Revelations of Divine Love

Julian, who lived all her life in the English city of Norwich, wrote about the sixteen mystical visions or "shewings" she received in 1373, when she was in her thirties.

She developed her ideas for decades, whilst living as an anchoress in a cell attached to St Julian's Church, Norwich, and wrote a far more extended version of her writings, now known as the Long Text.

[4] The English antiquarian Francis Blomefield incorrectly wrote in the second volume of his History of the County of Norfolk that Julian was still alive in 1442.

[5][note 1] Throughout her life Julian lived in the city of Norwich, an important commercial and religious centre in England during the Middle Ages.

[13] Details of her life remain unknown, but she is known with certainty to have existed, as she was the recipient of a number of wills,[4] and she is mentioned in an account by Kempe, who met her at her cell in Norwich.

[15][16] Julian referred to herself in her writings as "a simple creature unlettered", a phrase perhaps used to avoid antagonising her readers, especially in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

[20] In the 14th century, women in England were generally barred from high-status clerical positions or other authoritative roles such as teaching, and their knowledge of Latin, the lingua franca of the day, would have been limited.

[21] Her life was contemporaneous with four other English mystics—Walter Hilton, Richard Rolle, Margery Kempe, and the unknown author of the work known as The Cloude of Unknowing—all of whom wrote in the vernacular.

[22] The historian Janina Ramirez has suggested that their use of Middle English was a sensible choice, considering the inexplicable nature of what they were attempting to describe, as they could "couch their theological ruminations more as personal encounters with the divine".

[23] Julian's writings were not mentioned at all in any bequests, in which personal libraries of lay or monastic books were distributed within wills, as often happened for male authors at that time.

There is no evidence that her writings influenced other medieval authors, or were read by more than a very few people, until 1670, when her book was first published by Serenus de Cressy under the title XVI Revelations of Divine Love, Shewed to a Devout Servant of Our Lord, called Mother Juliana, an Anchorete of Norwich: Who lived in the Dayes of King Edward the Third.

[37] The Paris Manuscript (BnF fonds anglais 40), a manuscript consisting of the Long Text, was probably copied near Antwerp in imitation of an early-sixteenth-century hand in c.1580, travelled from there to Rouen, was sold by the Bridgettine monastic community, and was then owned by Jean Bigot of Rouen during the second half of the 17th century, before being bought for the French royal collection in 1706.

[51][52] It remained hidden following the English Reformation, as ownership of any copies of her work would have been considered heretical by the religious authorities.

[54] As part of the sale of the library of Lord Amherst of Hackney, which took place on 24 March 1910, the manuscript was purchased by the British Museum.

[61] The American Roman Catholic priest Isaac Hecker reprinted Cressy's book in 1864, noting in his preface "how sweetly the voice of piety sounded in our good old Saxon tongue".

[62] In 1902 the Irish Jesuit priest George Tyrrell published another version of the book, which included a detailed preface.

[65] It was based on "MS Sloane 2499", introduced early twentieth-century readers to Julian's writings,[65] and was republished nine times (with revisions) before Warrack's death in 1932.

Only one other complete version of the Long Text appeared in English between 1902 and 1958: Dom Roger Hudleston's translation of the Sloane manuscript, published in 1927.

[67][68] During the 1970s, several new versions of the book were published: Marion Glasscoe, A Revelation of Divine Love, produced by the University of Exeter in 1976, and revised in 1989;[69] Roland Maisonneuve's edition, Le Petit Livre des révélations (1976);[70] Etienne Baudry, Une revelation de l'amour de Dieu: version brève des "Seize révélations de l'amour divin" (Begrolles en Mauges, 1977);[71] and A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, an edition in two volumes by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (PIMS, 1978).

[87] In the third chapter, which concludes the introduction, Julian writes more concretely about the events of her illness and her preparation for death by receiving the last rites.

The introduction ends with Julian's recounting of her sudden recovery as she lay on her deathbed gazing at a shining image of the cross.

[112] It can be considered as a commentary on the Short Text, with extensive meditations on each of the revelations written as additional passages, woven by Julian into the fabric of her original words.

"[114] The Short Text has the character of a narrative of an experience of revelation,[115] but Julian's later writings bear witness to her later perception of God, of herself, and of her evencristens ('fellow Christians'), all being developed during her years as a recluse.

[118] Most of the chapters in the Long Text begin with a short abstract of what Julian saw, followed by details of her experiences and a commentary section.

[109] The final chapter is a reflection of all of the previous ones, as explained by Julian: "This book has been begun by God's gift and his grace, but it has not yet been completed, as I see it.

This is how our good Lord wills that we pray to him, according to the understanding I drew from all of what he intended us to learn and from the sweet words he spoke most cheerfully, 'I am the ground of your beseeching.

Most of the images focus on aspects of the Passion of Jesus, for example as in Chapter 4, when Julian depicts Jesus' blood flowing from the crown of thorns: "In this sodenly I saw the rede blode trekelyn downe fro under the garlande hote and freisly and ryth plenteously, as it were in the time of His passion that the garlande of thornys was pressid on His blissid hede".

[123] Her commentaries include a discussion of the idea of 'Jesus Christ as Mother': without describing Jesus as a woman, she understands him to embody the qualities of motherhood.

Windeatt notes the difficulties for any translator wishing to maintain Julian's original content, whilst still producing a text suitable for a contemporary audience.

[130] Windeatt notes that to modern readers, Julian's sentences can seem overlong, as she wrote in such a way that ideas "appear to circle their subject in building towards an accumulated understanding".