God's Kinde Love E-Book

Julia Lamm

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 712

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

God's Kinde Love is the first first full-scale study of Julian of Norwich's doctrine of grace. The thesis of the book is that Julian of Norwich developed a sophisticated, multifaceted doctrine of grace that reflected a profound knowledge of the theological tradition; at the same time, Julian resisted the dominant theological tradition and its established socio-political alignments, and she offered instead a new theological paradigm: that of 'God's kinde love.' Through a close reading of the Long Text, Lamm identifies three distinctive, interrelated facets of Julian's doctrine of grace. Julian's theological brilliance and artistry comes through as she develops these three facets by means of kinetic imagery that Julian develops thematically.

Leseprobe

GOD’S KINDE LOVE

GOD’SKINDELOVE

JULIAN OF NORWICH’SVERNACULAR THEOLOGYOF GRACE

JULIA A. LAMM

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For Jim and Jane

CONTENTS

Preface

INTRODUCTION: JULIAN OF NORWICH’S DOCTRINE OF GRACE

1.Thesis of God’s ‘Kinde’ Love

2.Relationship to Other Scholarship

3.Kinde Love, Grace, and Vernacular Theology

4.Outline of Chapters

5.A Note About Texts

CHAPTER 1: JULIAN IN NORWICH

1.The Anchoress

The Person

Her Book, Showings

2.England Pre-Plague

Serfdom

Norwich

3.Plague

4.Pressure

5.Revolt

Aims and Organization

Religion

The Meeting at Mile End

6.The Revolt in Norwich

Geoffrey Litster

Bishop Henry le Despenser

7.Suppression, Authority, and Pardon

8.Theological Pluralism, Heterodoxy, and the Specter of Heresy

Nominalism

Wyclif and Wycliffites/Lollards

CHAPTER 2: REVELATION AS EXPOSURE

1.Introduction: Revelation, Public and Private

2.Three Kinds of Showings

3.Christ’s Exposures

The Passion (1): Exposure as Exteriorization and Emptying

The Passion (2): Exposure as Vulnerability and Risk

The Incarnation: Exposure as Susceptibility to Contagion

4.Humanity Exposed

The Fall: Exposure as Abandonment

The Soul and God (1): Exposure as Mode of Receptivity

The Soul and God (2): Exposure as Enclosure

The Soul and God (3): Exposure as Unmasking

Judgment and Eschatology: Exposure as Censure

A Metaphysics of Enclosures

5.Living Exposures

Exhibition

Exposition

6.Concluding Remarks

Julian on Revelation

Julian on Scripture

CHAPTER 3: A SPREADING ABROAD: ROMANS 5:5 AS LEITMOTIF IN SHOWINGS

1.Introduction: Romans 5:5 and the Theological Tradition on Grace

2.Romans 5:5 in the Long Text of Showings

3.The First Showing: The “Plenteous Bleeding” and “Spreading Abroad”

4.Julian on Romans 5:5—Continuities with Augustine

5.Cherite, Caritas

6.More Radical Implications of “A Spreding Abrode”

God’s Love for Us: “For sothly I saw that we be that he loveth”

The Excess and Abundance of God’s Love

The Cosmic Dimension

Augustine’s Critics and Julian

7.Concluding Remarks

Julian and “Tradition”

Romans 5:5 as Leitmotif

CHAPTER 4: MERCY AND GRACE: GOD’S COMPASSION AND JOY

1.Introduction: Two Operations of One Divine Love

2.Distinguishing Mercy and Grace

The Problem with Mercy (Chapter 47)

Mercy and Grace (Chapter 48)

An Odd Juxtaposition

3.Mercy, Lordship, and Motherhood

Motherhood Redefines Lordship

The Transvaluation of Motherhood Through Identity and Equality

4.Grace as Cheerful Giving and Joyful Raising

The Cheerful Giver

The Servant’s Gift to the Lord

Gifting, Enclosing, Raising

5.Mercy and Grace (Chapters 52–63)

6.Concluding Remarks: Mercy-as-Compassion and Christian Humanism

CHAPTER 5: NATURE AND GRACE WHERE “NATURE” IS “KINDE”

1.Introduction: Kynde as Key

2.Translating Kinde

3.Falling and Sinning

The Church’s Teaching

Hints of Questioning

The Parable on the “Fall” and Human Nature

4.Julian on Kinde and Kindhede (Kindness)

Doctrine of God (1): God’s Kinde Is Kindhede (or, God’s Nature Is Kindness)

Doctrine of God (2): God’s Kinde Love Is God’s Motherhood

Christology (1): God’s Substantial Kindness Is the Ground of Humanity’s Union with God

Anthropology: God’s Kinde (Nature) as Kindness Determines Human Kinde (Nature) as Kinde (Good)

Christology (2): Kinde Describes Christ as Our Mother Substantially and Sensually

Doctrine of God (3): The Trinity as Kinde, Mercy, and Grace

Summary of Kinde and Kindhede/Kindnesse

5.Kinde and Grace

“Of One Accord” (Chapter 63)

Where “Nature” Is “Kinde”

6.Concluding Remarks: The Terms of the Debate

CHAPTER 6: GRACE AND SALVATION

1.Introduction: Julian and Tradition

2.Julian and Augustine, Revisited

The Narrative About Julian’s Augustinianism

Julian’s Supposed Augustinian View of Predestination

3.Julian on Divine Foreknowledge and Time: Two Deeds

Divine Foreordination

Divine Foreknowledge

Two Deeds That God Will Perform: “I Shall Make All Things Well”

Julian on Predestination

4.Julian on the Divine Will: Two Domes (Judgments)

5.The Order of Salvation

6.Salvation and Grace

Images of Salvation

Those “That Shalle Be Saved”

7.Concluding Remarks: Grace in Showings

APPENDIX: ROMANS 5:5 IN AUGUSTINE’S DOCTRINE OF GRACE

1.Confessions (397–401)

2.On the Spirit and the Letter (ca. 412)

3.On Nature and Grace (ca. 415)

4.On the Grace of Christ (418)

5.On Grace and Free Choice (427)

6.On Predestination of the Saints and On the Gift of Perseverance (428–29)

7.Letter 187, “On the Presence of God” (417)

8.Recent Criticisms of Augustine’s Doctrine of Grace

ABBREVIATIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

PREFACE

This project began years ago as a book whose purpose was to develop a typology of grace. Intending to include sections on Julian of Norwich (1342–ca. 1416) and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), I soon found out that little had actually been written on their respective doctrines of grace and so set out to remedy that. The result was a published article, “Schleiermacher’s Treatise on Grace,” and then a series of conference papers on Julian’s understanding of grace. There was so much to say about the latter that I wound up writing this book, God’s ‘Kinde’ Love: Julian of Norwich’s Vernacular Theology of Grace.

