The record of sixteen visions received by an English anchoress during a severe illness in 1373, and of the twenty years she then spent thinking about them. It survives in a short text written soon after and a long text that adds her reflection, and it is the earliest surviving book in English known to be by a woman. Julian holds that all shall be well while refusing to explain away sin, and her image of God as mother is worked out theologically rather than used as a figure of speech. Almost nothing is known of her life beyond what the book says.
Facts
Scholarship
Critical EditionMarion Glasscoe's 1993 edition is a standard modern scholarly text used in current criticism of the work. 1 First PublishedFirst printed in 1670 as Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love, edited by the Benedictine monk Serenus de Cressy, probably from the Paris manuscript. 1 TransmissionThe Long Text is known chiefly through a small number of manuscripts and early editions produced by English Catholic exile communities on the continent after the Reformation, since English contemplative writing of this kind had no institutional home left to preserve it at home. 1 Origins
Era of Composition Attributed Author / Compiler Composition NoteSixteen showings received in May 1373 during a near fatal illness; a Short Text was followed decades later by a fuller Long Text 1Tradition: Christian mystical (English) Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteThe earliest surviving book in English known to be written by a woman; the Long Text was not printed until 1670 1Tradition: Christian mystical (English) Text
Literary Form Transmission
Manuscript TraditionThe Short Text survives in a single fifteenth century manuscript, British Library Additional MS 37790; the Long Text survives complete only in later copies, the sixteenth century Paris manuscript and the seventeenth century Sloane manuscripts. 1 Sources
Textual NoteIts best known passage describes a hazelnut held in the hand as standing for everything that is made, sustained in being only because God loves it, an image often cited as a summary of the whole work's theology. 1 Learn More
Sixteen Showings, Received During a Near Fatal Illness
Julian of Norwich, an anchoress attached to a church in Norwich, England, describes receiving a series of sixteen visions, which she calls showings, in May 1373 during an illness so severe that she and those around her believed she was dying, visions centred on the crucified Christ and unfolding into extended reflection on divine love, sin and the nature of God's relationship to humanity. She wrote a shorter account of these showings relatively soon afterward, and then, over the following twenty years or more of continued reflection, produced a much longer and theologically more developed version of the same material, so that the surviving Long Text represents decades of sustained meditation on a single set of visionary experiences rather than a record set down once and left unchanged.
Among its most distinctive features is Julian's repeated use of maternal imagery for Christ, describing Jesus as a mother who feeds, nurtures and suffers for his children, alongside her famous, carefully qualified assurance that despite sin and suffering, all shall be well, a phrase that has become one of the most widely quoted lines in the whole of English religious writing. Julian remained an anchoress attached to her church for the rest of her recorded life, continuing to reflect on the same visions long after first receiving them.
The Earliest Surviving English Book Known to Be Written by a Woman
Revelations of Divine Love holds the distinction of being the earliest surviving book in the English language known to have been written by a woman, a fact that has made it a landmark text well beyond its specifically theological significance. Despite this importance, the work had a relatively narrow circulation for centuries; the Long Text was not printed until 1670, and it did not reach a genuinely wide readership until renewed scholarly and popular attention from the twentieth century onward, so Julian's current standing as one of the most read English mystics is substantially a modern development rather than a continuous reputation stretching back to her own time.
Glasscoe's scholarly edition of the Long Text, A Revelation of Love, remains a standard reference for the work's complex manuscript history, since the text survives in only a small number of manuscripts, none contemporary with Julian herself, requiring careful editorial reconstruction. Julian's combination of rigorous, sometimes startling theological reasoning with an intensely personal visionary voice has made her one of the figures modern readers most often turn to first when approaching medieval Christian mysticism.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Authored By
Julian's account of the showings she received in 1373, in a short text written soon afterwards and a long text reworked over some twenty years.
Sources
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