Memorable World History/Authors

Julian of Norwich

Julian (or Juliana) of Norwich, also known as Dame Julian or Mother Julian (late 1342 – after 1416) was an English anchorite of the Middle Ages. She wrote the earliest surviving book in the English language to be written by a woman, Revelations of Divine Love.

She lived throughout her life in the English city of Norwich, an important center for commerce that also had a vibrant religious life, but which during her lifetime was a witness to the devastating effects of the Black Death of 1348–50, the Peasants' Revolt, which affected large parts of England in 1381, and the suppression of the Lollards. In 1373, aged thirty and so seriously ill she thought she was on her deathbed, Julian received a series of visions or "shewings" of the Passion of Christ. She recovered from her illness and wrote two versions of her experiences, the earlier one being completed soon after her recovery, and a much longer version, today known as the Long Text, being written many years later.

For much of her life, Julian lived in permanent seclusion as an anchoress in her cell, which was attached to St Julian's Church, Norwich. Four wills in which sums were bequeathed to her have survived, and an account by the celebrated mystic Margery Kempe exists, which provides details of the counsel she was given by the anchoress.

Nothing is known for certain about Julian's actual name, family, or education, or of her life prior to her becoming an anchoress. Preferring to write anonymously, and seeking isolation from the world, she was nevertheless influential in her own lifetime. Her manuscripts were carefully preserved by Brigittine and Benedictine nuns, all the scribes but one being women. The Protestant Reformation prevented their publication in print for a very long time. The Long Text was first published in 1670 by the Benedictine Serenus de Cressy, under the title XVI Revelations of Divine Love, shewed to a devout servant of Our Lord, called Mother Juliana, an Anchorete of Norwich: Who lived in the Dayes of King Edward the Third. Cressey's book was reissued by George Hargreaves Parker in 1843, and a modernized version of the text was published by J. T. Hecker in 1864. The work emerged from obscurity in 1901 when a manuscript in the British Museum was transcribed and published with notes by Grace Warrack. Since then many more translations of Revelations of Divine Love (also known under other titles) have been produced. Julian is today considered to be an important Christian mystic and theologian.

Background

The English city of Norwich, where Julian probably lived all her life, was second in importance to London during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and at the centre of the country's primary region for agriculture and trade. During her life Norwich suffered terribly when the Black Death reached the city. The disease may have killed over half the population and returned in subsequent outbreaks up to 1387. Julian was alive during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, when the city was overwhelmed by rebel forces led by Geoffrey Litster, later executed by Henry le Despenser after his peasant army was overwhelmed at the Battle of North Walsham. As Bishop of Norwich, Despenser zealously opposed Lollardy, which advocated reform of the Catholic Church, and a number of Lollards were burnt at the stake at Lollard's Pit, just outside the city.

Norwich may have been one of the most religious cities in Europe at that time, with its cathedral, friaries, churches and recluses' cells dominating both the landscape and the lives of its citizens. On the eastern side of the city was the Norman Cathedral (founded in 1096), the Benedictine Hospital of St. Paul, the Carmelite friary, St. Giles' Hospital, the Greyfriars monastery, and to the south the priory at Carrow, located just beyond the city walls. The priory's income was mainly generated from 'livings' it acquired for renting its assets, which included the Norwich churches of St. Julian, All Saints Timberhill, St. Edward Conisford and St. Catherine Newgate, all now lost apart from St. Julian's. Where these churches had an anchorite cell, they enhanced the reputation of the priory still further, as they attracted legacies and endowments from across society.