain of physical death and of the fire of purgatory. This dread moves him to to seek God's comfort and mercy; it acts as a kind of threshold, and enables him to feel contrition through the blessed action of the holy ghost. The third is doubtful dread; even if it is slight in itself and is recognized, it is a species of despair. I am sure that God hates all doubtful dread, and wants us to be separated from it through the true knowledge of love.

The fourth is reverent dread. No dread pleases God positively except for reverent dread, which because of the power of love is both sweet and soft.⁵³ Reverent dread and love are not the same, since they are different in property and operation; but neither may be had without

⁵³sweet and soft: cf. Julian's "soft dread" at the start of the third, and towards the end of the thirteenth, revelations.

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the other. Therefore I am sure that he who loves also dreads reverently, though he feel it but little. The other forms of dread are not so true, though they come under the guise of holiness. In this way it may be determined which is which: the more that reverent dread is felt, the more it softens and comforts and pleases and calms; but false dread brings distress and tribulation and anxiety.

This then is the remedy, to know them both and refuse the false, as we would a wicked spirit that presented himself in the likeness of a good angel. Though he come in the guise and likeness of a good angel, and however fair his dalliance and his actions may seem, an evil spirit will distress and disturb and afflict the person with whom he speaks, and leave him in turmoil; and the more this spirit communes with him, the more he will be troubled, and the farther from peace. Therefore it is God's will, and to our own benefit, that we be able to discern the difference, for he wills that we be ever secure, at peace and at rest, in love as he is in us. As he is by nature to us, so he wills that we be towards ourselves, and to our fellow Christians. Amen.

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Appendix
The Motherhood of God¹

LVIII

God is never displeased with his chosen wife; of the three properties in the trinity: fatherhood, motherhood and lordship; how our essence is in each person of the trinity, but our sensuality is in Christ alone.

God the blissful trinity, everlasting being, endless without beginning, had as his eternal purpose the creation of mankind, whose fair nature was first ordained for his own son, the second person. And when he wished, with the full accord of the trinity, he made us all at once, and in our making knit and united us to himself by which union we are kept as pure and noble as when we were created. With the strength of this precious union we love and please our maker, praising and thanking him, and endlessly rejoicing in him: these good deeds are continually re-enacted in every soul who shall be saved, in accordance with God's will.

Thus in our creation God almighty is our natural father, and God all-wisdom our natural mother, who together with the love and goodness of the holy ghost are all one God, one lord. And in the knitting and the uniting he is our own true spouse, and we his beloved wife and fair maiden, with whom he is never displeased; as he says, ''I love you and you love me, and our love shall never be divided."

I beheld the working of all the blessed trinity, in which I saw and understood these three properties of fatherhood, of motherhood, and

¹The Motherhood of God: The translation of these chapters, which in the long text follow the fourteenth revelation and articulate Julian's doctrine of the motherhood of God, has been facilitated by Marion Glasscoe's edition of the mid-17th-century British Library NIS Sloane 2499, A Revelation of Love. The Sloane headings, probably the addition of a scribe and printed here in italics, summarize the contents of each chapter.

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of lordship in one God. In our father almighty we have our protection and joy as regards our essential nature,² which is ours without beginning through our creation. In the second person, in understanding and in wisdom, we are cared for in terms of our sensuality,³ our restoration and our salvation, for he is our mother, brother and savior. Through the marvellous courtesy and plenteous grace of our good lord the holy ghost, we shall have our reward and recompense⁴ for our lives and our travail, endlessly surpassing all we have desired.

Our lives are divided into three parts. In the first we have our being, in the second our growth, and in the third our fulfillment. The first is nature; the second is mercy; the third is grace. First I saw and understood that the exalted might of the trinity is our father, and the deep wisdom of the trinity is our mother, and the great love of the trinity is our lord: all this we have naturally through our essential creation. Then I saw that the second person, the same dear person who is our essential mother, has become our sensual mother, for our creation is twofold: that is to say, essential and sensual.

Our essential nature is the higher part, which we have in our father God almighty. In our essential creation, the second person of the trinity is our natural mother, in whom we are grounded and rooted; but in taking on our sensuality he has also become our merciful mother. Thus our mother works in diverse ways, whereby our parts are kept united. For in our mother Christ, we profit and increase: in mercy he reforms and restores us, and by the power of his passion and his death and resurrection unites us with our essence. In this merciful way our mother acts towards all children who are submissive and obedient. The co-operation of grace and mercy, as was particularly shown in the two properties, is accomplished by the third person, the holy ghost, whose concern is rewarding and giving: rewarding is a generous gift of truth that the lord makes to those who have travailed; and giving is

²essential nature: Julian's phrase is "kindly substance"; see OED substance 1 "essential nature, essence."

³sensuality: OED 1: that part of the nature of man that is concerned with the senses. Cf. Chaucer's Parson (X, 2601): "God, reason, sensuality, and the body are ordered so that each of these four things should have lordship over the others. That is, God should have lordship over reason, and reason over sensuality, and sensuality over the body." Sensuality is not a negative force unless, because of sin, this order is disrupted.

⁴reward and recompense: these are awarded to the soul after death.

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a courteous action which he performs freely with grace, and which surpasses anything we may have deserved.

Thus in our father, God almighty, we have our being; and in our merciful mother, through whom our parts are united and made perfect, we have our reforming and our restoration; and by the gracious rewarding and giving of the holy ghost we are fulfilled. Our essence is our father, God almighty; our essence is our mother, God all-wisdom; and our essence is in our lord the holy ghost, God all-goodness. In each person of the trinity, which is one God, our essence is complete. But our sensuality is only in the second person, Christ Jesus, in whom are the father and the holy ghost; in him and by him are we mightily delivered from hell and from the wretchedness of earth, and gloriously brought up into heaven, blissfully united with our essence, magnified in splendor and nobility, all by the power of Christ and the grace and co-operation of the holy ghost.