Despite the many hours spent alone in one’s office or in libraries, writing a book is a constant conversation—with the primary texts, with authors of the secondary literature, and with friends and colleagues nearer at hand. I trust that my appreciation of the hard work of other scholars of Julian of Norwich and of her time will be evident in the pages that follow. I wish here to acknowledge the many other conversations and kindnesses that lie behind this book and animate it. I am deeply grateful for all of them.

I thank, first of all, those several colleagues who have done me the favor of commenting on drafts of the manuscript. On this score my greatest debt is to Peter Albert, who heroically read the entire manuscript twice, in an earlier form and in its penultimate state. A historian by training, a poet in spirit, and a theologian by second avocation, he has the eye of an eagle and the heart of a dove. The book is so much better because of his editorial expertise. Two medievalists specializing in Middle English literature in the English Department here at Georgetown have also generously shared their expertise. Over the years, Sarah McNamer has offered feedback on papers and ideas for this study, and her own scholarship has been an inspiration. John Hirsh, a Chaucer scholar, graciously read the manuscript on short notice and offered valuable commentary. Patrick Hornbeck (Fordham University) and Mary Raschko (Whitman College), both medievalists as well, read the chapters closest to their own areas of specialization, respectively, and offered detailed feedback, catching mistakes and helping to shape a fuller picture. Patout Burns (Vanderbilt University) read the chapter on Augustine and Jane Lamm Carroll (St. Catherine University) the chapter on Julian’s historical context. Ariel Glucklich, in my home department, graciously read through the entire manuscript as well, even though the subject matter lies far from his own area of expertise; we have found common ground in the study of mysticism and emotion. My thanks to all of you.

There are others who have supported me in this project in definite and sustained ways over the years, and I thank them for their friendship and collegiality. In the Theology Department at Georgetown: Stephen Fields, S.J., Paul Heck, Terrence Johnson, Leo Lefebure, Daniel Madigan, S.J., Gerard Mannion, John O’Malley, S.J., Peter Phan, Jonathan Ray, Lauve Steenhuisen, and Julia Watts Belser. Elsewhere at Georgetown: Alisa Carse (Philosophy), Friederike Eigler (German), Anthony Deldonna (Music), Astrid Weigert (German), Al Archer (Art History), Emily Francomano (Spanish and Portuguese), Carole Sargent, and the Jesuit community. Beyond Healy Gates: Margaret Hansen Costan, Bernard and Patricia McGinn, Richard Miller, Martina O’Shea, Margaret Trinity, Duchie Van Hoven, and the Moyers. I am deeply grateful to you all for your support.

I thank Chris Myers of Herder and Herder/Crossroad Publishing. He has been helpful and gracious throughout the entire process, and it has been a joy working with him.

I am grateful to two research assistants for their hard work and dedication. Steven Gertz helped edit an earlier draft of the manuscript. Jordan Denari Duffner, who as an undergraduate at Georgetown had studied medieval women mystics with me and wrote a fine paper on Julian, assisted with page proofs and other late-stage tasks. Both are working on Christianity and Islam, albeit in different periods. I look forward to their scholarly contributions in the future.

My greatest debt is to my husband, Alan Mitchell, and our son, Aidan, the joy of our lives. They have been unfailingly loving, kind, funny, generous, and patient. Each day I marvel at my good fortune that I get to spend my life in their company. Aidan is finishing his junior year at Gonzaga College High School and is indeed becoming a “man for others.” Alan is the consummate colleague, friend, and spouse. Thank you, both.

This book is dedicated to my brother and sister, James D. Lamm and Jane Lamm Carroll. I am fortunate to be able to consider my two siblings friends and confidants. They are both people of grace, integrity, and virtue. They are both amazing parents who have each blessed us with a niece and a nephew. And they both embody the ideals of their respective professions: as I write, Jim is heading off to the other side of the globe to volunteer his skills as a trauma physician; and Jane, a historian, is writing a book on a nineteenth-century Dakota woman, Daybreak Woman, a.k.a. Jane Anderson Robertson, who, not unlike Julian of Norwich, could well have been lost to history. I am filled with love and admiration for them both.

I am grateful to the following presses for permission to republish some of my previous work: Johns Hopkins University Press, Ashgate, and Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies. An earlier version of chapter 2 was published as “Revelation as Exposure in Julian of Norwich’s Showings,” Spiritus 5/1 (2005): 54–78 (JHUP). Earlier versions of parts of chapters 4 and 6 appeared in two essays: “Julian of Norwich’s Retrieval of a Biblical Notion of Mercy,” in Rah.ma: Muslim and Christian Studies in Mercy, edited by V. Cottini, F. Körner, and D.R. Sarrió Cucarella, Studi arabo-islamici del PISAI, n° 22 (Rome: PISAI/Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, 2018): 127–44; and “Divine Lordship, Divine Motherhood,” in Theological Reflection and the Pursuit of Ideals: Theology, Human Flourishing and Freedom, edited by David Jaspers and Dale Wright (Surrey: Ashgate, 2013): 197–216.

Finally, I thank Georgetown University for a summer research and travel grant to consult manuscripts and to write chapter 5, and for two grants-in-aid related to this book.

Julia A. Lamm

Washington, D.C.

May 8, 2018 (the feast day of Julian of Norwich)

Introduction

JULIAN OF NORWICH’S DOCTRINE OF GRACE

1. Thesis of God’s ‘Kinde’ Love

Thirty years ago, scholars still needed to argue that Julian of Norwich (1342–ca. 1416) was not only a mystical author but also a Christian theologian in her own right. Now the point is simply accepted, thanks to the careful work of two generations of scholars.1 For the most part, studies of Julian’s theology have tended to focus on her soteriology and her notion of God as mother—in other words, on those (unconventional) theological insights that Julian developed in an explicit manner in the later version of her Showings.2 What has largely gone unnoticed is the fact that, between the earlier version (commonly referred to as the “Short Text”) and the later version (the “Long Text”), there was a twenty-four-fold increase in Julian’s use of the words grace, gracious, and graciously. Clearly, something important was going on for her, something that has yet to be explored in the secondary literature. The present book, God’s ‘Kinde’ Love, is the first full-scale study of Julian of Norwich’s doctrine of grace.

