Julian among the Books : Julian of Norwich's Theological Library [1 ed.] 9781443892513, 9781443888943

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Julian Among the Books

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library By

Julia Bolton Holloway

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library By Julia Bolton Holloway This book first published 2016 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2016 by Julia Bolton Holloway All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-8894-X ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8894-3

Jonathan Luke Holloway figlio della tua figlia

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ..................................................................................... ix Preface ....................................................................................................... xii I.................................................................................................................... 1 The Westminster Manuscript II ................................................................................................................ 20 Julian’s Showing in a Nutshell III ............................................................................................................... 51 Julian’s Judaism IV ............................................................................................................... 75 Julian’s Benedictinism V ................................................................................................................ 97 Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB VI ............................................................................................................. 147 Julian and The Cloud Of Unknowing: Textual Communities and Gendered Audiences VII ........................................................................................................... 182 Saints, Secretaries, Scribes, Supporters: Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena VIII .......................................................................................................... 198 The Amherst Manuscript IX ............................................................................................................. 229 Julian and Margery: The Soul a City X .............................................................................................................. 246 Brigittines and Benedictines

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List of Illustrations

Appendices .............................................................................................. 289 Ia. Margaret Gascoigne, Bridget More, Fragment of Showing of Love Ib. Barbara Constable, Fragment of Showing of Love IIa. Gertrude More, Defense of Augustine Baker, OSB, 1633 IIb. Catherine Gascoigne, Defense of Augustine Baker, OSB, 1633 Index ........................................................................................................ 313

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Plates I a,b,c. Westminster Manuscript, fols. 1, 74, 72v-73 II. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Manuscript, fols. 8v-9 III. British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript, fols. 97, 97v IV a,b. British Library, Sloane 3705, fol 8v, & 2499 Manuscripts, fol. 9 V a. Cambridge University Library Ii.III.21, Dionysius, Opera, fol. 108v V b. Florence, Museo Horne, Simone Martini, Diptych VI. Westminster Abbey, Liber Regalis, fol. 20 Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster VII a. Norwich Cathedral, Despenser Retable, Paul Hurst, ARPS VII b. Urdiala, Finland, Bishop Åbo, St Birgitta, Diptych Figures Figure 1. Westminster Manuscript, fol. 1 Figure 2. Westminster Manuscript, fol. 72v Figure 3. Westminster Manuscript, fol 74, detail Figure 4. Pieter Breughel the Elder, “Death of the Virgin”, Upton House, Bearsted Collection, circa 1564, ©National Trust Images/Angelo Hornak Figure 5. Death of St Catherine of Siena Figure 6. British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript, fol. 97, 97v Figure 7. Westminster Manuscript, fol. 74, detail Figure 8. Bibliothèque Nationale, anglais 40, Paris Manuscript, fols. 8v-9 Figure 9. Westminster Manuscript, fol. 74, detail Figure 10. Norwich Castle Manuscript, fol. 1. detail Figure 11. Colwich Abbey H18, Margaret Gascoigne, Bridget More Figure 12. Upholland Manuscript, Courtesy, Stanbrook Abbey Figure 13. Public Record Office, 1233 Tallage Roll, E401/1565 Figure 14. Westminster Manuscript, fol. 74, detail Figure 15. St Birgitta, Revelationes. Lübeck: Ghotan, 1492 Figure 16. Cambridge University Library, Ii.III.32, fol. 108v Figure 17. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 180, fol. 1 Figure 18. Urdiala, Finland, Bishop Hemming, Birgitta of Sweden

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Figure 19. Santa Maria Novella, Spanish Chapel, fresco detail Figure 20. St Birgitta, Revelationes, Lübeck, Ghotan, 1492 Figure 21. Siena, Biblioteca Communale degli Intronati, I.V.25/26 Figure 22. Birgitta’s Board, Piazza Farnese, Roma Figure 23. Birgitta’s Shrine, Blue Church, Vadstena, Sweden Figure 24. Despenser Retable, Norwich Cathedral, Paul Hurst, ARPS Figure 25. Westminster Abbey, Liber Regalis, fol. 20, Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster Figure 26. London, National Gallery, Wilton Diptych Figure 27. Rome, St Agnes, Mosaic, detail Figure 28. Rome, St Cecilia, mosaic and sculpture Figure 29. British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript, fol. 97v Figure 30. Florence, Museo Horne, Simone Martini, diptych Figure 31. Rome, St Cecilia in Trastevere, Adam Easton’s Tomb Figure 32. Canterbury Cathedral, Black Prince’s Tomb Figure 33. Uppsala C240, “Soror mea” Figure 34. Norfolk Record Office, entries on Adam Easton’s books Figure 35. St Birgitta, Revelationes. Lübeck: Ghotan, 1492 Figure 36. Cambridge University Library, Ii.III.32, fol. 108v Figure 37. British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript, fol. 97 Figure 38. British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript, fol. 101v Figure 39. British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript, fol. 106v Figure 40. British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript, fol. 108 Figure 41. British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript, fol. 108v Figure 42. Norwich Castle Manuscript, fol. 1, detail Figure 43. Norwich Castle Manuscript, fol. 31, detail Figure 44. British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript, fol. 97 Figure 45. British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript, fol. 101v Figure 46. Norwich Castle Manuscript, fol. 31, detail Figure 47. British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript, fol. 108 Figure 48. British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript, fol. 238 Figure 49. British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript, fol. 97v Figure 50. Westminster, Wynken de Worde, Orcherd of Syon, 1519 Figure 51. British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript, fol. 108v Figure 52. St Julian’s Church, with Round Tower, before WWII Figure 53. Stockholm, Kungliga Bibliotek, A65, Birgitta’s Handwriting

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Figure 54. Bridget More, OSB, Courtesy, Colwich Abbey Figure 55. Colwich Abbey, H18, Margaret Gascoigne, Bridget More OSB Figure 56. Barbara Constable, OSB, Catholic Record Society 13 (1913) Figure 57 Upholland Manuscript, Courtesy, Stanbrook Abbey Figure 58. Gertrude More, OSB, Permission Ampleforth Abbey Trustees Figure 59. Catherine Gascoigne, OSB

PREFACE

I sawe that alle es to litelle þt y can telle or saye for itt maye nou‫܌‬t be tolde botte ylke saule af= tere the saying of ssaynte Pawle schulde feele in hym þt in criste Jhesu.

T

Hey always begin accounts of Julian of Norwich saying “Very little is known about the Anchoress Julian of Norwich”. But if one studies her manuscripts and the other materials that form her thought it is to find a cornucopia (“Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over”, Luke 6.38), of many books, an entire library, of great value for studying medieval women’s theology. Christine de Pizan, having the run of the King of France’s library, created tapestry upon tapestry, book upon book, from those books. Similarly, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and the crates of books from Italy she gives her Aurora, had access to the library her father created from his slave wealth, which she hated, though she loved its library, and she begins her epic, Aurora Leigh, “Of writing many books there is no end”. These women, without university schooling, our “Cloud of Witnesses”, are best portrayed in their books, in manuscript, in print, and in whole libraries shelving their books. I came to Julian, as it were, by the back door. The medievalist editor, Professor Jane Chance, contracted me to write a book on Birgitta of Sweden for her Library of Medieval Women series. I had already travelled to Europe’s libraries and archives studying manuscripts and documents concerning Dante Alighieri’s teacher, Brunetto Latino. I was trained at Berkeley in palaeography, textual editing, and intertextuality, before the advent of the study of the Body, of Women’s Studies, of Theory, and then at Princeton continued all those studies. I had already edited the Tesoretto of Dante Alighieri’s teacher, Brunetto Latino (New York: Garland, 1981), and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh and Other Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995). I now found myself retracing my steps, questing manuscripts in libraries and documents in archives during

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summers of research, but adding to them Scandinavian libraries and also convents, as well as the Vatican, the Laurentian, the Bibliothèque Nationale, and the British Library. While writing Saint Bride and Her Book: Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelations (Newburyport: Focus Books, 1992; Cambridge: Brewer, 1997/2000), I kept finding Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe in related manuscripts and landscapes, as part of the same literary landscape, inscribing “Holy Conversations”, their practise of God’s Presence, across the map of Europe’s Continent, and not just England. However a Syon Abbey manuscript eluded me. It had last been read and transcribed in 1955. I wrote to Westminster Cathedral about it–to no answer for an entire year. Finally a letter came. I was invited to return to England to see it. When I did so the secretary told me they had discovered it, because of my letter, at the back of a safe where it had lain for years, unlabelled, unnoticed, wrapped in brown paper. The reading of this Westminster Manuscript of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love, itself written in preparation for printing by a Brigittine Syon Abbey nun before Thomas More’s execution would block all such publications, prompted my renouncing my American Professorship and Citizenship and returning to England to edit it for the MA Thesis in Theology, while living in Julian’s context of prayer and studying Greek and Hebrew in order to tutor in the Lambeth Diploma. Julian was a “pearl of great price”. I found the happenstance of studying Hebrew of great value while editing Julian’s Showing, discovering in an epiphany that she knew the Bible in its original tongue and script. But “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread”. I returned to England at a fraught time, my diocese a bastion against the priesting of women. Our convent was destroyed by bishops, its endowment for women’s ecumenical theological education removed in order to pay debts incurred by men, its library first shut up, then woefully reduced. The thesis was scorned. I fled to Italy with only my books, my computer and some of the convent’s book-binding equipment with which to earn a living, and where I continued to edit all the extant Julian manuscripts. I had discovered that they had already been edited by an Irish Catholic nun, Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, CP, who, teaching in Leeds in WWII, had submitted two meticulous theses for her MA and PhD degrees at Leeds University. These were to be published by the Early English Text Society. But male scholars, who had got wind of her work, at first promised to collaborate with her, then took her materials from her, and next published her work under their names only, while discounting her in their first paragraph to the two volumes. I found her in Kilcullen, County Kildare,

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and she came to Sussex to my convent before we lost it, and we worked together, now deciding to have our edition see the light of day. Our dream had been of Julian’s Showing shared ecumenically by a Catholic nun and an Anglican one. But the Church of England opposed that ecumenical vision. She and I had independently edited all the extant manuscripts in libraries in London and Paris, so we could check each other’s work, finding almost no errors between us. I set our transcriptions electronically (her version had been hunt and peck on a typewriter, while reading microfilm a word at a time with a microscope between bombing raids), and Tony St Quintin, an Irish Nota Bene computer expert in Leeds, helped us typeset the pages to replicate the texts exactly, letter for letter, line for line, folio by folio, including the rulings of the Westminster and Paris Manuscripts, as they were prepared for being printed in Tudor and Elizabethan times by Brigittine nuns. No longer an American professor, no longer an Anglican nun, I became a penniless hermit in exile in one unheated room above Florence for four years, with only the Julian editorial work and book-binding to keep body and soul together. A German Dante scholar, Otfried Lieberknecht, told SISMEL (Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino, then housed in the Carthusian monastery outside of Florence), of my work and its President, Professor Claudio Leonardi, who had been introduced to Julian of Norwich by the contemplative hermit, Don Divo Barsotti, and who had included her text in his anthology of Christian theology, Il Cristo, agreed to find the funds, achieving these from the Committee on Savonarola. SISMEL published our edition in 2001. I next published a paperback translation which shows the palimpsested layers of Julian’s text in modern English in Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love (Collegeville: Liturgical Press; London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 2003). James Hogg then published my Anchoress and Cardinal: Julian of Norwich and Adam Easton, OSB (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 2008, Analecta Cartusiana 35:20), based on the lecture I had given in Norwich Cathedral, 1 December 1998. Following that I aided Teresa Morris compile her 2010 Julian of Norwich: A Comprehensive Bibliography and Handbook, and typeset Greek Orthodox Fr Brendan Pelphrey’s 2012 Lo, How I Love Thee: Divine Love in Julian of Norwich, all the while encouraging translations of the Showing of Love into other languages, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Croatian, Korean. Juliana Dresvina’s translation into Russian facing the pages of the English texts is particularly

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fine. Jeongho Yang researches Julian’s text comparatively in trauma studies, examining Korean and Middle English vocabularies concerning this aspect. In 2000, I had been able to leave my one unheated room and become custodian of Florence’s Swiss-owned so-called “English” Cemetery, a position I accepted on condition I could maintain a library on the premises. This vowed hermit, like Julian, now lives in a graveyard, teaches the alphabet to Roma families and counsels troubled souls as a “wounded healer”. With the coming of the Internet I was already able to place essay after essay on the web, including one on the account of how three Julian scholars came together at Sr Anna Maria Reynolds’ Cross and Passion convent in Kilcullen, County Kildare, Sr Ritamary Bradley flying from America, myself, from Italy, the third living in St Bridget of Ireland’s realm, in order to work on the edition, our Julian Summit. Another presents the entire and searchable Latin text of Birgitta’s Revelations. The website reaches, according to Google Analytics, 7000 readers a month worldwide. But the form I use for it, simple .html and .jpg, replicating medieval manuscripts and their memory systems of images and colouring, is not considered scholarly. So this version, instead, is in Word and .pdf. A departure from modern printing cost-plus printing practices in black and white only was that I replicated the original rubrication of Julian’s Paris Manuscript throughout in red to indicate the practice of emphasizing God’s Word amidst her own words in a “Sacred Conversation”, a “Holy Conversation”, of a manuscript tradition dating back even to Ancient Egypt’s rolls of papyri for conversations with deities in the Book of the Dead. (For this printed book these are not in red, but bolded. I ask my gentle reader to image that blood red colour on its white and black pages.) Julian’s male editor to the Paris and Sloane Long Text Manuscripts prefer a Latinate title and the numbering of imposed Scholastic divisions, and therefore call the work on the order of XVI Revelations of Divine Love. I found that her original and male editor of the Long Text in the Sloane Manuscripts exactly copies the editorializing practices of Magister Mathias and Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén to the Revelationes of Birgitta of Sweden. (In Greek “Revelations” is “DZʌȠțȐȜȣȥȚȢ”, the title of St John’s Apocalypse). But Julian herself sees her Showing of Love as a seamless garment, as “One Love” (P89v), and writes it down in medieval English for her ‘Even Christian’; neither she nor Dante ever add to their titles “Divine”, “Divina”, but simply call their master works, “Showing”, and “Comedy”. Likewise her scholars and editors can seek to wrench her into their own religious confessions. But she is ecumenical, skilfully consonanting the Gospels’ Judaism and Christianity, and in so doing

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harmonizing also Orthodoxy with Catholicism, Catholicism with Lollardy, only rejecting in all of these, Pseudo-Dionysian hierarchies (a word he invented), that would exclude women from men, poor from rich. The methodology of this book is to heed primary materials above all else, particularly examining the palaeography of the manuscripts, their folios, lines, words, letters, and, where they are of paper, their watermarks, to bring Julian scholars as close as possible to the extant texts. References are made to the manuscripts’ foliation, which can be retrieved from the diplomatic edition by Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, CP, and Julia Bolton Holloway (Florence: SISMEL, 2001). References to the Edmund Colledge and James Walsh edition’s comments are given as CW, plus the volume and page number. References to Early English Text Society (EETS) volumes are to volume number. page number: line number. Nicholas Watson’s teaching edition is not used as it normalizes texts. A diplomatic transcription is WYSIWYG, “What You See Is What You Get”, carefully replicating the extant evidence; a normalized edition adapts and distorts the medieval text to current conventions. The Paris Manuscript (Bibliothèque Nationale, anglais 40, Plate II), for instance, represents a text normalized to Elizabethan conventions and the London dialect, while the very hastily written seventeenth-century British Library Sloane 2499 Manuscript (Plate IVb), instead, took the greatest care to replicate the spelling diplomatically of its lost medieval exemplar from Norwich, the Benedictine nuns in exile functioning as an Earliest English Text Society. W refers to the Westminster Manuscript, now at Westminster Abbey; P, to the Paris Manuscript, Bibliothèque Nationale, anglais 40; S and SS, to the Sloane Manuscripts, Sloane 2499 (diplomatic), Sloane 3705 (normalised), in the British Library (P and SS being of the “Long” Text); A, to the Amherst Manuscript, British Library, Add. 37790, of the “Short” Text; N, to the Norwich Castle Manuscript, 158.926/4g.5; L, to the Lambeth Palace Library 3600 Manuscript; G, to the Colwich, St Mary’s Abbey, H18 manuscript fragment, by Dame Margaret Gascoigne/Dame Bridget More, OSB; U, the now lost Upholland Manuscript, by Dame Barbara Constable, OSB; kindly supplied from Stanbrook Abbey’s photocopy M, to the Book of Margery Kempe, British Library, Add. 61823. The relevant parts of L (in Chapter X), M (Chapter IX) and N (Chapter II), are given diplomatically in the body of this book; the relevant texts of G and U in this book’s Appendix I, Dame Catherine Gascoigne and Dame

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Gertrude More’s Defense of Father Augustine Baker’s Prayer in Appendix II, while diplomatic excerpts from W, P, and S1 are given throughout to bring us as close to Julian’s text as possible. There are several controversial arguments which this book presents, hypothetically, based on primary, not secondary, evidence, from research amongst the manuscripts themselves and their libraries’ intertextuality: that Julian of Norwich and Cardinal Adam Easton, a Norwich Benedictine and supporter of Birgitta of Sweden’s canonisation, would have known each other (discussed by Emily Hope Allen, Grace Jantzen and the 1998 lecture in Norwich Cathedral that became the book, Anchoress and Cardinal: Julian of Norwich and Adam Easton, OSB); that Adam Easton is the more likely author of the Cloud of Unknowing cluster of texts quarrying the library he himself possessed of manuscripts by Origen, Pseudo-Dionysius, David Kimhi and the Victorines, and also author of the M.N. (“AdaM EastoN” in cryptography) glosses to Marguerite Porete’s Englished Mirror of Simple Souls, than would have been a cloistered Carthusian, such as the suggested Michael Northbrooke; that he writes them to a woman contemplative like Julian, and not to a Latinless lay brother, as has commonly been assumed; that the texts he is said to have translated when under house arrest by Pope Urban VI for three years in Genoa and Perugia could have been Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes, Catherine of Siena’s Dialogo, Mechthild von Hackeborn’s Book of Ghostly Grace, Jan van Ruusbroec’s Sparkling Stone, and, partially, Henry Suso’s Horologium Sapientiae, introducing these to England, and in English, from the Continent; that the Amherst Manuscript’s text is not Julian’s first but her last version of the Showing of Love, written, as the manuscript itself declares, in 1413, during her lifetime, as if in her presence; that Margery’s first amanuensis is not her dying English son, but his robust Baltic widow who is helping her illiterate grieving mother-in-law write a great book about her pilgrimages and her visions, that copy those in the Revelationes of St Birgitta, a saint so much beloved in the daughter-in-law’s native Gdansk, as logotherapy, while wrestling as an unschooled woman with the differences between German and English orthography and script; finally, that the Paris Manuscript, based on scientific trained palaeographical and codicological evidence, is not seventeenth-century but Elizabethan, and not Benedictine but Brigittine. A term currently in use amongst medievalists is “Vernacular Theology” for such works. Instead, I use and adapt a more dynamic and participatory term from Art History, “Sacred Conversation”, and, taking Francis Blomefield’s word describing Julian, “This Woman in those Days, was esteemed one of the greatest Holynesse”, I change this to “Holy

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Conversation” for these women’s theological texts. A “Sacred Conversation” painting or fresco has the donor and even his family or her convent be kneeling before their patron saint or saints as if present, for instance, at the Crucifix or the Nativity (Plates Vc, d, e, VIIa, VIIb, Figures 15, 20, 26, 27, 28, 30, 35, 50). Such “Sacred Conversations”, such “Holy Conversations”, function like Heraldry’s “mise en abyme”, like the “Droste effect”, where the image is repeatedly reflected in fractals. In these cases we identify with the donor or donors, in a “Spiritual Exercise”, placing ourselves within the frame, not outside of it, in contemplation, so entering into the Presence of God, the “Shekinah”, and of the saints; kneeling humbly in holiness, instead of standing arrogantly apart, divorced from it in a world of time and sin. In texts, similarly, we are to respond, as did St Augustine, “Tolle, legge!”, in conversion, our “Reader Response”. In most of the works discussed in this book, the writer describes his or her contemplative conversation with God in one’s soul: in the Biblical book of Job, Augustine’s Confessions, Jerome on Paula and Eustochium, Boethius’ Consolation, Gregory’s Dialogus, Dante’s Vita nova and Commedia, Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes, Catherine of Siena’s Dialogo, just as Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love and Margery Kempe’s Book seek to approach “Holynesse” through conversations and conversions, responding— Body and Soul—to their message. Later, Sr Mary Champney, OSS, in 1580, and Dame Margaret Gascoigne, OSB, in 1637, will do the same in their “Holy Dying”, their Brigittine and Benedictine congregations with them scribally participating in what Brian Stock usefully termed as a “Textual Community”, bridging and conversing across time, prompting also the conversion of their readers, such as ourselves, in the “Reader Response” of inclusion as Julian’s “Even Christians”. In the final Appendix we will see Dame Gertrude More, OSB, and Dame Catherine Gascoigne, OSB, risking all to defend this “Textual Community” of women’s sacred writings from destruction. Modern sainthood requires medically certified miracles, expects pathological hallucinations, and is bureaucratically literal. Medieval saintliness was ungendered, a possibility for all, the teaching of the “Discernment of Spirits” in accepting prophecies, visions and miracles where they were carried out in charity to one’s “Even Christian”, for then they were judged to have come from the Holy Spirit, but which were to be rejected if they were seen to lead to selfish vainglory. Jean Gerson, from his university chair, would seek to exclude women from the Canon of Saints, mirroring the exclusion of women from the new-fangled lecture halls of theology, but he would be overruled. This aspect has been

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especially studied by Rosalynn Voaden in connection with Birgitta of Sweden, while David Aers and Lynn Staley have discussed Julian’s writings in the context of the “Powers of the Holy”. A “devout” person meant someone who had vowed themselves to God, to become “collected” in that presence, carrying out contemplative lectio divina as a “Holy Conversation” between Creation and Creator, later called “mental prayer”, whether they were a professed nun, an episcopally enclosed anchoress, a consecrated widow, or a beguine. This was indeed open to all “Even Christians” of either gender or any age, not requiring male university training in theology, despite Archbishop Chancellor Thomas Arundel’s 1408 Constitutions. There was to be a great disjunction in this “Holy Conversation” in northern countries at the Reformation. But one finds that it always continued, even if forced into “samizdat” underground channels, in monastic Orders in exile. Here I give their acronyms: OSB referring to the Order of St Benedict, or Benedictines, OSS, to the Order of the Most Holy Saviour and St Birgitta, or Brigittines, OP, to the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans, O.Carm, to the Order of Carmel, or Carmelites, OSA, to the Order of St Augustine or Augustinians, SJ to the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, and CP, to the Order of the Cross and Passion, or Passionists, whole Orders, as well as individuals, sharing in these textual communities through time. Julian’s Showing had to be hidden for centuries, like a splendid Coleridgean underground river, only to emerge triumphantly, with healing for all, in the last century through their conduits. I wish particularly to thank all the participants, both real and virtual, in ‘The City and the Book’ VI, “Julian at Carrow” Symposium held at Norwich Shire Hall Study Centre, Norfolk Record Office and Carrow Abbey, 10-11 May 2013: Santha Bhattacharji, St Benet’s Hall, Oxford, Rev John Clark, Marleen Cré, Ruusbroecgenootschap, University of Antwerp, Antoinette Curtis, Norfolk Record Office, Gabriella Del Lungo, Università di Studi di Firenze, Juliana Dresvina, KCL/Wolfson College, Oxford, Linda & Michael Falter, Rev Malcolm Guite, Girton College, University of Cambridge, Rev Jeremy Haselock, Paul Hurst, Bradford Manderfield, KU Leuven, Richard Norton, Rev Brendan Pelphrey, Tim Pestell, Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Stefan Reynolds, Heythrop College, University of London, Rev Norman Tanner, S.J., Pontificia Universitaria Gregoriana, Nancy Bradley Warren, Texas A & M University, and Jeongho Yang, Seoul Women’s University, Korea, their papers to be found at http://www.umilta.net/JulianatCarrow.html, the conference held in honour of Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, CP. Following which Joan Greatrex and Christopher De Hamel held a conference at

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Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 10-11 April 2014 on Adam Easton, at which even the music of his Office of the Visitation was performed. Chapter V, “Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB”, was the 1998 lecture presented in Norwich Cathedral, now revised, Chapter VII, “Saints, Secretaries and Supporters”, originally appeared in Birgittiana 1 (1996), 29-45, Chapter IX, “Brigittines and Benedictines”, was researched for the Florence, 2001, edition, then published in Anchoress and Cardinal: Julian of Norwich and Adam Easton, OSB, Salzburg, 2008, edited by James Hogg. Hoyt Greeson ably studied the dialect of the Sloane Manuscript, a competence I lack. Father Robert Llewelyn quietly consoled me, when I was soul-broken, telling me I was the one who knew the most about Julian. Sheila Upjohn found the text libelling Syon Abbey. Brigittine Syon Abbey and Benedictine Stanbrook Abbey and Colwich Abbey are most greatly to be thanked for their preservation of Julian’s “Holy Conversation” for her “Even Christians”. The Orthodox monk, Nathanael Smythe, gave me the icon of Julian as Benedictine, contemplating on Mary, contemplating on her as-not-yet-born Son, whose contemplative mise en abyme we thus mirror in ourselves, “treasuring all these things in our heart”. This book about books is structured like a fugue in music, like an arabesque in art, like fractals in mathematics, repeating and reinforcing its points. It begins through the lens of an abbreviated and translated version of Westminster Manuscript text that prompted my leaving the profession of the university and entering the vocation of a cell, a hermitage, as its Chapter I. And then it will continue past that introduction to the various aspects of Julian’s Library in the following chapters: II. The manuscripts of her text (this chapter the most technical and difficult of the book); III. Her knowledge of the Bible, surprisingly, directly from its Hebrew, discovered while studying that language in the convent; IV. Her Benedictinism and lectio divina, including her use of Gregory’s account of Benedict and Scholastica, understood more deeply from living in monasticism than as a university professor; V. Her relationship with the Norwich Benedictine, Cardinal Adam Easton, and his use of PseudoDionysius; VI. His possible authorship of The Cloud of Unknowing and its cluster of Epistles, perhaps written to her, as well as the “M.N.” glosses to Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simples Souls; VII. Saints Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena as her models; VIII. The “Friends of God” texts (known from my ancestors’ Quakerism), in her Amherst Manuscript anthology, and the Carmelite and Lollard influences upon her; IX. Her oral conversation recorded by Margery Kempe, as if with a microphone in East Anglia in the early fifteenth century, a “Holy Conversation” which

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crystallizes and practices all the wisdom of these books; X. It then ends with Julian’s influence on the further writings by her Brigittine and Benedictine nun editors, who clandestinely, in “Holy Disobedience”, preserved her Showing of Love for us, despite the opposition of Archbishop Arundel, the Reformation, Benedictine monks, and the French Revolution’s atheism, and despite the real threats to courageous women contemplatives of censorship, oblivion, being burned at the stake in chains, hung, drawn and quartered, exiled, starved, imprisoned, and guillotined.

Florence’s “English” Cemetery 17 December 2015, “O Sapientia”

I THE WESTMINSTER MANUSCRIPT

And in þis he shewed me a lytil thyng þe quantite of a hasyl nott. lyeng in the pawme of my hand

I

N translating Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love in 1991 from the Syon Abbey manuscript owned by Westminster Cathedral and now on loan to Westminster Abbey,1 I chose to keep her own English words, rather than turning them into our Latinate forms, giving her “oneing” instead of our “uniting”, her “noughting” instead of “negating”, her “endlessness” instead of “eternity”, her “showing” instead of “revelation”. Somehow Latin hides their meaning into its foreignness. The English words’ truth, though now so unusual that they seem foreign, are actually closer to what we mean. I changed her “kynde” to our “natural”, though for us, in post-Darwinism, Nature has become red in tooth and claw in competitive cruelty, rather than with her original natural, nurturing, maternal “kindness”. Yet Julian’s theological concepts have a most modern ring. Computers, like brains and noughts and crosses games, generally simply “one” and “nought” their way through problems. Julian’s “oneing” is one’s bringing one’s self to that of God; while her “noughting” is the opposite of “oneing”, a turning away, to that which is evil, which is non-being. Her “endlessness”, her “wtou‫ݤ‬t be=gynnyng” (P23bis), “without beginning”, is of God, who is all time, at the centre; but the smaller and smaller bits of time, like death, being farther and farther away as the circle widens and thins, are of “noughting”. Modern time and eternity are linear; medieval time, as Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy teaches us, is like our clock face and circular about the centre. There are three versions of Julian’s Showing of Love. The hypothetical “First” text in the Westminster Manuscript, of which excerpts are given in this first chapter, was perhaps written when she was twenty-five. Its Tudor version was written and even corrected against another manuscript by Syon Abbey’s nuns circa 1500-35, copying a now-lost exemplar of circa

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I. The Westminster Manuscript

1450. The manuscript, which includes Hilton as well as Julian, the Hilton excerpts in a different order than his final version, begins with the date “1368”, written at the bottom of its first page as if to record that information (W1, Plate I a), next repeated on the end papers and the spine of the manuscript, though this manuscript is copied out later than this date.

Figure 1. Westminster Manuscript, date of ‘1368’, bottom first folio.

It is the second-oldest manuscript we have of Julian’s Showing. It has no reference to the “Holy Dying” vision of 1373. In it Julian speaks of her desire to die when young, and God tells her this will happen soon. If we accept that date in the manuscript Julian in 1368 was just 25 years old. Yet the theology of this manuscript, centring on Wisdom and Truth, is brilliant. (Not unlike the theological precociousness of the very young Catherine of Siena and Thérèse of Lisieux, both now “Doctors of the Church”.) It opens with “OUre gracious god”, as Wisdom and Truth, it shows the Nativity of the Word, mirror-reversing time, becoming the Annunciation, the Incarnate Word within Mary’s Body, in this book in Julian’s and our hands (W72v, Plate Ic). The “Long” Text constantly refers back to this scene as its “First” Showing (P8-9, 11-11v, 13v-14, 47v-49, concluding with P128v, “And that shewde he in the furst = wher he brought þt meke maydyn before the eye of my vnderstondyng in þe sympyll stature as she was whan she conceived. that is to sey oure hye god the souereyn wisdom of all”), though it is not given as the First Showing in the opening index of the Paris Manuscript by the male editor who presents that instead as the Crowning of Thorns (P1). This contemplating by Mary on the Word, both as Wisdom, mirrored in turn again and again by Julian in her texts, and now also by ourselves who read her Showing, carefully reflects Luke’s Gospel 1.29,2.19, 51, on Mary as she ponders on all these things in her

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heart, the Word increasing in wisdom and stature. This “Sacred Conversation” is an intensely feminist, obstetrical, maternal form of lectio divina. It is centred on gestation and birth, in fact, on the Body within the Body, on Life.2 Similarly, and for which Chancellor Jean Gerson of the University of Paris sought to condemn her, Birgitta of Sweden wrote “Four Prayers”, of which the third is addressed to the Body of Christ, the fourth to the Body of Mary.3 However, the counter arguments to this “1368” date on the manuscript’s opening folio are, first of all, and most strongly, that Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection is dated to the 1380s, and, secondly, that the other editors of this Hilton/Julian manuscript view it as a compilation created out of excerpts from the “Long” Text. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh believed the repetition in the Paris manuscript to be an error due to careless dittography,4 and Hugh Kempster wrote of this section of the Westminster Manuscript as the work of a mere Tudor hack, strongly objecting to its initial Marian imagery as a male, Romish interpolation unworthy of Julian’s “virile Christology”,5 not noticing that this obstetrical and doubled wonderment is actually carefully repeated in all the versions of Julian’s Showing of Love (W72v, P8-9, A99v.19,8), such “careless dittography” only editorially excised from the two late Sloane manuscripts, and that its earlier and multiple inclusion is surely no accident. Julian is echoing, in this paradox, Mechthild von Magdebourg, Marguerite Porete, Dante Alighieri, Birgitta of Sweden, and Geoffrey Chaucer, a paradox which will influence Elizabeth Barton, in which they imply the relationship of Mary as both God’s Mother and God’s Daughter, Wisdom, playing at his side at the Creation of the World, and in which we enter with Julian into the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospel of Luke (Proverbs 8, Wisdom 8.1, Luke 1.27-38),6 as embedded in Paris (P89, Plate II), ¶In this he brought our ladie sainct mari to my vnderstanding, I saw her ghostly in bodily liknes a sim= ple mayden and a meeke yong of age a little waxen aboue a chylde in the sta= ture as she was when she conceivede, ¶Also god shewed me in part the wi= sdom and the truth of her sowle. wher in I vnderstode the reuerent beholding that she beheld her god. that is her ma= ker. marvayling wt great reuerence that he would be borne of her that was^asymple creature of his makyng

4

I. The Westminster Manuscript ¶ffor this was her marvayling that he that was her maker would be borne of her that was made, ¶And this wisdome and truth knowing the gre= atnes of her maker. And the littlehead of her selfe that is made. made her to say full meekely to gabriell. Loo me here gods handmaiden, ¶ In this syght I did vnderstand verily that she is more then all that god made beneth her. in wordiness and in fullhead. for aboue is nothing that is made. But the [her blessed manhood of Christ. as to my syght,

and in Amherst (A99v.4-20), In this. God brought owre ladye to myne vnderstandynge. I sawe hir gastelye in bodilye lyekenes A Sympille maydene & ameeke ‫ݤ‬onge of Age in the stature that scho was wh= en scho conceyvede. Also god schewyd me in parte the wisdomm & the trowthe of hir saule. Whare yn I vndyrstode reuerente beholdynge þt sche beheld ourehyrgod that ys hir makere mervelande with grete re= uerence that he wolde be borne of hir that was Asympille creature of his makynge. Ffor this was hir mervelynge that he that was hir makere walde be borne of hir that was asympille creature of his makynge. And this wysdom of trowthe &^knawande the gretnes of hir makere and the lytelle heede of hir selfe that ys made made hir for to saye mekelye to the Angelle gabrielle loo me here goddys hande may= dene. In this sight. I sawe sothfastlye that scho ys mare than alle þat god made benethe hir in worthynes & in fulheede. ffor Abovene hir ys nothynge that is made botte the blyssede manhede of criste this lytille thynge that is made that es benethe oure ladye Saynt Ma= rye.

The text next includes the hazel nut passage, and it quotes again and again from St Gregory’s Dialogues on the Life of St Benedict, on how when the soul sees the Creator all that is created seems little. Then it turns that inside out, like the Beatles’ pocket, and speaks of God in a point, from Pseudo-Dionysius, the Greek Church Father, and from Boethius, the Latin Church Father. It discourses upon prayer, using Origen on the Lord’s Prayer and William of St Thierry’s Golden Epistle.7 It talks to us of Jesus as Mother, reflecting back to that opening of God and Mary “oned” in the “Great O” Antiphon of Wisdom, and Truth, in its “Holy Conversation” collapsing time to its centre, as in a Rose window, rather than of the

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“noughting” of this world. Julian uses the concept, from PseudoDionysius, Marguerite Porete and Dante Alighieri, of the Holy Trinity (to which the now Protestant Norwich Cathedral of the Holy and Undivided Trinity is still dedicated), as Might, Wisdom and Love. (Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is so dedicated to Christ as Wisdom, while Wisdom in Proverbs is God’s Daughter, playing at his side at the Creation, Arnolfo di Cambio for Florence’s original cathedral sculpting Mary’s soul as a girl child in Jesus’ arms at the Dormition of the Virgin, a combination which gives us Julian’s androgynous Jesus as Mother.) It ends with God saying he will grant Julian’s prayer to die young. The “Long” Text, given in the Syon Abbey, Bibliothèque Nationale, anglais 40, Paris Manuscript and in the three Benedictine Sloane 3705, Sloane 2499, Stowe 42 Manuscripts in the British Library, presents a version originally written when she was fifty, in 1393, discussing a vision of the Crucifix she had had when she lay, she and others thought, dying, in 1373. A final version, the “Short” Text, is given in the British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript, and states it was written when she was still alive in 1413, at seventy, when the Lollards, ancestors to Quakers such as Norwich’s Elizabeth Gurney Fry, were being burned at the stake. That manuscript also contains Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, Henry Suso’s Horologium Sapientiae and Jan van Ruusbroec’s Sparkling Stone, amongst other contemplative texts. All the early Julian manuscripts are connected to Brigittine Syon Abbey, the Westminster Manuscript being owned by the courageous recusant Lowe family. The last monk to be buried at Syon Abbey at the Reformation was a Lowe. The Lowes in exile continued to be associated with Syon Abbey in exile in Flanders, then Rouen, then Lisbon, Lowe women, as well as men, being imprisoned for their recusancy, and a Lowe priest was drawn, hung and quartered at Tyburn for converting five hundred souls to Catholicism. In the early nineteenth century a Rose Lowe entered Syon Abbey in Lisbon, saving it from extinction under Wellington’s deprivations in Portugal and became its Prioress. Bishop James Bramston contemporaneously studied for ordination at the English College, Lisbon. The manuscript next passed from Lowe and Syon ownership into his hands, being rebound at this date, the “1368” date being twice more repeated on the end paper and the binding, and it finally came to Westminster Cathedral.8 Julian, if this hypothesis is correct, thus spent her whole life writing this book. From the age of fifty on she lived as a Solitary, an Anchoress, in an anchorhold at St Julian’s Church, Norwich, surrounded by the tombs of its graveyard, while probably dressed in the black of a Benedictine nun, for

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she may have earlier been at the Benedictine Carrow Priory, which lies just beyond Norwich’s medieval flintstone wall with a fine view of Norwich’s Cathedral and Castle, and, in the tradition of hermits, she may have taught the A.B.C. and counselled troubled souls, like that of Margery Kempe from Lynn. In all these versions, except the last, Julian gives copious passages from the Bible in her Middle English, from Genesis, from Exodus, from the Psalms, from Isaiah, from Jonah, from the Epistles and much else, but she dares not do so in the 1413 version when to own or use John Wyclif’s translation of the Bible into English would have caused one to have been burnt at the stake in chains as a Lollard heretic. Strangely, she uses neither Jerome’s Latin Vulgate nor Wyclif’s Middle English of the Bible, the evidence being that she has access to the Hebrew of the Scriptures, likely gained through her family if they were conversi (Jews converted to Christianity), or through Cardinal Adam Easton who had taught the Hebrew Scriptures at Oxford and who had translated them into Latin, correcting Jerome’s errors, or both. But she is not an elitist scholar. Her last word in her last version is the Lollard term, one’s “even Christian”, one’s neighbour as one’s equal in the eyes of God. Julian begins the Westminster Manuscript Showing of Love by contemplating on the Virgin Mary contemplating on her still unborn Child within her. As in paintings of “Sacred Conversations” where the artist portrays the donor or donor’s whole family in the presence of the Virgin and Child or the Crucifixion, supported by their patron saints, so also did medieval contemplative texts, being “Holy Conversations”, transcend time to the Gospel, to Eternity, to the centre, rather than to the diminishing and thinning outer circlings of time, noughting and sin. Long before the Jesuits with Ignatius Loyola’s male-dominated and carefully structured and organised “Spiritual Exercises”, Jerome had described how Paula had done so at the Holy Places, at Bethlehem and Calvary. Birgitta of Sweden, Margery Kempe likewise did so, paintings even showing Birgitta as present at the Virgin’s birthing of her Child. Paula, Birgitta, Julian and Margery all practice the “Presence of God” liturgically and obstetrically. The initial “O” in the manuscript is illuminated in blue with red penwork ornamentation, the text written in brownish ink within rules to ease typesetting in print. It echoes typographically the Advent Antiphon, “O Sapientia”, enveloping liturgically the pregnant Virgin’s sung Magnificat at Vespers, in which she worships and addresses her as-yet-unborn child as Wisdom (W72v, Plate I c).9

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Figure 2. Westminster Manuscript, Westminster Abbey, fol. 72v

O

Ure gracious & goode lorde god shewed me in party þe wisdom & þe trewthe of þe soule of oure blessed lady. saynt mary. where in I vnder= stood þe reuerent beholdynge þat she behelde her god þat is her maker. maruelynge with grete reuerence þat he wolde be borne of her þat was a simple creature of his makyng. (W92v)

In this Tudor manuscript the single letter, “thorn”, þ, is used for our th, s being long-tailed Ǐ, except at the end of a word (not observed in this printing), us and vs the reverse of our practice, g or gh being “yogh”, ‫܌‬, and n is often abbreviated with a macron above the previous letter. The manuscript has drawings of hands in the margin pointing to important parts of the text. (Later, Julian speaks of the tender hands of God as our Mother, W111, while the first Jewish prayer a mother teaches her child to say in Hebrew at bedtime, “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit”, is what Mary hears her dying Son say as she stands at the foot of the Cross.) The sections given in the following quotations in bold are rubricated in the Paris Manuscript, but not in the Westminster Manuscript. In other manuscripts these phrases are in engrossed letters, which, in one instance, occurs also in the Westminster Manuscript (W87v), and which may have been Julian’s own practice, perhaps borrowed from Rabbinical texts, as in the Balliol College, Oxford, manuscript of Rabbi David Kimhi,

I. The Westminster Manuscript

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once owned by Cardinal Adam Easton, the Norwich Benedictine who effected Birgitta of Sweden‘s canonisation in 1391. Or they are underlined, and, in the 1670 printed edition, in italics. All these emphasise the “Holy Conversations” Julian mediates with us, with Mary and with God, as did Birgitta in her Revelationes, humbling their words to the Word. What follows is a modernised and abbreviated version of the Westminster Manuscript with some glimpses at its original form on its parchment folios as an accessus, an introduction, to this book on Julian. In reading its words, seek to become Dame Julian, and place yourself within her “Holy Conversation”.

O

Ur gracious and good lord God showed me in part the wisdom and the truth of the soul of our blessed Lady, Saint Mary that he would be born of her that was a simple person of his making. For this was her marvelling, “That he who was her maker would be born of her that is made”. And this wisdom and truth, knowing the greatness of her Maker and the littleness of her self who is made, caused her to say full meekly to Gabriel, “Lo, me here, God’s handmaiden”. This wisdom and truth made her see her God so great, so high, so mighty and so good that the greatness and the nobility and beholding of God fulfilled her with reverent dread. And with this she saw herself so little and so low, so simple and so poor in reward of her God, that this reverent dread fulfilled her with meekness. And thus, by this ground, she was fulfilled with grace and of all manner of virtue, and overpassed all people. In this sight, I understood truly that she is more than all that God made beneath her in worthiness and fullness. For above her there is no thing that is made: but the blessed manhood of Christ, as to my sight. And this our good Lord showed to my understanding, in teaching us. . . .

Figure 3. Westminster Manuscript, fol. 74, detail and in þis he shewed me a lytil

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thyng þe quantite of a hasyl nott. lyeng in þe pawme of my hand as it had semed. and it was as rownde as eny ball. (W74)

And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, “What may this be?” And it was answered generally thus, “It is all that is made”. I marvelled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nought for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: “It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it”. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God. In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second, that he loves it. And the third, that God keeps it. But what is this to me? Truly, the Creator, the Keeper, the Lover. For until I am substantially oned to him, I may never have full rest nor true bliss. That is to say, until I be so fastened to him that there is nothing that is made between my God and me. This little thing that is made, I thought it might have fallen to nought for littleness. Of this we need to have knowledge that it is like to nought, all things that are made. For to love and have God that is unmade. For this is the cause why we are not at ease in heart and soul, for we seek rest here, in this thing that is so little where there is no rest, and knowing not our God who is all mighty, all wise and all good. For he is true rest. God will be known, and he likes us to rest in him. For all that is beneath him cannot suffice us. And this is the cause why no soul is rested, until it is noughted of all that is made. And when he wills to be noughted for love, to have him who is all, then he is able to receive spiritual rest. Also our Lord showed that it is the fullest pleasure to him, that an innocent soul come to him nakedly, plainly and humbly. For this is the natural yearning of the soul by the touching of the Holy Spirit. And by the understanding that I have in this showing, God for þi goodnes ‫܌‬eue vnto me thy selfe: for þou art I nough to me. & I may no thyng aske þt is lesse. that may be full wur= shyppe to thee. And yf I aske eny/ thyng that ^is lesse. euer me wantith. but only in þe I haue all. And þes

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I. The Westminster Manuscript wordis. god of thy goodnes it ar fulle louesum to the soule. and ful nygh touchyng þe wyll of our lord. ffor his goodnes comprehen= [W75v-76]

“God, for your goodness, give me yourself. For you are enough for me and I may not ask anything that is less, that may be fully worthy of you. And if I ask any thing that is less, I am always wanting. But only in you I have all”. And these words, “God of your goodness”, are most lovely to the soul, and full nigh touching the will of our Lord. For his goodness comprehends all his creation and all his blessed works and overpasses them without end. For he is the endlessness, and he has made us only for himself, and restored us by his precious Passion, and ever keeps us in his blessed love, and all this is of his goodness. This Showing was given, as to my understanding, to teach our souls wisely to cleave to the goodness of God. ... It is God’s will that we have three things in our seeking of his gift. The first is, that we seek willingly and busily without sloth, as it may be with his grace gladly and merrily, without unskilfull heaviness and vain sorrow. The second, that we abide with him steadfastly for his love, without complaining and striving against him to our lives’ end, for it shall last only a while. The third is that we trust in him mightily with a full sure faith, for it is his will that we shall know that he will appear suddenly and blessedfully to all his lovers, for his working is secret, and it will be perceived, and his appearing shall be swift and sudden, and he will be believed, for he is very able, humble and courteous, blessed must he be. After this, I saw God in a point. That is to say in my understanding. But which sight I saw that he is all things. I beheld with advisement, seeing and knowing in that sight, that he does all that is done, be it never so little. And I saw that nothing is done by chance, nor by hazard, but all by the foreseeing of God’s wisdom. And if it be chance or fortune in the sight of man, our blindness and our lack of foresight is the cause. Therefore, well I know that in sight of our lord God, there is no chance or happenstance. And therefore it needs behoove me to grant that all things that are done, are well done, because our lord God does all. For in this time the working of Creation was not showed but of our lord God, in Creation, for he is in the midpoint of all things, and he does all.

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And I was sure that he does no sin. And here I saw truly that sin is no deed. Also among other showings our good Lord means thus, “See, I am God. See, I am in all things. See, I do all things. See, I never left off the works of my hand, nor ever shall, without end. See, I lead all things to the end, to which I ordained them, from without beginning, by the same power, wisdom and love, that I made them with. How should then anything be amiss?” I saw full surely that he never changes his purpose in any manner of thing, nor ever shall without end. For there was nothing unknown to him in his rightful ordering from without beginning. And therefore all things were set in order before anything was made, as it should be without end. ··· And this was shown in these words, “Are you well paid?”. By those other words that Christ said, “If you are paid, I am paid”. As if he had said, “It is joy and liking enough to me, and I ask nothing else of you for my travail, but that I might pay you”. And it is this he brought to my mind. The property of a glad giver: a glad giver takes but little heed of the thing that he gives, but his desire is in all his intent, to please him and solace him to whom he gives it. And if the receiver takes the gift gladly and thankfully, then the courteous giver sets at nought all his cost and all his travail for joy and delight that he has, for he has so pleased and solaced him whom he loves. Plenteously and fully was this shown. ··· Also our Lord showed for prayer, in which showing I saw two conditions in our Lord’s meaning. One is right full prayer. And the other is sure trust. But yet often our trust is not full, for we are not sure that God hears us, we think, because of our unworthiness, and because of that we feel nothing. For we are as barren and as dry often after our prayer, as we were before. And thus in our feeling, our folly is the cause of our weakness. For thus I have felt in myself. And all this brought our Lord suddenly to my mind and showed these words and said, “I am ground of your seeking. First it is my will that you have it, and I make you to will it. How should it then be that you should not have your seeking of it, since I make you to seek it, and you seek it”. And thus in the first reason of the three that follow, our lord God shows a great comfort as may be, saying in the same words in the first reason. Where he says, “And you seek it”, there he shows full great pleasure, and endless reward that he will give us for our seeking.

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And in the sixth reason there he says, “How should then this be?” This was said for an impossibility. For it is the most impossible thing that may be that we should seek mercy and grace, and not have it. For of all things that our Lord makes us to seek, himself has ordained it to us from without beginning. Here may we see then that our seeking is not cause of the goodness and grace that he does to us, but his own proper goodness, and that he shows truly in all these sweet words, where he says, “I am ground of your prayer and of your seeking”. And our Lord wills that this be known of all his lovers on earth. And the more that we know it, the more should we seek it, if it is wisely taken. And so is our Lord’s meaning. Wise seeking is a true, gracious, lasting will of the soul, oned and fastened into the will of our lord God himself. He is the first receiver of our prayer, it seems to me, and he takes it right thankfully and highly enjoys it. He sends it up above and sets it in the treasury, where it shall never perish. It is there before God with all his holy company continually received, ever fulfulling our needs. And when we shall achieve our bliss, it shall be given to us for a degree of joy with endless worshipful thanking of him. Full glad and merry is our lord God of our prayer. He looks there after and he would have it. For with his grace it makes us like himself in condition, as we be in nature. Also he says, “Pray though you think it not help you”. Also to prayer belong thankings. Thanking is a true inward knowing with great reverence and lovely dread, turning ourself with all our might into the working that our lord God stirred us to, enjoying and thanking him inwardly. And sometimes with plenteousness, it breaks out into voice, and says, “Good lord, grant mercy, blessed must you be”. ··· Truth sees God, and Wisdom beholds God, and of these two comes the third, and that is a marvelous holy delight in God, which is Love. Where truth and wisdom is, truly there is love and truly coming of them both, and all of God’s making. For God is endless sovereign truth, endless sovereign wisdom, endless sovereign love unmade. ··· And furthermore he wills that we know that this dearworthy soul was preciously knit to him in the making. Which knot is so subtle and so mighty, that it is oned to God, in which oneing it is made endlessly holy. Furthermore, he wills that we know and understand, that all the souls that shall be saved in heaven without end are knitted in this knot,

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and oned in this oneing, and made holy in this holiness. And for great endless love that God has to all mankind, he makes no departing in love between the blessed soul of Christ and the least soul that shall be saved, for it is very easy to live and to believe, that the dwelling of the blessed soul of Christ is full high in the glorious godhead. And truly as I understand in our Lord’s meaning, where the blessed soul of Christ is, there is the substance of all the souls that shall be saved by Christ. Highly ought we to enjoy that our God dwells in our soul, and much more highly we ought to enjoy that our soul dwells in God. And the dwelling place of our soul is in God, which is unmade. A high understanding it is inwardly to see and to know that God which is our maker, dwells in our soul. And a higher understanding it is and more inwardly to see and to know our soul that is made dwells in God in substance, of which substance by God we be that we be. Also the almighty truth of the Trinity is our Father. For he made us and keeps us in him. And the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother, in whom we be all enclosed, and the high goodness of the Trinity is our Lord, and in him we are closed, and he is in us. All mighty, all wisdom and all goodness; one God, one Lord and one goodness. God is nearer to us than our own soul, for he is ground in whom our soul stands, and he is the means that keeps the substance and the sensuality together so that it shall never depart. For our soul sits in God, in true rest, and our soul stands in God in sure strength, and our soul is naturally rooted in God, in endless love. And therefore if we will have knowing of our soul, and communing and daliance therewith, it is right to seek into our lord God in whom it is enclosed. Also, as truly as God is our Father, so as truly God is our Mother. And that he shows in all and namely in these sweet words, where he says, “I it am”. That is to say, “I it am, the might and goodness of Fatherhead; I it am, the wisdom and the kindness of Motherhood; I it am, the light and the grace, that is all blessed love; I it am, the Trinity; I it am, the Unity; I it am, the high sovereign goodness of all manner of things; I it am, that makes you to love; I it am, that makes you to long, the endless fullness of all true desires”. ··· I understand three manners of beholding of Motherhead in God. The first is ground of our natural making. The second is taking of our nature, and there begins the Motherhead of grace. The third is Motherhead of working and therein is a spreading forth by the same

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I. The Westminster Manuscript

grace of length and of breadth, of height and of deepness without end. And all is one love. ··· The mother’s service is nearest, readiest and surest. It is nearest, for it is natural, readiest, for it is most of love, and surest for it is of truth. This office might nor could anyone ever do to the full, but Christ Jesus, God and Man alone. We know full well that all our mothers bear us with pain and for dying. But our true Mother Jesus, he alone bears us to joy and to bliss, and endless living, blessed must he be. Thus he sustains us within him in love. And travailed into the full time that he would suffer the sharpest throes and the most grievous pains that ever were or ever shall be, and died at the last and when he had done and so borne us to bliss, yet might not all this be enough to his marvellous love. And that showed he in these high overpassing words of love, “If I might suffer more I would suffer more”. He might no more die, but he would not cease working. Therefore then he needs must feed us, for the dearworthy love of Motherhead has made him debtor to us. The mother may give her child to suck her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus, he may feed us with himself, and does full courteously and full tenderly with the blessed sacrament of his body and blood that is precious food of very life. And with all the sweet sacraments he sustains us well mercifully and graciously. The sweet gracious hands of our Mother are ready and diligent about us. For he in all this working uses the true office of a kind nurse, that has nothing else to do, but to attend about the salvation of her child. It is the office of our lord Jesus Christ to save us. It is his worship to do it, and it is his will we know it. For he wills that we love him sweetly and trust in him meekly and strongly. And this he showed in these gracious words, “I keep you most surely”. Furthermore a natural child despairs not of the mother’s love, and naturally the child presumes not of itself, naturally the child loves the mother, each of them loves the other. Also I had great desire and longing for God’s gift to be delivered of this world and of this life. For often I beheld the woe that is here in this life, and the weal and the blessed being that is in heaven, and I thought sometimes, though there had been no pain in this life but the absence of our lord God, it was more than I might bear, and this made me to mourn and anxiously yearn. And also my own wretchedness, sloth and irksomeness helped thereto, so that I wanted not to live and to travail as it fell out to me to do. And to all our courteous lord God answered for comfort and patience, and said these words, “Suddenly

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you shall be taken from all your pain, and from all your sickness, from all your illness and from all your woe, and you shall come up above, and you shall have me to your pay and reward, and you shall be filled with joy and with bliss, and you shall never more have any manner of pain, neither any manner of sickness, nor manner of misliking, nor no wanting of will, but be ever in joy and bliss without end. What should it then grieve you to suffer a while, since it is my will and my worship”. It is God’s will that we set the point of our thought in this blessed beholding, as often as we may, and as long.

The Westminster text bookends Birth and Death, much as does Simone Martini’s diptych (Plate Vb). But her near-dying, her “Holy Dying”, seems not to have yet happened, only to be desired. For if we take literally the words in the Westminster Manuscript, it seems to lie in the near future, while she is still young, before her stated date, in the other manuscripts, of 1373, and long before her actual death date of sometime after 1416. The manuscript’s “1368” would therefore be logical if these words can be accepted by a reader. Moreover she speaks of Death, like Birth, as being “delivered”.

Figure 4. Pieter Breughel the Elder, “Dormition of the Virgin”, Upton House, The Bearsted Collection, circa 1564 © National Trust Images/Angelo Hornak

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I. The Westminster Manuscript

Figure 5. Death of Catherine of Siena

Modern readers of Julian are puzzled by the large number of persons Julian describes as being in her room as she lies supposedly dying on that May day in 1373 in her Amherst, Paris and Sloane Manuscripts, though not in Westminster. Yet if we look at evidence from Julian’s Catholic Europe we find that the act of “Holy Dying” was important and participatory theatre. Breughel’s painting of the “Death of the Virgin” shows her looking at the Crucifix (of her Son’s dying), propped up at the foot of her bed for her to gaze upon while she and Jesus’ brother, James the Just together hold the requiem candle in her hand, men and women flocking about the bed, a snoring servant dozing by a hellish fire to the left, this glorious light to the right. St Catherine of Siena’s dying, similarly, took place in the crowded presence of her mother, her disciple Alessia, and all her other disciples, one of whom holds with her the requiem candle, both men and women being present. Only the English hermit at Lecceto, William Flete, could not be there in Rome on that 28th day of April in 1380. The British Library’s Beauchamp Pageants similarly show the death of Richard Beauchamp, as he gazes upon the Crucifix. Accounts of cloistered Brigittine nuns dying also describe how both brothers and sisters crowd into the cell to be present at the moment in shared prayer.10 Accounts of Carrow Priory speak of such events likewise, and Julian’s 1373 near-dying could have taken place there, just beyond the flint walls of Norwich, the Prioress, the Mother to the Sisters, being the one to close her eyes, believing her to be dead.11

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Julian’s “Holy Dying”, 8/13 May 1373, though she lives to tell the tale, in the final chapter of this book will be found to be used as a conscious, consolatory, devotional model by Sr Mary Champney, OSS, on 27 April 1580, and by Dame Margaret Gascoigne, OSB, on 9 August 1637, in a “Holy Conversation” bridging centuries, words in books penned by women “incarnated” in time. Julian gazes upon Christ, and her Body in pain becomes His.

