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Julian of Norwich

c. 1342 – c. 1416Historically documented person

English anchoress and writer (c. 1342–after 1416). In May 1373, gravely ill, she received sixteen visions of Christ's passion and of God's love, which she recounted in two versions: a Short Text and, after decades of meditation, a Long Text, the Revelations of Divine Love, the earliest surviving book in English written by a woman. She lived enclosed beside the church of St Julian in Norwich. Her theology of trust ('all shall be well'), of a God without wrath and of the motherhood of Christ has made her a classic author.

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

Estatua de Juliana en la fachada oeste de la catedral de Norwich (David Holgate) · CC0

In their words

«It behoved that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.»

Texto largo según la versión modernizada del Sloane 2499 de Grace Warrack (1901), cap. 27 (decimotercera mostración)

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

Their central idea

'All shall be well': behovely sin: In the thirteenth showing Julian asks why God in his wisdom did not prevent sin, which, she thinks, would have left everything well.

See in context

Biography

5 min read

A woman without a name of her own

Of the author of the earliest surviving book in English written by a woman we know neither her baptismal name, nor her parents' names, nor her exact birthplace. We call her Julian because that is what wills and copyists call her, and because she lived enclosed beside the church of St Julian at Conisford, in Norwich; she may have taken the name of the church's patron saint, as other recluses did. What we know for certain she tells us herself: that in May 1373, when she was 'thirty winters and a half' old, she received a series of visions during an illness that brought her to the edge of death. From this it follows that she was born towards the end of 1342.

Norwich was then one of the most populous cities in England, a centre of the wool trade with dozens of parish churches, houses of all four mendicant orders and a Benedictine cathedral priory. Julian's youth coincided with the Black Death, which struck the city in 1349 and returned in the following decades, with the Hundred Years' War and, in 1381, with the Peasants' Revolt, harshly suppressed in Norfolk by Bishop Henry Despenser. None of this appears explicitly in her book, but many readers have heard in her insistence that 'all shall be well' an answer to a wounded world.

The three gifts and the illness

Julian relates that as a young woman she had asked God for three graces: a vivid recollection of Christ's passion, as if she had stood at the foot of the cross with Mary Magdalene; a grave bodily illness at the age of thirty; and three 'wounds': true contrition, compassion and longing for God. The first two requests she forgot; the third she always kept. At thirty and a half she fell ill. For three days and three nights her condition worsened, she received the last rites, and her mother, among others, watched over her. The parish priest set a crucifix before her and told her to look on the image of her Maker and Saviour and take comfort. Her sight darkened except around the cross.

Sixteen showings

Then, on 8 or 13 May 1373 (the manuscripts differ), she saw the crown of thorns bleed, and with that vision began a series of sixteen 'showings': fifteen between four in the morning and mid-afternoon, and the last one the following night. They combine images of the passion of extraordinary physical realism (blood falling like raindrops from the eaves, the face drying and changing colour), inner words and 'ghostly sights' without images. In one of them she sees in the palm of her hand something the size of a hazelnut: 'it is all that is made', and it lasts because God loves it. Once recovered, she told a religious that she had 'raved', and at once repented of having denied what she had seen; that night she suffered the assault of a fiendish vision and received the last showing, which confirmed the earlier ones.

Two books

Soon afterwards she wrote a first account, known today as the Short Text, narrating the visions and their most immediate sense. For decades she went on meditating on them. She says that 'fifteen years after and more' she received the answer to her question about the meaning of it all: 'Love was his meaning'. Twenty years after the visions, less three months, she understood the example of the lord and the servant, a parable she had left out of the first account. The result is the Long Text, eighty-six chapters that turn the experience into a theology: sin, which is 'behovely' and yet has no substance; a God in whom she sees no wrath; the motherhood of Christ; prayer that 'ones the soul to God'. Nicholas Watson has proposed moving the writing of the Short Text into the 1380s and extending that of the Long Text well into the fifteenth century.

The anchoress of St Julian's

We do not know when she was enclosed in the cell attached to the church of St Julian, which belonged to the Benedictine nunnery of Carrow. The first documentary mention dates from 1394: the will of Roger Reed, rector of St Michael Coslany, leaves her two shillings. Further bequests follow in 1404, 1415 and 1416, the last from Isabel Ufford, Countess of Suffolk. An anchoress lived for life in one or two rooms, with a window onto the church to follow Mass and another onto the street to counsel those who came, and one or two servants saw to her needs. It has been suggested that she had earlier been a nun at Carrow, or a widow and mother, given the precision with which she writes about the rearing of children; both are conjectures.

Margery Kempe at the window

Around 1413 she was visited by Margery Kempe, the turbulent mystic of King's Lynn, who came to ask whether her tears and revelations came from God. The Book of Margery Kempe, dictated some twenty years later, recalls that 'Dame Julian' listened to her for several days and advised her to obey God, to trust in his goodness and not to be troubled by others' unbelief, because whoever always doubts is like the wave of the sea. It is the only portrait of Julian by someone who knew her. In that same year of 1413, according to the rubric of the Short Text manuscript, its author was still alive; her death, after 1416, left no documentary trace.

