A Book of Showings by Julian of Norwich

First transcribed: wr. c. 1373, revised and expanded c. 1393, pb. 1670

Edition(s) used:Showings, translated and by E. Colledge and James Walsh. New York: Paulist Press, 1978

Genre(s): Nonfiction

Subgenre(s): Meditation and contemplation; mysticism; spiritual treatise

Core issue(s): Creation; God; love; prayer; sin and sinners; union with God

Overview

In May of 1373, Julian of Norwich, at the age of thirty, suffered a grievous illness. On the seventh night of her suffering, she lay very close to death, her eyes on the crucifix held by her confessor. She had received the last rites days earlier. Now, hardly able to breathe, she believed her death was imminent. However, in a moment, all pain ceased, she tells the reader, and she felt completely sound, if a little disappointed, as she longed for release into the next life. Deprived of this, she prayed to experience the pains of Christ’s passion. As if in answer to her prayer, she saw the wounded head of the crucified Christ, the first of sixteen visions or revelations that she would experience over the next twelve hours or so.

Julian went on to record her visions in a work called Showings (also known as Shewings, Book of Showings, and Revelations of Divine Love), composing two versions, the so-called short text (ST), presumably written soon after the visions occurred, and the long text (LT), written some twenty years later. In the short text, Julian provides brief descriptions of each revelation. In the long text (which this essay refers to), these descriptions are accompanied and amplified by passages of reflection on theological and devotional matters that are the result of twenty years of study and thought.

Her visions or “showings” are of three types. Some are corporeal or bodily sights like the first vision of the crowned head of the crucified Christ that appears in chapter 5 (LT) and the famous passage on the hazel nut, which Julian learns is “all that is made,” sustained and held in existence by the love of God (chapter 4, ST). Others consist of words that are clearly spoken in her mind, as in the words “I thirst” from chapter 17 (LT). A third type she calls a “ghostly sighting,”one that lacks both words and images. A good example of this type appears in chapter 5 (LT), where Julian describes how the Lord shows her a vision of his “familiar [homely] love,” describing it as “everything which is good and comforting for our help.”

What Julian discerns in the course of her visions and in the years of reflection that follow them is a vision of God and our relationship to God that is endearing, in sharp contrast to the exacting judge of medieval Christianity. Hers is a welcoming God, ready to embrace creatures even when they sin. He/she is our mother, father, brother, and loving spouse. We are “knitted in a knot” to God, “oned” with him through Christ. Consequently, because we share in the will of Christ, we can never fully assent to sin. We are the “noblest thing” God ever made, and he makes our soul his “ dwelling place.”

In many of her visions, Julian beholds a motherly Christ whose care for souls is tender and nurturing. Christ, the second person of the Trinity, bears us into eternal life through the labor of his death on the cross and nourishes us from the blood and water flowing from his side, as a mother might nurse the child at her breast. This maternal God appears as well in the long and complex parable of the Lord and Servant (chapter 51, LT). Although the story opens with a male servant who has been sent on an errand by his lord, it quickly moves to a more feminine scene when the servant, overly eager and speeding along to do his master’s will, takes a fall from which he cannot rise or even look back to take consolation from the gaze of his lord. The lord, meanwhile, gazes with the tenderness and compassion of a loving mother on his dutiful servant and plans to reward him for his pain and suffering.

Julian’s fourteenth revelation centers on prayer. The vision occurs as the words “I am the ground of your beseeching” are brought suddenly into her mind. In this vision, she comes to realize that prayer is not a human invention but is grounded in God’s holy will, an expression of his generosity that desires to reward us for all eternity. God wants us to have some good thing, and he motivates us to pray for it. Knowing this should inspire us to trust and to feel secure, Julian learns, even in the midst of doubt. Effectively, what prayer achieves, she will find on further reflection, is the alignment of the will of the one who prays with the divine will.

When Julian reaches the end of her account, she hearkens back to an early reflection on the reality of sin when she wondered why God allows sin to exist. In that reflection, she ponders the possibility that God could have prevented sin, making all things well. She is assured then by the words of God that “Sin is necessary but all will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well” (chapter 27, LT), bequeathing to future generations the most famous and comforting words of her text. As she closes her book and wants to sum up the meaning of all that she has experienced in the course of the vision, she learns that love was its meaning and that all is, indeed, well, as God promised.

Christian Themes

Very little is known about the life of Julian of Norwich, not even her real name. She adopted the name Julian from the Church of Saint Julian in Norwich, to which she attached herself when she took up life as an anchoress. However, we can tell from her writing that she was an educated woman, familiar with Scripture, the writings of Saint Augustine and Boethius, and works of contemplative monastic spirituality. Her teachings on sin, for example, show the influence of both Boethius and Augustine in their insistence that evil lacks substance: “I believe that it [evil] has no substance, no share in being. . . .” (chapter 27, LT) and that, though sin is a necessary part of reality, God has the power to bring good out of evil, summoning the assurance “that all will be well.” Her mystical visions will yield a unique theological perspective, but this perspective will be grounded in traditional Catholic Christian orthodoxy.

