There it is possible that she acquired her name, as the “Lady of St. Her topics are not out of keeping for a medieval woman, but her commentaries on the spirituality of her day are deeply insightful as we shall see below.Īfter her “revelations,” Julian retired to a small anchorage attached to her local parish church of St. Her visions were of the sufferings of Jesus, the defeat of evil, God’s thankfulness for those who serve him, the Virgin Mary and the gifts of prayer. This longer document also survives and is today published as “Revelations of Divine Love.” It is still in print.

Later in life, she revised her text and added commentary on what these visions must have meant. After this experience, she recovered from the illness and wrote her visions down, in a manuscript that survives. Julian would later claim that she saw the crucifix bleed, and that for a period of several hours she had a series of 16 visions. At least one-third of the population was killed very quickly, and in some areas up to half the population.Įyewitness accounts from the period tell us that there were so many dead that they could not all be buried in time, and bodies were stacked up like cords of wood awaiting final rites. However, in her youth, the bubonic plague struck England with great devastation. Her home in Norwich might therefore have originally been a pleasant one, given that it was a prosperous merchant city, and the second largest city in England after London. She appears to have been educated in her youth, given the fact that she could obviously read and write and so was probably from the local gentry. She is worth listening to today if only to hear a female voice shining out of a culture in which most religious authorities were men. Even her name is not certain.īut, if for nothing else, she is remarkable in being the first woman to leave us a book written in the English language. In contrast to what we know of a great many mystics in the Western tradition, we know remarkably little about Lady Julian of Norwich, but her writing is one of the most beloved of the spiritual classics to come from the European Middle Ages. This week’s column, on “Revelations of Divine Love” by Lady Julian, continues a series on less well known spiritual classics.

Julian of norwich revelations