LIX

Wickedness in the chosen is turned to bliss by mercy and grace, for the property of God is to do good against evil through Jesus our mother in natural grace; and the highest virtue is meekness, the ground of other virtues.

Through mercy and grace we achieve heaven's bliss, which we could never have known if the properties of goodness whereby we have this bliss, and which are God had not been opposed. For though wickedness is allowed to rise up against good, the goodness of mercy and grace overcome it, turning all to good and to worship for those who shall be saved; this is the property of God that counters evil with good. Thus, as Jesus Christ counters evil with good, he is our true mother. We have our being through him where the ground of motherhood begins, and with all the sweet loving care that endlessly follows. God is as truly our mother as our father; and he showed this in all, and especially with his sweet words "It is I"⁵ as when he said, "It is I: the might and goodness of the fatherhood. It is I: the wisdom of the

⁵It is I. . . . : cf. the twelfth revelation.

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motherhood. It is I: the light and grace that is all blessed love. I am the trinity, I am unity. I am the sovereign goodness of all manner of things. It is I who makes you love, I who makes you desire and who endlessly fulfills all your true desires."

The soul is highest, noblest and worthiest when it is lowest, mildest, and most humble. All our virtues and our sensuality arise from this essential foundation, by the gift of nature and the assistance of mercy and grace, without which we can not prosper. Our high father, God almighty, who is being, knew us and loved us from before time. Through this knowledge, in his marvellous deep charity and by the prescient eternal counsel of the blessed trinity, he willed that the second person should become our mother, our brother, and our savior. From this it follows that God is as truly our mother as he is our father. Our father wills, our mother acts, our good lord the holy ghost confirms. And therefore it is appropriate for us to love our God in whom we have our being, and reverently thank and praise him for our creation, mightily praying to our mother for mercy and pity, and to our lord the holy ghost for help and grace; for in these three nature, mercy and grace are all our life. From them come meekness, mildness, patience and pity, and hatred of sin and wickedness for it is fitting for virtue to hate sin and wickedness Thus Jesus is our true mother in nature by our first creation, and he is our true mother in grace by his assumption of our sensual being. Both the ordered action and the sweet, natural function of precious motherhood are assigned to the second person for in him, by his own special goodness, we have the divine will whole and safe without end, both in nature and in grace.

I understood three manners of beholding of the motherhood of God: the first is grounded in our natural creation; the second is in the assumption of our nature, where the motherhood of grace begins; the third is the action of motherhood, and therein is a spreading forth, by the same grace, of the endless length and breadth and height and depth of his own love.

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LX

How we are bought again and fostered by the mercy and grace of our sweet, kind and ever loving mother Jesus, and of the properties of motherhood; but Jesus is our true mother, feeding us not with milk but with himself, opening his side to us and claiming all our love.

Now it is fitting to say a little more about this fostering, as I understand the meaning of our lord about how we are redeemed by the motherhood of mercy and grace, and returned to the natural state in which we were created by the motherhood of natural love, which never leaves us. Our natural mother and our gracious mother for he would become our mother completely, in all things undertook the beginning of his work both humbly and mildly in the maiden's womb: this he showed in the first revelation, when he brought that meek maid to the eye of my understanding, in the simple stature that she was when she conceived. In other words, our high God, in his supreme wisdom, formed and arrayed himself in our poor flesh in this lowly place, so that in all things he could perform the service and office of motherhood himself.

The mother's service is nearest, readiest and surest, for it is the truest, and may or can not be fully performed except by him alone. We imagine that our mothers bear us only to pain and to death; but our own mother Jesus who is all love, blessed may he be, bears us to joy and endless life. Thus he sustains us within himself through love; and he suffered for the utmost time so as to endure the sharpest torments and the most grievous pains that ever were or ever shall be; and he died at last. And when he had done this, and so borne us to bliss, yet still his marvellous love was not satisfied, as he showed me in these transcendent words, "If I might suffer more, I would."⁶ Though he could not die more often, he would not cease his efforts so it befits him to feed us, for the precious love of motherhood has made him our debtor.

The mother may give her child her milk to suck, but our beloved mother Jesus feeds us with himself. He does so courteously and

⁶If I might suffer more: i.e. in the ninth revelation.

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tenderly with the blessed sacrament that is the priceless food of life itself. Mercifully and graciously he sustains us with all the sweet sacraments. And this was the meaning of his blessed words, "It is I of whom holy church preaches and teaches you"; that is to say, I am all the health and life of the sacraments, all the virtue and grace of my word, all the goodness that is ordained for you by holy church.

The mother may lay the child tenderly at her breast; but our tender mother Jesus kindly leads us into his blessed breast through his sweet open side, therein showing in part the Godhead and the joys of heaven, with the spiritual assurance of endless bliss. This he showed in the tenth revelation, as he looked joyfully into his side, giving the same meaning with his sweet words, "Lo, how I loved you."

This fair lovely word mother is so sweet and so natural in itself that it may truly be said of no one but him, and of her who is mother of him and of us all. To the property of motherhood belongs natural love, wisdom and knowing, and it is good. For though our bodily birth is little, low and simple in comparison to our spiritual creation, yet it is he who performs it in the creatures by whom it is done.⁷ The kind, loving mother who knows and understands the needs of her child protects it most tenderly in keeping with the nature and character of motherhood. As it grows older she changes her treatment, but not her love. And when it has grown still more she allows the child to be chastized in order to eliminate its vices and enable it to acquire virtues and graces. With all that is fair and good, our lord permits this activity in those by whom it is done. Thus, for love of the higher part, he is our natural mother in the lower part, through the operation of grace. He wants us to know this, for he desires all our love to be fastened to him. In this I saw that all the debt we owe is God's bidding, through fatherhood and motherhood; and God's fatherhood and motherhood are fulfilled by our true loving of him, which blessed love Christ activates in us. And this was shown throughout, especially in the high generous words that he said, "It is I whom you love."

