The Work
Revelations of Divine Love (A Revelation of Love) exists in two versions: a Short Text of approximately 6,000 words, written shortly after Julian's visions in 1373, and a Long Text of approximately 65,000 words, written after twenty years of further reflection (around 1393). Both survive in manuscripts from the fifteenth century onward. The Long Text is the more theologically developed; the Short Text preserves the immediacy of the original experience. Julian wrote in Middle English, making her the earliest known woman to write a book in the English language. The first printed edition was published in 1670 by Serenus de Cressy, though manuscript circulation had sustained the work for three centuries.
The work is organized around sixteen 'showings' (revelations) that Julian received during a near-fatal illness in May 1373. She had prayed for three gifts: understanding of the Passion, a physical illness that would nearly kill her at thirty (she believed this would deepen her compassion), and three wounds of soul - contrition, compassion, and 'wilful longing toward God.' All three were granted. During the illness, which her contemporaries believed would kill her, she received the sixteen showings in a single night and the following morning. She recovered and devoted the rest of her long life to theological reflection on what she had received.
Julian was an anchoress - a religious recluse - at the church of St. Julian in Norwich, from which she took her name (her given name is unknown). She lived in a small cell attached to the church, engaged in prayer, spiritual direction of visitors (including Margery Kempe, who visited her around 1413), and the theological reflection that produced the Long Text.
Biblical Engagement
John 19:30 - 'It is finished' - is the christological center of the Revelations. The first showings are direct contemplations of the Passion - Christ's face covered with blood and dryness, his body becoming 'dry and dark and black,' the crown of thorns, the wound in his side. Julian meditates with extraordinary detail and compassion on the physical suffering of the crucifixion, drawing on the tradition of affective Passion meditation (represented by Meditations on the Life of Christ, attributed to Bonaventure) but adding her own distinctive theological interpretation: the suffering is an act of love so total and comprehensive that it cannot be separated from joy. 'See, I am God: see, I am in all things: see, I do all things; I never lift mine hands off my works, nor ever shall, without end: see, I lead all thing to the end I ordained it to from without beginning.'
Psalm 22:24 - 'For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hidden his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard' - provides the theological framework for Julian's treatment of God's response to human suffering. The question that Julian brings to God - 'All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well: but what of those who are not saved? What of sin?' - receives this answer: God sees the suffering of the afflicted and does not turn away. Julian does not receive a logical resolution of the problem of universal salvation; she receives a relational reassurance: God is not indifferent, and the assurance 'all shall be well' is not naïve optimism but eschatological trust.
Romans 8:38-39 - 'For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord' - is the Pauline foundation of Julian's characteristic assurance. Her famous phrase is a Middle English rendering of this Pauline conviction: the comprehensive, indestructible love of God that nothing in creation can overcome.
1 John 4:8 - 'God is love' - is the theological thesis that Julian develops more fully than perhaps any other writer in the Christian tradition. The entire Revelations is an extended meditation on the meaning of this statement. Her final answer to her questions about sin and salvation, about suffering and divine love, about why God permits evil, is: 'Wouldst thou learn thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who showed it thee? Love. What showed He thee? Love. Wherefore it was showed? For Love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end. Thus was I learned that Love is our Lord's meaning.'
The motherhood of God - Julian's most distinctive theological contribution - draws on Isaiah 49:15 ('Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee'), Isaiah 66:13 ('As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you'), and the Wisdom tradition (Proverbs 8, Wisdom of Solomon 7-8, where divine Wisdom is a maternal figure). Julian extends this maternal imagery to the second person of the Trinity: 'As verily as God is our Father, so verily is God our Mother.' She develops the theology of motherhood through nursing, birthing, educating, and comforting - all the works of motherhood become attributes of Christ's work in the soul.
Author and Context
Julian of Norwich (c. 1342 - c. 1416) lived through some of the most catastrophic decades in English history. The Black Death had struck England in 1348-1349 (killing perhaps a third of the population), returned repeatedly, and left a society permanently traumatized by sudden mass death. The Hundred Years' War was ongoing; the Peasants' Revolt occurred in 1381; the early Lollard movement challenged the institutional church; the Western Schism (1378-1417) had divided the papacy. Julian lived and wrote in this context of comprehensive crisis, which gives her serene assurance - 'all shall be well' - its full weight.
Norwich was one of England's wealthiest and most cosmopolitan cities in the fourteenth century, a center of wool trade with Flemish and other continental connections. Its religious life was intense: there were numerous female religious communities, beguinages, anchorages, and a tradition of mystical devotion connected to the continental devotio moderna movement. Julian's writings reflect this rich devotional culture while transcending it in theological depth.
Themes
The two central themes are the love of God and the problem of sin. Julian is clear that sin is real, harmful, and causes suffering - both to the sinner and to God. But she is equally clear that sin is not the final word: 'Sin is behovely' (necessary, fitting, that it should be thus), but 'all shall be well.' She does not explain how; she is not given a logical resolution. What she receives is the assurance that God's love is greater than sin's power, and that the end of all things in God will justify the confidence she is given.
The hazelnut vision is the most celebrated image in the Revelations: Julian sees in her palm 'a little thing, the quantity of a hazel-nut,' and asks what it is. She is told: 'It is all that is made.' 'How may it last? for it seemed to me it might suddenly have fallen to naught for littleness.' It lasts, she is told, because God loves it: 'It lasts, and ever shall last; for God loves it. And so hath all things its being by the love of God.'
Reception and Legacy
Julian was known in her own time through her anchorage in Norwich and through her correspondence. The full scope of her theological achievement was not recognized until the twentieth century. T.S. Eliot quoted her in Little Gidding (1942) - 'And all shall be well and / All manner of thing shall be well' - introducing her to modern readers. Thomas Merton wrote extensively on her; Rowan Williams's The Wound of Knowledge (1979) placed her in the central tradition of Christian mysticism. She is now widely considered one of the great theologians of any century.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study John 19:1-30 (the Passion, the subject of the first showings), Psalm 22 (the lament psalm as prayer of the Passion), 1 John 4:7-21 (God is love), Romans 8:31-39 (nothing can separate us from God's love), Isaiah 49:14-16 and 66:13 (the maternal imagery of God), and Proverbs 8:22-31 (divine Wisdom as a feminine figure).
Further Reading
- Denise Baker, Julian of Norwich's Showings: From Vision to Book (1994) - the best scholarly study of Julian's theological method. - Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St John of the Cross (1979) - includes a profound chapter on Julian. - Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian (1987) - the most comprehensive theological study, particularly strong on Julian's account of the motherhood of God.