THE COMPLETE JULIAN OF NORWICH PARACLETE PARACLETE GIANTS GIANTS About This Series: Each Paraclete Giant presents collected works of one of Christianity’s The C OMPLETE greatest writers—“giants” of the faith. These essential volumes share the pivotal teachings of leading Christian figures throughout history with today’s theological students and all people seeking spiritual wisdom. Forthcoming in This Series… OF NORWI C H THE COMPLETE THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX Edited with translations by Robert J. Edmonson, cj Father John-Julian, OJN Fall 2009 For more information, visit www.paracletepress.com. ® Paraclete Press BREWSTER, MASSACHUSETTS Dedicated WITH gratitude to CONTENTS Robert LLEWELYN, MICHAEL MCLEAN, VALERIE Lagorio, AND BRANT PELPHREY Illustration: The Medieval Parishes of the City of Norwich WHO showed ME THE waY. Part ONE: Introduction and Major Themes The Complete Julian of Norwich 1 Optimism 5 2 Transcendence of History 6 First printing 2009 3 No Wrath in God 8 Copyright © 2009 by The Order of Julian of Norwich 4 Sin Has No Substance 8 ISBN 978-1-55725-639-3 5 God Will Work His Will 10 Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from The Revised English Bible 6 Mysticism Without Histrionics 10 (reb), copyright © Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press, 1989. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. 7 Blindness 11 8 Prayer 12 Scripture quotations designated nrsv are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Education of the National Council of Churches of 9 Julian’s Aims, Compared to Those of Her Contemporaries 13 Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved. 10 Texts and Abbreviations 17 Scripture quotations designated njb are taken from The New Jerusalem Bible, published and 11 Surviving Manuscripts 17 copyright © 1985 by Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd. and Doubleday, a division of Random House Inc., and are used by permission of the publishers. 12 Abbreviations Used in This Book 18 Scripture quotations and other excerpts designated bcp are taken from The Book of Common Prayer 1979, Episcopal Church USA. Part Two: All About Julian 1 Julian’s Identity 21 The map on page vii was drawn by Sister Thérèse, ojn. 2 Julian’s Education 27 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data John-Julian, Father, O.J.N. 3 Testimonial Evidence of Julian’s Existence 30 The complete Julian of Norwich / Father John-Julian. 4 Julian and Margery Kempe 32 p. cm. ISBN 978-1-55725-639-3 5 Date and Time of Julian’s Visions 35 1. Julian, of Norwich, b. 1343. 2. Mysticism. I. Julian, of Norwich, b. 1343. Works. English. II. Title. 6 Julian’s Cell and Domestic Habits 38 BV5095.J84J64 2009 7 Julian’s Church 45 242--dc22 2009000267 8 Julian’s Papacy 49 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 9 Julian’s Bible 52 All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, pho- tocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without Part THREE: The Revelations, with Annotations the prior permission of the publisher. Chapters 1 Through 86 63 Published by Paraclete Press Brewster, Massachusetts www.paracletepress.com Printed in the United States of America vi | The Complete Julian Part FOUR: Appendices 453 1 Julian’s Crucifix 379 2 The Floods in Norwich 381 3 The Pestilence (“The Black Death”) 384 4 The Holy Year and The Vernicle 386 5 Saint John of Beverley 388 6 God in a Point 392 7 Pilate and Dionysius the Areopagite 394 8 The Wounds of Christ 398 9 Pellets, Eaves, and Herring 402 10 Predestination and Salvation in Julian 403 11 God as Mother 406 12 Behovabil 408 13 The Stabat Mater 409 14 The Holy Trinity 411 Notes 413 SOURCES AND RECOMMENDED READING 1. Julian Texts and Translations 435 2. Background on Julian of Norwich 436 3. Julian of Norwich 439 4. Julian’s Cell and Monastic Habits 442 5. Julian and Margery Kempe 442 6. History of Julian’s Religious Era 443 7. The Religious Milieu of the Fourteenth Century 444 8. Julian’s Bible 444 9. The Papacy in Julian’s Time 445 10. Julian’s Church Building 446 The Medieval Parishes of the City of Norwich 11. The Norwich Floods 447 Based on information from the Norfolk Family History Society 12. The Pestilence (“The Black Death”) 447 13. About Pilate 447 14. About Denis of France 448 15. Devotional Reading Based on Julian 448 16. Novels and Plays about Julian 450 17. Dictionaries and Linguistic References 453 PART ONE INTRODUCTION AND MAJOR THEMES INTRODUCTION AND MAJOR THEMES hristopher Ricks has defined a great work of art as “one that continues to repay attention.”1 As one who has translated The Revelations of Julian of Norwich and who has read, studied, and reflected daily on the book forC over a quarter of a century, I can unmistakably