⁷in the creatures by whom it is done: Julian's statement that Christ is essentially involved in human procreation challenges the dualist idea of the innate corruption of the flesh.

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LXI

Jesus shows greater tenderness in our spritual bringing forth; knowing our wretchedness he allows us to fall, but he quickly raises us, not withdrawing his love because of our trespass, for he will not allow his child to perish; he wants us to have the quality of a child, always fleeing to him in our need.

In our spiritual birth Jesus' care is unequalled in tenderness, because our soul is of greater value in his sight. He awakens our understanding, he directs our path, he eases our conscience, he comforts our soul, he lightens our hearts and gives us, in part, knowledge and love of his blessed Godhead with gracious remembrance of his sweet manhood and his blessed passion, and reverent marvelling at his exalted, surpassing goodness. Because of his love he makes us love all that he loves, and be satisfied by him and all his works. When we fall, he quickly raises us, with loving summons and gracious concern. And strengthened thus by his loving actions, we willingly choose to be his servants and his lovers, by his sweet grace, everlastingly.

After this he allows some of us to fall harder and more grievously than ever before or so it seems. Then we foolishly imagine that our efforts have been for nought. But this is not so: it is necessary both for us to fall, and to recognize the fact. If we did not fall, we would not know how weak and wretched we are in ourselves, nor would we know so fully the marvellous love of our maker. Truly we shall see in heaven without end that we have grievously sinned in this life; notwithstanding this, we shall see that his love for us was never diminished, nor were we ever of less value in his sight. Because of having fallen, we shall receive an exalted, endless knowledge of God's love.

A love that can and will not be broken by sin is mighty and wondrous. This is one valuable insight. Another is the humility and meekness that we shall gain from seeing our fall: through these virtues we shall be raised on high to heaven, which we could never have reached without them. So it is necessary to be aware of having fallen: if we are not, though we fall, it would be of no benefit to us. First we fall, and then we see it both by the mercy of God.

The mother may allow the child to fall sometimes, and be anxious in various ways for its welfare, but for love she will never permit any

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kind of danger to come to the child. Although an earthly mother may endure the death of her child, our heavenly mother Jesus will not allow those of us who are his children to perish for he alone is almighty, all wisdom and all love. Blessed may he be.

Often when our trangressions and our wretchedness are shown to us, we are so frightened and so greatly ashamed of ourselves that we scarcely know where to turn. But our courteous mother does not want us to run away nothing would be more hateful to him. Rather, he wants us to follow our childish nature; for when a child is upset or frightened it runs quickly to its mother with all its might. He wants us to act as the meek child does, saying, "My kind mother, my gracious mother, my dear mother, have mercy on me. I have made myself ugly and unlike you, and I cannot alter this without your special help and grace." If we are not immediately relieved, we should be assured that he is acting as a wise mother; for if he sees that it will be to our greater advantage to mourn and weep, he allows it with mercy and pity unto the best time, out of love. He wants us to act as the child who evermore trusts to the love of its mother, in joy and in woe.

He also wants us to adhere firmly to the faith of holy church, and with all the blessed company find our precious mother there, in the comfort of true understanding. For a single person may often seem to be broken on his own, but the whole body of holy church has never been broken, and never shall be, without end. Therefore it is a sure, good and gracious thing to choose humbly and mightily to be nurtured by and united to our mother, holy church, that is Christ Jesus. For the food of mercy that is his dear blood and precious water is ample to make us fair and clean; the blessed wound of our savior is open and rejoices in healing us; the sweet gracious hands of our mother are ready and diligent about us. In all these ways he acts as a kind nurse who has nothing to do but attend to the care of her child. It is his concern to save us, his honor to do so, and his will that we know it. For he wants us to love him sweetly and trust in him meekly and mightily. This he revealed in these gracious words, "I keep you securely."⁸

⁸I keep you securely: i.e. in the thirteenth revelation

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LXIII

Sin is more painful than hell, vile and hurtful to nature; but grace saves nature and destroys sin; the children of Jesus, who have not yet all been born, do not go beyond the stage of childhood, remaining weak until they come to heaven where joy is always new, without end.

Here we may see that we truly ought by nature to hate sin; for nature in itself is good and fair. Grace was sent to save nature and destroy sin, and bring fair nature back to the blessed point from which it came, which is God, with greater nobility and honor through the virtuous operation of grace. It shall be seen before God by all his saints, in endless joy, that nature has been tried in the fire of tribulation and found to have no fault, no defect. Thus are nature and grace of one accord, for grace is God as nature is God. He is twofold in operation and one in love neither grace nor nature works without the other, nor can they be separated.

And when we, with the mercy and help of God, are in harmony with grace and nature, we shall truly see that sin is without comparison more vile and painful than hell, for it is contrary to our fair nature. As truly as sin is unclean, so is it unnatural, and thus horrible to the sight of the soul who, as taught by nature and grace, would be fair and shining in the sight of God. But we should not be frightened by this, except insofar as fear may aid us. Rather we should humbly lament to our dear mother, who will sprinkle us with his blessed blood, making our souls pliant and calm, tenderly healing us through the process of time, as is most to his worship and our joy, without end. He shall never cease from this sweet labor until all his dear children are born and delivered. This was shown with the revelation of the ghostly thirst,⁹ the lovelonging that will last until doomsday.

