THE
P RTAL
May 2011 Page 8
Julian of Norwich Anglican
Luminary
c.1342 – c.1416 Feast day: 8 November
by Will Burton
We know little
about the person who wrote the first book to be published in English by a
woman. It is thought that she was born in 1342; and we know that she was alive in 1416, when she would have
been 76 years old.
We do not even know
her name! She is known
as Mother Julian because
she was an anchoress
at St Julian’s church in
Norwich.
An
anchoress
or
anchorite is someone who
lives the hermit life in a
cell attached to a church
building, spending their
time in contemplative
prayer.
At the time Norwich
was England’s second
city, a great industrial
centre and a port, with
Julian living at the heart
of it. Not for her the quiet
pastures of the country,
for her cell would have
been surrounded by the
bustle of industrial life.
The noise of the port, the
smell of cloth being dyed;
these things penetrated
her cell.
she was known all over
England, and became
a spiritual authority.
Marjorie Kempe, that
eccentric English mystic,
visited Mother Julian at
her cell in Norwich.
We know she was still
alive in 1416 when she was
73 years old, but after that
there is no information
about her at all.
Julian lived in difficult
times
with
peasant
revolts, the Black Death,
and the popular belief
that misfortune in life was
punishment from God.
This is all in stark contrast
to Julian’s optimistic
theology, for she believed
God wanted to save
everyone.
For this she has been
criticised for being a
“Universalist”. However,
she only expressed the
Amid this medieval city’s life she became one of view that God wished to save everyone, not that
England’s greatest mystics. She came to write her book everyone would be saved.
because of an illness. In 1373 Julian became very ill.
God’s words in revelation to Julian: “…All shall be
She believed she was about to die, and on her deathbed well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things
experienced a series of visions, or revelations.
shall be well”, reflect her theological understanding.
She recovered her health on 13 th May that year and
wrote the revelations down in what has come to be
called The Short Text. At the age of 50, she wrote again,
this time a fuller account of her revelations, named
The Long Text. This longer version is a theological
exploration of her revelations.
Her main work dates from 1393 and she entitled it
Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love. Through this work
The phrase itself has become famous in Catholic
spirituality and not least through T.S. Eliot using it,
as well as Julian’s “the ground of our beseeching” from
the 14th Revelation, in his “Little Gidding”, the fourth
of his Four Quartets poems.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well.