I argue that Julian of Norwich developed a sophisticated, multifaceted doctrine of grace that reflected a profound knowledge of Christian theology, and hence of various theological debates about human nature, divine grace, and salvation. At the same time, steeped though she was in the theological tradition, Julian resisted its fundamental paradigm regarding nature and grace and developed instead a doctrine of grace that emphasized, on the one hand, God’s passionate love for humanity and, on the other hand, humanity’s basic goodness and dignity. Her doctrine of grace is interesting in itself, but it gains a special valence when understood as, in part, a response to her times. Through a close textual analysis of Julian’s use of the word grace (and its cognates) in the Long Text, I identify three distinct but interrelated facets that together constitute her doctrine of grace. First, her adaptation of Romans 5:5,3 which since Augustine had been a key passage for understanding grace in the Western Christian tradition and which, I maintain, Julian shaped into a leitmotif for her theology. Second, a new, dynamic relation Julian established between mercy and grace, which then became programmatic for much of her theology. And third, her novel4 rendering of the relationship between nature and grace shaped in part through associations of the word kinde (the Middle English word for “nature”that carried a wide range of positive associations especially resonant in late fourteenth-century Norwich). For Julian, human nature (kinde) is grounded in the kindness(kindhede) of God and is redeemed by God’s kinde love.

Each of these facets involves an underlying kinetic imagery that Julian developed thematically through the course of her book in a way analogous to the composition of a piece of music, where successive iterations of recurring themes are developed with new transformations and augmentations throughout the text. That kinetic imagery was provided initially by her shewinges (showings, visions, or revelations) of Christ’s copious bleeding during the passion, and she seemed to find confirmation of her interpretation of those showings in Romans 5:5 and its language of the “spreading abroad” of divine love. Julian took up that kinetic imagery conceptually, in that it informed her very understanding of how grace works; methodologically, in that she returned to it again and again, using it as a tool to elaborate her theological insights; and structurally, in that the two divine movements of the outpouring of compassion (mercy) and the raising of humanity (grace) became for her an interpretive framework for understanding the sequence and meaning of her original showings. Julian’s Long Text can therefore be read as structured along the lines of the exitus-reditus schema (creation/fall and the return of creatures to God) so common in medieval theologies, but with a twist: in Showings, the movement is of God moving toward creation, enclosing all in God’s self, raising humanity, and making all creation whole.

The two main metaphors that I employ in presenting Julian’s doctrine of grace—facets and thematic composition—might seem to be at odds, since one is static and the other kinetic in nature, but I choose them deliberately. The metaphor of facets helps me get at the complex way in which the three elements of her doctrine of grace stand in relation to each other: they are not hierarchically arranged, nor are they isolatable. Whereas an aspect has to do with the observer’s way of perceiving certain features, a facet is a constituent element of something that is distinct from other facets, albeit related to them. The metaphor of thematic composition helps me capture the sophisticated manner in which Julian developed ideas into doctrines and then doctrines into a coherent yet fluid body of thought; it also helps capture the aesthetic dimension of her theology.

All three facets of Julian’s doctrine of grace, I maintain, are so intricately bound up with the most important theological discussions which she added in her revision of Showings (the Long Text) that those additions cannot be fully understood apart from her understanding of grace. Hence, those ideas, images, and passages in Showings to which scholars have devoted so much attention—the parable of the lord and servant (chapter 51), her description of God as mother along with her notions of the godly will, sensuality and substance, etc. (chapters 52–63)—are essentially claims about divine grace. Conventionally, in a systematic treatment of theology, a doctrine of grace occupies a definite theological locus where other doctrines (e.g., the doctrine of God, Christology, soteriology, pneumatology, and anthropology) meet. This is true in a qualified sense in Showings, which, as a prime example of a mystical text,5 is not systematically laid out in the way that, for instance, a medieval summa would be. Julian remained true to the original order of her sixteen showings, and her theology emerged initially as an exegetical exercise as she struggled to interpret their meaning. Her theology is nonetheless systematic in the sense of being intellectually coherent, intricately interconnected, and (in Denys Turner’s words) “self-conscious methodologically.”6 Julian’s doctrine of grace is not localized or even explicit, which is probably why it has gone unnoticed. Although it permeates almost every aspect of her theology, it needs to be delicately teased out—which is not atypical for medieval vernacular theologies.

2. Relationship to Other Scholarship

God’s ‘Kinde’ Love builds on and is in conversation with the body of secondary literature on Julian’s theology (as distinct from, for instance, studies of her literary style), as it aims to carry that basic trajectory forward by opening new theological dimensions to view. At the same time, while the core of my argument is theological in nature, my approach is multidisciplinary in that it relies heavily on the scholarship of medievalists—literary critics, historians, and fellow theologians specializing in medieval England. In bibliography as well as in approach, I try to address a tension in Julian studies between literary-historical and theological-philosophical approaches. In her introduction to A Companion to Julian of Norwich (2008), Liz Herbert McAvoy nods to this tension. She explains that her approach in designing her volume was “self-evidently—and self-consciously—literary and historical.”7 While McAvoy acknowledges the vital contribution of theological scholarship, the way in which she draws the disciplinary map is nevertheless illustrative of a gap that remains, even if an older divide has been for the most part mended:

It is [Julian’s] status as a writer and historical recluse with which most of the essays concern themselves, since these are the aspects of Julian’s work which are most widely scrutinized within the academic context. However, this is not in any way to downplay the importance of Julian’s exceptional contribution to theological exegesis, which is of concern to a large proportion of her readership today: indeed, this aspect of her work would seem to call for a separate volume. . . . In this present volume, however, except for [two essays] more directly concerned with aspects of Julian’s theology, Julian’s exceptional contribution to medieval theological exegesis is regarded as a given, implicit rather than explicit to the arguments presented by the contributors, who prefer instead to concentrate on Julian’s place within the traditions of women’s writing and its reception, and medieval anchoritism.8

McAvoy’s Companion volumeis an excellent contribution to the field, and no companion volume can be exhaustive. That notwithstanding, I would envision the ideal somewhat differently from how McAvoy has described it. Rather than a second volume dedicated to Julian’s theology, I imagine a two-volume companion wherein the historical, literary, and theological are integrated—as indeed they are in Julian’s text itself. In the present book, I try to work toward this more integrated approach.