A fragile transmission

The Short Text survives in a single manuscript copied in the mid-fifteenth century, the so-called Amherst manuscript (British Library, Add. MS 37790). The Long Text reached us thanks to the English Benedictine nuns exiled at Cambrai and Paris in the seventeenth century, who copied and kept it: from that milieu come the Paris manuscript (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Fonds anglais 40) and Sloane 2499 and 3705 in the British Library. The Benedictine Serenus Cressy printed it in 1670. Grace Warrack's edition of 1901 restored it to readers, and the critical edition by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (1978) established the text of both versions.

The theologian of trust

The twentieth century turned her into a classic. T. S. Eliot closed 'Little Gidding', the last of his Four Quartets, with her words on behovely sin and on all being well; the Church of England commemorates her on 8 May, and Benedict XVI devoted a general audience to her in 2010. The church of St Julian, destroyed by German bombing in 1942, was rebuilt with a cell that now receives pilgrims. Beyond the labels she has been given (feminist, universalist, ecological) there remains a voice that called itself 'a simple, unlettered creature' and wrote with a theological precision rare in her century, holding at once to the Church's teaching and to a vision of God in which she found no wrath.

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. · Watson, Nicholas, y Jacqueline Jenkins (eds.). The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press / Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. · Warrack, Grace (ed.). Revelations of Divine Love Recorded by Julian, Anchoress at Norwich, Anno Domini 1373. Londres: Methuen, 1901 (Project Gutenberg n.º 52958). · Windeatt, Barry (trad. e intr.). Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. · The Book of Margery Kempe. Ed. Sanford Brown Meech y Hope Emily Allen. Early English Text Society, o.s. 212. Londres: Oxford University Press, 1940, cap. 18.

Timeline

A life, year by year

Each point is a documented event. Click to read it, with its source and degree of certainty.

  1. c. 1342 · age 0

    Birth

    Date inferred from her own statement that she was 'thirty winters and a half' old in May 1373 (Long Text, ch. 3). Her baptismal name and family are unknown.

    Probable

  2. 1349 · age 7

    The Black Death in Norwich

    The epidemic decimates the city; new waves in 1361–1362 and 1369. The context of her childhood.

    Documented

  3. May 1373 · age 30

    The sixteen showings

    Gravely ill, she receives fifteen visions between early morning and afternoon and the sixteenth the following night. The manuscripts give 8 or 13 May.

    Documented

  4. c. 1380 – 1388 · age 38

    The Short Text

    Writing of the first account of the visions; the traditional date (soon after 1373) was challenged by Nicholas Watson, who places it in the 1380s.

    Disputed

  5. c. 1388 · age 45

    'Love was his meaning'

    'Fifteen years after and more' she receives the understanding that closes the book: love is the meaning of all the showings (Long Text, ch. 86).

    Documented

  6. c. 1393 · age 50

    The example of the lord and the servant

    'Twenty years after the time of the showing, save three months' she understands the parable of the lord and the servant (Long Text, ch. 51), the core of the Long Text.

    Documented

  7. March 1394 · age 51

    First mention as an anchoress

    The will of Roger Reed, rector of St Michael Coslany, leaves two shillings to 'Julian anakorite'.

    Documented

  8. 1404 · age 61

    Bequest of Thomas Emund

    A chantry priest of Aylsham leaves a bequest to the anchoress of St Julian's and to her servant Sara.

    Documented

  9. c. 1413 · age 70

    Margery Kempe's visit

    Margery Kempe consults her over several days about her experiences (Book of Margery Kempe, ch. 18). The rubric of the Amherst manuscript states she was alive in 1413.

    Documented

  10. 1416 · age 73

    Last mention: the will of Isabel Ufford

    The Countess of Suffolk leaves twenty shillings to 'Julian recluse a Norwich'. It is the last document mentioning her alive; the date of her death is unknown.

    Documented

  11. c. 1450

    The Amherst manuscript is copied

    A scribe copies the Short Text into an anthology of contemplative texts (British Library, Add. MS 37790), the only witness to that version.

    Probable

  12. 1670

    First printed edition

    The Benedictine Serenus Cressy publishes XVI Revelations of Divine Love from a Long Text manuscript related to the Paris one.

    Documented

  13. 1901

    Grace Warrack's edition

    Methuen publishes Grace Warrack's modernised version of Sloane 2499, which popularises the work.

    Documented

  14. June 1942

    St Julian's church destroyed

    German bombing destroys the church; it is rebuilt in 1953 with a chapel on the site of the cell.

    Documented

  15. 1978

    Critical edition

    Edmund Colledge and James Walsh publish the critical edition of both versions (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies).

    Documented

  16. December 1, 2010

    Benedict XVI's audience

    Benedict XVI devotes his general audience catechesis to Julian.

    Documented

Works

Essential works

The works without which their legacy cannot be understood.

