Revelations of Divine Love is a medieval book of Christian mystical devotions. Containing 87 chapters, the work was written between the 14th and 15th centuries by Julian of Norwich, about whom almost nothing is known. It is the earliest surviving example of a book in the English language known to have been written by a woman. It is also the earliest surviving work written by an English anchorite or anchoress.
Julian, who lived all her life in the English city of Norwich, wrote about the sixteen mystical visions or "shewings" she received in 1373, when she was in her thirties. Whilst she was seriously ill, and believed to be on her deathbed, the visions appeared to her for several hours in one night, with a final revelation occurring the following night. After making a full recovery, she wrote an account of each vision, producing a manuscript now referred to as the Short Text. She developed her ideas for decades, whilst living as an anchoress in a cell attached to St Julian's Church, Norwich, and wrote a far more extended version of her writings, now known as the Long Text. She wrote in Middle English.
Julian's work was preserved by others. Various manuscripts of both the Long Text and the Short Text, in addition to extracts, have survived. The first publication of the book was a translation of the Long Text in 1670 by the English Benedictine monk Serenus de Cressy. Interest in Julian's writings increased with the publication of three versions of Cressy's book in the 19th century, and in 1901, Grace Warrack's translation of the manuscript of the Long Text known as 'Sloane 2499' introduced the book to 20th-century readers. Many other versions of Julian's book have since been published, in English and other languages.
Julian of Norwich
Revelations of Divine Love was written by Julian of Norwich (1343after 1416), an English anchoress and mystic. Julian's dates can be surmised from various sources: Julian herself wrote that she experienced her revelations when she was thirty and a half years old in May 1373 (in chapters 2 and 3 of her Revelations), and the author of the preface to the so-called Short Text version of Julian's writings stated she was still alive in 1413. The celebrated mystic Margery Kempe wrote about her visit to Julian, which probably occurred in 1413. She is also mentioned by name in Isabel Ufford's will, which is dated 1416. The English antiquarian Francis Blomefield incorrectly wrote in the second volume of his History of the County of Norfolk that Julian was still alive in 1442.
Throughout her life Julian lived in the city of Norwich, an important commercial and religious centre in England during the Middle Ages. The Black Death of 13481350, the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, and the suppression of the Lollards, all occurred during her lifetime.
In 1373, seriously ill and convinced she was close to death, the 30-year-old Julian received a series of visions, or 'shewings', of the Passion of Christ. All the revelations but one appeared to her over a period of several hours during one night; the last occurred a day later. After recovering from her illness, Julian lived the rest of her life as an anchoress, in a cell attached to St Julian's Church.
Details of her life remain unknown, but she is known with certainty to have existed, as she was the recipient of a number of wills, and she is mentioned in an account by Kempe, who met her at her cell in Norwich. It is not known for certain whether the name Julian was adopted once she became a recluse: the authors Liz McAvoy and Barry Windeatt have both commented on the lack of historical evidence that the true names of anchoresses were ever changed to match the patron saint of the church they belonged to, pointing out that Julian was a common girl's name during the Middle Ages, and McAvoy notes that Julian is the old form of the modern name Gillian.
Julian referred to herself in her writings as "a simple creature unlettered", a phrase perhaps used to avoid antagonising her readers, especially in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The term unlettered in the Middle Ages might have meant that she was herself illiterate, or that she did not receive a formal education, rarely available to laywomen. The city contained many convents whose orders recognized the importance of education. Many had boarding schools for girls, where they were taught to read and write. Scholars are not sure whether Julian attended such a school. It is possible that Julian had an educated brother and became literate through him.
Julian's writings Revelations of Divine Love is unique, as no other work written by an English anchoress seems to have survived. It is the first book in English known to have been written by a woman. In the 14th century, women in England were generally barred from high-status clerical positions or other authoritative roles such as teaching, and their knowledge of Latin, the lingua franca of the day, would have been limited. It is more likely that they read and wrote in Middle English, their vernacular language, as Julian did. Her life was contemporaneous with four other English mystics—Walter Hilton, Richard Rolle, Margery Kempe, and the unknown author of the work known as The Cloude of Unknowing—all of whom wrote in the vernacular. The historian Janina Ramirez has suggested that their use of Middle English was a sensible choice, considering the inexplicable nature of what they were attempting to describe, as they could "couch their theological ruminations more as personal encounters with the divine". Julian's writings were not mentioned at all in any bequests, in which personal libraries of lay or monastic books were distributed within wills, as often happened for male authors at that time.
