Revelations of Divine Love. Julian of Norwich

      S. Matth. v. 3

      VERY little is known of the outer life of the woman that nearly five hundred years ago left us this book.

      It is in connection with the old Church of St Julian in the parish of Conisford, outlying Norwich, that Julian is mentioned in Blomefield’s History of Norfolk (vol. iv. p. 81): “In the east part of the churchyard stood an anchorage in which an ankeress or recluse dwelt till the Dissolution, when the house was demolished, though the foundations may still be seen (1768). In 1393 Lady Julian, the ankeress here was a strict recluse, and had two servants to attend her in her old age. This woman was in these days esteemed one of the greatest holiness. In 1472 Dame Agnes was recluse here; in 1481, Dame Elizabeth Scott; in 1510, Lady Elizabeth; in 1524, Dame Agnes Edrygge.”

      The little Church of St Julian (in use at this day) still keeps from Norman times its dark round tower of flint rubble, and still there are traces about its foundation of the anchorage built against its south-eastern wall. “This Church was founded,” says the History of the County, “before the Conquest, and was given to the nuns of Carhoe (Carrow) by King Stephen, their founder; it hath a round tower and but one bell; the north porch and nave are tiled, and the chancel is thatched. There was an image of St Julian in a niche of the wall of the Church, in the Churchyard.” Citing the record of a burial in “the churchyard of St Julian, the King and Confessor,” Blomefield observes: “which shews that it was not dedicated to St Julian, the Bishop, nor St Julian, the Virgin.”

      The only knowledge that we have directly fom Julian as to any part of her history is given in her account of the time and manner in which the Revelation came, and of her condition before and during and after this special experience. She tells how on the 13th day of May, 1373,{2} the Revelation of Love was shewed to her, “a simple creature, unlettered,” who had before this time made certain special prayers from out of her longing after more love to God and her trouble over the sight of man’s sin and sorrow. She had come now, she mentions, to the age of thirty, for which she had in one of these prayers, desired to receive a greater consecration,—thinking, perhaps, of the year when the Carpenter’s workshop was left by the Lord for wider ministry,—she was “thirty years old and an half.” This would make her birth-date about the end of 1342, and the old Manuscript says that she “was yet in life” in 1442. Julian relates that the Fifteen consecutive “Shewings” lasted from about four o’clock till after nine of that same morning, that they were followed by only one other Shewing (given on the night of the next day), but that through later years the teaching of these Sixteen Shewings had been renewed and explained and enlarged by the more ordinary enlightenment and influences of “the same Spirit that shewed them.” In this connection she speaks, in different chapters, of “fifteen years after and more,” and of twenty years after, “save three months”; thus her book cannot have been finished before 1393.

      Of the circumstances in which the Revelations came, and of all matters connected with them, Julian gives a careful account, suggestive of great calmness and power of observation and reflection at the time, as well as of discriminating judgment and certitude afterwards. She describes the preliminary seven days’ sickness, the cessation of all its pain during the earlier visions, in which she had spiritual sight of the Passion of Christ, and indeed during all the five hours’ “special Shewing”; the return of her physical pain and mental distress and “dryness” of feeling when the vision closed; her falling into doubt as to whether she had not simply been delirious, her terrifying dream on the Friday night,—noting carefully that “this horrible Shewing” came in her sleep, “and so did none other”—none of the Sixteen Revelations of Love came thus. Then she tells how she was helped to overcome the dream-temptation to despair, and how on the following night another Revelation, conclusion and confirmation [of all, was granted to strengthen her faith. Again her faith was assayed by a similar dream-appearance of fiends that seemed as it were to be mocking at all religion, and again she was delivered, overcoming by setting her eyes on the Cross and fastening her heart on God, and comforting her soul with speech of Christ’s Passion (as she would have comforted another in like distress) and rehearsing the Faith of all the Church. It may be noted here that Julian when telling how she was given grace to awaken from the former of these troubled dreams, says, “anon all vanished away and I was brought to great rest and peace, without sickness of body or dread of conscience,” and that nothing in the book gives any ground for supposing that she had less than ordinary health during the long and peaceful life wherein God “lengthened her patience.” Rather it would seem that one so wholesome in mind, so happy in spirit, so wisely moderate, no doubt, in self-guidance, must have kept that general health that she could not despise who speaks of God having “no disdain” to serve the body, for love of the soul, of how we are “soul and body clad in the Goodness of God,” of how “God hath made waters plenteous in earth to our service and to our bodily ease,”{3} and of how Christ waiteth to minister to us His gifts of grace “unto the time that we be waxen and grown, our soul with our body and our body with our soul, either of them taking help of other, till we be brought unto stature, as nature worketh.”{4}

      Julian mentions neither her name not her state in life ; she is “the soul,” the “poor” or “simple” soul that the Revelation was shewed to—“a simple creature,” in herself, a mere “wretch,” frail and of no account.

      Of her parentage and early home we know nothing: but perhaps her own exquisite picture of Motherhood—of its natural (its “kind”) love and wisdom and knowledge—is taken partly from memory, with that of the kindly nurse, and the child, which by nature loveth the

      Mother and each of the other children, and of the training by Mother and Teacher until the child is brought up to “the Father’s bliss” (lxi.-lxiii.).

      The title “Lady,” “Dame” or “Madame” was commonly accorded to anchoresses, nuns, and others that had had education in a Convent.{5}

      Julian, no doubt, was of gentle birth, and she would probably be sent to the Convent of Carrow for her education. There she would receive from the Benedictine nuns the usual instruction in reading, writing, Latin, French, and fine needlework, and especially in that Common Christian Belief to which she was always in her faithful heart and steadfast will so loyal,—“the Common Teaching of Holy Church in which I was afore informed and grounded, and with all my will having in use and understanding” (xlvi.).

      It is most likely that Julian received at Carrow the consecration of a Benedictine nun; for it was usual, though not necessary, for anchoresses to belong to one or other of the Religious Orders.

      The more or less solitary life of the anchorite or hermit, the anchoress or recluse, had at this time, as earlier, many followers in the country parts and large towns of England. Few of the “reclusoria” or women’s anchorholds were in the open country or forest-lands like those that we come upon in Medieval romances,