In Our Time - Julian of Norwich

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the anchoress and mystic who, in the late fourteenth century, wrote about her visions of Christ suffering, in a work since known as Revelations of Divine Love. She is probably the first named woman writer in English, even if questions about her name and life remain open. Her account is an exploration of the meaning of her visions and is vivid and bold, both in its imagery and theology. From her confined cell in a Norwich parish church, in a land beset with plague, she dealt with the nature of sin and with the feminine side of God, and shared the message she received that God is love and, famously, that all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.WithKatherine Lewis Professor of Medieval History at the University of HuddersfieldPhilip Sheldrake Professor of Christian Spirituality at the Oblate School of Theology, Texas and Senior Research Associate of the Von Hugel Institute, University of CambridgeAnd Laura Kalas Senior Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Swansea UniversityProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:John H. Arnold and Katherine Lewis (eds.), A Companion to the Book of Margery Kempe (D.S. Brewer, 2004)Ritamary Bradley, Julian’s Way: A Practical Commentary on Julian of Norwich (Harper Collins, 1992)E. Colledge and J. Walsh (eds.), Julian of Norwich: Showings (Classics of Western Spirituality series, Paulist Press, 1978)Liz Herbert McAvoy (ed.), A Companion to Julian of Norwich (D.S. Brewer, 2008) Liz Herbert McAvoy, Authority and the Female Body in the Writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe (D.S. Brewer, 2004)Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian (new edition, Paulist Press, 2010)Julian of Norwich (trans. Barry Windeatt), Revelations of Divine Love (Oxford World's Classics, 2015)Julian of Norwich (ed. Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins), The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and a Revelation of Love, (Brepols, 2006) Laura Kalas, Margery Kempe’s Spiritual Medicine: Suffering, Transformation and the Life-Course (D.S. Brewer, 2020)Laura Kalas and Laura Varnam (eds.), Encountering the Book of Margery Kempe (Manchester University Press, 2021)Laura Kalas and Roberta Magnani (eds.), Women in Christianity in the Medieval Age: 1000-1500 (Routledge, forthcoming 2024) Ken Leech and Benedicta Ward (ed.), Julian the Solitary (SLG, 1998)Denise Nowakowski Baker and Sarah Salih (ed.), Julian of Norwich’s Legacy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)Joan M. Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter: The Theology of Julian of Norwich (Crossroad Publishing, 1999) Philip Sheldrake, Julian of Norwich: “In God’s Sight”: Her Theology in Context (Wiley-Blackwell, 2019)E. Spearing (ed.), Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love (Penguin Books, 1998)Denys Turner, Julian of Norwich, Theologian (Yale University Press, 2011) Wolfgang Riehle, The Secret Within: Hermits, Recluses and Spiritual Outsiders in Medieval England (Cornell University Press, 2014) Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (University of California Press, 1982)Ann Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England (University of California Press, 1985)Hugh White (trans.), Ancrene Wisse: Guide for Anchoresses (Penguin Classics, 1993)

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. This is in our time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this edition, you can find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoyed the programme. Hello, in the late 14th century,

Julian of Norwich had visions of Christ's suffering, and she wrote these down in an account known since as revelations of divine love. She's probably the first-named woman writer in English, and her astonishing work is vivid and bold, both in its imagery and theology. From her confined cell in a parish church, in a land beset with plague,

she dealt with the nature of sin and the feminine side of God, sharing the message she received that God is love and that all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. With me to discuss Julianne of Norwich are Laura Callas, senior lecturer in medieval English literature at Swansea University, Philip Sheldrake, Professor of Christian Spirituality at the Oberle School of Theology, Texas,

and Senior Research Association of the von Hewgel Institute, University of Cambridge, and Catherine Lewis, Professor of medieval history at the University of Huddersfield. Catherine Lewis, what do we know of Julianneum Norwich's life and what might we guess? Well, we know that she had her visions in May 1373, and she tells us that she was 30 and a half years of age then. So that puts her birth date in late 1342. She was ill for seven days and then she experienced these visions when she was on the point of death. But she didn't die. She recovered and sometime after she recovered, she wrote down her visions in, originally in a shorter version.

And then she subsequently wrote down a longer version. She tells us after having thought about the visions for nearly 20 years. So that takes us to 1393. Now how do we know that Julian wrote the text? Well, the information for that comes from the manuscript that contains this so-called shorter version of the text, which says that these visions were shown to a devout woman called Julian, who was a recluse, so that's an anchoress in Norwich, and it says that she was still alive in the year 1413. Now, we have other evidence for an anchoress called Julian at the Church of St. Julian in Norwich, and this comes in the form of will references, and they leave her bequests of money.

So the first of these is in 1394. So that means that she was an anchoress by 1394. We have three more will references to her giving her money. The last of these comes in 1416. So she obviously died sometime after 1416. The other really important piece of evidence that we have actually comes from the writings of another woman, and that's Marjorie Kemp.

