Julian of Norwich

Portrait of a Young woman wearing a Coif  (c. 1435)

                     by Roger van der Weyden

The ancient city of Norwich has the rare distinction of being the home to two Christian mystics, namely the physician-philosopher Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) and the anchoress Julian of Norwich (circa 1342-1416).

Browne has been a perennial bloom of English literature. Diverse writers have responded to his creativity, including in modern times, Jorge Borges and W. G. Sebald. In contrast, Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love  has from being little-known in the early 20th rapidly become recognised as a work of world spiritual literature, better known than either Browne's Religio Medici (1643) and certainly more than his advisory essay Christian Morals (circa 1670).

Julian of Norwich's fame as a writer of profound spiritual insight, and as the first woman to write a book in the English language, was however, not established until the 20th century. Her Revelations of Divine Love only fully entered public consciousness through a sympathetic edition published in 1901 by Grace Warrick and later when T.S. Eliot famously quoted her in his poem  'Little Gidding' of the Four Quartets in 1942.

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

Julian of Norwich lived during the last years of the Black Death which devastated the population of Europe by one third. The later years of the 14th century were also an age of cattle disease, social unrest in the form of the Peasant's Revolt and several years of bad harvest; the harvest of 1369 being the worst in a 50 year era. Against this historical background, on May 8th 1373 aged 30, when seriously ill and preparing for her Last Rites, Julian experienced a series of  'showings' or visions of the Passion of Christ. Miraculously recovering from her near death experience, she spent many years contemplating the meaning of her Revelations which she believed were a spiritual message to be shared with all Christians.

Although describing herself as 'unlettered', the early Short Text and the later expanded Long Text of the Revelations of Divine Love are testimony to the long journey which Julian made in her life-time from visionary to profound and original theologian. Indeed, Julian's Revelations have been described as, 'the most remarkable theological achievement of the English late Middle Ages'. Throughout her Revelations of Divine Love Julian insists upon, and emphasizes her conformity to the doctrine of Holy Church.

Her mystical imagery includes the hazelnut as symbolic of God's love for humanity-

And he showed me more, a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, on the palm of my hand, round like a ball. I looked at it thoughtfully and wondered, ‘What is this?’ And the answer came, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marvelled that it continued to exist and did not suddenly disintegrate; it was so small. And again my mind supplied the answer, ‘It exists, both now and forever, because God loves it'.

It's also in Revelations of Divine Love that Julian, like Jesus in the gospels, uses the medium of parable involving a lord and a servant. Julian describes her vision of lord and servant as a parable of Man's relationship to God thus-  

The first kind of vision was this: the bodily likeness of two people, a lord and a servant, and with this God gave me spiritual understanding.... The lord looks at his servant lovingly and kindly, and he gently sends him to a certain place to do his will. The servant does not just walk, but leaps forward and runs in great haste, in loving anxiety to do his lord's will. And he falls immediately into a ditch and is badly hurt. And then he groans and moans and wails and writhes, but he cannot get up or help himself in any way. And in all this I saw that his greatest trouble was lack of help; for he could not turn his face to look at his loving lord, who was very close to him, and who is the source of all help; but like a man who was weak and foolish for the time being, he paid attention to his own senses, and his misery continued... 

Julian believed that the servant in 'good will and his great longing were the only cause of his fall', and throughout the Revelations there's an emphasis upon humanity's basically good, but flawed nature. Today, on at least three accounts, Julian is considered to be a theologian of significance. Her declaration-

'Just because I am a woman, must I therefore believe that I must not tell you about the goodness of God.'

- places her as a staunch supporter of the Christian feminist movement. Disassociated in gender from dubious and negative traits of patriarchy, Julian's highly original depiction of God as a caring and nurturing mother as well as father has resounding implications for Christian feminist theology. 

Secondly, according to Grace Jantzen, Julian's insights into spiritual growth and wholeness anticipate modern interest in psychotherapy and the attendant quest for spiritual insight which has dominated the 20th century. Thirdly, Julian's total lack of condemnation of humanity, far removed from standard medieval concepts of damnation and notions of God's wrath and judgement, distinguish her as a radical theological modern. There is no wrathful or angry God in Julian's merciful and compassionate theology,  she herself stating-

'For I saw no wrath except on man's side, and He forgives that in us, for wrath is nothing else but a perversity and an opposition to peace and to love'.

God's love for humanity is described by Julian as - 'our clothing, wrapping us for love, embracing and enclosing us for tender love'.