The issue is not simply a matter of disciplinary content and method, although it is certainly that. It has also to do with the degree of contextualization an author attempts. Theologians, in their excitement of finding in Julian an alternative theological vision, have been criticized for de-historicizing Julian and her text, either by neglecting her context9 or by speculating too freely about historical influences. Since the 1990s, the general movement has been toward more and more sophisticated readings of the historical context and situating Julian of Norwich’s Showings within it. Nicholas Watson set the path for this in three influential essays in the mid-1990s.10 David Aers and Lynn Staley offered their own deeply contextualized readings of Julian in 1996 in their co-authored book The Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics, and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture.11 As Staley therein insists,

the visions that [Julian] casts as her experience and that serve to authorize her acts of writing cannot be treated ahistorically, nor can our treatments of them dehistoricize their content and their form . . . . Visions take place in the language of the time in which they occur; they speak to those who use that language and can therefore understand the social codes embedded in it. Both texts of the Showings give evidence of Julian’s sensitivity to those codes.12

As a historical theologian, I try to walk a careful line in God’s ‘Kinde’ Love. I do maintain that Julian’s doctrine of grace is best understood in the context of late fourteenth-century England and thus against the backdrop of recurring waves of the plague and the multiple crises that ensued, including the Revolt of 1381 and its aftermath; and I suggest that her doctrine of grace is better understood as a response to both personal and social experiences of trauma caused by those staggering events. On this latter score I am convinced by the sensitive reading by Jane Frances Maynard in Transfiguring Loss: Julian of Norwich as a Guide for Survivors of Traumatic Grief .13 The heart of my argument, however, is based on a close reading of the Long Text itself and the lines of thought that Julian developed there. Shaped in a specific context, Julian’s doctrine of grace, like so much of her thought, carries a significance that potentially reaches far beyond that context, and it should command the attention of Christian theologians. I do not, however, try to make Julian a contemporary of ours.

This approach to Julian of Norwich’s theology would place me between, on the one hand, theological-philosophical approaches such as Denys Turner’s14 and Frederick Bauerschmidt’s15 and, on the other hand, literary-historical approaches such as Denise Baker’s16 and David Aers’s.17 The former two interpreters read her somewhat in context but also take her out of fourteenth-century England, either by placing her in conversation with thinkers who postdate her or by superimposing contemporary theories onto her Showings; the latter two interpreters read her deeply in context and undertake close literary readings that involve theological arguments, but they also incorporate discussions of other medieval authors and attend to larger literary and historical objectives, and as a result their work too often escapes the notice of theologians. These approaches are all illuminating, and I stand indebted. Where mine differs is in reading Julian in context, but with that context functioning as a backdrop that informs without distracting. I describe the context of fourteenth-century England in chapter 1 and reserve my theological argument for chapters 2 through 5, where I stick closely to the text itself, tracing Julian’s theological moves and trying to interpret those on her own terms, without bringing her into later discussions. In chapter 6, I return a bit to context, weighing some of Julian’s decisions in terms of theological options in her time and in light of some recent interpretations of her.

My theological analysis intersects with the historical background on at least two points. First, Julian’s new understanding of divine mercy eschewed the prevailing model of mercy-as-amnesty in the post-revolt context, when royal pardon took on urgent meaning and much was at stake. Second, Julian’s exploration of nature (human and divine) as kinde involved a play of associations in the vernacular that was specific to late medieval England, and it shows her to have been part of a larger conversation. I argue that on these two points we glimpse where Julian resisted aspects of the dominant religious tradition, most notably its established socio-political alignments, according to which the use of coercion (spiritual, social, political) by lords, bishops, and other authorities was justified and indeed expected, since humans were viewed as inherently sinful and rebellious, and God was viewed as “just.” Julian did not so much argue against the dominant paradigm as she simply refused to accept the terms of the debate. Instead she set forth a new paradigm based on what God had revealed to her and on how she had come to interpret those “showings,” finding scriptural warrant to do so. All of this serves to underscore the point that a doctrine of grace is never something entirely abstract, removed from a definite context; nor is it entirely private, removed from a larger social world. This brings us to the title of the book.

3. Kinde Love, Grace, and Vernacular Theology

God’s Love. Julian of Norwich’s development of a full-fledged doctrine of grace in the Long Text stemmed directly from the secondary revelation she received in 1388 (fifteen years after the original visions), when she was told “love” was the meaning of her showings and it was “Love” who showed them to her (86.14/379).18 I make the case that, in the Long Text of Showings,Julian gave systematic primacy to the divine attribute of love19—which is to say, she did not seek to counterbalance it with other divine attributes (such as justice), as most other Christian theologians had done. Theologically, this was radical in two senses of the word: it replaced established conceptual roots with new ones; and it invited far-reaching reforms, not just of certain ideas but of fundamental attitudes as well. Furthermore, this radical move was the basis for her paradigm shift regarding nature and grace, a paradigm shift that involved an implicit critique of the status quo in Norwich, especially after the Revolt of 1381 and efforts to quell it. At the time when Julian was writing the Long Text of Showings, English writers were contesting and proposing various models of authority,20 and behind each model was a different conception of God. According to Julian, if God is love, then God cannot be wrathful. God’s exercise of authority thus cannot be through punishment or retribution. This entailed a fundamentally different paradigm for understanding salvation.

‘Kinde.’ The simple phrase “God’s kinde love,” the main title of this book, is borrowed from Julian herself. She used this phrase toward the end of Showings—admittedly only a couple of times, but in ways that pull together so much of what she had theretofore accomplished. In one of her references to God as mother, Julian declared, “we ware made by the moderhed [motherhood] of kind love, which kinde love never leeveth us” (60.3–4/311). Also, reflecting on the “lesson of love” that was shown to her, she said that God “wille [wants] that we know it by the swete gracious light of his kinde love” (81.21–22/375). In Middle English, kind(e) carried an even richer array of associations than kind does in modern English. As an adjective, it referred not only to the disposition and attitude of kindness but also to kinship, to what is natural, and to what is inherently good. Kinde was one of those multivalent words in Middle English with which so many English authors and poets of the late fourteenth century played, Julian included. Kinde described God; kinde described the human person; kinde also described the bond between them. “God’s kinde love” refers to the intimacy and tenderness of God’s love for humanity, indeed for all creation. It is at the heart of Julian’s doctrine of grace and of what, I argue, was her deep Christian humanism. Kinde, taken as it is from Middle English,also underscores Julian’s doctrine of grace as an example of medieval vernacular theology.

