Julian of Norwich - a woman for our century 

May 2023 marks the 650th anniversary of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love – Julian is believed to be the first female author to write in English. 

Sheila Upjohn is an author who set out to find the reason why Julian’s book had been hidden for centuries, and why it is so startlingly relevant today 

 
When the 600th anniversary of Julian of Norwich was celebrated back in 1973 most people thought she was a man. Even the few who realised she was a woman knew almost nothing about her.

I was one of them, which was surprising since I’d lived in Norwich nearly all my life and studied mediaeval language and literature at university.  

But in those pre-internet days students of literature got our information from books, and the Oxford Companion to English Literature, our go-to book for information, had just two lines on Julian: “JULIANA OF NORWICH 1343-1443 anchoret; she wrote XVI Revelations of Divine Love, two manuscript copies of which are in the British Museum.” 
 
What has happened in the intervening years to make her so well known today? My eyes were opened when I was invited to join the committee to plan Julian’s 600th anniversary. And I was invited as a punishment. I’d written an article in the local paper opposing the plan to deconsecrate almost all the 32 mediaeval churches in Norwich and turn them into suitable secular uses, but without any proposal about where the money for their future maintenance might be coming from.  

But Alan Webster, the Dean of Norwich and my neighbour in the Close was an old hand at dealing with trouble makers. Next morning he rang me: 'Sheila,' he said. 'Since you’re so keen on prayer, perhaps you’d like to serve on a committee.' So after that I had to read her book.
 
I found it had been written by a woman who had been taken so gravely ill at the age of 30 that her mother and her friends had gathered at what they thought was going to be her death bed. In that illness Julian had a series of visions of Christ and knew that it was he himself who showed them to her.  He showed her his suffering, and told her that he suffered willingly for love.

The visions lasted from four in the morning until noon. Julian recognised that what she had been shown was meant for everyone, not just for her, and so she knew she had to write it down. Most people were unlikely to have been taught to read and write in those days - least of all women - and Julian may even have had to learn her letters before she could begin. She became an anchoress living in a little room beside St Julian’s church.
 
Part of the popularity of Julian’s writing today comes from the fact that she was the first woman to write a book in English, although in her final version of her book (for she wrote a short version which she revised later) she doesn’t even mention this. It was an unheard of thing for a woman to do - and to write it in English, too.  English today is the international language (luckily for us!) but in the 14th century it was a local dialect.  

Latin was the international language of scholarship. The language of diplomacy and of the court was French. English was the working language, the language of the streets. It did not even become the official language of England until Julian was 20 years old.  So to be the first woman to write a book in English was not something to be proud of, but a shaming admission she did not know Latin.  
 
Julian wrote her book by hand, and it was copied out by hand (printing had not been invented) and passed round secretly by hand. It could not be made public because it appeared to contradict the teaching of the church - the penalty was burning at the stake - even though Julian herself and those who read it prayerfully understood it all agreed with Holy Scripture and was founded on it.  

The church in those days - and sometimes indeed in our own - preached an angry God who punishes us for our sins. Julian was shown that God loves us, and looks after us tenderly as a mother looks after her child. She was shown that Christ is beyond male and female, untroubled by the distinctions that obsess us in our day. Julian wrote: 'And so I saw that God rejoices that he is our father, and God rejoices that he is our mother, and God rejoices that he is our true husband, and the soul his beloved wife. And Christ rejoices that he is our brother, and Jesus rejoices that he is our saviour.'
 
She continues: 'But often, when our falling and our miserable sin is shown to us, we are so ashamed we scarcely know where to put ourselves. But our loving mother does not want us to run away from him then, for he does not love us less… And here I understood that our Lord looks upon his servant with pity, not with blame.

'For this passing life does not ask that we live completely without blame and sin. He loves us endlessly, and we sin continually, and he shows us our sin most tenderly… And if we do not begin to feel better straight away, we can be sure he is behaving like a wise mother. For if he sees it is better for us to sorrow and weep, he allows us to be sad for a while, pitying us and sorrowing with us, for love.'
 
Perhaps only a woman could have been shown God in these terms. And perhaps it is because we are no longer confined in rigid male/female roles that her book has become so widely read today. Whatever the reason, Julian’s book has become known and loved in the 21st century at a moment when we are longing to be sustained by Julian’s God-given promise 'All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well' - the words that are embroidered on the screen used at the holiest moment of the Coronation.

 

Sheila Upjohn is the author of In Search of Julian of Norwich, first published in 1989 and updated in 2023, and numerous other works about Julian

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