Thus our life is grounded in the endless foreseeing wisdom of our true mother, Jesus with the high might of the father and the sovereign goodness of the holy ghost. By taking on our nature he brought us to life, and in his blessed dying on the Cross he bore us to endless life. From then to now, and until doomsday, he feeds and cares for us, as

⁹the ghostly thirst: i.e. in the eighth revelation.

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befits the sovereign nature of motherhood and the natural need of the child. Our heavenly mother is beautiful and sweet in our soul's sight; to our heavenly mother the gracious children with their mildness and meekness and all the fair virtues that are naturally theirs are precious and lovely. For the child does not naturally despair of the mother's love, nor is it naturally presumptuous; the natural child loves the mother and each of the other children. These, and others like them, are the fair virtues with which our heavenly mother is honored and gladdened.

I understood that in this life there is no higher condition than childhood, in its frailty and lack of strength and understanding. When at last our gracious mother has brought us to the joy of our father, the full meaning of his sweet words shall be known to us: "All shall be well, and you shall see yourself that all manner of things shall be well."¹⁰ Then shall the bliss of our mother in Christ begin anew in the joy of God, which new beginning shall last forever. Thus I understood that all his blessed children who are born of him in nature shall be brought unto him again by grace.

¹⁰all shall be well . . . : i.e. in the thirteenth revelation.

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Interpretive Essay
''All Shall be Well": The Political Implications

The Introduction to this volume attempted to consider Julian as a theologian, to locate her in a 14th-century mystical context. While she might have acceded to that approach, she would perhaps not have been pleased to see the Revelations become grist for the 20th-century political/feminist mill. Yet significant aspects of her work are relevant to such an inquiry, and cannot be ignored; in her rejection of hierarchy, dualism, misogyny and the exclusively 'masculine' nature of the trinity, Julian emerges, however inadvertently, as something of a radical.

To speak of Julian and politics in the same breath may at first seem incongruous. Certainly after becoming an anchoress she would have been expected to reject all interest in earthly matters, or even in any personal links with the outside world. As Hilton says to his anchoress-disciple in the Ladder of Perfection, "Since you have forsaken the world and turned wholly to God, you are symbolically dead in the eyes of men; therefore, let your heart be dead to all earthly affections and concerns" (1). And when, after the thirteenth revelation, Julian wonders about "a certain person whom I loved, and how she was," she is advised "as if by a friendly intermediary" to forget the individual and think only in term of the collectivity of her fellow Christians: "it is more honor to God," she then realizes, "to see him in all things than in any special thing" (XVI). This does imply an acceptance of the need for distance from the immediate concerns of day-to-day human existence.

But by 'politics' I do not mean Julian's view of peasant unrest or the Hundred Years' War. Though her own agenda was certainly not political, her work nonetheless reveals a consistent egalitarianism in a number of ways: in the use of the vernacular, and avoidance of the dense scholasticism that tended to keep theology as the domain of educated males; in the belief, implicit in the mystical experience itself, that a priest need not act as intermediary between the soul and God;

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and in the apparent rejection of hierarchy itself, whether on earth or in heaven.

The use of the vernacular for religious texts she shared with her 14th-century counterparts, and also the followers of Wyclif, who urged the translation of the Bible into English so that it would be more widely accessible.¹ Both mystics and Wycliffites although they disagreed profoundly on many points were treated as suspect, if not actively dangerous, by the contemporary establishment, because of the subversive potential of the vernacular. Specifically, few women and no one from the lower classes were likely to know Latin, and so would tend to be powerless in any society where everything of importance was written in that tongue. The consequences of vernacular use, and its implied challenge to authority, are perhaps best embodied in Chaucer's colorful and gleefully rebellious Wife of Bath, whose skill in using and abusing Scripture has caused many a man from her fellow pilgrim, the Clerk, to William Blake (who called her a "scourge") to tear his hair. But its implications were far more widespread:

The vernacular mystical writings, while partly intended for the use of unlearned clerics and religious, including nuns and anchoresses, were also read by devout lay people. . . . [In the fourteenth century] it was possible for a devout and literate layman, with the help of all the apparatus of religious instruction, sermons, and devotional literature, to take a more intelligent, educated, active, and, so to speak, professional part in the life of the Church (Pantin 253).

As it became possible for lay people probably including Julian at the time of the showings to take charge of their own spiritual lives, as they were "enabled and encouraged to attempt the practice of

¹ Wyclif believed that the Scriptures were the "ultimate authority in all questions concerning man's moral and spiritual life. . . . [So] it was the right of simple men to turn to the Bible for 'the points most needful to salvation' . . . . Wyclif sought in a different way what Rolle and the mystics were seeking to bring a more direct and personal meaning into religious life" (Baugh 272). It could be argued that Julian's Latin was not strong enough for her to actually write in it. This we cannot know, of course; but her use of the vernacular does accord with other manifestations of her egalitarianism, and her desire to write for all her fellow Christians, as will be discussed in the following paragraphs.

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contemplative prayer" (Pantin 253), so was the absolute power of the clergy qualified. Thus the liberation from Latin and scholasticism had significant political implications. Julian may not have seen eccleciastical power as requiring modification she often makes note of her fidelity to the teachings of the church (VI, XII, XV, XXI, XXIV) but what she most emphatically did want was for her work to be universally accessible:

Whatever I say about myself is meant to include all my fellow Christians, for I have learned through our lord's spiritual teaching that this is his intention. [Disregard me] and . . . behold God who, in his courteous love and endless goodness, would show [this vision] generally as a comfort to us all. . . . I wish the same benefit for every one as I first desired for myself. . . . For as we are all one, it is common and general. . . . If I look singularly to myself, I am as nothing; but in general I am united in charity with all my fellow Christians (VI) . . . .