Vernacular Theology. “Vernacular theology” emerged as a designation in the mid-1990s, when Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago) and Nicholas Watson (Harvard University) both began employing the phrase, around the time that medieval studies and early modern studies took the “turn to religion.”21 According to McGinn,

Vernacular theology is a mode of “understanding faith” (intellectus fidei) that aims for an intellectual and lived appropriation of the tenets of Christian belief open to all believers, and not just one filtered down through an intellectual elite, either of monastics or scholastically trained clerics. The fundamentals of the faith it seeks to understand are not different from the basis of the traditional monastic and scholastic forms of theology, but the audience and modes of communication express the democratization and even “secularization” (i.e., moving out into the wider lay world) that were an integral part of the “New Mysticism” of the later Middle Ages.22

McGinn’s interest in this new type of theology was initially related to his study of what he calls the “new mysticism” that emerged across Europe in the thirteenth century.23 Watson’s interest was initially more specifically tied to England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Where McGinn views vernacular theology largely in relation to monastic and scholastic modes of doing theology, Watson emphasizes its relation to the political sphere. Reflecting back critically on what he had written twenty years earlier (1995) about vernacular theology, Watson continues to affirm “that writing about religion in the vernacular is a political act (in a more specific sense than that in which writing in general is political); and that, because this is so, all vernacular writing about religion is connected, part of a single field or arena of discourse.”24Vernacular theology also carries the advantage, Watson argues, of dissociating the study of texts like Julian’s from the now unhelpful category of medieval English mysticism and therewith from the method of what he calls “traditional mystics scholarship”25 or “mystic studies,”26 which, he contends, is too focused on “the quality of experience”27 and too invested in religious agendas.

Weighing in on this discussion of vernacularity in 2003, Barbara Newman proposed another, complementary category: “imaginative theology.”28 Whereas vernacular theology calls “attention to the problem of who could write theology and who could read it,” imaginative theology “focuses on how theology might be performed; it draws attention to theological method and epistemology.”29 More recently, Newman has pursued the idea of “crossover rather than vernacularity as [her] starting point.”30 As she explains:

Vernacular genres like biblical paraphrase, motets, devotional songs, hagiography, miracles of the Virgin, beguine poetry, and Grail romance, as well as Latin treatises that cite French popular songs, testify to an intense, dynamic concern with bridging the divide between clerics and their lay patrons and audiences. But there remains an edgy, experimental quality to many of these works.31

Vincent Gillespie, in an essay entitled “Vernacular Theology” for a volume dedicated to Middle English, surveys the first decade or so of scholarship that took up the category. He suggests some adjustment to McGinn’s and Watson’s views, but he is especially eager to curb the “overstatement and tabloidization” embraced by some of the latter’s followers.32 In particular, he warns against “a privileging of the lay perspective over the clerical, and a downplaying of the continuing agency of the orthodox clergy in the production and dissemination of vernacular texts.”33 Gillespie nevertheless grants that “the socio-political tension between continued clerical agency and growing lay self-determination remains a key issue in exploring the contested rise of vernacular theology.”34

In highlighting Julian of Norwich’s vernacular theology of grace, my argument draws from all four of these medievalists. With McGinn, I stress the significance of the emergence of this new category for examining theology in the late medieval and early modern periods. Recognizing the credibility of vernacular theologies is vital for the field of Christian theology insofar as it affords us a more honest view of the complexity of medieval religious thought, as it also provides us with more resources from which to learn. Importantly, as in the case of Julian, the category of vernacular theology expands the theological canon by including the works of women—and by recognizing these women as theologians without diminishing their work by labeling it as spiritual writing.35 This, in turn, raises interesting and necessary questions about tradition, canon, authority, and orthodoxy.

With Watson, I underscore the political and social dimensions of Julian of Norwich’s theology. When it comes to mystics, the presumption in the past too often was that they existed on the margins of society and that their reclusiveness signaled an a-political stance. That view of mystics and mysticism has rightfully been challenged.36 I maintain that in her theology, and specifically in her doctrine of grace, Julian set forth a new theological paradigm with potentially profound social and political implications, had it ever carried sway beyond a relatively small audience. Watson also reminds us to attend to the power of the particular language in question—in Julian’s case, Middle English. He contends that “Julian and [her contemporary, William] Langland can be said to dissent from standard salvation theologies precisely because they are not writing in Latin but in a language they take already to embody the doctrine they expound.”37 As I shall argue, Julian’s take on the relationship between nature and grace was profoundly shaped by her native tongue and by the range of associations of the Middle English term for “nature”: kinde. Kinde meant nature, but it also meant so much more, with largely positive moral associations. This is an instance where a vernacular language can inspire an author (or community of believers) by offering a constellation of ideas and attitudes different from those constricted by Latin.

With Newman, I emphasize the importance of images for Julian in the formation of concepts. For Julian, the imagistic and conceptual are closely linked, and such linkage helps give unity to her doctrine of grace. I am also informed by Newman’s notion of crossover in genre and aim. Vernacular theologies from the late Middle Ages can have a compelling vigor about them as they competed, intentionally or not, with the Latinate elite.38 This was certainly true of Julian of Norwich’s Showings. I interpret Julian both as a reader of the longer Augustinian theological tradition (in its varied expressions) and as a participant in theological conversations in the charged context of Norwich around the turn of the fifteenth century.

With Gillespie, I want to stress the affective and sapiential dimension of Julian’s theology. Regarding her contemporary, William Langland, and his poem Piers Plowman (in which the main protagonists is named Will),Gillespie points to

a hinge between the earlier search for knowledge (scientia) along initially catechetic, then didactic, and finally academic pathways and Will’s subsequent (and progressive) search for understanding or “kynde knowynge” (sapientia) along pathways that mimic the more affective, devotional, and intuitive features of the meditative and psychologically catalytic “monastic” spirituality reflected in the religious prose that appeared in the vernacular in such rich abundance in the years after 1380, and continued to enrich it throughout the fifteenth century. It is a long way from catechesis to contemplation, but the field of vernacular theology necessarily embraces them both. Will’s point of departure (“How may I save my soul?”) is a search for a deeper personal understanding of the catechetic basics of the Church’s teaching tradition, and his most profound spiritual experiences take place because of his progressively deeper engagement with the liturgical and sacramental life of the institutional Church.39

Julian’s doctrine of grace is at once theological-doctrinal and contemplative-​practical. The current lament that scholasticism led to the separation of theology and spiritual practice, and that this separation defined the field of Christian theology until fairly recently, can only have arisen from a state of ignorance about late medieval vernacular theology.