So she's another woman who experienced visions. And in the late 1430s, she had these recorded in her own. own book. And she tells us that in around 1413, she made a visit to Norwich, and she actually went to visit Julian of Norwich. And the reason that she went to visit Julian is because she wasn't sure about the veracity of her own visions. She wanted to know, she says, if there was any deceit in them. And she tells us that Julian was an expert in such things and could give good advice. So that means that Julian had a reputation as a spiritual advisor. But that is really all that we know for sure about Julian. We know precious little really.

Exactly. You've outlined skillfully everything we know. Exactly. How did she become an anchoress? We know that she was an anchoress by 1394. So how do you become an anchoress? Oh, how do you become an anchoress? Well, so what an anchoress is is a woman who has chosen to live a life shut away from the world devoted to contemplation and prayer. It's not easy to become an anchoress. You have to get permission from your local bishop because it's a very demanding way of life. So you have to demonstrate to him that you have the right sort of character and the right kind of spiritual demeanour, if you will, to be able to undertake a life in which you are literally dead to the world. So the service that makes you an anchoress actually includes part of the funeral service within it.

And the idea is that that is because you are from then on dead to the world. But the crucial thing is... They called the cell was also known as a tomb, wasn't it? Exactly, yes. And in fact, anchoresses were encouraged. It sounds very, very sort of morbid, but they were encouraged to all. almost dig their own grave from the floor of the cell. And in fact, we know that sometimes anchoresses were buried in the cell that they had lived in. This is a mundane question, but I'm sure it'll cross the minds of everyone.

How did she get by in a daily way, eating and all the rest of it? Well, that's a really good question. So I said that she's dead to the world. She's shut in in this cell, but she's by no means cut off from the world. She remains really a focal part of her local community. She would interact with them regularly. Ancaresses had servants. We know that Julian had a servant because one of the will references I mentioned leaves money not only to Julian but to her servant who would act as an intermediary. And anchoresses were prestigious figures in the local community. They were dedicated to this life of prayer, study and contemplation. And people would support them. People would give them money and other gifts in return for those prayers. I didn't know she had a servant. That makes all of this. Oh, she did. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, she can't go out. So she needs somebody else to go out for her.

And not only does she offer prayers, but as Julian did for Marjorie Kemp, she would offer spiritual guidance, spiritual advice for people. It sounds to us like a really, again, a very macabre, a very weird way of life. But to be an anchoress meant that you were somebody really special, somebody really important in your local community. Thank you very much. Philip, Philip Sheldry. She's also described it a mystic. Yes.

Now can you just tell the listeners what at that time a mystic meant and how did it fit into what she was doing? Basically, a mystic was thought to be somebody who, through a very dedicated life of contemplation and focus on God, was able to be drawn into an ever deeper relationship with God, that's the first part of it, and secondly, into a much deeper insight

into what God was, who God was. And so it's basically being drawn into, through attentiveness and contemplation, into a very intense journey into the, if you like, the inner life of God. Were there special prayers for those special practices in order that she was drawn in in the way you described? Not really, not that I'm aware of. There was always an ambiguity about this because it didn't totally fit with the institution

because it seemed to give the person some kind of right to claim a knowledge of God that did that push back against the institutional church, you know? So what sort of knowledge did a numistic get that Ankeres didn't get? It was by an intensity of, if you like, of spiritual practice, particularly of contemplation. It was into a deeper level of... Sorry to interrupt. I'm not interrupting, but I really want to understand all this because it's absolutely fascinating. When you say contemplation, I know what the word means, what did it mean as far as she was concerned? What was she contemplating?

First of all, it was a fairly structured a spiritual practice that the whole monastic tradition in the West had a thing called Lexio Divina, spiritual reading, but it was basically entering into the scriptures through a series of different levels. And this would be what she was doing in how all her waking hours? Quite a lot of them, yes, yes, when she wasn't giving spiritual advice to people like Marjorie Kemp or the rest of it. Yes, she would have been very much involved in contemplative prayer and meditation on scripture, maybe a much more interpersonal sense of relationship with God, conversation. She was enclosed, that's the word you all use, in her cell, but there was a squint, those little window to, did people come to the window to ask for advice or whatever it was? There were two squints, really. There was the one onto the street, which, yes, people came to talk with her, as they would talk to any anchorite or anchoress.