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

Manuscript · c. 1385

The Short Text: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman

A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman

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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5 editions · amazon.com

The Long Text: Revelations of Divine Love — Julian of Norwich

Manuscript · c. 1393

The Long Text: Revelations of Divine Love

A Revelation of Love (Revelations of Divine Love)

A reworking of the same visions in eighty-six chapters, the fruit of twenty years or more of meditation. Besides expanding each showing, it adds theological chapters: the example of the lord and the servant (ch. 51), in which Adam and Christ are both the servant who falls in serving; the teaching that there is no wrath in God and that sin is 'behovely' but has no substance; the 'substance' and 'sensuality' of the soul; and the motherhood of Christ and of the Trinity (chs. 58–63). It closes with the answer received 'fifteen years after and more': 'Love was his meaning'. It is the major work of medieval English mysticism.

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9 editions · amazon.com

Complete works (3)

Quotations

Quotations located in a specific work. Each carries its provenance and its level of confidence.

It behoved that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

VerifiedTexto largo según la versión modernizada del Sloane 2499 de Grace Warrack (1901), cap. 27 (decimotercera mostración)

1 / 8
Apocryphal quotes or disputed attributions (1)

  • «Be a gardener. Dig a ditch, toil and sweat, and turn the earth upside down…»

    It circulates online and on devotional cards as a quotation from Julian. It does not appear in that form in either version: it is a free reworking of the image of the servant labouring as a gardener in the example of the lord and the servant (Long Text, ch. 51).

Last words

There are no verifiable records of their last words.

Neither the date nor the circumstances of her death are known. The last document mentioning her alive is the will of Isabel Ufford, Countess of Suffolk (1416); no source transmits final words.

Source: Tanner, Norman P. The Church in Late Medieval Norwich, 1370–1532. Studies and Texts 66. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984 (testamentos de Norwich con legados a anacoretas).

Ask

What their work answers

Twelve great human questions and what their texts allow us to answer, with references. We never put words in their mouth.

  • What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

    God is Trinitarian love, Father and also Mother

    A personal GodStated explicitly

    Julian of Norwich does not argue for God's existence: she describes what was «shown» to her in sixteen revelations during an illness in 1373. In them God is Trinity and is love: in the final chapter of the Long Text she sums up that the meaning of everything shown was love. This God is courteous, homely, rejoices in creatures and holds them in being, like the hazelnut that lasts because God loves it. Her most original contribution is to call God Mother with the same truth with which he is called Father, and to ascribe that motherhood especially to Christ, the second Person. The Absolute is for her a Thou who loves without wrath, whose love precedes creation and never lessens.

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  • Who am I? Is there a true self?

    Our substance is in God; our sensuality awaits union with it

    A created, immortal soulStated explicitly

    Julian of Norwich distinguishes in the human being the «substance», the highest part, which was never separated from God, and the «sensuality», the embodied, temporal life where sin and pain occur. In chapter 54 of the Long Text she states that she saw no difference between God and our substance, as if it were all God, and yet understood that our substance is a creature in God. In the parable of the lord and the servant (ch. 51), the soul's fall arises not from malice but from haste to serve. The true self is a created soul, loved forever and kept in God, which is reconciled with itself when substance and sensuality are united through Christ.

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  • Why do we suffer?

    Sin was behovely, but all shall be well

    Separation from GodStated explicitly

    Julian of Norwich asked why, if God is love, he did not prevent sin, which is the cause of all pain. The answer shown to her is one of the most famous sentences of English mysticism: sin was behovely, but all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. She did not see sin, because she believes it has no substance, and knew it only by the pain it causes. In the parable of the lord and the servant, the fall appears as the stumbling of a servant running to do his lord's will. Suffering arises from separation, but God does not look on it with wrath, and every pain will be turned to honour.

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  • What happens after death?

    A great deed at the end will make all things well

    Eternal life and resurrectionStated explicitly

    Julian of Norwich's revelations were born at the edge of death: she was thirty and a half, received the last rites, and the priest held a crucifix before her, before which the visions began. Her hope is the Church's: eternal life in God, joy and bliss. But she adds something of her own: in chapter 32 she is shown that there is a great deed that the Trinity will do on the last day, hidden from every creature, by which all shall be well. Julian acknowledges the tension with the Church's teaching on damnation and does not resolve it: she holds it in faith and in the promise that what is impossible for her is not so for God.

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  • How is liberation or salvation attained?

    God is the ground of our beseeching

    Through grace and loveStated explicitly

    Julian of Norwich sees salvation as the work of God's love that precedes everything: in chapter 41 of the Long Text she is shown that God is the ground of our beseeching, that it is he who makes us desire and ask for what he wishes to give us. The human role is real but humble: to pray, to trust, not to despair of one's own sin, and to remain in the faith of the Church. In chapter 68 she receives the promise that the soul will not be overcome, though it be tossed and afflicted. Liberation consists in Christ, our Mother, restoring us to the union of substance and sensuality, and keeping us in a love that never withdraws.