4. Outline of Chapters

Chapter 1, “Julian in Norwich,” is a descriptive chapter that introduces Julian and her text(s) to those readers unfamiliar with her, and it places her in context. It thus provides the backdrop for my main thesis but is not an integral part of my argument per se. In monographs on Julian’s theology, a section on Julian’s context is almost obligatory, although most treatments are relatively general and brief.40 My chapter offers a lengthy, fairly detailed account of England—and Norwich in particular—in the fourteenth century. In it, I draw from more recent scholarship in the field of history—most notably, Juliet Barker’s 1381: The Year of the Peasants’ Revolt;41 Helen Lacey’s The Royal Pardon: Access to Mercy in Fourteenth-Century England;42 and Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson’s edited volume, Medieval Norwich.43 Julian wrote the later version of Showings after the Revolt of 1381 and its suppression, and part of this book’s contention is that her doctrine of grace can be best appreciated when that history is understood. Nevertheless, readers most interested in Julian’s thought may want to proceed directly to chapter 2, where I give an overview of her theology through her understanding of revelation, or to chapter 3, where my argument about her doctrine of grace actually begins.

Chapter 2, “Revelation as Exposure,”44 sets the theological framework for Julian’s doctrine of grace. It argues that Julian’s developing understanding of the content, mode, and purpose of her showings rose to the level of a doctrine of revelation. Her doctrine of grace both presupposes and is closely intertwined with her understanding of revelation. For non-specialists, this chapter provides an overview of Julian’s Showings (including the importance of imagery for Julian’s theology) before the more focused argument about grace, which begins in chapter 3. For specialists, it offers a theological reading of Julian’s thought through the metaphor of exposure.

Chapter 3, “A Spreading Abroad: Romans 5:5 as Leitmotif in Showings,” begins the formal argument about Julian’s doctrine of grace. It identifies several passages new to the Long Text of Showings in which Julian was referencing Romans 5:5 and demonstrates that Julian rendered diffusa est (“is poured out into”) from the Latin Vulgate Bible alternatively as a spreding abrode, a forthspreding, and that which springeth and spredeth into us. Once we recall the importance of this scriptural text for Augustine and his doctrine of grace, and consequently for subsequent debates about grace in Western Christian thought; once we recognize how in Julian’s mind the imagery of Romans 5:5 coincided with, and thus confirmed, the imagery of her visions of Christ’s copious bleeding; and, finally, once we see how she connected this conceptual-imagistic theme to grace—then the first facet of her doctrine of grace comes into view. Julian introduced it early in Showings in connection with the first showing. This chapter shows how Julian shaped Romans 5:5 into a leitmotif that she developed thematically throughout the rest of her Showings. It also considers how Julian stood in debt to the wider Augustinian tradition and where she went beyond it.

Chapter 4, “Mercy and Grace: God’s Compassion and Joy,” examines a distinction Julian drew between what she called the divine properties of mercy and grace, a distinction that set them in dynamic relation to each other (chapter 48). It traces what she did theologically (and, arguably, politically) with this distinction. It shows how Julian’s discomfort with the prevailing construal of mercy, which had only become heightened in post-revolt England, evidently led her to redefine it. The chapter then demonstrates how she carried over her new definitions of mercy and grace into the parable of the lord and servant (chapter 51), where she gave concrete illustrations of them, and into her notion of God as mother (chapters 52–63)—and how, therefore, her understanding of mercy and grace actually served to hold together the two single largest textual additions to the Long Text that otherwise might seem incongruously placed. Finally, it examines Julian’s definition of grace as the joyful raising of humanity and, in particular, her notion of humanity as itself the gift.

Chapter 5, “Nature and Grace Where ‘Nature’ is ‘Kinde,’” argues that in Showings Julian developed an understanding of nature and grace that departed from the usual way of things, and further that the multiple and fluid ways that she, like so many of her contemporaries, played with the notion of kinde was at the heart of that departure. Nature was kinde, and therefore the usual oppositions between nature and grace (natura and gratia) did not apply.Here I argue that Julian did not accept the terms of the debate on nature and grace, first because her showings—and how, she believed, she had been led by grace to understand them—would not allow her to, and second because her own language resisted the terms of the debate and lent her possibilities for developing a new paradigm.

Chapter 6, “Grace and Salvation,” turns to a wider venue as it considers some of the implications of her doctrine of grace as a whole, especially with regard to predestination, divine foreknowledge, the divine will, and salvation. Here I return to the question of tradition and put Julian in conversation with several other treatments of nature and grace, from Augustine through fourteenth-century nominalism and lollardy. However varied the voices in this ongoing conversation (argument) about grace may have been, the vast majority of religious writers still accepted the basic paradigm. Julian, in contrast, did not just move the furniture around but redesigned the house.

The appendix, “Romans 5:5 in Augustine’s Doctrine of Grace,” traces the role that Romans 5:5 played in Augustine’s writings on grace. This is a presupposition for the argument I make about Julian’s own use of Romans 5:5 in my third chapter, but since most readers will be interested in Julian and may find this to be a distraction, I have chosen to append it to my main argument. In this appendix, I make the case that, despite several discontinuities that occur in his theological anthropology due to his polemics with Pelagius and the Pelagians, Augustine was fairly consistent in his appeal to this scriptural text and, concomitantly, in his emphasis on caritas in his doctrine of grace. The appendix concludes with a survey of recent criticisms of Augustine’s doctrine of grace, criticisms to which Julian in her use of Romans 5:5 is not susceptible.

Interest in Julian has soared among theologians, medievalists, lay readers, and even philosophers.45 This interest is due to the power and beauty of her voice, to the strength and integrity of her arguments, and to the fact that she offers a striking alternative to the dominant theological paradigm in Western Christianity, which has bequeathed a host of problems. Julian insisted that God is kind and loving and never angry, and she defined God as mother; she denied that human beings fell into sin out of rebellious pride, claiming instead that the motivation was an eager, loving will; she was interested not in blame but in how the pain resulting from sin might be ameliorated; she presented a holistic view of the human person (body and soul), of all humanity, and of all of creation; and she gave consolation to those who had suffered unbearable loss through several waves of the plague, famine, and social upheaval. God’s ‘Kinde’ Love touches on all these points.