But there was another squint into the church so that she was able to follow the lituried. Well, this is attached to the church, herself. It was attached to the church. and the original one was, I think, bombed in the Second World War, burnt by a firebomb. So it's a rebuild, and it's basically more like more or less a shrine to Julian. But yes, there was a little niche window into the church so she could follow the services,

but without having to go into the church physically. What do we know how and when her revelations were written down? The so-called short text was the original one, which is really just a description of the visions of these. of the revelations. But what is that just description? What does it consist of? Well, it's very, it's quite relatively brief. And she, it's thought that she wrote that down fairly soon after she experienced them. One of big things in it was that was the passion of Christ and not least an experience of seeing when she was, well, they thought she was dying and her mother was looking

after her. The local parish priest brought a crucifix and placed it by the side of her bed. And so she was able to look at that and she saw blood literally coming out of the head of Jesus. In other words, that the crown of thorns was actually producing a torrent of blood, which, of course, in medieval terms, was very much a symbol of life, pouring out of life. But the important thing was that 20 years onwards, after reflecting at great length about the original visions, she came to understand their meaning much more deeply. for example in the short text what's known as the parable of the Lord and the Servant

which is chapter 51 of the long text she doesn't put it in the short text because she didn't really understand what it was about Was it 20 years later that her revelations were written down or was it even later than that? There is an assumption that unlike Marjorie Kemp, that they think dictated because she was illiterate Dictated.

But Mager Kemp was another holy woman Yes, yes. Who cried a lot. Who came to see, yes. And who came to see Julian, yes. they think that she dictated her visions to someone who wrote it down, whereas they think that Julian was not illiterate. When she talks about herself as unlettered, they probably think she just didn't read Latin.

Thank you very much, Laura. I would like to dig into these revelations, and let's call it the short text, which is the first one when she was 30, and then we have to weigh 20 years until she broods over it, enriches it, and then that's a longer text. She wishes for three gifts.

what are the gift she wishes for? Yes. So the short text begins, as you've already said, with Julian's wish for three graces, as she puts it. And the first of those three things is that she wishes to have a minder, as she puts it, a mind of Christ. And by that she means that she would like to have a deep understanding of the passion of Christ. She wants to feel that she can relive the experience of Christ's passion

and be there at the very moment of his crucifixion, inserted, if you like, into the scene. And the reason for that, she tells us is because she wants to experience his suffering and to feel as close as possible to that. So she wants to transfer herself back to the crucifixion itself to a couple of thousand years, well, not a couple of thousand, but 12, 1,300 years at that time. Exactly, exactly. She wants to be transported in time and place and inserted into this sort of biblical scene. The second wish is that,

that she wishes to have a great bodily sickness. And she asks for this to happen to her when she is 30 years of age. And again, the reason that she asks for this bodily sickness is because she wants to sort of literalise the idea of Christ's passion in herself. So she wishes to experience the suffering of Christ on the cross in her own bodily state. And she asks for this bodily illness to be as grave as possible so that she will feel that she is about to die

and that others around her will also believe that she's about to die. And she feels that this will be important for her, for her spiritual progress in order that she can identify with Christ in a much more powerful way. Those first two wishes are predicated on a condition, however, that she mentions in her prayer. And that condition is that she recognises that these wishes are not according to the normal,

common course of prayer, as she puts it, that they deviate from what is expected normally from the church. And so she makes it clear that those two first wishes are based on Christ or God's own willingness for her to have those two prayers answered. The third wish that she relays to us is that she wishes to have three wounds. And she wants the wounds of contrition, compassion and a willful longing for God. Why does she call these wounds? Well, she calls them wounds because she's inspired by the life of an early Christian martyr called St. Cecilia. And St. Cecilia was a third-century Roman martyr, a virgin martyr, who refused to become betrothed as her family wished her to be.

They were forcing her to marry a pagan person. And because she resisted this life that was being imposed on her, she was executed. But the guards who were tasked with bare, beheading her, had three attempts at swiping off her head with their sword, and they were unsuccessful in doing so three times. And the law of the land at the time was such that you were only allowed three attempts. So Cecilia had to sit and wait to dive very slowly and very painfully. And there's something about Cecilia's tale that Julian clearly was inspired by.

Can you give us an idea of one of the revelations that is bibbit to you and will be bitty to the listeners. Most of the revelations, as Phillips already mentioned, are focused on the passion of Christ. And one of the things that's characteristic about the ways in which Julian describes her revelations is that she often begins in a very small, specific way and then moves outwards. And I think the 10th revelation is a good example.

And I'll read an example from the Middle English text. With a glad cheira, your good lord, lock it in te. his seeder and behelda enjoying. And with his swater looking, he led forth the understanding of his creature by the same a wounder into his seed within. And there he showed a fair, delectable plaza, and large enough for all a mankind that shall be savoured to rest in pace and in love. And therewith he broochta to minde his dareworthy, blood and his precious water which he let purer all out for love.