Notes 1

The Westminster Manuscript was first published in a normalised version by Betty Foucard,’ A Cathedral Manuscript, IV Excerpts from the Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich as They Appear in a Manuscript Belonging to the Cathedral Library’, Westminster Cathedral Chronicle (1955-56), 41, 59-60, 89-90; then diplomatically by Frances Reynolds [Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, CP], ‘A Critical Edition of the Revelations of Julian of Norwich (1342- c. 1416), Prepared from All Known Manuscripts, with Introduction, Notes and Select Glossary’, D.Phil. Thesis, Leeds University, May 1956, Appendix B; James Walsh and Eric Colledge then edited it in Of the Knowledge of Ourselves and of God: A FifteenthCentury Spiritual Florilegium (London: Mowbray, 1961); Edward Peter Nolan next published Julia Bolton Holloway’s initial 1991 transcription of the Westminster Manuscript in Cry Out and Write: A Feminine Poetics of Revelation (New York: Continuum, 1994), pp. 148-203; Julia Bolton Holloway submitted “The Westminster Cathedral Manuscript: Its Relationship to the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale and London British Library ‘Long’ Texts and ‘Short’ Text of Julian of Norwich’s Showing”, for the M.A. Thesis for the Archbishop’s Examination in Theology, 1995; Marleen Cré submitted “Westminster Cathedral Treasury MS 4: A 15th Century Spiritual Compilation” for the M. Phil. Thesis, University of Glasgow, April 1997; Hugh Kempster caused the manuscript to be removed from Catholic Westminster Cathedral’s recusant context and placed in the establishment Anglican Westminster Abbey Library and Muniment Room, then published a transcription of it in “Julian of Norwich: The Westminster Text of A Revelation of Love”, Mystics Quarterly 23 (December, 1997), 177-245; Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, CP, and Julia Bolton Holloway edited it again in Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love: Extant Texts and Translations (Florence: SISMEL, 2001), pp. 5117; Nicholas Watson republished Hugh Kempster’s transcription in The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and a Revelation of Love (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), pp. 418-431. Marleen Cré continues to research and publish on the Westminster Manuscript: “Authority and the Compiler in Westminster Cathedral Treasury MS 4: Writing a Text in Someone Else’s Words”, Authority and Community in the Middle Ages, ed. Donald Mowbray, Rhiannon Purdie, and Ian P. Wei (Stroud: Sutton,1999); “‘This Blessed Beholdyng’: Reading the Fragments from Julian of Norwich’s A Revelation of Divine Love in London, Westminster Cathedral Treasury, MS 4”, A

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I. The Westminster Manuscript

Companion to Julian of Norwich, ed. Liz Herbert McAvoy (Cambridge: Brewer, 2008); “Westminster Cathedral Treasury, MS 4 : An Edition of the Westminster Compilation”, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 37(2011), 1-59. 2 The Lowe family associated with this manuscript also owned a Psalter from Brigittine Syon Abbey, now Edinburgh University Library 59, acquired in 1636, with the feastdays of St John of Beverley and St Birgitta in its Calendar, and recording the birth of a daughter, with the inscription, “Elynor Mownse lowe was borne into þis world upon þe innocenttys day in þe mornyng betweyne xii and on of þe cloke þe yere of our Lord 1543. God make her a good woman . . . .” Christopher de Hamel, Syon Abbey, ed. John Martin Robinson, pp. 111-112, and in a letter, 4 July 1995, conjectures that the mother recording her daughter’s birth was a Brigittine nun at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It is just possible that the child’s scribbles are made by Elynor Mownse Lowe upon her mother’s copy of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love, and that centuries later a descendant of her family will again become a Syon Sister, Rose Lowe, perhaps bringing this book with her to Lisbon as part of her dowry. 3 Sancta Birgitta, Opera minora Vol. III. Quattuor oraciones, ed. Sten Eklund (Stockholm: Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 1991); disk of Birgitta of Sweden, Revelaciones XII, ed. Birger Bergh, Sten Eklund http://www.umilta.net/bk12.html; The Burnet Psalter gives a fine illumination of this prayer, fol. 28v: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/diss/historic/collects/bps/text/028v.htm 4 Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, “Editing Julian of Norwich’s Revelations: A Progress Report”, Mediaeval Studies 38 (1976), 406-7; A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, eds. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978), I.214; II. 297. 5 Hugh Kempster, “Julian of Norwich: The Westminster Text of A Revelation of Love”, Mystics Quarterly 23 (December, 1997), 177-245; “A Question of Audience: The Westminster Text and Fifteenth-Century Reception of Julian of Norwich”, Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays, ed. Sandra J. McEntire (New York: Garland, 1998), pp. 272-283. See also Alexandra Barratt, “How Many Children had Julian of Norwich? Editions, Translations and Versions of her Revelations”, Vox Mystica: Essays in Honour of Valerie Lagorio, ed. Ann Clark Bartlett, Thomas Bestul, Janet Goebel and William F. Pollard (Cambridge: Brewer, 1995), pp. 27, 37. 6 Luke 2.19; Julian echoes opening of Lord’s Prayer (Norwich Castle Manuscript, fol. 61); Great “O” Advent Antiphon, “O Sapientia”; Jerome and Paula, Epistles XLVI, CVIII; Pseudo-Bonaventure, Meditations; Mechthild von Magdebourg, Flowing Light of the Godhead III.1, VIII.60; Marguerite Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls, “I Creature made of the makere. bi me. that the makere hase made of hym this Boke. Why it is I knawe nou‫ݤ‬t. nor I kepe no‫ݤ‬t witt. for why I awe it no‫ݤ‬t. it Suffices me þt it is. Where ynne I may knawe the diuine wisdomm. And in hope. here I thame salue by the loue of pees of charite: in the hi‫ݤ‬e trynite that wille warante it” (A138v); Dante Alighieri, Paradiso XXXIII.1-6, “Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio”; Birgitta of Sweden, Revelationes VII.12, “Deus meus, Dominus meus et filius meus” of her vision of Mary saying these words in the Cave of

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Christ’s Nativity, Bethlehem; Geoffrey Chaucer, “Second Nun’s Prologue”, Canterbury Tales VIII.36-42, “Thou Mayde and Mooder, doghter of thy Sone”. 7 William of St Thierry, The Golden Epistle, trans. Theodore Berkeley OCSO (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1976), Cistercian Fathers Series 12. 8 Julia Bolton Holloway, Anchoress and Cardinal: Julian of Norwich and Adam Easton, OSB (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 2008), Analecta Cartusiana 35:20, pp. 279-81, 289-90. 9 “M.N.”‘s gloss to Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, “he leieth the note and the kernele with ynne the schelle vbrokinne” (A138). Giovanni Pozzi, “Maria tabernacolo”, Sull’orto del visibile parlare (Milan: Adelphi Edizioni, 1993), pp. 21-32, discusses Mary’s conception of her Son without seed as similar to the nut in relation to its fruit, likewise her addressing her conception with the seven Advent Antiphons, “O Sapientia, O Adonai, O Radix, O Clavis, O Oriens, O Rex, O Emanuel”. My thanks to Mark Roberts, British Institute, Florence, for this reference and to Dr Rev Malcolm Guite for his “O” Antiphon and Julian Sonnets. Dame Clementia Cary, writing out the Paris daughter house’s Constitution in 1656, uses the image: “And therefore you are to knowe þt þe life & substance of your holy Rule & Profession, doth not consist in þe onely obseruance of any humane Laws & Constitutions wch are but as þe Barke & shell without þe fruite & kernell, but in þe reformation & mortification of your corrupted nat=ure, & of þe inordinate propensions & passions of it, & in such union wth God as may be had in the life gained by þe serious & daily prosec=ution of internall or mental Prayer & abstraction of life in wch only consists þe true conversion, of your manners wch you have vowed & professed to solemnly before God & his Saints. for wtout þs internall Prayer & mortification of life & manners duly & daily accomplished (all wch is called piety) a good exteriour comportment & observance of reg=ular coustomes wch are only corporal (according to the Judgment of St Paul) proffit but very little towards þe true & full satisfaction of the Rule & Profession, though they bee very good & pious in Themselves, & are to bee used as means to attain to þt wch is more internall & spirituall”. 10 Liber usuum fratrum monasteri Vadstenensis/The Customary of the Vadstena Brothers: A Critical Edition with an Introduction, ed. Sara Risberg (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003), chapters 38-42, pp. 184-191. 11 Walter Rye, Carrow Abbey, Otherwise Carrow Priory, near Norwich, in the County of Norfolk: Its Foundations, Buildings, Officers and Inmates (Norwich, 1889).

II JULIAN’S SHOWING IN A NUTSHELL This boke is begonne by goddys gyfte and his grace but it is nott yet performyd as to my syght

T

His chapter is a palaeological and codicological study of the surviving versions of Julian’s texts. It will discuss the various manuscript families, restoring them to their scribal contexts, and next replicate their formats from the folios concerning the hazel nut. There are eight manuscripts giving three complete (“First”, W; “Long”, P,SS, Stowe 42; “Short”, A) versions or with fragments (G, U) of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love. The three oldest manuscripts (A, W, P), are associated with Syon Abbey in London and in exile; later copies of one or two of these then being made by English Benedictine nuns in exile in Cambrai and Paris. In all of these contexts, the Showing of Love, or Revelations, are presented by and/or for women in anachoritic or monastic contemplation as “Sacred Conversations”. In a continuum from the fourteenth century to our own they preserve material that took as model Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes, based in turn on John’s Apocalypse. An exemplar is the postulated original from which a surviving manuscript was copied. The hypothesised stemma for the three versions, Westminster (W), Sloanes (SS), Paris (P), Gascoigne Fragment (G), Upholland (U), and Amherst (A), from their now lost exemplar manuscripts (Ȧ, ȡ, ʌ, Į), is as follows: “First” Text Ȧ | W

“Long” Text “Short” Text ȡ Į / \ | SS ʌ A / \ P G, U, Cressy, Stowe

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I. The British Library, Add. 37790, Amherst Manuscript (A, exemplar Į), 238 folios, 170 x 265 mm, vellum. The earliest extant manuscript we have is possibly the last version of Julian’s text of her Showing. It is the “Short” Text in the Amherst Manuscript, British Library Additional 37790, first written in 1413 in Norwich (Į), then perhaps copied circa 1435 (A, Plate IIIa), by a scribe from Lincoln, and embedded in a collection of texts assembled finally for an anchoress, Margaret Heslyngton, in York, prior to which it could have been for a Carmelite anchoress, Emma Stapleton, of Norwich.1 Another hand corrects eyeskips to Julian’s text. The version of Julian’s Showing of Love that this manuscript includes clearly states it was first written out in 1413 (“Anno domini millesimo CCCC/ xiij°.”), when Julian is still alive, “and 3itt. ys oun lyfe”. The famed palaeographer A.I. Doyle cannot completely rule out the possibility that this section of this manuscript was written, as it says, in 1413, in her presence, because its opening parchment folio, 97, shows signs of wear and tear as if it had originally been the opening page of an initial gathering, later texts being bound afterwards in front of it by the same scribe (Plate IIIa).2

TH

ere es Avisioun. Schewed Be the goodenes of god to Ade= uoute womann and hir Name es Julyan that is recluse atte Norwyche and ‫܌‬itt. ys oun lyfe. Anno domini millesimo CCCC. xiij°. In the whilke visyoun er fulle many Comfortabylle wordes and gretly Styrrande to alle thaye that desyres to be crystes looverse.

Figure 6. ©The British Library Board. Amherst Manuscript, Additional 37790, fol. 97. Blue and red rubrication of initials can be seen in Plate IIIa.

II. Julian’s Showing in a Nutshell

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SI

Desyrede thre graces be the gyfte of god. The ffyrst was

to have mynde of Cryste es Passioun. The Secounde was bodelye syekenes And the thryd was to haue of goddys gyfte thre wo undys. ffor the fyrste come to my mynde with devocioun me thought I hadde grete felynge in the passyoun of cryste Botte ‫܌‬itte I desyrede to haue mare be the grace of god. me thought I wolde haue bene (A97)

This Showing of Love Amherst Manuscript version, Julian scholars currently believe, was written soon after the “deathbed” vision of 1373, almost forty years earlier than 1413, because it more closely recalls sickbed details than do the other texts. But Nicholas Watson found it to reflect the greater anxiety typical of the later circa 1413 period, when Chancellor Archbishop Thomas Arundel, countering John Wyclif’s Lollard Movement, was prohibiting lay people from teaching theology, especially women, and from their using the Bible in the English language (complete Latin text at: http://www.bible-researcher.com/arundel.pdf).3 I believe the greater recall of detail is being included in order to justify and validate her now long-ago vision and thus also her now-threatened, censored text. Similarly, the beguine Mechthild von Magdebourg, when elderly and blind at Cistercian Helfta, rewrote and crystallised her Flowing Light of the Godhead into one final text. In 1401 the death penalty, De Heretico Camburendo, the “Burning of Heretics”, had been instituted for such teaching, and William Sawtre, Margery Kempe’s curate of St Margaret’s Church, Lynn, had already been so burned in chains at Smithfield.4 In 1405 Archbishop Richard le Scrope was executed at York, by order of King Henry IV, following a scaffold sermon on the Five Wounds, it taking three blows of the sword to kill him, which Brigittines then took up as part of their propaganda for founding Syon Abbey.5 In 1407-09, Chancellor Archbishop Thomas Arundel published his Constitutions, requiring the licensing of both preachers and the ownership of vernacular Bibles, prohibiting the translating of the Bible into English, and limiting writing in the vernacular to such texts as the Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, while the Pater Noster, the Ave and the Credo were all to be recited only in Latin. In 1411 at the Carfax at Oxford, and in 1413 in front of St Paul’s, John Wyclif’s books were publically burned. In 1413 was further alarm as the Lollard Sir John Oldcastle escaped from the Tower and the Oldcastle Rising was in full swing.6 Therefore, given such a context, I concur with Nicholas Watson’s observations concerning a later date for the Julian texts, and take very seriously indeed the Amherst Manuscript version’s own most emphatically

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stated date of 1413, believing that it or its exemplar Į was written then, or rather dictated to a scribe, by a most courageous Julian at 70. For, in the “Short” Text, Julian seems to comply with Archbishop Arundel’s 14071409 Constitutions: she revises the text; excises swathes of scriptural material; she speaks of the now-mandatory worshipping of “Payntyngys of crucefexes”, though with some distaste (A97.16-17, Plate IIIa); she adds and engrosses a sentence on St Cecilia’s three neck wounds, saying that she had been told of her by “a man of Holy Kirk”, seeming to conflate those of the Roman martyr, who went on preaching for three days despite those mortal wounds to the three neck wounds of the English Archbishop of York Richard le Scrope at his 1405 execution (A97v.17-18 Plate IIIb); she protests she had never meant to teach theology (A101.4-16); and she also adds and engrosses for emphasis a complying sentence on the “Pater noster: Ave. and Crede.” in Latin (A109v.7). The penalty for teaching or writing theology in English from the Bible at this date was death, either by being burned in chains or by hanging, drawing and quartering, or both, the crime and the punishment being simultaneously for heresy and for treason. Such statements would not have been made at an earlier time, either close to 1368-1373 or between 1388-1393, when scriptural study was instead encouraged, rather than condemned. The “Short” Text Amherst Manuscript (A) was written for contemplative women and also includes Margaret Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, Jan van Ruusbroec’s Sparkling Stone, an extract from Henry Suso’s Horologium Sapientiae, and works by Richard Rolle, two translated by the Carmelite Richard Misyn of Lincoln and York, for women recluses, as well as Julian’s Showing of Love. The scribe’s dialect has been identified as from Grantham, Lincolnshire, the same scribe, who is male, being responsible for other major manuscripts, including Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Book of Ghostly Grace. The Amherst Manuscript constantly uses the monogram “SI”. The drawing at its conclusion, where Jesus is as Mother, is shown with a cross-nimbed halo made of three nails, and appears to reflect the Brigittine headdress of the five wounds made by three nails and spear in Christ’s body (A238, Figure 48). The manuscript is then heavily annotated by James Greenhalgh, a sometime monk of Syon Abbey’s twin foundation, Carthusian Sheen (A108v, Chapter VIII). Of interest also is that the Amherst Manuscript, the earliest extant text of Julian’s Showing of Love, with its gathering of Carmelite and “Friends of God” texts, survived in England because it came to be safely perhaps within the cloister of Carthusian Sheen Priory, beside Brigittine Syon Abbey,7 and following that, in the hands of recusant families in England. Bishop William Alnwick took manuscripts from Norwich to Lincoln, and

II. Julian’s Showing in a Nutshell

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Richard Misyn took manuscripts from Lincoln to York. The Swedish Brigittine Katillus Thorberni also had copied out contemplative manuscripts in this period along this axis of East Anglia, Lincoln and York by Richard Rolle and Adam Easton for Birgitta’s Vadstena monastery in Sweden. The earlier exemplars, Ȧ, ȡ, Į, from Norwich were destroyed, either by Arundel’s 1408 Constitutions for being Lollard, or by the 1534 Reformation for being Catholic. This 1413/circa 1435 manuscript was rediscovered in 1911. The Amherst Manuscript’s passage on the hazel nut at folios 99-99v is here presented diplomatically. Thus I tokede it for that tyme that oure lorde Jhesu of his curtay= se love walde schewe me comforthe before the tyme of my temptacy= oun for me thought it myght be welle that I schulde be the Suffyr= aunce of god and with his kepynge be temptyd of fendys or I dyede with this syght of his blyssede passyoun with the godhede that I saye in myn vndyrstandynge. I Sawe that this was stren= gh ynow‫ݤ‬e to me ‫ݤ‬e vnto alle creatures lyevande that schulde be saffe agaynes alle the feendys of helle & agaynes all gostelye= nd this same tyme that I sawe this bodily [enmyes. Syght oure lorde schewed me agastelye sight of his ^h amly lovynge. I sawe that he es to vs alle thynge þat is goode and comfortabylle to oure helpe he es oure clethynge for loove wappes vs and wyndes vs halses vs and alle be te= ches vs vs hynges aboute vs for tendyr loove that he maye nevere/ leve vs And so in this syght y sawe sothely that he ys alle thynge that ys goode as to myne vndyrstandynge and in this he schewyd me alyttille thynge the qwantyte of A= haselle Nutte lyggande in the palme of my hande & to my vn= dyrstandynge that it was as rownde as any balle. I lokede þer opoun and thought whate maye this be and I was aunswerde generaly thus/ it is alle that ys made. I merveylede howe þat it myght laste. for me thought it myght falle sodaynlye to nought for litille and I was Aunswerde in myne vndyr/standyn= ge it lastes and euer schalle for god loves it And so hath alle thynge the beynge thorowe the love of god. In this lytille thynge. I sawe thre partyes the fyrste is that god made it ^the Secounde ys that he loves it the thyrde ys that god kepes it. Botte whate is that to me sothelye the makere the lo= vere the kepere. fforto I Am Substancyallye aned to hym I may nevere have love reste ne varray blysse that is to saye that I Be So ffestenede to hym that thare be ryght nought that is ma= de betwyxe my god & me. (A99-99v)

A

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II. The Westminster Manuscript, on loan to Westminster Abbey from Westminster Cathedral (W, exemplar Ȧ), 112 folios, 106 x 156 mm, vellum. The second oldest extant version of the Showing of Love is in the Westminster Manuscript, presented in part in this book’s first chapter. It is owned by Westminster Cathedral and is now on loan to Westminster Abbey. The Tudor florilegium, or gathering of texts, including Psalm commentaries, parts of Walter Hilton’s Ladder of Perfection, and Julian’s Showing of Love, was likely written out about 1500, but bears the date on the first page (W1, Plate I) of “1368”, a date which may record that of its exemplar Ȧ, and which is repeated on the spine and on the end papers. The Westminster Manuscript (W) came to be owned by the Lowe family, Christopher de Hamel noting that that family also, at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, owned a Syon Psalter, now in Edinburgh. Philip Lowe and his wife and John Lowe, a priest, were arrested and imprisoned and John Lowe was drawn hung and quartered for their Catholicism and their association with Syon Abbey’s young nuns returned in disguise, under Elizabeth I. Rose Lowe became a Brigittine nun at Syon in exile in Lisbon in the early nineteenth century and saved Syon from extinction. John Bramston was the last Brigittine monk buried at Syon Abbey before the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The Bramstons were reported by a Portuguese spy as being secretly Catholic. Bishop James Yorke Bramston, who did his theological training at the English College, Lisbon, came to own this manuscript, calculating on its end paper in 1821, by subtracting 1368 from it, that it was 453 years old. Both families involved with the ownership of this manuscript have demonstrable Syon Abbey connections. Moreover the hand of the manuscript was most closely identified by the palaeographer Jean Preston with one in another manuscript owned by a Brigittine nun at Syon.8 It is likely written out by a Brigittine nun (Chapters I & X). The section on the Showing of Love is quite different from the British Library’s “Short” Text. It includes much of Julian’s brilliant theology, of the entire cosmos as if it were the size of a hazel nut in the palm of her hand, of God in a point, of Jesus as our Mother. It includes none of the death-bed vision that occurred in 1373 when Julian was thirty. It makes use of the Scriptures and where it uses the Hebrew Scriptures it does so with a knowledge of the original Hebrew texts, specifically two passages from Exodus, translating these into medieval English. This 1368?/1500 manuscript was discovered in 1955 but was then lost and therefore neglected by most Julian scholars.

26

II. Julian’s Showing in a Nutshell

Below are given folios 74-75 replicating the original spelling and layout from the Westminster Manuscript, the manuscript text given within careful line and margin rules, presenting the discussion on the hazel nut (Plate Ib): leue us. And so in this syght I sawe þat he is all þyng þt is good as to my vndyrstondyng.

Figure 7. Westminster Manuscript, fol. 74. And in þis he shewed me a lytil thyng þe quantite of a hasyl nott. lyeng in þe pawme of my hand as it had semed. and it was as rownde as eny ball. I loked þer upon wt þe eye of of my vnderstondyng. and I þought what may þis be. and it was answered generally thus. It is all þat is mad. I merueled howe it myght laste. for me þought it myght sodenly haue fall to nought for lytyllhed. & I was answered in my vnder= stondyng. It lastyth & euer shall for god louyth it. and so hath all thyng his begynning by þe loue of god. In this lytyll thyng I sawe thre propertees. The fyrst is. þt god made it. þe secunde is þet louyth it. & þe þrid is. þat god kepith it. But what is þis to me. sothly þe maker. þe keper & þe louer. for tyll I am

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substancially oned to hym. I may neuer haue full reste ne ve= rey blysse. that is to sey, þat I be so fastened to hym þat þer be no thynge þt is made be twene my god & me. This litil thynge þt is made. me thought it myght haue fall to nought. for lytillness. Of this nedith vs to haue knowynge þat it is lyke to nought all þyng þt is made. for to loue/ & haue god þat is vn= made. ffor þis is þe cause why þt we be not all in ese of harte & soule. for we seke here reste. In this thyng þt is so lytyll where no reste is in. and know not our god þat is allmyghty. all wise & all good. for he is verey reste. God wyll be knowen. & it likith hym þt/ we reste ^vs in hym. for all þat is beneth hym sufficith not to vs. And þis is þe cause why þat no soule is rested. tyll it be noughted of all þat is made. and when he is wylfully nou= ghted for loue. to haue hym þt is all. then is he able to resceue goostely reste. (W74-75)

Only the Amherst and Westminster Manuscripts of the Showing of Love are inscribed on parchment, other early manuscripts being now lost, all the other remaining surviving texts being written on paper (P,SS,G,U), for whose dating and provenance it has been important to also research the watermarks. The Norwich Castle Manuscript (N), contemporary with Julian, but which does not have the Showing of Love, is, like Amherst and Westminster, a parchment manuscript.

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II. Julian’s Showing in a Nutshell

III. The Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, anglais 40, Paris Manuscript (P, exemplars ʌ, ȡ), 174 folios, 100 x 143 mm, paper, watermarks, Antwerp, 1569-1583. The Paris “Long” Text Manuscript (P), the third oldest surviving manuscript, is Elizabethan and was written out circa 1580, according to its watermarks by experts in this field, in the region near Antwerp,10 which is the date at which exiled Syon was in Antwerp, then was taken by them to Rouen, then had to be sold when Brigittine Syon’s nuns sailed away to Lisbon in 1594, coming into the hands of the Bigot family of book collectors in Rouen, before it was auctioned off to the King of France’s Library in 1706, and is now Bibliothèque Nationale, anglais 40. It is likely written out by an Elizabethan Brigittine nun (Chapter X), copying out a Tudor “fair copy” of Julian’s text, an exemplar ʌ being readied for printing, then blocked by the Reformation, as was also likely the case with the Tudor Westminster Manuscript. Edmund Colledge, OSA, and James Walsh, SJ, disagreed with Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, CP, who had carefully consulted palaeographers, erroneously insisting it was a seventeenthcentury Cambrai manuscript pretending to be a Chattertonesque forgery (CWI.I.7-8,17), a false premise which has led major Julian scholars astray. This manuscript had not been available to the seventeenth-century Benedictine nuns in Cambrai and Paris, being instead in that period in Rouen. This manuscript version includes all the material that is in the Westminster Manuscript, plus a frame of XV Showings, like the Brigittine XV “O”s, in which Julian, in 1373, at the point of death, is presented with the Crucifix brought to her following her receiving the Last Rites, where she sees Christ’s head that bleeds, followed by a XVIth Showing of the Fiend whom she overcomes. While in the midst of the XIVth Showing is the interpolation of the Parable of the Lord and the Servant, in which the Servant, who is both Adam and Christ, runs forth from the Lord, who is God sitting in a blue robe in the wilderness. But the Servant is merely dressed in a dirty white shirt, which is our humanity, and next falls into a deep ditch as fallen Adam. He then is able to return to his beloved Lord and to sit at his right hand, garbed in rainbow colours, as Christ. This lengthy chapter is not included in the editorialising index to the manuscript, perhaps from being added five years later. The Paris Manuscript also includes the famous and carefully rubricated passage, in red, “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well” (P54v-55, also at P50,51,57-59v,62,62v).

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I may make alle thyng wele. And I can make alle thy ng welle. And I shalle make alle thing wele. And I wylle make alle thing welle. And thou shalt se thy selfe þt alle maner of thing shall be welle.

Here Julian is translating directly from the Hebrew into Middle English, rather than from Jerome’s Latin. 2 Kings 4 in the King James (which is translated from Hebrew), so translates ʭˣʬˇ ʕ “shalom”, which in Hebrew has the meaning of “all”, “wholeness”, “all being well”, while Jerome and Wyclif merely had it be “recte” and “right”. Julian is also using a Hebrew reading where she describes herself as like Jonah reciting Psalm 139.9 (Jonah 2.3-6), on the deep sea bed amidst seaweed, amongst others to be discussed in the following chapter. Here we give folios 8v and 9 (Plate II) of the Paris Manuscript of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love, in which we look on an Elizabethan manuscript copy by a Brigittine nun of a Tudor “fair copy” Syon manuscript readied for printing, “in a fayre hande redy to be a copye to the prynter when the seid booke shulde be put to stampe” (this being said of Elizabeth Barton’s “greate boke” copying Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes), but blocked by Henry VIII’s Reformation and then by Elizabeth I’s Accession:

Figure 8. Paris Manuscript, fols. 8v-9

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II. Julian’s Showing in a Nutshell

with Westminster’s corresponding passage for comparison.

Figure 9. Westminster Manuscript, fol. 74, detail

Below is a diplomatic transcription of folios 9-10v on the hazel nut in the Paris Manuscript, in the original carefully ruled with lines and margins, and with rubrication, here in bold (Plate II): The fyfte Chapter her is nothing that is made, but the blessed manhood of Christ as to my sight. The .vth. Chapter - //- //- //In this same tyme that I saw this sight of the head bleidyng. our go= od lord shewed a ghostly sight of his homely louyng. I saw that he is to vs all thing that is good and comfortable to our helpe, ¶ He is oure clothing that for loue wrappeth vs. and wynd= eth vs. halseth vs. and all becloseth vs. hangeth about vs. for tender loue þt he may never leeue vs, And so in this sight I saw that he is all thing that is good as to my vnderstandyng ¶ And in this he shewed a little thing the quantitie of an haselnott lying in þe palme of my hand as me semide and it was as rounde as a balle. I looked theran wt the eye of my vnderstanding and thought, what may this be. And it was anwered generaelly thus. The first reuelation - //¶ It is all that is made. I marvayled how it might laste, for me thought it might ^have sodenly fallen to nawght for littlenes ¶ And I was answered in my vnderstanding. it lasteth and ever shall. for god loueth

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library it. and so hath all thing being by the loue of god, ¶ In this little thing I saw .iij. proprties, ¶ the first is þt god made it, ¶ the secund that God loueth it, ¶ the thirde that god kepyth I therin/ it, ¶ But what behyld^ I verely the ma= ker. the keper. the louer. for till I am substantially vnyted to him I may ne= ver haue full reste. ne verie blisse. þt is to say. That/ I be so fastned to him that ther be right nought that is made betweene my god and me, ¶ This little thing that is made me thought it might haue fallen to nought for littlenes, ¶ Of this nedeth vs to haue knowledge. that vs lyketh nought all thing that is made. for to loue god The fyft Chapter and haue god that is^vnmade, ¶ ffor this is the cause why we be not all in ease of hart and of sowle; for we seeke heer rest in this thing that is so little wher no reste is in, and we know not our god that is almightie all wise and all good for he is verie reste; ¶ God will be knowen and him lyketh that we rest vs in him, ¶ ffor all that is beneth him suffyseth not to vs, ¶And this is the cause why that no sowle is in reste till it is/ noughted of all thinges that is made: when she is wilfully nough= ted for loue, to haue him that is all, then is she able to receive ghostly reste, ¶ And also our good lord shewed þt it is full great plesaunce to him that a sely sowle come to him naked pleaynly and homely, ffor this is the kynde dwellynge of the sowle by the touchyng of the holie ghost, as by the vnderstan= dyng that I haue in this schewying,

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II. Julian’s Showing in a Nutshell The first reuelation God of thy goodnes geue me thy selfe for thou art Inough to me. and I maie aske nothing that is lesse that maie be full worshippe to thee, and if I aske anie thing that is lesse ever me wanteth, but only in thee I haue all. ¶ And these wordes god of the good= of god nes^ thei be full louesum to the sowle and full neer touching the will of our lord for his goodnes fulfillithdeth all his creaturs and all his blessed workes ouer passeth wtout end, ¶ ffor he is the endlesshead and he made vs only to him selfe. and restored vs by his precious passion. and ever kepeth vs in his blessed loue and all this is of his goodnes //- //- // The vith Chappter //- //- //This shewing was geuen to my vn= derstanding to lerne our soule wi= sely to cleue to the goodnes of god. and in that same tyme the custome of our praier was brought to my mind. how

The appearances of the Westminster and the Paris Manuscripts are similar, both being written on parchment with ruled lines between ruled margins for ease with typesetting into print, the Paris Manuscript further rubricating Christ’s words in this “Holy Conversation” with Julian, as if in a Red Letter Bible (Plates I, II), where other Julian manuscripts tend to engross these passages. Julian says that she completed writing this version of the Showing of Love fifteen years after 1373, in 1388 (P173, S1109), and implies that either the visitation by the Fiend or the Parable of the Lord and the Servant was interpolated into the Showing of Love twenty years minus three months later than her 1373 vision, 16 February 1393 (P96v), S134 giving it as “XV” years save “iij” months later). Thus the Paris Manuscript’s lost ancestor exemplar ȡ’s dates are 1388-1393. If we study the dates that actually appear in the three manuscript versions of Julian’s Showing a most interesting pattern emerges. The Westminster Manuscript, which has nothing of the death-bed vision and which has the date “1368” at the bottom of its first folio, could represent a copy of a “First” Text written out when Julian was twenty-five. The Paris Manuscript “Long” Text tells us that its original version was being conceptualised and written fifteen and twenty years minus three months, after that “death-bed” vision at 30 and a half, on 13 May 1373, Julian

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writing it when she was 45-50, from 1388-February 1393. The Amherst Manuscript “Short” Text clearly tells us it was written out in 1413, when Julian was seventy (Plate IIIa). These manuscript versions could thus represent a lifetime of a woman’s theological writings. (However, most Julian scholars repeat each other, not consulting the manuscripts, in claiming that the Amherst “Short” Text (A)’s version precedes that of the “Long” Text, and is close in time to 1373’s vision.) These manuscripts will tell a story of an even greater span of time, a story which encompasses great troubles and tempests in the history of the Church in England and of Catholics in exile and imprisoned in the French Revolution. IV. Norwich Castle MS 158.926 4g.5 (N), 89 folios, 130 x 190 mm, vellum, and Lambeth Palace 3600 Manuscripts (L) There are three extant manuscript versions of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love (A, W, P), further copies of two of these (SS), some manuscript fragments (G, U), one report of a conversation held with her (M), and four wills naming her. None of these are written in her own hand, except perhaps the corrections to Amherst (A) of its scribe’s eyeskips. There may, however, be a manuscript that is written by Julian, in her own hand, even, possibly, of her composing in the case of the Pore Caitif section, with a knowledge of Hebrew, a manuscript that is still in situ in Norwich. But it is not her Showing of Love. Norwich Castle (now conserved in the Shire Hall) MS 158.926 4g.5 (N), its modern title, Theological Treatises in English, is a collection of treatises as if written by an anchoress for anchoresses that includes material both for living the contemplative life and for teaching the Catechism—as Julian probably did prior to Arundel’s 1408 Constitutions for her livelihood. Interestingly, next to Julian’s Paris Manuscript, anglais 40, on the Bibliothèque Nationale’s shelves, is the beautiful manuscript, anglais 41, bound in red velvet, owned by King James of Scotland, containing Pore Caitif and Luis de Fontibus. The Norwich Castle Manuscript is likewise beautiful, beginning with a lovely Gothic letter T in gold leaf on a purple ground.

II. Julian’s Showing in a Nutshell

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Figure 10. Norwich Castle Manuscript, fol. 1

It has iii + 89 folios, measuring 190 x 130 millimetres, the text area being 142 x 90 millimetres, in 27 lines to the page, much rubricated (here in bold). The hand of the scribe is squarish, with a particular ampersand. It transcribes the “Epistle sent Jerom [actually Pelagius] sent to amayd Demetriade that had vowed chastite to ihsu criste”, with the Carmelite Richard Lavenham’s Treatise on the Seven Sins and Pore Caitif, with its treatise on the Lord’s Prayer, beginning at N58v.11

P

ater noster qui es in celis. Oure fadir þat art in heuene. Sanctis nomen tuum. Halwid be þi name.¶ adveniat regnum tuum. mote þi kyngdom [59] come to and be knowe. ffiat voluntas tua sicut in celo & in terra. be þi wil don as in heuene so in erþe. Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie. Graunt us þis dai oure breed & our sustynaunce dai be dai, Et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut &nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. And for ‫ݤ‬eue us oure dettis as we for ‫ݤ‬eue to oure de=touris. Et ne nos inducas intemptacio nem. ¶ And lede us nou‫ݤ‬t into temptacioun. and bondyng. Sed libera nos a malo. but delyuere us fro euery wikked. Amen. So mote it ben ¶Þis is clepid oure lordis prayeris for oure lord ihesu crist made it and tawte it to his discipulis and it is best & berith þe prayers of alle prayeris for auctorite and worschepe of hym þat made it. Allso for it is schort and esyer to kunne for it conteyneth but seuene peticions. Allso for it is most sufficient for it conteyneþ alle þinge þat is nedful to soule and bodi to þe lif of þis word & to lif of the word þat is to come. ¶ ffor whi in þis prayer we askyn seuene peticionis of þe wiche þe þre firste schul be fulfild in þe lif þat is to come in heuene blisse þe þre laste longyn to oure lif in þis word [59v] þe meddil petycioun longith to boþe lyuis boþe to þe soule and to the bodi and þerfore in þis peticioun we askyn oure eche dai bred and oure bred dai be dai. þat is to seyne oure sustinaunce to bodi and soule here in þis dai of grace and after in þe dai of

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blisse of þe wiche dai and fedyng seith þe prophete. Saciabor cum apparuerit gloria tua. ¶ Lord seith he I schal be fulfeld and fed whan þi blisse schal apere whan I schal se þat blisful face þere as þe prophete seith. ysaie lxvij. Schal be sabat of sabaat for aftyr þe dai of grace and of reste fro synne schal come þe dai of blisse and ende les reste fro woo and trauaile also þis prayere his most of my‫ݤ‬t and most profitable for it conteyneþ .vij. peticionis and prayeris a‫ݤ‬ens þe seuene dedly synnys and enformyth us wit þe vij ‫ݤ‬iftis of þe holi gost And with þe seuene vertues of þe gospel and bryngith men to vij blisses þat arn knet þer to in þe gospel. Also þis prayere conteyneþ alle prayeris. ffor whi eueri prayere or it is to gete good or it is to fle wicke. Eueri good or it is endeles good. or gostly good as grace and vertues or temperelle good as rychessis and helthe. Eue[60]ry wicked or it is now or it is past or it is to come. The foure firste peticions been to gete good þe thre laste to fle wicked whan we seie oure fadir þat art in heuene we seke his goode wil with plesaunt preisyng whan we seie halwid be þi name. Whe askyn and preie þat þe name of þe fadir and of his fadirhed be confermed and stablid in his childryn. þat as we clepen hym fadir. so he wil takyn us to his childryn þat oure praiere mow þe bettere be herde. Whan we seyn mote þi kyngdom come to we askyn endeles goodnesse and þe kyngdom of heuene to oure mede ¶In þis prayere also we sekyn and askyn his worschepe þat he be worschyppid abowe alle þinge and knowe kyng and lord abouyn kyng. Of kyng. lord of lordis. for þat is kyngdom hath noon ende whan we seyn be þi wil doon in erthe as in heuene we aske grace and vertues to do wel and to fulfille þe wil of god and to fulfelle alle maner of grace to fle his offens and to do his wil in alle þynge wan we seie ‫ݤ‬eue us þis dai oure bred and oure liflode dai be dai we askyn tem[60v]peral good and oure nedful liflode. So firste aske we gostly good þat longith to þe worschepe of god and to helþe of the soule. ¶ And þanne temperal good nedful to oure bodi and þerfore god seith in þe gospel. ¶ Querite primum regnum dei &c. Sekith firste þe kyngom of heuene and his ri‫ݤ‬twisnesse. þat is to seie gostly good grace and vertues and alle þinge temperal nedful schal be ‫ݤ‬oue to ‫ݤ‬ow a‫ݤ‬ens wickid þat is passid we seie and preyei lord for ‫ݤ‬eue us oure dettys and oure trespas as we for ‫ݤ‬eue oure dettouris. A‫ݤ‬ens wickid þat is to come we seyn lord lede us nouth into temptacion þat is to seye ne let us not falle into temptacioun . ne ben hent in þe deuelys snare ne be disceyuid be his gile. ¶ Temptacioun is þe deuelis net. and þe fendis snare to take with manys soule. But as longe as þe brid is out of þe net and fre awey to fle. But whan he is sikir Inne. he may not fle with outyn helpe. Ri‫ݤ‬th so as longe as man with staid temptacion. so longe he is out of þe temptacion and out of þe deuelis snare but whan he consentith þanne is he Inne. and caut in þe snare ¶ A‫ݤ‬ens wickid þat is now boþe bodili and gostly bode of synne and of peyne þat we mow aschape it we seie delyuere vs fro euery wickid.~ Amen. So mote it be don. and be þis word. Amen, is undirstonde at eche of alle vij. peticiouns and it is a confirmacion therto. And it is in maner þe eyghtende preiere & peticioun confermyng all þe toþe. ffor eighte is a nombre of sadnesse and stabilite as craft of nombre scheweþ in kinde and amen.~ is a word of ebrew. and for dignite it was not translated no more. than alleluia. ffor amen . is godis othe in þe gospel and. alleluia. þe

II. Julian’s Showing in a Nutshell

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song and þe voys of aungelis. Amen.~ Signifi‫ݤ‬t also trewþe and trewli it may also ben grek. ab a. quod est sine et mene quod est defectus. And so. Amen. greis is to seyne withoute defaute. ffor þe .Pater noster. is a preieres sufficyent whit oute defaute. best of alle preieres and þouh oþere preieris ben goode. it schulde nouth be left þerfore.

The text then continues at length with a careful and much expanded analysis of each of the seven petitions, given with a strongly Lollard cast, with frequent citations from the Bible, demonstrating also the knowledge of its Hebrew, of which I give the first paragraph.

P

Ater noster qui es in celis. Oure fadyr þat art in heuene. God is oure fadir of alle þinge be creacion in þat þt he made alle þinge of nouht and is begynnere of alle þynge. He is also oure fadir be special purvyaunce and ordenaunce in þat þat he ordeyneþ for us as a fadir for his childeryn. He is oure fadir also be wei‫ݤ‬e of grace in þat he haþ takyn us to his grace and to his merci. after þe hei‫ݤ‬e offens of adam and of oure self also. And hath ordeynid us to ben eiris with his dere sone ihesu crist. in þe kyngdom of heuene.

It has other echoes of Julian’s life and writings: fol. 1v, “In þe furste two þat arne forbiddyinge and biddynge: arne conteined alle goddes commaundementes”; fol. 5v-6, “And we þat shulden been goddis seruauntes arn slow‫ & ݤ‬idel & rekles for to purchase us cristes wisdam”; fol. 6, “And the more we drynke of god þis grace & taste any þing of þat precious lycour of cristes loue. þe more ‫ݤ‬enerous [pencilled correction] & thristy. We schulde be for to seke moore aftir it. Blissed be alle þo þat hungryn & drustyn rightwisnes. for þei schul be fulfilled. Nout here. but in þe blisse of heuene. Now þanne siþen it is behoueley to alle men for hungre & driste rithtwisnes as brennendly”; fol. 22, “Many of them þat haue takyn þe name & þe purpos of goddis servants ware soner white heryd & and soner come to þe perfeccoun of eelde þan þei may come to þis perfeccoun of vertues”; fol. 26v-27, “Thenk on seint Cecile & doo as sche dede. for sche haar euere in herte in in here brest woordis of þe gospel. and of holy writ and neiþer nyght ne day sche stynted fro prayeris & fro god dis woordis”; fol. 30, “Doughter make þis thi besinesse alle þi studye & alle þi witte sette aboute þis matiere, turne it ofte in þi meende. wit þis meen ge þi trauail of þe day: and in þis take thi sleep on þe nyght. And at þe firste wakyng þat it falle soone in þi meende Trauail is schort but þe reste is endeles. to þat reste brynge us he þat for us deide on þe roode tre”; fol. 71v, Christ gave sacrament to Judas, did not excommunicate him for sin; fol. 72v, “Þe same mesure þt ‫ݤ‬e metyn to ‫ݤ‬our euencristene be þe same it schal be mote a‫ݤ‬en to ‫ݤ‬ow ‫ݤ‬if þat ‫ݤ‬e for ‫ݤ‬eue

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‫ݤ‬our euencristene here trespas & here defautes god schal for ‫ݤ‬eue ‫ݤ‬ow your tres pas & ‫ݤ‬our synnes ‫ݤ‬if ‫ݤ‬e for ‫ݤ‬eue no‫ݤ‬t god schal not for ‫ݤ‬eue ‫ݤ‬ow”, fol. 74v, “¶ Also it is nedful to make man and woman to knowe himself & his freelte”; fol. 78v, “. . . iusti sedes est sapiencie. ffor as seith holy write the soule of the ry‫ݤ‬tful man or womman is the see & dwelling of endeles wisdom that is goddis sone swete ihe If we been besy & doon our deuer to fulfille the wil of god & his pleasaunce thanne loue we hym wit al our my‫ݤ‬te”. The hand of the Norwich Castle Manuscript is similar to that of the corrector of the Amherst Manuscript adding missing and important lines to the text of the Showing of Love. It may be Julian’s own hand. It is not impossible that Julian, who would have earned her keep until Arundel’s 1408 Constitutions, teaching the Catechism, could be the author of Pore Caitif as this is one of its earliest manuscripts we have and it is in situ in Norwich, previously having been in the recusant ownership of the Duke of Norfolk. The hand of the Syon Abbey, now Lambeth Palace 3600 (L), manuscript is similarly squarish, written by a woman scribe, but later than Julian. It contains contemplative prayers in Latin and English (Chapter X gives a transcription). Many phrases within both these texts echo Julian’s theology, one being from the period before the founding of Syon Abbey, the other coming from Syon Abbey, yet neither manuscript contains Julian’s Showing of Love. V. The Benedictine Manuscripts: British Library, Sloane 2499 (S1), Sloane 3705 (S2) (SS, from exemplar ȡ), , British Library, Stowe 42, and the Serenus Cressy, 1670, editio princeps, Colwich Abbey, H18 Gascoigne (G), Upholland (U) (from exemplar ʌ). The “Long” Text exists in three further versions, two written in the seventeenth century, Sloane 2499 (S1), by Dame Clementia Cary, OSB, and Sloane 3705 (S2), and one in the eighteenth century, Stowe 42, which is complete apart from eyeskips. There are also two seventeenth-century fragments copied from a ‘Long’ Text version that seems to be a now-lost twin or exemplar of the Paris Manuscript, ʌ, one of these now at at St Mary’s Abbey, Colwich, that was copied at Cambrai by Dame Bridget More, OSB, the great great great great granddaughter of Thomas More, from a text originally copied by Dame Margaret Gascoigne, OSB, (G), the other (U), formerly at Upholland, written out by Dame Barbara Constable, OSB, likewise at Cambrai, the portraits of both these scribes also surviving (Appendix I).

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These five manuscripts were all transcribed by English Benedictine nuns in exile at Cambrai (now Stanbrook Abbey) and Paris (now St Mary’s Abbey, Colwich). They were observing the precepts of Dom Augustine Baker, OSB, who at Cambrai had encouraged the nuns to read fourteenth-century contemplative writings and to transcribe them for their own devotional use and for the English Mission carried out by the Benedictine monks. One of their two exemplars was “the Old Manuscript Book of her Revelations” (which would have been either the Tudor or Elizabethan ʌ), which Dom Augustine Baker tells us the nuns possessed at Cambrai, and which was first quoted from by Dame Margaret Gascoigne, OSB, before her death in 1637 (G). Hers was the first grave within the shadow of their monastic house.12 Dom Serenus Cressy, OSB, inheriting the mantle of Dom Augustine Baker, OSB, then continued that tradition at the Paris daughter house and published Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection (London, 1659), Dom Augustine Baker’s Sancta Sophia (2 vols, Douai, 1657, later republished as Holy Wisdom), Dame Gertrude More’s writings, and he edited the first printed edition of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love in 1670. VI. The Sloane Manuscripts [SS] The Sloane Manuscripts 2499 and 3705 (S1 & S2) copy out a now-lost medieval, perhaps autograph, exemplar of Julian’s Showing of Love, ȡ, likewise owned by the Benedictine nuns at Cambrai, if not borrowed from Benedictine monks of Lambspringe in Hildesheim, or from Douai which became Downside Abbey on its return to England, and these copies then were taken by them to Paris. This ȡ exemplar to the Sloane Manuscripts (SS), however, is clearly not the same as the now-lost Tudor ʌ exemplar copied out in the fragments (G) and (U), and in Stowe 42 and in the Serenus Cressy 1670 edition. Sloane 2499 (S1), 57 folios, 236 x 370, paper, is copied out rapidly by Dame Clementia Cary, OSB, likely at Cambrai about 1650, while she took great pains to be faithful to the archaic dialect of the exemplar, sometimes crossing out her initial modern word and replacing it with its medieval form. Dame Clementia Cary, OSB, would become the Mother Foundress, with Dame Bridget More, OSB, the first Prioress, of the Paris Our Lady of Good Hope English Benedictine house (today, Colwich Abbey in England), founded in 1651 from Cambrai’s Our Lady of Comfort English Benedictine mother house, founded in 1620, to preserve their manuscripts from the monks’ censoring of them. Dame Clementia also wrote out the English version of the Constitution of their new abbey

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in Paris (to become Colwich Abbey on their return to England), while Dame Bridget wrote out its version in French, Colwich Abbey having Dame Clementia’s original while the Bibliothèque Mazarine houses the one in French.13 We do not know who wrote out the other Sloane manuscript, Sloane 3705 (S2), 150 x 196 mm, paper. It has been thought to be later, perhaps eighteenth-century (CWI.8). Its spelling is modernised. But it takes pains with italicising and engrossing to reproduce the layout of its medieval exemplar. That its annotations and layout came to be used in Serenus Cressy’s 1670 editio princeps and in Stowe 42 indicates that it is closely contemporary with Sloane 2499 (S1). Moreover, some of its annotations are in Dame Clementia Cary’s hand and register her ecstatic initial “Reader’s Response” to Julian’s Showing. A check of its watermarks by W.H. Kelliher of the British Library, 12/1/1999, confirmed that it indeed actually precedes S1 in time, and is earlier seventeenth-century, while both manuscripts have Dutch watermarks, from Amsterdam, Leiden, etc., Cambrai at the time being in the Spanish Netherlands. S2 thus has normalised/modernised ȡ for easier reading, while S1 later copies ȡ diplomatically in its medieval spelling. The fact that the second Sloane manuscript (S2) has marginal notations which become the shoulder glosses in Stowe 42, and which are printed by Cressy in 1670, a clear “contamination” between the two families, leads us to several conclusions. The Benedictine copies of their two exemplars, one medieval and from Julian’s Norwich, perhaps her autograph, ȡ, the other Tudor or Elizabethan and from the Syon Abbey collection, ʌ, were being carefully collated against each other, resulting in what manuscript editors term and reject as “contamination” when selecting a base manuscript. Likewise, earlier, the Brigittine nuns had corrected their manuscripts from each other, thereby already “contaminating” the readings of their manuscript texts. But, in fact, they were all being meticulous and diligent editors in preserving this loved text for recusant readers, both lay and cloistered, even acting as if an Earlier English Text Society. Dame Clementia Cary in faithfully copying Sloane 2499 (S1) from ȡ has given us, in the seventeeth century, the least “contaminated” truest version we have extant today, Marion Glasscoe being correct in choosing to edit it in 1976. It is significant, too, that the Sloane manuscripts came to England before the return of the exiled English Benedictine nuns, likely by their Paris daughter house’s chaplain, Serenus Cressy, OSB, for the flower ornaments to the editio princeps, the first printed edition of 1670 made from these manuscripts, are English rather than French.14 Sir Hans Sloane

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(1660-1753), whose collection of manuscripts became the nucleus of the British Library, had died before French Revolution. His collection exemplifies his great interest in medicine and related subjects such as alchemy. It appears that Sir Hans Sloane acquired his two manuscripts, Sloane 2499(S1) and Sloane 3705 (S2), quite early, perhaps out of medical interest in Julian’s description of her near-dying, her theatre of “Holy Dying”, to be copied by Sr Mary Champney, OSS, and by Dame Margaret Gascoigne, OSB. Let us give the hazel nut passages in this second generation of Julian’s Showing of Love Manuscripts, generated in a Benedictine context, rather than a Brigittine one. British Library, Sloane 2499 (S1) is written hastily by Dame Clementia Cary, OSB, but she carefully replicates its Middle English spelling, likely from a desire for its preservation, while glossing the more modern form in its margin, of “lesten”, as “last”, but she does not follow the exemplar manuscript’s layout. This is from Sloane 2499 (Plate IVb, S1), fol. 4. In this Ǖame time our Lord Ǖhewed to me a GhoǕtly Ǖight of his homely loveing; I Ǖaw that he is to us every thing that is good & comfortable for us, he is our clotheing that for love wrappith us, halǕeth us, & all becloǕyth us for tender love that hee may never leve us, being to us althing that is gode as to myne underǕtondyng. Also in this he Ǖhewed a littil thing the quantitye of an haeǕil nutt in the palme of my hand, & it was as round as a Balle. I lokid thereupon with eye of my underǕtondyng and thowte what may this be, And it was generally AnǕwered thus: It is all that is made, I mervellid how it might leǕten for me thowte it might Ǖuddenly have fallen to nowte for littil. And I was anǕwered in my UnderǕtondyng; It leǕteth & ever Ǖhall for God loveth it, And Ǖo all thing hath the being be the love of God. In this littlething I Ǖaw iii properties: the firǕt is that God made it, þe Ǖecond is that God loveth it: the iiid þt God kepith it.

laǕt

Sloane 3705 (S2), is carefully written out, and is desirous of preserving its exemplar manuscript’s layout, though it modernises its spelling. This manuscript is often considered by Julian scholars as later than Sloane 2499 (S2), and even dated as eighteenth century, but it has marginal comments by Dame Clementia Cary, OSB, made during her first enthusiastic reading of it, and she then becomes the scribe of Sloane 2499 (S1), so S2 precedes, not follows, S1. This was confirmed, as well, by Kelliher’s examination of the watermarks of the two manuscripts. This text indicates its exemplar

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manuscript’s engrossing by underlining, as for italics. This is from Sloane 3705 (Plate Iva, S2), fols. 7,7v. Also in this he shewed a little thing of the bigness of hasel nut, in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as a Ball I looked there upon with the eyes of my understanding, & thought what may þs be? and it was generally answered thus; it is all that is made . I marveled how it could last, for me thought it might sudden= ly suddenly have fallen to nought for little, And I was answered in my understanding; it lasteth and ever shalle, for God loveth it. And so alle things have a being by the loue of God.

I studied the two Sloane Manuscripts, 2499 (Plate IVb, S1) and 3705 (Plate IVa, S2), of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love, in the British Library, admiring their marginal notations—in the same lovely hand and whose Nota Bene is made with the first stroke of the B being the last stroke of the N, that B having the long ascender curve over upon itself. Stowe 42 was thought to be a painstaking imitation by a reader of Serenus Cressy’s 1670 first edition of The Revelations of Divine Love. I asked the Librarian if I could examine all four texts at the same time, Sloane 2499 (S1) and Sloane 3705 (S2) along with Stowe 42 and the Serenus Cressy 1670 printed edition. Several things became clear. Stowe 42 is almost exactly the same as the printed edition, except that the name of the editor in Stowe 42 is signed in an elaborate cursive hand, “H. CreǏǏy” (Hugh Paulinus having been his baptismal names), rather than as in the capital letters of the printed edition, nor does Stowe 42 give the 1670 edition’s publishing information. In both Stowe 42 and in the Serenus Cressy 1670 edition shoulder notes gloss the obscure words in the text. Some of these in Stowe are lacking, not yet having been determined, but only indicated by means of asterisks, daggers and so forth, showing where they should be later supplied. These glosses were clearly arrived at through the consultation of the two Sloane manuscripts (SS), and coincide as a rule with the marginal comments, such as the NB, and with the related word written in those two texts. Chapter Three in Stowe 42 has a significant eye-skip, omitting “oftentimes to have passed, and so weened”, which is

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present in the Cressy printed edition. There are also others. These could indicate that Stowe is a copy of Cressy. However, the correction of the eye-skips can be explained by the careful checking that was clearly done, likely at page proof stage, and most likely by Serenus Cressy, of his prototype ʌ, related to P, against S1 and S2, where the eye-skipped sections are present and thus supply the lacunae. We shall see similar eye-skip corrections made in the Amherst Manuscript in Chapter VIII. Thus it is important to heed the readings of Stowe 42 and Cressy 1670. The dialect of the Tudor exemplar to Paris and Stowe was already flattened by the Syon Abbey Brigittines to the Middlesex area. While the medieval exemplar ȡ to the two Sloane Manuscripts (SS), was in Julian’s own Norwich dialect and corresponds with the Norwich Castle Manuscript written for and/or by an anchoress in that region.15 This exemplar ȡ could even have been in Julian’s hand. All these sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century readings of a fourteenth-century text in its various versions (P, Cressy, Stowe 42, on the one hand, and S1 and S2, on the other) thus need to be considered. VII. The Stowe 42 Manuscript and the 1670 Serenus Cressy editio princeps What of Stowe 42? At first I believed with these findings that Stowe 42 was a similar product of the English Benedictines, more likely in Paris than at Cambrai, and just prior to the 1670 Serenus Cressy printing, but W.H. Kelliher of the British Library checked the watermarks to find it to be clearly English and Georgian. It is just possible that Stowe 42 copies the Tudor exemplar manuscript to Cressy’s edition of 1670 or his fair copy to that printing, ʌ. It is certain that it was copied out on the Benedictine nuns’ return to England following the French Revolution. Serenus Cressy, OSB, had died and was buried near Ashburnham in Sussex, 1674. The Stowe Manuscripts were lodged for a while at Ashburnham Place in Sussex, following the Duke of Buckingham’s bankruptcy in the nineteenth century, before coming to the British Library. I thought perhaps Stowe 42 made its way into the Ashburnham Place collection, rather than into that initially at Stowe, and then into the British Library. However, its watermarks, according to Kelliher, indicate that it was copied out at the end of the eighteenth century and in England, and therefore more logically would have been a gift from the English Benedictine nuns to thank their benefactress and patroness, the Marchioness of Buckingham at Stowe, following their return to England at the French Revolution and in this way had come into that collection.

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These later two texts, Stowe and Cressy, give a shorter version of the “Long” Text, minus the editorializing chapter headings and censoring colophon, corresponding almost exactly with the Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, anglais 40 Manuscript (P), which was initially written out by an exiled Brigittine nun in Antwerp after 1583, according to its watermarks, and which then came to Rouen, where it entered the Library of the Bigot family, in turn being sold to the King of France’s Royal Library in 1706 (that became the Bibliothèque Nationale after the French Revolution).16 The Paris Manuscript was thus neither available to the Benedictine English nuns nor to their 1651-1653 spiritual director, Serenus Cressy, OSB, the manuscript not having yet reached Paris from Rouen by the publishing date of the editio princeps. Therefore one of the manuscripts the English Benedictines used could have been the Tudor exemplar ʌ of the Elizabethan Paris Manuscript or P’s twin, available to them but now lost. (In our Tenth Chapter we will find that these exemplar manuscripts, now lost, were catalogued at Cambrai at the French Revolution but the nuns’ schoolgirls, then almost that entire library disappeared across the French border into Belgium or Holland. I challenge Belgian and Dutch scholars to find them. We hear of there having been a Julian manuscript in Leiden.17 The Stowe 42 Manuscript is carefully written out with running headers, demonstrating how its pages are to be or were typeset by a printer. The scribe used a distinctive d whose ascender curls back over on itself. This is its hazel nut passage: Chap. 5. The First Revelation. 10 Us, and all becloseth us, hangeth about us for tender Love, that hemaie never Leave us. And so in this sight I saw that he is all thing that is good, as to my understanding. And in this he shewed a Litle thing, the quantitie of a Hasel-Nut, Ly= in the Palme of my hand, as me seemed, and it was as round as a Ball. I looked thereon with the eie of my understanding, and thought, What may this be? and it was answered generally thus, It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might Last. For me thought it might sodenlie have fallen to naught for Litleness. And I was answered in my understanding, It Lasteth, and ever shall; For God loveth it. And so hath all thing being by the Love of God. In this Litle thing I saw three Properties. The first is, that God made it. The second is, that God Loveth it. The third is, that God keepeth it. But what beheld I therein? Verilie the Maker, the Keeper, the Lover: For till I am substanciallie united to him, I maie never have

44

II. Julian’s Showing in a Nutshell full rest, ne verie bliss; that is to saie, that I be so fastened to him, that there be right nought that is made between my God and mee. This Litle thing that is made, me thought it might have fallento nought for Litleness Of this needeth us to have knowledge that us Liketh naught all thing is made, for to Love God, and have God that is unmade. For

When Dom Serenus Cressy took something like Stowe 42’s exemplar to the printer in 1670 it is likely that the printer had balked at producing Christ’s words to Julian in larger size type than the rest of the text, as here, and so both editor and printer compromised on using italic type instead for these passages, with Roman for the normal text. Paris (P), in the same instances, had used rubrication. Modern editions, apart from that for the Liturgical Press in 2003, make no attempt to replicate any of these practices—to our detriment. Reading these earlier versions in their red letter or engrossed or underlined or italicised forms is deeply satisfying. Julian humbles her words before this “Holy Conversation”, even typographically. This is the same section on the hazel nut as it appears in Serenus Cressy’s 1670 printed edition, pages 11-12: And in this he shewed a litle thing, the quantitie of a Hasel-Nutt, lying in the palme of my hand, as me seemed, and it was as round ____________________________________ 12 The First Revelation . Chap. 5 ____________________________________ round as a Ball. I looked theron with the eie of my understanding, and thought, What may this be ? and it was answered generally thus. It is all that is made . I marvelled how it might last: For me thought it might sodenlie have fallen to naught for litlenes. And I was answered in my Understanding, It lasteth, and ever shall: For God loveth it. And so hath all thing being by the Love of God.

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In this litle thing I sawe three Propeties. The first is, that God made it. The second is, that God loveth it. The third is, that God keepeth it. Etc.

III. The Gascoigne/More and Upholland Fragments Dame Bridget More, OSB, copied out a fragment of a Julian manuscript, originally copied out by Dame Margaret Gascoigne, OSB, More’s copy (G, Appendix IA), embedded in her own contemplative writing, now in the Paris daughter house, now St Mary’s Abbey, Colwich (Colwich H18), which returned to England following the French Revolution. This text makes careful use of engrossing the “Holy Conversations”. Another fragment of the Showing, copied out by Dame Barbara Constable, OSB, which came to be in the now-lost Upholland Northern Institute (U, see Appendix IB) collection, Stanbrook Abbey having its photocopy, recreates the same engrossing as do Sloane 3705 and Stowe 42, engrossing also seen in one instance in the Westminster Manuscript. That the second Sloane manuscript, like Dame Barbara Constable and Dame Bridget More’s two fragments from Julian’s Showing, is most careful to place Christ’s words to Julian in larger letters or with underlining, to differentiate these from the rest of their text, is likely evidence, where three scribal copyists concur, of Julian’s own scribal intention toward her text. It was the common practice of these Benedictine nuns, under first Dom Augustine’s Baker’s guidance, and then Dom Serenus Cressy’s, to create their personalized contemplative booklets, a fine example being ‘Colections’, Bibliothèque Mazarine 1202, compiled in Paris, July 1724, a hundred years after Dom Augustine Baker’s arrival at the mother house of Cambrai, July 1624, and which includes the writings of Angela Foligno and the Defenses by Dames Catherine Gascoigne and Gertrude More of Father Baker’s ‘Way of Prayer”, then seized at the French Revolution from the nuns, its “Defenses” given in this book’s second Appendix .18

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Figure 11. Colwich Abbey H18, Dames Margaret Gascoigne, Bridget More

Figure 12. Upholland Manuscript, Dame Barbara Constable

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Thus we owe the preservation of Julian’s Showing, her mise en abyme “Holy Conversation”, first to Brigittine, then to Benedictine, contemplative nuns down the centuries. Their story will be more fully told in the final chapter to this book and in its Appendices. This book in this chapter and in its final chapter studies the archaeology of Julian’s text in order to understand how its different versions came to be preserved, even where they had to be hidden and exiled, rather than revealed and shown, perhaps, because, like her own image of a homely hazel nut, it was beloved, despite persecution both from without and even from within, in Julian’s context of enclosed contemplative monasticism.

