All Shall Be Well: Julian of Norwich Medieval Mother of Theology

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The remarkable woman known as Julian of Norwich (1342– 1416) implored her readers: “quickly forget me.”¹ Thankfully, her wish was not fulfilled, and her work, Revelations of Divine Love, enjoys more popularity now than it did in her time. This medieval woman did not set out to write theology but, after experiencing powerful spiritual revelations, was compelled to share them along with her reflections on divine love. Reputed to be the first female writer in English, Julian has left a rich legacy. Using distinctly feminine language, she provided profound insights on spiritual direction, prayer, the Trinity, the incarnation, sin, salvation, and sanctification.

Her Life

Little is known about Julian’s life, not even her real name. She was likely unmarried or widowed and living with her mother at the time of her visions or “showings” as she called them, and she later served as an anchoress at St. Julian’s church in Norwich.² Julian received these revelations in AD 1373 in or near this thriving medieval city. Its location on the east coast of Anglia meant that trade was plentiful. However, all was not well. England’s war with France and three separate recurrences of the bubonic plague in Norwich led to deep poverty, population loss, and political uncertainty.

The church in Norwich was also troubled; papal rivalry led to extravagant selling of indulgences and eventual war. Those who criticized the papacy, like John Wycliffe’s followers, were burned at the stake.³ Women who taught theology could also be burned as heretics.⁴ Commoners lived in great fear of judgment day; “death bed” paintings often depicted demons surrounding an ill person.⁵ There was a strong emphasis on sin, guilt, eternal punishment, and confession.⁶ Understandably, the spirituality of the time focused on coming to terms with death.⁷ Given a culture surrounded by war, illness and death, a church in trouble, and a theology focusing on sin and judgment, England in the Middle Ages was in desperate need of assurance that “all would be well.”

During this troubled time, Julian fell gravely ill. On her assumed deathbed with a priest in attendance, she experienced sixteen “showings”—visions that were a mix of visual (blood flowing from the crucifix) and spiritual. Soon after her recovery, Julian recorded these revelations in a Short Text (ST); some twenty years later, after much meditation, she wrote a longer, more detailed version—the Long Text (LT)—that included practical guidance and scriptural interpretation. She had made three pleas: to see Christ “in the flesh” and “suffer with him,” to experience “bodily sickness,” and to receive the wounds of contrition, compassion, and “an earnest longing for God” (ST 1). Both her illness and her visions seemed to be answers to these pleas.

The Revelations of Divine Love, both the Short and Long Texts, were written to fellow Christians, or “those who would be saved” (ST 1, 6, 13; LT 9). In them, she described three types of visions: “bodily sight,” “words formed in my understanding,” and “spiritual sight” (LT 9). Although she viewed herself as simple and uneducated, her writing attests otherwise. A woman at that time would have had minimal formal education, but she demonstrated great familiarity with Scripture and the teachings of the church to which she frequently professed and advised submission.

Her Theology

In contrast to the surrounding grim spiritual atmosphere, Julian’s theology was enfolded in love and centered on the cross. Her monastic style of writing used imagery and allegorical methods of interpretation,⁸ as seen in her parable of the servant.⁹ Her concepts are strongly scriptural, well-integrated, and portrayed using distinct feminine language. In the Long Text she introduces the book as a “revelation of love” (LT 1) and ends it by summarizing the purpose of the showings: “Our Lord’s meaning was love” (LT 86). In a dark and difficult time, Julian emphasized that love describes God’s attributes, his actions, and his very being. All creation is as small as a hazelnut in comparison to God’s love; God is “endless love uncreated” (LT 44). In Julian’s sixth vision, depicting a lord holding a banquet, she described the Lord as “homely and courteous” (LT 14). In Middle English, “homely” is more than “familiar” or “intimate,” conveying an image of being “at home” with God, a uniquely feminine characterization for the time. In contrast to the medieval focus on fearing God, Julian was astonished that he would be so intimate with a sinful creature. Like Jesus’s command to “abide” in him as branches in a vine (John 15:1–17), she declared that God is our home, and we are his home. Elsewhere, she likened God to our clothing and believed our souls are knitted to God, again using feminine imagery (LT 5, 6, 53).

Julian also presented a unique image of Christ as Mother (LT 59, 60). She described three aspects of motherhood and connected them to specific works of Christ: creative foundation, incarnation (Jesus’s assumption of human nature), and acts of “mothering” like feeding and disciplining. Like our natural mothers, Christ brings us into the world and nurtures us with tender love and wisdom, even suffering with us. Although other theologians had previously pointed out some feminine characteristics of God,¹⁰ Julian was one of the firsts to consider motherhood an attribute of God.

Her Relevance Today

In the spiritually thirsty and distressed world of her day and ours, Julian’s writing leads us to Christ for a refreshing drink of love and a hand-knit baby blanket. It powerfully invites us into the contemplative life, demonstrating loving, listening, and theological toughness. Revelations of Divine Love is full of guidance that is practical, consistent, and well-integrated with her theology.