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  • Is a teacher necessary?

    What was shown is received within the Church's common faith

    Community and traditionInferred from their doctrine

    Julian of Norwich does not raise the question of the spiritual teacher; she received her revelations directly and spent some twenty years meditating on them. But she refuses to make them a separate authority. In chapter 9 of the Long Text she declares that she is not good because of the visions, but only if she loves God more, and that what she saw she believes according to the teaching of Holy Church. In chapter 80 she sums up the three things by which a human being stands in this life: the use of natural reason, the common teaching of the Church and the inward working of the Holy Spirit. Her text, moreover, is addressed to all her «fellow Christians», not to disciples.

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  • Is the world real?

    All creation fits in a hazelnut and lasts because God loves it

    A good and real creationStated explicitly

    Julian of Norwich's best-known image answers this question. In the first revelation, God shows her in the palm of her hand a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, round as a ball, and she is told that it is all that is made. Julian marvels that it can last, for it seems that, in its littleness, it might suddenly fall into nothing; and she is answered that it lasts and ever shall because God loves it. In that vision she understands three things: that God made it, that God loves it and that God keeps it. The world is real, fragile and small before its Creator, and good because it is loved.

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  • What is love?

    Love was the meaning of everything shown

    Love of God and neighbourStated explicitly

    Julian of Norwich's Long Text ends with the answer to the question she had asked herself for fifteen years: what the Lord's meaning was in what he showed her. She was answered that it was love: who showed it to her, love; what he showed her, love; why he showed it, for love. Julian adds that she saw with certainty that God loved us before he made us and that this love has never diminished nor ever shall. Love is God's essence, and from it proceeds the love creatures have for one another: her text is addressed to all her fellow Christians, because what was shown was for all, and in loving them she sees the concrete form of loving God.

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  • Are we free, or is everything determined?

    God does all that is done; the how remains a secret

    Did not address it

    Julian of Norwich does not treat human freedom as a problem. What is shown to her points elsewhere: in the third revelation she sees God in a point and understands that he is in all things and does all that is done; nothing happens by chance, but by God's foreseeing wisdom. That raises for her the question of sin, which is no deed, and she resolves it by trusting that all that is done is well done. She neither denies human responsibility —she speaks of repentance, prayer and the fall— nor theorises about predestination: she leaves the how in God's secret, who in his time will make all things well.

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  • Why meditate or pray?

    Prayer unites the soul to God, who is its ground

    Friendship with GodStated explicitly

    Julian of Norwich devotes several chapters of the Long Text to prayer. There she is told that God is the ground of beseeching: it is he who makes us desire what he wants to give, and so prayer is never in vain, even when it seems dry or fruitless. Prayer unites the soul to God: although the soul is always like God in nature, it is often unlike him through sin, and prayer makes it like him in will. She distinguishes beseeching, which asks, from contemplation, in which the soul can no longer ask but only behold and give thanks. The tone is one of homely trust: God is courteous and wants to be spoken to with the simplicity of a child with its mother.

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  • Can reason know the ultimate?

    Natural reason, the Church's teaching and the Spirit's work

    Faith and reason help each otherStated explicitly

    Julian of Norwich presents herself as an «unlettered creature», but her work shows great theological intelligence, and she gives reason an explicit place. In chapter 80 of the Long Text she lists the three things by which the human being stands in this life and by which God is honoured: the use of natural reason, the common teaching of Holy Church and the inward gracious working of the Holy Spirit, and adds that all three come from one God. The revelations do not replace reason: Julian spent twenty years meditating on them in order to understand them, and the Long Text is the fruit of that reflection. Reason helps; faith and grace complete.

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  • Withdraw from the world or transform it?

    An anchoress who writes for all her fellow Christians

    Withdraw in order to findInferred from their doctrine

    Julian of Norwich lived as an anchoress, enclosed in a cell attached to the church of Saint Julian in Norwich, from which she probably takes her name; wills of the period mention her as an anchorite in the early fifteenth century. Her form of life was thus the strictest withdrawal known to the medieval Church. But her work does not argue for enclosure or despise those who live in the world: she declares that what was shown is not only for her but for all her fellow Christians, and her theology of God's love addresses ordinary life, the falling and falling again of anyone. From the cell, the window opened onto the street.

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Affinities & tensions

Affinities and tensions

Calculated question by question from their positions. The reason for each agreement or clash, on click.

Anecdotes and stories

Anecdotes and stories

Testimonymayo de 1373

The parish priest's crucifix

Julian had been ill for three days and three nights, and on the fourth night she received the last rites, convinced she would not live to dawn. Those around her sent for the parish priest, who came with a boy and a cross. Julian's eyes were already fixed upwards, towards heaven, where she thought she was going; the priest set the crucifix before her face and told her to look on the image of her Maker and Saviour and take comfort from it. It was hard to lower her gaze, but she did, thinking she could hold out longer looking straight ahead than upwards. Then her sight began to fail: the room grew dark as if it were night, except for the image of the cross, which kept an ordinary light. She felt the upper part of her body dying. Suddenly the pain vanished, and she saw blood trickling down from under the crown of thorns, hot, fresh and plentiful, as at the time of the passion. So the showings began.