So what Julian is saying to us in this revelation is that God is Jesus is not only being envisioned by Julian in this visionary encounter, but he is leading her sight towards his side wound. He's encouraging her to look into his wound, which he describes as being the resting place for humanity. And so it's a way of Christ in the vision explaining to Julian that in this side is where humanity can reside and this is the love and the sacrifice that he's made for humankind. Catherine, what might a vision like as a mentor and what do we know what she as it were did with it? In terms of what it means for a woman to have visions, I think it's important to note that in some quarters there was a feeling that for a woman to claim that she had had visions

of the divine was problematic because of long-standing ideas about women's alleged inferiority. So this sense that women have neither the intellectual or the moral capacity to judge whether their visions really are from God or whether they come from the devil. And the way around this was to get male clerical authorization.

And often this comes in the form of the scribe. And Phillips mentioned that Julian doesn't talk about a scribe at all. There's no indication of a scribe, but she is very careful throughout, both versions of her visions, she reiterates that she adheres to all the tenets of Holy Church. But she's clearly aware in the short version that the fact that she's a woman could be a problem. And she actually says at one point, she basically says, I'm only a woman, I'm unlearned, I'm feeble, I'm frail, but yet I must tell you about the goodness of God.

And in fact, she even she sort of challenges the audience and she says, just because I'm a woman, should I not tell you of the goodness of God? But what's fascinating is that in the long version of the text, she removes that reference. She describes herself still as a simple and unlearned creature, but not as a woman. So we've said that she's been thinking about these visions for at least 20 years. She may have even taken longer than that to write down the long version. And I think there's something going on here about a development of confidence. And I think it's also worth going back to what Marjorie Kemp says about her.

Marjorie Kemp says that Julian is an authority on vision. So after over 20 years of study, Julian clearly feels that she can just be bolder in the way that she states her visions clearly without having to make that caveat. Thank you, Philip. Why was the passion so central to Julian's idea of Christianity? Julian basically believed, not that simply that she'd been mandated to offer these teachings, but rather that this was the duty. you know, she had the visions not for her own benefit, but actually in order to pass on this, in some respects, quite radical shift in how we understand God. And she used the praise even Christianity, to all Christians.

Yes, fellow Christians. Yes, all her fellow Christians. And she thought that she'd been shown all this for this reason. That's because basically there was quite a lot of radical shifts, and no doubt we'll come back to that in what she came to see. But why the passion? Because for her, the truth of God... Can you explain precisely what the passion is?

Passion is the crucifixion and the death and punishment of Jesus of Nazareth, who became known as the Christ, the anointed one of God. Excellent. And basically she understood Jesus as being the incarnation, i.e., the way in which God, entered into the human narrative, the human story in a direct bodily way. And therefore, emphasis on the bodily, seeing Jesus' sufferings in terms of flowing blood, the pouring out of his own life for us was very much an expression of her believing that, as it were, God pours himself out for us in love.

Laura, in what ways does she associate God with motherhood? This is Julian's way of developing on quite a long tradition of, Jesus as a mother. We have first references to this idea in the Old Testament where God is described as a sort of nurture and protector of humans. And then in the Gospels, Jesus is referred to as a mother hen. And this gets picked up in the 12th century by theologians like Bernard of Cervaux and Ansel of Canterbury. And these writers develop this idea about Christ as a nourisher and a nurture and a birther of humankind. And Julian picks up on this and develops the idea of God as a feminine God, as a mother figure. And she does this primarily in terms of the imagery in the text in two ways. The first way is through blood and through bodily fluids. And she often describes Christ in a very feminine sense. As Phillips just mentioned, many of her visions of the passion involve very visceral descriptions of bleeding,

She describes the blood as being hot and everflowing and fresh, and there's this sense of immediacy and endlessness of the pouring out of the blood. And sometimes the blood is also connected with water from the side of Christ as well. So there are illusions in those descriptions of physiological birthing, amniotic fluids, and the idea that the body of Christ can also mean a feminine sort of maternal. enclosure of humans, if you like. And Julian describes the way in which she's told by Christ that humans are endlessly birthed through him, but never birthed, never being separated. And as a mystic, as a devotee of God,

the ultimate aim is union with Christ, is to be as close as possible to Jesus and to achieve this very, very sort of integral experience of Christ. Do you want to answer? Yes. It's very clear that when she talks about Jesus' as mother, in the way you've described it, she's actually talking about God as mother. She doesn't separate what she wants to say about Jesus from God, as it were, seen as a whole, if I can put it that way. So God is our mother.

And that was very much counter to the kind of preaching that most people in her time had to listen to, which was, you know, God is angry, God will punish you, you are sinners, And that's going to be, you know, it's basically destructive. How unique was she in this? Well, I think as we've already said, in many ways, she's not unique in the concepts. And many of the ideas that she uses, or the images that she uses, we also see in writing of other mystic and visionary women.