Julian encouraged Christians to seek God with diligence, patience, and absolute trust: “God, of your goodness, give me yourself” (LT 5). She noted three ways to know God: through reason, revelation, and the teachings of the Church—a concept ahead of its time, anticipating Wesley’s quadrilateral for theological reflection.¹¹ Above all, Julian focused on the cross, recommending contemplation of the passion of Christ and reminding us of its help in spiritual warfare. God’s love is greater than we can imagine: “we are his joy” (LT 22), and we can relate to him as father, mother, and lover.

Julian also recognized that faith is not simple. She both modeled and taught that we can simultaneously question and accept the divine mystery, remembering that what is impossible for us is not impossible for God. Thus, we can “rejoice in him for everything which he reveals and for everything which he conceals” (LT 36). We should “wonder reverently,” “suffer meekly,” and accept some mysteries (LT 34, 47). “It is God’s wish that we should know in general terms that all shall be well, but it is not God’s wish that we should understand it now” (ST 15).

Julian offered much compassion to those suffering but no trite answers. She affirmed the experience of alternating joys and sorrows, believing that God protects and loves us in both. “All is well” only when we patiently trust in the triune God. Julian did not promise a trouble-free life but reassured us that the fiend is overcome and that, eventually, all our suffering will be taken away. Those who are suffering, therefore, are encouraged not to “fret,” “for if we knew him and loved him, we should be completely at rest” (ST 20). Rather than anxious or doubtful fear, we are to have “reverent fear” which “softens and comforts and pleases and rests us” (ST 25). She urged those in trouble to run to their heavenly Mother for help and to seek rest, not in created things, but in God, our true rest. Well ahead of modern psychology, she built self-esteem by pointing to the esteem God has for us. In contrast to her culture, she advised Christians that if we do sin, we are not to be unreasonably sorrowful, but to repent discreetly and then immediately turn to contemplate Christ.

Julian also taught Trinitarian prayer: we are to love God, praising him for creation, pray to Jesus for mercy, and supplicate the Spirit for help and grace. Knowing God and knowing self are intertwined: “prayer unites the soul to God” (ST 19, LT 43, 46). “Prayer is a new, gracious, lasting will of the soul united and fast-bound to the will of God” (LT 41). She exhorted readers to “pray earnestly even though (we) do not feel like praying” because it pleases God (LT 41). Julian also offered a model of how prayer works: God instills a desire within us, so that we then pray and give him the opportunity to fulfill that desire. Consistent with her theology of union, prayer involves reciprocity:

I am the ground of thy beseeching; first, it is my will thou shalt have it; after, I make thee to will it; and after I make thee to beseech it and thou beseechest it. How should it then be that thou shouldst not have thy beseeching? (ST 19, LT 41)¹²

People today are still seeking. They devour food, alcohol, drugs, and passive entertainment but remain unsatisfied. Even Christians too often busy themselves in church activities instead of spending time in passive delight in the Lord. Julian of Norwich’s work invites readers to “eagerly, attentively, and humbly contemplate God, who in his gracious love and eternal goodness wanted the vision to be generally known to comfort us all” (LT 8). The church needs to reintegrate theology and spirituality and refocus on the compassion of the cross. Despite the mysteries we must accept, we can rest in the assurance of the triune God that “all shall be well” “for the goodness of God is the highest object of prayer and it reaches down to our lowest need” (LT 6).

Notes

1. Elizabeth Spearing (translator). Revelations of Divine Love (Penguin, 1998), Short Text, ch. 6, henceforth referred to as ST; Long Text is abbreviated as LT.
2. An anchorage was a room attached to a church housing someone who had devoted their life to prayer and solitude. One window of this room faced the outside where another woman could seek counsel. As an Anchoress, Julian would have followed the Anchoresses Rule Book or Ancrene Riwle which advised modesty, simple clothes, simple food, and some provision of spiritual advice. See Sheila Upjohn, In Search of Julian of Norwich (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1989), 14–8; Brant Pelphrey, Christ our Mother: Julian of Norwich (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1989), 19–22.
3. Upjohn, In Search, 26–8; Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich (SPCK, 1987), 10–11.
4. Joan M. Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter (Crossroad, 1991), 19–21.
5. Upjohn, In Search, 46, 7.
6. Nuth, Wisdom’s, 117.
7. Jantzen, Julian, 59.
8. Pelphrey, Christ, 28, 34; Nuth, Wisdom’s, 9..
9. This describes a lord who sends his servant on an errand. The servant falls in a ditch and is distressed mostly because he cannot see his lord (LT 51, 52); see also Nuth, Wisdom’s, 9, 23, 24, 33.
10. E.g. Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux; see Jantzen, Julian, 117–9; Nuth, Wisdom’s, 43, 4, 94; Francis Beer, Women and Mystical Experience in the Midde Ages (Boydell, 1992), 137, 152.
11. The “Wesleyan Quadrilateral” is John Wesley’s theological framework comprised of Scripture, Christian tradition, experience, and reason. Albert C. Outler (ed.), John Wesley (Oxford University Press, 1964).
12. The original Middle English captures this idea best.