Origin of the story: Julian's own account in the Short Text (chs. 2–3) and the Long Text (chs. 3–4).

Source: Warrack, Grace (ed.). Revelations of Divine Love Recorded by Julian, Anchoress at Norwich, Anno Domini 1373. Londres: Methuen, 1901 (Project Gutenberg n.º 52958).

Testimonymayo de 1373

'I said I had raved'

When the first fifteen showings ended, towards mid-afternoon, the illness returned in force and the vision faded. A religious came to see her and asked how she was; Julian told him she had raved that day, and laughed at herself as she said that the cross before her had bled heavily. The man grew very serious and began to question her with great reverence. Julian then felt immense shame: this man took seriously what she, who had seen it, had dismissed as delirium. She wanted to confess, but did not dare tell a priest, thinking he would not believe her if she did not believe herself. That night, asleep, she felt the devil take her by the throat, with a young man's face, red like a newly fired tile and flecked with black spots, hair red as rust, and a stench that choked her. On waking, half dead, she received the sixteenth showing, which confirmed to her that everything had come from God. Her account of this lapse is one of the most honest pages of mystical literature.

Origin of the story: Long Text, chs. 66–67; the episode also appears in the Short Text (chs. 21–22).

Source: Warrack, Grace (ed.). Revelations of Divine Love Recorded by Julian, Anchoress at Norwich, Anno Domini 1373. Londres: Methuen, 1901 (Project Gutenberg n.º 52958).

Documentedc. 1413

Margery Kempe at the cell window

Around 1413 Margery Kempe, a married woman, mother of fourteen and protagonist of a noisy spiritual journey (she wept aloud in churches and scandalised the clergy), came to Norwich at the bidding, she says, of Our Lord, to consult 'an anchoress in the same city who was called Dame Julian'. She set out the graces, inner words and revelations she received, to learn whether there was any deceit in them, because the anchoress 'was expert in such things and could give good counsel'. Julian, according to the account, answered that she should obey God in all that was not against his worship or the profit of her fellow Christians, that the Holy Spirit never moves anyone against charity, and that whoever always doubts is like the wave of the sea, moved by the wind. They talked for many days. It is the only outside testimony about the flesh-and-blood Julian: a serene counsellor at the window of her cell.

Origin of the story: The Book of Margery Kempe, book I, ch. 18, dictated c. 1436–1438. The meeting is known only from this account.

Source: The Book of Margery Kempe. Ed. Sanford Brown Meech y Hope Emily Allen. Early English Text Society, o.s. 212. Londres: Oxford University Press, 1940, cap. 18.

Unverifiables. XX (tradición)

The anchoress's cat

In modern images Julian nearly always appears with a cat: in the statue at Norwich Cathedral, in stained glass, on devotional cards. The association rests on a real but indirect fact: the Ancrene Wisse, the rule for anchoresses written in England in the early thirteenth century, allows recluses to keep a cat and no other animal, to keep mice at bay. No source about Julian (neither her texts, nor the wills that mention her, nor the Book of Margery Kempe) says she had one. The cat is an affectionate inference of twentieth-century devotional tradition, not a documented fact.

Origin of the story: The rule comes from the Ancrene Wisse (part VIII). The attribution of a cat to Julian has no medieval source and spread with modern iconography.

Source: Jantzen, Grace M. Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian. Londres: SPCK, 1987 (nueva ed. 2000).

Documenteds. XVII

The nuns of Cambrai

For two centuries the Long Text came close to being lost. The English Reformation dissolved the monasteries and libraries where it could be copied, and the manuscripts of medieval mysticism survived mainly in exile. In the abbeys of English Benedictine nuns founded at Cambrai (1623) and Paris (1651), the nuns, spiritually directed by the monk Augustine Baker, copied and read the English mystics of the Middle Ages. The surviving copies of the Long Text come from that milieu, and from there came the first printed edition, published by the Benedictine Serenus Cressy in 1670. What is certain is that without that handful of exiled women Julian's book would not have reached us.

Origin of the story: Watson and Jenkins (2006) and Colledge and Walsh (1978) study the provenance of the Long Text manuscripts in the milieu of the Cambrai and Paris communities.

Source: Watson, Nicholas, y Jacqueline Jenkins (eds.). The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press / Turnhout: Brepols, 2006.

Teachings

Teachings

The notions that structure their thought, explained in context.

'All shall be well': behovely sintodo-ira-bien
In the thirteenth showing Julian asks why God in his wisdom did not prevent sin, which, she thinks, would have left everything well. The answer is the sentence that made her famous: 'it was behovely that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well'. Behovely does not mean that sin is good or desirable, but that it has a place in the divine design: through it we know our frailty and the greatness of the love that repairs. Julian adds that sin 'has no manner of substance' and is known only by the pain it causes. At the same time she refuses to draw conclusions contradicting the Church's teaching: she affirms that there is a secret 'great deed' God will do on the last day, by which he will make well all that is not well, and which is hidden from us. Hence her tone of trust, which does not deny evil but places it within a greater love.