Notes 1

Margaret Laing, “Linguistic Profiles and Textual Criticism: The Translation by Richard Misyn of Rolle’s Incendium Amoris and Emendatio Vitae”, Middle English Dialectology: Essays on Some Principles and Problems, ed. Margaret Laing (Aberdeen: Aberdeen Univerity ress, 1989), p. 209. 2 A.I. Doyle, in a letter from the University of Durham, University Library, 26 June 1999, “I am not inclined to date the section including Julian as early as 1413, but I cannot exclude it, as the other two manuscripts by the same hand are themselves undated and there are no letter-forms impossible at that date”. 3 Nicholas Watson, “The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love”, Speculum 68 (1993), 637-683; “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409”, Speculum 70 (1995), 822-864. He argues as do others that Julian’s “Long” Text is written later than the “Short” Text. I believe he is correct about the “Short” Text as late, but that instead the “Long” Text’s traditionally-held dating is right, the order of these needing to be reversed. Julian would surely have been too old at 85-90 for such a drawn-out magnum opus. Similarly with Piers Plowman drastic revision is now in order: Jill Mann, “The Power of the Alphabet: A Reassessment of the Relation between the A and B Version of Piers Plowman”, The Yearbook of Langland Studies 8 (1994), 21-50, discusses A as not the first but a later edition of Piers Plowman, where Langland shortened and toned down his magnum opus to comply with political changes, and yet preserve it, allowing it continued circulation. See David Aers and Lynn Staley, The Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), pp. 77-178, in this context. 4 David Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (London, 1737), III.252-260: William Sawtre first on trial before Bishop Le Despenser of Norwich in Lynn, 1 May 1399, renouncing his errors, amongst them stating Christ in flesh and blood was more worthy of worship than the mere wood of a cross, 25 May 1399, two years later burned, 26 February 1401, as a relapsed heretic, Despenser bringing evidence to his London trial. Augustus Jessop, Diocesan Histories: Norwich (London: SPCK, 1884), pp. 137-138: 1389, notes Despenser only Bishop

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then suppressing Lollardy; 1399, opposed Henry IV, arrested, imprisoned, 1401, reconciled. 5 Bodleian Library, Lat.lit. f.2=Arch.f.F.11, fols. 58v-60,146v; John Rory Fletcher, Syon Abbey Notebook 3, Exeter University Library. 6 Margery Kempe was confused as Sir John Oldcastle’s daughter at one point and in great danger, EETS 212.132:12-14. We see evidence of the censorship in Nicholas Love’s license from Archbishop Arundel for his Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Crist, and in Syon Abbey’s Myroure of oure Lady, the latter noting no one “shulde haue ne drawe eny texte of holy scryptyre in to englysshe wythout lycense of the bysshop diocesan”, which its writer has obtained, “therfore I asked & haue lysence of oure bysshop to drawe suche thinges in to englysshe to your gostly comforte and profyt. so that bothe oure consyence in the drawynge and youres in the hauynge. may be the more sewre and clere”, ed. John Henry Blunt, EETS Extra Series 19.71. 7 Michael G. Sargent, James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic, Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1984, 2 vols, gives the Amherst Manuscript’s Syon/Sheen matrix. 8 Jean F. Preston, in a letter, 12 September 1999, found closest comparison in Pamela Robinson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 737-1600 in Cambridge Libraries (Cambridge: Brewer, 1998), Vol. I, Item 259, Vol. II, Plate 357, of manuscript owned by the Brigittine nun “Elisabeth Crychlely 13 Jan 1521,” now Magdalen College F.4.13(13). 10 Letters from Professor A.I. Doyle of Durham University, 27 July 1995 noting Antwerp watermarks of 1569-1583, Briquet 13215, 2556-7, and Marie Pierre Lafitte, Conservateur en chef, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 14 June 1995, noting Flanders watermarks of 1572-1580, Briquet 5854, 5857, and that the script corresponds to those dates. 11 Pore Caitif survives in fifty-four manuscripts, among them: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, anglais 41; British Library, Harley 2322; St John’s College, Cambridge, 195, G.28; University of Manchester Library (John Rylands Library), Eng MS 87, Eng MS 412; Society of Antiquities; Lambeth Palace Library, MS 484, MS 541; Trinity College, Dublin, MS 520; Cambridge University Library Ff.vi.34, Ff.vi.55; Bodleian Library, Oxford, Bodley 3, Bodley 938, etc.; P.S. Joliffe, Check-List of Middle English Prose Writings of Spiritual Guidance (Toronto, 1974), p. 66; Sr Mary Teresa Brady, “The Pore Caitif: An Introductory Study”, Traditio 10 (1954), 529-48; “The Apostles and the Creed in Manuscripts of the Pore Caitif”, Speculum (1957), 323-35; “Rolle’s Form of Living and the Pore Caitif”, Traditio 36 (1980), 426-35; “The seynt and his booke: Rolle’s Emendatio vitae and the Pore Caitif”, 14th Century English Mystics Newsletter 7:1 (1981), 20-31; “Rolle and the Pattern of Tracts in the Pore Caitif”, Traditio 39 (1983), 457-65; “Lollard Interpolations and Omissions in Manuscripts of the Pore Caitif”, De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England, ed. Michael G. Sargent (Cambridge: Brewer, 1989), pp. 183-203; Karine Moreau-Guibert, “Le Pore Caitif: édition critique et diplomatique d’après le manuscript de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, 9, avec introduction, notes et glossaires”, Université de Paris, 1999; Nicholas Watson, “Ancrene Wisse, Religious Reform and the Late Middle

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Ages”, Companion to Ancrene Wisse, ed. Yoko Wada (Cambridge: Brewer, 2002), p. 210; Kalpen Dinkarray Trivedi, “Traditionality and Difference: A Study of the Textual Traditions of the Pore Caitif” (University of Manchester Ph.D. thesis, 2002); Moira Fitzgibbons, “Poverty, Dignity, and Lay Spirituality in Pore Caitif and Jacob’s Well”, Medium Aevum 77 (2008), 222; Nicole R. Rice, “Reformist Devotional Reading: The Pore Caitif in British Library, MS Harley 2322”, The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Papers Read at Charney Manor, July 2011 (Exeter Symposium 8), ed. E.A. Jones (Cambridge: Brewer, 2013), pp. 177194; Christopher G. Bradley, “Censorship and Cultural Continuity: Love’s Mirror, the Pore Caitif, and Religious Experience before and after Arundel”, After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp.115-132; ; Moira Fitzgibbons, “Women, Tales, and ‘Talking Back’ in Pore Caitif and Dives and Pauper”, Middle English Religious Writing in Practice, ed. Nicole R. Rice (Tournhout: Brepols, 2013); Gabriel Hill, “Pedagogy, Devotion, and Marginalia: Using The Pore Caitif in Fifteenth-Century England”, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 41 (2015), 187-207. Pore Caitif makes use of Rolle’s Form of Living and Emendatio Vitae, both texts present in the Amherst Manuscript compilation and likely part of Julian’s library. 12 Dame Margaret Truran informed Dr John Clark of Dom Augustine Baker’s “Life of Dame Margaret Gascoigne” as referring to Dame Julian, in the Downside Abbey, Baker MS 42, copied in Stanbrook Abbey MS 19: John P.H. Clark, “Father Augustine Baker’s Secretum: Sources and Affinities”, That Mysterious Man, ed. Michael Woodward, p. 133, n. 4a; The Life and Death of Dame Margaret Gascoigne, ed. J. Clark, Analecta Cartusiana 119:23, Salzburg, 2000. I give the whole passage she shared with me in Appendix I. Baker speaks of “the holy words that had sometime been spoken by God to the holy Virgin Juliana the Anchoress of Norwich, as appeareth by the Old Manuscript Book of her Revelations, and with the which words our Dame had ever formerly been much delighted: ‘Intend (or attend) to me. I am enough for thee: rejoice in me thy Saviour and in thy salvation’. Those words, I say, remained before her eyes beneath the Crucifix till her death”. That “Old Manuscript”, likely not Julian’s Norwich dialect autograph ȡ that the Sloane manuscripts copy, but the more easily read ʌ Tudor exemplar or Elizabethan twin to P, normalised to more modern conventions, was noted in the Benedictine Catalogue as a book that was not acquired by Dom Augustine Baker, but one already possessed by the Cambrai nuns at their foundation. It seems to have been first Margaret Gascoigne’s, then the community’s. 13 Bibliothèque Mazarine 3326: “Constitution des Benedictines Anglaises du titre de nostre Dame de bonne Esperance, 1656”. 14 CW I.6. 15 Hoyt Greeson’s Glossary with a dialect map proving this is given in the SISMEL 2001 edition of Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love, pp. 627-682. 16 Bibliotheca Bigotina seu Catalogus Librorum Bigotii Horum siet Auctio. Die. 1 mensis Julii 1706 (Paris: Bondot, Osmont & Martin, 1706), 2 vols, listing, I.26, Julianae Anatorite Revelationes Anglice, amongst ‘codices MSS in 8 in 12 etc’; Léopold Delisle, Bibliotheca Bigotiana Manuscripta: Catalogue des Manuscrits

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Rassemblés au XVIIe siècle par les Bigot, mis en vene au mois de Juillet 1706, aujourd’hui conserves à la Bibliothèque Nationale (Rouen: Henry Boissel, 1877), p. 92, 388 Juliane Anatoritae Revelationes, Anglice. 17 Gerhart Teerstegen, himself a contemplative who translated and published part of Julian’s Showing into German from the Cressy 1670 edition, says he saw “eine alte Manuscrpt von diesen Offenbarung” in Pierre Poiret’s library in Leiden. 18 ‘Colections’ by an English Nun in Exile: Bibliothèque Mazarine 1202, ed. Julia Bolton Holloway (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistic Universit¡t Salzburg, 2006) Analecta Cartusiana 119:26.

Plate Ia. Westminster Manuscript, fol. 1

Plate Ib. Westminster Manuscript, fol. 74

Plate Ic. Westminster Manuscript, fols. 72v-73

Plate II. Paris Manuscript, fols. 8v-9

Plate IIIb. ©The British Library Board. Amherst Manuscript, fol. 97v

Plate IIIa. ©The British Library Board. Amherst Manuscript, fol. 97 .

Plate IVa. ©The British Library Board. Sloane 3705 Manuscript, fol. 7

Plate IVb. ©The British Library Board. Sloane 2499 Manuscript, fol. 4

Plate Va. Cambridge University Library Ii.III.32, Dionysius, Opera, fol. 108v Plate Vb. Norwich Castle Manuscript, fol. 1

Plate Vc. Rome, St Agnes, mosaic Plate Vd. Rome Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, mosaic Plate Ve. Florence, Museo Horne, Simone Martini, Diptych

Plate VI. Westminster Abbey, Liber Regalis, fol. 20. Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster

Plate VIIa. Norwich Cathedral Despenser Retable, Paul Hurst, ARPS Plate VIIb. Urdiala, Finland, Bishop Hemming of Åbo, Birgitta of Sweden

III JULIAN’S JUDAISM

¶ Thus I sawe and vnderstode that oure feyth 1is oure lyght in oure nyght . Whych lyght is god oure endlesse day

I

Was needing to study Hebrew. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whom I was editing for Penguin, had been proficient in Hebrew as a child. At the same time, I was editing the manuscripts of Julian of Norwich in my convent. And I suddenly became aware that often in her texts Julian showed direct knowledge of that sacred language, for instance in not translating ʭˣʬˇ ʕ shalom, ‘peace, well-being, in all things’, ‘and all shall be well’, as had Jerome, with the mere Latin recte, or Wyclif, with the mere Middle English ri3t, but with “And all manner of thing shall be well”. Finding such instances, I came to suspect that she was of Jewish ancestry. But I could not go to Norwich for many years to investigate whether there were conversi (converts to Christianity) who remained in that city after King Edward I had banished all practising Jews from England in 1290. In 2005, I was at last able to sit in Norwich’s Library with their copy of V.D. Lipman’s The Jews of Medieval Norwich in front of me, taking copious notes, particularly on the conversi who remained in England and in Norwich following that expulsion.1 I. Norwich’s Jewry Michael Camille discussed the political and anti-Semitic cartoon drawn at the head of a 1233 tallage roll in the National Archives, E 401/1565. It “playfully”, cruelly, presents Isaac Jurnet of Norwich drawn with three heads, Moses Mokke and the Jewess Arveghaye (Abigail) together with fiends by Norwich Castle. Camille’s discussion of the drawing is in the context of idolatry. Indeed, the Jews in the major English cities were required to keep the documentation concerning the loans they made, shetar, in archae, chests, punning on the Ark of the Law.2 Norwich

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Cathedral was largely built from such loans. We find the same masons’ marks on pillars of Isaac’s House, the Cathedral Priory’s Infirmary, and Carrow Priory.3

Figure 13. National Archives, 1233 Tallage Roll, E 401/1565

Norwich, in Julian’s day, was the second largest city in England. Its Jewish community was scholarly, prosperous and powerful, though suffering sporadic severe pogroms, especially in 1144 when William of Norwich was found murdered, in 1255 when Hugh of Lincoln was found similarly murdered (in blood libel stories that Chaucer has his Prioress retell4), until King Edward I in 1290 expulsed all Jews from England. But some converted to Christianity and remained, including not a few in Norwich. There were 96 such converts there, of whom 44 were men and 52, women. One of these, in 1308, too early for our Julian (1342-circa 1416), is even named “Juliana of Norwich”.5 V.D. Lipman tells us in particular of the Jurnet family, domiciled in Conisford. The founder, Jurnet, who loaned money to Norwich Cathedral Priory, had married a Christian heiress, Miryld or Muriel of Earlham, for which he was fined 6000 marks. Margaret, their daughter, though born of a Christian mother, was a Jewess and could write a shetar or receipt in Hebrew. Their son, Isaac, the wealthiest Jew of the thirteenth century, was caricatured in the tallage roll above. While another Isaak, known as Hak, also of this family, following his imprisonment in the Tower of London, converted to Christianity in 1253. This family was noted for its learning and generous patronage, and spoken of as Ha Nadib, as worthy. Indeed, Norwich, in the thirteenth century, had five or six rabbinical scholars, addressed as “Master”, “Magister”. Likewise, the women were noted for their literacy.6 Other Jews than the Jurnets in Norwich lived near the Castle and its market in the Westwick area, and would seek protection under the King in Norwich Castle in times of trouble. Jonathan Plunkett has placed his father George Plunkett’s photographs of Norwich on the web, http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/, many of these

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being taken before the war and the bombing that would destroy St Julian’s Church. I give, with their consent, the Plunkett comments on “Isaac’s Hall or the Music House on King Street”, to be found below St Julian’s Church and Alley: . . . At Bury St Edmunds is still to be found the strong Jew’s House known as Moyse’s Hall, and correspondingly the Jew’s House in Norwich is still to be found although greatly disguised by reason of subsequent additions. It is in the parish of St Etheldred, and has been known both as “Paston House” and “The Music House”. . . . a conjectural drawing of the original Jew’s House . . . exhibits the usual method of entrance to a Norman building which was by a covered staircase leading to a door on the first floor. . . . the Norman groined cellaring (has) the only remaining portion of one side of the entrance door of the Isaac’s Hall, all the rest of the door, porch and staircase having been destroyed when the Jacobean portion of the Music House was erected on the south side. The bases (of this entrance door) have vertical “nicks” about 1½ inches apart inside the concave moulding . . . similar to the three transitional pillars of the old Infirmary of the Norwich Priory . . . the date of these is believed to be between 1175 and 1190. It appears then that the house was built by Isaac the Jew temp. Henry II. On his death it was escheated by King John and alienated in favour of Sir William de Valoines by Henry III. After passing through many hands it was in 1474 the city house of William Yelverton Esq who sold it to Sir John Paston Knt. In 1613 it was purchased by Sir Edward Coke, Recorder of Norwich and Lord Chief Justice. He it was who probably built the 17th century addition to the south, calling it Paston House in memory of his first wife. Finding the old porch in the way, he destroyed all except the fragment shown. The “Music House” was first mentioned in the “Norwich Gazette” of 19th January 1723, the City Waits being accustomed to meet and practice there.

IIa. Sacred Alphabet Hebrew has the letter that begins God’s name, Jerusalem’s, Judea’s, Joshua’s, Isaiah’s, Jesus’s, and Julian’s, be the smallest one of all, the letter ʩ, that means “hand”, yod. Another letter ʫ means the palm of one’s hand, kaph. The first Jewish prayer that Mary would have taught Jesus was “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit”, ʟʺʓʮʠʎ ʬʒʠ ʩʩ ʩ ʑʺˣʠ ʤ ʕʺʩ ʑʣʕ˝ ʩʑʧ˒ʸ ʣʩʑʷʴʍ ˋ ˃ ʍʣʕ ʩˎʍ Into Thy hands O Lord I commend my spirit. and which Jesus last utters on the Cross in Mary’s hearing (Psalm 31,5; Luke 23.46).

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There are two kinds of mysticism, the Greek, derived in turn from the East, from India by way of Syria, which desires abstraction, imagelessness, which is called apophatic, and which is attained by kenosis, by emptying oneself, stripping away all to become detached from this world and time, and thus attain the “Cloud of Unknowing”, especially espoused by Pseudo-Dionysius. There is another, the Hebraic, which excessively overdoes itself when becoming the Kabbalah, but which naturally sees God as creating us marvellously by his Word, all that is created being so created by a sacred alphabet, the Atomic Chart of Elements, our genetic coding, the Fibonacci curves of natural forms, the functioning of the brain in tandem, in synapses, with the hand, the eye, which is tangible, concrete.7 Julian, especially in her vision of the world as of the quantity of a hazel nut held in the palm of her hand (W74), is clearly cataphatic.

Figure 14. Westminster Manuscript, fol. 74, detail

Julian likely earned her keep when an anchoress teaching children their A.B.C., these children then being able to become literate nuns and monks. Julian speaks of her knowing of God, her approaching God, as being like learning her A.B.C. (P103v-104), I haue techyng wt in me. as it were the be= gynnyng of an .A.B.C. wher by I may haue some vnderstondyng of oure lordys menyng. ffor the pryvytes of the reuelacion be hyd ther in. [I have teaching within me, as it were the beginning of an alphabet, whereby I may have some understanding of our Lord’s meaning, for the secrets of the revelation are concealed therein.]

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and (P166), Of whych gretnesse he wylle we haue knowyng here as it were in an .A.B.C. That is to sey. that we may haue a lytylle knowyng where of we shulde haue fulhed in heuyn and that is for to spede vs. [Of which greatness he wants us to know here as if it were an alphabet. That is to say that we may have a little knowledge of what shall be fulfilled in heaven and that is to help us.]

The alphabet is Semitic, and of one family, one technology, one phonetic code, shared by Torah, Gospel and Koran, in which God’s Word is inscribed, whether the forms of these letters be aleph, beth, gimel in Hebrew, or alpha, beta, gamma in pirated Greek, or alif, baa, taa in Arabic, or A, B, C, in our Roman usage. This is where computers began. One calls such mysticism cataphatic, for it uses signs and symbols, icons and images, being concrete, not abstract, ‘dabhar’ being word and thing, ‘amen’, that which is said, which therefore is. Hebrew Law forbids the representation of God, except by a hand (yad, yod, hand, the number 10, the smallest letter ʩ) in the sky, but the Hebrew Bible very much shapes God in our image, with a face, with arms, with hands, with fingers, with human body parts. Hebrew mysticism is paradoxically concretely rooted in the Incarnation, of the Word as flesh and blood, with simple things we see and taste, with mem being water, and nun, fish; that God’s Word, as Julian affirms (P59), is in all Creation. ʠ ʡ ʢ ʣ ʤ ʥ ʦ ʧ ʨ ʩ ʫʪ ʬ ʮʭ

Aleph, ox, 1, 1000 Beth, tent/house, 2, 2000 Gimel, camel, 3, 3000 Daleth, door, 4 Heh, airhole, 5 Zayin, weapon, 7 Vau, nail/hook, 6 Chet, fence, 8 Teth, coiling, 9 Yod, hand, 10 Caph, palm of hand, 20, 500 Lamech, oxgoad, 30 Mem, water, 40,600

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56 ʰʯ ʱ ʲ ʴʳ ʶʵ ʷ ʸ ʹ ʺ

Nun, fish, 50, 700 Samech, support, 60 Ayin, eye, 70 Pe, mouth, 80, 800 Tzadi, fishhook, 90, 9 Qoph, coif, 100 Resh, head, 200 Shin, took, 300 Tau, sign, mark, 400

And where candles, water, bread, wine and oil are blessed liturgically by women and men. ʕ ʍːʷʑ ʸˇ ʓ ʠʏ ʭʬʕ ˣʲʤʕ ˂ʬʓ ʮʓ ˒ʰʩʤʒ ˄ʠʎ ʩʩ ʤ ʕˢʠʔ ˂˒ʸˎʕ .ʺˎʕ ˇ ʔ ʬˇ ʓ ʸʒʰ ʷʩʬʑ ʍʣʤʔ ʬʍ ˒ʰ˒ʕ ʶʑ ʥʍ ʥʩ ʕʺˣʶʍ ʮʑ ˎʍ ˒ʰˇ .ʵʸʓ ˌʤʕ ʯʮʑ ʭʧʓ ʬʓ ʠʩʶʑ ˣ˙ʤʔ ʭʬʕ ˣʲʤʕ ˂ʬʓ ʮʓ ˒ʰʩʤʒ ˄ʠʎ ʩʩ ʤ ʕˢʠʔ ˂˒ʸˎʕ .ʯʴʓ ˏʕ ʤʔ ʩʸʑ ˝ʍ ʠʸʒ ˣʡ ʭʬʕ ˣʲʤʕ ˂ʬʓ ʮʓ ˒ʰʩʤʒ ˄ʠʎ ʩʩ ʤ ʕˢʠʔ ˂˒ʸˎʕ Baruch atha adonai elohenu melech ha’olam. Blessed art thou Lord, King of the Universe, who has made us holy by Thy Commandments and bidst us light these Sabbath lights. and who brings forth bread from the earth, and of the fruit of the vine.

Worn-out scrolls and books in Hebrew are so revered they must be given proper burial in the earth as if human bodies. St Francis of mercantile Assisi, himself with Jewish roots, saw God’s Creation in such sacred material forms, treasuring each scrap of writing, reading in Humanity and Nature, the imaging of the Creator, the Word become flesh in one’s midst. IIb. Shema In particular, in Julian, there are echoes of the Hebrew Shema, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One; And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind, and with all your strength; and your neighbour as yourself”, from Deuteronomy 6.4, Leviticus 19.18, Mark 12.30-31, Luke 10.27, and which are fastened upon one during prayer and which are written on scrolls blessed and placed in mezuzahs on the doorposts of observant Jewish houses.8 Isaac’s House would have had one. ʟʣʕʧʠʓ ʩʩ ˒ʰʩʒʤ˄ʎʠ ʩʩ ʬʒʠʸʍʕ ˈʑʩ ʲʔʮˇ ʍ ʣʲʒ ʥʕ ʭʬʕ ˣʲʬʍ ˣʺ˒ʫʬʍ ʮʔ ʣˣʡ˗ʍ ʭˇ ʒ ˂˒ʸˎʕ ˃ʓʣʖ ʠʍʮʚʬʕʫʡʍ ˒ ˃ʍˇʴʍ ʔʰʚʬʕʫʡʍ ˒ ˃ʍʡʡʕ ʬʍ ʚʬʕʫˎʍ ˃ʩʓʤ˄ʎʠ ʩʩ ʺʒʠ ʕˢʍʡʤʔ ˌʍʥ

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Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. Blessed be His name, whose glorious kingdom is for ever And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thine soul, and with all thy might.

to be found in Julian’s Paris Showing of Love (P107v), as when we fele hym truly. wyllyng to be wt hym. wt all oure herte. wt all oure soule. and wt all oure myghte. [And when we feel him truly, willing to be with him with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our might.]

In the Westminster Showing of Love (W93v) as And in thys knowyng he wyll þt our vndir= stondyng be grounded wt all our myghtis. all our entent. & all oure meanyng. [And in this knowing he wills that our understanding be grounded with all our might, all our intent and all our meaning.]

Again in the Paris Manuscript (P77) as ¶ He wylle that we haue true knowyng in hym selfe that he is beyng. And in this knowyng he wylle that oure understandyng be groundyd wt all oure myghtes and alle oure intent and alle our menyng. [He will that we have true knowing in himself that he is being. And in this knowing he wills that our understanding be grounded with all our might and all our intent and all our meaning.]

Also in Westminster (W107-107v)

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for he wolde haue all oure loue fastened to hym.

[For he would have all our love fastened to him.] . . . and my harte to fasten on god wt alle the truste and the myghte. (P147)

[And my heart to fasten on God with all trust and strength.] IIc. God as Power, Wisdom and Love Julian descants upon God as Power, Wisdom and Love. So also had Dante had his Hell Gate be created by God as Power, Wisdom and Love. When I sought this phrase in Latin in a computer search amongst the Church Fathers I found it only in the circle associated with the influence of Pseudo-Dionysius, mainly the Victorines, Marguerite Porete and Dante. The similar phrase Julian also uses, of God as Power, Wisdom and Goodness, is likewise rare. But in Julian these terms for God invoked as Power, Wisdom and Love are everywhere (W83, P25, 58, 63v, 84v, 124v, 132, 133v, 154v, 161, A100). Similarly for God as Might, Wisdom and Goodness (P10, 63, 84v, 87v, 90 (twice), 114, 114v, 125v, 136, 144, A112). And for the Trinity as Truth, Wisdom and Love, (W97, P81 [twice], 81v, 84v, 168v). While the form, Truth, Wisdom and Goodness, is likewise found (W99v, P114). For example: see I led all thyng to^þeende. that I ordeyned it to . fro wtoute begyn= nynge. by þe same myght wise= dome & loue. that I made it with (W83) [See I lead all things to the end that I ordained them to, from without beginning, by the same might, wisdom and love that I made them with.]

It was not until I was asked to review a book about Nicholas of Lyra,9 that I found what I had sought. Jewish/Christian polemics hinged upon God as Unity/Trinity. Hebrew has plural forms for God’s name, for example, Elohim. These plural forms came to be seen in rabbinical teachings as Power, Wisdom and Love, or Power, Wisdom and Goodness.

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However, Nicholas of Lyra and other Christian exegetes, for instance, Thomas Aquinas, who attacked Augustine on this score, paradoxically claimed this was heresy, that God could not be divided, and that these qualities belonged to the act of Creation, not to God per se. IId. Restlessness and Rest Another example of possible Hebraism is Julian’s use of the passages from the Psalms and Isaiah 30.15, shading over into Augustine’s theme of rest in the restlessness of his autobiographical Confessions, in his quest for the God of the Sabbath of Sabbaths, at P10 and W75, 75v, ¶ And this is the cause why that no sowle is in reste till it is noughted of all thinges that is made: for when she is wilfully nough= ted for loue, to haue him that is all, then is she able to receive ghostly reste, [And this is the cause why no soul is at rest until it is noughted of all things that are made: for when she is willfully noughted for love, to have him that is all, then she is able to receive ghostly rest,]

which recurs in the Norwich Castle Manuscript at folio 59v (N59v), ¶ Lord seith he I schal be fulfeld and fed when thi blisse schal apere whan I schal se that blisful face there as the prophete seith. ysaie lxvij. Schal be sabat of sabaat for aftyr the dai of grace and of reste fro synne schal come the dai of blisse and endeles reste fro woo and trauaile. [“Lord”, he said, “I shall be fulfilled and fed when your bliss shall appear when I shall see that blissful face there” as the prophet says, Isaiah 67, on the Sabbath of Sabbaths. For after the day of grace and of rest from sin shall come the day of bliss and endless rest from woe and travail.]

And in the Amherst Manuscript’s passage from Henry Suso, Horologium Sapientiae (A136), from Isaiah 66.23, “et sabbatum ex sabbato”. This theme is also found in Adam Easton’s writings, including his colophon to the Defensorium ecclesiastice potestatis.10

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IIe. The “Sign of Jonah” In the “Long” Text, at P20-20v, but neither in Westminster or Amherst, is a use of both Jonah 2.2-9, especially 2.5, and Psalms 18.16, 139.7-12 (for Jonah is quoting the Psalms), where Julian describes herself on the deep sea floor, wrapped in seaweed, in a “sign of Jonah” episode (Matthew 12.39-41, Luke 11.29-32), again taking what is consonant from Hebraism with Christianity. One could illustrate this vision with two scenes from the Guthlac Roll, showing fish in water, Saints Guthlac and Pega likewise from East Anglia (British Library, Harley Roll Y 6). In Hebrew M, mem is water, N, nun is fish. Catherine of Siena said in her Dialogo, 2, “þanne is a soule in God, & God in þe soule, ri‫ݤ‬t as fischis abyde in þe see, & þe see in þe fische” [“Then is a soul in God and God in the soul, as fish are in the sea and the sea in the fish”] (EETS 258.20:3233). This is Julian’s passage, Julian’s vision: ¶ One tyme my vnderstandyng was lett Downe in to the sea grounde . and ther saw I hilles and dales grene semyng as it were mosse begrowyng wt wrake and gravell. Then I vn derstode thus . that if a man or woman when there vnther the brode water and he myght haue syght of god . so as god is wt a man continually. he s= houlde be safe in sowle and body and take no harme. [One time my understanding was let down on to the sea bed and there I saw green hills and dales seeming as it were moss growing on the wrack and gravel. Then I understood that if a man or woman were there under the deep water he might yet have sight of God. For as God is with a man continually he should be safe in soul and body and take no harm.]

Julian chiastically envelopes it with the Song of Solomon’s love quest, and just so had Christ preceded and presented within it the Queen of Sheba coming to seek Solomon’s wisdom (Matthew 12.42, Luke 11.31), when speaking of the “sign of Jonah”.11 Even the fine passage at the end of the Showing of Love (P171v),

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¶ Thus I sawe and vnderstode that oure feyth is oure lyght in oure nyght . Whych lyght is god oure endlesse day [Thus I saw and understood that our faith is our light in our night. Which light is God, our endless day.]

is quoting Psalm 138.11-12, from the Psalm Jonah has sung in the belly of the whale. One therefore suspects this gathering of texts represents what Julian heard from a sermon Master Adam Easton had preached in Norwich to the laity, 1356-1363, 1367-1368. Just as one suspects another sermon Julian would have heard from Adam during those years to have been on St Dionysius the Areopagite. IIf. And God Saw That It Was Good Soon after the “Deep Sea Bed” section, is an enchanting part of Julian’s “Long” Text that reminds one of one’s first Hebrew lesson, describing God’s Creation of the World and seeing that each in turn is good, tov, Genesis 1.4,10,18,25,31, ʡˣʨʚʩʑ˗ ʭʩʑʤ˄ʎʠ ʠʸʔʍ ˕ʥʔ at P24 on the soul beholding God, And generally of all his workes . ffor they be fulle good. [And generally of all his work. For they are very good.]

That discussion of God’s Creation of the World continues through a blending of Exodus 3.14, Psalm 119.73, Wisdom of Solomon 7, Hebrews 6.1 at P25, to be followed on Genesis 1.6-10 and Psalm 65.9 at P25v. Julian repeats Exodus 3.14, where God is “I am”, at P49 as the beyond gender, “I it am”. It is as if we are glimpsing the labours of Paula and Eustochium with Jerome. And those of Magister Mathias and Birgitta. For the biographies of Cardinal Adam Easton from John Bale state he translated the entire Hebrew Bible: “ac Biblia tota ab hebreo in latinum transtulisse”.

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IIg. The Mikveh Other scholars have also responded to Julian’s Judaism. Maria R. Lichtmann, “‘I desyred a bodylye sight’: Julian of Norwich and the Body”, Mystics Quarterly 17 (1991), 12-19, cites Jacob Neuser, The Oral Torah: The Sacred Books of Judaism, An Introduction, pp. 16-21, on the Talmudic taboo of overflowing of boundaries of fluidity in relation to P25v.8-26.4 of the “Long” Text, where Julian speaks of God’s creation of the waters plenteously for our service, reminding one of the mikveh, the ritual bath (when Christ changes the water in the jars into wine at the wedding feast of Cana, these containers are the ones used to carry the water to the mikveh bath for the cleansing of a woman from menstrual blood), but then adding that Christ’s blood is even more cleansing and more generous (P25v-26). the hote blode ranne out so plentu= ously that ther was neyther seen skyn= ne ne wounde but as it were all blode. And when it cam where it shulde ha= ue falle Downe. there it vanyssched. not wt standyng the bledyng conty= nued a whyle. tyll it myght be seen wt avysement. ¶ And this was so plentuous to my syght that me thought. if it had ben so in kynde and in substance for that tyme. it shulde haue made the bedde all on bloude. and haue passyde over all about, ¶ Than cam to my mynde. that god hath made waters plentuous in erth to our servys. And to our bodyly eese for tendyr loue that he hath to vs. But yet lyketh hym better that we take full holsomly hys blessyd blode to wassch vs of synne. ffor ther is no lycour that is made. that lykyth hym so wele to yeue vs. ffor it is most plen= tuous as it is most precious. [The hot blood ran out so plenteously that neither the skin nor the wound could be seen for blood. And when it came to where it should have fallen, there it vanished. Notwithstanding the bleeding continued a while till it could be seen observantly. And this was so plenteous in my sight that I thought that if it been so in nature and in substance at that time it would have made the bed

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all bloody and have spilled over all about. Then came to my mind that God has created waters plenteously on earth for our service and for our bodily ease for the tender love that he has for us. But yet he likes better that we take full wholesomely his blessed blood to wash ourselves from sin. For there is no liquid that is made that he likes so well to give us. For it is as most plenteous as it is most precious.]

In these lines in the Showing of Love one can sense Julian as Jewish, concerned about purity and pollution, and as Christian convert, understanding Jesus’ radical strategy in breaking halach, the careful avoiding of blood, death, cannibalism, by taking his blood as Eucharist wine and flesh as bread to save all, to be echoed again in Marlowe’s lines he gives to Doctor Faustus (V.ii.91-92): See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul—half a drop! ah my Christ!—

Alfred Edersheim, a Jewish convert in the nineteenth century, wrote scholarly books, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah and The Temple and its Services, studying Jesus’ Judaism, mixing it with proto-Marxism, observing that Rome co-opted and exempted Jerusalem’s priests from taxes either to Temple or Caesar but that the laity were bled white paying both taxes to Temple and to Caesar.12 He noted how Jesus’ ministry and martyrdom broke the financial stranglehold of the Romanised Judaic priesthood, based on the paid ritual observances of halach, by turning these inside out to where unclean women, lepers, madmen, Samaritans, Syro-Phoenicians could cease to be “untouchable”, and where the central liturgy itself now turned blood and death into life and salvatory wine gratis. Gandhi would repeat these strategies with the illegal making of salt, breaking the imperial Roman and British monopoly, and with his radical inclusion of the Untouchables. Martin Buber in Ecstatic Confessions, in 1909, responded to Julian’s Showing. Teresa of Avila and Edith Stein similarly lived the consonance of Judaism and Christianity. John Lounibos and his Jewish students at Dominican College discussed Julian in terms of the Torah’s Midrash on valiant women. Sr Benedicta Ward observed that Julian’s precursor is in St Anselm’s Prayer on St Paul where Christ is Mother. But it is in Judaism that God is emphatically both Mother and Father, both feminine and masculine, as we shall see in the hands of Rembrandt’s Prodigal Father, and in particular it is Rabbi David Kimhi, whose work Adam Easton possessed, who wrote of the Motherhood of God as in Psalm 110.3 “Tecum principium in die virtutis tuae in splendoribus sanctorum ex utero ante luciferum genui te”, “Thy people

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shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning”, and in Isaiah 49.15-16 “Can a woman forget her suckling child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands”.3 IIh. Psalm 110, “Dextra Domini” Psalm 110, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand”, the liturgical psalm for Sunday’s Vespers, is the base of Julian’s Parable of the Lord and the Servant, a parable which also owes much to Isaiah, particularly its “Suffering Servant” section. In part, perhaps, it is a political allegory, for Adam Easton fell afoul of his beloved Pope Urban VI, was imprisoned in a dungeon, tortured, the other five Cardinals with him, murdered, he alone escaping to tell the tale. Of particular interest is Julian’s discussion of the Servant, whom Julian does not place as Christ seated at God’s right hand, as one would expect from the Christian uses of Psalm 110-1 in Matthew 22.41-46, Mark 12.35-37, Luke 20.42-44, and the Creed, but first as standing directly before the Lord, the Father, and she uses “right” only as a qualifier. She takes pains to explain that “right” is not literal, ¶ But it is nott ment that the sonne syttyth on the ryght hand besyde as one man syttyth by an other in this lyfe. for ther is no such syttyng as to my syght in the trynyte. but he syttyth on his faders ryght honde. that is to sey ryght in the hyest noblyte of the faders Joy (P106), [But it is not meant that the Son sits on the right hand side as one man sits by another in this world. For there is no such sitting as to my understanding in the Trinity. But he sits on his Father’s right hand, that is to say right in the highest nobility of the Father’s joy,]

conforming her perceptions to those in Adam Easton in the Defensorium Ecclesiastice Potestatis and in The Cloud of Unknowing (EETS 216.106109:26, 114:3-10, discussing Stephen’s martyrdom in Acts 7.55). Rabbi David Kimhi, whose work Adam Easton owned, had clearly stated, from his father Rabbi Joseph Kimhi, that Christians erred in their interpretation

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of the Psalm. Adam Easton, following their teaching as does Julian of Norwich, explained that in Hebrew “dextra domini”, is not be taken literally, but as “honoured” (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hamilton 7, fol. CCXLI). A similar instance occurs in Easton’s Defensorium Ecclesiastice Potestatis where Easton has himself in dialogue in Avignon as “Episcopus” while discussing with a Jew, Rabbi Samuel de Doma, the meaning of Psalm 72.2: “Deus iudicium tuum regi da, et iustitiam tuam filio regis”, as to whether it applies to King Solomon or God. Easton adds “I reply to you as I did then to the Jew: Let the Psalm be read and if it can be verified about Solomon purely as a man and a king I agree with you and am convinced. If it cannot be explained thus, hold what the Church teaches”. Julian’s text (P106): ¶ But it is nott ment that the sonne syttyth on the ryght hand besyde as one man syttyth by an other in this lyfe.

reflects Adam’s text which reflects Rabbi Samuel’s text, which reflects Rabbi David Kimhi’s text, which reflects his father Rabbi Joseph Kimhi’s text, all this reflected too in the Cloud’s text, in a family of texts, passed down from father to son, and here also perhaps to a sister. Thus the line in the Creed is to be interpreted not literally as seated at the right hand but as greatly “honoured”, as the heir. IIi. Adam Both Julian of Norwich and Adam Easton are intensely aware of the meanings of the name “Adam”, that it signifies Everyman/Everywoman, earth, red, and the beginning of sin for humankind. Julian says of the creating of the soul and the body the following (P.112-112v): And thus is mannys soule made of god. and in the same poynte knyte to god ¶And thus I vnderstode that mannes soule is made of nought, that is to sey it is made but of nought. that is made as thus. whan god shulde make mannes

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III. Julian’s Judaism body he toke the slyme of the erth. whych is a mater medelyd and ga= deryd of alle bodely thynges. and ther= of he made mannes body. ¶But to the makyng of mannys soule he wolde take ryght nought. but made it. And thus is the kynde made right= fully onyd to the maker whych is substauncyall kynde vnmade þt is god. ¶And therfore it is that ther may ne shall be ryght nought betwene god and mannis soule. [And thus is man’s soul made by God and in the same point knit to God. And thus I understood that man’s soul is made of nought, that is to say it is made but of nothing that is made, as thus: When God should make man’s body he took the slime of the earth, which is a matter meddled and gathered of all bodily things, and from that he made man’s body. But to the making of man’s soul he took right nought, but made it. And thus is the nature made rightfully oned to the maker who is substantial nature unmade, that is God. And therefore it is that there may nor shall be right nothing between God and man’s soul.]

But she also says emphatically (P.53-53v, A106v): Adams synne was the most harme that evyr was done or evyr shalle in to the worldes end.

And repeats her use of the name, ‘Adam’, thirty times. IIj. Moses and the Vision of God (P80v, Exodus 32.20) The creature that is made shall see and endlesly behold god whych is the maker. ¶ ffor thus may no man se god and leue after· that is to say· in this dedely lyffe· but whan he of his speciall grace will shewe hym here. he strengthyth the the creature/ a bouyn the self· And he measures þe show= ing after his awne will as it is profytable for þe tym [The creature who is made shall see and endlessly behold God who is the Creator. For thus no man may see God and live, that is to say, in this deadly

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life, but when he of his special grace will shown him here, he strengthens the creature above itself. And he measures the showing after his own will as it is profitable at that time.]

Here Julian in “Holy Conversation” explains that she cannot physically see God and live but only in her understanding, in contemplative lectio divina, can this take place. She does not physically see God, but does so mentally, in her soul, where God wills this. IIk. I it am/I am: P49, P126v, P170v, Exodus 3.14, 1 Kings 19.12, John 8.58 Julian sees God as being above gender and to express this, states: ¶ Often tymes oure lorde Jhesu seyde· I it am· I it am· I it am· that is hyghest· I it am· that thou lovyst I it am, that thou lykyst· I it am that thou servyste· I it am that thou longest I it am· that thou desyrest· I it am that thou menyste I it am· that is alle I it am· that holy church prechyth the and techyth thee· I it am· that shewde me before to the· [Often our Lord Jesus said, I it am, I it am, I it am, who is highest, I it am whom you love, I it am whom you like, I it am whom you serve, I it am whom you long for, I it am whom you desire, I it am whom you mean, that is all I it am, that Holy Church preaches and teaches you, I it am who showing myself before to you.]

IIl. The Blue of Aaron’s Garb One of the loveliest texts cherished in the Middle Ages is the letter St Jerome wrote to the Roman divorced noblewoman, Fabiola, explaining, at her request, Aaron’s high priestly garb and the significance of the colour blue: Exodus 39.22–31; Numbers 20.25–6.13 In the Parable of the Lord and the Servant Julian garbs the Lord who is God the Father in that same blue of Aaron’s robe–and of Mary (P97v). ¶ The place that the lorde satt on was symply on the erth . bareyn and deserte aloone in wyldernesse . his clothyng was wyde and syde and full

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semely as fallyth to a lorde ¶ The colour of of the clothyng was blew as asure most sad and feyre . his chere was mercifull . [The place were the Lord sat was simply on the earth, barren and desert alone in the wilderness. His clothing was wide and large and fitting as becomes a lord. The colour of the clothing was blue as azure, most fine and fair. His expression was merciful.]

IIm. David and the Penitential Psalms David, following his sinning with Bathsheba of both adultery and murder, repents to God in Psalm 51: ʤʒʧʮʍ ,˃ʩʓʮʧʏ ʸʔ ʡʖ ʸʍ˗ ;˃ ʓːʍʱʧʔ ˗ʍ ʭʩʑʤ˄ʎʠ ʩʑʰʒ˚ʧʕ ʩʕʲˇ ʕ ʴʍ . Julian evokes that composition (P68): ¶And then god brought^ merely to my mynde· David and other in the olde lawe wthym wtou3t nom= ber· and in the new lawe he brought to my mynde· ffurst magdaleyne. Pe= ter and paule, Thomas and Jude. Sent John of Beverly And other also wtou‫܌‬t nomber how they be / knowen in the c^hyrch on erth. wt ther synnes, and it is to them no chame· but alle is turned them to worshyppe· [And then God brought merrily to my mind, David and others in the Old Law with him without number, and in the New Law he brought to my mind, first Magdalen, Peter and Paul, Thomas and Jude, St John of Beverley, and others also without number how they are known in the church on earth with their sins and it is to them no shame, but all is turned to honour.]

IIn. Shalom Apart from Benedictine Adam Easton’s influence on Julian would have been that of the Carmelites. The White Friars, as they were called, like William Southfield who knew both Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe of Lynn, traced their origins to the prophets Elijah and Elisha. At P50-59v, is a crescendoing of a passage drawn from 2 Kings 4.23,26, concerning the miracle by Elisha of the raising of the Shunamite woman’s dead child, despite her sarcasm. She answers, when all is lost, her son dead, “ʭˣʬˇ ʕ Shalom, All is well”. Julian’s use of “All shall be well and

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all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well”, rubricated, in red, in the Paris manuscript, corresponds to the Hebrew text of the Scriptures where this phrase is shalom, rather than the translation of the Jerome Vulgate Latin, recte (Regum IV 4.26) and Wycliffite Middle English, ri3t, Bibles.14 Julian in her thirty-first chapter (P54v-55), says, I may make alle thyng wele. And I can make alle thy= ng welle. And I shalle make alle thyng wele. And I wylle make all thyng welle. And thou shalt se thy selfe þt alle maner of thyng shall be welle. [I may make all things well. And I can make all things well. And I shall make all things well. And I will make all things well. And you will see yourself that all manner of things shall be well.]

III. Julian on the Jews Julian in her 32nd and 33rd Chapters to the Showing of Love struggles to reconcile damnation and salvation, Christ’s teaching and that of the Church. She rubricates Christ’s saving argument that she reveals in her prophetic writing, her Showing of his Love (P58v-59). ¶ And one poynt of oure feyth is. that many creatures shall be da= mpnyd as angelis that felle ou‫܌‬t of hevyn for pride whych be now fendys. And meny in erth that dyeth out of the feyth of holy chych. that is to sey. tho that be heythyn And also many that hath receyvyd criston= dom and lyvyth vncristen lyfe. And dyeth ou‫ݤ‬te of cheryte. All theyse shall be dampnyd to helle wtou‫܌‬t ande. as holy chyrche techyth me to beleue. ¶ And stondyng alle thys me thought it was vnpossible that alle maner of thyng shuld be wele as oure lorde shewde in thys tyme. ¶ And as to thys I had no other answere in shewyng of our lorde but thys. that ^þt is vnpossible to the is nott vnpossible to me I shalle

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III. Julian’s Judaism save my worde in alle thyng and I shalle make althyng wele. [And one point of our faith is that many creatures shall be damned like the angels who fell from heaven because of pride and who are now fiends. And many on earth who die outside of the faith of Holy Church, that is to say those who are pagan. And also many who have received Christ but lived unChristian lives and who die lacking charity. All these shall be damned to hell without end, as Holy Church teaches me to believe. Yet from all this I though it was impossible that all manner of thing shall be well as our Lord showed at this time. And to this I had no other answer the Lord showed but this: What is impossible to you is not impossible to me. I shall save my Word in all things and I shall make all things well.]

Scripturally those words are said by the Angel to Mary concerning God conceiving Jesus within her virgin womb at the Annunciation, Luke 1.37, with which Julian’s Westminster Showing of Love had so magnificently opened, joining these to ʭˣʬˇ ʕ shalom, all shall be well, that shall be wrought by that saving Word, the Saviour, salus noster, in all. Then in the following Showing (P60), Julian comments on devils, to be further discussed in Chapters V on the Norwich Benedictine, Cardinal Adam Easton, and IX on Margery Kempe: ¶ In whych sy‫܌‬t I vnderstond þt alle the creatures þt be of the devylles condiscion in thys life. and ther in en= dyng ther is no more mencyon made of them before god and alle his holyn then of the devylle. ¶ Notwythstondy= ng that they be of mankynde wheder they haue be cristend or nought. ffor though the reuelation was shewde of goodnes in whych was made lytylle mencion of evylle. ‫܌‬ett I was nott drawen ther by from ony poynt of the feyth þt holy chyrch techyth me to beleue [In which sight I understand that of all the creatures who are of the devil’s condition in this life and at their ending, there is no more mention made of them before God and his angels, than of the devil. Though they are of mankind, whether christened or not. For the Revelation was shown of goodness in which little mention was made of evil. Yet I was not drawn by it from any point of the faith that Holy Church teaches me to believe.]

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Finally, on the Crucifixion, she speaks of the Jews (P60-60v), ffor I had syghtof þe passion of crist in dyuerse shewy= ing. . . . as it is before seyde wher in I had in part felyng of þe sorow of oure lady. And of hys tru frendys that saw hys paynes. but I saw nott so properly specyfyed the Jewes that dyd hym to deth. but nott wtstondyng I knew in my feyth that they ware a cursyd and dampnyd wtoute ende. savyng tho þt were convertyd by grace. [For I saw Christ’s Passion in several Showings. . . . As said earlier, where I shared the feeling of the sorrow of our Lady and of his true friends who saw his pains. But I did not see properly the Jews who put him to death. Though I knew in my faith they were cursed and damned eternally, except those who converted by grace.]

Julian, as we have seen in the earlier examples, sees Judaism and Christianity as a seamless garment, the Shema being also in the Gospel. Similarly, the Benedictine Cardinal Adam Easton from Norwich includes such a defense of the Jews in his Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae in 1391, while countering Nicholas of Lyra’s condemnation and burning, 1 June 1310, of Marguerite Porete and a lapsed Jew. Similarly, Teresa de Avila and Edith Stein had been brilliant Jewish women converts to Christianity. However, Julian’s Church, before Vatican II and before Auschwitz, had taught as dogma the damnation of the Jews. Julian, as Christian, must obey her Church. Yet she also obeys Christ, holding these contradictions in a complementarity. Julian’s Church told her Jews, unless they converted, were damned. Julian’s Showing from Christ does not show her this doctrine. Julian’s Christ uses a most Jewish argument to save all and to have all manner of thing be well, noting that God’s Word in all shall be saved, all of us having that creating and rubricating Word within us (P59), Dante’s rubricated “Incipit Vita Nova”, the Tau, ʺ, of Exodus, of Apocalpyse. I shalle saue my word in alle thing and I shalle make althyng wele,

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whether Jew or Greek, Christian or Muslim, Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant, Believer or Non-Believer, sinner or saint. Her Showing is supreme ecumenism. She preaches the Gospels’ theology of inclusion practised by Jesus. IV. Julian’s Extant Manuscripts It is almost universally assumed by Julian scholars that the Amherst Manuscript (dated within itself as of 1413, and carefully stating it is written during Julian’s lifetime) is early, circa 1373, while the Westminster, Paris and Sloane Manuscripts are considered to be late, their exemplar circa 1383, their copies written out up through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Only Nicholas Watson in two Speculum articles questioned this assumption, then retracted to the safety of the status quo.15 But given Chancellor Archbishop Arundel’s stringent prohibitions against the translation of the Bible into English and against the teaching by the laity, especially by women, of theology promulgated in his 1408 Constitutions, it is far more probable that the Amherst Manuscript was drafted in compliance with those strictures. It protests at length against Julian herself as a teacher and it rigorously cuts from its text almost all her translations from the Hebrew Bible. Its heavy reliance on detail in reporting her “death-bed” vision can be attributed to the great danger to her life she faced under Arundel’s enforced Constitutions, rather than to the nearness in time of that vision, as being the now needed justification for her writing. Prior to Arundel’s restrictions, Julian in Norwich had been quietly translating the Hebrew Scriptures into English – more than two centuries before the 1612 King James Bible would do so.16

Notes 1

V.D. Lipman, The Jews of Medieval Norwich (London: Jewish Historical Society, 1967); Alan Webster delivered the 1981 St Paul’s Lecture on “Suffering, the Jews of Norwich and Julian of Norwich” at St Botolph’s Church, Aldgate, based largely on his friendship and sharing with V.D. Lipman’s copious research on Norwich’s medieval Jewry; for evidence of persecution of Jews in Norwich, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13855238; for longevity in English folk music: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/oct/28/sam-lee-gypsy-folk-music, http://samleesong.bandcamp.com/track/jews-garden of pogroms against Jews in York, Lincoln and Norwich. My thanks to Alberto Legnaioli of the Università degli Studi di Firenze for typesetting the passages in Hebrew in Word. 2 Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge: University Press, 1989), pp. 182-185. 3 http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/

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4

Chaucer’s Prioress, http://www.umilta.net/Prioress.html; Michael Calabrese, “Performing the Prioress”. https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/texas_studies_in _literature_and_language/v044/44.1calabrese.html 5 Lipman, p. 184. 6 Lipman, pp. 95-99, 109, 147, 157, 184, 224. Joanne Greenberg’s first novel, The King’s Persons (New York: McDougal, 1963), is a brilliantly researched study of the genocide of the Jews in York, their second largest community in England. 7 Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, ed. R.J. Werblowsky, trans. Allan Arkush (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), notes that in the Kabbalah “haskel” or “heskel” (Jeremiah 9.23), is the infinitive form of “sekhel” or nous, thinking with God alone, being noughted but for God, in relation to “hokmah” (wisdom) and discusses this from John Scotus Erigena and Meister Eckhart, pp. 269, 272-273. 8 Julian, Showing of Love, W93v,107v, P12, 77, 79v, 83v, 91,107v,121v,122, 123,147, A100v,115, Norwich Castle Manuscript, fol. 86v-87: Diliges dominum deum tuum ex toto corde tuo & ex tota anima tua et ex omnibus viribus tuis. þou schalt loue þi lord god wit al þin herte with al þin soule wit al þin my‫܌‬tis./ ¶ þe secunde is þis ¶ Diliges proximum tuum. sicut te ipsum. Luc.x.Capitolo. ¶ þu schalt loue þin nei‫܌‬hebour as þi self in þese too seiþ Crist hangeþ al þe lawe & al þe prophecie. 9 Deeana Copeland Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers: Nicholas of Lyra and Christian Reading of Jewish Text in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), p. 93. 10 Leslie J. MacFarlane, “The Life and Writings of Adam Easton, OSB”, University of London Thesis, 1955, I,256, quotes Easton writing, “Thou hast created us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts can find no rest, until they rest in Thee”. 11 This particular passage seems to evoke as well intensely classical passages from Plato and from Plotinus, likely known to Master, then Cardinal, Adam Easton: Plato, Republic X.611, gives Glaucus as a figure for the degradation of the human soul in the ocean of this present world . . . his natural members are broken off and crushed and in many ways damaged by the waves, and incrustations have grown over them of seaweed and shells and stones, so that he is liker to some sea monster than to his natural form; preserved in Plotinus, Ennead, “It is in this sense that we read of the Soul: We saw it as those others saw the sea-god Glaukos. And, reading on if we mean to discern the nature of the Soul we must strip it free of all that has gathered about it, must see into its love of wisdom, examine with what Existences it has touch and by kinship to what Existences it is what it is”; concept preserved also in Vatican Mythographers, Boethius, Sedulius Scotus, and Dante’s use of transumanar, Paradiso I.67-75. 12 Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (London: Longmans, Green, 1897), The Temple and its Services (London: Religious Tract Society, 1874).

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13

“Hieronymus ad Fabiolam de vestitu sacerdotum”, “compulisti me, fabiola, litteris tuis, ut de aaron tibi scriberem uestimentis”, Opus Epistolarum diui Hieronymi Stridonensis, una cum scholiis Des. Erasmi Roterodami, denuo per illum non vulgari rocognitum, correctum et locupletum (Parisiis: Guillard, 1546), III.18v-21v. 14 Maria Boulding cites John MacQuarrie on Hebraic shalom as signifying completeness, fullness, unity, wholeness, similar to Russian mir and Sanskrit santi, while the Greek eirene means truce, a mere pause in man’s normal state of hostility, similar to Latin pax, and that Biblical thinking has peace be more original than sin in The Coming of God (London: Collins, 1984), pp. 200-201, citing Macquarrie, The Concept of Peace (New York: Harper, 1973), p. 22. 15 Nicholas Watson, “The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love”. Speculum 68 (1993), 637-683; “Censorship and Cultural Change in LateMedieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409”. Speculum 70 (1995), 822-864; The Writings of Julian of Norwich. A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, ed. Nicholas Watson & Jacqueline Jenkins (University Park: Pensylvania State University Press, 2006). 16 When Alfonso of Jaén and Adam Easton defended Birgitta of Sweden for her canonisation they likened her to Huldah, the woman who told King Josiah that the Torah, which had been forgotten, then discovered in a cupboard in the Temple, must be read and studied by all, children, women and men. Later, Ezra and Nehemiah, following the return from the exile in Babylon, would copy her, Bede illuminating that scene in the Codex Amiatinus. Only David and Huldah are buried in Jerusalem, Huldah at Huldah’s Gate. Birgitta, through her spiritual director Magister Mathias, had access to the Bible in Hebrew and later travelled to Jerusalem on pilgrimage, becoming a model to Julian of Norwich, and also to Julian’s pilgrim surrogate from Lynn, Margery Kempe. See also Martin Buber, http://www.umilta.net/buber.html, John Lounibos, http://www.umilta.net/midrash.html, Nicholas of Lyra, http://www.umilta.net/nicholalyra.html

IV JULIAN’S BENEDICTINISM

and I þought what may þis be . and it was aunswred generally thus . it is all þat is made .

I. Benedict’s Life and Julian’s Text

G

Regory (540-604) wrote the Dialogues about St Benedict (480-547), which are really Dialogues within Dialogues for in them he speaks with another named Peter who asks him questions about the Life of St Benedict, and about the meaning of that life. In one of these Dialogues is an internal Dialogue between a brother and a sister. It is the story about Benedict’s twin, St Scholastica (480-543), “Soror namque eius, scolastica nomina”, “For he had a sister, named Scholastica”. We can envision the two, clad in Benedictine black or white. In the Dialogues, Benedict visits her and they discourse at length on sacred things, “Qui totum diem in dei laudibus sacris que conloquiis ducentis”, “Here they spent all the day in praise of God and discussing sacred things”, in “Holy Conversation”, until nightfall, when in obedience to his Rule, he demands that they separate. Scholastica begs him to stay. When he is obdurate, Scholastica places first the fingers of her hand on the table, then her head upon these, and she begs God to have Benedict stay with her overnight. Immediately out of a clear sky a storm comes–and Benedict is forced to be disobedient to his Rule, but obedient to God and to a nun and a woman, “Sanctimonialis quippe femina”. Three days later Scholastica dies and is buried by her brother Benedict in his own tomb-to-be.1 Christianity treasured stories of the interaction between women and men. There are the poignant tales of Mary and Jesus from the Gospels. The Roman Empire became Christian largely through the influence of the British concubine slave of the Emperor Constantius (the Emperor dying in York), upon their son, the Emperor Constantine, and whom he proclaimed as Empress Helena (255-330). From this it has been said that Christianity is the “religion of women and slaves”. The Romanesque iconography of

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the Virgin and Child throughout Christendom became that of a Byzantine Empress in black and gold, her togaed Emperor Son held in her arms, both staring ahead at us, seated together on the Throne of Wisdom. Monica (331-387) lived a similar paradigm towards her son Augustine (354-430). While Jerome (342-420) was assisted by the Roman noblewomen, Paula (347-404), and her daughter Eustochium (368-419), and a host of other noble Roman ladies. Characteristic of all these Christian women was their adoption of Mary’s humility and their teaching of that humility to their menfolk. Benedictinism, as in the Orléans 201 Manuscript’s Resuscitatio Lazari, would award the most exquisite Gregorian chant to Lazarus, Mary and Martha, a brother and his sisters, the brother a leprous beggar, one of the sisters a whore, to whom he sings, “Cara soror”, “Dear sister”, telling of his imminent death. That humility from the Gospel, between gender and class, embeds itself deeply in Benedictinism.2 It is also embedded in David’s Hebrew Psalter, translated into Latin and sung with Gregorian chant seven times daily in the Benedictine Offices. Though Benedictine humility will be tragically lost when Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB, sets about opposing first the Franciscan, Dominican, Augustinian and Carmelite Mendicant Friars in Norwich and then the Wycliffite Lollards in all of England through using Pseudo-Dionysian hierarchies. Immediately following upon the story of Benedict and his twin Scholastica in the Dialogues is another, where Benedict and a Deacon are in the Italian Campania, Benedict in prayer in a great tower, the Deacon sleeping below. Suddenly, the Deacon, aroused, is aware of a tremendous noise, thunder and lightning, including a ray of light that takes into itself all that is, Benedict being within its edge, “omnis etiam mundis, uelut sub uno solis radio collectus”. There is a parallel in the vision Satan shows Christ in the Wilderness, of the entire world, offering that he govern it, if he worship Satan, which Christ refuses to do (Matthew 4.8). Later Peter queries Benedict as to what happened. Meanwhile, in these dialogues within the Dialogues, these “Holy Conversations”, Gregory explains to his audience of one—who include ourselves as readers of the text—that to those who see God, all that God has made seems too small, too shrunken, reduced to nothingness. While within the dialogue within the Dialogue Benedict tells the Deacon that something has happened to the Bishop Germanus in Capua. They send messengers, learning that, at that moment, Bishop Germanus had died. The sentence Gregory the Great used to Peter in Dialogorum libri iv, to whom he narrates these stories, is: “Quia animae videnti creatorem angusta est omnis creatura”, “To whatever soul seeing the Creator every

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creature, all creation, is reduced in size, is shrunk”. Gregory then expands that sentence to Peter in this way, “Quid itaque mirum, si mundum ante se collectum uidit, qui subleuatus in mentis lumine extra mundum fuit? Quod autem collectus mundus ante eius oculos dicitur, qui, in deo raptus, uidere sine difficultate potuit omne quod infra deum est. In illa ergo luce, quae exterioribus oculis fulsit, lux interior in mente fuit, quae uidentis animum qua ad superiora rapuit, ei quam angusta essent omnia inferiora monstrauit” [“Why do you marvel, if the world is collected before you, when you were raised in your mind in that light outside of this world? What then should this compacted world be before your eyes, that, rapt in God, one can see without difficulty, all that is below God. For in that light, which shines in the external sight, was also an interior light in the mind, seeing which the soul is rapt up into the heavens, and all that is beneath would therefore be shown as if diminished”].3

Julian uses these sentences again and again in all her versions of the Showing of Love, embedding within that text a Benedictine concept, as if writing it within a Benedictine context.4 But Julian is not the first anchoress in England to have made use of Gregory’s account of Benedict’s vision. There had been the earlier Christina of Markyate whose vita is written in Latin and who had a similar vision in which she suddenly saw, as she fell to the ground, an immense world, “Procidensque ad terram deorsum uno [intui]tu vidit immensum mundum”.5 These games of scale, of divinity and humility side by side, are at the heart of Benedictinism. There is in the sense of the shared monasticism of Christianity, in the West, in the East, that where one reduces the world, the flesh and the devil into proportion, the presence of God becomes overwhelming in size, overcoming all evil. The Creator is greater than all Creation, the Maker greater than all that is made. Temptation to evil is simply the tending to division, to separation, to non-being. Julian has God say to her the very opposite, of all times as present, and of both genders and none, “I it am”. Which Julian writes in larger letters or her scribe rubricates as God’s Word in her “Holy Conversation”, her Dialogue. Julian begins her perhaps earliest version of the Showing of Love, the Westminster Manuscript,6 with a vision of the Virgin envisioning her Child at the Nativity, at the Annunciation, the two surrealistically superimposed upon each other, as in the Advent “O Sapientia” Antiphon to the “Magnificat”, sung at Vespers. It is also movingly like Dante’s homage he has Cistercian St Bernard sing to the Virgin as Wisdom, God’s Daughter (Par. XXXIII.1-6) :

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Julian’s mind’s eyes gaze upon the Virgin, while the Virgin’s mind’s eyes gaze upon her Son, just new-born, or still within her, marvelling in Dante’s words he gave to Cistercian St Bernard, that God who is her Maker would be born of her who is made. where in I vnder= stood þe reuerent beholdynge þat she behelde her god þat is her maker. maruelynge with grete reuerence þat he wolde be borne of her þat was a simple creature of his makyng. (W72v)

This is Julian contemplating in her heart upon all of these things, upon Mary contemplating in her heart upon all of these things (Luke 2.19, 51). And then Julian recalls the phrase used by Gregory to Peter, but now for Mary, for herself, for her reader (W73), And wt thys she sawe her selfe so lytyll & so lowe so simple & so pore in re= gwarde of her god . þat þis re= uerent drede fulfylled herof mekenes. [And with this she saw herself so little and so low, so simple and so poor in regard of her God, that this reverent dread fulfilled her with meekness.]

