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The Short Text: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman — Julian of Norwich

Manuscript · Essential works

The Short Text: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman

A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman

Estatua de Juliana en la fachada oeste de la catedral de Norwich (David Holgate)
byJulian of Norwich

The first version of the account of the visions of May 1373, in twenty-five chapters. It narrates the three gifts requested, the illness, the crucifix and the sixteen showings in a more personal and immediate tone than the long version: Julian presents herself as a woman and apologises for teaching ('Should I believe, because I am a woman, that I ought not to tell you of the goodness of God?'). It does not yet contain the example of the lord and the servant or the theology of Christ's motherhood. It is the earliest surviving English text known to be by a woman.

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Editions and translations · 5

Englishenm

Authorship note

Autograph lost. Sole witness: British Library, Add. MS 37790 (the Amherst manuscript), copied c. 1435–1450, whose rubric says the author, 'recluse at Norwich', was still alive in 1413. Date of composition debated: traditionally soon after 1373; Nicholas Watson places it in the 1380s.

Editions and translations

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English

enm

  • Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love: The Shorter Version Ed. from B. L. Add. MS 37790

    Carl Winter, 1978

    ISBN 9783533026921

    Edición de Frances Beer.

Other works by Julian of Norwich

Sources

  • Colledge, Edmund, y James Walsh (eds.). A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich. 2 vols. Studies and Texts 35. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978.

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