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Christianisme · Mystique chrétienne · Catholicisme

Julian of Norwich

v. 1342 – v. 1416Personne historiquement documentée

Anachorète et écrivaine anglaise (vers 1342 – après 1416). En mai 1373, gravement malade, elle reçut seize visions de la passion du Christ et de l'amour de Dieu, qu'elle relata en deux versions : un Texte court et, après des décennies de méditation, un Texte long, les Révélations de l'amour divin, le plus ancien livre conservé écrit en anglais par une femme. Elle vécut emmurée contre l'église Saint-Julien de Norwich. Sa théologie de la confiance — « tout sera bien » —, d'un Dieu sans colère et de la maternité du Christ en a fait une autrice classique.

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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

Dans ses propres mots

«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

Son idée centrale

'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.

Le voir en contexte

Biographie

6 min de lecture

Traduction assistée à partir de l'original espagnol, en attente de relecture par un traducteur natif.

Une femme sans nom à elle

De l'autrice du plus ancien livre écrit en anglais par une femme qui nous soit parvenu, nous ignorons le prénom, celui de ses parents et le lieu exact de sa naissance. Nous l'appelons Julienne parce que c'est ainsi que la désignent les testaments et les copistes, et parce qu'elle vécut emmurée contre l'église Saint-Julien de Conisford, à Norwich ; il se peut qu'elle ait pris le nom du saint patron, comme le firent d'autres reclus. Ce que nous savons avec certitude, elle le raconte elle-même : en mai 1373, alors qu'elle avait « trente hivers et demi », elle reçut une série de visions au cours d'une maladie qui la conduisit au seuil de la mort. On en déduit qu'elle naquit vers la fin de 1342.

Norwich était alors l'une des villes les plus peuplées d'Angleterre, un centre du commerce de la laine qui comptait des dizaines d'églises paroissiales, des couvents des quatre ordres mendiants et un prieuré bénédictin cathédral. La jeunesse de Julienne coïncida avec la peste noire, qui frappa la ville en 1349 et revint au cours des décennies suivantes, avec la guerre de Cent Ans et, en 1381, avec la révolte des paysans, durement réprimée dans le Norfolk par l'évêque Henry Despenser. Rien de tout cela n'apparaît explicitement dans son livre, mais nombre de lecteurs ont entendu dans son insistance sur le fait que « tout sera bien » la réponse à un monde blessé.

Les trois dons et la maladie

Julienne raconte que, jeune, elle avait demandé à Dieu trois grâces : un souvenir vivant de la passion du Christ, comme si elle s'était tenue au pied de la croix avec Marie Madeleine ; une grave maladie corporelle à trente ans ; et trois « blessures » : la vraie contrition, la compassion et le désir de Dieu. Elle oublia les deux premières demandes ; la troisième, elle la garda toujours. À trente ans et demi, elle tomba malade. Pendant trois jours et trois nuits son état s'aggrava ; elle reçut les derniers sacrements et sa mère, entre autres, la veillait. Le curé plaça devant elle un crucifix et lui dit de regarder l'image de son Créateur et Sauveur et d'y trouver réconfort. Sa vue s'obscurcit, sauf autour de la croix.

Seize monstrations

Alors, le 8 ou le 13 mai 1373 — les manuscrits divergent —, elle vit saigner la couronne d'épines, et avec cette vision commença une série de seize « monstrations » (shewings) : quinze entre quatre heures du matin et le milieu de l'après-midi, et la dernière la nuit suivante. Elles mêlent des images de la passion d'un réalisme physique extraordinaire — le sang qui tombe comme les gouttes de pluie d'un avant-toit, le visage qui se dessèche et change de couleur —, des paroles intérieures et des « visions spirituelles » sans image. Dans l'une d'elles, elle voit dans la paume de sa main une chose de la taille d'une noisette : « c'est tout ce qui est créé », et cela dure parce que Dieu l'aime. Une fois rétablie, elle dit à un religieux qu'elle avait « déliré », et se repentit aussitôt d'avoir renié ce qu'elle avait vu ; cette nuit-là, elle subit l'assaut d'une vision diabolique et reçut la dernière monstration, qui confirmait les précédentes.