assert that, in the sense of Ricks’s definition, Julian’s book wholly qualifies as at the very least “a great work of art.” In all these years, I have never picked up her book for a serious read when I have not discovered some previously undiscerned insight: like Holy Scripture itself, The Revelations clearly “repay attention.” Thomas Merton once wrote: “Julian is without doubt one of the most wonderful of all Christian voices. She gets greater and greater in my eyes as I grow older and whereas in the old days I used to be crazy about St. John of the Cross, I would not exchange him now for Julian if you gave me the world and the Indies and all the Spanish mystics rolled up in one bundle. I think that Julian of Norwich is with Newman the greatest English theologian.”2 Recently, the Archbishop of Canterbury has characterized Julian’s book as “what may well be the most important work of Christian reflection in the English language.”3 Even the Encyclopedia Britannica— not known for its editorializing—declares that Julian’s book “is gener- ally considered one of the most remarkable documents of medieval religious experience.”4 What is it about this retiring, obscure, fourteenth-century English anchoress that stirs the hearts and minds of some of the greatest spiri- tual leaders of our time? What is it that has motivated scores of books to be published about Julian in the last thirty years after over 600 years of silence? What spark has she struck in the imaginations and in the souls of moderns that has brought her finally into the very forefront of contemporary spirituality? The answer is to be discovered in the pages of her book—in her own account of the miraculous revelations granted her during a 4 | The Complete Julian Introduction and Major Themes | 5 seemingly mortal illness, and her long-awaited and carefully con- sidered understandings of the meaning and implication of those 1. Optimism visions. However, since my primary goal in this work is to increase Julian’s First, Julian is a theological optimist. Standing over against the pes- accessibility to contemporary readers, it might be helpful to suggest simism and sin-absorption of the theology of much of the Middle some of the themes and patterns of thought and theology that spring Ages—and in spite of living in the midst of devastating cultural from her insights. I do not pretend to speak for Julian—she speaks too upheaval and the collapse of centuries-old institutions and patterns of well for herself—but I want to point out some of Julian’s primary life on which entire cultures had been based—Julian stands forward as lines of thought so that readers may be sensitive to the uniqueness of a primary voice of clarity and hope. her understandings and to their amazing relevance to our lives today. When we consider what happened during her life in England, the parallels with our own time present themselves with awesome clarity. She saw the assassination of a king and an archbishop; she saw the nation-wide rioting of the Peasants’ Rebellion (and the harsh suppres- sion of that movement—especially by her own military bishop Henry le Despenser of Norwich). In her lifetime, she lived through at least three sieges of the massive Pestilence that struck East Anglia and killed over half of the population. She saw the beginning of what came to be called the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. She saw the firm rock of the papacy come crashing down—crumbling, first, in the Babylonian Captivity at Avignon, and then collapsing entirely in the Great Schism, when for a time there were three men who claimed to be the true Pope. She watched the continuing degeneration of the monasteries from centers of the highest sacrifice and devotion to England’s most self-aggrandizing landlords. She saw the results of the moral collapse of the Franciscan movement in which so many in England had placed high hopes. And she lived during the rise of England’s first heretics in the persons of Oxford’s John Wycliff and his later Lollard followers. (And, if my tentative identification of her has any accuracy, she even saw the murder of her own young husband.) The fourteenth century was the mad, crumbling, convulsive world in which this exceptional woman lived, and it was in this world that, astoundingly, she was able to accept and articulate those most famous words: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” 6 | The Complete Julian Introduction and Major Themes | 7 But there is in Julian’s optimism nothing of the self-blinding “transcendence of events.” Any specific historical occurrence is of “make believer” who simply converts pain, suffering, and sin into relative unimportance to one who does not worry over and has no fictions and pretends they are not real.