The Comforting Assurance of Julian of Norwich

Julian of Norwich is known and loved for the lines revealed to her by God, “All shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” But beyond the comfort of this understandably uplifting phrase, what are theological and philosophical insights we might learn from this anonymous medieval Christian mystic and anchoress?

Ryan McAnnally-Linz joins Evan Rosa to discuss the historical context of Julian of Norwich, her life and vocation as an anchoress, and the story of near-death experience and subsequent mystical visions that led her to write such theologically rich and uplifting words—which comprise the earliest known writing by a woman in English. Together they have an extended discussion of a rather marvelous segment from the Long Text of the Revelation of Divine Love, sections 46-58, and in particular we look at the revelation Julian herself was most puzzled and mystified by during her own life, discovering understanding only decades after having received the vision: Section 51, the Parable of the Lord and the Servant.

Image Credit: adapted from The Lives of the Saints Gallus, Magnus, Otmar and Wiboradain German, 1451–60. St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 602, p. 303.

Show Notes

• “All shall be well” as an introduction to Julian for many
• Rowan Williams on Julian as one of the greatest English language theologians
• Who was Julian? How she thinks and what we can draw from her for the purposes of theological insight and spiritual maturity?
• Found Julian in a medieval survey course and she has remained with him
• What caught you in Julian? Why did it stick with you?
• She synthesizes a visionary experience with deep theological reflection: subtle and sophisticated theologian; simplicity, earnestness, and virtuosity
• So give us a little bit of her biography. I know that we know precious little, but what do we know? And maybe give us some of the historical context of her?
• Couple of manuscripts of her writing; the short and the long text
• Margery Kempe visits Julian to make a request in The Book of Margery Kempe (https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/publication/staley-the-book-of-margery-kempe)
• Anchoress and is attached to a church in Norwich; 1340s first and second waves of the Black Death; mass loss and trauma
• The text is less focused on herself outside of the visions that happen on what she believes is her death bed.
• What is the spiritual occupation of an anchoress or anchorite?
• Anchorite as isolated spiritual calling different from monks and hermits; life is in this one cell
• Do you know what motivations are there for that spiritual vocation in the church? Why would anyone do this?
• Anchorite ceremonies are like funeral rites; a death to the world, living only for prayer
• The showings - 16 visions; prays for mind of the passion, bodily sickness, and three wounds (contrition, compassion, and willful longing for God)
• The suffering of Christ and his wounds and their popularity in medieval devotional practice
• 16 showings that are intertwined and vary in form (visual, auditory, bodily, mental)
• The last showing, which she ponders for the rest of her life.
• What are some of the core philosophical, theological, or other concepts that are most salient for understanding Julian?
• Julian understands herself as beholden to the church, its teachings, and its tradition - wrestling with these and her visions.
• A Vision Shown to a Devout Woman by Julian (https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-02547-6.html)
• A Revelation of Love by Julian (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/261039/revelations-of-divine-love-by-julian-of-norwich-translated-by-elizabeth-spearing-introduction-and-notes-by-a-c-spearing/)
• Augustinian tradition is appealed to—his teachings on evil and sin, Christian Platonism
• Julian as a Trinitarian thinker
• What would you say about her understanding of love?
• Later visions in life and praying for many years for understanding —Love is THE thing for Julian, it’s the whole thing.
• Love as joyful communion but also a passionate willingness to sacrifice for one’s beloved
• A Short Play: The Lord and the Servant (from the long text)
• Chapter 51 of the Long Text
• Red herrings in Julian; the medieval trope of enumerating
• The perplexing vision of the servant in the hole ?
• Reconciling the goodness of the world with sin; dealing with what she is seeing from God and what the church teaches about sin—wresting with the details
• The Fall, the “Felix Culpa” or the “Happy Fault,” and the servant in the hole
• God looks without blame and that complicates church teaching on sin; layers in the narrative, God, humanity, Christ
• Being drawn into the puzzling and the pondering experienced by Julian inspired by her writing; finding comfort in a loving God that we cannot see clearly
• How God sees
• “Our life and our being are in God.”
• Chapter 49 of Julian’s Showings
• “She’s saying, sorry sin, good creatures are good creatures and their goodness qua creatures of God is kept safe and whole in God, regardless of what their concrete existential messed-upness might be.”
• Julian says: “Jesus is all who shall be saved. And all who shall be saved are Jesus and all through God's love along with the obedience, humility and patience and other virtues which pertain to us.”
• Totus Christi: Jesus as both head and body of the church
• Julian says: “All people who shall be saved while we are in this world have in us a marvelous mixture of both weal and woe. We have in us our risen Lord Jesus. We have in us the misery of the harm of Adam's falling and dying. We are steadfastly protected by Christ, and by the touch of His grace, we are raised into sure trust of salvation. And by Adam's fall, our perceptions are so shattered in various ways, by sins and by different sufferings, that we are so darkened and blinded that we can hardly find any comfort. But inwardly, we wait for God and trust faithfully that we shall receive mercy and grace, for this is God's own operation within us. And in His goodness, He opens the eye of our understanding, and by this we gain sight, sometimes more, sometimes less, according to the ability that God gives us to receive it.”
• The servant out of the hole; the mixture of weal and woe within us
• “She says at some point, ‘Peace and love are always at work in us, but we are not always in peace and love.’”
• Even when we don’t feel God, Julian wants us to know the comfort that he is there.
• Julian writes: “There neither can, nor shall be anything at all between God and man's soul. He wants us to know that the noblest thing he ever made is humankind and its supreme essence and highest virtue is the blessed soul of Christ. And furthermore, he wants us to know that his precious soul was beautifully bound to him in the making. With a knot which is so subtle and so strong that it is joined into God, and in this joining, it is made eternally holy. … Furthermore, he wants us to know that all the souls which will be eternally saved in heaven are bound and united in this union and made holy in this holiness.”
• The Beauty of the Middle English it was originally written in: “one-ing”
• “Christ's union with God is our union with God by virtue of Christ's union with us.”
• The meaning of atonement for Julian of Norwich
• The soul as an intricately woven knot; one knot that is interwoven with those of others by and through God—atonement, the one-ing of humans and God; being tied together and pulled in by the incarnation
• “It’s Julian reminding me that my blindness doesn’t have the final say, doesn’t actually say anything about what’s real and true and how God sees.”

Production Notes

• This podcast featured Ryan McAnnally-Linz
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Kacie Barrett, and Macie Bridge
• A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
• Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give