Julian goes on to say that it is because of that humility in relation to her God, that Mary is filled with grace and therefore above all created persons and things, that in this Mary mirrors Christ’s own humility in taking upon himself our deadly flesh.

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Benedictinism shares Judaism’s singing of David’s Psalms, the reading in contemplative study of the Bible. Benedictinism, like Judaism, stresses literacy, every monk in Lent to read a book, in chapel and choir the need to read aloud and sing from written texts and music, even the Rule given the monks and nuns by St Benedict being spoken of as parallel to the Ten Commandments, of letters given to Israel by Moses. While Benedict’s image of the Ladder of Humility in the Regula is taken from the work of John of Climacus who lived and wrote in the monastery of St Catherine’s nestled at the foot of Mount Sinai who in turn had based it on Jacob’s Dream of the Ladder of Angels at Bethel. Benedictine contemplation arises out of the book held in the hand, and read from and sung with eye and ear and mouth. It is a tangible mysticism, an incarnational mysticism, a literate mysticism, a physical mysticism, a code rooted and grounded in Creation and its Creator. Julian’s life in her anchorhold enacts it. Julian presents us with herself, mirroring us, her readers, and what she is holding in her hand, as we hold in our hands her book, is a simple, small thing, the size of a natural hazel nut, as in a homely cook book, the “quantity” of a hazel nut; hand, hazel nut, book, these objects codifying all that God has made. Time and space and scale have no meaning. In medieval depictions God, and kings in his image, can hold the whole created cosmos within the hand as a ball, the cross at the top for Jerusalem. Benedictine Westminster Abbey has such a painting of Julian’s King Richard II with the Orb in his hand, the Cross at its top. Julian has taken this orb out of God’s hand, and placed it not in her King’s hand, but in her own palm and also in the palm of her readers’ hand, making them kings, prophets, priests, like God himself. Who can therefore no longer despise what God has made. Julian’s next Benedictine image is where she gives God, who neither despises nor disdains anything that he has made, as willing to serve humankind at the humblest office that belongs to our bodily needs,7 as in Cyril of Jerusalem’s words in his Catechetical Lecture, where Christ “girds himself with the towel of our humanity and ministers to that which is sick”. Benedictines repeat the humility of Christ’s Maundy Thursday washing of the feet of his proud disciples, an action of love in turn already taught and done to Christ by sinful women in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who rush in where angels fear to tread, into the midst of Pharisees’ proud banquets, and who wash Christ’s feet with their penitential tears, and anoint his head with precious balm, ordaining him the Messiah, the anointed one of Israel and of all Humankind. In Benedictinism likewise the feet of pilgrim guests are customarily washed by the proud Abbot. And Abbess. Benedictinism understood Christ’s courtesy and homeliness8 –

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though Judas and Peter blundered. Here men stoop to conquer, using women’s humble tasks. Then she repeats the comment from Gregory on Benedict, elaborating upon it (W80, P13v), ffor of all thing þe beho= deng & þe loving of þe maker causith þe soule to seme leste in his owne sight. & moste fyllith it wt reuerent drede & true meke nes. And wt plente of charite. To his euencristen. [For of all things the beholding and the loving of the Maker causes the soul to seem least in its own sight and most fills it with reverent dread and true meekness and with plenty of charity to its even Christians.]

In Julian’s inclusiveness, “Even Christians”, all people are worthy of God’s charity and of ours, all are worthy of Benedictine courtesy and homeliness, for Christ despises no one. She tells us of Jesus as Mother, taken from the Bible, but also from St Anselm, and more immediately from the Benedictine John Whiterig’s Meditationes.9 Whiterig was Easton’s contemporary at Oxford, becoming a Benedictine hermit on Farne Island from 1363-1371, and writing contemplative theology in Latin which mirrors Julian’s in Middle English. Sic denique solent matres filiolos suos tenere diligentes, si forte distantes ad se eos cicius uellent currere, brachia statim expandere, capud inclinare, quo signo paruuli naturaliter edocti ad oscula festinant, atque currentes matrum ruunt in amplexus . . . [Even so is it with mothers who love their little children tenderly; if these happen to be at a distance from them, and want to run to them quickly, they are wont to stretch out their arms and bend down their heads. Then the little ones, taught in a natural way by this gesture, run and throw themselves into their mothers’ arms.] Ita et nobiscum facit Christus Deus noster. Ad amplexandum uero nos manus expandit, ad osculandum nos capud demittit, atque ad suggendum latus nobis sperit; et licet sanguis sit quem propinat ad suggendum, salutiferum tamen illum credimus et dulciorem super mel et fauum.

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[Christ our Lord does the same with us. He stretches out his hands to embrace us, bows down his head to kiss us, and opens his side to give us such; and though it is blood which he offers us to such, we believe that it is health-giving and sweeter than honey and the honey-comb.]

Then Julian, again playing games of scale, uses an image also from other Benedictines, Gertrude of Helfta and Mechthild of Hackeborn, of the wound in Christ’s side, the sacred heart. She tells us that she and we become like Doubting Thomas and that Christ leads us to that wound (W86v-87, P46), Also wt glad chere . our lord loked into his syde & behelde enioyenge . and wt his swete lo= kynge he ledde furthe þe vnder= stondyng of his creaturys by þe same wounde in to his syde wt yn . and þere he shewed a feyre delectable place & large I now for all man kynde þat shall be sauf to reste in pees & loue. [Also with glad cheer our Lord looked into his side and beheld, enjoying, and with his sweet looking he led forth the understanding of his creatures by the same wound into his side within, and there he showed a fair delectable place and large enough for all mankind that shall be saved to rest in peace and love.]

We see through, and with, Christ’s eyes his wound in his side, the wound made by the spear at his death, evoking also the Song of Solomon 4.9, “vulnerasti cor meum soror mea sponsa” [“you have wounded my heart, my sister, my bride”], and yet he is alive as he shows it to us, and all we who behold it are drawn inwards into his heart as some vast city, peopled with all humankind. Julian elsewhere tells us that all having God’s Word in them shall be saved, and all are created by and have God’s Word within themselves. One of my strangest experiences was looking at manuscripts made by contemplative women that were confiscated at the Reformation. In these manuscripts now in the Lambeth Palace Library are drawings and paintings of the wound in Christ’s side, with notations beside them, “This is the size of the wound”. What they show is both a cruel spear wound and the part of the woman’s body one normally never sees but from which we are all of us, unless by Caesarian section, born. Out of this nothing, this nought, this hole, this “O”, the whole of mankind has, is and will come. We are born out of God and are born again into God

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as if he is our Mother. All and nothing are met in one, Death and Life, both male and female, beyond gender, in Christ’s side. Later Julian turns that inside out, no longer us as drawn into God’s body, God’s heart, but God sitting within our own soul, which becomes his city, this immense God, this tremendous Lover, able to dwell within our tiny world, our puny body, our soul being beyond time and space and all that is (W101v). This is like that paradoxical passage that keeps recurring in the Apocryphal Gospels, including the Gospel According to St Thomas, Logia 22, Jesus said to them, “When you make the two One, and you make the inner even as the outer, and the outer even as the inner, and the above even as below, so that you make the male and the female into a single One, . . . then you shall enter the Kingdom”.

Let us turn to the second version of Julian’s Showing of Love which she thought about for many years following her 1373 vision, completing her book, yet noting it was not yet completed, in 1393. This version survives in the manuscript now in Paris written out by nuns in the Antwerp region, taken with them to Rouen, in the sixteenth century, and also in manuscripts written out in the seventeenth century, again by contemplative English nuns living in exile, the first group being Brigittine, the second, Benedictine, and including the descendants of Sir/St Thomas More. This text is much longer, and it also stresses Julian and others as God’s servants, a term typical in Benedictine usage, from the balancing of work, study, prayer, body, mind, soul, where even prayer is work, the Offices, the Opus Dei. In it Julian often speaks of teaching and learning, reflecting the Benedictine triad of work, study and prayer, her first explicit use of the Gregorian/Benedictine vision concerning scale being prefaced with the phrase, “this lesson of love” (P13v). Benedict’s Rule is a School of Charity. Then, in the Paris Manuscript, Julian repeats that concept. First she says “Benedicite dominus”, “Blessed be the Lord” (P7v,A98v) rubricated in the Paris Manuscript, engrossed in the Amherst Manuscript, noting she says this because she understands, among other things, that God has made all things (P16v-17, A100): for wele I wot that hevyn and erth and alle that is made . is great . large and feyer and good . but the cause why it shewyth so lytylle to my sight was . for I saw it in the presence of hym that is the maker. ffor a soul that seth the maker

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of all thyg . all that is made semyth fulle lytylle. [For I know well that heaven and earth and all that is made, is great, large, fair and good. But the cause why it shows so little to my sight was that I saw it in the presence of him who is the Maker. For a soul which sees the Maker of all things, all that is made seems little.]

This exactly translates Gregory on Benedict’s “quia animae videnti creatorem angusta est omnis creatura”. Later in the Paris “Long” Text, Julian uses a magnificent image, again about scale and about how God is everywhere. She takes it from Psalm 139, that lovely obstetrical psalm, and from Jonah 2.5, where Jonah is quoting Psalm 139. This is Julian’s Benedictine lectio divina (P20-20v): ¶ One tyme my vnderstandyng was lett Downe in to the sea grounde . and ther saw I hilles and dales grene semyng as it were mosse begrowyng wt wrake and gravell. Then I vn derstode thus . that if a man or woman wher there vnther the brode water and he myght haue syght of god . so as god is wt a man continually. he s= houlde be safe in sowle and body and take no harme. [One time my understanding was let down on to the sea bed and there I saw green hills and dales seeming as it were moss growing on the wrack and gravel. Then I understood that if a man or woman were there under the deep water he might yet have sight of God. For as God is with a man continually he should be safe in soul and body and take no harm.]

In Benedictinism the question is asked “Whom seek you?”, the answer, “God only”. Julian, in the Paris “Long” Text (P61v-62), says, ¶ God shewde fulle grett plesaunce that he hath in ale men and women that myghtly and wisely take the prechyng and the tec= hyng of holy chyrche . for he it is holy chyrche. ¶ he is the grounde . ¶ he is the substaunce. ¶ he is the techyng ¶ he is the th techer. ¶ he is the ende. and he is the mede wherefore every kynde

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IV. Julian’s Benedictinism soule traveleth. And thys is knowen ^and shall be knowen to ech soule to whyche the holy gost dec= laryth it. ¶And I hope truly alle tho that seke thus they shalle spede for they seke god . [God showed the great pleasure that he has in all men and women who mightily and wisely take the preaching and teaching of Holy Church. For he is Holy Church. He is the ground. He is the substance. He is the teaching. He is the teacher. He is the end, and he is the reward for which every natural soul travails and this is known, and shall be known, to each soul to which the Holy Ghost declares it. And I hope truly that all those who seek this shall be helped, for they seek God.]

This passage is repeated in the Amherst “Short” Text, given here in a dialect and form closer in time and space to Julian’s speech, and which was likely written in Julian’s old age, at the conclusion of her life-long search (A108.4-5): I Am sekyr that alle tho that sekes thus schall spede for thay seke god. [I am sure that all those who seek thus shall succeed, for they seek God.]

all these instances on the quest for God. It is possible that this next passage was not written by Julian but by another and interpolated into the text, if so by a Brigittine but about a Benedictine, where St John of Beverley is mentioned (P68v), as being “in his youth and in his tender age a dear worthy servant to God, greatly loving and dreading him”. John of Beverley, we learn from Bede, was part of England’s early Benedictine history. But his cult and miracles were greatly fostered following the Battle of Agincourt, 25 October 1415, which is later than the composition of the “Long” Text and why I think these are words written by another following in her footsteps and writing in her spiritual tradition The passage ends with its evoking of Luke 15.22-24 on the Prodigal Son, “And that this is true, God shows on earth, with plenteous miracles occurring about his body continually. And all this was to make us glad and merry in love”. Julian’s style is an oral one, skilfully weaving repetitions back and forth into her text, like a most excellent preacher or professor—though women were forbidden to preach or teach. She again evokes Gregory on Benedict in Showing of Love (P81-81v).

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¶ in which mervelyng he seeth his god . hys lorde . hys maker . so hye. so grett. And so good in regarde of hym . that is made . that vnnethys the creature semyth ought to the selfe . but the bryghtnes and cle= rnesse of truth and wysedome makyth hym to see . and to know that he is made for loue. in which loue god end= lesly kepyth hym [In which marvelling he sees his God, his Lord, his Maker, so high, so great, and so good in regard to himself who is made, that the creature seems nought to the self. But the brightness and clearness of Truth and Wisdom makes him to see and to know that he is made for Love, in which Love God endlessly keeps him.]

She repeats that again in Showing of Love (P139v). ¶ ffor as it was shewed, this reverence þt I meane is a holy curtious drede of our lorde to which meekenes is knyt, and that is that a crea= tur see þe lord meruelous great : and her selfe mervelous litle. [For as it was showed, this reverence that I speak of is a holy courteous dread of our Lord, to which meekness is knit. That is that a creature sees the Lord as marvellously great and herself marvellously little.]

In 1413, when Julian was seventy, times were very difficult. Archbishop Arundel, on the rampage against Wycliffite Lollards, banned all theological writing in English, except by license, likewise all translations of the Bible into English, while Julian’s Showing of Love is filled with scriptural allusions, often from the Hebrew, rather than Jerome’s Latin Vulgate or Wyclif’s English versions, and the idea of women daring to preach was enough to cause them to be burned at the stake. Julian accordingly revises her Showing of Love. But she makes sure that she embeds her beloved concept of the “even Christians” within an acceptable framework, one which now greatly emphasises her near fatal illness, and her remarkable, and validating, visions. And she also defiantly has three scriptural quotations, Romans 8.35-39; Matthew 8.25, 14.30 (A103.6-8),

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And in the tyme of ioye I might hafe sayde with Paule na= thynge schalle departe me fro the charyte of cryste. And in payne ymyght hafe sayde with saynte Petyr/ lord save me I perysche [And in the time of joy I might have said with Paul: Nothing shall separate me from the charity of Christ. And in the time of pain I might have said with Saint Peter: Lord, save me, I perish.]

On the next folio she again quotes from Saint Paul, Philippians 2.5, ‘Let the mind be in you which was in Christ’ (A103v.16-19): I sawe that alle es to litelle þt y can telle or saye for itt maye nou‫܌‬t be tolde botte ylke saule af= tere the saying of ssaynte Pawle schulde feele in hym þt in criste Jhesu. [I saw that all is too little that I can tell or say for it may not be told but each soul after the saying of St Paul should feel in him that in Jesus Christ.]

What is left in the Amherst Manuscript 1413 “Short” Text of the Showing of Love that might be related to Julian as Benedictine is a statement that she saw all sin and pain “in an instant” (P50v, A106v). The other like statements are largely lacking from this text, which is now so filled with anxiety. II. Benedict’s Rule We have now discussed Gregory on Benedict and recreated Julian’s direct quotations from that text. Let us next turn to Benedict’s Rule.10 To begin with we should say, like Julian’s Showing of Love, that this is a text itself woven from monastic lectio divina, giving not so much Benedict’s words, as those of God in Bible and Gospel. Much as Julian herself will write “Bible” with innumerable echoes of scripture until Archbishop Arundel’s prohibition in his 1408 Constitutions against doing so in English by the time of the Amherst Manuscript’s 1413 date. The Prologue to the Rule speaks of our need to listen, since God listens to us, “Obsculta, o fili”, being obedient to the Master’s teachings. (Indeed, in Gregory on Benedict we have witnessed Peter listening to Gregory and learning of Benedict.) Then we are told that God is already listening to us and present with us even before we begin to pray, “et antequam me invocetis, dicam vobis: Ecce adsum”, from Matthew 6.7, which Julian repeats (P77-77v).

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¶ Beholde and se that I haue done alle thys before thy prayer. And now thou art . and prayest me. [Behold and see that I have done all this before your prayer. And now you are and pray to me.]

In the Prologue and throughout the Rule Benedict stresses the monastery as a school of divine servitude, “Constituenda est ergo nobis dominici schola servitii”, while stressing its gentleness, its conservation of charity, the sweetness of its love. Julian, surprisingly, never uses the word “school”, yet likewise throughout her text emphasises teaching, learning, and the ‘lesson of love’ (P13v, 23, 49, 61v, etc.). In the First Chapter Benedict defines the kinds of monk, the first who is in the monastery, the second, the one who has long lived in a monastery and who is now an anchorite or hermit, living alone and fighting the devil without others’ help. It is likely that Julian had had some monastic experience, though perhaps only as a Lay Sister, before she in turn became an Anchoress. The final two Benedict tells us to ignore: monks who live without a Rule; monks who wander from monastery to monastery. The Second Chapter discusses the role of the Abbot. A particularly moving section is that where Benedict tells the Abbot not to discriminate against persons, to love all equally, treating slave and free alike with respect, all being God’s children, “quia sive servus sive liber, omnes in Christo unum sumus”, “whether slave or free, all are one in Christ”. We can hear in this Julian’s oft-repeated “even Christians”, for whom she writes her Showing of Love. Though Benedict, twinned to Scholastica, does not say so overtly, implied in this passage is not only the equality between slave and free, but also that between women and men. Benedictinism is a world where both genders can be equal though separate. It gave Julian a framework as a woman in which to read Scripture and to write theology in equality with men. Though we shall later find that Benedictinism’s adoption of Pseudo-Dionysian hierarchies will corrupt this Gospel equality. The Third Chapter is on Chapter Meetings, the Abbot calling together the Monks of the Monastery to confer with them concerning decisions about the Community. Again the stress is upon equality, it being stated that all shall be consulted concerning major matters, included the youngest, for often God reveals to the youngest what is best, “quia saepe iuniori Dominus revelat quod melius est”. Julian speaks of the different ways in which the English Kings governed; they had Parliament, but they

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also had their own Privy Council. But she also stresses that the labour of even the youngest shall be counted at Judgement Day, seeming to speak of performing the Offices when young, then having to leave the convent (P30).11 And I saw þt homely and swetly was thys shewd that the age of every man shalbe knowen in hevyn and be rewardyd for hys wilfulle servys . and for hys tyme. And namly þe age of them that wilfully and frely offer ther yowth to god .passynly is re warded and wonderfully thangkyd. [And I saw that homely and sweetly was this showed that the age of every man shal be known in heaven and be rewarded for his willing service, andfor his time. And especially the age of them who wilfully and freely offer their youth to God surpassingly is rewarded and wonderfully thanked.]

Chapter IV gives the Ten Commandments and other precepts, what Julian calls “Biddings and Forbiddings” (P121v-122), ffor the comawnd^ementys of god come there in In whyche we owe to haue two manner of vnderstan= dyng ¶ That one is . that we owe to vnderstand and know . which by his byddynges to loue them and to kepe them ¶ That other is that we owe to know his forbyddynges to hate them and refusen them . ffor in theyse two is alle our werkyng comprehendyd, [For the Commandments of God come therein, in which we ought to have two ways of understanding. The one is that we ought to understand and know which are his biddings, to love them and to keep them. The other is that we ought to know his forbiddings, to hate them and refuse them. For inthese two is all our working comprehended.]

repeated in the Norwich Castle Manuscript, “In the furste two that arne forbiddyinge and biddynge: arne conteined alle goddes commaundementes”, fol. 1v, concluding with what “Eye has not seen nor ear heard, what God

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has prepared for those who love him”, a phrase much used and beloved of Julian (P35, 49v, 151v, 152v, 162; A104v, 107), for example (P49v), but the Joy that I saw in the shew= yng of them passyth alle that hart can think or soule may Desyre. [but the joy I saw in the showing of them passed all that heart can think or soul may desire.]

The Fifth Chapter is on Obedience, humility and listening. And it includes the precept and concept Benedict and Julian share from 2 Corinthians 9.7, that God loves a cheerful giver, “hilarem datorem diligit Deus”, that obedience is from our duty and our joy (W86v, 100, P45v, 115) And it þis he brought To my mynde . þe propertee of a glad ^ ‫܌‬euer . A glad ‫܌‬euer . takyþ but lytyll hede at þe thing þt he ‫܌‬euyth . but his desire is & all his entent . to pleace hym & solace hym to whom he ‫܌‬euith it. And ‫܌‬f þe resceyuer take þe ‫^܌‬efte gladly & thankefully . then þe curteys ‫܌‬euer settythe at nought all his coste & all his traueyle for ioye & delyte þat he hath. [And in this he brought to my mind the property of a glad giver. A glad giver takes but little heed of the thing that he gives, but his desire is in all his intent, to please him and solace him to whom he gives it. And if the receiver takes the gift gladly and thankfully, then the courteous giver sets at nought all his cost and his travail, for joy and delight that he has.]

Chapter VI is on Silence, Chapter VII on Humility and opens with Mary’s “Magnificat”, then proceeds to the Jacob’s Ladder image of the Sinai monk, John of Climacus, giving to it twelve steps, upon which if one is humble one rises, but if one seeks worldly power and wealth and pleasure one is dragged downwards, Humility meriting the crown. Julian repeats often the following (W80), ffor of all thing þe beho= deng & þe loving of þe maker

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IV. Julian’s Benedictinism causith þe soule to seme leste in his owne sight. & moste fyllith it wt reuerent drede & true meke nes. And wt plente of charite. To his euencristen. [For of all things the seeing and the loving of the Creator causes the soul to seem least in one’s own sight and most fills it with reverent dread and true meekness, and with plenty of charity to one’s even Christian.]

Chapters VIII through XX are on the Divine Offices, Chapter XVI telling us of the Seven Offices, Matins, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. Chapters XXIII through XXIX are on the excommunicated brethren, Chapter XXVII describing the loving and healing care the Abbot is to give him. Chapter XLIV will return to how to punish brethren late to Office or to Refectory, who performs a “venia”, lying prostrate upon the ground before the person, arms outstretched as if upon the Cross, and to whom the Abbot eventually says “Sufficit”, “Enough”. That is a word Julian often uses (W76, P10v, 65v, 164v), this in a prayer also said by the Benedictine, John Whiterig. God of thy goodnes geue my thy selfe for thou art Inough to me . and I maie aske nothing that is lesse that maie be full worshippe to thee . and if I aske anie thing that is lesse ever me wanteth, but only in thee I haue all. [God of your goodness give me yourself for you are enough for me. And I may ask nothing that is less that may be fully worthy to you. And if I ask anything that is less I shall always be lacking, for only in you I have all.]

Chapter XXX speaks of how those who are younger need different ways of being corrected. “Omnes aetas vel intellectus proprias debet habere mensuras”. This reflects also Julian’s comments concerning the mother’s changing ways of correcting and teaching her child (W106v-107). The kynde lo= uynge moder þat wote and knowyth þe need of her chylde, She kepyth it full tenderly . as the kynde & condicion of moder . hed wyll . and euer as it wex= ith in age & in stature so she

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chaungith her wurkyng . but not her loue . and whan it is waxen of more age . she suf= ferith/ it to be chastised in bre= kyng downe of vicis to make þe chylde to resceyve vertues & grace. [The naturally loving mother who understands and knows the needs of her child, she keeps it very tenderly as nature and condition of motherhood will. And ever as it grows in age and in stature so she changes her working, but not her love. And when it is grown of more age she allows it to be chastised in breaking down of vices to make the child received virtues and grace.]

That perception is reflected as well in the XXXVII and XXXVII Chapters on the sick, the old and the children, that the Rule is applied gently in their cases and only as appropriate. Even XXXVIII, in speaking of the reader in the refectory, during which time there is silence, is not chosen according to seniority but as to what will edify the hearers. He may have wine, but then is to eat with the cook and his helpers afterwards. Chapter XXXI on the cellarar describes how he must treat all objects as if they were the sacred objects for the altar, from Zachariah. Such precepts continue through Chapter XXXIII describing how no monk may have anything of their own, not a book, or tablet or pen or anything. Chapter XXXV describes how the monks take turns to do all things connected with the kitchen for a week. Chapter XXXVI is on the care of sick monks. We will find that Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB, himself acquired a learned medical tome for such Benedictine use. Chapter XLVIII begins by saying “Idleness is the enemy of the soul”, “Otiositas inimica est animae”, a concept we hear Chaucer’s Second Nun busily repeat while composing a rhyme royal poem upon Saint Cecilia. Julian’s action against idleness is to write. Benedictines are to counter idleness with manual work, as did the Apostles, themselves spoken of in the Rule as true monks, to be balanced with study, “in lectione divina”. Julian has God speak of her youthful illness as including depression, as “wanting of will”, from which God says, in the Westminster Manuscript (W112-112v), she will have an early death. and þou shalt neuer more haue no maner of peyne . neþer no maner of sekenesse . no maner of myslyking . ne no wanting of wyll . but

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IV. Julian’s Benedictinism eyyr in ioye & blysse wtouten ende [And you will have no more pain nor any kind of illness, no kind of disliking, nor wanting of will, but be ever in joy and bliss without end.]

Chapter LXVI speaks of the doorkeeper having the cell nearby to hear when a poor man knocks, saying, “Deo gratias”, or “Benedic”. Scholars have accused Julian of using poor Latin, but her “Benedicite dominus” (P7v, 16v, 143, A98v.7, 100, 112), is the correct opening of conversation among Benedictine monks and nuns in medieval England as described in the life of Christina of Markyate, this use also observed by Brigittine monks and nuns.12 In Chapter LXXII Benedict notes that an evil rage separates us from God and leads us to hell, while a good zeal separates us from vice and conducts us to God and eternal life: “Sicut est zelus amaritudinis malus qui separat a Deo et ducit ad infermum, ita est zelus bonus qui separat a vitiis, et ducit ad Deum et ad vitam aeternam”. They must cultivate this zeal of love and fear of God. The chapter heading in Sloane, likely written by Julian’s editor (whom I consider to have been Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB, imposing on her the structuring of Alfonso of Jaén’s editorialising of Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes, rather than by herself), gives this (S1100.28-31): A Loveand soule hatith synne for Vilehead more than all þe peyn of hell. & how the beholding of other Mannys synne (but if it be with compassion) lettith the beholding of God. [A loving soul hates sin for its vileness more than all the pains of hell. And how the beholding of another man’s sin (unless it be with compassion) hinders the sight of God.]

The Rule ends by saying it is but a beginning: “Quisquis ergo ad patriam caelestem festinas, hanc minimam inchoationis Regulam descriptam adiuvante Christo perfice; et tunc demum ad maiora, quae supra commemoravimus, doctrinae virtutumque culmina Deo protegente, pervenies”. So does Julian’s “Long” Text end, by saying it has begun the task, which is not yet fulfilled (P172v-173). THis boke is begonne by goddys gyfte. and his grace but it is nott yett performyd as to my sight. [This book is begun by God’s grace, but it is not yet performed to my sight.]

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III. Benedictine Julian I began by arguing from the evidence of Julian’s text that she is Benedictine, deriving this from Gregory on Benedict and from Benedict’s Rule. Now we look at her context. We have two manuscripts that clearly state that Julian is an anchoress of Norwich, the first stating that she is a “recluse atte Norwyche” in the year 1413 and noting that she is still alive, that information being copied out into the 1413-1430 Amherst Manuscript in the British Library at the opening of Julian’s “Short” Text of the Showing of Love (A97), while the second manuscript giving this information calls her an “anatorite norwyche”, is the Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Anglais 40, “Long” Text, at its conclusion (P174). We also have several Wills bequeathing money, sometimes only to her, sometimes also to her maid servants, and these specify that her anchorhold was at St Julian’s Church at Conisford in Norwich. Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, CP, noted the Wills of Thomas Edmund, 1404, “Item Iuliane anachorita apud ecclesiam sancti Iuliani in Norvico xiid Item sa [Sara], commoranti eum eademn viijd”, and that of John Plumpton, 24 November, 1415, “Item lego le ankeres in ecclesia sancti Iuliani de conesford in Norwico xld et ancille sue xijd. Item lego Alicie quindam ancille sue xijd”. Two other Wills are those of Roger Reed, Rector of St Michael’s Coslany, Norwich, 20 March, 1393/4, 2s to “Julian anakorite”, and Isabella Ufford, Countess of Suffolk, daughter of Thomas Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick, sister of Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick, great aunt of Anne Neville, Richard III’s Queen, and votary of Campsey Priory, “Item jeo deuyse a Julian recluz a Norwico xxs”. We later hear of “Alice Hermyte”, who may be Julian’s former handmaiden, giving a chalice to St Giles’ Church in Norwich. Farther out of Norwich than St Julian’s Church was the Benedictine Priory of Carrow, beyond the city walls of flint, established by King Stephen in 1146, who also gave Carrow Priory the Church of St Julian at Conisford that same year. While at the centre of Norwich is its Cathedral, which in Julian’s day was Norwich’s Benedictine Cathedral Priory for men. Thus we see the ancient “separate but equal” pattern of Benedictine nuns and monks, as at Subiaco with Saints Benedict and Scholastica, replicated in Norwich with Carrow Priory and Norwich Cathedral Priory. The anchorhold of St Julian’s Church at Conisford was under Carrow’s Benedictine Priory, which in turn was under Norwich Cathedral’s Benedictine Priory.13 Women could be anchoresses both at Carrow and at St Julian’s, but only in the latter case earning the title, “recluse and anatorite of Norwich”, as Carrow lay beyond the city walls. It was typical for the anchoresses at both Carrow and at St Julian’s to have been

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Benedictines and to be called “Dame”. When the troubled Margery Kempe visits Julian, she speaks of her as “Dame Jelyan”, repeating, when dictating to her amanuensis many years later in the Book of Margery Kempe, ‘an ankres in þe same Cyte which hyte Dame Jelyan.’ (M21). “Dame” to this day is the English form of address to a Benedictine nun. If we wish to image the Lady Julian, “Dame Jelyan”, at prayer in her anchorhold at St Julian’s, its hagioscope looking upon that church’s altar, we should invest her in black Benedictine garb, as did Father Nathanael Smythe in his icon of her. Julian, however, no longer being a cloistered Benedictine at Carrow, but instead an anchoress at St Julian’s, had the right, though not on Fridays, when anchoresses would have been in silence, to discourse upon theology through her window, concealed behind its black cross upon white cloth, perhaps with the Augustinian Canons whose house and its fine library lay nearby on the River Wensum that runs through Norwich and which is just below St Julian’s Church at the end of St Julian’s Alley where it opens into Parmenter Street, the street of the Parchment makers, nearby being Isaac’s House. And also with Carmelite Hermits, such as the saintly William Southfield who sent Margery Kempe her way. And perhaps even with the learned Greek Franciscan from Crete, Peter of Candia, who studied in Norwich and who then became Anti-Pope Alexander V, 1409-1410. The next chapter shall introduce the Norwich Benedictine Adam Easton, OSB, “Master” Adam Easton of Oxford University, where he taught the Hebrew Scriptures—and knew their Hebrew—and later, when “Cardinal” Adam Easton, where he was friend and supporter of such notable women as Saint Birgitta of Sweden, Saint Catherine of Sweden and Saint Catherine of Siena. I suspect he is our Julian of Norwich’s equally brilliant brother. The quotation Julian takes from Gregory/Benedict, “Quia animae videnti creatorem angusta est omnis creatura”, “To whatever soul seeing the Creator every creature, all creation, seems small”, weaving it into her Showing of Love text down the years, perhaps in 1368, certainly in 1393, and in 1413, crisscrossing it with that of “Adam” and of Christ as our Brother and Master, is taken from the Dialogues concerning scale in relation to God and Creation and the human soul, which comes immediately after the one concerning the twins, their “Holy Conversation” between sister and brother, Scholastica and Benedict, and God. Julian and Adam blend into their writings as well the discourse between Augustine and Monica, their “Holy Conversation”, looking upon the Tiber River at Ostia, where they discuss the soul, and God as from before beginning and after ending and ever present—and upon silence.14

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Notes 1

Gregorius Magnus, Dialogorum libri iv, CDROM CETEDOC: CLCLT2, in words that remind one of the discourse between Saints Augustine and Monica in the Confessions, IX.x. Monica dies nine days later, following that discourse. Centuries later, Peter Salvin, wrote in relation to Augustine Baker, “And . . . I cannot blame spiritual persons, if they bear so great affection one the other, and desire so much to converse together, as appeared in our Holy Father and S. Scholastica . . . having chosen the ‘best part, which will never be taken from them,’” Memorials of Father Augustine Baker, OSB and Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts from the Works and Life of Father Augustine Baker, OSB, ed. Justin McCann, p. 44; Julian’s Benedictinism specifically studied by Dom Hugh Feiss, OSB, in “Dilation: God and the World in the Visions of Benedict and Julian of Norwich”, American Benedictine Review 35.1 (2004), 55-73, http://www.umilta.net/feiss.html; Dom Finbar Boyle OSB, on Showing, chapter VII, http://www.umilta.net/finbar.html; Sr Jane Morrissey, SSJ., “Scholastica and Benedict: A Picnic, A Paradigm”, Fr Gerard Farrell, OSB, “Saints Benedict and Scholastica: The Liturgical Music”, Equally in God’s Image: Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Julia Bolton Holloway, Joan Bechtold, Constance S. Wright (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), pp. 251-260. I owe my knowledge of Saints Benedict and Scholastica to Father Gerard Farrell, OSB. See also Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catherine Misrahi (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), for lectio divina. 2 Sacre Rappresentazione nel manoscritto 201 della Bibliothèque municipal di Orléans, ed. Giampiero Tintori e Raffaello Monterosso (Cremona: Athenaeum Cremonense, 1956), pp. 233-243. 3 Gregorius Magnus, Dialogorum libri iv, from CETEDOC, CLCLT2. 4 David Knowles, OSB, English Mystics (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne: 1927), p. 132, “the only clear citation of a known author by Dame Julian is a passage from St Gregory’s Life of St Benedict”; Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, CP, “Some Literary Influences in the ‘Revelations’ of Julian of Norwich”, Leeds Studies in English and Kindred Languages 7-8 (1952), 23, noting P16v-17’s “ffor a soul that seth the Maker of all thing. all that is made semyth fulle lytylle”, from “quia animae videnti creatoram angusta est omnis creature”, Gregory, Dialogus, xxxv, Patrologia cursus completus, Series latina, ed. J.P. Migne, 66.200. 5 The Life of Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-Century Recluse, ed. and trans. Charles H. Talbot (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), p. 110; Michael Camille, “Philological Iconoclasm: Edition and Image in the Vie de Saint Alexis”, Medievalism and the Modernist Temper, ed. R. Howard Bloch and Stephen G. Nichols (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1996), pp. 371-401. Boniface’s friend Lioba had been associated with a dream of a ball of purple thread that was infinite and never ending. Catherine of Siena, trans. in The Orcherd of Syon, “sche þanne left up hir goostly i‫܌‬e to þe fadir in heuene, and sey in his fist al þe world encloside”. 6 The Westminster Manuscript has the date “1368”, though it was copied out again circa 1500. It has nothing of the 1373 “death-bed vision”.

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Wisdom 11.23-26, “For the whole earth [orbis terrarum] before thee is the least grain of the balance . . . But thou hast mercy upon all, because thou canst do all things . . . For thou lovest all things that are, and hatest none that thou hast made”. 8 Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, CP, “Courtesy and Homeliness in the Revelations of Julian of Norwich”, 14th-Century-English-Mystics-Newsletter 5:2 (1979), 12-20. 9 John Whiterig, “The Meditations of the Monk of Farne”, ed. Hugh Farmer, Studia Anselmiana 41 (1957), Latin text, fol. 23; The Monk of Farne: The Meditations of a Fourteenth-Century Monk, ed., Dom Hugh Farmer, OSB, trans., a Benedictine of Stanbrook (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1961), Meditacio ad Crucifixum, Chapter 40, p. 64. 10 I use Sancti Benedicti Abbatis Regvla Monasterivm (Abbazia di Viboldone: Scuola Tipografica San Benedetto), 1956. 11 Cloud of Unknowing, EETS 218.13-14:20, and Norwich Castle Manuscript, fol. 22, likewise agree that old age is not of significance in God’s service. 12 Christina of Markyate, ed. & trans. Talbot, p. 143; Liber usuum fratrum monasteri Vadstenensis/ The Customary of the Vadstena Brothers: A Critical Edition with an Introduction, ed. Sara Risberg (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003), p. 100. 13 David Knowles, The Religious Houses of Medieval England (London: Sheed and Ward, 1940), p. 65; Roberta Gilchrist and Marilyn Oliva, Religious Women in Medieval East Anglia (Norwich: University of East Anglia, 1993). 14 Julian (W74v), Norwich Castle Manuscript (fols. 32, 59v), and Cardinal Adam Easton especially make use of Augustine on restlessness in the world, and rest in God: Confessions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), Loeb Classics, 26-27.

V JULIAN AND CARDINAL ADAM EASTON, OSB

Soror namque eius, Scolastica nomina Adams synne was the most harme that evyr was done or evyr shalle in to the worldes end

Figure 15. St Birgitta presents her Revelationes to Christendom, the Cardinal at her right, Adam Easton, OSB, of Norwich. Editio princeps, Lübeck: Ghotan, 1492.

T

His chapter will discuss our anchoress, Julian, eventually immured as a Benedictine anchoress in Norwich, and the cardinal, Adam Easton, OSB, who went from Norwich Cathedral Priory to Oxford, to Avignon and to Rome. This chapter will make intensive use of his pan-European

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iconography. I see these two personages as begging to differ, Easton being asked by his Prior to preach in Norwich against the Mendicant Orders, the Franciscans or Grey Friars, the Dominicans or Black Friars, the Carmelites or White Friars, and the Augustinians or Austin Friars, these Orders seeking a reform back to the Gospel, and Easton later taking up the cudgels against John Wyclif whose Lollards similarly sought a return to Gospel poverty and equality, while Julian rebels against that wealthy elitism, those Pseudo-Dionsyian hierarchies, that Easton supports and admires. I believe they conduct a “Holy Conversation” with each other, which is to be resolved by Adam’s “Death Row” conversion to Birgitta of Sweden’s teachings against the Church’s corruption and against his own prideful ambitiousness. In the work of editing the Julian manuscripts, published by SISMEL in 2001, I had encountered difficulties in dating the versions of her text. But I found the date of “1368” on the first folio of the Westminster Manuscript of the Walter Hilton, Scale of Perfection, and Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love, interesting, as if in this later copy it was necessary to recall the date of its original publication – as we do today in listing the original copyright and later re-publication dates of a book. But perhaps on this I am wrong. It was for this my thesis was rejected. With this hypothesis, of a woman able to write outstanding theology, at 25, in “1368”, in the Westminster Manuscript (W); at 45-50, in 13881393, in the Paris Manuscript (P) and Sloane Manuscripts (SS); and at 70, in 1413, in the Amherst Manuscript (A), I next sought not just the evidence within her surviving manuscripts, but also in her own life’s context. I had already discovered, while reading the Acta Sanctorum in the Vatican Library in connection with Birgitta of Sweden, the brilliant Norwich Benedictine monk who became cardinal, named now Adam Easton, but who wrote his name as “OESTONE” or “Eston”, perhaps from the village six miles to the west of Norwich, or who could have been named “Westwick”, in Norwich’s Jewry, whose inhabitants once paid for the building of her Cathedral, who would have paced the floors of its cloister, and read the manuscripts in its library and inscribed them in its scriptorium. A University of London thesis had been written on him in 1955 by Leslie John MacFarlane, listing manuscripts Adam Easton owned and wrote, manuscripts which I sought out in turn.1 Amongst Adam’s schoolboy manuscripts were studies of Arabic mathematics and astronomy. One of these, now at Cambridge University Library, Gg.VI.3, folios. 318-320, has his drawings of how to measure the height of the spire of Norwich Cathedral and of the walls of Norwich Castle, by trigonometry, in which the structures

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are clearly recognisable, while also giving Grosseteste’s Tractate on “Squaring the Circle”, that becomes the ending of Dante’s Commedia. 2 Adam Easton was sent from Norwich Cathedral Priory, together with Thomas Brinton, to study at Oxford in 1350 where he was soon teaching the Hebrew of the Old Testament. Two recent writers on Adam Easton, Margaret Harvey and Andrew Lee, state that Adam came to Hebrew studies late when serving in the Papal Curia in Avignon and they discuss his assiduous work in translating the whole Bible from Hebrew into Latin, correcting Jerome’s version, meeting with four Jewish scholars and a Jewish interpreter for this work. But in his Defensorium ecclesiastice potestatis he tells Pope Urban VI in 1378 that he has already been studying Hebrew for some twenty years, dating these studies at least back to his Norwich and Oxford days. If he were from a Norwich conversa family his knowledge of Hebrew could even date back to his childhood. Adam Easton also discovered during the earlier period the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, who was thought in the Greek and Latin Churches to be the Dionysius converted by Paul on the Areopagus in Athens, together with the woman Damaris, in Acts 17.3 “Pseudo-Dionysius” was a Syrian theologian, who lived several centuries later, and who pretended to be the converted Athenian Dionysius: Therefore he is now called “PseudoDionysius”. He wrote marvellous but flawed theology. He invented, for instance, the most un-Christian word and concept, “hierarchy”, and applied these hierarchies intensely in the Church and among Angels, corrupting Gospel Christianity and Benedict’s Rule. Understandably, Emperors and Kings, both East and West, sought his collected Opera and propagated them in manuscripts, one of which Adam Easton himself owned. It is a beautiful thirteenth-century Victorine manuscript, in Latin and Greek, and the prayer to the Trinity as Wisdom is illuminated with a most lovely Romanesque T in gold leaf, lapis lazuli blue and leafy green intertwines (Plate Vb).4

Figure 16. Cambridge University Library, Ii.III.32, fol. 108v

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V. Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB

The Kings of France are buried at the Benedictine Abbey of St Denis outside Paris, the French believing that this St Dionysius, their patron, St Denis, had written the theology Adam and Julian used, and even that he was also the martyred Apostle to France, who was beheaded on Montmartre, then picked up his head and carried it about, all this as well as having been Paul’s convert in Athens. The Gothic style, and its later ramifications, which Norwich’s Benedictine Cathedral and East Anglian churches came to use, was begun at the Benedictine Abbey of St Denis by Abbot Suger in response to Pseudo-Dionysius’ Neoplatonist delight in hierarchy, mirrored in stone tracery and glass, this in part also borrowed from the Crusaders’ exposure to Arabic delicacy, instead of the clunky native Romanesque. Similarly the Victorine monks (of Paris’ Abbey of Saint Victor) poured over Pseudo-Dionysius, weaving from the text an elaborate theology, Easton himself being thoroughly immersed in the writings of Richard, Hugh and Andrew of St Victor on the priesthood, these men knowledgeable in both Hebrew and Greek Orthodox theology and using elaborate figural allegoresis. Abelard, alone, himself a monk of St Denis, observed the fraudulence of all this legendary material—for which he was decidedly not popular. The King of France’s authority and the hierarchy of the French church and state greatly depended upon it. Interestingly, Julian does not like political or religious hierarchies but speaks instead of our “Even Christians”, our equals. Nor does she appreciate the way clerks revere the ranks of angels, and she says so in the Showing of Love (P166v), in what is perhaps a dig at Pseudo-Dionysius, Walter Hilton, and Adam Easton, all of whom were writing on angelic hierarchies, Julian speaking instead of our “oneing”, male and female, as Adam, directly with God, who created us in that image, which is his own. But she also wrote of “Seynte dionisi of france whyche was that tyme a paynym” (P37-37v), believing his lie that he was a witness to the time of the Crucifixion. ¶ I mene of .ij. persons . that oone was pylate . that other person was Seynt dyo= nisI of france . whych was that tyme a panym . ffor whan he saw wo= nders and merveyles sorowse and dredys that befelle I that tyme . he seyde eyther the worlde is now at an ende . or elles he that is maker of kyndes suffeyth. ¶ Wherfore he dyd wryte on an awter . thys is an awter of^thevnknowyn god. God.

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of hys goodness tht makyth planettes and the elementes to worke in ther kynde to the blessyd man . and to þe cursyde. ¶ In that tyme it was wtdraw fro both . wher for it was. þt they that knew hym nott/ were in sorow that tyme, [I mean of two kinds of people who knew him not, as it may be understood by two persons. The one was Pilate. The other was Saint Dionysius of France, who was at that time a pagan. For when he saw wonders and marvels, sorrows and dreads, that took place at that time, he said “Either the world is now at an end, or else he who is the Maker of Nature suffers”. Therefore he did write on an altar, “This is an altar of the Unknown God”. God who of his goodness makes the planets and the elements to serve in their nature the blessed man and the cursed, in that time was withdrawn from both. Wherefore it was that they who knew him not were in sorrow that time.]

Adam Easton flourished at Oxford; Arabic mathematics, Hebrew philology, and Greco-Syrian theology suited him. He was fascinated with time and eternity, with how to measure smaller and smaller amounts of time. He was also intrigued by time’s immensity and wrote out dates in arabic numerals, including those we would expect, 1368, 1373, but going on to not just our year 2000, but the years 40,000, 80,000, 100,000. He hated wasting time. Julian shares that concern (P134, 141v, 160v). Adam Easton was as well deeply versed in spirituality. A Benedictine student who overlapped with Adam Easton at Oxford was John Whiterig, who later became a hermit on Farne Island, writing on St Cuthbert and in the Meditationes, on Jesus as Mother which Julian would quote in her Showing. Amongst Easton’s lost Dionysan/Victorine writings, perhaps destroyed at the Reformation, are a work on the “The Perfection of the Spiritual Life”, and translations into the vernacular as if he sought out a surrogate to compensate for his lack of a contemplative life to whom he could give spiritual direction.5 However, the Bishop of Norwich wanted Adam to return from Oxford, along with a fellow Benedictine, “Jo”, likely the brilliant John Stukley. In 1352, Adam wrote to the Pope begging to be allowed to continue working towards his degree, appealing against his Bishop.6 The Prior of the Cathedral next demanded he and Thomas Brinton return and that they bring back with them all their books and plate. Benedictines must obey their Abbot or Prior as if he were Christ. So Adam and Thomas now dutifully came back to Norwich and were there from 1356 to 1363.7 The Prior needed Adam Easton and Thomas Brinton to preach to the Norwich

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laity to woo them back from the Franciscans and the Dominicans, from the Carmelites and the Augustinians, who were becoming far too popular in competition with the Benedictine Cathedral Priory’s clergy.8 We learn that the sermons of the two young men were lively and wellattended by the laity. Adam’s sermons could have included such material as Pseudo-Dionysius on God in a point, on God as “I am” (Julian’s genderless “I it am”), on Jesus as Mother, on the Bible text translated directly from Hebrew into Middle English, and on the Trinity as Might, Wisdom and Love. All of this material is in Julian’s perhaps “1368” Westminster Manuscript. During this period Easton copied out polemical works against the Franciscans, even illuminating in one of them grey-clad Franciscans, black- clad Dominicans, white-clad Carmelites and black-clad Augustinians, with fiends attacking them. We remember the 1233 Norwich tallage roll in the National Archives of such fiends at Norwich Castle, while Lambeth Manuscript 432, fols. 87-87v, gives a similar 1350 Norwich miracle of a man who is almost throttled by the fiend but who had a vision of a book in which were written the words that whoever prayed to the Virgin would be saved from peril; and at his prayer the Virgin removes the devil’s paws from his mouth and nose. All of which foreshadow Julian’s XVIth and diabolical Showing (P142v-143, 146v-147), and ultimately her conversation with Margery Kempe (M21).9

Figure 17. Richard of Armagh, De Pauperie Salvatoris, detail of devil at the throats of a Franciscan and a Dominican, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 180, fol. 1. Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College

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There is a strong possibility that Julian had heard Adam Easton preach at a time when he was studying and translating Isaiah, and making use of Rabbi David Kimhi’s brilliant commentaries on Isaiah and on the Psalms, for Julian not only uses the servant Messiah passages from Isaiah 52-53, she also incorporates into the Showing of Love the Isaiah 30.15 passage on restlessness and rest that Augustine before her and Herbert after her so treasured, the Isaiah 40.12 passage on God’s holding the waters of his Creation in the hollow of his hand, the passages in Isaiah 49.15 and 66.13 where God compares himself to a mother who loves her child, as well as using Psalms 110.1 and 119.73, and perhaps later the Isaiah 2.10 passage on being hidden in an earthen ditch, in the Vulgate, “abscondere in fossa humo”. Finally he was able to return to Oxford, after a six years’ absence, becoming Prior of Students three years later, 20 September 1366.10 We have a huge bill paid for the shipping by wagon of the manuscripts, 113 shillings and threpence.11 Julian’s largest legacy, from IsabellaUfford, Countess of Suffolk, was a mere “xx” shillings. Among those manuscripts would have been Pseudo-Dionysius’ Opera, Origen on Leviticus, and perhaps one by Rabbi David Kimhi on Hebrew philology, in Hebrew.12 He came back again to Norwich, in 1367-1368, and at the same time that Julian may have been writing the Westminster Cathedral Manuscript (W)’s original version at 25. Next, and now addressed as “Master”, Adam Easton left Norwich to work for Cardinal Simon Langham at Avignon where the Pope was then residing. It was at Avignon that Adam Easton came to own John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, a manuscript now at Balliol, by writing it out himself.13 Julian will use its political language again and again in her 1388-1393 “Long” Text (P and SS). Adam Easton was jealous of his Oxford colleague, John Wyclif, and wrote to the Benedictines at Westminster Abbey, asking that they send him reports on Wyclif’s Oxford lectures against the Benedictines, spying on him.14 In line with hierarchical Benedictines as owners of lucrative properties for their endowments, Easton would continue his campaign now against Wyclif as he had earlier against the Friars, who were for equality and poverty. Wyclif and Julian were for the Gospel, Easton for Dionysian hierarchy. While at the Papal Curia in Avignon and later in Rome, when the learned and ambitious Adam Easton himself became Cardinal, he came to know Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena, and learned to admire them for their visionary writings against wordly corruption in Church and Empire. Perhaps because he already knew of a Norwich lass, writing a

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V. Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB

similar book. But more likely because he already knew of the early English presence of Birgitta’s Revelationes.

Figure 18. Diptych of Bishop Hemming of Åbo, Birgitta of Sweden, Urdiala, Finland

At this point we need to voyage across the Northern Sea to Scandinavia, to Finland and to Sweden. A diptych at Urdiala, Finland, shows Bishop Hemming of Åbo, Finland, and Birgitta of Sweden, whom the bishop encouraged to write her Revelationes, her “Holy Conversations” with Mary and Christ (Plate VIIb).15 Birgitta was a Swedish noblewoman, mother of eight children, widowed young, who had had an important vision in Arras in France when returning from pilgrimage to Compostela in 1342, the year Julian was born, in which “St Dionysius of France” had spoken to Birgitta of the need for peace between the King Philip VI of France and King Edward III of England, and of which she writes in Book IV, 103-5 of the Revelationes, “Orante Christi sponsa vidit in visione, qualiter beatus Dyonisius orabat pro regno Francie ad virginem Mariam”.16 Birgitta then sent envoys from Sweden to the Kings of England and of France and to the Pope, in 1347-1348, pleading for peace in Europe and the end to the Hundred Years’ War, the envoys including Prior Petrus and Bishop Hemming who conveyed the text of her visions, the Revelationes, or “Showings”, introduced by Magister Mathias, a Swedish scholar who had studied Hebrew in Paris.17 Magister Mathias was brilliant, filled with doubts, and Birgitta taught him theology, writing this out in her vision of the ladder in Book V, the “Book of Questions” of the Revelationes, which

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came to her while journeying to the King’s Palace at Vadstena, a building to be given to her for her convent. Julian, and her editor, will quote this text in her “Long” Text and “Short” Text Showing of Love (P59, 93, 153155v, A107). Birgitta’s Revelationes are modeled upon John’s Revelation, the Book of the Apocalypse, but written by a woman instead of a man, and which include the theme of theological doubting by men, countered by women’s faith, a theme Adam Easton will repeat in his 1391 Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae. It is likely that those Baltic envoys disembarked at one of the Norfolk ports like Lynn, just as in 1415 Swedish Brothers and Sisters from Vadstena’s Abbey would come that way to assist Henry IV/Henry V found the English Brigittine Syon Abbey where Julian’s manuscripts were to be so carefully preserved, Katillus Thorberni having already come from Vadstena on preparatory mission in England in 1408, bringing back to Sweden manuscripts by Richard Rolle, Adam Easton, and others. Perhaps Birgitta’s embassy visited Norwich, then the second largest city in England, on their way to King Edward III in 1347. The young Benedictine, Adam Easton, had not at that date left Norwich Cathedral Priory for Oxford University. Prior Petrus and Bishop Hemming could have been within the walls of Norwich Cathedral Priory, with that early version of Birgitta’s Revelationes or “Showings” in their hands. England thus knew of a woman’s text called the Revelationes, the “Showings”, in 1347-48, twenty years before Julian’s hypothetical writing of the initial “1368” “First” Text Westminster version of her Revelation or Showing. During the Black Death Birgitta herself left Sweden and came to Italy in 1350. In the political allegory painted on the walls of the Spanish Chapel in Santa Maria Novella in Florence, are Queen Joan of Naples with golden hair and crown, Birgitta of Sweden‘s daughter, Catherine of Sweden, Birgitta herself as a widow, and Lapa Acciaiuoli Buondelmonte, sister of the Nicolò Acciaiuoli who out of his guilt for his sins, had built the vast monastery of Certosa outside of Florence and who died in Naples in Birgitta’s presence, 8 November 1366.18

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V. Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB

Figure 19. Pious woman, Queen Joan of Naples, Catherine of Sweden, Birgitta of Sweden, Lapa Acciauoli. Santa Maria Novella, Spanish Chapel, detail of fresco

Birgitta continued writing her Revelationes, her “Showings”, throughout her whole long life, now with the assistance and oversight of a Spanish Bishop become Hermit, Alfonso of Jaén, who first was drawn into her circle in 1368, the year that Birgitta of Sweden succeeded in bringing both Pope Urban V from Avignon and the Emperor Charles of Bohemia from Prague, to Rome.