5. A Note About Texts

I use Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins’s critical edition of Julian’s Showings: The Writings of Julian of Norwich.46 In modernizing the orthography of Julian’s texts, Watson and Jenkins have succeeded in their goal of making “Julian’s writings more accessible to modern readers, a particular preoccupation of this book.”47 Quotations will thus be given in the Middle English in order to convey the power and beauty of Julian’s writing, with translations of certain words (or occasionally entire passages) provided when necessary. Watson and Jenkins number the lines in their edition beginning anew in each chapter. Providing the lines in my citations will thus assist readers of this book who are using different editions to estimate where in the chapter they can find the passage, as it will also signal to the reader how the various passages being discussed stand in relation to one another. Most chapters of Showings are relatively short—under 50 lines. The chief exception is chapter 51, which contains the parable of the lord and servant and which has 280 lines. In Watson and Jenkins’s edition, the primary text is given on right-hand, odd-numbered pages and editors’ notes and commentaries on the corresponding left-hand, even-numbered page; therefore, page references for passages running over from one page to the next will not appear immediately sequential (for example, 39.7–8/239–41).

Since my argument is about the Long Text, all references will be to that unless noted otherwise; references to the Short Text will be preceded by “ST.” The Watson and Jenkins edition is especially helpful in comparing the two versions in that, in addition to supplying an annotated text of the Short Text(pp. 61–119), they also supply the corresponding passages from the Short Text at the bottom of the pages of their annotated text of the Long Text, in order to make it easier to see what Julian added, altered, or omitted in her revision. Their critical edition is an invaluable resource.

Occasionally, I shall discuss different modern translations of Showings. Those are given in the bibliography, and of course proper bibliographic information will be provided along the way. One translation, Julian of Norwich: Showings, by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh,48 will receive particular attention. In my notes I shall refer to their translated edition as “C&W.” This will also help to distinguish their translation from their critical edition, which was published in the same year.49

1.In chronological order I list here just some of the monographs devoted to the subject, reserving references to the many more essays for notes in subsequent chapters: Grace M. Jantzen, Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian (New York: Paulist Press, 1988); Brant Pelphrey, Christ Our Mother: Julian of Norwich (Wilmington, DE: M. Glazier, 1989); Joan M. Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter: The Theology of Julian of Norwich (New York: Crossroad, 1991); Margaret A. Palliser, Christ, Our Mother of Mercy: Divine Mercy and Compassion in the Theology of the Shewings of Julian of Norwich (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1992); Denise Nowakowski Baker, Julian of Norwich’s Showings: From Vision to Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Christopher Abbott, Julian of Norwich: Autobiography and Theology (Rochester, NY: D.S. Brewer, 1999); Frederick C. Bauerschmidt, Julian of Norwich and the Mystical Body Politic of Christ (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999); Kerrie Hide, Gifted Origins to Graced Fulfillment: The Soteriology of Julian of Norwich (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001); Denys Turner, Julian of Norwich, Theologian (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011). For a more general discussion of the relation between mysticism and theology in the Middle Ages, as well as between scholastic and vernacular theologies, see Bernard McGinn, “Introduction: Apostolic Renewal and the New Mysticism,” in The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200–1350) (New York: Crossroad, 1998): 1–30.

2.The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, ed. Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), hereafter “W&J.” The titles of the two versions used by Watson and Jenkins here are taken from the first line of each respective text. For simplicity’s sake, I follow the custom of referring to them as the Short Text (ST) and the Long Text (LT). References will be to chapter and line number(s), followed by “/” and page number(s) from W&J. For example, “63.7/321” means chapter 63, line 7, on p. 321.

3.“. . . and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (NRSV). Other Modern English translations of the main verb use “is spread abroad.”

4.Although much of what she had to say was novel, it needs to be pointed out that novelty was not her aim. As Vincent Gillespie notes, “Originality is not the issue: truth to her showing is.” Gillespie, “Vernacular Theology,” in Middle English, ed. Paul Strohm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 404.

5.In his magisterial, multi-volume study of Christian mysticism, Bernard McGinn defines Christian mysticism as “a special consciousness of the presence of God that by definition exceeds description and results in a transformation of the subject who receives it.” McGinn, Flowering of Mysticism, 26. On Christian mystics, mystical authors, and the characteristics of a mystical text, see Julia A. Lamm, “A Guide to Christian Mysticism,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, ed. Julia A. Lamm (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 1–23.

6.Turner, Julian of Norwich, Theologian, 11.

7.Liz Herbert McAvoy, “Introduction: ‘God Forbede . . . that I Am a Techere’: Who, or What, Was Julian?,” in A Companion to Julian of Norwich (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), 8.

8.McAvoy, “Who, or What, Was Julian?,” 8–9.

9.Literary figures have done the same. As Sarah Salih and Denise N. Baker note, “Allusions to Julian in high cultural literary texts often present her as a disembodied, dehistoricized seer whose revelations address the most profound spiritual enigmas. T.S. Eliot and Annie Dillard use Julian to explore the problem of evil. Both detach her from her medieval context in order to assimilate her words and ideas into their own texts. She provides an insight that impels them to a poetic resolution of their conundrum. The invocation of Julian creates for their texts an aura of timeless Christian wisdom, of enduring mystical truth.” Salih and Baker, Introduction to Julian of Norwich’s Legacy: Medieval Mysticism and Post-Medieval Reception (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 6.

10.Nicholas Watson, “The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love,” Speculum 68/3 (1993): 637–83; “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409,” Speculum 70/4 (1995): 822–64; and “Visions of Inclusion: Universal Salvation and Vernacular Theology in Pre-Reformation England,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27/2 (Spring 1997): 145–87. The last of these directly pertains to Julian’s understanding of grace.

11.David Aers and Lynn Staley, The Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics, and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996). Their two chapters dedicated to Julian of Norwich are Aers, “The Humanity of Christ: Reflections on Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love” (77–106), and Staley, “Julian of Norwich and the Late Fourteenth-Century Crisis of Authority” (107–78).

12.Staley, “Crisis of Authority,” 157–58.

13.Jane Frances Maynard, Transfiguring Loss: Julian of Norwich as a Guide for Survivors of Traumatic Grief (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2006).

14.See Turner, Julian of Norwich, Theologian.