Although Julian, or any contemporary contemplative, would of course have relied on a priest for confession, absolution and communion, and probably for spiritual advice as well, the very nature of the mystical experience excludes any outside presence. Union takes place between the soul and God directly; no intermediary is required, or indeed even possible. As we have seen, Rolle, Hilton and the Cloud's author all attempt to instruct their disciples in the correct preparation for union, but when the moment finally does arrive, these individual souls will by definition be completely on their own. In this way, too, was the centrality of the clergy threatened.

The move away from Latin during the 14th century thus generally reflected a sort of democratizing impulse: as the control of the clergy over the common folk was modified, they could participate more actively in their own religious lives. But Julian's rejection of hierarchy is more explicit. In God's sight, which was what she cared most about, every soul is equal, and the revelations are for all God's faithful no one soul has meaning on its own, and none is seen as 'holier' than the others. United in love, they comprise a body which she invariably refers to as her "even cristen." The very insistence on this term reveals Julian's belief in the basic equality of these souls. It tends to be translated as "fellow Christians" or "neighbors," but such renditions do not fully capture the Middle English significance of ''even," which has a long and specific history of meaning: "level, uniform,

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alike throughout; neither higher nor lower; equal in rank, dignity and power."² "In general," declares Julian,

I am united in charity with all my fellow Christians, and in this oneness of charity stands the life of all mankind who shall be saved. For God . . . has made all that is made, and loves all that he has made (VI).

In keeping with Julian's insistence upon the collectivity of her "even cristen," then, there is no suggestion of rank in the Revelations. Despite the fact that, as we have seen, she details three stages in the mystical process, she does not suggest that those individuals at stage one or two are inferior to those who may be at the third. Further, she rejects the idea of 'quantifying' virtue. Following Matthew's parable of the vineyard (20.116), all are equally deserving; regardless of how short a time they have served the lord, all will be equally rewarded.³ Unlike the conventional medieval model of heaven that includes a series of levels, with the most holy being closest to God,⁴ in Julian's heaven all shall apparently be as one.

God showed me three degrees of bliss that each soul who has willingly served him in any degree while on earth shall have in heaven (IX; my italics).

In this she differs significantly from Hilton, for example,⁵ who argues that conternplatives and

those who by the grace of God have entered any Religious Order . . . will have an especial glory and reward for their lives in the joys of heaven, a reward above that of other souls (54, 74).

²OED, Even (a), 113.

³ Julian does, however, suggest that God will feel particular gratitude to those who served him in their youth (VIII). Matthew's parable is also retold in the late 14th-century poem, Pearl (11.50172), in order to explain how a child who died when she was only two (and therefore had little opportunity for virtuous action) could be among the company of the blessed in the New Jerusalem.

⁴ Dante's "Paradiso" is now the best known medieval depiction of heavenly ranks, but Dionysius' 5th-century De Caelesti Hierarchia, which described the nine orders of celestial beings, was the paradigm for the Middle Ages.

⁵ Sara McNamer (1989, 245) argues that the work of Hilton and the Cloud are characterized by a "vertical way of thinking," while Julian "lifts the relationship with God out of the competitive climb."

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Similarly, in her description of heaven and the trinity, Julian's language is insistently egalitarian:

My understanding was lifted up into heaven, and there I saw three heavens . . . ; none is more, none in less, none is higher, none is lower; all are alike in bliss (XII).

And in the final revelation, even Christ seems to turn away from his own superiority, as it would involve the separation imposed by rank. In this vision Julian sees her soul, within her heart, "as large as if it had been a kingdom. In quality it seemed a noble city, [in the midst of which sits] our Lord Jesus,"

both God and man, a fair person of large stature, a noble, exalted lord. . . . My soul is joyously inhabited by the godhead. . . . Jesus shall never forsake the place that he occupies in our soul, for in us he finds his most pleasing and comfortable home (XXII).

Despite the obvious option of 'reigning over,' he prefers his familiar home within the soul.

Even more dramatic than Julian's rejection of hierarchy is her response to the virulent antiferninism of her century heir to a millenium of powerful ecclesiastical misogyny to which she would have been exposed while growing up and as a devout laywoman. According to St. Paul,

every woman praying or prophecying with her head not covered disgraceth her head, [unlike men who are] the image and glory of God; . . . women [should] keep silence in the churches: . . . if they would learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home (1 Corinthians XI; XIV).

He and the early Church Fathers were responsible for giving renewed impetus to a tradition that had earlier been reflected in such classical notions as Aristotle's division of the sexes into superior form (men), and inferior matter (women): "We should look upon the female state as being as it were a deformity." Thus Tertullian (c.160230) described women as "the devil's gateway." "Woman taught once," said Clement of Alexandria (c.150c.220), "and ruined all. On this account . . . let her not teach . . . for the sex is weak and fickle'' (O'Faolain and Martines 1973, 128132). Et cetera, et cetera.

This view, according to which women unless wholly pure, like Julian's favourite, St. Cecilia (I) were responsible for the Fall and in general prone to evil, continued throughout the Middle Ages; indeed many would argue that it is still with us today, in thinly veiled

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form. Because of their sensuality and intellectual weakness, women, even the 'good' ones, were to concern themselves only with affective devotion, and steer clear of speculative theology (Watson 1993). In her mystical apprehension of the crucifixion, Julian certainly achieves a profound emotional identification with the suffering of Christ. But as we have seen in the Introduction, she is also able to handle the intricacies of theology at least as deftly as her 14th-century male counterparts; her enterprise extends far beyond the affective.