So we've mentioned Marjorie Kemp, but I suppose another obvious comparator is Bridget of Sweden, who actually died in 1373, so the year that Julian had her visions. She had many visions as well. She also very much emphasises the bloodiness of the crucifixion. She talks about the crown of thorns and blood running down Christ's face very similarly to Julian of Norwich. Bridget's writings were very widely known and Julian almost certainly knew of her. But the fact that they are talking in similar terms doesn't mean that Julian, as it were, copies Bridget.

And in many ways we could say then that Julian focusing on the crucifixion is conventional. But actually it's also quite different to what other women mystics do with it because Bridget and other women mystics, they take us through a kind of episodic narrative of Christ's passion, like literally blow by blow. But with Julian, it's more of a starting point for a much more overtly theological discussion of the ramifications of the crucifixion.

So she's talking about sin and redemption. It's a, as I say, it's a very theological discussion. it's sophisticated intellectually. It's, as we've seen, it's quite complex and abstract. And in that way, she is quite different to most other women mystics. And in fact, if we didn't know that the text was written by Julian, who's a woman, if it was an anonymous text, it would undoubtedly be attributed to a man because it is a much more learned response to the crucifixion.

Philip, Philip Chaldre, can you tell us something more about Julie? understand of sin. Ah, yes. Well, it's very interesting because she, when she was asking to, she believed that sin was there, that it was a reality, but when she asked to see,

she could not see sin. And so she was led to say, if I can't see sin, what is sin? And this is me interpreting it. Sin for her is more an absence of something, an absence of embracing God's love. Human activity is certainly imperfect. for Julian, that's certainly true,

but she doesn't see that human nature as essentially sinful in the sense of evil needing to be punished or in some way otherwise. Laura, her imagery is very powerful. Can you give us one of two examples?

One of the sort of techniques that Julian uses in her imagery is to start with the small, with the minuscule and to work outwards. And one of the most famous images in the text is that of the hazelnuts and the hazelnut vision. And so Julian describes having a vision in the first revelation of seeing a little thing in the palm of

her hand like a hazelnut. And she understands through God in the vision that this little thing is all that is made. What is all that is made mean? All that is made means all of creation, absolutely everything that has ever been materially made by God is contained within this microcosmic object. So it's a sort of a macrocosmic idea within this microcosmic hazelnut-like thing. And it's not a literal hazelnut. It's like a hazelnut in the palm of her hand. And so Julian sees this hazelnut-like thing in the palm of her hand as being so tiny that she's anxious that it's going to disappear before her eyes because

it's sort of almost fading into oblivion. And she goes on to describe the fact that she understands this hazelnut-like thing as having three properties, that God made it, that God loves it, and that God keeps it and cares for it. And she uses this idea to extrapolate out some understandings about the difference between the created world and the sort of spiritual or heavenly realm. And so she's told by God in this wonderful vision that she needs to make nothing what is made. One needs to do the thing that Julian uses is the word norting.

She says we need to nought everything that is made in order to find our rest in God rather than in the created world. This happens in the short text when she's 32. Does it happen again before she writes many years later? the longer text? She does have two more sort of revelatory moments in her life. She has a revelatory moment in 1388 and again in 1393. And the 1393 revelation sort of helps her to understand one of the revelations which she has, which is about a lord and a servant. And many people have used that information to extrapolate out the idea that perhaps we might think of her beginning, the writing of the long text at that moment because it seems to be a moment of meditative clarity

following those two subsequent revelatory moments in her life, which is another reason why Julian's text is so unique really in the sort of context of medieval devotional vernacular literature in the sense that she blends together visionary experience, which is very immediate and visceral, with this theological explication. Can we come back to you, Catherine, the famous phrase, all should be well and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well?

Was that revealed to it directly by God? Yes, it was. So those were, I'm walking on glass here, but are these words she hears said by him? Yes. And they are the most famous words from her visions now, and in many ways have become... What does it actually mean?

Well, well, one thing to notice straight away is that so that's, I'm sure the listeners probably know the formulation that you just gave, all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. The phrase actually in variations crops up many times throughout the visions and to pick up on what you were just talking about with Laura. Yes, she's literally having a discussion, a conversation, a dialogue with God and this all comes back to what Philip was talking about in relation to sin because this is where these words appear. And it's as part of this discussion, she's obviously trying to reconcile the teachings of the church about sin and as you say about punishment with what she

knows of God, who is goodness and who is love, and who does not blame humans for sinning. And she basically says, yeah, you know, how could God create sin, essentially? And Christ replies, so they're having a discussion, Christ replies and says, well, sin is profitable. And that's when he says, all shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Sin is profitable. Sin is profitable. Can you explain that further? You learn from sin.