For Julian, sin occurs in human life not as stressed in medieval theology, because people are intrinsically evil, but because they are ignorant and lack self-knowledge. Through sin (a heavily-loaded word which many protest and recoil from upon hearing, without any real understanding of its meaning moral and spiritual wrong-doing) and the resultant consequences of sin in one's life, suffering humanity draws closer to an awareness of Christ's own suffering. In Julian's theology sin is necessary in life as ultimately it brings one to self-knowledge which in turn leads to acceptance of the role of Christ and God in one's life.

Julian of Norwich's vision of love and joy ruling God and Christ's relationship to humanity, her emphasis upon the feminine aspect of God and insistence upon orthodoxy are positive factors which will continue to attract new admirers to her spiritual classic Revelations of Divine Love throughout the world.

Julian's feast day is celebrated on May 8th in the Anglican and Lutheran Church and on May 13th in the Roman Catholic tradition.

Recommended books

Julian of Norwich  Grace Jantzen SPCK 1987 new edition 2000

Revelations of Divine Love trans. Elizabeth Spearing Penguin 1998

Consulted
The English Mystical Tradition  David Knowles Burns and Oates 1961
In search of Julian of Norwich Shelia Upjohn pub. Darton -Longman-Todd  1989

Web-Links   Wikipedia - Julian of Norwich
Web-site on Julian, her life and contemporaries Umilta

Essay on Julian and Sir Thomas Browne's literary and spiritual affinity at Umilta

Hildegard von Bingen

Today (September 17th) is the feast day of the German Christian mystic Hildegard von Bingen (1098 -1197 ) who not only wrote music but  was also a poetess, theologian, a Benedictine Abbess and all round polymath. The Sibyl of the Rhine as she was known, was consulted by princes, popes and emperors for her prophetic insight. Like Julian of Norwich, Hildegard experienced serious illness before receiving her visions. 

It was the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung who remarked -

The creative mystic was ever a cross for the church, but it is to him that we owe what is best in humanity.

Jung might have added  and her as far as Christian mystics are concerned for many notable women mystics are recorded throughout the history of Christianity. Recently, feminist interest in Hildegard has  also grown, as has her place in  'New Age' philosophies for her holistic approach to life.

The above picture entitled  Motherhood from the Spirit and the Water dates from 1165. It's an extremely intriguing quaternity of images conveying a certain numinous quality of Hildgard's mystical experiences and   shares in my view, an affinity with the Layer Monument quaternity.

The other image worth pondering upon in Hildegard's art is her Universal Man, an illumination from her Liber Divinorum Operum (1165). To my mind its an image which strongly suggests that perhaps Hildegard had the opportunity to read of the so-called Vitruvian man of antiquity, the human proportional representation which Leonardo Da Vinci based his own famous image upon. Essentially a vision of the Anthropos, or Greater Man within, of which Christ remains the most potent living symbol of; Hildegard can be seen in the bottom left corner,  receiving and writing her vision.

But with mystics one can never be too confident there was ever a previous vision to the original one presented. However, universal and cosmic, Hildegard von Bingen and her Christian faith has endured, nine centuries on, to speak deeply of the spiritual life. The mystic, as ever, has the last word on the soul.

There's been a renaissance in recordings of Hildegard's music in the past two decades, I particularly like Richard Souther's pop music interpretation Vision (1995) with Emily van Evera singing. Hildegard's music has been considerably modernized on this recording, complete with multi-tracking and synthesizers but nevertheless its a very inexpensive buy on Amazon and a great introduction and reinterpretation. I used some of its tracks as interludes when first acting as Sir Thomas Browne in the church of Saint John the Baptist, Maddermarket in December 1996. 

A more traditional approach to Hildegard's music is A Feather on the Breath of God with Emma Kirkby and Gothic Voices (Hyperion 2000). But there's a bewildering range of recording available in the catalogue at present, a veritable mine-field of good and uninspired  interpretations of Hildegard's music.

Here's the link to the Wikipedia entry on  Hildegard von Bingen

Mary's Steps

Last weekend, a rare evening's jaunt out to the theatre, a short walk to the  UEA Drama studio, located on the campus of the University  of East Anglia. The final year drama students  had staged a medieval mystery play entitled ‘Mary’s Steps’ for four nights only; the production included over 20 scenes including the Creation and Fall, the Passion of Christ and the Assumption of Mary.  Ingeniously, the play conceived by  Anthony Gash and assisted in direction by Ant Cule and Tom Francis, included several ‘Frame’ scenes in which the action focused upon a meeting between two medieval Christian mystics of the region, Margery Kempe and  Julian of Norwich. The portrayal of their quite different temperaments and approach to spiritual matters fittingly framed  the medieval mystery play.

