Julian of Norwich

5 Julian of Norwich

It behoved that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

The first book published in the modern English language, Revelations of Divine Love, was written by a woman, an English abbess: Julian of Norwich; in it, Jesus famously tells her that, although there must be sin in the world, in the end all will be well if we simply trust Him. Like some of her predecessors and successors, Julian transgressively insisted that being a woman was no bar to writing about the love of God. ‘But for I am a woman should I therefore live that I should not tell you the goodness of God?’

Julian had a near death experience – ‘And when I was thirty years old and a half, God sent me a bodily sickness, in which I lay three days and three nights; and

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on the fourth night I took all my rites of Holy Church, and weened not to have lived till day.’ After this, Julian began to receive revelations or ‘Shewings’ which she believed came straight from God without any ‘mean’ [intermediary]. ‘These Revelations were shewed to a simple creature unlettered, the year of our Lord 1373, the Thirteenth day of May.’

I saw the red blood trickle down from under the Garland hot and freshly and right plenteously, as it were in the time of His Passion when the Garland of thorns was pressed on His blessed head who was both God and Man, the same that suffered thus for me. I conceived truly and mightily that it was Himself shewed it me, without any mean.

This transgresses, as do the revelations of all the female mystics, the Catholic idea that God would only speak to the people through a male priest, and in Latin at that. It was men like Luther and Calvin objecting to this idea that led to the Reformation and Protestantism, though the Wycliffe and Tyndale Bibles in English and the Lollards of the late fourteenth century, Julian’s contemporaries – among whom were women preachers and organisers – had preceded them. But, as other female mystics maintained, since God had entrusted his words to her, she had to express them in writing. ‘As a heart desires to the wells of water: so thou God, my soul desireth to thee . . . The Lord sent his mercy in the day: and his song in the night.’ Also like other female mystics, Julian stressed the Virgin Mary’s status as the most perfect human; a woman superior in grace to any man.

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In this [Shewing] He brought our blessed Lady to my understanding. I saw her ghostly, in bodily likeness: a simple maid and a meek, young of age and little waxen above a child, in the stature that she was when she conceived. Also God shewed in part the wisdom and the truth of her soul: wherein I understood the reverent beholding in which she beheld her God and Maker, marvelling with great reverence that He would be born of her that was a simple creature of His making. . . I understood soothly that she is more than all that God made beneath her in worthiness and grace; for above her is nothing that is made but the blessed [Manhood] of Christ.

Also, like some later woman writers, Julian (passing on God’s words, as she maintains) blames Adam rather than Eve for the woes of the world.

But in this I stood beholding things general, troublously and mourning, saying thus to our Lord in my meaning, with full great dread: Ah! good Lord, how might all be well, for the great hurt that is come, by sin, to the creature? And here I desired, as far as I durst, to have some more open declaring wherewith I might be eased in this matter.

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And to this our blessed Lord answered full meekly and with full lovely cheer, and shewed that

Adam’s sin was the most harm that ever was done, or ever shall be, to the world’s end; and also He shewed that this [sin] is openly known in all Holy Church on earth. . . Then signifieth our blessed Lord thus in this teaching, that we should take heed to this: For since I have made well the most harm, then it is my will that thou know thereby that I shall make well all that is less. . .

And as to this I had no other answer in Shewing of our Lord God but this: That which is impossible to thee is not impossible to me: I shall save my word in all things and I shall make all things well. Thus I was taught, by the grace of God, that I should steadfastly hold me in the Faith as I had aforehand understood, [and] therewith that I should firmly believe that all things shall be well.

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