Some Middle English spiritual texts were written for a specific readership, such as The Cloude of Unknowyng, which was intended by the author to be read by a young hermit, but Julian wrote as if for a general readership. There is no evidence that her writings influenced other medieval authors, or were read by more than a very few people, until 1670, when her book was first published by Serenus de Cressy under the title XVI Revelations of Divine Love, Shewed to a Devout Servant of Our Lord, called Mother Juliana, an Anchorete of Norwich: Who lived in the Dayes of King Edward the Third. Since then the book has been published under a variety of different titles, Since the 1960s, a number of new editions and renderings of her book into modern English have appeared, as well as publications about her.
Surviving manuscripts The book now commonly known as Revelations of Divine Love was written in manuscript form by Julian in two versions, now known as the Long Text and the Short Text, both of which contain an account of each of her revelations. They were written whilst she was living as an anchoress, enclosed in her cell attached to St Julian's Church, with the Short Text being completed soon after Julian had recovered from her illness. Complete versions of the extended version of her writings known as the Long Text—in which she developed her ideas over a period of decades—survive in the form of three separate manuscripts. Three partial copies of the Long Text are also known to exist.
The Short Text is known from a single manuscript. The number of copies of the Long Text that once existed, but are now lost, is not known: Windeatt refers to the three surviving manuscripts of the Long Text as being copied "perhaps from now-lost medieval manuscripts or copies of these", and the authors Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins acknowledge the existence of unknown "earliest copies".
The Long Text
The Long Text does not seem to have been widely circulated in late medieval England. The one surviving medieval manuscript, the mid- to latefifteenth century Westminster Manuscript, contains a portion of the Long Text, refashioned as a didactic treatise on contemplation.
The three complete manuscripts of the text fall into two groups, with slightly different readings. The late 16th-century Brigittine Long Text manuscript was produced by exiled nuns in the Antwerp region. Now referred to as "MS Fonds Anglais 40" (previously known as "Regius 8297") or simply the Paris Manuscript, and consisting solely of a copy of Julian's Long Text, it resides in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. The other two surviving manuscripts, "Sloane MS 2499" and "Sloane MS 3705", now form part of the British Library's Sloane Collection. The Paris Manuscript and "Sloane MS 2499" are named by Watson and Jenkins as "the main witnesses to the text".
Provenance of the Long Text manuscripts The Paris Manuscript (BnF fonds anglais 40), a manuscript consisting of the Long Text, was probably copied near Antwerp in imitation of an early-sixteenth-century hand in , travelled from there to Rouen, was sold by the Bridgettine monastic community, and was then owned by Jean Bigot of Rouen during the second half of the 17th century, before being bought for the French royal collection in 1706.
A number of manuscripts can be associated with exiled English Benedictine nuns based at the French town of Cambrai:
BL Sloane MS 2499, a version of the Long Text, was probably copied by Mother Anne Clementina Cary (died 1671), of the Paris convent that was founded as the sister house of Cambrai in 1651. It seems to follow a different manuscript from the one which the Paris Manuscript follows. BL Stowe MS 42, a version of the Long Text, was written sometime between 1650 and 1670 (or possibly up to 1700). It served either as exemplar text for Cressy's 1670 printed edition of the Long Text, or possibly a hand-written copy of Cressy. It was possessed in turn by: John Haddon Hindley; the 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos and his son the 2nd duke; and Bertram Ashburnham, the 4th Earl of Ashburnham and his son the 5th Earl, from whom the British Museum purchased the manuscripts in 1883. The manuscript now known as "Upholland MS" was possibly copied in the 1670s or 1680s by the exiled English Benedictine nun Barbara Constable (1617–1684) in Cambrai. A copy of this manuscript is known to have been kept at Stanbrook Abbey, part of an anthology containing fragments copied from Cressy's Long Text. According to the author Elisabeth Dutton, "Upholland MS" was based on a "Paris-like" version of the Long Text. Once owned by St Joseph's College, Up Holland, and now privately owned and kept at an unknown location, it is a set of excerpts from Julian's book. The text used to make the copy appears to be the same as that Cressy which used for his 1670 translation. BL Sloane MS 3705, a version of the Long Text, was copied from BL Sloane MS 2499 later in the 17th century or early 18th century by Cambrai nuns for use in Paris. St Mary's Abbey, Colwich, "MS Baker 18", known as the Gascoigne fragments, was copied by Sister Margaret Gascoigne (1608–1637) of Cambrai. Consisting of meditations on fragments of four chapters of the Long Text based on the Paris manuscript, it arrived in England after the French Revolution.
The Westminster Manuscript The one surviving medieval manuscript to contain Julian's writings, the mid- to late-fifteenth-century Westminster Manuscript, contains a portion version of the Long Text, refashioned as a didactic treatise on contemplation.