JULIAN of Norwich was like one in every of those serial killers when the neighbours discover the awful truth: “He all the time kept himself to himself,” they tell journalists. And, famously, Julian — one in every of the foremost women in English history — kept herself very much to herself, particularly after she selected (possibly in her thirties) to be sealed in a cell attached to St Julian’s, Norwich.
Julian became an anchoress: one anchored to a spot. A funeral service was sung as the doorway to her cell was sealed up. She walked in, but she wouldn’t walk out. This was her tomb — though perhaps also a throne. Sometimes, what appears as death to everyone else is life in disguise. Julian believed so, and risked all the pieces on it.
People got here to her window for counselling. Among her visitors was the wonderful self-publicist Margery Kempe, who was neither shy nor retiring. It will need to have been an interesting encounter between two very different visions for all times. Given Julian’s fame today, one may think quite a queue for her wisdom. Yet, through the years, she received only 4 legacies by means of thanks, which was a low figure for an anchoress. It appears that, in her own day, she was not even famous in Norwich. Other guides were more wanted and higher rewarded.
YET, it was here, in obscurity, that she became the primary woman to put in writing a book in English. Chaucer and Langland were doing it for the boys, and Julian was doing it for the ladies — although, more truthfully, she was doing it for everybody, after she was given 16 visions on her deathbed.
That was a terrible night, and he or she tells us about it. She was so in poor health and wasted that her mother declared her dead. The priest said that she wasn’t dead yet — but soon can be. He gave her the last rites, holding the cross before her.
And then, when everyone, including Julian herself, had given up, along got here “the showings”, given on 8 May 1373. Also given to Julian were 40 more years of life through which to reflect on them, live them, and record them. The Revelations of Divine Love was not, nonetheless, a book that any publisher dared print.
WITHOUT wishing to sound trite, I’d say that Julian jogs my memory of Jesus — not when it comes to character, for his or her temperaments were different. Jesus was happier with anger, for a start. Julian would never denounce anyone in the style that Jesus denounced the religious authorities; nor would she have been so rude concerning the Temple. But there’s one big similarity between the 2 of them: they were each discreet but magnificent subversives.
Jesus would say that he didn’t come to abolish the law or the prophets, that neither jot nor tittle was under threat. But he drove a convoy of camels through the law, leaving nothing standing, including the Temple.
Likewise, Julian pays lip service to Mother Church, declaring herself a faithful child of the received faith. But, in her own sweet way, she didn’t leave much standing, either. And what she particularly dismantled was the Church’s vision of God, who, in those days, was not a figure you’ll want in, or anywhere near, your private home group.
He was psychotic, unpredictable, and in constant need of placating. There were various ways to do that. You could buy an indulgence, or stroke a relic, or make your confession, or whip yourself sore, or starve yourself to death — anorexia mirabilis, because it was known. These were the things that calmed the God of Julian’s day, when terror of divine punishment was almost the mark of sound faith.
So, Julian was shocked when her visions revealed no wrath in God — none in any respect; neither judgement nor blame. “I discovered no wrath in God,” she declares. It was extraordinary. It still is. But what was she to do with this news?
THE Bishop of Norwich, Henry Despenser, was continuously furious. He had to steer some services, in fact; it goes with the job. But he was never happier than when killing the Scots, or the French. Bishops don’t do that a lot now, but, really, Henry was only mimicking the fashion of his God. Guilt and fear — these were the pillars of the Church. And God’s wrath was at the guts of each.
But what if there was no wrath? You can see why Julian had to cover away to put in writing; why her work needed to be smuggled out, to resurface eventually in a French monastery. Book-burnings had already begun; and, by the top of her life, so had the people-burnings.
JULIAN wouldn’t be read in England for greater than 600 years; so, for one in every of the foremost women in English history, she wasn’t to the fore in any respect. But it’s all concerning the climate, isn’t it? I don’t understand how you assess people. Professional success? Sermonic wizardry? Their baking of a Victoria cream sponge? I are likely to assess climate — the climate that folks create around them — for that’s the surest guide to who they’re. We create around us what we’re.
And Julian creates a climate of freedom, with neither judgement nor blame. It is difficult to assume such a proposal in her setting — the invitation to step away from the “Jekyll and Hyde” God we may ourselves be acquainted with. Here is the God who, on the one hand, loves us so very much, and, on the opposite, is endlessly offended at our disappointing behaviour. He does love us; but we do have to apologise a terrific deal.
Julian eases us away from this dysfunctional narrative. And, with rage taken out of the relational equation, the maths can accommodate something that appears and looks like freedom. “I discovered that love is his meaning,” she writes; and one way or the other we are able to breathe again.
JULIAN didn’t write about social issues. You wouldn’t have known a plague was killing half of England as she sat in her cell. Nor would you already know that social inequality created the primary organised political movement in English history, the Peasants’ Revolt; or that she lost a husband and child to the plague. Her work was neither a political tract nor a misery memoir.
Instead, she prefers to talk of affection — which can infuriate those preferring the denouncements of social prophets. Those can feel more relevant. But Julian opts for love, and the inner freedom that it brings. It has been said that her theology “starts from the sun and never the clouds”. What if God laughs on the shadows? “Between you and me, there isn’t any in-between,” is the divine whisper in her cell.
Julian was comfortable to talk of God as father, so long as we also speak of God as mother. Julian should still be ahead of us there.
“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well,” she famously wrote. I wish she was still available. Here at her window, I actually have so many questions.
Simon Parke is a counsellor. His novel on the lifetime of Julian of Norwich, The Secret Testament of Julian, is published by White Crow (Books, 30 November 2018).