Acted in the the round, the set was admirably configured upon the  Jungian Quaternary principle, with four entrances and exits, heaven and hell opposite each other from which  a procession of  monks, bishops, angels, Mary and Joseph, Adam and Eve, Satan and his pantomime cohorts, the Parliament of Heaven,  Christ and Pilate and personifications of the seven deadly sins among many others, occupied the central round with some fine acting.  One sensed  throughout the staging of 20 scenes that the production included a strong collaborative element amongst the cast.  The delivery of quite a difficult middle English text throughout was excellent and clear. It can’t have been easy remembering such lines as -

The twelfte is meknes that is fayre and softe. In mannnys sowle withinne and withowte: Lord, mun herte is not heyyed on lofte Nyn myn eyn be not lokynge abowte.

But in fact as the  programme notes to the production of   ‘Mary’s Step’s’ inform, the re-enactment  of what is known as the cycle of ‘N-town’ Medieval mystery plays involved research  upon quite a number of topics for its realization. These included- How to read a Church, 15^th century Ecclesiastical History, Liturgy, Music, Iconography, clothing and costume, Law and Government and Domestic arrangements. Such research contributed greatly to the credibility of the production. The end result of such labours however, involving a whole term’s rehearsal was a thoroughly stimulating evening’s entertainment, the psychological intensity of the enactment of the Passion of Christ central  to the whole drama. The two girls sitting beside me were suitably shocked and squeamish at the graphic physicality of  blood  and violence as hammer and nails were used  in the crucifixion scene. But there was also puppetry, acrobatics and humour interspersed throughout the performance.

There were also several moving passages of music, sung well if self-consciously; at times one wished for stronger accompaniment of either whistle or harp  to add colour and support, but still  a fine selection of polyphonic music, one can’t go  too wrong with  the music of von Bingen and Desprez.

But in essence the final year  UEA drama students achieved  their goal,  none other than the restoration of an important piece of East Anglian cultural history no less, a  pageant  of theological tableaux not without humour, but equally informative upon the didactic entertainment  of the Medieval age, which held their audience  enthralled as much now as during the Middle Ages. It may be quite some time before the resources and inclination are available for another scholarly  re-enactment of a medieval mystery play  in Norwich.

 In addition to the  enactment of a  medieval passion play, ‘Mary’s Steps’  included  a portrayal of Julian of Norwich (c. 1342 – 1416).  The fame of Julian of Norwich continues to grow world-wide, ever since T.S.Eliot quoted her in his poem 'Little Gidding' the fourth of his  four quartets.  It has now become an introductory commonplace to trot out the fact that she is the first woman to be identified as such, to write in the English language. Julian's ‘Revelations of Divine Love’  a recording of her ‘showing’  of the Passion of Christ, and reflection upon the meaning of her revelations, are a spiritual classic and one of the most up-beat  statements about  God’s loving-kindness. There are at least three increasing well-known texts by Julian which are frequently quoted. The exacting research of the  production  of ‘Mary’s Steps’  pinpointed Julian’s description of the human condition neatly in her parable of a lord and his servant (chapter 51 Long text). Julian's hazel-nut vision can never be quoted too often -

At the same time, our Lord showed me a spiritual vision of his familiar love. I saw that for us he is everything that we find good and comforting......In this vision he also showed a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, 'What can this be?' And the answer came to me, 'It is all that is made.' I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly disappear. And the answer in my mind was,'It lasts and will last forever because God loves it; and in the same way everything exists through the love of God'.

The contrast between Margery Kempe’s at times gushy spirituality  with Julian’s quiet, inner mystical visions was neatly marked in ‘Mary’s Steps’; it was an inspired idea to place  Margery Kempe amongst the audience, as heart-on-her sleeve, she  melodramatically  responded to  the enactment of the Passion of Christ. ‘Mary’s Steps’ concluded with Julian’s  meditation upon her famous words  -'All shall be well'; here's a  fuller  quote  from chapter 27 -

And because of the tender love which our good Lord feels for all who shall be saved, he  supports us willingly and sweetly, meaning this: 'It is true that sin is the cause of all this suffering, but all shall be well, and all shall be well,  and all manner of things shall be well. These words were said very tenderly, with no suggestion that I or anyone who will be saved was being blamed. It would therefore be very strange to blame or wonder at God because of my sin, since he does not blame me for sinning.