But you said originally you said that sin was the absence of things. Well, this is where it gets complicated. It is and it isn't, I think, because Julian still recognises that people will sin. And in fact, God brings to her mind a list of famous sinners. So we have David and we have St. Paul and we have John of Beverley as well. interestingly. And what Julian understands from this is that they all sinned terribly, but then after their repentance, they gained greater rewards and greater honour than they would have done if they hadn't sinned. Although Julian is then very careful to tell the reader that that doesn't

mean that they should go out and commit sins in order to obtain greater rewards. But still, Julian's clearly not happy, because then later on, she comes back to this, all shall be well. And she basically says, well, I don't think it's possible that all shall be well. And at this point, God just says to her, well, what's impossible to you is not impossible to me. I will keep my word and I shall make all things well. And exactly shall. And at that point, Julian says, right, I have to just trust that all things will be well. But what I really love about all of this is, again, that it is a dialogue.

it's not, sometimes when the phrases said today, it can sound a bit trite. Oh, you know, everything will be fine. But the first time that God or Christ says it to Julian, she doesn't just accept it, she keeps pushing back. And we really see her probing intellect at work. And even when she's finished the long text, she says that actually she doesn't think it is finished. And I think that this is an issue that she must have carried on

thinking about and worrying at for the rest of her life. Philip, you'd take that. Well, just that, you know, I think that's right, that all shall be well is if you like something that God is promising, ultimately. It's not sort of, oh, don't worry if you've done this thing, tomorrow it'll be fine. That's not how to understand it. It's at the end of time, God will do a great deed to make all things well that are not well. But it's very much at the end of time rather than tomorrow. Is there any intimation of what the great deed will be?

No. No. She has to trust that this great deed will be performed and that it will make, it shall make all things well. But she has to take it on trust. So it's nothing to do with the passion. Well, it needs to do with the passion because the passion is the vehicle that will ultimately make all things well.

But it's the Holy Spirit, isn't it? The Holy Spirit is going to do this fantastic thing. But we don't know what the thing is. No. And I think the other thing that's very important, important about that whole thing is that there are those who ask the question, well, does

Julian think that everyone in the end will be saved? In other words, is she a universalist? And that means not just every Christian, but every created person. And that's ambiguous. I think she's very careful not to be too

dogmatic about that. But she's very important to her. Why is it so important to her? Because I think it's the ultimate revelation of what she believes. she's been shown throughout all her visions and showings and revelations that God is love and only love and there's nothing else to be said about God that you know and that's it is it yes although I think but I think as I say that she that she still hasn't quite got to the bottom of it you know that she's still thinking about it and that she's still reflecting on it but yeah that's absolutely

and she says at the end you know that that is the meaning of the whole text and I mean she repeats it over and over again, that that was the meaning and the meaning of God is love. And the meaning of everything that she saw is love. Laura, she lived, as we understand, into her 70s, which was a fine age for the time, I presume. Was there another stage? We've had the short text, we've had the longer text.

She's moving into a different phase of her life. Did something else come out towards the end of it? Not that we know of. No, we don't know anything beyond. the fact that Catherine mentioned at the beginning about the wills. We have four wills that show various bequests to Julian in her older age. Do we know what she needed with them? One was from Lady Uffert, wasn't it?

That's right. Isabella, Countess of Suffolk. And yes, she left some money in Julian's name. So, you know, what that tells us, I suppose, is that Julian had some sort of repute by that point, at least only in the locality, if not in the wider sense. We don't think her work was particularly well read in the medieval period. It's much, much later when her text start to be sort of copied in, not until the 17th century in northern France, actually,

by some exiled Benedictine nuns. And so in Julian's own time, we know very little about the reception of her text and how far people were reading her writings. But what we do know is that she was having money left to her in these wills, we know, of course, that Marjorie Kemp visited her in 1413, and she was told, Marjorie was told by God to go to see Julian in 1413 in a revelation of her own. So there was a reputation that Julian had acquired by that point,

at least in the sort of local community, of being an expert and having some sort of authority by that point. So we know that she would have been seen as being a sort of a wise authoritative counsellor, if you like, but we don't know anything more about her life beyond that point. Sorry, you want to say something? No, no, no. The reputation faded for a century to and then came back. Can you tell us when it came back and why it came back? Catherine.

The text was essentially preserved, as Laura has said, thanks to some exiled English nuns who copied out the long text, and it gets printed as well in the 17th century. So people are aware of the text, and it gets discussed sort of 17th, 18th, 19th century, But what's really crucial in the early 20th century is that a woman called Grace Warwick produces a modern English translation of the text. And that's what really starts to get Julian much better known. And it's from this point really that more people are aware of her writings, more people are aware of her as a visionary.