Certainly echoes of Clement's adjuration that women should not teach, and Paul's that women should keep silence can be heard in Julian's own protestation: "But God forbid that you should take me for a teacher. Such is not my intention and never has been" (VI), and in her references to her own unworthiness:

I entreat you for God's sake to disregard the wretched sinful creature to whom this vision was shown. . . . Soon you will forget me, a mere wretch . . . and will behold Jesus who is teacher of all (VI).

Nonetheless, Julian refuses to be silenced: "Ought I to believe, simply because I am a woman, that I should not tell you of God's goodness? When I saw the vision I also saw that he wants it to be known" (VI). Nor does she feel the need of a husband to answer her questions. Rather, she puts them to God directly: "What may this [the little hazel nut] be?" she asks in the first revelation (IV); and, ''What is sin?" in the third (VIII); and, "Are any of hell's torments as painful as this?" in the eighth (X); and, in the thirteenth, "Ah, good lord, how may all be well, considering the great harm that has come to your creatures through sin?" (XIV).

After the sixteenth revelation, in apparent defiance of Paul and Clement, Julian even 'presumes' to answer two questions:

It may be asked, What are we? And I answer, If all that is not good were taken from us, we would be good. When wretchedness is taken from us, God and the soul are . . . as one. What of the earthly things that separate us from God? I answer, In that they assist us they are good; in that they shall perish they are wretchedness (XXIII).

No doubt Julian would have accepted the societal view that women should 'keep their place.' But then, as far as we know, she was not particularly interested in human, temporal society. In any case, despite the misogynist climate of her time, she found the courage to believe

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in her ability, and to insist on her right, to articulate even the most difficult of the revelations to act as God's intermediary.

Julian can be seen to take her rejection of misogyny even further in her articulation of the doctrine of the motherhood of God, which in the long text follows the fourteenth revelation (see Appendix A). In her words, "God is as truly our mother as he is our father" (LIX); specifically, the second person of the trinity, who never ceases to be the son of God, is also our mother:

I saw that the second person of the trinity is our natural mother, in whom we are grounded and rooted. . . . For in our mother Christ we profit and increase: in mercy he reforms and restores us. . . . Thus as Jesus Christ counters evil with good he is our true mother. We have our being through him where the ground of motherhood begins, and with all the sweet loving care that endlessly follows. . . . Our own mother Jesus who is all love . . . bears us to joy and endless life. . . . Our beloved mother Jesus feeds us with himself . . . courteously and tenderly with the blessed sacrament that is the priceless food of life itself (LVIII, LIX, LX).

According to Julian, our lives have three stages: natural being (created before time by the father); growth (which occurs during our life on earth); and perfection (brought about by the holy spirit). During the most difficult, second stage, when we are vulnerable and prone to error, our mother Jesus nurtures, guides and rescues us.

As Molinari points out, the motherhood similitude, in use up to the fifth century, had been revived in the eleventh by St. Anselm; "this, however, does not mean that she simply took over an idea current at that time. . . . Julian developed this conception into a doctrine not found before in such fulness, and made it a pillar of her teaching on the spiritual life" (171). Undaunted by the particular ecclesiastical tradition that viewed the trinity in wholly masculine terms, and by the more general, pervasive climate of antifeminism of the time, Julian joyously and unequivocally shares her unique understanding of the second person as mother.⁶

Somehow, Julian not only survived, but transcended her conditioning. Consistent with her understanding of the feminine nature of

⁶ McNamer (21 ff.) relates the qualities of immanence, unconditional love and mercy in Julian's work to the fact that she is a woman.

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Christ, mother as well as son, is her repudiation of dualism. Associated with this repudiation is a minimization of guilt a weapon regularly used to intimidate women, as the daughters of Eve and a freedom from the prevailing view of woman as 'other,' which would have seen her as less capable than men of identification and union with the divine.

As a prospective anchoress, Julian might be expected to reveal a measure of dualism in her thinking. The eremitic tradition was inherently ascetic; the solitary life implied a mistrust of the flesh and the physical world, and its penitential focus presumed an emphasis on personal sin. But in fact these elements are not evident in Julian's writing. She seems to have been a naturally spiritual person who chose to live alone not because she was beset by worldly temptations, but simply to be closer to God. Julian herself seems to have been incapable of anger, and in her Revelations we do not hear of God's wrath at human waywardness, but rather of his love.

Julian's denial of dualism is the corollary of her view of God as all-loving. "He is our clothing," she says,

who for love wraps and encloses us, embraces and encircles us, clings to us for tender love, that he may never leave us. . . . I understood truly that he is everything that is good (IV).

In the first showing Julian marvels as to how the little hazel nut can survive; and she is answered,

"It lasts and ever shall because God loves it; and so through the love of God does every created thing have its being" . . . . Every created thing has been made for love, and is sustained by that same love, and ever shall be without end (IV, V).

In reference to communion, Julian remarks that although "God has made the waters on earth plentiful, for our aid and our physical comfort,"

yet he prefers that we use his blessed blood to wash ourselves of sin; there is no created liquid that he likes so well to give us, since it is so plenteous, and of our own nature (VIII).

In such a passage we see love, tenderness, generosity, kinship (his blood is "of our own nature"). But though sin is mentioned, there is not a whisper of reproach; and throughout her work, though she deals extensively with the question of sin, the emphasis on guilt and penance is slight. In the eighth revelation, for example, Julian is shown the prolonged sufferings of the crucified Christ "when he was near

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death," and she too is filled with pain. Yet his purpose in revealing his pain is not to stimulate guilt: "he wanted to show it again, to fill me with compassion" (X). At the showing's end, seeing her suffering, "His countenance became joyous'' not because he enjoys her pain, but because he wants to alleviate it:

the changing of his expression changed mine, and I [became] glad and cheerful. . . . Then our lord brought merrily to my mind: "What is the point of your pain and your grief?" And I was completely cheered (XI).