Deux livres

Peu après, elle écrivit un premier récit, appelé aujourd'hui le Texte court, où elle relate les visions et leur sens le plus immédiat. Pendant des décennies, elle continua de les méditer. Elle raconte que « quinze ans après et davantage » elle reçut la réponse à sa question sur le sens de tout cela : « L'amour était son intention ». Vingt ans après les visions, moins trois mois, elle comprit l'exemple du seigneur et du serviteur, une parabole qu'elle avait omise dans le premier récit. Il en résulta le Texte long, quatre-vingt-six chapitres qui font de l'expérience une théologie : le péché, qui est « convenable » et pourtant n'a pas de substance ; un Dieu en qui elle ne voit pas de colère ; la maternité du Christ ; la prière qui « unit l'âme à Dieu ». Nicholas Watson a proposé de retarder la rédaction du Texte court jusqu'aux années 1380 et de prolonger celle du Texte long jusqu'en plein XVe siècle.

L'anachorète de Saint-Julien

Nous ignorons quand elle s'enferma dans la cellule adossée à l'église Saint-Julien, qui dépendait du prieuré de moniales bénédictines de Carrow. La première mention documentaire date de 1394 : le testament de Roger Reed, recteur de Saint-Michel-Coslany, lui lègue deux shillings. Suivent d'autres legs en 1404, 1415 et 1416, le dernier d'Isabel Ufford, comtesse de Suffolk. Une anachorète vivait à vie dans une ou deux pièces, avec une fenêtre donnant sur l'église pour suivre la messe et une autre sur la rue pour conseiller ceux qui venaient la trouver, tandis qu'une ou deux servantes pourvoyaient à sa subsistance. On a supposé qu'elle avait d'abord été moniale à Carrow, ou bien veuve et mère, vu la précision avec laquelle elle parle de l'éducation des enfants ; ce sont deux conjectures.

Margery Kempe à la fenêtre

Vers 1413, Margery Kempe, la turbulente mystique de King's Lynn, vint la consulter pour savoir si ses larmes et ses révélations venaient de Dieu. Le Livre de Margery Kempe, dicté une vingtaine d'années plus tard, rapporte que « Dame Julienne » l'écouta pendant plusieurs jours et lui conseilla d'obéir à Dieu, de se fier à sa bonté et de ne pas s'inquiéter de l'incrédulité d'autrui, car celui qui doute toujours est semblable au flot de la mer. C'est le seul portrait de Julienne dû à quelqu'un qui l'a connue. Cette même année 1413, selon la rubrique du manuscrit du Texte court, son autrice était encore en vie ; sa mort, postérieure à 1416, n'a laissé aucune trace documentaire.

Une transmission fragile

Le Texte court survit dans un seul manuscrit copié au milieu du XVe siècle, le manuscrit dit Amherst (British Library, Add. MS 37790). Le Texte long nous est parvenu grâce aux bénédictines anglaises exilées à Cambrai et à Paris au XVIIe siècle, qui le copièrent et le conservèrent : de ce milieu proviennent le manuscrit de Paris (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Fonds anglais 40) et les Sloane 2499 et 3705 de la British Library. Le bénédictin Serenus Cressy l'imprima en 1670. L'édition de Grace Warrack, en 1901, le rendit aux lecteurs, et l'édition critique d'Edmund Colledge et James Walsh (1978) établit le texte des deux versions.

La théologienne de la confiance

Le XXe siècle en fit une autrice classique. T. S. Eliot clôt « Little Gidding », le dernier de ses Quatre Quatuors, sur ses paroles à propos du péché « convenable » et de ce que tout sera bien ; l'Église d'Angleterre la commémore le 8 mai et Benoît XVI lui consacra une audience générale en 2010. L'église Saint-Julien, détruite par les bombardements allemands de 1942, fut reconstruite avec une cellule qui accueille aujourd'hui des pèlerins. Par-delà les étiquettes qu'on lui a attribuées — féministe, universaliste, écologique —, demeure une voix qui se présentait comme une « simple créature illettrée » et qui écrivit avec une précision théologique rare en son siècle, tenant ensemble l'enseignement de l'Église et une vision de Dieu où elle ne trouva pas de colère.