So Julian's scholarly reputation didn't really take off until the 1980s. and this was as part of a much wider interest, a burgeoning interest in the lives of medieval women more generally. And since the 1980s, there's been a huge amount of scholarship on Julian. So we have not only editions of her original text, but there are a number of modern English translations. So she's regularly studied. And I think it's an interest in her from a sort of theological and visionary and religious perspective,

but also in her as a writer. She's very admired as a writer. She even gets called, I think, the mother of English prose as a kind of counterpart to Chaucer being the father of English poetry. The two of them are almost direct contemporaries. And so I think there is, as I say, as part of that interest in medieval women in general, Julian has now come to be seen as in some ways representative of them, but also in many ways exceptional and distinctive as well.

Would you go along with that, for that? Oh, yes, I would. I mean, she is thought to be the, well, she's considered to be the first woman to have written in vernacular English that has a text that survived. So what the consequences of that? She's unknown. I'll be general. She's unknown. Her works have not been referred to at all.

And then suddenly up she comes through the earth and she blooms and grows. What are the consequences among you scholars and all of the consequences for thought about religion and about the passion? at that time. She tells us a lot about women's engagement with devotional trends, but also with theology. And initially, reactions to her held a lot of people wanted to argue very strongly that she must have had a specifically academic education. But actually, the work that's been done in the last few decades on women's book ownership and networks of book borrowing among women shows us that you didn't have to have a sort of formal academic education to have access to some really quite complex theological ideas. And again, we keep mentioning Marjorie Kemp, but she's a very good

example of this because we know that her priest read to her and gave her access to a lot of important mystical theology. And so in many ways, Julian, it can be seen as representative of that. But on the other hand, there is something, again, very special about the quality of her insight, about her perspicacity, I think, which again is deemed to set her apart. I mean, she, She's actually, apparently, she has been considered as a possible candidate to be a doctor of the church in the Catholic Church. And in fact, her visions appear as part of the catechism, I believe, you know, in sort of discussions of sin. So she's become a real authority figure. Yes.

And I think the other thing to say is that Julian's visions are the first real example we have of sort of female visionary writings in England for about 200. years. So what's quite remarkable about this is that on the continent, on the European continent, there's been a flourishing and an explosion of female piety and female devotional texts in the 13th and 14th centuries. People like Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena, the Helftanunans, the Begienes in France and Belgium. And these texts are already circulating around Europe, but they're not really making their way to England until the very, very end of the 14th century. and into the 15th century, and at that point they start to be translated

into the English vernacular in various monastic contexts, and all of a sudden, Julian's writings and experiences are contextualised in this broader sense of a European tradition. And I think that's also what's becoming more and more important in scholarship now is positioning Julian within that wider context. Well, come at the end of our time now, but briefly, what's her legacy now? That's a difficult question to answer quickly. Julian's legacy now, I think, for a woman who shut herself away from the world, she's hugely visible. She's probably the best-known medieval mystic now, possibly with the exception of Hildegarde of Bingham. She's admired as a very important theologian. She's admired as a great writer as well. She's also, though, somebody who I think her writings mean a lot to many Christians today, but you don't have to be Christian, I think, to find something inspiring in Julian's.

writings. Her legacy in the 21st century has grown even more widely in the sense that there are now myriad modern recreations of Julian's life and works. There are collections of poetry, plays, novels, lots and lots of different sort of literary and artistic productions that respond to Julian's life and her writings. And so that tells us that there's something very resonant still about Julian's experience and her text that's still making people turn back to it. I'd just like to end actually with a sentence from Julian's own text and from her the last chapter of her long text, because I think it sums up where she got to, but I think it also sums up what attracts a large number of people these days,

whether Christian or not. She said she wanted to know in what was our Lord God's meaning. And 15 years after more, I was answered in spiritual understanding, And it was said, what? Do you wish to know your Lord's meaning in this thing? Know it well. Love, what's his meaning? Who reveals this to you? Love. What did he reveal to you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For love. Remain in this, and you will know more of the same,

but you will never know different without end. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Philip Sheldray, Catherine Lewis and Laura Callas, and to our studio engineer Emma Harth. Next week, it's Germinal, M. Milzola's great novel set among the striking miners in northern France. Thank you very much for listening.

And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. And my opening question, and perhaps my only real question is, what did you not say that you'd like to have said? Starting with you, Philip. Well, interestingly,

Yes, interesting. You've asked that question. One of the other things that I think is very central to Julian is that there are two ways of seeing. There is our way of seeing, which is reality, which is very limited and is not only by context, but also by our own weakness, but there's also in God's sight. And in God's sight is the actual reality of reality,

if you see what I mean. So she contrasts these two ways of seeing, and her theological side is attempting to try and communicate to her readers what she believes reality is in God's sight, not rather than in our very limited way of seeing things. I'd like to talk about Julian's cat, if I may. So if you go online and you look for a portrait of Julian, We have no medieval portraits of her, obviously.