Figure 20. Birgitta, Revelationes, Siena, Biblioteca Communale degli Intronati, I.V.25/26 Figure 21. Birgitta of Sweden gives her completed Revelationes to her editor, Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén, the friend and associate of Cardinal Adam Easton, Benedictine of Norwich, from the editio princeps, Lübeck: Ghotan, 1492

The illumination of Birgitta in the act of writing comes from a manuscript written for Cristofano Di Gano, one of St Catherine of Siena ‘s disciples and scribes, giving her entire Revelationes, translated into Sienese Italian, today still in Siena (Figure 20);19 while Christopher Di Gano’s translation into Latin of Catherine’s Dialogo in Sienese Italian will

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come to England and be translated into Middle English, and eventually be printed as The Orcherd of Syon.20 Another disciple to Catherine of Siena, and indeed her executor, was the Englishman, William Flete, who became an Augustinian Hermit at Lecceto, outside Siena, who had, like Walter Hilton, been educated at Cambridge,21 and whose text, Remedies Against Temptations,22 Julian quotes from again and again in the Westminster (A84v, 95), Paris (P27, 27v, 29, 31 v, 42v, 46, 51, 52, 67v, 68, 72, 72 v, 118, 126 v, 130 v, 132 v, 140, 154 v, 156, 156 v, 160 v, 161, 161 v, 163, 165 v, 169) and Amherst (A97 v, 102, 108 v, 109, 109 v, 111, 114 v) texts of the Showing of Love. Master Adam Easton returned again to England and Norwich that same year, with a letter from Pope Urban V to Edward III, dated 3 May, 1368. He was back in Avignon in 1369. Julian’s Westminster Showing version of her text (perhaps written in 1368), which opens with the vision of the Virgin at the Nativity and the Annunciation (W72v), was still being spoken of in the “Long” Text as her “First” Showing (P13v, 81, 122v, 128v). Then we come to her next vision (W74-75). Hebrew has the letter that begins God’s name, and Jerusalem’s, Judea’s, Joshua’s, Jesus’s, and Julian’s, be the smallest one of all, and be the letter ʩ that means “hand”, yod. Another letter ʫ means the palm of one’s hand, kaph. We have in iconography the image of God holding in his hand all that is, the entire universe of which he is king, the whole cosmos, surmounted by a cross, even as a fragile glass ball, as in the later painting by Bernardino Luini. Similarly Richard II and Elizabeth II and countless other kings and queens have held orbs, the globe with the cross of Jerusalem at its top, in their imaging of God at their Coronations. But here it is not God or Edward III who holds this fragile globe. It is Julian, holding in her hand a small thing, the quantity of a hazelnut, and she is told generally in her understanding—by God—that it is all that is made (W74, P9, A99). Julian, like Wisdom in Proverbs 8 and Wisdom 8, like Gregory on Benedict, is playing with God sacred cosmic games of proportion. Easton wrote that Adam was the first High Priest, like Aaron. In Julian’s text all are the Royal Priesthood, priests and kings, each descended from Adam, each in Christ’s image. In the following year 1370 Birgitta of Sweden presented Pope Urban V and Cardinal Beaufort, who was to become the next Pope, Gregory XI, another edition of her massive book, the Revelationes, or “Showings”, and in that same year the Dominican Thomas Stubbes and the Carmelite Richard Lavenham were lecturing on Birgitta’s Revelationes or “Showings” at Oxford.23

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V. Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB

In that year of 1370, too, the Pope appointed Henry le Despenser Bishop of Norwich who had fought beside Sir John Hawkwood in Italy. Thus we begin to see that Julian’s homely Norwich is really panEuropean, with important links to Scandinavia and to Italy. The Italians call Sir John Hawkwood “Gianni Acuto”. In Siena’s Sala della Pace we can see Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s depiction of Siena at Peace, and of Siena at War, during warfare waged by these English condottieri. Terry Jones in Chaucer’s Knight describes them well. St Catherine of Siena was so appalled at their brutality that she wrote to Sir John Hawkwood begging that he take such soldiers as Henry le Despenser away from Christian Tuscany and have them wage a Crusade instead against the Saracen. This enthronement as bishop of a condottiere came about because the Pope received word of the previous Bishop of Norwich’s death while Henry le Despenser was standing before him and whom he had to pay. He did so with the Bishopric, and constantly called upon Bishop le Despenser to wage Crusades against fellow Christians who had elected an opposing Pope to himself. It is not likely that Bishop le Despenser, who was unlettered and martial, would have initially allowed Julian to become an Anchoress in the Anchorhold at St Julian’s Church in Norwich. It would be Bishops Despenser, then Arundel, and finally Alnwick who rampaged against the Norwich Wycliffite Lollards. St Julian’s Anchorhold and Church were under the patronage of the Benedictine nuns of Carrow Priory which in turn was under the patronage of the Benedictine monks of Norwich Cathedral Priory.24 The Benedictines of Norwich Cathedral Priory and Bishop le Despenser thoroughly hated each other and were only reconciled years later, when we find the first references to Julian as being left money in wills to carry out her work of prayer at St Julian’s. She may have earned her keep earlier, as had been typical for anchoresses, in teaching children their ABC and their Catechism. But under Archbishop Chancellor Arundel’s 1408 Constitutions such teaching by lay persons, especially by women, would be forbidden. In 1371-1373 Cardinal Simon Langham and Master Adam Easton were asked by Pope Gregory XI to work on peace between England and France, in accordance with Birgitta of Sweden ‘s 1342 Revelation, which is copied out in English manuscripts, giving St Denis/St Dionysius speaking to Birgitta in Arras of the need for peace between the Kings of France and England.25 We have further evidence of Easton’s presence in England at this time.26 Thus Easton would again have returned to his mother house, Norwich Cathedral Priory, around 1371-1373. He could even have been the “relygyous person”, “religious person” (P141v, A111v), at Julian’s supposed deathbed, in May of 1373, for that is

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the term typically used of a Benedictine monk living under vows of religion. Julian tells us that when she told this person of her vision, of the Crucifix “bleeding fast”, he suddenly stopped laughing and instead took her very seriously, of which she was greatly ashamed. Adam Easton at this time would have taken very seriously indeed a woman’s vision, especially of the Crucifix, for that was a most famous and recent vision his friend Birgitta of Sweden had had of the Crucifix which spoke to her at St Paul’s Outside the Walls at Rome, in 1368.27 But he would not have been the appropriate person to whom Julian could then make her confession concerning the “Discernment of Spirits”, and she is greatly troubled about making that confession. So troubled and so ill is she that she next, twice, hallucinates while sleeping, of the presence of the fiend (P142v, that nightmare returning to her again at P146v).

A

Nd in my slepe at the begynnyng me thought the fende sett hym in my throte puttyng forth a vysage fulle nere my face lyke a Yonge man and it was longe and wonder leen I saw nevyr none such . the coloure was reed lyke þe tylle stone whan it is new brent wt blacke spottes there in lyke frakylles fouler than þe tyle stone his here was red as rust not scoryd afore . wt syde lockes hangyng on þe thonwonges – he grynnyd vpon me wt a shrewde loke shewde me whyt teth. And so mekylle me thought it the more vgly, ¶ Body ne hands had he none shaply but wt hys pawes he helde me in the throte and would a stoppyd my breth and kylde me . but he might not. [And in my sleep at the beginning I thought the Fiend set himself at my throat, putting forth a face like a young man’s very close to my face. And it was long and wonderfully lean. I never saw any such. The colour was red like the tile stone when it is newly burnt with black spots in it, like freckles fouler than the tile stone, his hair was red as rust not yet scoured away, with side locks hanging on the cheeks. He grinned at me with a shrewd look, showing me white teeth, and so large I thought them the more ugly. Neither a shapely body nor hands had he but with his paws he held me by the throat and would have stopped my breath and killed me. But he could not.]

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V. Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB

Birgitta of Sweden would defend Pope Urban VI against his conspiring Cardinals and write an extraordinary vision into the Revelationes IV.49, about them, scraps of which have been preserved in her own un-schooled handwriting on pieces of Sienese paper sewn together, written in Swedish (Figure 53). In it she sees the Church as the Bride who tells the Pope and the Cardinals to respect each other and be humble. But instead the Church, from the arrogance of the Cardinals, has been turned into rusty red hinges filled with earth (punning on “cardinalis” in Latin as hinges and on “Adam” in Hebrew as “red” and “earth”), that its pavement is filthy and stinking, a bottomless pit, that the roof is burning and dripping like rain with sulphur and pitch, its tiles being marred with black spots, the bottom of the pit smoking, and everything stained as if with blood mixed with pus, adding how can the “Friends of God” dwell in such a Temple? “Quomodo”, inquit, “poterit intrare in sanctam Ecclesiam, in qua foramina cardinum sunt plena rubigine et terra? 4 Ideo et postes inclinati sunt ad terram, quia in foraminibus non est locus, ubi uncini imprimantur, qui postes deberent sustentare. Vncini quoque sunt extensi ad plenum nichilque curuati ad postes tenendum. 5 Pauimentum vero totum effossum est et conuersum in foueas profundas ad modum puteorum profundissimorum, qui nullum omnino habent fundum. 6 Tectum autem est linitum pice et ardet de igne sulphureo stillans quasi pluuia densa. 7 De nigredine vero et spissitudine fumi, qui de abisso fossarum et de stillicidiis tecti ascendit, omnes parietes maculati sunt et ita deformes in colore ad intuendum, quasi sanguis commixtus putrida sanie. 8 Ideo amicum Dei non decet habere mansionem in tali templo”.28

Julian, giving those details of the red rust and the tile stones marred with black spots, applied in Birgitta’s text to corrupt Cardinals, with Cardinal Adam Easton giving his Hebrew name and his Cardinal’s garb as the colour red, even to rubricating those letters in scarlet acrostics, seems to be reporting, as if in Freudian dream psychoanalysis, about a connection between the “religious person” (P141v, A111v), who visits her, the “man of Holy Kirk” (A97v.8-9), who tells her of St Cecilia, and this traumatising fiend. In 1373 Adam Easton was not yet a red-clad Cardinal of St Cecilia in Trastevere. But the 1233 Norwich tallage roll had shown fiends about the Jewish Jurnet family (Figure 13), Norwich had had a 1350 miracle of a fiend at the throat of one of its citizens, and Adam Easton had illustrated fiends throttling Franciscans and Dominicans, Augustinians and Carmelites, circa 1356-1563 (Figure 17). Julian, in her text, is collapsing time, as one does in dreams, palimpsesting upon an event of 1373, others before and after that date, Urban VI’s Papacy, 1378-1389, which Birgitta

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describes, and Adam Easton becoming himself Cardinal, 1381, bringing to its past also future baggage, written down by her following all these events. In a further turn of the screw, in our continuing Freudian dream psychoanalysis, we could hypothetically collate Adam Easton with the “religious person” (P141v, A111v), and with the “man of Holy Kirk” (A97v.8-9), telling of St Cecilia of Trastevere, whose name “Adam” he himself declares means “red”, “tawny”, “earth” from the Hebrew, and moreover, as Cardinal, is garbed in scarlet, as possibly also the fiend who attacks Julian, throttling her, and who seems to have red hair like rust and skin spotted like burnt tile stones, recalling Birgitta’s vision of evil plotting arrogant Cardinals as also like rust and tile stones with black freckles. It may reflect a childhood trauma. This is Julian’s XVI Showing in the “Long” Text and it is a diabolical one. Now the final Book XIII to Birgitta’s Revelationes was the Epistola Solitarii written by Adam Easton’s Hermit Bishop colleague, Alfonso of Jaén. Its sixth chapter is titled: “Hic probatur per diuinam scripturam, quod visiones et reuelaciones istius libri et aliorum beate Brigide emanuerunt et processerunt a spiritu sancto et non ab illusione dyabolica, et hoc probature ex septem signis siue racionibus hic contentis”, “Here it is proved through divine scripture that the visions and revelations of these books and others had by blessed Birgitta came from the Holy Spirit and not from diabolical illusions, and this can be proved by seven signs or reasons contained here”. In a sense the XVI Showing deconstructs the “Long” Text and protests against itself by presenting what is precisely and most graphically a diabolical illusion–we recall Julian noting that the other persons present do not smell the fire that she does (P143)–and one which is closely derived from the diabolical and illusory architecture related to corrupt Cardinals in Birgitta’s celestial Revelationes IV.49. However, despite this trauma, she calls out “Benedicite dominus”, blessing God, in the Benedictine and Brigittine opening of conversation, just as in the 1350 Norwich miracle the victim remembered to call on the Virgin and so was released from the Fiend’s clutch at his throat (Lambeth Manuscript 432, fols. 87-87v). In this she carries out William Flete’s Remedies against Temptations, and her editor (who may be Adam Easton) in the Sloan Manuscript comments in the third person concerning her scruples about confession that brought on this nightmare: The XVi Revelation &c And it is conclusion & Confirmation to all XV. And of hir frelte & morning in disese, & lyte speking after the gret Comfort of Iesus saying she had ravid, which being hir gret sekeness I suppose was but Venial

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V. Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB synne: But yet the devil after that had gret power to Vexin hir ner to deth (S190).

Which next leads her into the most lovely inner vision from Wisdom 8 and even from Adam Easton’s Pseudo-Dionysian Invocation to the Trinity: Of the Worshipfull syte of the soule which is so nobly create, þt it myte no better a be made in which the trinite joyeth everlastingly & the soule may have rest in nothing but in God which sitteth therin reuling al things (S191).

In this we may deduce a scene of not only clergy abuse but incest, where the perpetrator, in penance, finally comes to assist his victim, who may be his sister, to write the Showing as therapy, for herself and for her readers against trauma, creating a Viktor Frankl logotherapeutic Book, both being “wounded healers”. Jeffrey Hamburger has spoken of Julian’s Showing as a telltale title to the eye as well as the ear. She will next, perhaps, counsel Margery to write a similar therapeutic book, including in it an outcry against clergy abuse, both women copying that of Birgitta with her great book of Revelations for peace in all of Europe and against the corruption of cardinals. Certainly, in counselling Margery, Julian draws on this same vision of the City in the Soul. Julian had declared most emphatically (P53), Adams synne was the most harme that evyr was done or evyr shalle in to the worldes end. [Adam’s sin was the greatest harm that ever was done or ever shall unto the world’s end.]

Julian next included John of Beverley as a sinner, which he is not in Bede’s account of that saint (P68), ¶And then god brought ^merely to my mynde. David and other in the olde lawe wthym wtou‫܌‬t nom= ber. And in the new lawe he brought to my mynde . ffurst magdaleyne . Pe ter and paule . Thomas and Jude . Sent John of beverly.

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[And then God brought merrily to my mind David and others in the Old Law with him without number. And in the New Law he brought to my mind, first Magdalen, Peter and Paul, Thomas and Judas, St John of Beverley.]

The only other version in John of Beverley’s vita, of sinfulness followed by conversion, occurs in a Flemish text, dated 1512. Alan Deighton discussed the medieval legend concerning John of Beverley, that he sold his soul to the fiend who offered in exchange that he become drunk, that he rape his sister, that he murder her. John chose the first as the least sinning, but in his drunkenness also committed the other two, becoming a Wild Man in his grief, until he finally confessed his sin to the Pope, coming home to Beverley in Yorkshire and finding his sister still alive in her grave, singing.29 A related tale is of Richard Rolle, again of Yorkshire, getting his sister to give him her clothing and running off to be a hermit in the wilderness at which point she declares he has gone mad, a tale which continued to be known in Vadstena and Syon circles.30 Other brothers and sisters living separately and contemplatively included Benedict and his twin Scholastica, the Beverley brother and sister, Thomas de Froidmont and Margaret of Jerusalem, and the East Anglian Guthlac and Pega. Adam Easton was connected with the Collegiate Church of St John of Beverley, being appointed its provost by Boniface IX within weeks of his restoration to the Cardinalate of St Cecilia. Otherwise, Benedictine John of Beverley was of little importance in England until Agincourt, 1415, following which his cult was strongly observed at Henry V’s foundation, the Brigittines’ Syon Abbey. Adam Easton, as the “religious person” (P141v, A111v), and as the “man of Holy Kirk” (A97v.8-9), telling of St Cecilia in Trastevere, would take very seriously indeed a vision of the Crucifixion, like those to St Francis of Assisi in 1205 at San Damiano and 1224 at La Verna, and like that given to Birgitta in Rome in 1368, and like that to Catherine of Siena in Pisa in 1375, which copy Francis’. Yet Julian’s vision in Norwich in 1373 is very different from theirs. As Julian gazed upon the Crucifix she began to see the blood flow from the garland of thorns about Christ’s head. She describes it as like the rain upon thatched eaves—and we know that St Julian’s Church roof was thatched at this time31—and she describes it also as like the scales of herring that would have been brought up the river so near to her church and along whose shores merchants built vast storage barns, including Isaac’s House. Along that street also parchment was made for use by monks and friars and such like who would have been literate in Julian’s day in Norwich. The parchment for Julian’s own book, her Showing, would have been bought by her maid in that street. Enclosed Julian’s maids Sara and Alice are named in wills made in her favour, one

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V. Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB

of the maids in turn perhaps becoming the anchoress, “Alice Heremyte”, who left a silver chalice to a Norwich church in her will. Julian, however, simply refuses to make her crucifix vision political in the way that Birgitta of Sweden does. Instead she has it be homely and familiar, likening it to rain and herring (P14v). The scale of heryng for the rou= ndhede in the spredyng . the droppes of the evesyng of a howse for the plenteuou= shede vnnumerable. [The scale of a herring for the roundness of the spreading, the drops from the eaves of a house for the innumerable plenteousness.]

And she also evades it, distancing herself from it, speaking in the Amherst Manuscript like a Lollard, such as had the executed William Sawtre, Margery Kempe’s St Margaret’s chaplain, with distaste of the now legally mandated prayers to “Payntyngys of crucyfexes” “paintings of crucifixes” (A97).32 Birgitta of Sweden died the same year and in the month following Julian’s illness, 23 June 1373, on the vigil of Mary Magdalen, following her return from Jerusalem, in Rome, her body first being laid upon the board upon which she customarily ate and wrote the Revelationes (Figure 22),33 then brought home to Sweden by way of Baltic Gdansk and laid to rest in a sumptuous shrine at Vadstena where her monastery was founded. Julian describes the colouring of Jesus’ face as just like such a tawny board, both Julian and Adam knowing that the word “Adam” in Hebrew also means “tawny” (P34v), the skynne and the flesshe that semyd of the face and of the body . was smalle rympylde wt a tawny coloure lyke a drye bord whan it is agyd. And the face more browne than the body. [The skin and the flesh that seemed of the face and of the body, was wrinkled with a tawny colour like a dry board when it is aged. And the face browner than the body.]

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Figure 22. Birgitta’s board for writing and eating, sleeping and dying, today still preserved in the room in which she lived and died in Rome, and seen by Margery Kempe Figure 23. Birgitta’s shrine in the Blue Church, Vadstena, Sweden

Catherine of Siena was examined by the Dominicans in that year in the Spanish Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, amidst its frescoes of herself, and her friends, Catherine of Sweden and Birgitta of Sweden. Birgitta’s director and her appointed executor, the Hermit Bishop Alfonso of Jaén, gave Birgitta’s Revelationes to Pope Gregory XI and was next appointed by the Pope to serve as Catherine of Siena’s director.34 At which point the illiterate Catherine miraculously began writing, or rather dictating, sometimes to three secretaries at once, letters to Popes and Emperors and even to the Englishmen King Richard II and Sir John Hawkwood, the martial Bishop of Norwich’s former companion as condottiere in Italy. Catherine of Siena, like Birgitta, next composed a theological visionary work, the Dialogo,35 a copy of which was brought to England, likely by Adam Easton who knew her, and translated into Middle English, later to be printed as The Orcherd of Syon by Wynken de Worde in 1519 for Syon Abbey (Figure 50).36 The translation could be by Easton himself who is noted to have made such translations: “De communicatione ydiomatum”, “De diversitate translationum”, “De perfectione vite spiritualis”. In 1379 Alfonso of Jaén, 3 March, Adam Easton, 9 March, and Catherine of Sweden, Birgitta’s daughter,10 March, all testified on behalf of the validity of Pope Urban VI’s election.37 Then Adam Easton presented to Pope Urban VI his magnum opus, the Defensorium Ecclesiastice Potestatis, “The Defense of Ecclesiastical Power”, based on Dionysian hierarchies, and for which he read—and countered—Dante Alighieri. It ends with the Augustinian, “Thou hast created us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts can find no rest, until they rest in Thee”, a passage

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V. Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB

Julian uses in the Westminster and subsequent Showings (W75-75v, P10, A99v-100). In that same year Alfonso of Jaén wrote the Epistola Solitarii, in defence of Birgitta’s visions, and he edited her entire Revelationes, in preparation for her canonisation. The material of Alfonso of Jaén’s Epistola Solitarii on the “Discernment of Spirits” is quarried from William Flete‘s pre-1379 Remedies Against Tempations; it is found again in the Cloud Author‘s treatises on the “Discernment of Spirits”; in the comments on Catherine of Siena found in East Anglian Cloud manuscripts;38 in Adam Easton’s 1391 Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae; in the Chastising of God’s Children (which is in several East Angian manuscripts);39 in Julian’s 1413 Showing (A114v,115); and in Julian’s conversation with Margery Kempe (M21). The Epistola solitarii also exists translated into Middle English in a Norfolk manuscript of Birgitta’s Revelationes.40 Catherine of Siena, the Dominican Tertiary, died in 29 April 1380, equally revered by Romans as had been Birgitta of Sweden. At her death she was surrounded by her disciples, women and men, and with her mother at her side, a scene strongly evoking that of May 1373 at Julian’s “deathbed” in Norwich (Figure 5). A “Holy Dying” in the Middle Ages was a strongly participatory event, even in cloistered settings as at Carrow Priory and Syon Abbey. Breughel the Elder’s chiaroscuro painting of the Dormition of the Virgin shows this well where she gazes upon the Crucifix of her Son, while James, Jesus’ brother, helps her hold the candle in her hands and all the disciples gather round her while a servant girl sleeps by the kitchen fire (Figure 4). Earlier, in 1377, the townsfolk of Lynn had rebelled against, routed and wounded the Lord Bishop Henry le Despenser of Norwich because he insisted on their Mayor’s mace being borne before him as he entered the city gates.41 The particular mayor in question was one John Brunham, father to Margery Kempe . In 1381 the Bishop of Norwich, true to form, acted swiftly to quell the Peasants’ Revolt, fuelled by Wyclifism and Lollardy.42 The bishop, Thomas Walsingham tells us, “dressed as a knight, wearing an iron helm and a solid hauberk impregnable to arrows as he wielded a real two-edged sword”, though clergy were forbidden to use more than a mace when fighting. Walsingham goes on to compare “the warlike-priest to a wild boar gnashing its teeth, neither sparing himself nor his enemies”. In particular he oversaw the execution of the Peasants’ Norwich leader, the dyer John Litester, the acclaimed “King of the Commons”, and the idol of the people, hearing his confession, and holding up his head during the drawing, before Litester’s execution by being next hanged and quartered. “Payntyngys of crucifexes”, “paintings of Crucifixes”,

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can help illustrate Julian’s text and Litester’s death, such as an illumination in a manuscript owned by Westminster’s Benedictine Abbot Nicholas Lytlington between 1382-1386, or Sir Miles Stapleton’s Breviary, or the famous Norwich Cathedral Despenser Retable (Plate VII).

Figure 24. Despenser Retable, Norwich Cathedral, Paul Hurst, ARPS

The Bishop of Norwich, circa 1382, commissioned the commemorative retable, Sheila Upjohn notes, following Litester’s execution. It is now restored to Norwich Cathedral for which it was originally intended after having spent some centuries as a table bottom following the Reformation.43 Sheila Upjohn notes how Julian describes the head of Christ having the skin torn as if it had been dragged along the road—the medieval form of execution being preceded by the drawing of the victim along the street, as was done to Litester, before the quartering of his body. Julian describes the drying of Jesus’ body as it hangs upon the cross—far more like that of a body strung up for many days upon the gallows, drying in the Norfolk wind and the cold, than Jesus’ Crucifixion of but six hours in Jerusalem (P33v-36, etc.). When I look at Bishop Despenser’s retable I seem to see Despenser portrayed in the image of Pilate, Litester, the “King of the Commons”, in the image of Christ. The following year the Norfolk people attempted to revolt again and to kill their Bishop, but the Revolt was again swiftly put down. In 1381 Adam Easton was made a Cardinal and given the Basilica of St Cecilia in Trastevere in Rome, where Benedictine nuns and, later, Brigittine monks resided.44 The Blackfriars Council, the “Earthquake Council”, of 21 May 1382, instigated by Adam Easton and mentioned by Julian in the Showing (P158-158v), condemned Wyclif’s writings, because Wyclif had condemned Benedictine wealth, John Wyclif dying at Lutterworth the following year. Wyclif was for equality, Easton for hierarchy, Wyclif for translating the Bible from Latin into English, Easton for translating the Bible from Hebrew into Latin, the Norwich Carmelite

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V. Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB

John Bale noting of him, “Iste multa opuscula edidisse per ea tempora perhibetur, ac Biblia tota ab hebreo in latinum transtulisse”. Julian seems to mediate between them. As Cardinal, Adam Easton worked to effect the marriage/coronation between his King of England, Richard II, with Anne of Bohemia, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles of Bohemia, and sister of the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Bohemia. The 1382 Liber Regalis manuscript illuminated by a Bohemian artist, which is still used for the coronations of English Queens and Kings, shows Richard and his consort Anne in Benedictine Westminster Abbey, both in the Royal Priestly blue garb of Aaron about which Adam Easton writes extensively (Plate VI).45

Figure 25. Westminster Abbey, Liber Regalis, fol.20. Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster

The theology of the Liber Regalis is Adam Easton’s, speaking of how the Abbot of Westminster must instruct the King in Benedictine humility, and basing it upon Hebrew narratives of prophets and anointed kings, speaking of Aaron, Nathan and Zadok, quarrying the Epistle to the Hebrews, Jerome, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Victorines, essentially works in the library of books Easton and Julian used and shared. The exquisite Wilton Diptych, again likely by Bohemian artists, shows Richard II in prayer, kneeling on the ground in a wilderness before his

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patrons, John the Baptist, Edward the Confessor and St Edmund Martyr, in a “Sacred Conversation”.

Figure 26. London, National Gallery, Wilton Diptych

While yet another work of art shows Geoffrey Chaucer reading his Troilus and Criseyde to Richard II, again garbed in cloth of gold, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, Parker Library 61, fol. 1v. In that same year Adam Easton was appointed as one of three cardinals to have oversight of Birgitta’s cause for canonisation, and it was noted that, either then or—more likely—later, “he was prepared to risk his theological reputation over the matter, in order to further a cause in which he believed, and moreover, one in which he was personally convinced”.46 For initially he seems to have dragged his feet about the project, until later on being galvanised into belief in her miracles. Cardinal Adam Easton thus lived an intensely active life as teacher, scholar, diplomat but he yearned, too, like John Whiterig, to be a solitary, a hermit, an anchorite. I believe he was to make Julian his contemplative surrogate while he paced corridors of power. I present this discussion in the following chapter on the Cloud of Unknowing cluster of texts. But then disaster struck, 11 January 1385, when Adam was at Nocera with the Pope. Urban VI in his paranoia against his corrupt cardinals even

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V. Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB

punished those who were loyal to him, for their just criticism of his errors. Six cardinals were hurled into a dungeon at Nocera and most cruelly tortured. One of them was the Norwich Benedictine, Cardinal Adam Easton of England. Immediately King Richard II, the English Benedictine Congregation, Oxford University and the English Parliament wrote letters in defence of Cardinal Adam Easton, begging that the Pope bind up his wounds with wine and oil (referring to the Good Samaritan Parable) and restore him to liberty and his Cardinalate.47 Pope Urban VI had to flee, 20 August, to Genoa by mountains, then by sea, arriving there, 23 September, the six Cardinals slung under horses. The other five Cardinal prisoners disappeared, executed clandestinely. Easton, despite passionate pleas (from King Richard II, Parliament, Oxford University and the English Benedictine Congregation), and despite his own continuing loyalty to the Pope, remained a prisoner until the next Pope’s accession in 1389, for nearly five years. At least his life was saved. While in that dungeon awaiting death and so terribly injured from torture Easton had prayed that if he were to be spared he would work for the canonisation of St Birgitta of Sweden, who had died twelve years earlier, in 1373, the year of and the month after Julian’s Showing, and for whose cause for canonisation he had been given responsibility with two other cardinals in 1382. He could well have envisioned himself as like Boethius on Death Row, his mind now concentrated wonderfully on women and their contemplative writings, rather than on hierarchies in Church and State, particularly if he had already sought to give a Norwich anchoress spiritual direction. Certainly the tortures wrought on his body and those of his fellow cardinals parallel those meted out to Litester, the “King of the Commons”, in a turning of the tables, a reversal of rank. Julian describes them well in her Parable of the Lord and the Servant, whom she names “Adam”. While under mere house arrest for a lengthy four years, first a year in Genoa, then three in Lucca and Perugia, and no longer busily officiating as Cardinal of England at Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, he could have set himself the task of translating women’s contemplative writings, modelling himself on the Cardinal Jerome’s and Cardinal Jacques de Vitry’s similar support of women contemplatives, in Easton’s case perhaps the writings which then show up especially in East Anglian and Lincolnshire manuscripts, including Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes, Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, with its “M.N.” glosses, Catherine of Siena’s Dialogo, Mechthild von Hackeborn’s Book of Ghostly Grace, and Jan van Ruusbroec’s Sparkling Stone, of which the Mirror and the Sparkling Stone later are found in the Amherst Manuscript, and the Book

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of Ghostly Grace, written by the Amherst’s scribe, but in a different manuscript. Under the influence of Birgitta’s miracle Adam Easton now sets himself to study this “Feminist Theology” in preparation for her Defensorium. For these works constitute a contemplative library that later made its way to the Brigittine Syon Abbey, founded by King Henry V in London, but which may first have been shipped by way of Flanders to Norwich in 1390 and shared with the Anchoress Julian of Norwich as her library, next called in by Bishop Alnwick of Norwich, who then was translated to Lincoln, three of these works being copied out by a Lincolnshire scribe and two of them, along with Julian’s 1413 “Short” Text Showing of Love, in the Amherst Manuscript, coming to Sheen/Syon. When he was released I believe that Adam immediately made his way back to Norwich with the necessary documentation, including the massive illuminated Revelationes or “Showings” she had written and which Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén had edited. Joan Greatrex lists the bills for the shipping of his books to Norwich through Flanders, 1389-90, Norwich Cathedral Priory Master paying 48s 7d, the Almoner 10s “pro cariagio librorum domini cardinalis”, the Benedictine Prior of Lynn contributing 20s “circa libros domini Ade de Eston”. The Norfolk Record Office actually lists far greater sums, clearly sufficient for the Lord Cardinal’s 1390-91 journeying and stay in Norwich.48 In 1390, Westminster Abbey received a copy of the Bull of Boniface IX, restoring to Cardinal Adam Easton his English benefices taken from him unjustly. This is evidence that in 1389-1391 Cardinal Adam Easton returned home, to Norwich Cathedral Priory, and in its cloister he set to work writing the Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae, the “Defense of St Birgitta”, the document, the legal brief, for her canonisation, sent next to Pope Boniface IX, to the Brigittine Abbess in Vadstena, Sweden, and to Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén, “Et illum libellum per articulos declaratos transmisi domino Alphonso eius devoto ad Ianuam isto anno”, in February 1390, whom he does not yet know has died in Genoa, 19 August 1389. The Devil’s Advocate for the cause for the canonisation, a Perugian theologian, made use of Nicholas of Lyra‘s 1310 XV Articles against Marguerite Porete (whose Mirror of Simple Souls is in the Julian Amherst Manuscript), arguing in XLI Articles that women are unworthy to have visions of God. (Margery Kempe would similarly have such Articles placed against her by theologians.) Cardinal Adam Easton countered that claim, using Nicholas of Lyra dialectically in his Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae, speaking of the Old Testament women prophetesses, of the Holy Women at the Tomb who had the vision of the Resurrection and who were

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V. Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB

the Apostles to the Apostles of that Good News, the Gospel, which the male disciples considered but “idle tales”, and of Philip’s four virgin daughters in Acts 21 who were all prophetesses. He continues by speaking of Virgin Saints like Agnes (to whom St Peter had appeared in a vision and who appeared in “Sacred Conversations” to Birgitta, teaching her the Latin she lacked and needed, and giving her jewels from her crown for every insult given her by male churchmen, Revelationes VIII.15, Plate Vc),

Figure 27. Rome, St Agnes, mosaic commissioned by Pope Honorius (625-638), seen daily by Birgitta

Agatha and Cecilia (co-patrons of his Cardinalate Basilica in Trastevere), all of whom are named in the Canon of the Mass, the Benedictine communities of the churches of St Agnes and St Cecilia tending the lambs, spinning and weaving their wool for the pallium. He next speaks of Peter’s “Quo vadis” vision of Christ at Rome, and Thomas’ vision of Christ in Jerusalem. He narrates of women’s far greater faith than men, the men denying and doubting Christ, the women staying at the cross. He states that women’s visionary books are valid in the eyes of the Church. Consequently Birgitta of Sweden was canonised a saint in Rome, 7 October 1391. Adam Easton’s Defensorium, echoing William Flete’s Remedies against Temptations, and both echoed in the Amherst’s ending to the Showing (A114v-115), was used as a concluding imprimatur to manuscripts of the Revelationes, but came to be replaced in the printed

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editio princeps by Cardinal Turrecremata’s Defense, penned following the 1433 Council of Basel. Nevertheless the Prior of Norwich present at that Council continued Norwich’s interest in the saint.49 While Adam is writing his Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae Julian is writing the version of the Showing that most mirrors the Revelationes of St Birgitta. She adds to her 1373 vision aspects which belong to Rome, rather than to Norwich. For instance, she describes what she perhaps saw in relation to the Veronica Veil shown to pilgrims in Rome’s Vatican Basilica on Good Friday (P21, A98v). It made me to thynke of the holie vernicle of rome which he por= trude wt his one blessed face . when he was in his hard passion . wilfully goyng to his death. [It made me think of the Holy Veronica Veil of Rome which he portrayed with his own blessed face when he was in his hard Passion, going wilfully to his death.]

Sr Ritamary Bradley suggests from her words that Julian had actually travelled to Rome and seen this precious relic.50 If she had so travelled to Rome she would likely have stayed under the aegis of Adam Easton after he became Cardinal in 1381, his household being composed of many people from Norwich, as we see from his Roman will, and which was headquartered at his titular church of St Cecilia in Trastevere. Pope Pascal I described how he had a vision in St Peter’s of St Cecilia where she appeared to him in 822 in golden robes telling him of her burial place, beside her husband and brother-in-law, in St Callixtus’ Catacombs. He found them and brought them to her church the following day, reburying her there as she was. A sixteenth-century cardinal then exhumed her, finding her incorrupt, lying on her side, the head turned in shame, the sword wounds upon its neck, still robed in gold tissue, and commissioned Stefano Maderno, likewise an eyewitness, to sculpt her so. The apse mosaic had similarly garbed Christ the Teacher, Cecilia, Pascal and Agatha in cloth-of-gold (Plate Vd).51

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V. Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB

Figure 28. St Cecilia, mosaic at Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome, commissioned by Pope Pascal I, on finding her incorrupt body at St Callixtus

It is likely Adam Easton, who as a “man of Holy Kirk” (A97v.8-9), told not only the Pope of Rome, the Abbess of Vadstena, the Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén whom he thought was at Genoa, but also Julian in Norwich, of St Cecilia, the patron of his church in Rome as Cardinal, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, in justifying Birgitta’s prophesying. If Julian had been a pilgrim guest of the Benedictine nuns at Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, walking beside the Tiber to Vatican St Peter’s one Good Friday, these Roman memories would have heightened her use of the Veronica Veil (P21, A98v), St Cecilia’s martyrdom of three neck wounds and three days’ preaching while dying (A97v.16-17), Birgitta’s “tawny” board in the room where she died shown to pilgrims (P34v), and Julian’s own ever-present theme of Christ as Teacher (P61v), of Christ as Master (P50), of Christ as Brother (W87v, P15v, 46v, A101), this “Master Jesus” (P50), shadowed by that of her Norwich/ Oxford /Avignon/Rome “Master Adam”, become Cardinal of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere and reformed as supporter of Birgitta of Sweden, and also those Norwich Jewish scholars prior to their Diaspora, who were addressed as “Master”, as “Rav”, as “Rabbi”, as was Jesus himself (Matthew 19.16, 22.16, 22.23-24, 23.26; Luke 7.40, 10.25, 12.13, 18.18, 19.29, 20.21, 20.27). Julian’s Amherst Showing of Love, we have noted, engrosses and underlines in red with great emphasis St Cecilia’s name, desiring to share that saint’s three neck wounds (Plate IIb, A97v.16-17),

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Figure 29. ©The British Library Board. Amherst Manuscript, Additional 37790, fol. 97v.

while the Norwich Castle Manuscript likewise stresses St Cecilia as the feminist model for writer and reader, as had earlier Christina of Markyate and as would Chaucer’s Second Nun (N26v-27), Thenk on seint Cecile & doo as sche dede. for sche haar euere in herte in in here brest woordis of þe gospel. and of holy writ and neiþer nyght ne day sche stynted fro prayeris & fro god dis woordis. [Think on St Cecilia and do as she did, for she had even in her heart and in her breast words of the Gospel, and of Holy Scripture, and neither night nor day did she cease from prayer and from God’s words.]

1388-February 1393 is exactly the time span the Anchoress Julian of Norwich tells us within her text that she was formulating and writing her second version of the Revelations of Divine Love, her “Long” Text Showing of Love, her magnum opus of the same title as Birgitta’s massive book. Perhaps by this date, perhaps not, Julian was an anchoress at St Julian’s Church, within walking distance of the Cathedral where the Cardinal, convalescing from his tortures, was perhaps studying a book of the same title and likewise written by a woman, and edited by his friend

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V. Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB

and associate, Alfonso of Jaén, in fulfilment of the vow Adam had made during his dungeon imprisonment in 1385. In the “Long” Text of the Showing of Love we can see she is building upon an earlier version of its text, expanding it, cross-referencing in it back and forth, often speaking of a “First” Showing, but which is not the Christological I Showing of the XV+I, for that is of the Crown of Thorns, but instead is of the opening and Marian “First” Showing of the Westminster Manuscript. She tells us at the Showing’s ending that it is not yet ended, that she is not yet satisfied with it, that she will write yet another version of it. That reminds one of the way Dante Alighieri writes his texts, their endings being their beginnings again. It is also how St Birgitta had constructed her magnum opus across almost half a century in edition upon edition, book upon book. Julian interestingly interpolates a magnificent section that is not in the Table of Contents of the XV+I Showings, the Parable of the Lord and the Servant (P93-106v). This Parable is to be read allegorically on many levels, in the way that Dante Alighieri writes in the Commedia. It is both scriptural exegesis about God as Man, God creating Adam in his own image, in Genesis; then God the Father sending God the Son in that same image, in the Gospels; as Jesus, which means in Hebrew, “God saves”, to save Adam, which in Hebrew means Everyman, Everywoman, Jesus himself in the Gospels calling himself “Son of Man”, “Ben-Adam”, “BarAdam”, our Brother, we his Mother, his Brothers, his Sisters. But it also reads as a political allegory, of the Pope and of his loyal Cardinal who has fallen into a dungeon, a deep slade, a “fossa humo”, an earthern ditch (Isaiah 2.10), where he lies sorely wounded, from torture, and who seeks to return to his Lord.48 In a way it is similar to the Despenser Retable, where it seems one thing but which hides/shows its censored opposite. Julian tells us that this Servant is Adam, and she uses the same words about the meaning of Adam as does Adam Easton in his own writings. Both know of the Hebrew meanings for Adam being “Everyman”, “earth”, “tawny” (P112v) ¶ And thus I vnderstode that mannes soule is made of nought, that is to sey it is made but of nought. that is made as thus . whan god shulde make mannes body he toke the slyme of the erth whych is a mater medelyd and ga= deryd of alle bodely thyngys . and ther= of he made mannes body

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[And thus I understood that man’s soul is made of nought, that is to say it is made but of nothing that is made, as thus: When God should make man’s body he took the slime of the earth, which is a matter meddled and gathered of all bodily things, and from that he made man’s body.]

Gradually, in Julian’s brilliant allegory, the fallen repentant Adam, who shadows the imprisoned Cardinal Adam, then turns into the risen Christ, the Son and heir of the Kingdom of Heaven, who comes to sit at the Lord’s right hand, of Psalm 110 and the Epistle to the Hebrews, but not in the literal sense, instead as being honoured (P93,106), as indeed Adam Easton was, the Pope writing to Parliament commending him, 1390. Both Adam and Julian in their theology, derived from Rabbi David Kimhi, speak of Adam as all of us, as the general man, all of us fellow-heirs with Christ in the Kingdom of Heaven. Easton had lectured on the Hebrew Scriptures at Oxford, he owned the writings of Rabbi David Kimhi, and the biographies of Cardinal Adam Easton note that he translated the entire Hebrew Bible.53 Rabbi David Kimhi (RADAK) countered Kabbalistic learning and Maimonides’ scepticism, pleading for the return to philology in studying theology. He argued that “Jerome, your translator, has corrupted the text by taking, ‘The Lord said my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, and I will make your enemies my footstool”’”, in Psalm 110, literally; that it meant instead to be treated honourably, which is precisely what Julian says in her text, and likewise does Cardinal Adam Easton and the Cloud of Unknowing author. Kimhi also says this reference is to a mortal lord, not the Messiah, which Easton and Julian ignore, for their reading is in the Christian Creed.

Figure 30. Florence, Museo Horne, Simone Martini, Diptych

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V. Julian and Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB

Simone Martini’s “Sacred Conversation” diptych (Plate Ve), illustrates Julian’s W, P, A Showing of Love, its Marian First Showing, its Christological XV+I Showings, in presenting the yoked contraries, Birth and Death, that “one” together when it is closed, the Madonna and Child, the dead Christ in the Pietà, both with tawny red hair, as Son of Adam, Son of David, for David also in Hebrew is ruddy, tawny, with beautiful eyes (1 Samuel 16:12). The Luttrell Psalter, fol. 203, showed God the Father, and David as mortal king, enthroned side by side, the cross-nimbed Christ as Creator, holding the Orb of Creation, David, the sceptre. Flemish art, later than Julian, was to similarly illustrate Psalm 110, “Dixit Dominus Domino meo: sede a dextris meis”, the Psalm sung each Sunday at Vespers in the Christian liturgy, but with the Trinity, to which Norwich Cathedral is dedicated, with God the Father, God the Son and the Dove between them for the Holy Ghost.54 This ambivalence, this theological argument, from Kimhi’s book and from Avignon’s assembled Rabbis’ conversation, as to whether the the second Lord is mortal or God, serves Julian’s allegorizing well. There is yet another layer to this allegory. Julian tells us that the Lord is garbed in blue seated on the ground in a Wilderness. That is Aaron’s colour. But it is also the Virgin’s colour. In the “1368” Westminster Manuscript version Julian had Jesus become his Mother and ours. Adam Easton at Avignon would have been familiar with the now-lost fresco painted by Simone Martini of the Virgin in Humility, where she is seated in blue on the ground, with the donor of that painting, the Cardinal Stefaneschi, in his scarlet, kneeling in prayer before her. We recall Richard II the Lord and King of England in cloth of gold kneeling on the ground in a wilderness as if a servant in the Wilton Diptych. But there is more. Cardinal Jerome had written to the Roman noblewoman Fabiola a magnificent treatise, “compulisti me, fabiola, litteris tuis, ut de aaron tibi scriberem uestimentis”, explaining the High Priest Aaron’s garb in Exodus, specifically dwelling upon the hyacinthine blue of his ephod.55 Adam Easton won his Cardinalate through writing of that material on the Pope as Christendom’s High Priest, as Aaron, in blue, using both Jerome and Pseudo-Dionysius, in his Defensorium Ecclesiastice Potestatis. And he included it, too, in the Liber Regalis, Bohemian artists there showing both Richard II and Anne of Bohemia in Aaronic blue. Cardinal Jerome, a model for Cardinal Easton, had left Rome for Bethlehem, being joined there by the noble Roman matron, Paula, and her virgin daughter Eustochium, in 386, and together they had worked at studying Hebrew, already having Greek and Latin, and together translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin, the Vulgate Bible which

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served Latin Christianity until Vatican II. Birgitta of Sweden had a most beautiful married virgin daughter, Catherine of Sweden, friends with Catherine of Siena, Catherine of Sweden becoming the first Abbess of the Brigittine Abbey of Vadstena in Sweden. A painting by Francesco Botticini, now in London’s National Gallery, but formerly at San Girolamo (Jerome), Fiesole, shows Saints Jerome, Paula and her beautiful daughter, Eustochium, simultaneously portraying the last two also as Saints Birgitta and her beautiful daughter, Catherine of Sweden. Birgitta and her daughter Catherine and their labours at producing the Revelationes, were analogised to Paula and her daughter Eustochium and their labours at producing the Vulgate. A Syon Abbey manuscript now at Lambeth Palace and associated with Norwich, speaks of Paula and “the holy maid Eustace”, or Eustochium.56 The Norwich Castle Manuscript, which could be written by Julian of Norwich herself, echoes that phrase where it begins with a treatise translated into Middle English, supposedly of Cardinal Jerome, but actually the British Pelagius, writing to “the holy maid Demetriade” on how to be an anchoress. Birgitta’s earliest editor, Magister Mathias, had studied Hebrew under the misogynist Jewish convert in Paris, Nicholas of Lyra, and had then translated the Bible from Hebrew into Swedish for Birgitta to use in her visionary writings, similarly modelling his role on that of Jerome, the great Doctor of the Church and his relationship with holy women, and on Cardinal Jacques de Vitry to Marie d’Oignes. Master Adam had taught Hebrew at Oxford and translated the Bible. Julian’s texts, especially the Westminster and “Long” Texts, though far less so, the Amherst, are filled with scriptural allusions to both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Greek Testament. The Wycliffite Bible was being produced during Julian’s lifetime, but she is not using it.57 The Wycliffite Bible translates the Latin Vulgate into medieval English. That was one of the reasons for Adam Easton’s scorn for his colleague John Wyclif. Easton believed the Bible should be translated, as was to be the King James Bible some centuries later, from Hebrew and Greek. When I study Julian’s text, with Hebrew and Greek Bibles at hand, I find that was what she was doing, very quietly, very humbly, in an obscure anchorhold in Norwich, and that she, with Adam Easton’s help, was giving to her even-Christians the Bible in our language. Their model was that household of Cardinal Jerome and the Holy Paula and her daughter Eustochium in the cave adjacent to that of the Nativity in Bethlehem, visited by Birgitta and by Margery on pilgrimage, sharing in their “Holy Conversations”.

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Julian quotes directly and repeatedly from Gregory’s Dialogues, giving the Life of St Benedict, on scale and proportion, in relation to the hazel nut image, how all that is made, all creation, seems full little in the presence of its Maker, the Creator, which indicates she probably was Benedictine. She is also deeply conversant in St Benedict’s Rule. She could have been a schoolgirl, or a lay sister, or a nun at Benedictine Carrow Priory.58 Clearly she knows the monastic Offices and the Lessons from Holy Scripture with profound familiarity, these being further enhanced by her lifelong Benedictine lectio divina, her contemplation upon them. But there is a reference in an Adam Easton manuscript to a deformed woman,59 and I wonder if it is she, in pain, and frequently ill, as she herself writes of herself (W111v-112v, P3-4v, 137, A97-97v, 103.13, 110v.11), not expecting to live long, yet brilliant, and succeeding in defying even her own expectations in living to a ripe old age, a Stephen Hawking. From her constant references to teaching, until that is forbidden by Archbishop Arundel’s 1408 Constitutions, one can assume she may have earned her keep by teaching, for instance the A.B.C. she mentions twice in her text (P104, 166), and by copying out manuscripts, these often the work of others, rather than her own. There are manuscripts from Brigittine Syon Abbey contexts known as the XV “O”s.60 They are frequently described in this almost exclusively English manuscript tradition, as prayers about the Crucifixion taught to St Birgitta by the Crucifix vision she had had at St Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome in 1368. So it seems someone in England invented those PseudoBrigittine prayers, someone who wrote in a florid Dionysian/Victorine style, someone who wanted them to seem to be composed by a devout woman. Though they parallel Julian’s “Long” Text XV+I Showings structure, they are penned in Adam Easton’s style. There are two versions of this “Long” Text written by our Julian of Norwich, the “Long” Text in the Paris Manuscript (P), the Stowe Manuscript, and the 1670 Cressy printed edition, all of which which lack editorialising chapter descriptions, and the two Sloane Manuscripts (SS) which give a colophon like the gloss by M.N. to The Mirror of Simple Souls and the introduction to The Cloud of Unknowing, as well as careful chapter descriptions, written by a contemporary of Julian, who deeply admires her, who knows her identity as a holy woman, who associates her with God as Wisdom (P78v, S154), who is editing her text, who authorises her work and who requires that it not be altered (S1110). He seems to model his work of editing Julian’s Showing on the editing of Birgitta of Sweden ‘s Revelationes, first by Magister Mathias in Sweden in 1345, then by Bishop Alfonso of Jaén in Rome, through its final editing in 1379,

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following her death in 1373. This editor could only be our Norwich Benedictine, Adam Easton, and thus colleague to three great fourteenthcentury women theologians, Birgitta of Sweden, Catherina of Siena, and Julian of Norwich. He could be the Benedictine monk who stopped laughing, May 1373, at her supposed “deathbed” and that he began to take her very seriously indeed. I believe he is using her for political ends and that she objects to being so exploited. I do not know whether the exemplar ȡ to the Sloane/SS “Long” Text versions precedes or follows that of the exemplar ʌ to the Paris/P “Long” Text. If it were earlier, then Julian next courageously stripped her text of his interference and his imprimatur, for the exemplar ʌ to the Paris Manuscript lacks chapter descriptions. And that she went on later to write her final version, the exemplar Į to the Amherst Manuscript, or that gathering of the Amherst Manuscript written for her by a sympathetic scribe, which all strip away the XV+I Showings structuring. In both the P and the SS versions she insists at the end of the XV+I Showings that she is not content with the work as it stands and promises us a further edition (P172v-173), defying the SS editor’s colophon. I believe that the future edition is the Amherst, rather than the Westminster text, for the sequence of books influencing the versions reverses the alphabet, giving us W (Westminster), with Gregory, Benedict, William of St Thierry, William Flete, John Whiterig, Pseudo-Dionysius, Hebrew, and close scriptural references; P (Paris) and SS (Sloane) using the XV+I Showings structure, echoing the pseudo-Brigittine XV “O”s, of prayers to the Crucifixion supposedly given to St Birgitta by the Crucifix, while adding John of Salisbury, Birgitta of Sweden, and the Parable of the Lord and the Servant to these; A (Amherst) eliminating the XV+I Revelations/Showings structure, eliminating great swathes of scriptural material, eliminating the Lord and the Servant Parable, and eliminating Jesus as Mother, while adding, in engrossed letters in the manuscript’s brown ink, a sentence on a “man of Holy Kirk” telling of “Saynte Cecylle”, “St Cecilia”, and the three sword wounds (A97v), likewise a similarly engrossed sentence on the “Pater noster: Ave and Crede” (A109v), protesting that she never meant to teach (A101), and adding further material from Alfonso of Jaén’s Epistolaria Solitarii and Adam Easton’s Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae “Discernment of Spirit” material, which had served as the imprimatur to Birgitta’s Revelationes and as argument for the Swedish widow’s canonisation in 1391 (A114v-115). The consulting of these texts in this sequence correlates to their chronological acquisition of materials by Adam Easton.

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While Easton delights in hierarchy, Julian seeks equality; while Easton and Birgitta espouse Dionysian angelology, Julian speaks for her EvenChristian. Easton, because of his Dionysianism, harnessed to Benedictinism’s insistence upon power, property and wealth, opposed and destroyed Wyclif, who spoke for Gospel poverty in the Church; Julian strongly disagrees with her powerful patron, the Cardinal, and supports his Oxford victim’s Gospel ideal. Amherst, if it is her final version, her swan song, with the greatest courage most emphatically ends with the Wycliffite, Lollard term, “evencristenn. Amen”. I think of a crippled brilliant women in Norwich as having had an older brother named Adam Easton, a brother who teased her unmercifully, then came to take her seriously, and who then helped her, because of his vow under torture in a dungeon, to write an edited, authorised and expanded version of a text he had formerly scorned, as it unfolded decade upon decade. The evidence for this editorialising third person collaboration lies in the chapter headings of both Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes and in Julian of Norwich’s Sloane Showing of Love, the first compiled in Sweden and Italy, the second in England, but surely with a copy of the first at hand. Just so in Germany Mectild von Magdebourg wrote her Flowing Light of the Godhead, crystallising it in her old age; in Sweden and Italy, Magister Mathias and Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén had helped Birgitta unfold her huge book; women and men became Catherine of Siena’s scribes, one of whom would later have Birgitta’s Revelationes translated into Italian; and in Lynn various priests would similarly assist illiterate Margery Kempe inscribe her Book, one of whom indexed Birgitta’s Revelationes. For Julian keeps speaking of Christ as “Master Jesus” (P50, A105v) and as “our brother” (W87v, P15v, 46v, 106v, 124, 127, S170, A101), when “Master Adam” was Easton’s title before he was Cardinal (Vatican Secret Archives, Armarium LIV.17, fols. 46-7, “Venerabilis et reverendus pater et religiosus honestus magister Adam de Eston, magister magnus et profundus in sacra pagina, monachus Norwicensis, ordinis Sancti Benedicti, etatis XL et ultra, nacione Anglicus”). In the “Lord and Servant” Parable Julian turns Adam into Christ. Adam himself in his own self-conscious and sometimes acrostic writings played on the Hebrew meanings of his name “Adam”.61 Julian frequently, emphatically at times with repetition and with similar rubrication, likewise discourses upon “Adam” and all the meanings of his name (P3, 53v, 95v, 97, 97v, 98v, 101v(7x), 102(6x), 103(4x), 105v, 107, 108, 108v, 110v, A106v). While Adam with his brilliance was welcomed at Norwich Cathedral Priory, Carrow Priory was more snobby and less cultured. Julian there

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would have been used as a teacher in its school for girl boarders, but treated as a lay sister, the service she says she has done in her youth (P1v, 4v, 29-30v, 171, A102). Then perhaps she had to leave on health grounds. That seems to be the sense of her words about her severe and youthful physical and mental incapacitation, her wanting of will, her wasting of time (W111v-112, P137v, A110v), which she later clearly outgrew. The first extant bequest to “Julian anakorite”, is as late as 1394, of 2s left by the parish priest Roger Reed; following that is one in 1404 by Thomas Edmund, chantry chaplain, of 12d, and for her maid Sara, 8d; while in 1415, the merchant John Plumpton left 40d for her, and 12d for her two maids, one named Alice; in 1416, Isabella Ufford, Countess of Suffolk, leaving her the famous “xxs”. Julian, as an anchoress, would have received Communion only fifteen times a year but daily could gaze upon the Sacrament upon the altar through a window let into the church from the anchorhold. So had Birgitta in Rome had a hagioscope looking onto the altar at San Damaso. Margery Kempe was to win from Archbishop Arundel, from talking with him under the stars in his garden at Lambeth Palace, the right to receive Communion every Sunday, then a most rare privilege.63 But she was the Mayor of Lynn’s daughter. A second window in Julian’s anchorhold would have looked out onto the street, through which she could speak with others, including, memorably, our Margery Kempe . Cardinal Adam Easton returned to Rome. The Diarium Vadstenense describes him as present at the Canonisation of St Birgitta, 7 October 1391. He died there in 1397 and is buried in Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. His later tomb, which once had an elaborate canopy and was beside that of St Cecilia, is not unlike that of the Black Prince, King Richard II’s father, at Canterbury, beside that of Thomas Becket, both with the Royal Arms of England. But it is in Rome, in his titular church as Cardinal of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, formerly near the tomb of St Cecilia.64 When the bodies were later exhumed in the Renaissance both Cecilia’s and Adam’s were found incorrupt. Following Adam Easton’s death in 1397, more than 228 of his manuscripts in six barrels from Rome were returned to the Cathedral Priory’s library in 1407.65

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Figure 31. Rome, St Cecilia, Adam Easton’s Tomb with Royal Arms of England Figure 32. Canterbury Cathedral, Black Prince’s Tomb with Royal Arms of England

Notes 1

Full information on Adam Easton is to be found in Leslie John MacFarlane, “The Life and Writings of Adam Easton, OSB” (University of London Ph.D. Thesis, 1955); “De S. Birgitta vidua”, Acta Sanctorum [henceforth, ASS] (Paris: Victor Palme, 1867), October 8, Oct IV, vol. 50, 369A, 412A, 468A, 473C; Eric College, A Syon Centenary (Syon Abbey, 1961), pp. 5-6; Joan Greatrex, Biographical Register of the English Cathedral Priories of the Province of Canterbury, circa 1066-1540 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); Margaret Harvey, The English in Rome 1362-1420: Portrait of an Expatriate Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 188-237; Andrew Lee, The Most Ungrateful Englishman: The Life and Times of Adam Easton (2006); in the latter case it is important to note that Westminster Abbey document 5664* of 27 June 1383, names “ADAM miseracione divina titulo sancta cecilie presbiter Cardinalis . . .” and that the Norfolk Record Office repeatedly affirms it has documents concerning the shipping of books to Norwich for 1389-1390, not 1391, though Lee insists

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Adam Easton only became Cardinal of St Cecilia in Trastevere as late as 1389, pp. 222-226, and that the records of the shipping of books are dated 1391, pp. 261-2. 2 Cambridge University Library Gg.VI.3, fols. 318, 320, Norwich Cathedral Priory shelfmark, X.clxx. Another Easton manuscript on astronomy is Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 347, mentioning St Dionysius, fol. 156v. 3 Thomas Aquinas quoted Pseudo-Dionysius 1,700 times, believing him to be the Dionysius of Acts 17.34, and therefore an Apostolic Father. Brunetto Latino, Dante’s teacher, wrote in his Tesoro (Laurentian Plut 42.19, fol. 16): lo nostro singnore li mostro grande partita del suo segreto. ke elli fu portato infino al terço cielo. e dice ke uide tali cose/che non è con= ueneuole a parlarle agli uomini. ... Elli conuertio a la fede xpiana uno gran= de filosofo in grecia. lo quale aueua nome dionisio. che fu poi martoriato in francia pre= dicando et exaltando el nome di xpo speaking of St Paul being carried up into the third heaven and learning God’s secrets, then converting Dionysius on the Areopagus, Dante next, like Julian, using the third heaven, of Venus, as that of love, Paradiso VIII.37, Julian likewise discoursing upon the Pauline three heavens in her Ninth Showing, “That is to mean the endless love, that was without beginning and is and ever shall be”. 4 Cambridge University Library Ii.III.32, fol. 108v, Norwich Cathedral Priory shelfmark X.ccxxviii (highest surviving manuscript number of the six barrels of books Easton willed to his monastery). Another of Easton’s manuscripts, Origen, Homelia in Leviticum, Cambridge University Library, Ii.I.21, Norwich Cathedral Priory shelfmark X.cxx, includes, “Aut tibi videtur Paulus cum ingressus est theatrum, vel cum ingressus est Areopagum, et praedicavit Atheniensibus Christum, in sanctis fuisse? Sed et dum perambulasset aras et idola Atheniensium ubi invenit scriptum ‘Ignoto Deo’” (Cloud author and Julian also use episode); Origen’s texts, written for nuns, are particularly sensitive to women in the Bible, discussing for instance the woman touching Christ’s fringed garment. Easton makes notes in the manuscript on priesthood. 5 “Totum vetus Testamentum ex Hebraeo vertit in Latinum”, De perfectione vite spiritualis, “De diuersitate translationum”, “De communicatione ydiomatum”, “De sua calamitate”, amongst numerous other titles: John Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium Maioris Brytannie, quam nunc Angliam et Scotiam vocant: Catalogus (Basle: Opinorum, 1557-1559); Ioannis Pisei Angli, Relationvm Historicarvm de Rebus Anglicis (Paris: Thierry & Cramoisy, 1619), I.548-549; Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. Reginald Lane Poole and Mary Bateson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), pp. 4-6. 6 Joan Greatrex, Biographical Register, pp. 502-503; John Lydford’s Book, ed. Dorothy M. Owen, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Devon and Cornwall Record Society 19 (1974), 201, p. 106; 202, p. 107; ‘ A de E, monk of Norwich

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appeals again to Holy See to remain at Oxford until 12 June 1352’, 20 (1974), 202. For a sense of the intellectual milieu of medieval Norwich Cathedral Priory, see William Courteney, Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 275: “Stuckely discussed the infinite capacity of the soul for beatitude, the latitude of forms, finite and infinite intensities, the augmentation and diminution of grace, maxima and minima, modal and tensed propositions, qualitatitive and quantitative infinites, the relation of grace and free will, predestination, divine responsibility for sin, and the possibility of the meritorious hatred of God”. 7 Joan Greatrex notes Easton preached in Norwich, Feast of Assumption, 14 August 1356, Norwich Record Office [NRO], DCN 1/12/29. Brinton’s sermons survive, but not Easton’s, The Sermons of Thomas Brinton, Bishop of Rochester (1373-1389), ed. Sr Mary Aquinas Devlin, O.P., Camden Third Series 85 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1954); Langland, Piers Plowman, ed. Walter W. Skeat, I.14-18, B. Prologue 139-215, based on Brinton’s Sermon 69, II.317, allegory of Parliament and John of Gaunt, where rats and mice debate belling the cat; motif on Malvern Priory misericordia. Norman Tanner says Benedictines’ sermons to the laity were lively, learned and appreciated, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich 1370-1532 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1984), p. 11; William Courtenay notes commitment to Biblical study, encouraged by the Papacy and the laity, including translation into the vernacular, excellent preaching, production of devotional treatises and participation in the controversy raging about Wyclif, characterised this period, “‘The ‘Sentences’—Commentary of Stukle: A New Source for Oxford Theology in the Fourteenth Century”, Traditio 34 (1978), 435-438; Schools and Scholars, p. 373; Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich (London: SPCK, 1987), p. 22. 8 Prior of Norwich explains to Prior of Students at Oxford that he cannot yet send Adam Easton back to incept at Oxford, as he is needed at Norwich to help with the preaching and in silencing the Mendicants, and promises to restore him to the bosom of the university in a year: Documents Illustrating the Activities of the General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks 1215-1540, ed. William Pantin, Camden Third Series 45, 47, 54 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1931-1933, 1937), 3.28-29, from Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 682, fol. 116. 9 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 180, Richard FitzRalph, Bishop of Armagh, writing against the Friars, De Pauperie Salvatoris, Norwich Cathedral Priory shelfmark, X.xlvi, LIBER:DNI/DE:OESTONE:/MONACHI:NOR/ WICENSIS’ at fol. 88. The illumination of the opening folio recalls Julian’s account of the devil at her throat (P142v, A111v); 1350 Norwich episode is given in Lambeth MS 432, fols. 87-87v. A companion manuscript to CCCC 180 is William St. Amour, Bodleian Library, Bodley 151, “Liber ecclesie Norwycensis per magistrum Adam de Estone monachum dicte loci”, Norwich Cathedral Priory shelf mark X.xlvi. 10 Joan Greatrex, citing Pantin, Black Monks, 3.60. 11 “In expensis Ade de Easton versus Oxoniem et circa cariacionem librorum eiusdem, cxiijs iiid”. Greatrex notes total cost, 154s. 8d, NRO DCN 1/12/30,

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Sacrist contributes to his inception, NRO DCN 1/4/35, Refectorer, NRO DCN 1/8/42, Master of Cellar, 30s, to “master of divinity”, NRO DCN 1/1/49./ 12 David Kimhi, Sepher Ha-Miklol (Book of Perfection) Sepher Ha-Shorashim (Book of Roots), Cambridge, St John’s College 218 (I.10); The Longer Commentaries of R. David Kimhi on the First Book of the Psalms, trans. R.G. Finch, intro. G.H. Box (London: SPCK, 1919), p. 16, noting of Deuteronomy 32.18, ‘He is to you as a father, and the one that gave thee birth—that is the mother’. 13 Oxford, Balliol 300b, Norwich Cathedral Priory shelfmark X.clxxxxiii, with Easton’s marginalia to passages used in Defensorium Ecclesiastice Potestatis, such as, ‘Respublica beata est quando per sapientiam gubernatur ‘, fol. 63. 14 Westminster Abbey Muniment 9229*. Its scribe is the second, and un-English, hand in Easton’s John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, Balliol 300b, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Balliol College, Oxford, ed. R.B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), p. 320. 15 For a study of Birgitta in art, especially as writing her Revelationes, see Mereth Lindgren, Bilden av Birgitta (Hoganas: Wiken, 1991). 16 Revelationes IV.103-5 ; Bodleian, Ashmole Rolle 26 (olim 27), verso, gives letter/vision for Edward III, Philip IV, “Orante xi sponsa Beata Birgitta vidit in visione qualiter beatus Dionisius orabat pro Regno francie ad virginem mariam Libris Xo Celestium Revelacionem”; Eric Colledge, “Epistola solitarii ad reges: Alphonse of Pecha as Organizer of Brigittine and Urbanist Propaganda”, Mediaeval Studies18 (1956), 19-49, cites similar Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 404, fol. 102v. 17 Revelationes I.3.8-9: “Iste fuit quidam sanctus vir, magister in theologia, quo vocabatur magister Mathias de Suecia, canonicus Lincopensis. Qui glosauit totam Bibliam excellenter. Et iste fuit temptatus a diabolo subtilissime de multis heresibus contra fidem catholicam, quas omnes deuicit cum Christi adiutorio, nec a demone potuit superari, ut in legenda vita domina Birgitte hoc clarius continetur. Et iste magister Mathias composuit prologum istorum librorum, qui incipit ‘Stupor et mirabilia’ etcetera. Fuit vir sanctus et potens spiritualiter opere et sermone.” Magister Mathias‘ commentary on Apocalypse, based in part on that of Nicholas of Lyra under whom he studied, influenced St Bernardino of Siena, Colledge, “Epistola”, p. 22, likely reaching Siena by way of Alfonso of Jaén who had Sienese ancestry and who returned there in connection with Catherine of Siena. Magister Mathias refers to Cardinal Jacques de Vitry’s support of the beguine Marie d’Oignies, a model Margery Kempe’s scribe also used, Magister Mathias, Copia exemplorum, ed. Lars Wåhlin, Margarete Andersson Schmitt (Uppsala, Universität Uppsala, 1990), pp. 21-22; Book of Margery Kempe, EETS 212.152-153. 18 Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death: The Arts, Religion and Society in the Mid-Fourteenth Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), pp. 86, 88, 91, 125; Anthony Luttrell, “A Hospitaller in a Florentine Fresco: 1366/8”, Burlington Magazine 114 (1972), 362-66; Julia Bolton Holloway, “Saint Birgitta of Sweden, Saint Catherine of Siena: Saints, Secretaries, Scribes, Supporters”, Birgittiana 1 (1996), 29-45.

