( Log Out /  Thank you! What an intellect! Being well in our modern world is related to the healthy body, the avoidance of debt, whether financial or indebtedness to other people, being free from dependency. (Julian of Norwich) Sometimes I can hardly believe what I get to do for a living. You cannot be well, we imagine, when you are facing imminent death even if your pain is being controlled. Like her contemporaries of 1373, she is Roman Catholic and believes that the last rites give special sanctifying grace and strengthen a sick person bodily and spiritually at death. ‘All this was shown in three ways: that is to say, by bodily sight, and by words formed in my understanding, and by spiritual visions. Having survived 600 years, her book, Revelations of Divine Love, is the earliest surviving of its kind – a book written in English, by a woman. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  In some cases, the cell was walled up. My guess is that the Lady Julian might have understood the intensity of these experiences. Best wishes and stay safe. She reports that heaven opens to her, she beholds Christ in his glory, and she sees the meaning and power of his sufferings. The only access to the outside world was a small, curtained window. She was also allowed to keep a cat, to control the mice and rats; many images of Julian show her dressed in the habit of a nun, with a cat sat at her feet as she studies her books. Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts by email. Years ago, long before we arrived in Norwich I would sometimes quote the Lady Julian, using her best known saying. The beauty of a flower, the rays of the sun, the greenness of the grass, the interior beauty of friends – it didn’t matter what it was but it was the death zone and the suffering which came with it which enhanced life. As a translator of the mystics, I plunge into the wellspring of their wisdom and remain immersed, until they have told me all they have to … Although her near-death experience directed her later life, it was only many years after her illness that Julian entered her cell as an anchorite. I always found that line “all shall be well’ of great comfort, and especially now. Another wonderful post. on WordPress.com, Guest Post: All the Ælfgifus by Annie Whitehead, Book Corner: Fugitive by Paul Fraser Collard, The Warennes and the First Cluniac Priory in England, Book Corner: The Northern Throne by Steven A. McKay, Guest Post: Whores and Winchester Geese – Prostitution in Medieval London, Book Corner: Interview with Paul Fraser Collard, Book Corner: The Crescent and the Cross by SJA Turney. There was no chance of living superficially any more. However, we simply do not know enough about Julian’s early life to positively identify her origins. Of particular concern was the anchorite’s mental capacity to deal with the solitude and limitation on human contact. All Rights Reserved.