But if you look for a portrait of her online, almost all of them will show her with a cat. And this has become her emblem. So it's almost become the way that you know that you're looking at Julian rather than anyone else. She is also sometimes shown with the hazelnut, which Laura mentioned. And of course, she's sometimes shown with a book. And she's sometimes shown with all three,

so juggling a hazel nut, a cat and a book. So the cat, why the cat? Well, one reason for representing Julian with a cat is that we know from an instructional text that was written for anchoresses that they were permitted to own a cat. And it seems pretty clear that this is for practical reasons. If you are living enclosed in a cell, you do not want to have mice and rats running around.

So therefore you are permitted to own a cat. But I think there's something a bit more to it than that and maybe something more about the way that a cat actually is a very good emblem for the aromitical lifestyle. Cats were associated with hermits from a very early stage of the church, actually. And if we think about what cats are like, with the exception of lions, they are not social creatures. They prefer to live on their own. They're very independent.

They're very self-reliant. And I think there's a level on which, I mean, yes, cats can be lovely, and everybody loves, not everybody loves cats, I realize. But, you know, cats are very popular on the internet, certainly. But I do think there's something more serious. I think that actually a cat is an appropriate emblem for Julian on that level because actually I think it does speak to her status as somebody who, yes, has to be self-reliant, particularly psychologically. Laura, do you say that?

Yes, I think one thing that would be worth mentioning is the fact that it seems quite clear that Julian had some sort of medical knowledge. Her descriptions of Christ on the cross in particular suggest to us that she was familiar with particular medieval traditions of writing called tribulation writings. There's a writer who we think probably influenced her text, who is William Fleet, who wrote a text called Remedies Against Temptations. And medieval clergymen and theologians were trained to some extent in natural philosophy and medicine as well. So she may have had these ideas sort of disseminated to her through her religious advisors,

but she also may have accumulated them through her lived experience through perhaps watching people die. You know, she's lived through the time of the black death as a child and later recurrences of the black death as an adult. So it's very likely that she watched people die. And we can speculate about the fact that she may or may not have had experience of childbirth as well. So a lot of the descriptions in the text have this slightly medicalised quality where she's describing Christ dying, for example,

in the same way that you might find in a medical text that's describing the signs of death. Philip, you want to come back to anything? No, only that you referred to the possibility she may have had a child or she may have given birth. And there are speculations. I mean, it's unprovable. That she may well have been married at some point.

All this is conjecture, though, isn't it? It is conjecture, absolutely. But, you know, the fact that the fact that such a high proportion of men died in her time, both from the plague, but also because of the war, the war of France. It strikes me that when you mentioned the plague, the bleakness of the sermons at that time, the bleakness of the outlook at that time,

was such that her, all should be well, comes like as a radical opposition to this and brand of fire in a dark world, doesn't it? Yes, it really does. It's kind of testament, I think, to the, the way in which Julian has come over many, many years to sort of recognise that there's, this, she feels from her revelations and from all of those years of reading and meditating that there is something reassuring about everything that she was shown in 1373.

And she feels very strongly, I think, that that reassurance is something that she needs to communicate to her readers. There's something else that I wanted to get in, but I didn't, is that, of course, it is the 650th anniversary of Julian's revelations. And we didn't know that when we did the programme? Sorry, well, oh, did you not? Oh, I assumed it was deliberate. But I wanted to get...

The BBC is Mr. Chance to celebrate an anniversary. This is unheard of. But the reason I wanted to mention it in part is because it relates back to the issue of legacy and there's been a whole programme of events put on by the friends of Julian of Norwich who are based at St Julian's church in Norwich, which is the church where she lived

and where, as Philip mentioned, well, not the cell has been recreated, but there's a chapel on what is believed to be the site of the cell. And I think it's worth mentioning that this has now become a pilgrimage site in its own right. And actually people from all over the world travel to the church to see where Julian lived, essentially, and to see where she thought, where she studied, where she wrote.

And that's another dimension of her popularity. And the fact that, again, going back to those depictions of her, she's not a saint, but she is very much recognised as a holy woman and somebody who is deserving a veneration. Okay. Well, thank you all very much indeed. Thank you. I think Simon's going to come in with his contribution.

Mind you, his contribution is constant. Does anyone want your coffee? Tea. Tea would be lovely, thank you. Three teas. Three teas, Melvin? I think I'll have a cup of coffee for a change. I'm teed up today.

Thank you all very much. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed it. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. What do you see when you look at the numbers on a graph? Imagine if they could help you reveal the guilt of a serial killer. This most chilling graph I've ever seen. Or prove that global climate change is not a hoax.

It was such a visceral indicator of the profound impact that we were having on the planet. I'm Hannah Frye. And in this series for BBC Radio 4, Uncharted will reveal how the humble graph has changed your life. I will be your guide through a collection of extraordinary discoveries, which shifted the world with a single line on a page. From BBC Radio 4, this is Uncharted. Subscribe on BBC Sounds.