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Siena, Biblioteca Communale degli Intronati, I.V.25/26, Colophon: “Compagnia de la vergina maria di siena, posta nell ospedale di sancta maria della scala. E fecelo faro Ser xpofano di gano da siena. Frate notaio del detto spedale. Pregate dio per lui”. This is Catherine’s cenacolo, which had accompanied her to Avignon in 1376, and which is still active eighteen years after her death, this manuscript being written out in 1399 and still in situ in Siena. 20 The Orcherd of Syon ed. Phyllis Hodgson and Gabriel M. Liegey, EETS 258; Phyllis Hodgson, “The Orcherd of Syon and the English Mystical Tradition”, Proceedings of the British Academy 50 (1964), discussing its likeness to Julian’s Showing. A similar cross-fertilising occurs between Sweden and England as between England and Italy, with Vadstena treasuring the writings of English mystics Richard Rolle and Walter Hilton amongst their manuscripts 21 William Flete is the recipient of Catherine of Siena’s Letters 64, 66, 227, 326, etc. He wrote Remedies Against Temptations before leaving England, he sent “Three Letters to the Austin Friars in England” from his hermitage in Italy: Aubrey Gwynn, The English Austin Friars in the Time of Wyclif, pp. 96-210, esp. 193-210. 22 “Remedies Against Temptations: The Third English Version of William Flete”, Archivio Italiano per la Storia della Pietà 5 (Rome, 1968), p. 223. 23 ASS October 4:409A: “revelationes in scholis Oxoniensibus et in cathedris publicis magistralibus exposuerunt magni sua aetate doctores Thomas Stubbes, Dominicanus, Ricardus Lavynham, Carmelita, et adhunc alii ejus generis multi circa annum domino MCCCLXX”. 24 David Knowles, The Religious Houses of Medieval England (London: Sheed and Ward, 1940), p. 65; Roberta Gilchrist and Marilyn Oliva, Religious Women in Medieval East Anglia (Norwich: University of East Anglia, 1993). 25 Devlin, Sermons of Thomas Brinton, p. xiv. 26 Joan Greatrex, noting Thomas Pykis, precentor of Ely, paying 40s to Easton’s clerk, 1371-2, Cambridge University Library Add. 2957, fol. 45. 27 The iconography in paintings of “St Birgitta’s Vision of the Crucifix Which Spoke to Her”, collapses the “Crucifix in San Damiano Speaking to St Francis” with “St Francis Receiving the Stigmata at L’Averna”. Monastic influences on her are, first, Cistercian, then Dominican and Franciscan, while also involving Carthusianism. 28 Birgitta of Sweden, Revelationes IV.49; http://www.umilta.net/bk4.html 29 Alan Deighton, “Julian of Norwich’s Knowledge of the Life of St John of Beverley”, Notes and Queries 40 (1993), 4.440-43; James Hogg, “Adam Easton’s Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae”, The Medieval Mystical Tradition, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1999), pp. 213-240. The Amherst Manuscript (A96v-97v) includes part of the Liber de modo bene vivendi ad sororem, called here “The Golden Epistle”, believed to be written by St Bernard to his sister, but in fact written by Thomas de Froidmont to his sister Margaret of Jerusalem, who were from a Beverley, Yorkshire, family. Birgitta had owned this text in a Spanish manuscript, keeping it always in her pocket, and it still proclaims: “Hunc librum qui intytulatur doctrina Bernardi ad sororem portavit Beata mater nostra sancta Birgitta continuo in sinu suo ideo inter reliquies suas asseruandus est”: Uppsala University Library C240; Andersson & Franzen, Birgittareliker, pp.

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54-55, 60, fig. 46, who suggest it was given to her by Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén.

Figure 33. Uppsala C240, open to ‘Soror mea’. 30 Frances M.M. Comper, The Life of Richard Rolle together with an Edition of his English Lyrics (London: Dent, 1938), pp. 55-57. I assisted Julian Jaynes in his writing The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1977), in which he argued, before neuroscience came to validate it, that pre-literate societies and pre-literate children externalize internal stress as hallucination, Odysseus seeing Athena, the Maurice Sendak “monsters under the bed”. Clearly medieval Norwich was accustomed to such diabolical apparitions. Julian appears here to have a mini post-traumatic-syndrome breakdown which she overcomes. 31 Francis Blomefield, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk containing a Description of the towns, villages, hamlets, with the foundations of monasteries, churches, chapels, chantries and other religious buildings, also an account of the Ancient and Present State of all the Rectories, Vicarages, Donatives, and Improrpiations, their Former and Present Patrons and Incumbents, with their several Valuations in the King’s Books, whether discharged or not: Likewise the Historical Account of Castles, Seats and Manors, their Present and Ancient Owners, Together with Epitaphs, Inscriptions and Arms in all the Parish Churches and Chapels, with several Draughts of Churches, Monuments, Arms, Ancient Ruins and other Relics of Antiquity, collected out of Ledger-Books, Registers, Evidences, Deeds, Court-Rolls and other Authentick Memorials (London: William Miller, 1805-10), IV.79; British Library, MSS Add. 23,013-65, give these volumes with further annotations, sketches in colour, of which the relevant materials for Julian are in Add. 23016. Dom Finbar Boyle, O.S.B, Pluscarden Abbey, http://www.umilta.net/finbar.html, “Julian’s Raindrops Fom Eaves”, notes of this passage “The image derives from stillicidium, a rare Latin word that refers specifically to drops of moisture or rain falling from the eaves of a house. It occurs only twice in the Vulgate: in Psalms 64:11 and 71:6”. But it also occurs in Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes IV.49: “6. Tectum autem

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est linitum pice et ardet de igne sulphureo stillans quasi pluuia densa. 7 De nigredine vero et spissitudine fumi, qui de abisso fossarum et de stillicidiis tecti ascendit, omnes parietes maculati sunt et ita deformes in colore ad intuendum, quasi sanguis commixtus putrida sanie” (italics mine), where it is sinister indeed. 32 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), pp. 77-178. 33 Birgitta’s board of walnut upon which she ate, wrote, and it is even said was laid at her death, is still kept as a relic in the room become a chapel where Birgitta lived and wrote and died, and which Margery Kempe memorably visited, perhaps on Julian’s recommendation, Santa Brigida, Piazza Farnese, Rome, Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Allen, EETS 212.95. See Aron Andersson and Anne Marie Franzén, Birgittareliker (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1975), pp. 33-44, 58-59. 34 Alfonso of Jaén served as spiritual director to Birgitta of Sweden, her daughter, Catherine of Sweden, also to her friend, Catherine of Siena, and to Chiara Gambacorta of Pisa: Ann M. Roberts, “Chiara Gambacorta of Pisa as Patroness of the Arts”, Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy: A Religious and Artistic Renaissance, ed. E. Ann Matter and John Coakley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 120-154. 35 Suzanne Noffke, O.P., The Texts and Concordances of The Works of Caterina da Siena: Il Dialogo, Le Orazioni, L’Epistolaria ; Letters 133, 138, 143, 312, 317, 348, 362, are written to Queen Joanna of Naples. 36 The Cell of Self-Knowledge: Seven Early English Mystical Writers Printed by Henry Pepwell MCXXI, ed. Edmund G. Gardner (London: Chatto and Windus, 1910), p. xviii, notes Catherine of Siena’s connections with England though her Cambridge University/Augustinian Hermit disciples, William Flete and Giovanni Tantucci, and her Letter 14 to Sir John Hawkwood, and to Richard II, the latter not surviving; David Wallace, “Mystics and Followers in Siena and East Anglia: A Study in Taxonomy, Class and Cultural Mediation”, The Medieval Mystical Tradition in English: Papers Read at Dartington Hall, July 1984, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1984), pp. 169-191; Jane Chance, “St Catherine of Siena in Late Medieval Britain: Feminizing Literary Reception through Gender and Class”, Annali d’Italianistica 13 (1995), 163-203; Phyllis Hodgson, “The Orcherd of Syon and the English Mystical Tradition”, Proceedings of the British Academy 50 (1964), 229-249. Both Vadstena and Syon had cloistered orchards, pleasure gardens (“örtagärd”, “viridiarium”), in which the nuns could walk and talk. Alfonso had written the Viridiarium compiled from Birgitta’s Revelationes of visions concerning Christ and Mary especially for the nuns of Vadstena: Colledge, ‘Epistola’, p. 34. The connections, as with The Orcherd of Syon, are far closer than commonly realised between Birgitta and Catherine, Alfonso and Adam. Vadstena in 1391 and Syon in 1415 were granted pardons, indulgences, equivalent to St Francis’ Portiuncula, Margery Kempe mentioning this Pardon of Syon. 37 Vatican Secret Archives, Armarium LIV.17, fols. 46-7, “Venerabilis et reverendus pater et religiosus honestus magister Adam de Eston, magister magnus

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et profundus in sacra pagina, monachus Norwicensis, ordinis Sancti Benedicti, etatis XL et ultra, nacione Anglicus”‘; Colledge, ‘Epistola’, p. 35. 38 Rosalynn Voaden, God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (York: York Medieval Press, 1999), and “The Middle English Epistola Solitarii ad Reges of Alfonso of Jaén: An Edition of the Text in British Library MS. Cotton Julius F ii”, Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, ed. James Hogg (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistic Universität Salzburg), I.142-179. The Norfolk manuscript in question also includes Magister Mathias’ Prologue, and much of the Revelationes. Hope Emily Allen had earlier hoped to publish it. Of interest is that Syon manuscripts in English, such as the Princeton University Garrett Revelations, use the Swedish form in English “Birgitte”, while this text uses the Italian “Brigid”, possible evidence of Adam Easton’s acquisition of its exemplar from Alfonso of Jaén in Italy. It makes use of careful cross-referencing to the Revelationes throughout in the same manner as does Julian’s “Long” Text, but not her Westminster or “Short” Texts, and is likely evidence of university-trained male editing and authorising of women’s contemplative writings. Oxford, University College 14, “doctrine schewyd of god to seynt Kateryne of seen. Of tokynes to knowe vysytacions bodyly or goostly vysyons whedyr thei come of god or of the feende”, East Anglian manuscript; British Library, MS Royal 17 D v, “Here folowen dyuerse doctrynys deuowte and fruytfulle taken oute of the lyfe of that glorious virgyn and spowse of our Lorde Seynt Kateryne of Seenys”. 39 The Chastising of God’s Children, ed. Joyce Bazire and Eric Colledge (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957), uses William Flete, Jan van Ruusbroec, Alfonso de Jaén, and significantly adds an interpolation to Ruusbroec’s text of ‘Cardinals’, p. 35, in East Anglian MS. 40 British Library, Add. 61,823, fols. 21-21v; The Book of Margery Kempe, EETS 212.42-43. Among the materials is Alfonso’s statement that writings by visionary women be examined by literate men of the Church. It is likely that the writings of all three women, Birgitta, Catherine and Julian, received that examination—and approbation. The Sloane Manuscripts give such a a statement as colophon, echoing that found in the Cloud of Unknowing and in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls. A manuscript of the Chastising now in a Scandinavian collection, but which had been at Sheen or Syon, is uniquely attributed to Walter Hilton. 41 Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Leslie Stephen (London: Smith, Elder, 1888), 14.411. 42 The Peasants’ Revolt began with John Ball preaching on Blackheath on the Feast of Corpus Christi, 13 June, on “When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?”: Kenneth Leech, “Contemplative and Radical: Julian meets John Ball”, Julian: Woman of Our Day, ed. Robert Llewlyn (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1984), p. 97, giving date as July, when it was June. See Jill Mann, “The Power of the Alphabet: A Reassessment of the Relation between the A and B Version of Piers Plowman”, The Yearbook of Langland Studies 8 (1994), 21-50. Piers Plowman B had been recited in the Peasants’ Revolt. 43 Sheila Upjohn, In Search of Julian (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1989), pp. 26-27. Apparently someone discovered it in 1847 because he dropped a pencil

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during a meeting, crawled under the table to retrieve it—then looked up to see its gold-leafed splendour. 44 “Hoc etiam anno, xi Kalendas Octobris, idem dominus papa Vrbanus fratrem Adam de Eston, Anglicum monachum ecclesie Norwycennsis, magistrum in theologia famosum, Rome in cardinalem erexit”, Vita Ricardi Secundi, ed. George B. Stow (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 1977), p. 70. 45 Liber Regalis seu Ordo Consecrandi Regem solum, Reginam cum Rege, Reginam solam (London: Roxburgh Club, 1870); in connection with Coronation is also Westminster Abbey Muniment 5664* in which Cardinal Adam Easton of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere conveys the order of the Pope that the Benedictines of Westminster Abbey are to have the Coronation offerings of gold and silver and cloth of gold and other things restored to them as is the custom, which have been despoiled from the Abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury and various London clergy, 27 June 1383. The document opens ‘ADAM miseracione divina titulo Sancte cecilie presbiter Cardinalis . . . .’ 46 James Hogg, “Cardinal Easton’s Letter to the Abbess and Community of Vadstena”, Studies in St Birgitta, ed. Hogg, II. 21; “Adam Easton’s Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae”, The Medieval Mystical Tradition, Volume 6, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1999), p. 234; MacFarlane, Thesis, 1955, p. 225. 47 [1387-1389] Richard II to Urban VI, “Quod cardinalis liberetur a carceribus et ad statum pristinum reducatur”, Diplomatic Correspondence of Richard II, ed Edouard Perroy, Camden Third Series 48 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1933), pp. 63-4; CCLXIV, A Letter from the Presidents of the Chapter-General of the Benedictine Order in England to Urban VI, July 9, 1387, Pleading for Pardon for Cardinal Adam de Eston, Rolls Series 61, Letters from Northern Registers, pp. 423-425. MacFarlane notes further letters in Reading Abbey Formulary, p. 25. In July 1387 also, the Ramsey Benedictine, John Wells, was sent to Urban VI to intercede for the imprisoned Cardinal, but failed, dying the next year in Perugia, and was buried in the church of Santa Sabina. 48 Joan Greatrex, Biographical Register of the Priories of the Province of Canterbury circa 1066-1540, citing DCN 1/1/65; 1/6/23; 2/1/17/ for the shipping of his books to Norwich through Flanders, 1389-1390, Norwich Cathedral Priory Master paying 48s 7d, the Almoner 10s “pro cariagio librorum domini cardinalis”, the Benedictine Prior of Lynn contributing 20s “circa libros domini Ade de Eston”, a total of 78s 7d. I learned of those bills because I was sitting across the table from Joan Greatrex in Cambridge University Library. I was admiring Easton’s beautiful Dionysius manuscript with its lovely green leafy and gold leaf Gothic T for the invocation to the Trinitas and she was working on Benedictine archival records throughout England. However, Andrew Lee counters this information on his website, https://sites.google.com/site/cardinaladameaston/restored-topower/journey-home: stating, “They come from the Norwich Priory Records of 1391 [sic] and show that some 90 shillings and 7 pence were spent [sic]’. Jonathan Draper, Norfolk Record Office, 3/3/2014, corrects this: “According to our catalogue DCN 1/1/88 is dated circa 1390, DCN 1/6/23 is dated 1389-90, DCN 2/1/17 is also dated 1389-90”. Anne Lovejoy, NRO, adding ‘DCN 1/1/65 the sum

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of expenses “exceeds” 4000 pounds, DCN 1/6/23 sum of expenses is £78 7s 5d, DCN 2/1/17 expenditure exceeds receipts by £49 8s 5½d”. Thus it is likely the Cardinal together with his books was in Norwich in 1390.

Figure 34. Norfolk Record Office 1389-90 entries on Adam Easton’s books, “librorum domini” 49

Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library 114, fols. 23v-53v, Tuesday after Easter, 1409, giving Cardinal’s 9 February 1390 Letter to Abbess of Vadstena; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hamilton 7, fols. ccxix-cclviij; Universitätbibliothek Uppsala C518, fols 248-273; I.263-275; ASS 468, “Adamo Angliae Libri Attestationum”, could imply he sent books, was not himself present. Hogg, II,24; Colledge, “Epistola”, pp. 27, 42-43; James Alan Schmidtke, “Saving with Faint Praise: St Birgitta of Sweden, Adam Easton and Medieval Antifeminism”, American Benedictine Review 32 (1982), 175-81, does not understand medieval dialectic and Easton’s inclusion/refutation of mysogynist Nicholas of Lyra; James Hogg, “Cardinal Easton’s Letter to the Abbess and Community of Vadstena”, Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, ed. James Hogg, II. 20-26; F.R. Johnston, “English Defenders of St. Bridget” 47; Harvey, p. 205, on Easton’s presence at the canonisation, citing Diarium Vadstenense; F.R. Johnston, II,271, on Prior of Norwich, citing M.R. James, (1904), p. 11. 50 Ritamary Bradley, “Christ the Teacher in Julian’s Showings: The Biblical and Patristic Traditions”, The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Papers Read at Dartington Hall, July, 1982, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1982), pp. 127-142. Sr Ritamary Bradley communicated to me that she believed Julian visited Rome, seeing the Veronica Veil there. 51 Augustus J.C. Hare, Walks in Rome (New York: Routledge, n.d.), pp. 677-682, who notes English Chaucer’s contemporary use of St Cecilia, and that Cecilia is one of the few saints commemorated daily in the Canon of the Mass, the other women commemorated so being Felicita, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucia, Agnes, and Anastasia. Much of that church has been altered. But to this day one can see in its crypt the ruins of a Roman house and bath with hot springs, the Sudatorium which features in the legend of Cecilia’s martyrdom, the fine Byzantine apse showing the togaed Christ with scroll, Christ as Teacher, flanked by Paul and Peter, by Cecilia and Valerian, and by Pope Pascal I (816-821) carrying the model of this church, and St Agatha, whom Pascal made co-patroness of this church, as well as medieval

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buildings clustering about the now Baroqued Basilica. Every year since at the churches of St Agnes and St Cecilia lambs are blessed and brought to this cloister to be tended by the Benedictine nuns, their wool woven into the pallium given to high church dignitaries throughout Latin Christendom. In Julian’s day an entire series of frescoes existed giving the life and miracles of St Cecilia, the marriage feast of Valerian and Cecilia, Cecilia having Valerian seek Pope Urban I, Valerian riding to Urban, Valerian’s baptism, the angel crowning Valerian and Cecilia, Cecilia converting her executioner, Cecilia in the bath, the execution of Cecilia, her burial, then Pascal’s dream, of which only the last fresco survives, copies of those which were destroyed being kept in the Barberini Library. 52 Parable may also reflect Wyclif’s “Of Servants and Lords”, The English Works of Wyclif Hitherto Unprinted, ed. F.D. Matthews, EETS 74.227; Herbert B. Workman, John Wyclif: A Study of the English Medieval Church (Oxford: Clarendon, 1926), II.148, says “Of Servants and Lords” written when Wyclif was translating Bible, founding Poor Preachers. 53 Cambridge, St John’s College, 218 (I.10), Norwich Cathedral Priory shelfmark X.clxxxxij. 54 Janet Backhouse, The Luttrell Psalter (London: The British Museum, 1989), Plate 2, fol. 203; http://www.bl.uk/turning-the-pages/?id=a0f935d0-a678-11db83e4-0050c2490048&type=book; Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts 1475-1550, ed. Maurits Smeyers and Jan Van der Stock (Ghent: Ludion Press, 1996), pp. 7879. 55 “Hieronymus ad Fabiolam de vestitu sacerdotum”, “compulisti me, fabiola, litteris tuis, ut de aaron tibi scriberem uestimentis”, Opus Epistolarum diui Hieronymi Stridonensis, una cum scholiis Des. Erasmi Roterodami, denuo per illum non vulgari rocognitum, correctum et locupletum (Parisiis: Guillard, 1546), III.18v-21v. 56 Lambeth MS 432, 1350 Norwich miracle given of a man who is almost throttled by the devil but who had a vision of a book in which were written the words that whoever prayed to the Virgin would be saved from peril; at his prayer the Virgin removes the devil’s paws from his mouth and nose, fols. 87-87v; followed by Westminster miracle, of a widow’s blind son cured by water used to wash the images of the Virgin and Child on St Ann’s altar, fol. 87v. 57 Compare her citations with the Jerome Vulgate, and with The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal Books in the Earliest English Versions made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and His Followers, ed. Rev. Josiah Forshal and Sir Frederick Madden (London: Oxford University Press, 1850). An example is the Hebrew shalom, translated by Jerome and Wyclif as recte, ri3t, by the King James as “all is well”. She also includes, in Middle English, a beginner’s Hebrew translation of Genesis 1, God as “I it am” of Exodus, Jonah on the deep sea bed reciting Psalm 139, among other examples. 58 Blomefield, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk . . . and Other Authentick Memorials, IV.524-530; Walter Rye, Carrow Abbey, Otherwise Carrow Priory, near Norwich, in the County of Norfolk: Its Foundations, Buildings, Officers and Inmates (Norwich, 1889), who owned the precints, despite the evidence of the records he reproduces, denies it was a school.

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Julian de Hedirsete, formerly a boarder, was cellaress in account rolls, Edward III’s reign, pp. 50, 44. Veronica O’Mara sees connections between the Benedictines at Carrow and the Brigittines at Syon through Cardinal Adam Easton as spiritual advisor, given the contents of Cambridge University Library Hh.I.11, which is Benedictine, contains texts by Birgitta, Flete, and Suso, and is from the Norwich region. 59 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 74, Berengarius Biterrensis, Norwich Cathedral Priory annotation, shelfmark, “liber ecclesie norwyce per magistrum adam de estone monachum dicti loci”, X.xxxiiii, fol. CLXII, and noted in the index at fol. LXIII. 60 Nicholas Rogers, “About the 15 ‘O’s, the Brigittines and Syon Abbey”, St Ansgar’s Bulletin 80 (1984), 29-30; Charity Meier-Ewart, “A Middle English Version of the Fifteen Oes”, Modern Philology 68 (1971), 355-361. 61 For example, his youthful university “Questiones disputatio in vesperiis domine Ade de Estone monachi Norwicensis responsali Nicholao Redclyf”, where Easton equates Adam’s perfect knowledge of God with his love of God, the immediate end of which is God: Worcester Cathedral F.65; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 692, fol. 21; MacFarlane, 1955 Thesis, p. 104; his mature Defensorium Ecclesiastice Potestatis having the rubricated acrostic upon “Audite / Determinatis / Angela / Materia” ; the Office for the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, composed on order of Urban VI, proclaimed 9 November 1389, by Boniface IX, using the Orthodox feast date of 2 July in order to heal that greater Schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, to heal the Great Schism, in which the antiphons for the First Vespers’ “Magnificat”, for Matins and for the First Nocturn form ADAM CARDI[NALIS], underlined in red, twice punning upon that colour, red in Hebrew meaning ‘Adam’ and red being a cardinal’s colour. It uses Victorine phrases: “fons vivus, rosa de spinis, virga de Iesse, stella sub nube, lux mundi, thronum lucis, ancilla dei”. 62 Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, “A Critical Edition of the Revelations of Julian of Norwich (1342-c. 1416), Prepared from all the Known Manuscripts with Introduction, Notes and Select Glossary”, Doctor of Philosophy Thesis, Leeds University, 1956, p. ix, from information shared with her by Hope Emily Allen. 63 Book of Margery Kempe, EETS 212.36-37. 64 Sculptor, Paolo Romano, beginning of fifteenth century, tomb spoken of as that of “Cardinale Adam di Hertford (1398)”; this misinformation appears to circulate at time of Council of Basle, ASS, 412A, “Adamus iste dictus fuit de Eston, Herefordiae in Angliae natus, vir doctrina insignis ex Ordine S. Benedicti, et ex episcopo Londinensi, ut nonnullus placet, factus S.R.E. Cardinalis ab Urbano VI, a quo etiam unus ex examinatoribus Revelationum S. Birgittae constitutis fuit anno 1379”; Bishop of Hereford may have ordered tomb at that time and Italians been confused. 65 H.C. Beeching and M.R. James, “The Library of the Cathedral Church of Norwich”, Norfolk Archaeology 19 (1915-1917), 67-116, giving manuscripts with Easton’s name and Norwich Cathedral Priory pressmark of X that survive; Joan Greatrex notes the king ordered the six barrels, brought to London from Rome, be delivered to Norwich and that the communar/ pittancer paid 12s carrying charges

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NRO DCN 1/12/41, in accordance with Easton’s Will. While some of Norwich Cathedral Priory’s books at the Reformation, among them some 10 of Adam Easton’s, made their way to Cambridge and Oxford libraries, John Bale, p. 85, in his search found only 58 books extant out of the Cathedral Priory Library, “Ex Bibliotheca Nordavicensis”, others having been used by grocers, candlemakers, soapsellers and so forth.

VI JULIAN AND THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING: TEXTUAL COMMUNITIES AND GENDERED AUDIENCES

Sister, alwey quan I speke of man in þis wrytinge, take it bothe for man & woman, for so it is ment in alle suche writinges, for al is mankende.

Figure 35. Birgitta giving Revelationes, Lübeck, 1492, with Emperor, Pope, Cardinal Adam Easton, to her right, Kings to her left, the laity at her feet

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I

Visited the monastery of San Marco in Florence, really to see the Fra Angelico frescoes in each cell and to contemplate upon their “Sacred Conversations”. I had been troublingly told that my argument that Cardinal Adam Easton was likely Julian of Norwich’s spiritual director could not be made. That they would never have known each other, he too important, she too insignificant. I was inexplicably drawn into a gallery. Before me suddenly I saw a vast canvas of St Birgitta handing her Rule and Revelationes to the Sisters and Brethren of her Order, to her right a scarlet-clad Cardinal, the Emperor Charles of Bohemia with sceptre and orb, to her left Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén, his Bishop’s mitre laid down on the steps below the crown Birgitta’s brother Israel had renounced and the deer her daughter Catherine had rescued, and a Brigittine monk, her son, Birger. It had once been at the Paradiso, the Brigittine monastery founded in Florence. But there hadn’t been a Cardinal in her household, I said to myself, dismissing the quite ugly “Sacred Conversation” painting for what I thought was a mistake, and returning to the Refectory, where in Ghirlandaio’s “Last Supper” one sees cherries strewn about the damask woven tablecloth, such as one can still find hand-loomed by countrywomen, and with peacocks peering down from open vaulting. I. Remedy, Cloud, Chastising, Scale, Showing An important cluster of texts appears to be related to Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love as if in a “Textual Community” with each other.1 The texts are the Augustinian Hermit William Flete’s Remedies Against Temptations,2 The Cloud of Unknowing and its unknown author’s subsequent Epistles,3 the likewise anonymous The Chastising of God’s Children,4 and the Augustinian Canon Walter Hilton’ s The Scale of Perfection.5 We have already noted the similarities between Julian’s Showing of Love and John Whiterig’s Meditationes (in his case in Latin and for men, such as initially was the case with Flete’s Remedies). These are texts written for contemplatives, particularly for women, supporting their mise en abyme “Holy Conversations” of prayer. In time these texts would be collected and copied out again within enclosed women’s abbeys, first at Brigittine Syon in England and then in exile, and next in the English Benedictine houses at Cambrai and Paris, also in exile, under the spiritual direction of Dom Augustine Baker OSB and Dom Serenus Cressy, OSB, down the centuries. A manuscript of William Flete’s Remedies Against Temptations, Bodleian Library’s Holkham misc. 41, titled Consolacio anime, makes use of the same verse as that which occurs in the Amherst Manuscript

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containing Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love, “Syke and sorwe deeply”, addresses its Prologue to a “religious Sister”, and particularly prays for all solitaries, “Ancres, Reclusis and heremites and alle estatis reclusid”, and its scribe is likewise a woman.6 The Cloud of Unknowing begins, “Goostly freende in God”, going on to speak of the four forms of life, Common, Special, Singular (solitary, anchoritic) and Perfect, its recipient being Singular (EETS 218.13). The Chastising of God’s Children appears to be conference addresses given orally in a women’s monastic establishment and to be also addressed scribally to one anchoress not present at the conferences, a double audience.7 Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, Part One, is clearly addressed to an anchoress, “Goostli suster in Jhesu Crist, y praye thee that in the callynge whiche oure Lord hath callyd thee to His servyse, thu holde thee paied and stond stedefastli thereinne” [“Ghostly sister in Jhesu Christ, I pray thee that in the calling which our Lord hath called thee to His service, thou hold thee paid and stand steadfastly therein”].8 Henry Pepwell in 1521 gathered many of these texts together, Edmund G. Gardner in 1910 republishing that collection of seven tracts, of Catherine of Siena, of Margery Kempe, and of the Cloud Author, as The Cell of Self-Knowledge, and noting that the Cloud Author’s texts are written for an anchoress.9 This chapter will discuss these works in relation to each other and to the anchoress Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love, as texts which are shared in a “Textual Community” and which, from their being written in Middle English, rather than in Latin, are likely directed towards women living a life of prayer as their audience—and that in some cases the texts are even written by such contemplative women. These are, as so often in medieval paintings, “Sacred, Holy Conversations”, but in writing, as much as Julian’s and Margery’s were in speech. They are guides to vowed living. II. William Flete’s Remedies Against Temptations William Flete, who was to leave the University of Cambridge in 1359 to become an Augustinian Hermit near Siena, where he became a disciple and executor to Catherine of Siena, had already written the Remedies Against Temptations in Latin. That work was translated into Middle English so that it could be available to women contemplatives. Perhaps it was translated by another Augustinian, Walter Hilton, who similarly wrote the first part of The Scale of Perfection to an anchoress, as British Library Harley 2409 clearly states, “Here bigynnes a deuoute matier to þe drawyng of M. Waltere Hyltoun”.10 Or, its translator might be the candidate given

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at the end of this essay, a candidate who had known William Flete in Italy and who was himself from East Anglia’s Norwich. Julian quotes often from the Remedies Against Temptations in her Showing of Love. The Middle English text of the Remedies Against Temptations is careful to be gender inclusive in its language (the references to women here throughout shall be given in bold): Oure merciful lord god chastyseth hese childirn & suffereth hem to ben tempted for many profytable skeles to have soule profi‫܌‬te; and þerfore ther schulde non man ne woman ben hevy ne sory for no temptacion . . . . 11

The text even goes so far as to say: Sister, alwey quan I speke of man in þis wrytinge, take it bothe for man & woman, for so it is ment in alle suche writinges, for al is mankende. And forthermore as touchynge ‫܌‬oure troubles, þenke ‫܌‬e in alle ‫܌‬oure diseses quat troubles and diseses goddis servauntis haue suffred . . . . 12

And it adds: And þerfore, suster, be not douteful ne hevy . . . for therby ‫܌‬e schal wynne the crowne of worchip . . .13

Flete gives the story of St. Peter: It was no maystrye for Seynt Petir, quan he saw oure lord Iesu on the hyl in blisse, to seye: Lord, it is good vs to dwelle here; but aftirward quan he saw hym amongis his fowen tormentid, a woman’s word mad hym afered and soo sore in dreed þat he seyde he know hym not.14

The text adds: whanne somme men or women haue be custom good sterynges and deuoute þou‫܌‬tes and felyngis of meditacions & of contemplacions, of sych parauenture as ben solatarye . . . . he will tempt them the more.15

The text then tells its woman reader: Suster, þis is ‫܌‬oure spouse, whom ‫܌‬e desyre to loue and plese.16

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Much else in this text is repeated in Julian’s Showing of Love, indicating not only its intended audience but also its conscious use by that gendered audience. Flete notes that every sin lies in our will, that which is against our will not being sin, and that the devil tempts us no more than God permits, that faith and hope are the ground of perfection and root of all virtues, and that though a soul no longer sees God in its despair, it still dwells in the fear and love of God and all that trouble is thus paradoxically great reward in the sight of God.17 Flete, like Julian, lists those great sinners, such as David, Peter and Mary Magdalen, whom God forgave.18 Similarly, he warns that none should therefore decide to sin wilfully, counting on that forgiveness.19 If the soul falls into doubt, it is crucial to remember that with God nothing is impossible, “And þerfore þenk weel þat his myght may do alle þinge, and his wisdom kan, and his goodnesse wole”.20 He continues, “somtyme God with draweth deuocion for preyer to make the preyer more medeful. God wold be serued somtyme in bitternesse and somtyme in swetnesse”.21 And “For a man is not so redy to asken for‫܌‬eueness and mercy, þat ‫܌‬et oure mercyful lord of his grete goodnesse is more redy to ‫܌‬eue it hym”.22 Further, concerning the devil, “þou‫ ܌‬he tempte ‫܌‬ou with ony temtacions, þ(r)ou‫ ܌‬the myght of god and merites of his passyon it schal be no perel to ‫܌‬ou of soule, but to hym it schal turn to schame & confusion”. William Flete likewise uses the image of God as a mother who will chastise her children to prevent them from coming to harm, this being especially the case with those who are “goddis seruauntes”.23 III. The Unknown Cloud Author’s Cloud of Unknowing An anonymous writer, likely an ecclesiast who was forced to live in the midst of worldliness and who possessed the texts of Origen, PseudoDionysius, and Richard of St Victor, translated and adapted these texts into Middle English as The Cloud of Unknowing, and Dionise Hid Divinite, and used them also in The Epistle of Prayer, The Epistle of Discretion in the Stirrings of the Souls, The Epistle of Privy Counsel, and The Treatise of Discerning of Spirits.24 In doing so the author made use of an ancient tradition, seen also in Ovid and Paul, Origen and PseudoDionysius, Jerome and Boniface, Abelard and Heloise, of the writing of treatises and epistles, which was frequently employed by men writing to and for women. A similar epistle is even to be found in a Norwich Castle manuscript 158.926/4g.5. Ascribed in the manuscript to Jerome (“Apistle of sent Jerom sent to a mayde demetriade. þat hadde uowed chastite to our lorde ihu criste”), it is actually Pelagius’ “Epistle to Demetrias”, translated

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into Middle English for the benefit, perhaps, of a Norwich anchoress, the text then being written out by such an anchoress and in Julian’s dialect, the manuscript including other texts, one by Richard Lavenham, the Carmelite confessor to Richard II who lectured on Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelations at Oxford, while another is a Lollard text.25 Thomas More, scoffing at such epistolary texts, said “They begynne theyre pystles in suche apostolycall fashyon that a man wold wene þt were wryten from saynt Paule himself”.26 Though the Cloud author made use of difficult texts, culled from Paul, Origen, Pseudo-Dionysius, John of Salisbury and Richard of St Victor, they were written for someone who lacked Latin. These works are usually considered to have been written to a young man, conjectured to have been a Carthusian lay-brother. But why would such a male youth with such an intellect not have been privileged with Latin? Their author was himself thought to have been a Carthusian, though Evelyn Underhill in her rendition of the text took issue with that belief, noting that the author’s references to the behaviour of those in the corridors of power amongst whom he had to live and work made such a belief untenable, while Dom Justin McCann in his original edition believed he could have been an East Anglian pastor.27 The Cloud of Unknowing’s author first invokes and vernacularises the prayer of the Mass (“God, unto whom alle hertes ben open, & unto whom alle wille spekiþ, & unto whom no priue þing is hid: I beseche þee so for to clense þe entent of myn hert wiþ þe unspekable ‫܌‬ift of þi grace, þat I may parfiteliche loue þee & worþilich preise þee. Amen” [EETS 218.1]), which echoes the Ancrene Riwle’s recommendation of this Mass prayer for its three anchorites.28 However, though anchorites were to gaze upon the altar, they rarely received the sacrament, the Ancrene Riwle’s author telling his readership, “People think less of a thing which they have often, and for this reason you shall only receive Communion fifteen times a year, as our lay-brothers do”.29 The author then opens The Cloud of Unknowing in a way which echoes Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Institutione Inclusarum, written for his recluse sister, “Suster, that hast ofte axed of me a forme of lyuyng accordyng to thyn estat, inasmuch as thou are enclosed”,30 of Thomas of Froidmont ‘s Liber de modo bene vivendi ad sororem, written to his Yorkshire sister, Margaret of Jerusalem, which opens “Soror mea . . . audi domini nostri jhesu cristi verba. Attendite ne corda vestra”31; of the Ancrene Wisse, “MIne leoue sustren”32; of the title of Richard Rolle’ s The Form of Living, written for the recluse Margaret Kirkeby; and of the opening of Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, Part One, “Goostli suster in Jhesu

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Crist, y praye thee that in the callynge whiche oure Lord hath callyd thee to His servyse, thu holde thee paied and stond stedefastli thereinne”, “Ghostly sister in Jhesu Christ, I pray thee that in the calling which our Lord hath called thee”.33 The Cloud author writes, Goostly freende in God, I preie þee & I beseche þee þat þou wilt haue a besi beholding to þe cours & þe maner of þi cleeping. & þank God hertely, so þat þou maist þorow help of his grace stonde stifly in þe state & þe degree & in þe fourme of leuyng þat þou hast ententiuely purposed, a‫܌‬ens alle þe sotil assailinges of þi bodily & goostly enemyes, & winne to þe coroun of liif þat euermore lasteþ. Amen.34

When medieval texts written in English sought gender inclusion, because they were being written to an audience that was female, they referred to men and women in that order. In the texts written by the author of The Cloud of Unknowing similar care is taken to speak of ‘man and womman’ as was the case with the Middle English versions of William Flete’s Remedies against Temptations and of Walter Hilton’s Scale of Pervfection. The Cloud of Unknowing is addressed to a “Goostly freend in God” (EETS 218.13:1,8), who is to be meek and loving “to þis goostly spouse, þat is þe Almi‫܌‬ty God” (15:4), who is compared to “what man or womman þat wenith to come to contemplacion” (27:16) and “it behoueþ a man or a woman” (27:20), and who is advised not to be proud and curiously learned as “in oþer men or wommen, what-so þei be, religious or seculers” (30:15-16), this phraseology continuing through pages 35:18, 36:6,22, 37:19, 41:18, 50:13, while the examples held up to the reader are of Mary Magdalen and Martha who are clearly spoken of as “scho” and “hir sister”, that account crescendoing with pages 48:17-49:11’s & ri‫܌‬t as Martha pleynid þan on Marye hir sistre, ri‫܌‬t so ‫܌‬it into þis day alle actyues pleinen of contemplatyues. For & þer be a man or a womman in any companye of þis woreld—what companye se-euer it be, religious or seculers, I oute-take none—þe whiche man or womman (wheþer þat it be) feleþ hym sterid þorow grace and bi counsel to forsake alle outward besines, & for to sette hym fully for to lyue contemplatyue liif after þeire kunnyng and þeir concience, þeire counseyl acordyng: as fast þeire owne breþren & þeire sistres, & alle þeire nexte freendes, wiþ many oþer þat knowen not þeire sterynges ne þat maner of leuyng þat þei set hem to, wiþ a grete pleynyng spirite schal ryse apon hem, & sey scharply vnto hem þat it is no‫܌‬t þat þei do. & as fast þei wil reken up many fals tales, & many soþe also, of fallyng of men & wommen þat han ‫܌‬ouen hem to soche liif before; & neuer a good tale of hem þat stonden.

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One can well envision in those comments the likely predicament of the Cloud author’s twenty-four-year-old disciple. The Cloud author then consoles his reader with Christ’s words: “‘Marye haþ chosen’, he seyde, ‘þe best partye, þe whiche schal neuer be take from hir’” (54:9-10).35 He continues that account by speaking of the angel at the Tomb, honouring Mary above the male disciples, a topos which had also been employed by Jerome and Abelard when writing to console and convince women such as Eustochium and Heloise of their superiority in Christianity, “‘Weep not, Marye; for whi oure Lorde wham þou sekist is resyn, & þou schalt haue him, & se him lyue ful feyre amonges his disciples in Galile, as he hi‫܌‬t’”(55:16-18), and which would be similarly used by Cardinal Adam Easton in his 1391 Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae. The Cloud’s author adds (56), & ‫܌‬if a man list for to se in þe Gospel wretyn þe wonderful & þe special loue þat oure Lorde had to hir, in persone of alle customable synners trewly turnid & clepid to þe grace of contemplacion, he schal fynde þat oure Lorde mi‫܌‬t not suffre any man or woman, ‫܌‬e, not hir owne sistre, speke a worde a‫܌‬ens hir, bot ‫܌‬if he answerid for hir hym-self. ‫܌‬e, & what more! he blamid Symound Leprous in his owne hous, for he þou‫܌‬t a‫܌‬ens hir. þis was greet loue; þis was passing loue.

Thus does the writer champion his reader. (His reader, from these examples, must surely be a young woman, rather than a lay brother.) The author continues (60) by speaking of the love one should have for one’s “euen Cristen”, whether “his frende or his fo, his sib or his fremmid”, describing the “homly affeccion” Christ had for John, Mary and Peter, adding that,36 For as alle men weren lost in Adam [see also 14:2, 142:14], & alle men, þat wiþ werke wil witnes þeire wille of saluacion, ben sauid, & scholen be, by vertewe of þe Passion of only Crist.

He adds (61:1-4), & who-so wile be a parfite dissiple of oure Lordes, him behouiþ streyne up his spirite in þis werke goostly, for þe salvacion of alle his breþren & sistren in kynde, as oure Lorde did his body on þe cros. & how? Not for his freendes & his sib & his homely louers, bot generaly for alle man-kynde, wiþ-outen any special beholdyng more to one þen to anoþer. For alle þat wylen leue sinne & axe mercy scholen be sauid þorow þe vertewe of his Passion.

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On page 74:14 the Cloud author speaks of vocal prayer which is suddenly exclaimed, such as when a “man or a womman, afraied wiþ any sodeyn chaunce of fiir, or of mans deeþ, or what elles þat it be, sodenly in þe hei‫܌‬t of his speryt” he utters a one syllable word, such as “þis worde FIIR or þis word OUTE”. He goes on to say that such a “schort preier peersiþ heuen” (75). He repeats that example (78:5), “Ensaumple of þis haue we in a man or a womman affraied in þe maner before-saide”. Later he speaks of the problems of a “‫܌‬ong disciple” who may be deceived, going on to say that “A ‫܌‬ong man or a womman, newe set to þe scole of deuocion” (85.15-16), can overdo spiritual exercises out of pride. He continues, “For what schuld it profite to þee to wite hou þees greet clerkis, & men & wommen of oþer degrees þen þou arte, ben disceyvid?” (86:2587.1). Then, for the rest of the text, this sensitivity to the gender of his reader is no longer needed. He takes his leave “Farewel, goostly freende, in Goddes blessing & myne! & I beseche Almi‫܌‬ti God þat trewe pees, hole counseil, & goostly coumforte in God wiþ habundaunce of grace, euirmore be wiþ þee & alle Goddes louers in eerþe. Amen”. (133:4-7). The tone in which he writes is that used to an equal, often with the kind of bantering laughter that a man might use towards his biological younger sister. IV. The Unknown Cloud Author’s Cloud Cluster of Texts In the next work, Þe Book of Priue Counseling, we again have indications of a feminine recluse being its reader, for the writer speaks of the kinds of prayer to be engaged in, “be it orison, be it psalm, ympne or antime, or any oþer preyer, general or specyal, mental wiþ-inne endited bi þou‫܌‬t or vocale wiþ-outen by pronounsyng of worde” (135:17-19). Such prayer is described in the Ancrene Wisse and in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls and is typically expected of an anchoress. He even writes for his reader a prayer such as we find Julian herself to say, in his suggested and reiterated, “Þat at I am, Lorde, I offre vnto þee, wiþoutyn any lokyng to eny qualite of þi beyng, bot only þat þou arte as þou arte, wiþ-outen any more”(136:4-6), a prayer modeled on that said by Mary at the Annunciation to Gabriel, Luke 1.38, while Julian’s corresponding prayer is modeled rather on that of David to God at his dying (1 Chronicles 29.10-20). It is of interest that Origen, On Prayer, discusses these prayers by David,37 and that all these prayers are similar to John Whiterig’s prayer on Farne Island.38 The Cloud author then repeats the simple prayer several times in his text, concluding with “Þat at I am, Lorde, I offre vnto þee, for þou it arte” (137:1-2). Similarly would Walter

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Hilton present his Jerusalem Pilgrim’s prayer again and again in The Scale of Perfection, Part Two, perhaps written after he had read The Cloud of Unknowing and other works by the Cloud author. The Cloud author next speaks amusingly of the criticism he has received for writing to his reader about material they think is unsuitably difficult. þis is litil maistrie for to þink, ‫܌‬if it were bodyn to þe lewdist man or womman þat leuiþ in þe comounist wit of kynde in þis liif, as me þenkiþ. & þerfore softely, mornyngly & smylyngly I merueyle me somtyme whan I here sum men sey (I mene not simple lewid men & wommen, bot clerkes & men of grete kunnyng) þat my writyng to þee and to oþer is so harde and so hei‫܌‬, & so curious & so queinte, þat vnnethes it may be conceiuid of þe sotelist clerk or wittid man or womman in þis liif, as þei seyn.

He continues speaking of the paradox of men and women’s seeing what is as simple as a child’s A.B.C. as curiously complex as the learning of the greatest scholar. What he avers is that “mans soule or wommans in þis liif is verely in louely meeknes onyd to God in parfite charite” through such a simple prayer (137:18-19). Julian, in the “Long” Text, similarly plays with the concept of the alphabet (Paris Manuscript, folio 165v), “Of whych gretnes he wylle we haue knowyng here as it were an .A.B.C.” His initial biblical example, again in this work, as in The Cloud, centres upon a woman: “bere up þi seek self as þou arte & fonde for to touche bi desire good gracious God as he is, þe touching of whome is eendeles helþe by witnes of þe womman in þe gospel: Si tetigero vel fimbriam vestimenti eius, salua ero. ‘If I touche bot þe hemme of his cloþing I schal be saaf’” (139:3-5).39 We see that he has to carefully translate the Latin for his unlearned but brilliant reader—which was not necessary for the Ancrene Wisse author to do.40 Thirteenth-century religious women still knew some Latin, fourteenth-century women did not, with certain exceptions perhaps such as the Cistercian nuns of Hampole and the Brigittine nuns of Syon.41 The text then continues its gender-sensitive phraseology: as wel alle þi breþren & sistren in kynde & in grace (141:1, 142:24),

until, as in The Cloud of Unknowing, it no longer needs to continue with that focus. Once we, as readers, note our inclusion in his text, we cannot again then read ourselves out of it, we cannot unbold ourselves back into its wallpaper.

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V. Pseudo-Dionysius We recall that Julian in the “Long” Text of the Showing of Love wrote of “Seynte dionisi of france” (P37-37v) and of his altar to “the vnknowyn god”. Benedictine Adam Easton of Norwich, Oxford and the Papal Curia in Avignon and Rome, titular Cardinal of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, owned the complete works of Pseudo-Dionysius in a fine manuscript from the thirteenth century which included Greek amidst its Latin.42 He had been at Oxford at the same time as his fellow Benedictine, John Whiterig. The Cloud of Unknowing’s seventieth chapter cites Dionysius interestingly, as had already John Whiterig of Farne in his Latin Meditations.43 . . . & herfore it was þat Seynte Denis seyde: ‘Þe moste goodly knowyng of God is þat, þe whiche is knowyng bi vnknowyng’. & trewly, who-so wil loke Denis bookes, he schal fynde þat his wordes wilen cleerly aferme al þat I haue seyde or schal sey, fro þe biginnyng of þis tretis to þe ende. On none oþerwise þen þus list me not alegge him, ne none oþer doctour for me at þis tyme. For somtyme men þou‫܌‬t it meeknes to sey nou‫܌‬t of þeire owne hedes, bot ‫܌‬if þei afermid it by Scripture & doctours wordes; & now it is turnid into coriousitee & schewyng of kunnyng. To þee it nediþ not, & þerfore I do it nou‫܌‬t. For whoso haþ eren, lat hem here, & who-so is sterid for to trowe, lat hem trowe; for elles scholen þei not. (125)44

The Book of Privy Counselling speaks of the Cloud author’s other writings as based on Dionysius, “Þis is þe cloude of vnknowyng . . . þis is Denis deuinite . . . Þis it þat settiþ þee in silence as wele fro þou‫܌‬tes as fro wordes. þis makiþ þi preier ful schorte. In þis þou arte lernid to forsake þe woreld & to dispise it” (154:15-20). The text of Deonise Hid Divinite by the same author for the same audience of one then translates Pseudo-Dionysius’ Mystica Theologica and deepens that material by referring not to the Trinity of the Greek and the Latin text and translation but to Wisdom as Goddess. In Greek the original invocation is ȉȡȚ੹Ȣ ਫ਼ʌİȡȠȪıȚİ, ਫ਼ʌİȡ੺ȖĮșİ, ਫ਼ʌȑȡșİİ, ʌĮȞIJȠįȪȞĮȝİ, ʌĮȞIJİʌȓıțȠʌİ, ਕȩȡĮIJİ, ਕțĮIJȐȜȘʌIJİ, in Latin the invocation becomes, “Trinitas superdea et superbona, inspectrix divinae sapientiae christianorum”. Adam Easton‘s manuscript of that text now at Cambridge University, opens with the most beautiful assymetrical Gothic T, with intertwines in gold leaf, for “Trinitas”, Cambridge University Library Ii.III.32, fol. 108v, Norwich Cathedral Priory shelfmark X.ccxxviii (Plate Va). I like to think that Julian saw that folio.

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Figure 36. Cambridge University Library, Ii.III.32, fol. 108v

The Middle English of the Cloud Author further feminises the text by dropping “Trinity”, which in English is without gender, as that which is invoked, in having feminine “Wisdom” take its place, and which echoes the Great O Advent Antiphon for December 17, “O Sapientia!”: Þou vnbigonne & euerlastyng Wysdome, þe whiche in þiself arte þe souereynsubstancyal Firstheed, þe souereyn Goddesse, & þe souereyn Good, þe inliche beholder of þe godliche maad wisdome of Cristen men (EETS 231.2).45

So speaks a gifted and learned preacher to one whose intellect he admires yet whom he knows to be “unlearned in letters”, in the formal education men could receive at university, but not women. Throughout he addresses his audience of one not only as his intellectual equal but even his superior in contemplating Wisdom. For instance in the Cloud’s thirtythird chapter, “I tro þat þou schalt cun betir lerne me þen I þee” [“I believe that you know better how to teach me than I you” (EETS 218.67:16-17)]. The magnilioquent phrases of the invocation echo those in Julian’s text, particularly her opening to the Westminster Manuscript.

O

Ure gracious & goode lorde god shewed me in party þe wisdom & þe trewthe of þe soule of oure blessed lady. saynt mary. where in I vnder=

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stood þe reuerent beholdynge þat she behelde her god þat is her maker. maruelynge with grete reuerence þat he wolde be borne of her þat was a simple creature of his makyng. (W72v)

Almost all of The Cloud of Unknowing ‘s editors and commentators have assumed that these texts were written to a young man.46 The same had occurred not with the audience, but with the writer, in the case of Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls where Clare Kirchberger had thought her to be male. Even the joking and admiring tone in response to Porete’s book manifested by learned Parisian scholars is the same as that of the Cloud’s Author to his youthful reader.47 The cluster of texts by the author of The Cloud of Unknowing are carefully written in the vernacular and exhibit a similar carefulness with gender inclusive terms—surely because they are written to a young woman contemplative. There are phrases in these Dionysian texts that echo Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, “and prey not wiþ þi mouþ . . . be it orison, be it psalm, ympne or antime, or any oþer preyer, general or specyal, mental wiþ-inne endited by þou‫܌‬t or vocale wiþ-outen by pronounsyng of worde. & loke þat noþing leue in þi worching mynde bot a nakid entent streching into God, not cloþid in any specyal þou‫܌‬t of God in hym-self, how he is in him-self or in any of his werkes, bot only þat he is as he is”,48 and others that are echoed in turn by Julian of Norwich, “þat byleue þi grounde” (W89v), “I am wel apaied” (W83v) and even the Showing of Love’ prayer, “þat at I am, Lorde, I offre vnto þee, wiþoutyn any lokyng to eny qualite of þi beyng, bot only þat þou arte as þou arte, wiþ-outen any more” (W75v).49 Clearly, The Cloud of Unknowing ‘s cluster of texts is at the centre of a woman’s, rather than a men’s, “Textual community”. Indeed, it appears that the Cloud author knew Marguerite Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Souls and influenced Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love. He may have given her The Mirror of Simple Souls in its Middle English version, perhaps he even translated it, initially long ago, then again more recently, while in great distress, adding to it the “M.N.” comments which specifically counter the XV Articles laid against Marguerite Porete by Nicholas of Lyra and the XLI Articles Adam Easton countered for Birgitta of Sweden’s canonisation. The Mirror of Simple Souls is with Julian’s Showing of Love in the earliest extant manuscript, Amherst (A), that we possess of her text.