This is true even of her portrayal of God/Christ as mother. She is not the first to think of God this way. Others from the Middle Ages and earlier, including Saint Anselm and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, had touched on this idea, but she offers possibly the fullest, richest, most thought-out development of the concept. Her God is close and caring. He is our clothing, she says, made of love that wraps us in a protective embrace, much as the protective womb of the mother cradles the growing baby. Through the labor pains of his passion and death, Christ births us into eternal life. He remains a doting mother, ever at our side, nourishing us with the Eucharist, always eager to hear our voices in prayer and to shower gifts on us.

Julian’s interpretation of God’s motherliness is derived from her exploration of the Trinity, a mystery she reflects on without apparent trepidation. Through the Incarnation, Christ shares in our human nature, both physical and spiritual, and for Julian this sharing makes him the best expression of the motherliness of divine love.

Sources for Further Study

Baker, Denise N. Julian of Norwich’s “Showings”: From Vision to Book. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994. Traces the evolution of Julian’s writings from the origin of her visions in affective spiritual practices to the sophisticated theology of the educated medieval woman.

Beer, Frances. Women and Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: Boydell Press, 1992. Beer summarizes and explicates A Book of Showings, focusing on Julian’s visions of the Crucifixion and Christ’s suffering as parallel to human suffering, which is intended to draw people to God. The author clearly admires Julian as a person and as a spiritual authority.

Bradley, Ritamary. “Julian of Norwich: Writer and Mystic.” In An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe, edited by Paul E. Szarmach. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984. Bradley analyzes Julian’s style and use of figurative language, and she outlines what she considers to be the key features of Julian’s theology: the nature of the Trinity and of God’s transforming love. Discussions of Julian’s place in the Christian mystical tradition and of her modern influence are particularly helpful.

Coleman, T. W. English Mystics of the Fourteenth Century. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1971. In his chapter on Julian, Coleman gives detailed biographical background and resists the supernatural nature of the visions, citing several expert opinions to suggest that they may be attributed to Julian’s physical and mental state at the time.

Dearborn, Kerry. “The Crucified Christ as the Motherly God: The Theology of Julian of Norwich.” Scottish Journal of Theology 55, no. 4 (2002): 283-302. Dearborn explains how Julian develops her concept of the motherliness of God without contradicting traditional teachings or sacred Scripture.

Heimmel, Jennifer P. “God Is Our Mother”: Julian of Norwich and the Medieval Image of Christian Feminine Divinity. Salzburg, Austria: Inst. für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, University of Salzburg, 1982. An in-depth study of the history of the title theme, which Heimmel contends reaches its greatest depth in A Book of Showings. Includes a bibliography.

Jones, Catherine. “The English Mystic: Julian of Norwich.” In Medieval Women Writers, edited by Katharina M. Wilson. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984. Jones examines Julian’s background and sources for A Book of Showings and considers her place in medieval and modern spirituality. She compares Julian’s innovative rhetorical and stylistic techniques to Chaucer’s and shows how Julian’s development of the idea of God as mother is unlike any previous or contemporary treatment. Parallel excerpts from the short and long versions of the text are included, along with a bibliography.

Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love. Translated by Clifton Wolters. 1966. New York: Penguin Books, 1982. The standard modern English translation of Julian’s work. In his generally helpful introduction, Wolters argues that Julian’s vision of Christ as mother is her own, idiosyncratic concept.

Julian of Norwich. Showings. Translated by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh. New York: Paulist Press, 1978. This translation includes both short and long versions, with a comprehensive bibliography.

Llewelyn, Robert, ed. Julian: Woman of Our Day. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1985. This collection of essays, many devotional in nature, is united by the idea that parallels between the fourteenth and twentieth centuries make Julian’s spiritual insights especially applicable today. Includes a brief bibliography.

McEntire, Sandra, ed. Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays. New York: Garland, 1998. Eleven essays cover a wide range of pertinent topics including genre, Julian’s theology, writing style, and possible models.

Nuth, Joan M. Wisdom’s Daughter: The Theology of Julian of Norwich. New York: Crossroad, 1991. An excellent, comprehensive study of Julian’s work from a feminist theological viewpoint. With an extensive bibliography and an index.

Pelphrey, Brant. Christ Our Mother: Julian of Norwich. Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1989. A good source for the nonspecialist; includes a useful outline of each vision.