Julian of Norwich

Julian of Norwich (c.1342-c.1413) is considered to be one of the greatest English mystics. Her book The Revelations of Divine Love is believed to be the first book written by a woman in the English language.

Her life and writings

By 1394 a woman, whose real name we do not know, had taken up residence as an anchoress or solitary in a cell attached to St Julian’s church here in Norwich. Save in one major respect, we know very little about her except that until her death, some time after 1416,

her life was bound up with what went on in the church where she lived, and that
she was visited by a great number of people who sought her advice on living the Christian life.

According to her own account, in May 1373 she became seriously ill and in the course of her illness received a major spiritual revelation which took the form of fifteen ‘shewings’ on one day and a further shewing the next. She recovered from her illness and wrote down her experiences. Her account of these profound spiritual insights survives in two versions and is known to us today as The Revelations of Divine Love of Julian of Norwich (she took the name of the church where she lived).

The first short draft she wrote down very soon after the revelations themselves. The second and much longer text contains the fruit of many years of sustained meditation and reflection on her experience; this cannot have been committed to writing until after 1393 at the earliest. This Long Text, as it is known, is a very coherent, theologically informed and profoundly prayerful meditation on God’s love for his creation and shows clearly that Julian was a remarkable woman - educated, deeply spiritual but sensible and practical in wrestling with the problems of sin and evil.

Her thoughts have struck resonances in the hearts of many men and women throughout the Christian world across the centuries, and modern editions of her book are widely read. Her uniquely unsentimental use of the fairly common medieval notion of Christ imaged as mother, which she sees at work in human motherhood and in the way in which God allows people to get hurt while shielding them from ultimate harm, has caused her to be seen (mistakenly) as a sort of proto-Christian feminist.

More importantly she exemplifies the very best in the English mystical tradition of the 14th century and lay spirituality at its most refined.

Quotations from The Revelations of Divine Love

Her utter confidence in God’s love is summed up in her most quoted saying: ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well'.

But perhaps more typical is this: ‘Lord God, I understand three ways of contemplating your motherhood. The first is the foundation of our nature’s creation; the second is your taking of our nature, where your motherhood of grace begins; the third is your motherhood at work. And in that, by your grace, everything is penetrated, in length and in breadth, in height and in depth, without end; and it is all one love'.