Late medieval debate on predestination and salvation, in the England of Wyclif and Langland.

Source: 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.

A God without wrathdios-sin-ira
One of the boldest features of the Long Text is the claim that Julian saw no anger in God: 'I saw truly that our Lord was never angry, nor ever shall be, for he is God'. Wrath, she explains, is in us, as a contrariness to peace and love; God does not blame but looks with pity. Julian acknowledges the tension with the Church's teaching, which speaks of God's wrath against sin, and devotes long chapters (45–50) to holding both: the Church's judgement, true for our life here, and God's higher judgement, which sees in the soul only the 'substance' united to him. The resolution comes with the example of the lord and the servant. This theology has been read as an anticipation of modern theologies of mercy, and has also raised the question whether it verges on universalism, which Julian avoids affirming.

Contrast with fourteenth-century penitential preaching and with the image of judgement in scholastic theology.

Source: Jantzen, Grace M. Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian. Londres: SPCK, 1987 (nueva ed. 2000).

The example of the lord and the servantsenor-y-siervo
In chapter 51 of the Long Text, the longest, Julian narrates a vision she had left out of the first account because she did not understand it: a lord sitting at peace sends his servant on an errand; the servant runs off out of love, falls into a ditch and is hurt, unable to rise or to see his lord's face, who looks on him with compassion rather than reproach. Nearly twenty years of meditation taught her to read the scene in layers: the servant is Adam, that is, all humanity, whose fall springs from goodwill rather than rebellion; and he is also Christ, who falls into Mary's womb and into death to raise Adam. The details (the servant's clothing, the earth he tills as a gardener, the treasure he must seek) receive allegorical interpretation. The parable is the key to her theology: God sees fallen humanity through Christ, and so there is no wrath in him.

Medieval multi-layered exegesis and the tradition of parable as a form of theological teaching.

Source: Watson, Nicholas, y Jacqueline Jenkins (eds.). The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press / Turnhout: Brepols, 2006.

The motherhood of Christ and of Godmaternidad-de-cristo
In chapters 58 to 63 of the Long Text Julian develops, at unprecedented length, the image of Jesus as mother: 'as truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother'. The second person of the Trinity is mother in three ways: in the creation of our nature, in the incarnation, by which he takes on our sensuality, and in the work of grace, by which he gives birth to us in new life, feeds us with his body in the Eucharist as a mother gives the breast, and brings us up patiently, sometimes letting us fall so that we may learn. The image was not new (it appears in Anselm, Bernard and Cistercian spirituality), but Julian makes it a Trinitarian structure. Since the late twentieth century it has been central to feminist readings of her work, though she presents it as a truth about God rather than a programme.

Medieval tradition of Jesus as mother (Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, William of Saint-Thierry).

Source: Jantzen, Grace M. Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian. Londres: SPCK, 1987 (nueva ed. 2000).

Substance and sensualitysustancia-y-sensualidad
Julian distinguishes two dimensions in the soul. 'Substance' is the highest part, created by God and united to him from the beginning without interruption: in it the soul 'is in God' and has never consented to sin. 'Sensuality' is the soul as united to the body and to temporal life, where fall, suffering and change take place. Christ, by becoming incarnate, unites both in himself and makes it possible for the whole human being to be 'oned' with God. The concept, close to the Rhineland mystics' 'ground' of the soul but formulated independently, underpins her claim that in every soul that is saved there is a godly will that never assented to sin, and her hope that the inner division of the human being is not the last word.

Augustinian anthropology of the image and the English contemplative tradition (Hilton, The Cloud of Unknowing).

Source: Watson, Nicholas, y Jacqueline Jenkins (eds.). The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press / Turnhout: Brepols, 2006.

The courtesy and homeliness of Godcortesia-de-dios
Julian describes God's relation to the soul with two words from the social vocabulary of her time: God is 'courteous' and 'homely'. Courtesy is the nobility of the great lord who draws near without ceasing to be one; homeliness, the intimacy of one who is at home. In the sixth showing she sees God as a lord who, in his house, thanks his servants for their labour and honours them before all, with a joy that is not condescension. This image corrects that of the distant, fearsome sovereign and grounds her invitation to pray with trust, as one speaks with someone who wishes to be sought. The combination of greatness and nearness ('he is the highest and the most homely') runs through the whole book.

The courtly language of fourteenth-century England applied to theology.

Source: Windeatt, Barry (trad. e intr.). Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Videos

Videos

Recordings, interviews and documentaries. Videos play from YouTube; they are not hosted here.