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An early manuscript of the Cloud Author’s works, Oxford, University College 14, is in East Anglian dialect, and several others are from a Scandinavian area, though other early manuscripts are in East Midland dialect.50 Two of the seventeen manuscripts also include the teachings of St Catherine of Siena,51 while another, translated into Latin by the Carthusian, Richard Methley, of Mount Grace Charterhouse, Yorkshire, again includes Margaret Porete’s Speculum Animarum Simplicium or Mirror of Simple Souls (in this manuscript attributed to “Russhbroke” or Ruusbroec).52 Three Cloud of Unknowing manuscripts are annotated by the Sheen Carthusian James Grenehalgh, who also annotated the Amherst Manuscript which includes the “Short” Text Showing of Love manuscript. Grenehalgh usually did this in association with the Brigittine nun, Joanna Sewell.53 Some of these manuscripts came to Mount Grace Priory, along with The Book of Margery Kempe, some others came later into the hands of Dom Augustine Baker and, later still, of Dom Serenus Cressy.54 VI. Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection is similar to The Cloud of Unknowing, yet significantly different.55 It is possible that both authors wrote for an anchoress capable of responding to their texts.56 That part of Hilton and part of Julian are to be found in the Westminster Manuscript is indicative of such a relationship.57 Indeed, Edmund Colledge and James Walsh asked the question as to who copied whom, of the “All schal be wel” of Scale of Perfection, Part Two, and Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love.58 Like the Austin Hermit William Flete, Walter Hilton studied at Cambridge, 1357-82, incepting then in canon law, before becoming an Austin Canon at Thurgarton about 1386.59 He was attracted to the solitary life, writing to his friend Adam Horsely on the subject before Adam entered the Charterhouse of Beauvale.60 He wrote, besides his masterwork The Scale of Perfection, the Eight Chapters on Perfection, derived from a book “founde in Maister Lowis de Fontibus booke at Cantebrigge”, a work either owned or written by Luis de Fontibus, an Aragonese Franciscan studying at Cambridge in 1383, which discusses the distinction between true and false “liberty” of spirit,61 the Epistola ad Quemdam Saeculo Renuntiare Volentem, advising his secular friend not to be a cloistered religious, the treatise on The Treatise on the Mixed Life, and the commentary on Psalm 90 Qui Habitat, which occurs in the Westminster Cathedral manuscript along with Psalm 91, Bonum Est, which may not be his work, but which is traditionally taken, for instance by Rabbi David

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Kimhi, whose work Adam Easton knew and owned, to be the Psalm Adam said at his Creation.62 Walter Hilton wrote The Scale of Perfection in two parts, separately from each other, a separation that is reflected in their manuscripts.(63) Part One, in translation, begins, “Ghostly sister in Jesus Christ, I pray thee that in the calling which our Lord hath called thee to His service, thou hold thee paid and stand steadfastly therein”.63 Wherfore a wrecchid man or a woman is he or sche that leveth al the inward kepinge of hymself and schapith hym withoute oonli a fourme and likenes of hoolynesse, as in habite and in speche and in bodili werkes, biholdynge othere mennys deedys and demyng here defaughtes, wenynge hymsilf to be aught whanne he is right nought, and so bigileth hymsilf.64

In Chapter 60 he wrote of priests, clerks and laymen, widows, wives and maidens as all capable of being God’s servants in following the vocation of perfection.65 In Chapter 83, he stated, “although you are an enclosed anchoress and unable to leave your cell to seek opportunities of helping your fellow-men by acts of mercy, you are still bound to love them all in your heart, and to show clear signs of this love to all who come to you”.66 He ends with the image from Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians 4.19, where Paul compares himself in relation to his flock to a woman in childbirth, “‘Filiolo, quos iterum parturio donec Christus formetur in vobis’. My dear children, which I bear as a woman beareth a bairn until Christ be again shapen in you”.67 The author of The Cloud of Unknowing had appeared to refer to The Scale of Perfection, Part One, approvingly,68 where Hilton recommended that his anchoress read books in the vernacular as she would not be able to understand the Latin Scriptures, but the Cloud author could equally have been speaking of such passages in Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Institutione Inclusorum69 and the Ancrene Wisse70 and their comments on the desirability of anchoresses reading books, where the Cloud of Unknowing (71) states, Neuerþeles menes þer be in þe whiche a contemplatif prentys schuld be ocupyed, þe whiche ben þeese; Lesson, Meditacion & Oryson. Or elles to thyn vnderstondyng þei mowe be clepid: Redyng, þynkyng & Preiing. Of þeese þre þou schalt fynde wretyn in anoþer book of anoþer mans werk moche betyr þen I can telle þee.71

Besides responding to William Flete’s Remedies Against Temptation (which is also incorporated into The Chastising of God’s Children), by the

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time of writing the second part of The Scale of Perfection, Hilton had encountered The Cloud of Unknowing, whose Pseudo-Dionysianism he challenged. In doing so, in The Scale of Perfection, Part Two, he no longer was writing to an anchoress but to a more general and male audience of this “Textual Community”. The Cloud author had stressed secrecy and exclusivity; both Hilton and Julian appear to have rebelled against such an emphasis, writing for their “euyn-cristens”. The Cloud author had written privately to his “Ghostly Friend”, Julian of Norwich wrote her Showing of Love as God’s Servant, with generality and generosity to all God’s Lovers. However, as a canon lawyer at Thurgarton in 1387 Hilton was to campaign against Wycliffism, concerning which he wrote Conclusiones de Ymaginibus.72 He countered the iconoclasm of Pseudo-Dionysianism, perhaps realising its potential relationship to Lollardy—and even the Reformation. Both Hilton and Julian espoused the contemplation, as in a “Holy Conversation”, of the Nativity and the Crucifixion. While Julian began her “1368” First Westminster Text by echoing the inclusiveness of the Lord’s Prayer, “OUr gracious & goode/ lorde god”, and wrote at the bitter end of the 1413 “Short” Text, at the time of the Sir John Oldcastle Lollard Revolt, the Lollard term, “And to oure. Evenchristenn. Amen”. VII. The Chastising of God’s Children Anselm’s “Prayer to St Paul” had made use of Jesus’ image from Luke, combined with Paul’s from Galatians 4.19, upon which Origen commented, to be used in turn by Walter Hilton at the conclusion of The Scale of Perfection, Part One.73 Jesus as Mother is ubiquitous in medieval texts. Sr Ritamary Bradley noted that the Ancrene Riwle’s image of Jesus expanded upon Anselm with his putting “himself between us and his Father who was threatening to strike us, as a mother full of pity puts herself between the stern angry father” and the child.74 John Whiterig, the Benedictine hermit on Farne, wrote in his Meditations, Even so is it with mothers who love their little children tenderly . . . Christ our Lord does the same to us. He stretches out his hands to embrace us, bows down his head to kiss us, and opens his side to give us such; and though it is blood which he offers us to suck, we believe that it is health-giving and sweeter than honey and the honey-comb.75

The Augustinian Hermit William Flete used the image in Remedies Against Temptations, deriving it from the Stimulus Amoris, written by James of Milan and to be translated by Walter Hilton, the Augustinian

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Canon. But The Chastising of God’s Children, though it is influenced by William Flete, borrows this passage instead from the Ancrene Wisse.76 The Chastising tells us, That hooli men and goode men bien more tempted þan oþir men; and how oure lorde pleieþ wiþ his children, bi ensample of þe moder and hir child; and what ioie and mirthe is in oure lordis presence.77

The Chastising of God’s Children, which is not William Flete’s work, but which, like Julian of Norwich in her Showing of Love, knows the De remediis and makes use of it, was written for oral delivery to a group of women and scribally to one woman. It is addressed to “sister” and to “friend” and, like William Flete and the Cloud Author, carefully speaks of both “men and women”. In one of its manuscripts, in the Bodleian Library, Bodley 505, it is bound with Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls; another manuscript of it came to St John’s, Cambridge, where it is 128 (E25), and where it is accompanied by 71 (C21), which also contains Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls (the St John’s College manuscripts likely coming originally from Syon Abbey’s Sisters’ Library as well as from the Carthusian houses with which they shared texts); a third manuscript contains this work, Hilton’s Eight Chapters of Perfection from Luis de Fontibus, Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes and William Flete’s De remediis (British Library, Harley 6615), while a fourth manuscript contains the Cloud Author’s Epistle of Prayer, Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, and this anonymous Chastising of God’s Children (Liverpool University Library, Rylands F.4.10). The text of The Chastising makes use of Gethsemani, its refrain being constantly “Vigilate et orate”, a theme present also in the Speculum Inclusorum. It employs the metaphor of God who plays with his children as does a mother with her child, borrowing the image, also present in William Flete’s De remediis and John Whiterig’s Meditations, from the Ancrene Wisse. It speaks of the problems of translating Latin into English, specifically concerning the word “prescience”, a word noted as well in an Adam Easton manuscript.78 From its use of Ruusbroec‘s Spiritual Espousals and the Epistola solitarii of Alfonso of Jaén, which is written as Preface to Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes, Book XIII, on the “Discernment of Spirits”, it can be dated as not earlier than 1373 nor later than 1401, for the Cleansyng of Man’s Soul, which was written before 1401 and owned by Sibille de Helton, Abbess of Barking, quotes from The Chastising of God’s Children. Julian uses this material on the “Discerning of Spirits” material from Alfonso of Jaén’s Epistola solitarii and Adam Easton’ s 1391 Defensorium

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Sanctae Birgittae in the 1393 ‘Long’ Text and the 1413 “Short” Text and had spoken of it with Margery Kempe shortly before 1413 in the “Oral” Text. She had used the “Jesus as Mother” trope as early as her Westminster Text, which may perhaps be dated 1368. We witness, in this period, a “Textual Community” in Brain Stock’s sense, involving both men and women. Interestingly, The Chastising changes the original text of Ruusbroec of “neiþer to pope” to add the following: “ne to cardinal”.79 It shares with the Cloud Author (“þe deuels seruantes & his contemplatives”, 49), the phrase “devil’s contemplatives”, as heretics.80 If one were a Dorothy Sayers one might detect a connection between The Chastising of God’s Children and the cluster of texts about The Cloud of Unknowing and these Norwich Benedictines. VIII. The Unknown Cloud Author There is a possibility that these texts, excepting William Flete’s Remedies Against Temptations, John Whiterig’s Meditations, and Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, are written by first Master, then Cardinal, Adam Easton of Norwich (1330-1397), having Julian be as if his surrogate in the contemplative life as he himself treads corridors of power (EETS 218.129:10-12). Certainly the following is not penned by a Carthusian in his cell: siþen we ben boþe clepid of God to worche in þis werk, I beseech þee for Goddes loue fulfille in þi partye þat lackiþ in myne.

Some of these texts, such as The Cloud of Unknowing, could have been written when he was preaching in Norwich, or at Oxford, where he was teaching Hebrew, others such as the various Epistles, could well have been written from the Papal Curia upon its peregrinations from Avignon to Rome and elsewhere, his possible translations of women’s texts, of Birgitta of Sweden, of Catherine of Siena, of Marguerite Porete, while imprisoned by Pope Urban VI in Genoa and Perugia, to be sent to an anchorhold in England, while The Chastising of God’s Children appears to be as if conferences addressed to nuns in a Benedictine convent, and, it has been suggested, possibly Carrow Priory.81 For Benedictine Adam Easton owned the complete works of PseudoDionysius the Areopagite, a work by Origen and a work by Rabbi David Kimhi, and clearly used Victorine texts. Among his own lost writings was a treatise Perfectio Vitae Spiritualis and material in the vernacular idiom.82

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He overlapped with John Whiterig at Oxford before the latter went to Farne; he knew Catherine of Siena and Birgitta of Sweden, William Flete and Alfonso of Jaén during his presence in the Papal Curia in Avignon and Rome; he presided over the canonisation of St Birgitta of Sweden, reading all of her massive Revelationes, twice over. It is most likely he who brought into England Birgitta of Sweden’s definitive Revelationes with Alfonso of Jaén’s Epistola solitarii ad reges in manuscript, upon which Easton modelled his own Defensorium Sancte Birgitte, and which was translated, perhaps by him, and copied out in Norfolk.83 And it is also likely he who brought to England the manuscript of Catherine of Siena’s Dialogo written out by Cristofano Di Gano, which became the basis later for the Brigittine Orcherd of Syon.84 Meanwhile Cristofano Di Gano, Catherine’s disciple, alongside of William Flete, after Catherine of Siena’s death, had Birgitta of Sweden‘s Revelationes translated into Sienese in an exquisite illuminated manuscript, still in Siena, for the cenacolo founded by Catherine of Siena, to which he and William Flete belonged.85 With that manuscript is an abbreviated Latin version (with many shorthand contractions) of the Revelationes written out by Alfonso of Jaén, accompanied by an account of Birgitta’s miracles and intended for use towards her canonisation.86 While in Florence’s Riccardian Library is a translation into Florentine Italian of Marguerite Porete ‘s Mirror of Simple Souls, prefaced by the same texts from Origen which Adam Easton used. The Cloud of Unknowing, at its beginning, had told its then young reader that there are four degrees and forms of Christian life, Common, Special, Singular (Solitary) and Perfect, and that he believes that his reader is called by God to live all of these, being now at the third degree and living as a Solitary.87 Though drawn himself to the contemplative life, he is in the world, and he is concerned about the right use of time, “A token is that time is precious: for God, that is giver of time, giveth never two times together, but each one after other”.88 Similarly, Julian knows the technical term for the measurement of time, “touch” or “toc” (P50v; A106v.4). That is surely the way a productive scholar and future Cardinal would organise his life.89 Is it not possible that this cluster of treatises could have come from the hand of Adam Easton? When Adam Easton wrote in Latin, from his early academic exercise, “Utrum Adam ad lege statius innocencie visionem immediatem Dei essencie haberat”, through his later works, he elaborately played upon his name, even with acrostics, and stressed its Hebrew meanings. Adam of St Victor similarly had done so, Andrew of St Victor deeply studying Hebrew, and Adam Easton became heir to these Victorine traditions. In

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Middle English, if Easton were the Cloud author, he was much more careful about anonymity. Nevertheless, those texts play upon that name in The Cloud of Unknowing and The Epistle of Privy Counsel, where the author speaks to his reader, saying she was called from being lost in Adam to being saved in God’s precious blood, while Julian’s Parable of the Lord and the Servant likewise plays upon the juxtaposition of Adam and Christ and the vision of God.90 Julian repeats that passage about being lost through Adam and saved through Christ (P53, A106v.28-34), and she even writes of Adam in red letter (P 53.16-18), Adam in Hebrew meaning red, tawny, ruddy, as Easton knew: Adams synne was the most harme that evyr was done or evyr shalle in to the worldes end.

The Cloud of Unknowing text notes that the reader is “now of foure & twenty ‫܌‬ere age”.91If this were a text given to Julian of Norwich when she was twenty-four, she received it in 1367, the year before she perhaps wrote the “1368” Westminster Text, at which date, according to The Cloud of Unknowing, if she is the recipient, she is already living the anachoritic Singular life, having passed to it from the Common and the Special, first as a layperson, then, as the text gives it, as a servant of God’s servants (14.5, perhaps as a layservant to nuns, or less likely as a Carrow choir sister). Julian in the “Long” and “Short” Texts speaks of her service to God in her youth.92 The Cloud of Unknowing is precisely the kind of text that could prompt the writing of the Westminster Text of the Showing of Love, stimulating a cataphatic antithesis to its apophatic thesis, resisting its Pseudo-Dionysian hierarchies with her celebration of one’s evenChristian. The later Pistle of Preir speaks of the illness of its recipient and is concerned about his/her health “For þof it may be soþ in þee in dede þat þou schalt liue lenger . . .” [EETS 231.48:20] . If the Epistles are from Adam Easton they may have been written to her from abroad, from France and Italy, Avignon and Rome. That the Westminster Text speaks of pain and that the “Long” and “Short” Texts describe a near-fatal bout of illness correspond again and again with the Cloud author’s texts written to his “Goostly freende in God”, so prone to illness. An Adam Easton manuscript even annotates material on deformity and crippling in a woman. But it is also clear that Julian came to grow more robust with time, living to a ripe old age. Julian is most close to The Cloud of Unknowing’s Dionysianism in her “1368” Westminster Text, growing away from its apophatic Quietism in her 1393 “Long” Text, and being deeply anxious about it in her 1413 “Short” Text.

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The cluster of Cloud treatises, it has been said, even go beyond Pseudo-Dionysius in their Quietism, if not Elitism.92 They could well represent a phase in Adam Easton’s own bildungsroman, where he was teaching himself through teaching another. Unable himself, as he admits, to become a solitary, he is experimenting dangerously, heretically, with someone else—who will have the courage of her convictions to rebel against, as well as use, its material, and to object to being treated as a subject—as indeed from the tone of the Cloud Author’s remarks, we can tell has already happened. If the Cloud author were Adam Easton and his recipient Julian of Norwich, we can come to see them as like John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, complementing and balancing each other’s mysticism, the one negating images, the other coming to espouse them, such as a hazel nut, the rain from roof eaves, the scales of a herring, drying cloth upon a line, as images of Creation and Creator, of Incarnation and Crucifixion, the Word become flesh and dwelling in our midst, in the world created by that Word. The Chastising of God’s Children would have been written much later than the Cloud’s cluster of texts, during the time when Julian was writing not the “First” Text but the “Long” Text, while its material on the “Discerning of Spirits” from William Flete’s Remedies against Temptations and Alfonso of Jaén’s Epistola solitarii is echoed in the circa 1413 “Oral” Text, Julian’s reported conversations with Margery, and in the so-dated 1413 “Short” Text. Much of The Chastising’s contents reflects the library of texts that are found in the Westminster Text and Amherst “Short” Text Manuscripts, texts such as Hilton’s Qui habitat, Ruusbroec‘s Spiritual Espousals, Alfonso of Jaén’s Epistola solitarii, Henry Suso‘s Horologium Sapientiae, and it appears to have originated as a series of conferences in a woman’s convent.94 Could these have been addresses given by Cardinal Adam Easton to the nuns at Carrow Benedictine Priory in Norwich, written out so that they could also be read by the Solitary, Julian, and which are given in defense of Julian, much as Adam Easton, too, had defended Birgitta? They could then have been shared with Benedictine Barking Abbey where Chaucer’s daughter was a nun. Adam, Cardinal of England at the Papal Curia, and Geoffrey Chaucer, the King’s diplomat to Italy, would have known each other well. It is even possible that Julian’s relationship to her Prioress at Carrow is reflected in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales’ Second Nun (whose tale is of St Cecilia), to her Prioress (whose tale has anti-Semitic Norwich and Lincoln analogues, that of the murdered child in Saint William and Saint Hugh).95 Similar texts occur in another manuscript with possible Carrow associations, such as Suso‘s Horologium Sapientiae, Flete’s Remedies

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against Temptations, and Hilton’s Psalm commentaries, which may also be associated with Adam Easton.96 Julian of Norwich in her “Long” Text speaks most clearly about this same St Dionysius (P37-37v) whose works these authors share in a textual community. What mitigates against such a claim is that only one good early manuscript, at University College, Oxford, and which includes the teaching of Catherine of Siena, whom Adam Easton knew, is in a dialect that can be associated with East Anglia.97 The Chastising of God’s Children comes to us in two families, one with East Anglian, Northern characteristics, the other, South East Midlands.98 The Cloud cluster of manuscripts’ common parent could have been written in East Anglian, next softened by Oxford’s dialect. IX.The Editor’s Colophon Julian’s Showing of Love in the editorialised Sloane version (S2110) ends with an elitist, excluding nervous colophon, not written by Julian, that is quite the opposite of Amherst’s address (A115) to her “Even Christian”, her “Evencristenn”: I pray Almyty God that this book come notbutto the hands of them that will be his faithfull lovers, & to those þt will submitt them to þe feith of Holy Church, & obey the holesom Vnderstondyng & te ching of þe men that be of vertuous life, sadde Age, & profound lerning: ffor this Revelation is hey Divinitye, & hey wisdam, wherfore it may not dwelle with him that is thrall to synne & to the Devill. And beware þu take not on thing after thy affection & liking & leve another for that is þe Condition of an heretique, but take every thing with other & trewly Vnderstonden. All is according to holy scripture & growndid in the same, & that Jhesus our very love Light & truth shall shew to all clen soules that with mekenes aske perseverantly this wisdom of hym. And thou to whome this booke shall come thanke heyly & hertily our savior Crist Ihesu that he made these shewings & revelations for the & to the of his endless love, mercy & goodness for thine & our safe guide & Conduct to ever lesting bliss the which Ihesus mot Grant us. Amen.

but which so much echoes the nervous caveats and warnings given in the translation of Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls by its translator into Middle English, one “M.N.”, who explains he had already translated the work years before and is now, as a lost soul, retranslating it and adding glosses to counter those Articles declared against, first Marguerite’s book burned by the Bishop of Cambrai at Valenciennes, then against even her

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self, he seeming to know she was burned at the stake in 1310 in Paris (A137-138v): To the Worschip and lawde ofþeTrinite Be þis Worke begunne and endid. Amen. The Prologe his boke the which is called þe myrroure of Sy mple Saules. I moste vnworþy creature and oute cast of alle oþer. many yeeris gone wrote it oute of ffrenche in to englisch after my lewyd kunnyn ge. in hope that by þe grace of god it scholde profet the deuout Saules that schalle rede it. This was forsoth my ne entente. But now I am Stirryd to labore it a‫ݤ‬eyne newe ffor by cause I am enfourmed that somm wordes þerof hafe bene mys taken. þerfore ‫ݤ‬if god will. I schalle declare þoo wordes more openly. ffor þou‫ ݤ‬loue declare þe poynt as in the Same boke it is but schortly spoken and maye be taken oþerwise than it is mente of thaym þt rede it So deynly and takis no forther hede. Therefore sych wordis to be twyes openyd: it wolde be more of audience and So by grace of oure lord good god: it schalle the more profite to the auditours: Bot bothe the first tyme and nowe: I hafe grete drede to do it . ffor the boke is of hye devyne maters and of hie gostely felyngis and kunnyngly and fulle my stely it is Spoken and I am a creature ri‫ݤ‬t wrycched & vnable to do any syche werke. Pore and nakid of gostely frutes. derked with Synnes and defautes envirowned and wrappyd þerinne ofte tymes the whiche taketh a way my taste and my clere si‫ݤ‬t. that litell I hafe of gostely vndir stondynge and lesse of þe felyngis of diuine loue. Ther fore I may Saye the wordys of the prophit [Amos 4.6]. my teth be nou‫ݤ‬t white to byte of this brede. Bot almyghty ihu god that ffedethe the worme, and giffes Syght to the bly nde. And witt to the vnwitty: giffe me grace of witt and wisdome in alle tymes. wisely to gouerne my selfe ffolowynge alwey his wille: and sende me clere sight and trewe vndirstandynge: welle to do this werke to his worschip and plesaunce parfite also & encres of gra ce to gastly louers: þt bene disposed and clepid to this hy‫ݤ‬e eleccion of the freedom of saule. O ‫ݤ‬e that schall rede this boke: do ‫ݤ‬e as david says in the sauter Gusta te & videte that is to saye. Tasteth & seeS But why to owe ‫ݤ‬e he seyde tasteþ firste: er þan he seide seeS: ffor first a saule mest taste: er it haue verray vndyrstandy nge & trewe Sight si‫ݤ‬t of gastely werkynges of diui ne loue. O fulle naked & derke. drie & vnsauery. bene

T

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VI. Julian and The Cloud Of Unknowing the Spelynges and werkynges of these hi‫ݤ‬e gostely fe lynges of the loue of god. to thame that has not tas ted the Swetnes þerof. But when a saule is touched with grace. bi whiche sche has tasted Sumwhat of þe swetnes of this diuine fruycyon and begynnes to wade & draweth the drau‫ݤ‬tes to hir warde. than it Sauores the saule so Swetly that sche desires gretly to hafe of it more and more and pursueth þer after & than the saule is glad & ioyefulle to hyere & to rede: of alle thynge that pertenes to this hi‫ݤ‬e felynges of þe wurkyngis of diuine loue. in norischynge & encresy nge here loue & deuocion to the wille and plesynge of hym that sche loues god crist ihu. Thus sche entres & walkes in the waye of illuminacion that sche my‫ݤ‬t be tau‫ݤ‬t into the gostly influences of the diuine werke of god. there to be drowned in the hi‫ݤ‬e flode & unyed to god by uanyschynge of loue: by whiche sche is all oon oon Spirite with her spouse. Therfore to these sau les tht bene disposid to these hie felyngis: loue has made of hym this boke in fulfillynge of her desire: and often he leieth the notte and the kernelle with ynne the schelle vnbrokinne. This is to say. that loue in th is boke leyes to soules the touches of his diuine wer kes priuely hid vndir derke speche: ffor they schulde tas te the deppere. the drau‫ݤ‬tes of his loue and drynke and also to make tham haue the more clere insi‫ݤ‬t in diuine vnderstangis to diuine loue & declare þame selfe. And some poyntes loue declares in thre diuerse wises acordynge to oon. Oon maner sche declares to ac tifes. The secunde to contemplatiues. And the þrid to commyn peple. But ‫ݤ‬it as I sayde afore. it hase bene mystaken of summe persones that hase red the boke. Ther fore at siche places there me Semed moste nede. I wy le write mo words þerto in maner of glose. aftir my Symple kunnynge as me Semes best. And in these fe we places that I put in more than I fynde written. I wi le be gynne with the ferste letter of my name .M. and ende with this letter.N. the firste of my Sur name. The frenche boke that I schalle write after is yuel writen & in Sum. places for defaute of wordes and silables the reson is awaye. Also in translatynge of ffrensche Summe words need to be chaunged. or it wille fare vngudely. not acordynge to the sentence. Wherefore I wille ffolowe the Sentence acordynge to the matere. as nyere as god wolle giffe me grace. obeiynge me euer: to the correction of holy kirke prayinge gastlye

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lyueres and clerkis: that they wille uowche safe to correc te & amende: þo that I do amys. Here endith þe Prologe of the translator that drewe this booke out of ffrensch into englisch. And here Begynnes the Prologe in two chapiters vp on this Same booke that loue Nameth the mirror of Simple saules. Oure lorde god crist ihu brynge it to a goode ende. Amen

and to the opening by the unknown author of the Cloud of Unknowing (EETS 218.1-2): Here bygynniþ a book of contemplacyon þe whiche is clepyd þe clowde of vnknowyng in þe whiche a soule is onyd wiþ god . . . . I charge þee & I beseche þee bi þi autorite of charite, þat ‫ݤ‬if any soche schal rede it, write it, or speke it, or elles here it be red or spokin, þat þou charge hem, as I do þee, for to take hem tyme to rede it, speke it, write it, or here it, al ouer. For parauenture þer is som mater þer-in, in þe beginnyng or in þe middle, þe whiche is hanging & not fully declared þer it stondeþ; & ‫ݤ‬if it be not þere, it is sone after, or elles in þe ende. Wherfore, ‫ݤ‬if a man saw o mater & not anoþer, parauenture he mi‫ݤ‬t li‫ݤ‬tly be led into errour, & þerfore, in eschewing of þis errour boþe in þi-self & in alle oþer, I preye þee par charite do as I sey þee. Fleschly ianglers, opyn preisers & blamers of hem-self or of any oþer, tiþing tellers, rouners & tutilers of tales, & alle maner of pinchers: kept I neuer þat þei sawe þis book. For myn entent was neuer to write soche þing unto hem. & þerfore I wolde þat þei medel not þer-wiþ, neiþer þei ne any of þees corious lettred or lewed men. ‫ڻ‬e, þou‫ ݤ‬al þat þei be ful good men of actiue leuyng, ‫ݤ‬it þis mater acordeþ noþing to hem; bot ‫ݤ‬if it be to þoo men þe which, þou‫ ݤ‬al þei stonde in actyuete bi outward forme of leuying, neuerþeles ‫ݤ‬it bi inward stering after þe priue sperit of God, whose domes ben hid, þei ben ful graciously disposid, not contynowlely as it is proper to verrey contemplatyves, bot þan & þan to be parceners in þe hie‫ݤ‬st pointe of þis contemplative acte: ‫ڻ‬if soche men mi‫ݤ‬t se it, þei schuld by þe grace of God be greetly counforted þerby.

that one would not be considered a fool if one thought they came from the same pen, that of a learned Norwich, Oxford-educated, scholar Cardinal, named AdaM EastoN, writing to an enclosed Norwich anchoress, named Julian.

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X. Conclusion It was not until later that day that I realised the identity of the scarletclad Cardinal in the Paradiso painting of St Birgitta and her following, now in Florence’s San Marco. He recurs in the manuscript illuminations and the later engravings as well as gracing paintings, “Sacred Conversations”, about St Birgitta and her Revelationes. He is to be seen in his Cardinal’s hat beside the Pope, beyond them both, the Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén, all at Birgitta’s right hand side in the Lübeck engraving. He is our own English Benedictine, Adam Easton of Norwich, Oxford, Avignon and Rome, who, from a background of poverty and exclusion, came to be buried in his titular basilica of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere in Rome in a magnificent marble tomb sculpted with his Cardinal’s hat and tassels and the royal arms of England. He was a lover of theological books and, eventually, of women’s writings, who had owned the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, of Origen, of Rabbi David Kimhi, and of the Victorines, and who, converted while imprisoned and tortured, expecting capital punishment on “Death Row”, like Boethius, vowed to effect Birgitta of Sweden’s canonisation if his life were spared, who knew Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén, spiritual director to Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Sweden, Catherine of Siena and Chiara Gambacorta, as well as knowing John Whiterig, his Oxford contemporary who became the hermit on Farne Island, and as well William Flete, who became the hermit of Lecceto, Catherine of Siena‘s executor, the English member of her cenacolo. Adam Easton may very likely have himself been Julian of Norwich’s spiritual director, editing the “Long” Text of her Showing of Love, and translating such works as Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls (commenting on it as AdaM. EastoN.), Jan van Ruusbroec’s Sparkling Stone, Henry Suso’s Horologium Sapientiae that are to be found bound together in the Amherst (A) Manuscript, and Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes, William Flete’s Remedies Against Temptations, Catherine of Siena’s Dialogo and Pseudo-Dionysius’ De Mystica, separately, and writing for her those lost treatises on the spiritual life of perfection, drawing on the Victorines and Pseudo-Dionysius, in Middle English, rather than Latin, that have until now been so hid in a “Cloud of Unknowing” that neither their author nor their audience could be discerned.

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Notes 1

Brian Stock, Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: University Press, 1983); Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola, trans. Richard Miller, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974. Colledge and Walsh in their edition, I.45, see Julian as much influenced by The Cloud of Unknowing and The Scale of Perfection. The three texts exist in a “Textual Community”. Their careful analysis by Marion Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics: Games of Faith (London: Longman, 1993), as in the pairing of them by many other scholars, makes their contextualisation obvious. See also Catherine Innes-Parker, “The ‘Gender-Gap’ Reconsidered: Manuscripts and Readers in Late Medieval England”, Studia Anglica Posnaniensa: An International Review of English Studies 38 (2002), 239-269. 2 William Flete, “Remedies Against Temptations: The Third English Version of William Flete”, ed. Eric Colledge and Noel Chadwick, Archivio Italiano per la Storia de la Pietà 5 (Rome, 1968). 3 The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counselling (“Here Bygynniþ a Book of Contemplacyon þe whiche is clepyd þe Clowde of Vnknowyng in þe whiche a Soule is onyd wiþ God”), ed. Phyllis Hodgson (London: Oxford University Press, 1944), Early English Text Society (EETS) 218.13; Deonise Hid Divinite and Other Treatises on Contemplative Prayer Related to the Cloud of Unknowing, A Treatyse of þe Stodye of Wysdome þat men clepen Benjamin, A Pistle of Preier, A Pistle of Discrecioun of Stirings; A Tretis of Discrescyon of Spirites, ed. Phyllis Hodgson (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), EETS 231. Henceforth EETS’ volume, pagination and line numbering are cited in the text and in the footnotes. Only Edmund G. Gardner raises the possibility that the Cloud texts were written for a woman about to become an anchoress, The Cell of SelfKnowledge: Seven Early English Mystical Writers printed by Henry Pepwell, MDXXI, ed. Edmund G. Gardner (London: Chatto & Windus, 1910), pp. 95-110. 4 The Chastising of God’s Children and The Treatise of the Perfection of the Sons of God, ed. Joyce Bazire and Eric Colledge (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957). 5 Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, ed. Evelyn Underhill (London: Watkins, 1923); trans. John P.H. Clark and Rosemary Doreward (New York: Paulist Press, 1991). 6 Colledge and Chadwick, “Remedies Against Temptations”, pp. 207-210. The text also speaks of events of the Passion not in the Gospels but “the which was be reuelacion of God schewid to a religious persone”. 7 Chastising, ed. Bazire and Colledge, pp. 44-48. 8 Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, ed. Thomas H. Bestul, http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/bestul-hilton-the-scale-of-perfection-book-i; ed. Underhill, p. 1; trans. Clark and Doreward, p. 54, notes that the manuscript variants are “Gostely syster/brother/brother or suster”, which is indicative of the gender interchangeability of these texts. 9 The Cell of Self-Knowledge: Seven Early English Mystical Writers printed by Henry Pepwell MDXXI, ed. Edmund G. Gardner (London: Chatto & Windus 1910), pp. 88, 95, 102 and passim. Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, CP, transcribed and

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collated the Julian of Norwich Showing of Love manuscripts, excepting Upholland and Gascoigne, for her University of Leeds Theses, 1947: S1, collated with S2; 1956: A,P, collated with SS,W. Other editions were A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, ed. Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and James Walsh, S.J. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978), 2 vols. (A,P, collated with W,SS); A Revelation of Love, ed. Marion Glasscoe from British Library, Sloane 2499 (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1976, 1986, 1993) (S1); Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love: The Shorter Version Ed. from B.L. MS. 37790, ed. Francis Beer (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1978) (A), while Edward P. Nolan published my earlier transcription of W in Cry Out and Write: A Feminine Poetics of Revelation (New York: Continuum, 1994), pp. 141-203. Nicholas Watson, “The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love”, Speculum 68 (1993), 637-683, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409”, Speculum 70 (1995), 822-864, dates Julian’s “Short” Text as later than previously thought, but not as late as 1413, though his theses would support the Amherst Manuscript’s own dating. 10 Colledge and Chadwick, “Flete’s Remedies”, p. 204. While another ascription, to ‘St Richard of Hampole’, will be considered valid by Father Augustine Baker and the English Benedictine nuns in exile whom he directed, resulting in copies of Julian’s Showing of Love in manuscripts together with Flete’s text but as ascribed to Rolle, as in the case of Colwich H18, written out in the hand of Bridget More, Thomas More’s descendant, p. 215. 11 Colledge and Chadwick, “Flete’s Remedies”, p. 221. 12 Colledge and Chadwick, “Flete’s Remedies”, pp. 223-4. 13 Colledge and Chadwick, “Flete’s Remedies”, p. 228. 14 Colledge and Chadwick, “Flete’s Remedies”, pp. 230-1. 15 Colledge and Chadwick, “Flete’s Remedies”, p. 232. 16 Colledge and Chadwick, “Flete’s Remedies”, p. 238. 17 Colledge and Chadwick, “Flete’s Remedies”, p. 222. 18 Colledge and Chadwick, “Flete’s Remedies”, p. 223. 19 Colledge and Chadwick, “Flete’s Remedies”, p. 226. 20 Colledge and Chadwick, “Flete’s Remedies”, p. 227. 21 Colledge and Chadwick, “Flete’s Remedies”, p. 230. 22 Colledge and Chadwick, “Flete’s Remedies”, p. 233. 23 Colledge and Chadwick, “Flete’s Remedies”, p. 235. 24 Roger Ellis, “Author(s), Compilers, Scribes, and Bible Texts: Did the CloudAuthor translate The Twelve Patriarchs?” The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Exeter Symposium V, ed. Marion Glasscoe, pp. 193-94. 25 The vocabulary of the manuscript clearly echoes that in the Sloane manuscripts of Julian’s Showing of Love, “arn” for “be”, and such words as “behouely”, “woo”, “travail”, “sekir”. It comprises texts written in Middle English for a woman vowed as an anchoress or other form of perfect living. It makes use of illuminated capitals in gold leaf upon purple, copying the Bibles written out at St Boniface’s request by English nuns in an earlier time.

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library 26

175

Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 222. 27 A Book of Contemplation the Which is Called the Cloud of Unknowing, In the Which a Soul is Oned with God, ed. Evelyn Underhill (London: Watkins, 1912), pp. 7-9. For such worldly behavior, see especially Chapter 8, p. 97. In Chapter 73, p. 307, he tells his reader to fulfil for him what is lacking in his own life. Dom David Knowles, The English Mystics (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1927), p. 91, quotes from Dom Justin McCann’s 1924 edition of The Cloud of Unknowing, p. xii. 28 The Ancrene Riwle, trans. Mary B. Salu (London: Burns and Oates, 1955), p. 11. See also The Myroure of oure Ladye, ed. John Henry Blunt (London: Trübner, 1873), EETS, Extra Series, 29, which similarly demonstrates how the Latin of the liturgical Offices could be rendered into Middle English for women’s benefit, in this case for the Brigittine nuns of Syon Abbey. 29 Among them Twelfth Night, Candlemas, Lady Day. Easter Sunday, Holy Thursday, Whitsunday, Midsummer, St Mary Magdalen’s, Assumption, Nativity, St Michael’s, All Saints, St Andrew’s, Ancrene Riwle, trans. Salu, p. 182. 30 Aelred of Rievaulx, De Institutione Inclusarum, ed. John Ayto and Alexandra Barrett (London: Oxford University Press, 1984), EETS 287.1:5-6. 31 Aron Andersson and Anne Marie Franzen, Birgittareliker (Stockholm: Alqvist and Wiksells, 1975), pp. 54-55. 32 The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle: Ancrene Wisse, Edited from the Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 403, ed. J.R.R. Tolkien (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), EETS 249.63:12-15 and passim. 33 Hilton, Scale, ed. Underhill, p. 1. 34 Cloud, ed. Hodgson, EETS 218.13; ed. Underhill, pp. 7-9. Julian’s Showing of Love, W84v, P42v,46,56, A105.12, similarly emphasises the crown of life, derived from Philippians 4.1. 35 Compare with Ancrene Riwle, trans. Salu, pp. 183-184; Julia Bolton Holloway, Saint Bride and her Book: Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelations, pp. 41-50, for the strange use of masculine forms in the Mary and Martha story translated into Middle English by a Brigittine brother of Syon. 36 Cardinal Adam Easton, arguing for women’s greater capacity to see and hear visions than men’s, cited that text when defending Birgitta of Sweden’s canonisation: Lincoln 114 (now at Nottingham University), fol. 27v, observing that Mary Magdalen was the first to see the risen Christ and that she announced this as Apostle to the Apostles. He also cites Philip’s four virgin prophet daughters and Saints Agnes, Agatha and Cecilia, while his male examples are of the Doubting St Thomas and the betraying St Peter of the ‘Quo Vadis’ vision at Rome, fols. 28-28v. 37 2 Samuel 7.18-22, 1 Chronicles 29.10-20, in Origen, On Prayer, XXXIII.3, ed. Eric George Jay (London: S.P.C.K., 1954), p. 218. 38 John Whiterig, The Monk of Farne: The Meditations of a Fourteenth-Century Monk, ed. Hugh Farmer, OSB, Studia Anselmiana 41 (1957); trans. A Benedictine of Stanbrook, p. 26. 39 Adam Easton owned Origen’s Homilies on Leviticus, Homily IV using this example, “sed fimbriam tetigit vestimenti”, Patrologia cursus completus series

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VI. Julian and The Cloud Of Unknowing

Graeca, ed. J.P. Migne, 12.443A. The original Greek text is lost, the Latin only surviving. 40 Ann Savage and Nicholas Watson, Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Related Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), p. 34, note that the Deerfold anchoresses did not need to have the Latin prayers and quotations from the Fathers translated for them which are embedded throughout the text of the Ancrene Wisse. 41 Eileen Power, “Nunneries”, Medieval Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), ed. M.M. Postan, pp. 96-97; Julia Bolton Holloway, Equally in God’s Image: Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Julia Bolton Holloway, Joan Bechtold, and Constance S. Wright (Berne: Peter Lang, 1990), passim, observed that the loss of Latin literacy amongst religious women coincided with the coming of the Universities, which only admitted and trained men until our last century. 42 Cambridge University Library Ii.III.32. This manuscript’s invocation to the Trinity has an illuminated Gothic T in intertwined gold-leaf, fol. 108v. Its Norwich Cathedral Priory shelfmark is “X ccxxviii”, the highest surviving shelf mark for the books from Adam Easton’s library returned to Norwich from Rome at his death in six barrels, but which had already been shipped between Norwich and Oxford during his preaching in the one city, his teaching in the other, in Julian’s formative years. 43 Whiterig, Monk of Farne, ed. Farmer; trans. Benedictine of Stanbrook, p. 129. 44 Cloud, ed. Hodgson, EETS 218.125; trans. as The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Treatises, With a Commentary by Father Augustine Baker, OSB, ed. Dom Justin McCann (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1943), pp. 93-94. 45 That invocation echoes as well the quasi-Gnostic text of Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls–which occurs in the same manuscript as does Julian’s “Short” Text, and which may reflect the contents of Julian’s library of contemplative books, perhaps given her by Adam Easton. On Wisdom, among other texts, see Joan Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter: The Theology of Julian of Norwich, Asphodel P. Long, In A Chariot Drawn by Lions: The Search for the Female in Deity (London: Women’s Press, 1992). 46 Gerard Sitwell, Introduction to The Ancrene Riwle, trans. Salu, p. x, states “The Cloud of Unknowing was not apparantly written for an anchoress, but it is a notable member of this group of writings, and it deals with this experience from the start”; Marion Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics: Games of Faith (London: Longman, 1993), pp. 167-172, gives the received opinion that the disciple is male. 47 The Mirror of Simple Souls: By an Unknown French Mystic of the Thirteenth Century, ed. Clare Kirchberger (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1927), p. xxix, “We cannot determine with any exactness who was the author of the Mirror, nor has anything further come to light since Miss Underhill, in 1911, conjectured that he may have been a secular priest or a Carthusian living on the borders of Flanders and France in the last third of the thirteenth century”, and p. xxxii, “The boldness and humour of the Fleming seems to have pleased his censors, and their verdict appears to have satisfied him”.

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library 48

177

Þe Book of Priue Counseling, ed. Hodgson (EETS 218.136); Mirror of Simple Souls, British Library, Add. 37,790 (A145,151v) and passim; ed. Kirchberger, p. 51 and passim. 49 Book of Priue Counseling, ed. Hodgson, EETS 218.135-6. 50 Cloud, ed. Hodgson, EETS 218.l-li, noting that MSS Kk, Har2, Ro1, U, Ro3 are all more Scandinavian, i.e. with East Anglican connections, than the base text chosen, Har1, on the theory that Har1 represents the language of the original. Eric Colledge, The Mediaeval Mystics of England (London: Murray, 1962), p. 75: Oxford, University College 14 contains a marginal note observing the derivation of part of The Cloud from Hilton’s Of Reading (Scale of Perfection). 51 Cloud, ed. Hodgson, EETS 218: British Library, MS Royal 17 D v (Ro3), fol. 59, “Here folowen dyuerse doctrynys deuowte and fruytfulle taken owte of the lyfe of that glorious virgyn and spowse of our Lorde Seynt Kateryne of Seenys”; Oxford, University College 14, which has East Anglian characteristics, at fol. 56v concludes with “doctrine schewyde of god to seynt Kateryne of seene. Of tokynes to knowe vysytac i ons bodyly or goostly vysyons whedyr þei come of god or of þe feende”, which is precisely the material used by Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén and Cardinal Adam Easton in their defenses of St Birgitta of Sweden from William Flete influencing St Catherine of Siena. 52 Porete, Speculum Animarum Simplicium, trans. Richard Methley: Pembroke College, Cambridge, 221. 53 James Grenehalgh annotated British Library, Harleian 2373, Harleian 6576, Royal 5.A.v, Add. 24,661, Add. 37,790; Cambridge, Emmanuel College I.ii.14, Trinity B.15.18; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 262; Michael G. Sargent, James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistic Universität Salzburg, 1974), Analecta Cartusiana 10. 54 Cloud, ed. McCann, pp. 152-153; ed. Hodgson, EETS 218.xix, fn, states that the Ampleforth manuscript says it was transcribed 1677 “out ye Cambray copy of 1648, which was taken out of the old copy that was transcribed, 1582” and again that it was taken “out of ye copy of Cambray, being a little thin Octavo, with parchment covers”. The Stanbrook manuscript is 1648. The 1582 manuscript would have been contemporary with that of the Julian Paris “Long” Text manuscript and thus likely a Syon in exile or Sheen anglorum text. Stanbrook Abbey still has two manuscripts of these texts, measuring 4" x 6", from their Cambrai house where Father Baker had been their spiritual director, 1624-1633, while the Upholland Julian manuscript was also transcribed at Cambrai by these same nuns. My thanks to Dame Eanswythe Edwards, OSB, Stanbrook Abbey, for this information. See John Rory Fletcher, The Story of the English Brigittines of Syon Abbey (Devon: Syon Abbey, 1933), p. 59, on the Syon nuns in hiding in England desiring to publish The Scale of Perfection at this time. 55 See John P.H. Clark, “‘The Lightsome Darkness’—Aspects of Walter Hilton’s Theological Background”, Downside Review 95 (1977), 95-109. While we have excellent Early English Text Society editions of the Ancrene Wisse/ Riwle and The Cloud of Unknowing and their related texts, we currently lack such editions for Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection and Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love (Michael Sargent is completing M.G. Bliss’s edition of Part One, S.S. Hussey’s

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edition of Part Two, of The Scale of Perfection for the EETS): Hilton, Scale, trans. Clark and Dorward, p. 53. 56 Both the 1494 printed edition and John Bale, copying that information, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, p. 106, believed that Walter Hilton was a Carthusian; both give the opening of the Scala Perfectionis as “Ghostly Sister in Christ Jesus, Dilecta soror in Christe Iesu”. 57 James Walsh and Eric Colledge, Of the Knowledge of Ourselves and of God, p. xvii, note that the manuscript “demonstrates the doctrinal and terminological interdependence of Walter Hilton and Julian of Norwich.” 58 Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, “Editing Julian’s Revelations: A Progress Report”, Mediaeval Studies 38 (1976), 415. 59 John P.H. Clark, “Late Fourteenth Century Theology and the English Contemplative Tradition”, The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Exeter Symposium V: Papers Read at the Devon Centre, Dartington Hall, 1992, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 1-16, esp. 3; Hilton, Scale, trans. Clark and Dorward, pp. 14-15; however, Wolfgang Riehle, The Middle English Mystics, p. 9, cites colophon to Marseilles 729, “Explicit liber . . . editus a . . . Waltero Hiltonensi Parisius in sacra pagina laureato magistro”; Michael G. Sargent, “The Transmission by the English Carthusians of Some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 27 (1976), 236. 60 British Library, Harley 2406, folios 58-60v. 61 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, anglais 41, Luis de Fontibus in Middle English, and Pore Caitif, owned, King James I of Scotland, who married Joan Beaufort, Margaret Beaufort’s aunt, for whom see below; Karine Moreau-Guibert, “Le Pore Caitif: édition critique diplomatique d’après le ms de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, Anglais 41, avec introduction, notes, et glossaires”, Université de Paris, 1999. 62 The Longer Commentary of R. David Kimhi on the First Book of the Psalms, trans. R.G. Finch, p. 1, notes that this Sabbath psalm was said by Adam at the Creation; John P.H. Clark, “The Problem of Walter Hilton’s Authorship: Bonum Est, Benedictus, and Of Angels’ Song”, Downside Review 101:342 (1983), 15-29; “Walter Hilton and the Psalm Commentary Qui Habitat”, Downside Review 100:341 (1982), 235-262, ‘Qui habitat’ being the psalm said daily at Compline. 63 There are 42 manuscripts of Part One, 26 of Part Two of The Scale of Perfection, the work circulating far more widely than either The Cloud of Unknowing or Julian’s Showing of Love. Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, had Wynken de Worde print it in 1494: Hilton, Scale, ed. Clark and Dorward, p. 33. James Grenehalgh would annotate the printed edition, Rosenbach Collection, 484H, with his and Joanna Sewell’s monograms. 64 Hilton, Scale, ed. Underhill, p. 226. 65 Hilton, Scale, ed. Underhill, pp. 144-45. 66 Hilton, Scale, trans. Leo Sherley-Price (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957), p. 101. 67 Hilton, Scale, ed. Underhill, p. 219. 68 Cloud, ed. Hodgson, EETS 218.71:14-17. 69 Aelred of Rievaulx, Institutione Inclusarum, ed. Ayto and Barrett (London: Oxford University Press, 1984), EETS 287.6,221-222.

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70

Ancrene Wisse, ed. Tolkien, EETS 249.27,125. Cloud, ed. Hodgson, EETS 218.71:11-16. 72 Clark, “English Contemplative Tradition”, ed. Glasscoe, 1992, p. 4. 73 “Sed et tu, IESU, bone domine, nonne et tu mater? An non est mater, qui tamquam gallina congregat sub alas pullos suos? Vere, domine, et tu mater”, etc., S. Anselmi Cantuarensis archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, ed. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1956), III.40; “And you, Jesus, are you not also a mother?/Are you not the mother who, like a hen,/gathers her chickens under her wings?/ Truly, Lord, you are a mother;/for both they who are in labour/ and they who are brought forth/ are accepted by you”, Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm, trans. Sr Benedicta Ward, S.L.G., p. 152-53; Pelphrey, Christ our Mother, p. 163; Grace M. Jantzen, Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian, p. 114; Origen, Homily XII on Leviticus (owned in manuscript by Adam Easton), Patrologia cursus completus series Graeca, 12 (1857), 543: citing Galatians 4.19, “Donec formetur Christus in vobis”. 74 Ritamary Bradley, Julian’s Way: A Practical Commentary on Julian of Norwich (London: Harper Collins, 1992), p. 142. A much closer correspondence can be found in the following Ancrene Riwle (trans. Salu, p. 175) passage: 71

“Can a mother”, He says “forget her child? And even if she could, I can never forget you. I have painted you”, He says “in my hands”. People tie knots in their belts to remind them about things, but our Lord, because He wished never to forget us, put nails of piercing in both His hands, to remind Him of us. 75

Whiterig, Monk of Farne, ed. Farmer, trans. Benedictine of Stanbrook, p. 64. John Whiterig quotes from Hugh of St Victor, De arrhâ animae, pp. 104, 109, and speaks of “God’s Friends”, p. 97. On p. 129, in the “Meditation upon Angels”, Whiterig states “My opinion would, however, appear to be contradicted by what Denys the Areopagite together with St Gregory, hold to be true”. 76 Linda Georgianna, The Solitary Self, p. 134; Flete, “Remedies against Temptations”, ed. Colledge and Chadwick, . p. 205. 77 Chastising, ed. Bazire and Colledge, p. 91. 78 Chastising, ed Bazire and Colledge, p. 146, fols. 42-42v, “þou‫܌‬tis of predestination and of þe prescience of god, of the which metier I drede soore to write, for þese termes han oþer sentence in latyn þanne I can shewe in ynglisshe . . . [God’s] prescience, þat is to seie on ynglisshe his forknowynge”, a term to be repeated in Julian, is also found in Adam Easton’s Italian manuscript copy of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 74, Berangarius episcopus Bisirrensis, “Presciencia”, fol. 195/CXCVv, where it is discussed similarly as knowing the future and in the context of freedom of will. Easton likely acquired this particular manuscript while in Italy and after his time of preaching in Norwich, teaching at Oxford. 79 Chastising, ed. Bazire and Colledge, p. 35. 80 Chastising, ed. Bazire and Colledge, ed., p. 46. See Cloud, p. 49, lines 15-16.

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Veronica M. O’Mara, A Study and Edition of Selected Middle English Sermons. (Leeds: Leeds Texts and Monographs N.S.13, 1998), discusses Brigittine/ Benedictine sermons in Cambridge University Library, Hh.1.11; manuscript described by Edmund Colledge and Noel Chadwick in “William Flete’s Remedies Against Temptations”, pp. 206-208. 82 John Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. Reginald Lane Poole and Mary Bateson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1902, p. 6; John Bale also says Easton wrote De communicatione ydiomatum . See as well John Bale, Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytannie, quam nunc Angliam et Scotium vocant: Catalogus (Basle: Opinorum, 1557-1559). 83 Rosalynn Voaden, “The Middle English Epistola Solitarii ad Reges of Alfonso of Jaén: An Edition of the Text in British Library MS. Cotton Julius F ii”, Studies in St. Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, 1: 144, noting the Norfolk provenance of the manuscript; F.R. Johnston, “English Defenders of St. Bridget”, 1:263-275 (however, in connection with p. 265, Hamilton 7 is of Swedish provenance and so may also be Lincoln 114); James Hogg, “Cardinal Easton’s Letter to the Abbess and Community of Vadstena”, 2: 20-26. 84 The Orcherd of Syon, ed. Phyllis Hodgson and Gabriel M. Liegey (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), Early English Text Society 258, p. vii; Jane Chance, “St Catherine of Siena in Late Medieval Britain: Feminizing Literary Reception through Gender and Class”, Annali d’Italianistica 13 (1995), 176; Elizabeth Psakis Armstrong, “Informing the Mind and Stirring up the Heart: Katherine of Siena at Syon”, Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, ed. James Hogg (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1993) 2: 170-198, esp. 189-193, on the relation of Catherine and Julian’s texts to each other. Cristofano Di Gano, Catherine of Siena’s secretary, also had Birgitta’s Revelationes translated into Sienese Italian in 1399 in two fine illuminated manuscript volumes, today still in Siena, Biblioteca Communale degli Intronati, I.V.25/26. 85 Siena, Biblioteca degli Intronati, I.V.25/26; Julia Bolton Holloway, “Saint Birgitta of Sweden, Saint Catherine of Siena: Saints, Secretaries, Scribes, Supporters”, Birgittiana 1 (1996), 29-45; republished in following chapter. 86 Siena, Biblioteca degli Intronati, C.XI.20. While in Florence is found an early fifteenth-century translation into Florentine of Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, its beginning and ending containing, in the same hand as the rest of the manuscript, extracts from Origen, one of them on women in Genesis, most probably produced in the Brigittine context of the Paradiso and possibly deriving from Adam Easton’s strong interest in Origen (who wrote for women), and in women theologians, Biblioteca Riccardiana 1468. 87 Cloud, ed. Hodgson, EETS 218.13-14. 88 Adam Easton’s Oxford astronomical treatises survive, Cambridge University Library Gg.VI.3, Norwich Cathedral Priory shelf mark C clxx, and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 347, that at Cambridge also containing his drawings of Norwich Cathedral, Norwich Castle; Cloud, ed. Hodgson, EETS 218.17.15-18:5; ed. McCann, p. 8, gives an interesting note from a Cambridge manuscript; Italian still uses “attimo” “toc”, to speak of measurements of time.

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Leslie John McFarlane, “The Life and Writings of Adam Easton, O.S.B”. University of London, Ph.D. Thesis, 1955, pp. 36-48. We recall that Easton translated the Bible from Hebrew into Latin in the midst of much else, “ac Biblia tota ab hebreo in latium transtulisse”, John Bale tells us, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, p. 6. 90 MacFarlane, “Adam Easton, OSB”, pp. 102, 137, 166, 205. 91 Cloud, ed. Hodgson, EETS 218.20. 92 “After this our lorde Seyde: I thangke the of thy servys and of thy travelle of thy yowyth”, P29, “aftyr this oure lorde sayde. I thanke the of thy servyce & of thy trauayle, & namly in þi 3ough”, A102v. 93 Maika J. Will, “Dionysian Neoplatonism and the Theology of the Cloud Author”, Downside Review, 110:379 (1992), 98-109. 94 Chastising, ed. Bazire and Colledge, pp. 44-48. 95 Carleton Brown, “The Prioress’s Tale”, Sources and Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, ed. W.F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster, pp. 447-487; Julia Bolton Holloway, “Convents, Courts and Colleges: The Prioress and the Second Nun”, Equally in God’s Image: Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Holloway, Bechtold and Wright, pp. 198-215. 96 O’Mara, Study and Edition of Middle English Sermons, discussing Brigittine/ Benedictine sermons in Cambridge University Library, Hh.1.11. 97 Cloud, ed. Hodgson, EETS 218.l. 98 Joyce Bazire, “The Dialects of the Manuscripts of The Chastising of God’s Children”. English and Germanic Studies 6 (1957), 64-78.

VII SAINTS, SECRETARIES, SCRIBES, SUPPORTERS: BIRGITTA OF SWEDEN AND CATHERINE OF SIENA

Ego sum creator celi et terre, unus in deitate cum Patre et Spiritu sancto, ego, qui prophetis et patriarchis loquebar et quem ipsi expectabant.

