JULIAN of Norwich was like one of those serial killers when the neighbours discover the awful truth: “He always kept himself to himself,” they tell journalists. And, famously, Julian — one of the foremost women in English history — kept herself very much to herself, particularly after she chose (possibly in her thirties) to be sealed in a cell attached to St Julian’s, Norwich.
Julian became an anchoress: one anchored to a place. A funeral service was sung as the entrance 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 everything on it.
People came to her window for counselling. Among her visitors was the glorious self-publicist Margery Kempe, who was neither shy nor retiring. It must have been an interesting encounter between two very different visions for life. Given Julian’s fame today, one might imagine quite a queue for her wisdom. Yet, over the years, she received only four legacies by way 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 sought after and better rewarded.
YET, it was here, in obscurity, that she became the first woman to write a book in English. Chaucer and Langland were doing it for the men, and Julian was doing it for the women — although, more truthfully, she was doing it for everyone, after she was given 16 visions on her deathbed.
That was a terrible night, and she tells us about it. She was so ill and wasted that her mother declared her dead. The priest said that she wasn’t dead yet — but soon would be. He gave her the last rites, holding the cross before her.
And then, when everyone, including Julian herself, had given up, along came “the showings”, given on 8 May 1373. Also given to Julian were 40 more years of life in which to reflect on them, live them, and record them. The Revelations of Divine Love was not, however, a book that any publisher dared print.
WITHOUT wishing to sound trite, I would say that Julian reminds me of Jesus — not in terms of character, for their temperaments were different. Jesus was happier with anger, for a start. Julian would never denounce anyone in the manner that Jesus denounced the religious authorities; nor would she have been so rude about the Temple. But there is one big similarity between the two of them: they were both discreet but magnificent subversives.
Jesus would say that he did not 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 would want in, or anywhere near, your home group.
He was psychotic, unpredictable, and in constant need of placating. There were various ways to do this. You could buy an indulgence, or stroke a relic, or make your confession, or whip yourself sore, or starve yourself to death — anorexia mirabilis, as 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 at all; neither judgement nor blame. “I found 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 constantly furious. He had to lead some services, of course; it goes with the job. But he was never happier than when killing the Scots, or the French. Bishops don’t do this so much now, but, really, Henry was only mimicking the rage of his God. Guilt and fear — these were the pillars of the Church. And God’s wrath was at the heart of both.
But what if there was no wrath? You can see why Julian had to hide away to write; why her work had to be smuggled out, to resurface eventually in a French monastery. Book-burnings had already begun; and, by the end of her life, so had the people-burnings.
JULIAN wouldn’t be read in England for more than 600 years; so, for one of the foremost women in English history, she wasn’t to the fore at all. But it’s all about the climate, isn’t it? I don’t know how you assess people. Professional success? Sermonic wizardry? Their baking of a Victoria cream sponge? I tend to assess climate — the climate that people create around them — for that is the surest guide to who they are. We create around us what we are.
And Julian creates a climate of freedom, with neither judgement nor blame. It is difficult to imagine such an offer in her setting — the invitation to step away from the “Jekyll and Hyde” God we may ourselves be familiar with. Here is the God who, on the one hand, loves us so very much, and, on the other, is endlessly angry at our disappointing behaviour. He does love us; but we do need to apologise a great deal.
Julian eases us away from this dysfunctional narrative. And, with rage taken out of the relational equation, the maths can accommodate something that looks and feels like freedom. “I discovered that love is his meaning,” she writes; and somehow we can breathe again.
JULIAN did not 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 know that social inequality created the first 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 speak of love — which may infuriate those who prefer 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 not the clouds”. What if God laughs at the shadows? “Between you and me, there is no in-between,” is the divine whisper in her cell.
Julian was happy to speak of God as father, as long as we also speak of God as mother. Julian may 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 have so many questions.
Simon Parke is a counsellor. His novel on the life of Julian of Norwich, The Secret Testament of Julian, is published by White Crow (Books, 30 November 2018).
