Jesus As 'Mother' in Julian of Norwich's Showingof Love

Chapter 15 Jesus as ‘Mother’ in Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love

Julia Bolton Holloway

Julian was a woman contemplative who lived in Norwich, England, during the reigns of Edward III, Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V (1342-c.1416), and who became an anchoress at St Julian’s Church, overseen by Benedictine Carrow Priory, both close by the River Wensum. Forbidden to preach or teach, partic- ularly under Archbishop Arundel’s Constitutions,1 she writes a samizdat text of inclusive theology, that is consonant with Judaism, Orthodoxy, Catholicism and proto-Protestant Wycliffism,2 sharing with us, her readers, her experienc- ing of God’s androgynous body knit to her own, in an autobiography she calls the Showing of Love. This for centuries had to be hidden and concealed by Brigittine and Benedictine nuns in exile from England, until it was published in 1670 by the Benedictine convert, Serenus Cressy, O.S.B.3 Few versions of the text, composed by Julian at different dates, survive. In this essay, the West- minster Cathedral Manuscript, now at Westminster Abbey, will be cited as W, followed by its foliation, the Paris Manuscript (Bibliothèque Nationale, anglais 40), as P, followed by its foliation, its rubricated passages here in bold, the Sloane Manuscript (British Library, Sloane 2499), as S1, followed by its foliation, these being of the Long Text originally written in 1387-93, the Amherst Manuscript (British Library Additional 37790), of the Short Text originally written in 1413, as A, followed by its foliation, using the diplomatic edition by Sr. Anna Maria Reynolds, CP, and Julia Bolton Holloway.4

1 Nicholas Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409.” Speculum 70 (1995), 822-864. 2 This can be concluded from her endorsement by Martin Buber, Brant Pelphrey, Thomas Merton, and T.S. Eliot, Jew, Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican. 3 Julia Bolton Holloway, Anchoress and Cardinal: Julian of Norwich and Adam Easton, O.S.B., Analecta Cartusiana 35:20, Spiritualität Heute und Gestern (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 2008), pp. 248-324. 4 Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love: Extant Texts and Translation, ed. Sister Anna Maria Reynolds, C.P. and Julia Bolton Holloway (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001), Biblioteche e Archivi 8.

This chapter will discuss the several Epiphanies, the bodily Showings, of Je- sus that Julian describes in the Showing of Love. In the first we see and hear in synaesthesia Mary singing the Advent Antiphon, “O Sapientia” to her as-yet- unborn Son within her, as seen, heard and felt through Julian’s senses, writing in the first person, and thus experienced virtually also through our own senses, in a Russian-dolls, mise en abyme fashion, of Christ within us, even within our womb, as we read. In the second scribal and iconographical Epiphany we wit- ness the trauma of his Crucifixion, again through Julian’s perceptions, both of her “understanding,” and bodily as she gazes upon the as-if-menstrual/child- birthing brown and red bleeding Crucifix held before her eyes,5 but also fil- tered through those of Pseudo-Dionysius’ “Epistle to Polycarp” supposedly witnessing the world convulsing in earthquakes and eclipses at that event,6 while reaching back to the women’s and men’s Gospels’ witnessing, as an iconographical “Sacred Conversation.” The third Epiphany, more drama than text, is in the Parable of the Lord and the Servant where the Lord is garbed in Aaron’s and the Virgin’s azure blue, seated on the ground in the Wilderness in humility, while the Servant, who begins as Adam, Everyman and Everywoman, evolves into Jesus, first in filthy rags, standing, running, falling, then finally enthroned in shot-silk rainbow hues, God’s Son, beside God, and who includes and en- closes us, writer and reader, in the Royal Kingdom of Priests,7 we being “Even Christians,” male and female, with him. The fourth Epiphany is where we find Jesus sitting in Julian’s/our soul, as King, as Bishop, as Mother, as Brother, this vision enveloped, before and after, with Julian’s terrifying hallucination of the male fiend with red hair attempting to strangle her to death. The two colors dominating the text are first red, of mortality, then blue, of eternity, not unlike the vivid twining colours of the umbilical cord at childbirth, colors em- phatically used in handwritten medieval manuscript before the cheapness of the black and white printing press. Each Epiphany, each Showing, stresses the body, of flesh and of blood, of the senses, of men, of women. Each equates the mortal body and the infinite soul of Jesus as including us, both male and female.

5 Maria R. Lichtman, “‘I desired a bodylye sight’: Julian of Norwich and the Body,” Mystics Quarterly 17 (1991), 12-19; on Julian’s Judaism, see V.D. Lipman, The Jews of Medieval Norwich (London: Jewish Historical Society, 1967), passim; Julia Bolton Holloway, Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), pp. 51-74. 6 Pseudo-Dionysius, “Epistle to Polycarp,” in The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York, N.Y.: Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 266-269. 7 Exodus 19.6, 1 Peter 2.9, Hebrews, Revelation 1.6.