15.See Bauerschmidt, Mystical Body Politic, and “Order, Freedom, and ‘Kindness’: Julian of Norwich on the Edge of Modernity,” Theology Today 60/1 (2003): 63–81.

16.See Baker, From Vision to Book.

17.In addition to Powers of the Holy, see David Aers, Salvation and Sin: Augustine, Langland, and Fourteenth-Century Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009).

18.For the full quotation, see chap. 1, sec. 1, pp. 35–36; chap. 2, sec. 2, p. 97; and chap. 3, sec. 6, p. 157.

19.See Julia A. Lamm, “Casting Out Fear: The Logic of ‘God is Love’ in Julian of Norwich and Friedrich Schleiermacher,” in Saving Fear in Christian Spirituality, ed. Ann W. Astell (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, [in press] 2019).

20.See Staley, “Crisis of Authority.”

21.See Ken Jackson and Arthur F. Marotti, “The Turn to Religion in Early Modern English Studies,” Criticism 46/1 (2004): 167–90.

22.Bernard McGinn, The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticisms, 1350–1550, vol. 5 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Herder & Herder, Crossroad, 2012), 334.

23.Hence the subtitle of McGinn’s Flowering of Mysticism, cited above: Men and Women in the New Mysticism, 1200–1350.

24.Watson, “Cultural Changes,” English Language Notes 44/1 (2006): 130. This volume of ELN is devoted to the topic of vernacular theology ten years after Watson’s influential essay “Censorship and Cultural Change.” See pp. 77–126 in this volume of ELN for other essays on the topic.

25.Nicholas Watson, “The Middle English Mystics,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 544.

26.Watson, “Middle English Mystics,” 545.

27.Watson, “Middle English Mystics,” 544.

28.Barbara Newman, God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 294–304.

29.Newman, God and the Goddesses, 297.

30.Barbara Newman, Medieval Crossover (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), 3.

31.Newman, Medieval Crossover, 4.

32.Gillespie, “Vernacular Theology,” 406.

33.Gillespie, “Vernacular Theology,” 407.

34.Gillespie, “Vernacular Theology,” 407.

35.See Andrew Prevot, “No Mere Spirituality: Recovering a Tradition of Women Theologians,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 33/1 (2017): 107–17.

36.See, e.g., Segundo Galilea, “The Spirituality of Liberation,” The Way: Contemporary Christian Spirituality 25/3 (1985): 186–94; Dorothee Sölle, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001); Mary Frohlich, “Mystics of the Twentieth Century,” and Philip Sheldrake, “A Critical Theological Perspective,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, ed. Lamm, 515–30 and 533–49, respectively. When it comes to the political dimension of Julian of Norwich’s thought, see also Denis Renevey, “Mysticism and the Vernacular,” in ibid., 562–76; and Bauerschmidt, Mystical Body Politic, especially his section entitled “Political Theology,” 9–12.

37.Nicholas Watson, “Visions of Inclusion,” 170.

38.As Renevey puts it, “This cultural transfer, either by means of translation or original compositions, negotiated the reassessment of authority in a language which slowly found its own Sitz-im-Leben (‘setting in life’) against the powerful machinery of Latinate culture, for an audience emancipated from the need of learned intermediaries” (“Mysticism and the Vernacular,” 562).

39.Gillespie, “Vernacular Theology,” 408.

40.See, e.g., Jantzen, Mystic and Theologian, 5–12; Hide, Gifted Origins, 10–13; Pelphrey, Christ Our Mother, 49–58, 63–69; and Bauerschmidt, Mystical Body Politic, 173–80.

41.Juliet R.V. Barker, 1381: The Year of the Peasants’ Revolt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).

42.Helen Lacey, The Royal Pardon: Access to Mercy in Fourteenth-Century England (York, UK, and Rochester, NY: York Medieval Press, 2009).

43.Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson, eds., Medieval Norwich (London and New York: Hambledon and London, 2004).

44.An earlier version of this chapter was published as “Revelation as Exposure in Julian of Norwich’s Showings,” Spiritus 5/1 (2005): 54–78.

45.See Marilyn McCord Adams, Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999).

46.See note 2 above.

47.Watson and Jenkins, “Introduction,” The Writings of Julian of Norwich, 43.

48.Edmund Colledge, O.S.A., and James Walsh, S.J., eds., Julian of Norwich: Showings (New York, Ramsey, and Toronto: Paulist Press, 1978).

49.Edmund Colledge, O.S.A., and James Walsh, S.J., eds., A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1978).

Chapter 1

JULIAN IN NORWICH

. . . and her name is Julian, who is a recluse at Norwich and still alive, A.D. 1413.1

Maybe this is true of any century, but it seems intensely so about Julian’s: the fourteenth century in England was one of those long centuries during which so much changed, and fundamentally so, that its great literary products from the end of the century could not have been imagined at the beginning. The combination of the pain endured, changes wrought, and aspirations awakened defined it. The second half of the century was punctuated by the crises of repeated epidemics of the plague, a severe labor shortage, and a brutally crushed revolt that was the first nationwide rebellion in England led by commoners. These related serial events left traumatic scarring in the social body. At the same time, the century saw considerable social fluidity and, with it, new possibilities—not least because of those same crises. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, William Langland’s Piers Plowman, Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (both by the same poet), and Julian’s Showings all belong uniquely to that late fourteenth-century context.

This chapter introduces Julian to readers not yet acquainted with her. About Julian the person and her texts, I shall be relatively brief, providing only the basic facts of what we know about her, which is not much, and relegating more specialized debates about her and her texts to footnotes, so that readers who wish to pursue questions further might know where to begin. About Julian’s context I shall have more to say. I set her and her book Showings in context by sketching the contours of life in fourteenth-century Norwich and highlighting certain historical events that, I maintain, are relevant to the doctrine of grace she developed in the Long Text of her Showings. Of course, not everything that should be said about Julian’s context can be said in one chapter, but it is my hope that enough will be reviewed so as to orient the reader and help illuminate key strands of my argument.

I begin with Julian herself (section 1) and broaden the scope to England and Norwich before the plague (section 2). I then turn to the plague itself (section 3), to the social unrest it brought about (section 4), to the ensuing Revolt of 1381 (section 5), and, narrowing the scope, to how that uprising played itself out in Julian’s Norwich (section 6). Finally, I close with a reflection on the post-revolt milieu, including suppression and the heightened need for royal pardon (section 7) and the nature of theological pluralism in England at the end of the fourteenth century (section 8