Jesus is anxious that she should not be stricken with remorse at the sight of the crucifixion; even more, he wants to make sure she is cheered before moving on to the next revelation.

And during the difficult seventh showing, she is alternately filled with joy and pain. But she learns that though she feels alone, "in sad weariness at myself and irksomeness at my life," she has not been rejected. On the contrary,

This vision's purpose was to teach me the need for each soul to feel this way. . . . God wants us to know that he keeps us safe both in well and in woe, and loves us as much in the hard times as the good. For the profit of his soul, a man is sometimes left to himself, although sin is not the cause. . . . Joy is endless, while pain passes and shall be brought to nought (IX; my italics).

Julian's universalist intimations imply that the perfect reparation of the crucifixion will counter absolutely the effect of any sin; after Judgment Day, "all shall be well." Far from recoiling from the flesh as hopelessly corrupt and unlike Hilton to whom "the law of the spirit is the restoration of the reasonable soul to the image of God, while the law of the flesh is sensuality, . . . the image of sin" (132)⁷ Julian's view of the creation is wholly positive, as her apostrophe to sin makes clear: "Ah, wretched sin! What are you? You are nothing" (XXIII). God is in all things; all creation, including the physical self, has its being through God. Such a view is perhaps not surprising in the work of one who so clearly understood the powerlessness of the devil, and to whom the intimate, physical presence of Jesus was so important; but again it contrasts with the dualist view, which in its fear

⁷ See Tarjei Park's "Reflecting Christ: The Role of the Flesh in Walter Hilton and Julian of Norwich" (in Glasscoe 1992, 1732) for a discussion of Hilton's dualist tendencies.

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and rejection of the flesh had difficulty with the very fact of the incarnation.⁸

Julian's 'holistic' position, her view of the creation as wholly good in which God's love is unconditional, and in which human suffering can be seen as part of the pattern of love, not as punishment imposed by an angry God, or as random misery permitted by an indifferent one corroborates her transcendence of misogyny, fundamentally dualist in that it was based on the oppositions of good vs. evil, men vs. women, virgin vs. the "devil's gateway." It inspires both her commitment to the whole body of her "even cristen," and her rejection of hierarchy: as we all have our being through God, so must we all be equal, and equally loved. This is politics of the highest order. In her words, "Amen, par charyte."

⁸ "Aware that anti-physicalism has possibly damaging implications for the doctrine of the Incarnation," says Park (30), "Hilton states that the Incarnation must not be split, but should be loved ghostly rather than fleshly. Yet over all this there resonates a voice that feels uneasy with a relational exchange between Jesus and the flesh."

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Bibliography

As a glance at the Bibliography will show, Julian studies have blossomed in the past fifteen years. At the outset, special credit should be given as setting this blossoming in motion to a few Julian 'pioneers,' starting with Grace Warrack and her oft-reprinted 1901 translation of the long text. Sister Anna Maria Reynolds' 1956 doctoral dissertation, a critical edition of the long text, was of crucial importance in initiating a more scholarly approach to Julian's work than had previously been possible; subsequently, the 1958 Reynolds modernization of the short text facilitated early comparisons between the short and long texts, setting in motion the complex and ongoing study of the relation between the two.

In 1974, Ritamary Bradley and Valerie Lagorio launched their typewritten Fourteenth-Century English Mystics Newsletter, which has gone on to become the esteemed Mystics Quarterly. FCEMN provided the opportunity for a network of Julian scholars to be established, and for many of the early articles about her to be published including Bradley's key study, 'The Motherhood Theme in Julian of Norwich' (1976). And since 1980, Marion Glasscoe's five volumes of The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England have provided the forum for a number of longer, ambitious studies of Julian, and for the dialogue between Julian scholars to continue.

The recent growth of the Julian 'industry' may in part be due to the fact that critical editions of both the short and long text became available during the '70s. It certainly can be related to the increasing interest in women's studies, and in the recovery of texts written by women (of which extant Middle English specimens are in short supply); it also reflects the recent renewal of interest in spiritual matters, and mysticism in particular. More particularly, this proliferation indicates both an admiration for Julian's formidable intellectual power, and a delight in her sweetness and generosity; her accessibility and touching clarity that earnest desire to be understood, which sets her apart from so many theological and scholarly writers, past and present; her ability to articulate a view of the creation in which God's love is for each one of us, equally.

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Index

A

Adam's sin, 13, 45

anchoress, enclosure of, 3

Ancrene Wisse, 39n., 43n., 44n.

Anselm, 4n., 77

Augustine, 5, 5n.

B

Benedict, 4n.

Bernard, 4n.

bodily birth, 66

bodily (or physical) sights, 5, 6, 7, 8, 29, 30, 33, 34, 35, 38, 58

Book of Privy Counselling, 34n., 37n., 48n., 51n.

C

Cecilia, 19, 26, 26n., 75

Chaucer, Geoffrey

'Parson's Tale', 17n., 44n., 50n., 62n.

'Second Nun's Tale', 26n.