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.

Chronologie

La vie, année après année

Chaque point est un événement documenté. Cliquez pour le lire, avec sa source et son degré de certitude.

  1. v. 1342 · 0 ans

    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 · 7 ans

    The Black Death in Norwich

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

    Documenté

  3. mai 1373 · 30 ans

    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.

    Documenté

  4. v. 1380 – 1388 · 38 ans

    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.

    Contesté

  5. v. 1388 · 45 ans

    '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).

    Documenté

  6. v. 1393 · 50 ans

    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.

    Documenté

  7. mars 1394 · 51 ans

    First mention as an anchoress

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

    Documenté

  8. 1404 · 61 ans

    Bequest of Thomas Emund

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

    Documenté

  9. v. 1413 · 70 ans

    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.

    Documenté

  10. 1416 · 73 ans

    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.

    Documenté

  11. v. 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.

    Documenté

  13. 1901

    Grace Warrack's edition

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

    Documenté

  14. juin 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.

    Documenté

  15. 1978

    Critical edition

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

    Documenté

  16. 1 décembre 2010

    Benedict XVI's audience

    Benedict XVI devotes his general audience catechesis to Julian.

    Documenté

Œuvres

Œuvres essentielles

Les œuvres sans lesquelles on ne comprend pas son héritage.

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

Manuscrit · v. 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.

Non disponible Voir le livre

5 éditions

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

Manuscrit · v. 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.

Non disponible Voir le livre Lire le texte intégral

9 éditions

Toute son œuvre (3)

Citations

Citations localisées dans une œuvre précise. Chacune porte sa provenance et son degré de fiabilité.

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.

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

1 / 8
Citations apocryphes ou d'attribution contestée (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).

Dernières paroles

Il n'existe aucun témoignage vérifiable de ses dernières paroles.

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).

Interroger

Ce que répond son œuvre

Douze grandes questions de l'humanité et ce que ses textes permettent d'y répondre, références à l'appui. Nous ne lui prêtons jamais de paroles.

  • Qu'est-ce que l'Absolu ? Dieu existe-t-il ?

    God is Trinitarian love, Father and also Mother

    Un Dieu personnelIl le dit expressément

    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.

    Comparer cette question avec d'autres maîtres

  • Qui suis-je ? Existe-t-il un vrai soi ?

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

    Une âme créée et immortelleIl le dit expressément

    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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  • Pourquoi souffrons-nous ?

    Sin was behovely, but all shall be well

    La séparation d'avec DieuIl le dit expressément

    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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  • Que se passe-t-il après la mort ?

    A great deed at the end will make all things well

    Vie éternelle et résurrectionIl le dit expressément

    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.

    Comparer cette question avec d'autres maîtres

  • Comment atteint-on la libération ou le salut ?

    God is the ground of our beseeching

    Par la grâce et l'amourIl le dit expressément

    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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  • Faut-il un maître ?

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

    La communauté et la traditionCela se déduit de sa 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.

    Comparer cette question avec d'autres maîtres

  • Le monde est-il réel ?

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

    Une création bonne et réelleIl le dit expressément

    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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  • Qu'est-ce que l'amour ?

    Love was the meaning of everything shown

    L'amour de Dieu et du prochainIl le dit expressément

    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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  • Sommes-nous libres ou tout est-il déterminé ?

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

    Ne s'est pas prononcé

    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.

    Comparer cette question avec d'autres maîtres

  • Pourquoi méditer ou prier ?

    Prayer unites the soul to God, who is its ground

    L'amitié avec DieuIl le dit expressément

    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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  • La raison peut-elle connaître l'ultime ?

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

    La foi et la raison s'entraidentIl le dit expressément

    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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  • Se retirer du monde ou le transformer ?