  • 2024 Julian Festival Lecture, Julian and the Trinity, Archbishop Rowan Williams

    Lecture· EN· 2024· 89 min

    Julian of NorwichOfficial channel

  • Julian of Norwich: mother, mystic, radical

    Lecture· EN· 2023· 81 min

    Jesus College, CambridgeOfficial channel

  • Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love - Robert Fruehwirth

    Lecture· EN· 2016· 61 min

    St Paul's CathedralOfficial channel

  • Prayer in the Teachings of Julian of Norwich: A Journey of Desire | Philip Sheldrake

    Lecture· EN· 2019· 84 min

    Oblate School of TheologyOfficial channel

  • How to Read Julian of Norwich / Ryan McAnnally-Linz

    Lecture· EN· 2024· 54 min

    Yale Center for Faith & CultureOfficial channel

  • Julian of Norwich and the English Mystics: A Lecture by Fr. Groeschel

    Lecture· EN· 2019· 73 min

    International Institute for Culture

  • Cecilia Twinch: Julian of Norwich: All manner of things shall be well

    Lecture· EN· 2023· 42 min

    Ibn 'Arabi SocietyOfficial channel

  • Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of NORWICH read by David Barnes | Full Audio Book

    Third-party recording· EN· 2018· 441 min

    LibriVox Audiobooks

  • 3º clase - Javier Melloni sj expone sobre Juliana de Norwich, teóloga de su propia experiencia

    Lecture· ES· 2022· 113 min

    Fraternidad del Santo Nombre

  • Juliana de Norwich, Mística de la cortesía de Dios - El primer documental español

    Documentary· ES· 2026· 15 min

    Radio Monastero Interiore

  • El Papa dedica la audiencia general a Juliana de Norwich, mística inglesa

    Third-party recording· ES· 2010· 3 min

    ROME REPORTS en EspañolOfficial channel

  • Juliana de Norwich

    Lecture· ES· 2026· 104 min

    Cruzando Fronteras con Fernando Cordero sscc

  • Giuliana di Norwich, Mistica della cortesia di Dio - il primo documentario italiano

    Documentary· IT· 2025· 16 min

    Radio Monastero Interiore

Gallery

Gallery

Images with verified licences. Each keeps its authorship and attribution.

Manuscripts

Manuscripts

Manuscript witnesses and ancient texts, with their custodian and conditions of access.

  • ENM · Gótica cursiva inglesa (tipo no verificado) · Texto: c. 1373–1390; copia: c. 1435–1450

    A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman (Texto breve), en antología contemplativa

    Surviving witness
    Único testimonio del Texto breve, dentro de una antología de textos contemplativos (Rolle, Ruusbroec, Suso, entre otros). La rúbrica afirma que la autora seguía viva en 1413.
    Custodian
    British Library, Londres · Add. MS 37790 (manuscrito Amherst)

  • ENM · Cursiva (tipo no verificado) · Copia de finales del s. XVI

    Revelations of Divine Love (Texto largo), copia de París

    Surviving witness
    Texto largo completo con el explicit «Explicit liber revelationum Julyane anatorite Norwyche»; texto próximo al de la edición de Cressy (1670).
    Custodian
    Bibliothèque nationale de France, París · Fonds anglais 40

  • ENM · Cursiva del s. XVII · Mediados del s. XVII

    Revelations of Divine Love (Texto largo), Sloane 2499

    Surviving witness
    Texto largo completo con ortografía arcaizante; base de las ediciones de Warrack (1901), Glasscoe (1976) y Crampton (1993).
    Custodian
    British Library, Londres · Sloane MS 2499

  • ENM · Cursiva del s. XVIII · S. XVIII

    Revelations of Divine Love (Texto largo), Sloane 3705

    Surviving witness
    Copia tardía del Texto largo, con ortografía modernizada.
    Custodian
    British Library, Londres · Sloane MS 3705

  • ENM · Gótica cursiva inglesa (tipo no verificado) · c. 1500

    Extractos del Texto largo (manuscrito de Westminster)

    Surviving witness
    Antología de pasajes del Texto largo junto a comentarios a los salmos; el testimonio más antiguo de esa versión.
    Custodian
    Westminster Cathedral Treasury, Londres · MS 4
Manuscripts →

Connections

Connections

Influences, discipleships and affinities. Documented relations are distinguished from similarities identified by analysis.

  • Influenced by

    Jesus of Nazareth

    The sixteen showings centre on Christ's passion, which Julian had asked to behold 'as if she had been there', and her whole theology is built around him as servant, mother and saviour.