The whole performance  of 'Mary's Steps' lasted  almost 3 hours, so a big well-done to all involved in such a  marathon production which never remotely  flagged. The cheers of relief back-stage were also a joy to hear!

                                                               Step this way!

It was amusing to see that in order to leave the studio and re-enter the world  the audience had to walk through the dog’s mouth entrance to Hell!

Postscript:

To be honest I often have mixed feelings about my old alma mater, as one of the last new Universities to be built UEA is a mere 50 years old, against a backdrop of a City over one thousand years old . Because the University's  fragile identity felt the need to  ‘borrow’ the city’s motto for its own (Do different) without adopting the City’s place-name I feel, as a half-century resident Norvicensian, a need to  speak out here.  Recent events  have not always seen the UEA  make a  positive contribution towards the reputation of the City.  Town and gown’s relationship remains very poor  because UEA’s recent ‘doing different’ has included a  rapid succession of short-stay vice-chancellors, the reputation of the School of climatic research exposed under world-media scrutiny and now a lecturer in Law convicted and imprisoned; UEA's lack of direction will hopefully be stabilized  in developing a medical teaching relationship  with the nearby University Hospital. Must do better!

It’s very important to remember however  that this catalogue  of failures  is  solely the fault of the academic institute itself and not the fault of  its students whatsoever.

In the same week as the debate and vote upon whether student tuition fees should be hiked up, effectively pulling the draw-bridge up for access to higher education for many, here was a  university theatrical production which in its own modest way restored an important piece of cultural history to the region. It’s not exactly rocket-science to understand the importance of such artistic projects to society as a whole.  But again this is more to do with the talent of students than the  knee-jerking  compliance of academic institutions to Government directives. Sometimes those controlling the purse-strings  of finance know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Link to   photo's of costume rehearsal
 Here's a link to the excellent website dedicated to Julian, maintained by Julia Bolton Holloway Julian of Norwich website

The best paperback edition  of Julian available -

 Revelations of Divine Love ed. Elizabeth Spearing. Penguin 1998

Hazel-nut Vision

I came across a book somewhere (I'll find it soon promise) which proposed that Shakespeare knew of Julian's famous hazel-nut vision because Prince Hamlet alludes to it. There's also the suggestion that Julian was a member of the Beguine order, a continental religious community which had only one Community based in England at Norwich. Finally found the Shakespeare quote of Prince Hamlet and nutshell image!

'O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space - were it not I have bad dreams'. (Act 3: Scene 2).

There's also a Sir Thomas Browne 'nutshell' image, an imagery in essence of essence worth quoting here-

And since instructions are many, hold close unto those whereon the rest depend. So may we have all in a a few, and the Law and Prophets in a Rule, the Sacred Writ in Stenography, and the Scripture in a Nut-shell. (Christian Morals 3:4)

Here's Julian of Norwich's famous 'nutshell' vision-

At the same time, our Lord showed me a spiritual vision of his familiar love. I saw that for us he is everything that we find good and comforting......In this vision he also showed a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, 'What can this be?' And the answer came to me, 'It is all that is made.' I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly disappear. And the answer in my mind was,'It lasts and will last forever because God loves it; and in the same way everything exists through the love of God'.

Underwater

A long-time  resident Shubunkin  of the Aquarium; sadly recently gone.

The city of Norwich has historically the distinction of association with two Christian mystics. Both Dame Julian and Sir Thomas Browne's writings includes imagery of the submarine, that is, life at the bottom of the sea, perhaps because of the close proximity of the North Sea.

Julian’s spiritual meditations in her Revelations of Divine Love lead her to the seabed-

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 sea-weed and sand.

Browne’s underwater image occurs in his inventory of lost and imaginary books, pictures and objects Museum Clausum (c.1675) which includes-

9. A Sub Marine Herbal, describing the several Vegetables found on the Rocks, Hills, Valleys, Meadows at the bottom of the Sea, with many sorts of Algae, Fucus, Quercus, Polyonum, Gramens and others not yet described.

Such matching pieces of imagery could excite a student of comparative religious literature. However, this coincidence of imagery may simply be the result of both Julian and Sir Thomas having a complete knowledge of the Bible.

Julian’s seabed image, which is only in the Long Text, is probably inspired from Scripture; submarine imagery occurs in the Book of Jonah when Jonah is on the seabed, wrapped in seaweed, and in the Psalm which he cites while there; even at the bottom of the seabed God is with Jonah.