    An anchoress who writes for all her fellow Christians

    Se retirer pour trouverCela se déduit de sa 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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Affinités et tensions

Affinités et tensions

Calculées question par question à partir de ses positions. La raison de chaque accord ou de chaque désaccord s'affiche d'un clic.

Anecdotes et récits

Anecdotes et récits

Témoignagemayo 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.

Origine du récit: 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).

Témoignagemayo 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.

Origine du récit: 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).

Documentéc. 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.

Origine du récit: 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.

Invérifiables. 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.

Origine du récit: 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).

Documentés. 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.

Origine du récit: 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.

Enseignements

Enseignements

Les notions qui structurent sa pensée, expliquées dans leur contexte.

'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.

Vidéos

Vidéos

Enregistrements, entretiens et documentaires. Les vidéos sont lues depuis YouTube ; elles ne sont pas hébergées ici.

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

    Conférence· EN· 2024· 89 min

    Julian of NorwichChaîne officielle

  • Julian of Norwich: mother, mystic, radical

    Conférence· EN· 2023· 81 min

    Jesus College, CambridgeChaîne officielle

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

    Conférence· EN· 2016· 61 min

    St Paul's CathedralChaîne officielle

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

    Conférence· EN· 2019· 84 min

    Oblate School of TheologyChaîne officielle

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

    Conférence· EN· 2024· 54 min

    Yale Center for Faith & CultureChaîne officielle

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

    Conférence· EN· 2019· 73 min

    International Institute for Culture

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

    Conférence· EN· 2023· 42 min

    Ibn 'Arabi SocietyChaîne officielle

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

    Enregistrement de tiers· EN· 2018· 441 min

    LibriVox Audiobooks

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

    Conférence· ES· 2022· 113 min

    Fraternidad del Santo Nombre

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

    Documentaire· ES· 2026· 15 min

    Radio Monastero Interiore

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

    Enregistrement de tiers· ES· 2010· 3 min

    ROME REPORTS en EspañolChaîne officielle

  • Juliana de Norwich

    Conférence· ES· 2026· 104 min

    Cruzando Fronteras con Fernando Cordero sscc

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

    Documentaire· IT· 2025· 16 min

    Radio Monastero Interiore

Galerie

Galerie

Images dont la licence a été vérifiée. Chacune conserve son auteur et son attribution.

Manuscrits

Manuscrits

Témoins manuscrits et textes anciens, avec leur dépositaire et leurs conditions de consultation.

  • 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

    Témoin conservé
    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.
    Dépositaire
    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

    Témoin conservé
    Texto largo completo con el explicit «Explicit liber revelationum Julyane anatorite Norwyche»; texto próximo al de la edición de Cressy (1670).
    Dépositaire
    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

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

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

    Revelations of Divine Love (Texto largo), Sloane 3705

    Témoin conservé
    Copia tardía del Texto largo, con ortografía modernizada.
    Dépositaire
    British Library, Londres · Sloane MS 3705

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

    Extractos del Texto largo (manuscrito de Westminster)

    Témoin conservé
    Antología de pasajes del Texto largo junto a comentarios a los salmos; el testimonio más antiguo de esa versión.
    Dépositaire
    Westminster Cathedral Treasury, Londres · MS 4
Manuscrits →

Relations

Relations

Influences, filiations et affinités. On distingue la relation documentée de la similitude identifiée par analyse.

  • A reçu l'influence de

    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.

    Relation documentée

  • Idées proches de

    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.

    Similitude identifiée par analyse

  • Contemporain de

    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.

    Similitude identifiée par analyse

  • Idées proches de

    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.

    Similitude identifiée par analyse

  • Idées proches de

    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.

    Similitude identifiée par analyse

  • Idées proches de

    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.

    Similitude identifiée par analyse

  • Idées proches de

    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.

    Similitude identifiée par analyse

Lié depuis d'autres fiches

Sources

Sources

Bibliographie et catalogues consultés pour cette fiche.

  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.
Ayant droit
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.

En attente de confirmation

Ce que cette fiche n'a pas encore pu établir. Nous préférons le dire plutôt que de combler.

  • 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.

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