    Documented relation

  • Ideas akin to

    Augustine of Hippo

    Julian works within the Augustinian horizon (fall, original sin, grace, God's image in the soul), but her vision of a God who does not blame departs from the rigour of the late Augustine. No direct reading is documented.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Contemporary of

    Catherine of Siena

    Exact contemporaries (Catherine was born in 1347 and Julian had her visions in 1373), both laywomen without Latin learning who dictated or wrote theology in the vernacular. There was no contact.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Teresa of Ávila

    Two women who wrote of their experience of God in domestic language and with a theological sharpness that exceeded their 'unlettered' status. Teresa did not know Julian's work.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Hildegard of Bingen

    Both visionaries received visions in sickness and interpreted them over years; but Hildegard was an abbess, prophetic and cosmological, and Julian a recluse and introspective. No documented relation.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Francis of Assisi

    Affective devotion to the suffering humanity of Christ, spread in fourteenth-century England by Franciscan spirituality, forms the background of her visions of the passion. No direct relation.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Meister Eckhart

    Julian's 'substance' of the soul ever united to God recalls Eckhart's 'ground' of the soul, but her language is narrative and concrete, not speculative. There is no sign that she knew Rhineland mysticism.

    Similarity identified by analysis

Linked from other profiles

Sources

Sources

Bibliography and catalogues consulted for this profile.

  1. Wikidata, Q236699 «Juliana de Norwich / Julian of Norwich» (P31=Q5; 45 enlaces entre wikis).
  2. 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.
  3. Watson, Nicholas, y Jacqueline Jenkins (eds.). The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press / Turnhout: Brepols, 2006.
  4. Warrack, Grace (ed.). Revelations of Divine Love Recorded by Julian, Anchoress at Norwich, Anno Domini 1373. Londres: Methuen, 1901 (Project Gutenberg n.º 52958).
  5. Windeatt, Barry (trad. e intr.). Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
  6. The Book of Margery Kempe. Ed. Sanford Brown Meech y Hope Emily Allen. Early English Text Society, o.s. 212. Londres: Oxford University Press, 1940, cap. 18.
  7. Jantzen, Grace M. Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian. Londres: SPCK, 1987 (nueva ed. 2000).
  8. Benedicto XVI. Audiencia general del 1 de diciembre de 2010: Juliana de Norwich. Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
  9. Spearing, Elizabeth (trad.), y A. C. Spearing (intr. y notas). Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love (Short Text and Long Text). Londres: Penguin Books, 1998.
  10. Watson, Nicholas. «The Composition of Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Love». Speculum 68, n.º 3 (1993), pp. 637–683.
  11. Ward, Benedicta. «Julian the Solitary». En Kenneth Leech y Benedicta Ward, Julian Reconsidered. Oxford: SLG Press, 1988.
  12. Glasscoe, Marion (ed.). Julian of Norwich: A Revelation of Love. Exeter Medieval English Texts. Exeter: University of Exeter, 1976 (ed. del Sloane 2499).
  13. Beer, Frances (ed.). Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love: The Shorter Version Ed. from B. L. Add. MS 37790. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1978.
  14. Open Library (Internet Archive), registros de edición consultados por ISBN para las ediciones listadas.
  15. Eliot, T. S. «Little Gidding» (1942), en Four Quartets. Londres: Faber & Faber, 1944, sección V.
  16. Tanner, Norman P. The Church in Late Medieval Norwich, 1370–1532. Studies and Texts 66. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984 (testamentos de Norwich con legados a anacoretas).
  17. The Julian Shrine, St Julian's Church, Norwich: historia de la iglesia y de la celda reconstruida.
  18. Friends of Julian of Norwich (asociación que mantiene el Julian Centre y promueve su lectura).
  19. Holloway, Julia Bolton, Anna Maria Reynolds et al. (eds.). Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love: Extant Texts and Translation. Florencia: SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001.
  20. Wikisource en inglés: Revelations of Divine Love (Grace Warrack, ed. de 1907), transcripción con subpáginas por capítulo.
Rights holder
Dominio público (obra del siglo XIV). Las ediciones críticas, traducciones y modernizaciones posteriores a 1955 (PIMS, Penn State, Penguin, Oxford, Paulist Press, Trotta…) están sujetas a los derechos de sus editores.

Pending confirmation

What this profile has not yet been able to settle. We would rather say so than fill it in.

  • Confirmar la fecha de muerte de Dundas Harford (n. 1858) para liberar su edición del Texto breve (1911) en la sala de lectura; hasta entonces queda con caution.
  • Comprobar la calidad del OCR de la reimpresión de 1843 de la edición de Cressy en Internet Archive.
  • Localizar el traductor de la edición española de Trotta (Libro de visiones y revelaciones, 2002; ISBN 9788481645590), que Open Library no registra, y buscar otras ediciones españolas con ISBN (Revelaciones del amor divino).
  • Localizar ISBN de ediciones francesa, alemana e italiana: Open Library no devuelve registros fiables.
  • Verificar si el manuscrito de París (BnF, Fonds anglais 40) y los Sloane 2499 y 3705 están digitalizados (Gallica; British Library Digitised Manuscripts, afectado por la caída del servicio de la BL desde 2023).
  • Fijar con Colledge–Walsh y con Tanner (1984) las cuantías y fechas exactas de cada legado testamentario (Reed 1394, Emund 1404, Plumpton 1415, Ufford 1416).
  • No hay traducción española de dominio público conocida; la sala de lectura queda solo en inglés.
  • Programas de afiliación: ninguno verificado.

Researched on 2026-10-25