Christ as mother, 61-70, 77-78

as teacher, 33, 33n., 43, 47, 50, 51

Christ in Majesty, 22, 43, 55-56, 57, 75

Christ's compassion, 45, 46

joy (bliss, pleasure), 41, 42, 46, 51, 56, 79

passion (or pain), 1, 17, 25, 26, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 57, 62, 65, 67, 69, 78

thirst, 38, 46, 69

Cloud of Unknowing, 4, 8-14 passim, 72, 73, 74n.

love, 11, 12, 15

penance, 14-15

prayer, 12

reason, 11

reformation, 12

rejection of thought, 11

sin, 14-15

communion, 35, 65-66, 68, 69, 78

compassion, 12, 13, 28, 39, 45, 79

confession, 10, 49, 52, 73

Consolation of Philosophy, 47n.

contrition, 10, 12, 49, 52, 59

creation, 31, 79, 80

of mankind, 61, 62, 64, 65

spiritual, 66, 67

crucifix, bleeding of, 2, 6, 29, 31, 34, 35

paintings of, 25

placed by Julian's bed, 1, 27

D

dark night, 16n., 37, 37n., 51

David, 49, 49n.

despair (doubtful dread), 17, 18, 19, 21, 39, 56, 58, 59, 70

devil (fiend, enemy, evil spirit), 12, 13, 14, 15-16, 29, 35-36, 40, 50, 59, 60

assault by, 1, 13, 16-17, 21, 22, 55, 56-57

powerlessness of, 13, 14, 17, 35-36, 54, 56, 79

Dionysius, 5, 31n., 74n.

divine love, 11, 13, 17, 19, 22, 29, 31, 35, 37, 40, 41, 46, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 56, 58, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 78-80

dread, 18, 19, 21, 22, 31, 48, 54, 59

four kinds, 59-60

remedy for, 60

dualism, rejection of, 78-80

E

egalitarianism, 71-75, 80

essential creation, 62

foundation, 64

nature, 61, 62

F

fellow Christians, 13, 18, 32, 33, 34, 44, 45, 48, 51, 60, 71, 73, 74, 80

G

ghostly (or spiritual) sights, 5, 6, 9, 29, 31, 33, 34-35, 36, 37, 58

God the brother, 62, 64

the father, 41, 42, 46, 61, 62, 63, 64, 69, 70, 77

the holy ghost, 42, 45, 46, 47, 49, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 69

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the mother, 61-70, 77-78

children of, 62, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 77

the son, 41, 42, 46, 77, 78

the spouse, 61

God's courtesy, 13, 29, 34, 43, 49, 55, 59, 61, 63, 65, 68, 73, 77

friendliness, 29, 34, 43

gratitude, 36

pleasure, 52, 58, 61

purpose, 61

Gregory, 4n.

H

hazel nut, showing of, 20, 29, 30, 76

heaven, 33, 36, 40, 41, 49, 50, 53, 63, 66, 67, 74, 75, 78

hell, 14, 39, 50, 63, 69

holy church, 25, 32, 33, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 51, 53, 55, 59, 66, 68, 73

Hilton, Walter, 4, 8, 71, 72, 73, 74, 74n., 79

Angel's Song, 33n.

Ladder of Perfection, 8-14

passim, 37n., 50n.

reformation, 9-12

sin, 10, 14

three degrees, 8-9

I

impatience, 18, 19, 37, 54, 58, 79

Isaias, 37n.

J

John, 32n., 38n.

joy (or bliss), 7, 31, 32, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 46, 53, 56, 61, 62, 63, 65, 67, 69, 70, 79

Julian of Norwich

as anchoress, 3, 8, 71, 78

as feminist, 75-78

as teacher, 19, 22, 33

as theologian, 5-16

biographical details, 2-4

failure of sight and strength, 28

visit by religious, 54

Julian's curate, 1, 19, 27

folly, 54, 55

disclaimer, 4, 19, 32-33, 76

illness (sickness), 1, 2, 16, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 54, 55

laughter, 36

mother, 3, 19, 22, 39

pride, 44

rhetorical devices, 4

sixteen revelations:

eighth, 6, 12, 20, 21, 22, 38-41, 76, 78

eleventh, 20, 21, 22, 42-43

fifth, 6, 13, 17, 20, 21, 35-36

fifteenth, 16, 20, 21, 53-54

first, 2, 5, 20, 21, 22, 29-34, 65, 76, 78

fourteenth, 10, 20, 21, 51-53, 77

fourth, 6, 20, 21, 35, 78

ninth, 6, 20, 21, 41-42, 65n., 75

second, 6, 20, 21, 34

seventh, 6, 20, 21, 37-38, 79

sixteenth, 6, 14, 18, 20, 21, 22, 55-56, 75, 76

sixth, 6, 20, 21, 36, 73, 74

tenth, 6, 20, 21, 42, 66

third, 6, 20, 21, 34-35, 76

thirteenth, 13, 20, 21, 43ff., 68n., 70n., 71, 76

twelfth, 20, 21, 43, 63n., 66

temptation, 16-19

passim, 29, 55, 56-57

three degrees of bliss, 36, 74

three heavens, 41-42

three manners of beholding, 64

three noughts, 30-31

three stages of our lives, 62, 77

three stages (or types) of visions, 5-9

passim, 21, 33, 58, 74

three wishes, 1, 8, 12, 21, 25, 26

three wounds, 1, 27, 28

K

Kempe, Margery, 3, 4, 4n.

L

Luke, 30n, 39n.

long text, 1, 2, 2n., 17n., 18, 19, 20, 22

M

Mark, 16n., 39n.

Mary Magdalene, 25, 49, 49n.

Matthew, 34n., 39n., 74, 74n.

misogyny, sources of, 75, 76

rejection of, 76-77, 80

monism, 13, 13n.

N

nature, 64, 69, 70

co-operation with grace, 69, 70

O

oneness (or unity) in trinity, 46

of trinity, 46, 64