A

Ndré Vauchez has called for a study of canonisation processes; Brian Stock has given us the concept of “Textual Communities”; Mikhail Bakhtin has noted that as scholars all we have as evidence are words that “uttered, written, printed, whispered or thought”.1 With Saints Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena we have remaining to us dictated and written words,2 manuscript illuminations, painted pictures and sculptures and also tangible relics, such as an odd mixture of bones3 and a shabbily but lovingly patched cloak.4 I. Saints We are familiar with the political context of St Birgitta in Sweden, and with her Secretariat there, who included the Dominican Hebrew scholar, Master Mathias, Bishop Hemming of Åbo, and the two Peter Olavssons, one a Master and Augustinian Canon garbed in black, the other a Cistercian Prior garbed in white, these two similarly-named men continuing on with her in Rome and Jerusalem as her confessors and amanuenses.5 To represent that Secretariat one could turn to Bishop Hemming of Åbo and Saint Birgitta as they are shown in a diptych in the Church of Urdiala, in Finland (Plate VIIb). The Bishop authorises the Saint who writes, validating her book and her prophecy. Master Mathias wrote the Epistle/Prologus, “Stupor et mirabilia audita sunt in terra nostra” to her Book and in 1346-7 Bishop Hemming and Prior Petrus Olavsson were sent with it to the Pope, Clement VI, and to King Philip VI of France and King Edward III of England, all of whom were then in what

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we know today as France, with the intent that these early Revelationes, and Birgitta’s Rule, end both the Papal “Babylonian Captivity” in Avignon and the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, while instituting a Golden Year, a Jubilee, of pilgrimage to Rome.6 We associate with that earlier Secretariat the Books I, II and V of the Liber Celestis. Then, for the 1350 Roman Jubilee that Birgitta had advocated through Bishop Hemming of Åbo to Clement VI, she herself travelled to Italy, re-establishing her Secretariat in Rome and writing further Revelationes.7 Let us next go iconographically from Finland to Santa Maria Novella’s Spanish Chapel in Florence. In a remarkable fresco, painted in 1368, over twenty years later than Birgitta’s initial papal diplomacy, we see living supporters of the Church and the Empire, at the centre of which are Pope Urban V and the Emperor Charles IV of Bohemia, who were both in Rome on 21 October 1368. There they celebrated Mass together, the Emperor as Deacon, who had earlier come to St Peter’s for his Coronation by the Papal Legate, 5 April 1355. Flanking the Pope and Emperor are such figures as King Peter of Cyprus, who was to be murdered in 1369, and whose widow, Queen Eleanor, Birgitta of Sweden would meet in 1372 and to whom Catherine of Siena would write, and other people, such as the Count Amadeus III of Savoy (who was the father of Robert of Geneva, to become the Anti-Pope Clement VII), the Cardinal Albornoz and the Grand Master of the Hospitallers, Juan de Heredia, while on the left we see a humble Dominican mantellata, who is thought to be St Catherine, and on the right an aging widow, likely Birgitta, who had for over twenty years advocated and stage-managed this event, beside her fair daughter, Catherine of Sweden.8 The other two women, one of whom is crowned, are likely Queen Joan of Naples and Niccolò Acciaiuoli’s sister, Lapa Acciaiuoli Buondelmonte. Birgitta had known them well in Naples in the years 1365-67, and had been at Niccolò Acciaiuoli’s deathbed, 8 November 1365.9 In this room, Santa Maria Novella’s Spanish Chapter used for chapter meetings, in 1374, six years later than this fresco was painted, Catherine of Siena herself was interrogated by her own Dominicans, Raymond of Capua then being appointed her confessor and director.10 In 1380, he was to become Confessor General of the Dominican Order. II. Their Secretaries and Scribes Likely in the same year of the fresco, 1368, another Bishop, this one also a Hermit, the Spaniard Alfonso of Jaén, but of Sienese descent, became a member of Birgitta’s entourage.11 In 1370, Alfonso interpreted for her to Urban V at Montefiascone, and was her Confessor there for

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three months while the two Peter Olavssons were ill in Rome. Alfonso then went with Birgitta on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1372, visiting also Naples and Cyprus on the way. We remember Birgitta prophesying shipwreck when he packed his books, “Only take two or three”, she said. One of them was the John of Climacus now at Uppsala, listing their itinerary.12 Birgitta appointed Alfonso her literary executor “Nunc ergo . . . trade omnes libros revelationum . . . episcopo meo heremite, qui conscribat eos . . .” He was absent at her death in 1373, being then in Avignon at the curia of Pope Gregory XI, who next sent him to the Dominican tertiary and mantellata, St Catherine of Siena, in 1374, to bestow upon her the papal blessing and to request her support for the Pope.13 Catherine mentioned Alfonso as the Pope’s messenger to herself in the 1374 letter from Siena to Pisa, dictated to Alessia, one of her scribes and a fellow mantellata, when writing to the Dominicans Fra Bartolommeo and Fra Tommaso Cafferini “ciò fue el padre spiritual di quella contessa che morì a Roma, ed è colui che renuntio al vescovado per l’amore della virtù”, “And he was the spiritual director of that countess who died in Rome and it was he who gave up his bishopric out of love of virtue”.14 Then Pietro Gambacorti invited Catherine of Siena to Pisa to dissuade Pisa and Lucca from joining the Tuscan League against the Pope.15 In the church of Santa Cristina in Pisa, 1375, Catherine received the stigmata in the form of five rays of blood-red light. It was at this date and from this place that Catherine suddenly became a prolific writer of letters, dictating these to sometimes up to three scribes at once, her usual amanuenses being Neri di Landoccio del Pagliaresi, Stefano Maconi, Barduccio Canigiani, Francesco Malavolti, as well as Alessa, these being sometimes joined by the notary, and disciple, Ser Cristofano di Gano Guidini.16 Catherine of Siena was already famous for her sanctity, inheriting Birgitta of Sweden’s mantle as peacemaker, and even Birgitta’s spiritual director was momentarily her own. In one of these letters from Pisa to Siena written in 1375 to her first Confessor, Frate Tommaso della Fonte, she again mentions Alfonso, asking that he pray that God grant them grace so that they will not return empty-handed, implying that Alfonso is still in Siena.17 Another such letter she wrote to the Englishman and condottiere, Sir John Hawkwood, begs that he go on Crusade against Saracens rather than murder Christians.18 Then, in 1376, accompanied by twenty-two disciples of her cenacolo, she attempted to negotiate Florence’s reconciliation to the Church in Avignon and moreover persuaded Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome, repeating Birgitta’s strategy with Popes Clement VI, Innocent VI, and

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Urban V.19 Catherine of Siena returned to Florence, March 1377; then, 22 June 1378, was almost martyred, Cristofano di Gano Guidini, her secretary at the time witnessing the garden scene. She wrote about it to her Dominican confessor and, later, biographer, Raymond of Capua, “But the Eternal Bridegroom played a great joke on me, as Cristofano will tell you more fully by word of mouth”. In 1377-8, St Catherine returned home to Siena and dictated the Dialogo to her secretaries. Was it influenced by Revelationes V? It is not the same as Birgitta’s conceptualisation. In it God the Father speaks with the Soul, rather than Christ and the Virgin – yet Birgitta’s texts often begin with God’s words, “Ego sum Creator celi et terre”, “I am the Creator of Heaven and Earth”. Birgitta’s vast, apocalyptic Liber Celestis makes use of heavenly courtroom Doomsday drama in a highly visual and theatrical way. To illustrate this one could use an illumination not from her books but from her father’s law code written for King Magnus Eriksson.20 There against a golden sky, the wounded Christ on a rainbow prepares to judge the world, the crowned Virgin at his right side, the Angel and St John at his left. Catherine’s Dialogo, instead, is an interior one, between God and the mirroring Soul in God’s image, in her anachoritic cell of selfknowledge and of God. It is closer in strategy to Julian’s Showing of Love, yet Julian, like Birgitta, uses intensely memorable images and parables. However, Julian’s images are disarmingly homely ones, rather than regal, private, rather than public. In that same year, soon after the election of Italian Urban VI, 8 April 1378, at Gregory XI’s death, 27 March 1378, came the Great Schism’s election of the French Anti-Pope Clement VII, 30 September and coronation, 31 October 1378, under Queen Joan of Naples’ protection.21 Anti-Pope Clement VII was the son of Count Amadeus III of Savoy, the dark and sinister figure beside blond, blue-eyed King Peter of Cyprus in the Florentine Spanish Chapel fresco. Catherine destroyed her health working for Pope Urban VI. Others who also laboured in the vineyard were the members of the Brigittine Secretariat who combined that task with their desire to have Birgitta canonised. In a document in the Vatican Archives three witnesses testify on behalf of the legitimacy of Urban VI’s election, Bishop Hermit Alfonso, 3 March, Cardinal Adam Easton from Norwich, 9 March, Catherine of Sweden, Birgitta’s daughter, 10 March 1379.22 The two Catherines, of Siena and Sweden, were both present in Rome and were friends. But when the Pope asked them to go on embassy to Queen Joan of Naples to dissuade the Queen from her support for the Anti-Pope, Catherine of Sweden refused, quite understandably, given the story of her brother Charles’ affair with that Queen, followed by his death

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from tuberculosis, and the Pope withdrew his request.23 Catherine of Siena died in Rome, 29 April 1380. In 1381 Catherine of Sweden was at Vadstena. In 1382 Queen Joan was murdered, but not before testifying to Birgitta’s miracles and not before sending a dusky slave the Queen had purchased and freed to Vadstena, who became the nun, Catherine Magnusdottir. 24 Two Sienese manuscripts tend to answer the question as to whether Catherine of Siena’s Dialogo was influenced by Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes. In the Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati there is a hastily written Alfonsine manuscript in Latin, G.XI.20, of the miracles of St Birgitta, the Sermo Angelicus, and the Regula, in preparation for her Canonisation, written out, the text says internally, in the year Birgitta died in Rome, 1373, at Montefalco, where they had rested while transporting her bones back to Sweden.25 As well, there is another manuscript in two volumes giving a truly splendid translation into Sienese Italian of the complete Brigittine Revelationes, I.V.25/26. This is carried out, the colophons to its two volumes tell us, by St Catherine’s disciple, friend and sometimes secretary, the notary Ser Cristofano di Gano Guidini. It is written and illuminated in 1398, after the deaths of both women (Birgitta dying in 1373, Catherine in 1380). Its colophons not only name Ser Cristofano di Gano, they also state it is written for the Compagnia della Vergine dell’Ospedale della Scala. Volume I’s colophon states “Questo libro e de la compagna de la vergine maria di siena. El quale fece scrivere Ser xpofano di gano notaio dellospedale de suoi denari. & di quegli do meio di jacomo che anda al sepolcro per non tornare. Nel mcccclxxviiij. Pregare dio per loro. Amen” [“This book is of the Company of the Virgin Mary of Siena. Which Ser Cristofano di Gano Notary of the Hospital paid to have written, and also Meio di Jacomo who is going to the Holy Sepulchre to never return. In the year 1378, Pray to God for them. Amen”], Volume II giving, “Questo libro e de la compagnia de la vergine ma della scala. E fecelo faro ser xpofano di gano da siena. Frate notaio de dellospedale. Pregate dio per lui” [“This book is of the Company of the Virgin Mary della Scala. And Ser Cristofano di Gano of Siena Brother Notary of the Hospital, had it made. Pray to God for him”].26 This work is thus for the cenacolo, the Compagnia della Vergine Maria della Scala that St Catherine founded for her disciples, and which included the painter of her portrait, Andrea Vanni,27 the Augustinian and English hermit, William Flete,28 her secretary Stefano Maconi, the notary Cristofano di Gano, and many others.29 The cenacolo, we see, is still active after her death, and still drawing inspiration from Birgitta who is not yet officially canonised. As a grace note to the above, when Dan James, a Syon Brother, translated into

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Middle English the Dialogo of Catherine of Siena as the exquisite Orcherd of Syon which we have both in fine manuscripts and in the Wynken de Word incunable of 1519 (Figure 50),30 it is the Latin translation made by this same Ser Cristofano di Gano Guidini that is used as its base text.31 This international web of manuscripts, which became also printed books, has already touched on Florence and England. These contextual documents demonstrate Birgitta’s importance and influence both inside the cloister and outside of it, in the world of commerce, in counting houses and legal chambers of men of wealth and power, both cloister and market; while also involving the world of women – who were usually excluded from that male world of documents. Let us see some further Florentine examples. It is not likely that Birgitta ever visited Florence, though Catherine did so several times. Yet Birgitta’s presence was clearly felt with the establishment of the Certosa in 1364, the Carthusian Monastery outside Florence, by Niccolò Acciaiuoli, the Florentine Seneschal of Naples to Queen Joan, concerning which Birgitta had had a grim vision and at whose deathbed in 1365 in Naples Birgitta had been present. A letter written by Birgitta in her own hand to Niccolò Acciaiuoli’s sister, Lapa Buondelmonte, had once been carefully preserved at the Certosa.32 Furthermore, in the Florentine Archives, the Carte Strozziane, Serie Prima, CCCLII, copies a letter written in December 1374, following Birgitta’s death, by Francesca Papazzuri and sent to Madonna Lapa Acciaiuoli, sister to Niccolò Acciaiuoli, the Florentine Seneschal of Naples. In the letter Francesca Papazuri tells Lapa Buondelmonte that Catherine, Birgitta’s daughter, and the rest of the household have now left Rome for Sweden. She further asks Lapa whether she could have a painting for the room where Birgitta died (again an instance of “Holy Dying”), “quod faciatis mihi istam charitatem, quo pro uobis ego possem habere unam tabulam pro illa capella et altari posita in illa camera, in qua ipsa domina Brigida emisit spiritum ad Christum”. She describes the painting’s “Sacred Conversation” iconography as of a Crucifixion with the sorrowing Virgin Mother, Saints John, James, Catherine of Alexandria and Mary Magdalen, and other saints, “Et in predicta tabula sint depinti, uidelicet Christus crocefixus cum matre sua angosata et beato euangelista Johanne, sancto Jacobo et sancta Catherine et Magdalena. Item sancto Petro cum sancto Paulo se inuicem amplexando, sancta Agnete et Johanne Baptista”.33 We know that later Francesca Papazzuri donated the Casa di Santa Brigida to Vadstena and that she testified at the canonisation processus. These instructions for a painting particularly epitomise the genre of the “Sacred Conversation”,

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here combined with “Holy Dying”, for a room which Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich’s friend, would visit in prayer. Birgitta’s Florentine presence was also memorialised by the establishment of the Florentine Brigittine monastery, the Paradiso.34 The Paradiso is near the Certosa, as indeed is typical for Brigittine and Carthusian houses, such as at Syon and Sheen. A letter written by Ser Lapo Mazzei, the notary of the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, to the Merchant of Prato, Francesco Datini, 13 November 1395, tells his pen friend with great excitement of the foundation of the Paradiso monastery by his fellow Florentine Antonio Alberti and of “Santa Brisida”, speaking of her as “quello ambassador che Christo ci manda”. He adds that she can particularly comfort Datini’s wife as she also had been married and even had had a large family. He continues in great detail about her writings concerning her Order and her stipulations concerning its monks and nuns, as a New Vine for Christ, all of which statements were dictated to her by an Angel or Christ or the Virgin, then edited by a bishop. He also says he has met Alfonso of Jaén and speaks as well of Dominican Clara Gambacorta, to whom Alfonso of Jaén gave a life of Birgitta.35 I discovered such another early vita and accompanying indulgence, dated 1397 from Vadstena and written out by Johannes Johannis Kalmarnensis, for the Brigittine Paradiso, now in the Florentine Archives.36 A further document is the illuminated leaf at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York from a Paradiso choir book which self-referentially shows the Paradiso choir nuns singing the Office beneath an Annunciation.37 While illuminated in a typical Florentine style it clearly also gives actual portraits of the nuns, shown with distinctive features, and as of varying ages, present with their mother foundress, the now canonised St Birgitta. Paradiso’s nuns came from the very best Florentine families, other documents in the Florentine State Archives giving them as from the Alberti, Bardi, Benci, Macchiavelli, Antenori, Acciaiuoli, Neri, Ricasoli, Ruccellai, Frescobaldi, Ghiberti, Soderini, Corsini, Guicciardini, Medici houses, one of them the illegitimate Ginevra Alberti.38 In the illumination the now aging nuns are garbed in the Brigittine habit, their headdresses being the distinctive crown of white cloth with five red roundels placed on their black veils, while St Birgitta is garbed simply as a widow and pilgrim who carries a red cross. To have been able to so portray these nuns the painter of these faces must herself have been one of their enclosed number, the Brigittine Rule insisting that no male or secular could enter the Sisters’ Cloister. At Vadstena, Genoa and Syon the cloistered nuns wrote out their own books. It is thus likely that this magnificent leaf was by one of the Florentine Brigittine nuns.

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Thus we find in Florence, where we would expect Catherine’s presence and memory, a strong Brigittine one. Even with Pistoia there is such a presence, a Biblioteca Riccardiana (Riccardian 1345) Revelationes with the vita of St Catherine of Siena being written out by Suora Brigida Baldinotti of that city. III. Supporters Now let us turn to St Birgitta’s and Pope Urban’s supporters. Though the French, including Jean Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris (who did come to support the feminist Christine de Pizan),39 were detractors of both Birgitta and Urban VI, in England Birgitta found strong support. Cardinal Adam Easton of Norwich first testified for Urban’s election as valid, then was imprisoned by him, being the only one of six Cardinals not to be executed, thanks in part to Richard II’s diplomatic intervention. Then Easton worked strenuously for Birgitta’s canonisation, having successfully prayed that she intercede for him. As did Alfonso with the Epistola solitarii so did Adam write a text supporting Birgitta, the Defensorium Birgittae. In that treatise he gave examples of other visionary women.40 Cardinal Adam Easton may also have encouraged Julian of Norwich, whose anchorhold at St Julian’s Church, Conisford, was associated with Carrow, the Benedictine Priory for women under the Benedictine Cathedral Priory of which Adam was a monk. For Julian is like Birgitta and Catherine in writing her Showing of Love, her dialogue with Christ. Noisy Margery Kempe from Lynn, who deliberately copied Birgitta’s pilgrimages to Norway, Compostela, Gdansk, Rome, Bethlehem and Jerusalem and who visited Syon and Sheen, also visited Julian’s quiet anchorhold.41 It is very likely that Margery Kempe knew the Dominican William Bakthorpe, Prior of Lynn, and close associate with Catherine of Siena’s confessor and biographer, Raymond of Capua, between 1393-99.42 A fifth document could be the manuscript, now in Oxford’s Bodleian Library, written out at Vadstena and sent to Syon with which Johannes Johannis Kalmarnensis had already had close contact. It contains the lives of St Alban of England, Catherine of Sweden, Vadstena’s first Abbess, and Petrus Olavi/Olavsson, Vadstena’s first Confessor General.43 These three lives are dated from Vadstena, 20 June 1427. For another strong supporter of Birgitta was Thomas Gascoigne, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, who was greatly enamoured of Syon Abbey.44 He travelled to Sweden and Rome and acquired this manuscript from Vadstena, giving the lives of English and Swedish saints. One charming story in it is of Catherine of Sweden where she was picking grapes in the countryside with

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a group of noble Roman matrons. Though she was dressed shabbily, they saw her sleeves as of purple silk and ornamented richly with jacinths. The Vadstena scribe has drawn in the margin not the usual hand pointing at the text but a pair of delicate hands clad in beautiful sleeves, reaching up and picking a bunch of grapes.45 These are Catherine of Sweden’s hands and this illustrates the miracle in Rome where the noble matrons believed her patched and darned sleeves were instead of purple silk embroidered with jacinths. It is a lovely image for a Vadstena monk to have drawn for Syon ones, concerning the first Abbess of Vadstena, where the Brigittine Rule, the Regvla Salvatoris, has Christ say to Birgitta, “Ego plantabo michi nouam vineam” [“I will plant a new vineyard from which many other vineyards shall arise”]. 46 Then Thomas Gascoigne carefully repeated this episode in his life of St Birgitta.47 Below the account of this miracle in the Vadstena text at Oxford is the account of Birgitta’s death in the Casa di Santa Brigida on a rough straw mattress on a board covered only by a mended, shabby mantle, a mantle which we still have. Thus from libraries, archives, frescoes and reliquaries we can catch precious glimpses of once living flesh and blood women, of Birgitta of Sweden, the noble woman turned beggar, in her mended cloak, her daughter, Catherine of Vadstena, in her patched, jewelled sleeves, and of the daughter of the dyer, Giacomo Benincasa, Catherine of Siena. We also glimpse the women they influenced through time, through their textual community woven by both men and women, Clara Gambacorta, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Brigida Baldinotti, Francesca Romana, nuns of Vadstena, Paradiso and Syon, Gertrude More, even Sor Juana de la Cruz of Bishop Hermit Alfonso’s Hieronymite Order, and countless others– including ourselves.

Notes Essay originally published in Birgittiana I (1996), 29-45, now lightly revised. 1 André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyne Age: d’après les procés de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, Palais Farnese, 1981): Brian Stock, Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: University Press, 1983); P.N. Medvedev/M.M. Bakhtin, “The Object and Tasks of Marxist Literary Scholarship”, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, trans. Albert J. Werhle (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 8. When Cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger, at Pope John Paul II’s celebration of St Birgitta of Sweden in 1991, said the following: “We will now consider another point in the profile of our saint. Saint Bridget as a woman, and as a woman she has left behind a very significant literary work, which has made her a Teacher of the Faith in the

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Church. Her ‘Revelations’ have for centuries shaped, in a very decisive manner, the portrayal of the life and of the human sufferings of Jesus, in one word the image of Christ in the Church. Saint Bridget is not isolated as a ‘female theologian’ in the history of the medieval Church. She inserts herself in the great context of medieval ‘female thelogy’, which begins in the twelfth century with Elizabeth of Schönau and Hildegard of Bingen, continues in Germany in the thirteenth century with Mechthild of Magdebourg, Mechthild of Hackeborn and Gertrude the Great, while in Italy at about the same time Clare of Assisi gives new brilliance to the faith. She is followed by Margherita of Cortona and Angela of Foligno, and after Saint Bridget, mention must be made of Catherine of Siena. England contributes Julian of Norwich, and in this way we would continue with other names up to the great Saint Teresa of Avila. Up to the middle of our century, the study of medieval theology was concentrated substantially on Scholasticism, therefore on the theology of the Universities, which since the beginning of the fourteenth century—in general offered a sad picture of dwindling intellectual stature and spiritual poverty. In the 1950s however, Jean Leclercq called attention to the fact that side by side with scholastic theology, monastic theology is a second current, with its own dignity. This current was not made to correspond to the needs of the Schools, but is derived from lectio divina, from meditative and contemplative familiarity with Holy Scriptures, and in this way it always remained close to that kind of theology that the Fathers had developed. Therefore, very slowly, the conviction grew that female theology in turn had to be considered as a form of monastic theology. Today it is absolutely clear that this great current of spiritual knowledge cannot simply be labeled and filed as ‘edifying’. What we have here, is a form of spiritual understanding of revelation, with its own dignity, even if it does not present itself in that form of science as developed at the Universities”: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “L’attualità di Santa Brigida di Svezia/ The relevance of Saint Bridget for our times”, Atti dell’incontro internazionale di studio, Roma, 3-7 ottobre 1991/ Proceedings of the International Study Meeting, Rome, October 5-7, 1991, Preface, John Paul II (Roma: Casa Generalizia Suore Santa Brigida, 1991), pp. 71-92. 2 The Liber Celestis of St Bridget of Sweden, ed. Roger Ellis (Oxford: Early English Text Society [henceforth EETS], 1987), EETS 192; Johannes Jørgensen, Saint Bridget of Sweden, trans. Ingeborg Lund (London: Longmans, Green, 1954), 2 vols; Julia Bolton Holloway, Saint Bride and her Book: Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelations (Newburyport: Focus, 1992); Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, trans. Suzanne Noffke, O.P. (New York: Paulist Press, 1980); Johannes Jørgensen, Saint Catherine of Siena, trans. Ingeborg Lund (London: Longmans, Green, 1938); C.M. Anthony, Saint Catherine of Siena: Her Life and Times (London: Burns & Oates, 1915), among others. 3 Artur Bygdén, Nils Gustaf Gejvall, Carl Herman Hjortsjö, Les reliques de sainte Brigitte de Suède: Examen médicoanthrolopologique et historique, K. Humanistika Vetenskapssamfundets I Lund Årsberättelse/ Bulletin de la Société Royale des Lettres de Lund (Lund: Gleerup, 1953-54), III,93. One of the bones purports to be of the English missionary to Sweden, St Sigfrid.

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The patched cloak is still preserved as a relic, Aron Andersson and Anne Marie Franzén, Birgittareliker (Stockholm: Alqvist & Wiksell, 1975), pp. 18-29, 57, figs. 17-30; likewise the remaining scraps of her handwriting in Swedish on Sienese paper sewn together like patchwork, Stockholm: Kungliga. Biblioteket, A65 (Figure 53); she would mend her fellow beggars’ clothes when she sought alms outside San Lorenzo in Panisperna, in Rome. 5 Black Canons, apart from those of a cathedral or collegiate church, in the twelfth century, adopted Augustine’s Letter 109, written originally for his sister’s convent, as their Rule. This Rule was used by Popes as a catch-all for new Orders and was even imposed officially upon the Order of the Holy Saviour and St Birgitta. Mereth Lindgren, Bilden av Birgitta (Höganäs: Wiken, 1991), p. 83, shows the two Peter Olavssons, one in black, one in white, presenting Birgitta’s Revelationes to Christendom’s kings and queens. 6 Eric Colledge, “Epistola solitarii ad reges: Alphonse of Pecha as Organizer of Birgittine and Urbanist Propaganda”, Mediaeval Studies 18 (1956), 19-49, p. 32, citing Cambridge, Corpus Christi 404, fol. 102v, giving letter of a certain matron of the land of Sweden concerning the right of England to the Kingdom of France, presented to Edward III and Philip VI, its bearers, Bishop Hemming and Prior Peter. Creçy had just been fought, 26 August 1346, followed by the Siege of Calais which eventuated in a three years’ Peace Treaty between the two Kingdoms negotiated by Papal legates. Bishop Hemming had been a student of Pope Clement’s at the Sorbonne. He wrote to Birgitta about his failure concerning the Rule and expenses, Jørgensen, I.198-200. 7 Acta Sanctorum (henceforth ASS), (Paris, 1867), vol. 52, October, IV: column 423A: “Christus loquitur Sponsae existenti in Monasterio Alvastri, dicens: Vade Romam, et manebis ibi, donec videas Papam, et Imperatorem, et illis loqueris ex parte mea verba, quae tibi dicturus sum . . .” 8 For identities of these figures see Anthony Luttrell, “A Hospitaller in a Florentine Fresco: 1366-8”, Burlington Magazine 114 (1972), pp. 362-66, esp. 365. It may be the second earliest portrayal of her to have survived, her first being that on her parents’ tomb, Uppsala Cathedral. See Mereth Lindgren, Bilden av Birgitta, p. 23. Another Florentine fresco, this one just inside the door of Santa Maria Novella, shows the Annunciation and the Nativity, in the latter of which, shown in Brigittine iconography with the child laid on the earth in humility, we see the figure of the widowed pilgrim, St Birgitta herself, standing to one side as witness to the event. 9 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ottob. Lat. 90, Acta et processus, 1391, fol. 120; Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket, A14, fol. 135v; Acta et Processus Canonisationes Beate Birgitte, ed. Isak Collijn (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1924-31), p. 329, etc. 10 Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena After the Black Death: The Arts, Religion and Society in the Mid-Fourteenth Century (New York: Harper, 1964), passim. 11 Concerning Alfonso’s Sienese ancestry, see Arne Jönsson, Alfonso of Jaén: His Life and Works with Critical Editions of the “Epistola Solitarii”, the “Informaciones” and the “Epistola Serui Christi” (Lund: Univerity Press, 1989),

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p. 32, citing Martin de Ximena, Catalogo de los Obispos de la Iglesias Catedrales de la diocese de Jaen y Annales deste Obispado (Madrid, 1654), p. 340, noting Alfonso’s ancestor was “de Nacion Italian, de la Cuidad de Sena”, and José de SigĦenza, Historia de la Orden de San Geronimo, 1600 (Madrid, 1979), pp. 11-12; Hans Torben Gilkaer, The Political Ideas of St Birgitta and her Spanish Confessor, Alfonso Pecha, Liber Celestis Imperatoris ad Reges: A Mirror of Princes, Odense University Studies in History and Social Sciences 163 (Odense University Press, 1993), p. 28. The earliest documents note that Alfonso’s ancestor had been a Sienese knight who followed the Infante Henry back to Spain following Henry’s exile in Italy. For the Infante Henry of Castile, Alfonso el Sabio’s treacherous brother, see Julia Bolton Holloway, Twice-Told Tales: Brunetto Latino and Dante Alighieri (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), pp. 77-78, 80, 96, 119, 227-228. Imprisoned following the 1268 Battle of Tagliacozzo, Henry was visited by Eleanor of Castile, his sister and wife to England’s King Edward I, and was allowed to return to Spain, 1293. Alfonso el Sabio and Brunetto Latino were exchanging treatises and poetry, based on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the Sienese and Henry of Castile being party to these exchanges. 12 Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek, C86, which also contains Alfonso’s full account of the pilgrimage. 13 ASS Oct. IV, vol. 52, cols. 369-536 passim; Jönsson, Alfonso of Jaén; Gilkaer, Political Ideas. 14 Epistolario, Letter 127, Al frate Bartolomeo Dominici e a Frate Tommaso d’Antonio dell’Ordine de Predicatori quando erano a Pisa, “E per tanto io vi dico che’l papa mandò di qua uno suo vicario ciò fue il padre spiritual de quella contessa che morì a Roma, e è colui che renunziò al vescovo per amore della virtù, e venne a me da parte del Padre santo, dicendo ch’io dovesse fare special orazione per lui e per la santa Chiesa: e per segno me recò la santa indulgenza. Gaudete, dunque, et exultate, perocche il Padre santo ha cominciato ad esercitare l’occhio verso l’onore di Dio e della santa Chiesa”, The Texts and Concordances of The Works of Caterina da Siena: Il Dialogo, Le Orazioni, L’Epistolario, ed. Suzanne Noffke, O.P. (Madison: University of Wisconsin, Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1987), pp. 258-260; E. Dupres-Theseider, Epistolario di santa Caterina di Siena (Roma, 1940), p. 85; Eric Colledge, “Epistola solitarii”, 34; Arne Jönsson, Alfonso of Jaén, p. 54, who notes that Alfonso also received travelling expenses from the Pope; Karen Scott, “Io Caterina: Ecclesiastical Politics and Oral Culture in the Letters of Catherine of Siena”, Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the Epistolary Genre, ed. Karen Cherewatuk and Ulrike Wiethaus (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), pp. 87-121; Giulio Ferroni, “L’io e gli altri nelle lettere di Caterina da Siena”, Les femmes écrivains en Italie au Moyen Age et à la Renaissance, ed. George Ulysses (Aix-e-Provence: Universités de Provence, 1994), pp. 139-156. 15 ASS, April II, 506, Oct. IV, 370, notes Alfonso’s involvement with Tora/Clara Gambacorta in Pisa, whom he supports against her parents in her desire to enter a Dominican convent. See also Catherine, Epistolario, Letters 194, 262, 382, written to Clara, including one dated 26 October 1378. Alfonso was thus spiritual counsellor to Saints Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, Catherine of Sweden

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and Blessed Clara Gambacorta, Colledge, “Epistola solitarii”, p. 41, while Birgitta knew and counselled Queens Blanca of Sweden, Joan of Naples, Eleanor of Cyprus. 16 Epistolario, Letter 43. 17 Epistolario, Letter 127, “A Frate Tomaso della Fonte dell’Ordine de’ Predicatori in Siena”, p. 279, “Pregate quello venerabile Spagniuolo che ci accatti grazia che noi non torniamo vote. Ma per la grazia di Dio non credo tornare vota”, then she sends greetings by him to her mother, Monna Lapa, and the rest of the family; Jørgensen, Catherine of Siena, pp. 210-11. 18 Epistolario, Letter 140, ‘A Messer Giovanni, condottiero e capo della compagnia che venne nel tempo della Fame. Al nome di Gesù Cristo crocifisso e di Maria dolce. A voi, dilettissimi e carissimi fratelli in Cristo Gesù, io Caterina, serva e schiave de’ servi di Gesù Cristo, scrivo nel precioso sangue suo . . .”, giving this letter as Raymond of Capua’s credential to treat with him, ending, “Gesù dolce, Gesù amore, Caterina, inutile serva”. These are the opening and closing formulae Catherine uses in almost all her letters. 19 Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena, pp. 86-88, 91, 125; nor were Birgitta and Catherine the only ones to persuade Popes to return to Italy, Nicholas of Basle of the “Friends of God”, the Dominican circle associated with Tauler, Eckart and Suso, also met with Pope Gregory XI in 1377, presenting him with a clock, and warning him of God’s message and his pending death if he disobeyed it, The History and Life of the Reverend John Tauler of Strasbourg, with Twenty-Five of his Sermons, trans. Susanne Winkworth (London: Smith, Elder, 1857), pp. 160165; Jørgensen, Saint Bridget, I.105. A computer search through the Latin text of the Revelationes finds the term “Friends of God” omnipresent, especially in Revelationes IV. 20 Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket, B154. 21 Epistolario, Letters 133, 138, 143, 312, 348, 362 are written to the Queen of Naples, in one of which Catherine reminds her she is also Queen of Jerusalem and should be worthy of that title, in the last letter noting that she is stripped by the Pope of her regal titles. 22 Vatican Secret Archives, arm. 54.17; Colledge, Epistola solitarii, p. 35. 23 Raymond of Capua, Legenda Major III.1.335; ASS April II, col. 946. Colledge, Epistola solitarii, p. 36. Also, I.F.S.I., The Life of S. Catherine A princely virgin and widow of Svecia. Daughter to S. Brigit, Foundress of the Order called Brigittines, 1634, facsimile in Vol. 141, English Recusant Literature (Yorkshire: Scolar Press, 1973). 24 She cured a dying child by means of the gold cross from Jerusalem Birgitta gave her, Jørgensen, Saint Bridget, II, 234. 25 Sancta Birgitta, Opera Minora II: Sermo Angelicus, ed. Sten Eklund (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1972), did not note manuscript; Sancta Birgitta, Opera Minora I, Regvla Salvatoris, ed. Sten Eklund (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1975), pp. 28, 63, considered it 15th century, not 1373, and chose not to collate it as its type occurs in only two manuscripts and is a mixture of the P and S texts. This last fact should, however, indicate it as the common ancestor of the two manuscript

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families. It is written out hastily, with many tironian notes or contractions, rubrication of capitals omitted. 26 See Epistolario, Letters 183, 321, sent by Catherine to this Compagnia of her disciples. 27 She wrote to him Letters 358, 363, 366. 28 She wrote to him Letters 64, 66, 227, 326, etc. 29 C.M. Anthony, Saint Catherine of Siena, pp. 239, 275. 30 Wynken de Worde text says that the manuscript had been found at Syon in a corner by the steward Sir Richard Sutton who then had it printed at his own great cost; three manuscripts: British Library, Harleian 3432 (siglum H); St John’s College, Cambridge, C25 (J); Pierpont Morgan, 162 (M), of which the Worde text is likely from H; The Orcherd of Syon, ed. Phyllis Hodgson and Gabriel M. Liegey (Oxford: EETS 258, 1966); Phyllis Hodgson, “Orcherd of Syon and the English Mystical Tradition”, Proceedings of the British Academy, 50 (London, 1964), 22949; Elizabeth Psakis Armstrong, “Informing the Mind and Stirring up the Heart: Katherine of Siena at Syon”, Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, ed. James Hogg (Salzburg: Institut fĦr Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1993), II. 170-98; Jørgensen, Saint Bridget, I.229, notes Extravagantes 12 (Latin), 17 (Swedish), stating that at Vadstena for recreation on feast days the Abbess was to give an edifying discourse and then the Sisters were to walk in the orchard or the grass court, some of these trees still extant. Syon also had a “Nuns’ Orchard”. Its Abbey in Devon included a greenhouse with a grape vine. 31 Siena, Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, T.II.4. Another translation was made by one of the original scribes, Stefano Maconi, who, at Catherine’s urging, became a Carthusian and even its Prior General, in 1398. Raymond of Capua, who became Master General of the Dominican Order, 1380, did not live to complete his own translation. 32 The letter, written by St Birgitta to Lapa Acciaiuoli, disappeared in WWII, but a copy of it, made in 1552, is preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze (henceforth ASF), Carte Strozz. II.CXVII, fol. 65; discussed in Isak Collijn, Birgittinska Gestalter: Forskninger i italienska arkiv och bibliotek (Stockholm: Michaelisgillet, 1929), pp. 9-20. 33 ASF, Carte Strozz. I.CCCLII, fol. 20. Such an altar triptych is in the Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, painted by Niccolò di Tommaso. It includes in its centre panel the scene of St Birgitta as a pilgrim witnessing the vision of the Nativity in the grotto in Bethlehem, on the left panel, saints, including Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Nicholas of Bari (whose shrine Birgitta visited as a pilgrim), on the right panel the Crucifixion with Mary, John and Mary Magdalen, its artist being also the illuminator of the deluxe Alfonsine presentation codices of the Revelationes, now in the New York Pierpont Morgan Collection, Palermo, Warsaw and Turin, noted by Jan Svanberg, Buckfast Abbey, Bridgettine Conference, July, 1994. A further painting of the same subject and by the same artist, Carl Brandon Strehlke notes, is number 1943,236 (36.8 x 39.4 cm), Early Italian Paintings in the Yale University Art Gallery (New York, 1970), p. 66, no. 45. See also Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena, pp. 149-150. It is possible that this commissioned painting was in the room when English Margery Kempe visited

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the Italian Casa di Santa Brigida in 1415 and spoke with the former maidservant to St Birgitta, The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Sanford B. Meech and Hope Emily Allen, EETS 212 (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), p. 95. Another maidservant of Birgitta’s, Katherine of Flanders, was a witness at Birgitta’s canonisation processus. 34 Giovanni da Prato, Il Paradiso degli Alberti, 1389, ed. Alessandro Wesselofsky (Bologna: Romagnoli, 1867), Scelta di curiosità Letterari e Inedite o Rare dal Secolo XIII al XVIII, 86, 4 vols, I.195-6; Boniface IX, 26 January 1392, granted foundation of Paradiso. 35 Archivio di Stato, Palazzo Datini, Prato, Letters from Lapo Mazzei to Francesco Datini, Letter XCII; Lettere di un Notaro ad un Mercante del Secolo XIV, ed. Cesare Guasti (Florence: Le Monnier, 1880), I.118-123; Iris Origo, The Merchant of Prato: Francesco di Marco Datini (London: Jonathan Cape, 1957), p. 217. 36 Julia Bolton Holloway, Boyd Hill, Jeremy DuQuesnay Adams, Bonnie Wheeler, “A Bridgettine Document from the Florentine Paradiso written at Vadstena, 1397, and its Context”, Atti dell’incontro internazionale di studio, Roma, 3-7 ottobre 1991/ Proceedings of the International Study Meeting, Rome, October 5-7, 1991 (Roma: Casa Generalizia Suore Santa Brigida, 1991), pp. 860-900 37 I owe this information to Christopher de Hamel. See his descriptions, ‘121, The Gradual of the Brigittine Nunnery Del Paradiso, in Latin’, in Western Manuscripts and Miniatures (London: Sotheby’s, 24 June 1985), pp. 172-3; also “75, Annunciation and Brigittine Nuns at Choir”, The Bernard H. Breslauer Collection of Manuscript Illuminations (New York: Pierpont Morgan, 1992), pp. 49, 196-7. 38 Giovanni da Prato, Paradiso, ed. Wesselofsky, Paradiso description, pp. 15-17, Ginevra Alberti, pp. 20-21; ASF, Monastero di Santa Brigida detto del Paradiso, listing Paradiso nuns. 39 Jean Gerson attempted to derail the confirmation of Birgitta’s canonisation, 1419, stating, like Nicholas of Lyra, “All words and works of women must be held suspect”, De Probatione Spirituum i.15; Phyllis Hodgson, British Academy Proceedings, p. 238. 40 ASS Oct. IV, vol. 52. 369A, 412A, 468A, 473C; Document 96 [1387-89] Richard II to Urban VI, Diplomatic Correspondence of Richard II, ed. Edouard Perroy, Camden Third Series, vol. 48 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1933), pp.- 63-4; Leslie John McFarlane, “The Life and Writings of Adam Easton, OSB”, University of London thesis, 1955; Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library, 114, dated Tuesday after Easter, 1409, includes Cardinal’s 1390 letter to Abbess of Vadstena, Adam Easton not knowing then of Alfonso’s death, 19 September 1388, at San Girolamo di Quarto, the Hieronymite monastery Alfonso founded outside Genoa and which he handed over to the Olivetans. 41 Julia Bolton Holloway, “Bride, Margery, Julian and Alice: Bridget of Sweden’s Textual Community in Medieval England”, in Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays, ed. Sandra J. McEntire (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 203-221. 42 Phyllis Hodgson, British Academy Proceedings, p. 231; Anne K. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 69-70. There were typically anchoresses at the Carmelite Priory in Norwich as well as at the Benedictine’s St Julian Church,

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including the daughter of the Sir Miles Stapleton who executed a legacy from the Countess of Suffolk to Julian of Norwich. Julian’s Showing of Love is similar to both Birgitta’s Revelationes and Catherine’s Dialogo. 43 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 172, fols. 25-53. 44 He had a second copy made of the canonisation process from the papal register of Martin V, “ego, Thomas Gascoigne . . . feci scribe . . . in vitulinus Oxoniae secundum copiam illius libri attestacionum pro canonizacione beate Birgittae”, Acta et Processus, ed. Isak Collijn, p. xx. He gave an arm relic of St Birgitta to Oseney Abbey, recording that gift in a paste down in British Library, Add. 22285. 45 Bodleian Library, Digby 172, fol. 37. 46 Saint Birgitta, Opera Minora I. Regvla Salvatoris, ed. Eklund, II.102-104. 47 Birger Gregersson and Thomas Gascoigne, The Life of Saint Birgitta, trans. Julia Bolton Holloway (Toronto: Peregrina Publishing, 1991), pp. 8-9, 18.

VIII THE AMHERST MANUSCRIPT

‡þer fore it semed to me that synne is nou‫܌‬t. ffor in alle thys synne ‡what may make me mare to luff myne evencristen

W

Illiam Langland in Piers Plowman (B.X.300-303), wrote movingly about monasteries and schools of learning as not being places of polemic. He was looking back to Benedictine Malvern Priory’s contemplative, book-producing-and-reading, monastery, rather than towards the seething universities of his day, where twenty-one doctors of theology, among them, Benedictines, Cistercians, Carmelites, Augustinians, Dominicans, and the Franciscan Nicholas of Lyra could unite in condemning a woman, Marguerite Porete, on the basis of XV Articles, to burning at the stake, when not brawling against each other. Yet, in reaction perhaps to that holocaust, Dominican men and women, the “Friends of God”, came to collaborate, across the face of Europe, in the clandestine writing of contemplative texts, for women as well as men, texts that will later be treasured, Julian’s among them, by exiled English Brigittine and Benedictine nuns on the Continent. While in insular England contemplative texts followed in the footsteps of the Ancrene Wisse, Richard Rolle writing for Margaret Kirkeby, Richard Misyn for Margaret Heslyngton, along with the Cloud of Unknowing texts and Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, texts written for anchoresses, and treasured in Carmelite, Brigittine and Carthusian settings where men were encouraging women’s contemplative lives of prayer. These are vibrant textual communities, to be shattered by the gender apartheid of the Universities, the Renaissance, and the Reformation. Following Adam Easton’s death Julian would have been freer to associate with non-Benedictines, with Carmelites, Augustinians, Dominicans, and Lollards. Her library could become more open to other influences, as did that, too, of Adam Easton during his support of Birgitta’s canonisation. No longer restricted to the Bible, the Benedictine Rule, Gregory’s Dialogus on Benedict, Pseudo-Dionysius, and the

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Victorines, we now find it to include the writings of Richard Rolle and the circle of the Dominican “Friends of God”. British Library, Amherst Manuscript, Add. 37790, gathers all these materials together, Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, the “Friends of God”, Jan van Ruusbroec, Henry Suso, Marguerite Porete, and Birgitta of Sweden. Julian’s theology, in her own words, is here embedded in the midst of a compilation that can mirror her contemplative, theological, library of books, now being prepared for other anchoresses, an anthology which would eventually gravitate to Carthusian and recusant ownership.1 This earliest surviving Julian of Norwich manuscript may contain the latest version of her Showing of Love. It is the “Short” Text version, giving the date of its writing as of 1413, in its 97th folio, third and fourth lines, as: “Anno domini millesimo.CCCC/xiij°”. Because it was eventually purchased at the Lord Amherst Sale in 1910, becoming British Library Additional 37790, it is also known as the Amherst Manuscript (A). Its formerly first folio, showing signs of wear and tear, and now bound at folio 97, is tantalisingly marred by repair, a strip of paper pasted to its edge taking the place of now lost annotations (Plate III). These cancelled annotations were likely made by the Carthusian James Grenehalgh, to be discussed later in this essay.

TH

ere es Avisioun Schewed Be the goodenes of god to Ade= uoute womann. and hir Name es Julyan that is recluse atte Norwyche and ‫܌‬itt. ys oun lyfe. Anno domini millesimo CCCC xiij°. In the whilke visyoun Er fulle many Comfortabylle wordes and gretly Styrrande to alle thaye that desyres to be crystes looverse.

Figure 37. ©The British Library Board. Amherst Manuscript, Additional 37,790, fol. 97.

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Desyrede thre graces be the gyfte of god The ffyrst was to have mynde of Cryste es Passioun. The Secounde was bodelye syekenes And the thryd was to haue of goddys gyfte thre wo= undys. ffor the fyrste come to my mynde with devocoun me thought I hadde grete felynge in the Passyoun of cryste Botte ‫܌‬itte I desyrede to haue mare be the grace of god. me thought I wolde haue bene

SI

Thus we first hear the bass voice of the authorising male scribe, providing the accessus, the introduction, giving the name, place, date, and profession (Julian is given as a “Ade=uoute . . . recluse”, as a vowed anchoress), then Julian’s treble voice in the first person, “So I Desyrede . . .” I. The Manuscript’s Scribe The entire manuscript is a florilegium assembled by one scribe whose dialect is of Grantham, Lincolnshire, perhaps the Lincoln/York Carmelite Richard Misyn who translated Richard Rolle’s Emendatio vitae and Incendium amoris, as the manuscript states, 1434-1435, for the anchoress Margaret Heslyngton of near York, or a Lincolnshire colleague copying a collection of texts of which the first sections could have come from Norwich by way of Bishop Alnwick.2 Lincolnshire is the next county to Norfolk. Scholars have decided that the scribe of this manuscript, which contains texts associated with the “Friends of God” as well as those of the condemned beguine, Marguerite Porete, and of the maverick hermit, Richard Rolle, is Carthusian. But A.I. Doyle, Britain’s foremost scholar of these medieval contemplative manuscripts, cautions against Hope Emily Allen, Margaret Deanesly, Michael Sargent and others seeing the propagation of Richard Rolle manuscripts as largely a Carthusian monopoly, mentioning in particular a related Richard Rolle, “Short” Text Incendium manuscript, Lincoln Cathedral 218, as decorated with pictures of Carmelite friars, not Carthusians.3 I believe on the basis of dialect studies, provenance, and internal evidence, that the the scribe of Amherst’s exemplar Į is Carmelite along the axis of Lincoln and York, with the manuscript eventually coming to Carthusian Sheen, brother house to the Brigittine’s Syon Abbey. A.I. Doyle tells us that this Amherst scribe also wrote out Mechthild von Hackeborn, Book of Gostlye Grace, British Library, Egerton 2006 (owned by King Richard III and his wife, Anne Neville, who commissioned the Beauchamp Pageants, Cotton Julius E.IV, her parents being Richard and Anne Beauchamp, Earl and Countess of Warwick, her great aunt Isabella Ufford, Countess of Suffolk, who willed

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Julian “xx s”, 26 September 1416), and a Middle English translation of Deguileville, St John’s College, Cambridge, G.21. Of all the extant Julian manuscripts this is the only one where the scribe is clearly male. The texts following Julian’s Showing in this florilegium are earlier or contemporary with Julian, while the additional gatherings now at the front of the manuscript with the Richard Rolle translations by Richard Misyn are later than Julian. The first texts and their later dates, with Richard Misyn translating Richard Rolle, A.I. Doyle concurs, could have been added last. It is just within the realm of possibility that this gathering was indeed written in 1413, when Julian is still alive, at seventy years of age. Its language so emphatically states that fact, and the entire text is written as if to present Julian’s voice to us as one that is a living witness to the event she describes, its form even like that of a legal document prepared for a canonisation process looked for following her decease. Indeed we have such texts preserved now at Uppsala and Oxford, created within the Brigittine circle in Norwich, Lincoln, York and Vadstena, before and for the founding of Syon Abbey, concerning the canonisations of Birgitta, Catherine, her daughter, Petrus Olavi, the Archbishop of York, Richard le Scrope, and Richard Rolle. Likewise, Birgitta of Sweden had continued writing versions of her Showings, her Revelationes, from the age of forty through her seventieth year. Likewise did Mechthild von Magdebourg, when elderly and blind, crystallize her text into a newer and shorter version. Then around this embedded Julian text came to be gathered others, Richard Rolle’s and Birgitta of Sweden’s among them, all for use in living the contemplative life of prayer, most translated into English, meaning the intended audience, the reader of this manuscript, is likely an intelligent woman, unable to be educated at school and university. Imagine her as an Emma Stapleton, or a Margaret Heslyngton, under the spiritual direction of Carmelites such as Adam Hemlyngton or Richard Misyn. As someone who had perhaps known Julian of Norwich and who sought to propagate her theological manuscript library. II. A Possible Initial Recipient of the Amherst Manuscript’s Exemplar We know that the anchoress Emma Stapleton had for her spiritual director the Carmelite Adam Hemlyngton, D.D., when she was enclosed at the Norwich Carmelite Friary, 1421-1443, and that another woman member of her family, Agnes Stapleton, owned and willed a similar contemplative text, the Chastising of God’s Children.4 The father of Emma Stapleton was Sir Miles Stapleton, who fought, like Chaucer’s Knight, at

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Alexandria, and who, as the executor of Isabelle, Countess of Suffolk, would have known Julian of Norwich. His Book of Hours’ inclusion of the Passion told and illuminated from the four Gospels in Latin by an Augustinian Hermit visibly shares Julian’s vision. The Stapleton family will continue to be intensely involved with Syon Abbey for centuries and its preservation of Julian texts. III. The Showing of Love’s Corrector There are interesting corrections made to the Amherst Julian of Norwich Showing of Love text but not elsewhere in Amherst in a hand that reminds one of the Norwich Castle Manuscript. Given that the Showing of Love text itself stresses that it is being written in “1413” during Julian’s lifetime, it is just within the realm of possibility that we have her here correcting her scribe, completing his lacunae, his eye-skips. This hand also seems to match that of the rubricator to this part of the manuscript.

Figure 38. ©The British Library Board. Amherst Manuscript, fol. 101v, detail. ‡þer fore it semed to me that synne is nou‫܌‬t. ffor in all e thys synne

Figure 39. ©The British Library Board. Amherst Manuscript, fol. 106v, detail. Ɍ‡ lyke in þis i was inparty fyllyd with compassioun

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Figure 40. ©The British Library Board. Amherst Manuscript, fol. 108, detail. ‡ & it langes to þe ryalle lordeschyp of god for to haue his prive consayles

Figure 41. ©The British Library Board. Amherst Manuscript, fol. 108v, detail. ‡what may make me mare to luff myne evencristen

In each instance these corrections give concepts integral to Julian’s thought, to her theology.

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IV. The Norwich Castle Manuscript As with the Westminster Cathedral and British Library Amherst Manuscripts the Norwich Castle Manuscript (Norwich Castle 158.926/4g.5), is a florilegium of contemplative and catechetical texts. It is described as “Theological Treatises”, containing “An Epistle of St Jerome to the Maid Demetriade who had vowed Chastity”, the “Treatise on the Seven Deadly Sins” (fols. 31-58v), which Richard Copsey, O.Carm., notes is written by Richard Lavenham, O.Carm., who lectured on Birgitta’s Revelationes at Oxford and who was Richard II’s confessor, with the Pore Caitif (fols. 58v-89). The work is dated by palaeographers as written in the beginning of the 15th century. Its dialect is of the Norwich region.5 This gives us a manuscript produced during Julian’s lifetime, in the region where she was enclosed and, like the Amherst Manuscript, with Carmelite/Brigittine associations. It begins with a letter written, it says, by Saint Jerome (though actually by Pelagius) to the maid Demetriade who had vowed virginity, to aid in the contemplative life. Its other texts are of interest for catechetical purposes, especially the Pore Caitif, with its fine “Treatise on the Lord’s Prayer”, given below. Much of its wording directly reflects that in Julian’s S1 “Long” Text Showing of Love. It is possible that Julian, before Arundel’s 1408 Constitutions, taught the Alphabet and the Catechism. It is even a possibility that the Pore Caitif could have had an anonymous woman author and that author be Julian as anchoritic catechist, with her Lollard sympathies, just as much as the Mirror of Simple Souls and the Cloud of Unknowing were considered incorrectly as being authored by Carthusians when the first is by a woman Beguine, Margaret Porete, the second perhaps by a Benedictine Cardinal, Adam Easton, for a Benedictine anchoress. It has some illuminated capitals in gold leaf upon a purple background. It begins with a lovely Gothic letter T in gold leaf upon a purple ground (Plate Vb):

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Figure 42. Norwich Castle Manuscript, fol. 1

It also has another letter C given in a less florid decorative manner and a capital letter T at folio 31:

Figure 43. Norwich Castle Manuscript, fol. 31

It seems worthwhile to compare these capitals with those in Amherst:

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Figure 44. ©The British Library Board. Amherst Manuscript, fol 97, detail.

The scribes of the two manuscripts are clearly not the same but their layout is similar, as if the writer of the Norwich Castle Manuscript had the employment of the scribe of the Amherst Manuscript, perhaps for the production of a book for Emma Stapleton who later became enclosed as an anchoress with the Carmelites in Norwich. Both manuscript texts begin, not with þ (thorn), but with TH. Another most beautiful manuscript Julian likely saw, owned by Adam Easton, OSB, of Norwich, has a similarly beautiful Gothic T for Trinitas, in gold leaf with green intertwines, beginning its invocation to Wisdom, the Prayer of St Dionysius in De Mystica in its fine thirteenth-century Victorine manuscript, now at Cambridge University Library Plate Va).6 If we compare the hand of the corrector to the Amherst Showing of Love to that of the scribe of the Norwich Castle Manuscript we see they share a squarishness. (Likewise the hand of Cardinal Adam Easton of Norwich, who predeceased Julian, has a squarish, Tudor-seeming, quality to it). The Amherst corrector and the Norwich scribe share the form of the letters m, n, l, k, d, a, e, &’s and yochs. However the Norwich Castle Manuscript is written in a deliberate bookhand with differently formed letters þ, w, s and y to those of Amherst’s corrector, and the descenders of h and ff are different.

Figure 45. ©The British Library Board. Amherst Manuscript, fol. 101v.

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Figure 46. Norwich Castle Manuscript, fol. 31

Figure 47. ©The British Library Board. Amherst Manuscript, fol. 108.

Likely in neither the corrector to Amherst nor in the Norwich Castle Manuscript do we see Julian’s actual hand. Nevertheless it is possible that Dame Emma Stapleton could have corrected Dame Julian’s text, having another manuscript at hand from which to supply lacunae. Or that these corrections could have been made later at Syon Abbey, the largest collection of Julian’s Showing of Love manuscripts coming to the Sisters’ library there (though not listed in the surviving Catalogue for the Brothers’ Library),7 until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. V. The Amherst Florilegium’s Contents The Amherst Manuscript florilegium is intended for a Latin-less woman contemplative, likely of the generation following Julian’s. The manuscript may include translated texts originally in Julian’s own contemplative library, then recycled by copying it out for a later anchoress. One can envision Julian herself leaving instructions as to what it should contain. This entire manuscript, and another by this scribe, are worthy of study in the collaborative spiritual direction of women anchoresses, and of their own production of theological texts, by Marguerite Porete, Julian of Norwich, Birgitta of Sweden, and Mechthild of Hackeborn. With the inclusion of the works by Porete, Suso and

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Ruusbroec this collection is also related to the Dominican movement on the continent, known as the “Friends of God”, where Porete was influenced by Pseudo-Dionysius and William of St Thierry, her clandestine work influencing in turn Meister Eckhart and his disciples such as John Tauler and Henry Suso, a movement characterised by deep respect for women and indeed collaboration with them in the creation of contemplative theological texts. This movement, in turn, through Magister Mathias, who associated with the Dominicans in Paris and Stockholm, strongly influenced Birgitta of Sweden. Contents: Richard Rolle [A1-95], added later to the front of the manuscript. Bernard of Clairvaux [Thomas de Froidmont, written for His Sister Margaret of Jerusalem], The Golden Epistle [A95v-96v].8 Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love, “Short” Text [A97-115], beginning of original manuscript. Jan van Ruusbroec, Sparkling Stone, Complete [A115-130]9 Henry Suso, Horologium Sapientiae, Excerpt [A135v-136v]10 Marguerite Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls, Complete [A137-225]11 Miscellaneous materials including brief excerpts from St Birgitta of Sweden

Julian has verbal echoes to Marguerite in all versions of her Showing of Love and appears to know the fate of its author, burnt at the stake in Paris in 1310, condemned by the Doctors of Theology of the Sorbonne. Moreover this translation into Middle English in three manuscripts is accompanied by a commentary written by one “M.N.”, thought to be Carthusian. The Mirror in the Manuscript has after its ending the following (A225) Here endeth the Boke that Loue calles the mirroure off Symple Saules Who that this Booke will Vnderstand Take þt lorde to his Spouse lovande That is God in Trinite x x x x x Jhesu mercy and grace Marie Praie ffor vs

SI

ighe and sorrowe deepleie morne and wepe ynwardlie Pray and thenke deuoutly Loue and longe contynuely

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Adam Easton spent five years in imprisonment, at the beginning of which he had vowed that if is his life were spared he would work towards Birgitta of Sweden’s canonisation, a task about which he had earlier been lackadaisical. He needed to counter in dialectic Nicholas of Lyra’s position that women were inferior and that Marguerite Porete was a heretic. It is possible that in Adam Easton’s prison cell in Genoa, so like a Carthusian one, following his initial torturing, he would have been able to acquire materials that he would later ship to Norwich via Flanders, and that he set to work, penitently, to become a Feminist, translating Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes, Catherine of Siena’s Dialogo, Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, Jan van Ruusbroec’s Sparkling Stone and perhaps the supposed St Bernard’s Golden Epistle, a text actually by Thomas de Froidmont, brother to Margaret of Jerusalem, both from Beverley in Yorkshire, a text much beloved by Birgitta of Sweden, into Middle English, while studying how best to defend Birgitta of Sweden and her Revelations. A gloss is added to the Middle English translation of Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls by one “M.N.”, thought to be a Carthusian, but who could be ‘AdaM EastoN’, of the Cathedral Priory of the “Holy and Undivided Trinity” Cathedral in Norwich, accompanying this cryptologically censored text to Julian with a colophon much like that to the “Long” Text Showing and the opening of the Cloud of Unknowing.12 An amateurish drawing on the final folio of a Mother and Child where the Mother is cross-nimbed (only Jesus may be cross-nimbed in iconography), the Cross made from three great nails, but not the Child. The “Short” Text omits Julian’s discussion of “Jesus as Mother”. Yet this drawing appears to know of that theological argument and to portray it. This knowing is possible if the manuscript came to rest in a communal setting with access to the other versions of Julian’s text. The manuscript drawing is especially intriguing in a Brigittine context where the Sisters wear white crowns with crosses, five red roundels at the interstices upon their black veils, in memory—and in contemplative “Holy Conversation” —of the Five Wounds of Christ.

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Figure 48. ©The British Library Board. Amherst Manuscript, fol. 238.

VI. The ‘1413’ ‘Short Text’’s Contexts A. The Continent Julian is writing her “Short” Text in a context that is both Continental and Insular, both European and English. If she is having it written in 1413, her likely former patron, certainly a “Aman . . . of halye kyrke”, Cardinal Adam Easton of England, Benedictine of Norwich, is already dead. His titular basilica in Rome was Santa Cecilia in Trastevere and he was already buried there in a tomb by St Cecilia’s. The Short Text manuscript of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love stresses St Cecilia by engrossing that name at fol. 97v, and the text makes use of St Cecilia’s three neck wounds,

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Figure 49. ©The British Library Board. Amherst Manuscript, fol. 97v. I harde Aman telle of halye kyrke of the Storye of. Saynte Ce = cylle . In the whilke schewynge. I vndyrstode that sche hadde thre woundys with ASwerde. In the nekke withe the whilke sche py= nede to the dede. By the styrrynge of this. I conseyvede amyghty desyre Prayande oure lorde god that he wolde grawnte me thre woundys in my lyfe tyme that es to saye the woundys of contricyoun the wounde of compassyoun & the wounde of wylfulle langgynge to god,

as its threefold ordering principle, much in the same manner as had St Catherine of Siena ordered her 1378 Dialogo or “Revelation of Divine Love” according to a fourfold division, based on four petitions.13 It is just possible that this same Cardinal Adam Easton, who may have been in Norwich writing the Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae and of her Revelationes, effecting her canonisation at the same time that Julian was writing her “Long” Text of the Showing of Love, had been Julian’s spiritual director bringing to her from the Continent contemplative works by Marguerite Porete, Birgitta of Sweden, Henry Suso, Jan van Ruusbroec

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and Catherine of Siena, the Norfolk Record Office noting the bills for shipping the Lord Cardinal’s books by way of Flanders.14 Cardinal Adam Easton had worked with Catherine of Siena and Alfonso of Jaén, 1379, defending Urban VI’s election and then had defended Birgitta of Sweden’s 1391 Canonisation. His biography notes that he wrote many contemplative and vernacular treatises on the “Spiritual Life of Perfection”. I suspect that the exemplar manuscript of Catherine of Siena’s “Holy Conversations” to that which came to be owned by Syon Abbey and from which Wynken de Worde printed the Orcherd of Syon, was given to Julian by Adam. ¶Here begynneth the boke of dyuyne doctryne. That is to/ saye of goddes techyng. Gyuen by the person of god the fa/der to the intelleccyoun of the gloryous vyrgyne seynt Kathe-/ryn of Seene/ of the ordre of seynt Domynycke. Which was/ wryten as she endyted in her moder tongue. Wha n she was in con/templacyon & rapt of spyryte she herynge actualy. And inthe same/ tyme she tolde before many what our lorde god spake in her.

Figure 50. The Orcherd of Syon, Westminster: Wynken de Worde, 1519 ¶And here foloweth þe first chapytre of this boke. Which is how the soule of this mayde was oned to god & how then she

ctryne: as it is specyfyed in þe kalender before. Capt.1. A Soule that is reysed up with heuenly and

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library made .iiii. petycyons to oure lorde in that tyme of contem placyon and of the answere of god and of moche other do

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ghostly desyers & affeccyons to the worship of god & to the helthe of mannes soules with a greate

The colophon to the printed edition states, a ryghte worshypfull and deuoute gentylman mayster Rycharde Sutton esquyer stewarde of the holy monastery of Syon fyndynge this ghostely tresure these dyologes and reuelacions . . . of seynt Katheryne of Sene in a corner by itselfe wyllynge of his greate charyte it sholde come to lyghte that many relygyous and deuoute soules myght be releued and haue comforte therby he hathe caused at his greate coste this booke to be prynted.15

The “Short” Text of Julian’s Showing of Love is closer to Catherine’s Dialogo than are the other W and P “Long Text” versions of her text. William Flete’s Remedies Against Temptations is quoted in the Westminster Text throughout, Flete then becoming Catherine’s disciple and executor, and Catherine’s 1378 Dialogo opening, of the knowing of oneself and God, is present in the Westminster Text. It is even just possible that Julian, through “Holy Conversations” with William Flete and Adam Easton, influenced Catherine of Siena, and that then Easton gave Julian Catherine’s resulting Dialogo, in this international textual community. Related to the three wounds of Cecilia are also the five wounds of Christ. Several English manuscripts speak of a solitary and recluse woman who sought to know Christ’s wounds: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Lyell 30, XV Os of St Birgitta, “A woman solitari and recluse covetyng to knowe cristis woundus”; British Library, Add. 37787, fols. 71v-74, “Femina quedam solitaria et reclusa vulnerum xristi scire cupiens”, waiting thirty years to do so, “Sciendum est ante quod signis in peccatis esset triginta annis”; Harley 172, fol. 3, on Orysons on wounds shown to a solitary and recluse woman, “She covetynne to knowe the nombre of the wondys of oure lord Jhesu cryst oftyne tymes she prayede God of his specyal grace that he wolde vouchsafe to shewe hym to hire”; Harley 494, fols. 61-62, echoes Amherst’s “Ade=uoute womann, and hir Name es Julyan that is recluse atte Norwyche”, then speaks of “Certaine prayers shewyd unto a devote person called mary Oestrewyk”. This frame, “of a woman solitary and recluse covetous to know Christ’s wounds”, is sometimes given to the English XV Os, falsly attributed to St Birgitta. Usually these XV Os and these “woman solitary and recluse” incipits, like Julian of Norwich’s

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Showing of Love, occur in devotional manuscripts associated with Syon Abbey.16 Where the Westminster Text, W89, and the “Long” Text, P73, give Julian being shown “for prayer”, in the Amherst Short Text, this becomes “foure prayers”, “Four Prayers” (A109.32). This may be a reference to St Birgitta’s Quattuor Orationes, her “Four Orysons”, her “Four Prayers”, sometimes associated with Birgitta’s 1368 Vision of the Crucifix at St Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome, and which in turn are sometimes confused with the XV “O”s. Cardinal Adam Easton’s Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae (likely written in Norwich, according to the bills paid for shipping his books there at that date in the Norfolk Record Office), supported Birgitta’s canonisation in the attack against her by a Perugian theologian, her cause’s “Devil’s Advocate”, who objected to the rudeness of her writing, to the Rule written by a woman, and specifically to these “Four Prayers”, two of which are addressed to the bodies of Christ (“In hac oracione a Deo reuelata beate Birgitte pulcre laudantur omnia membra sanctissimi corporis Domini nostri Ihesu Christi et virtuosissimi actus eius corporales”) and Mary (“In ista oracione, que diuinitus fuit reuelata beate Birgitte, deuotissime et pulcre laudantur omnia membra gloriosi corporis Virginis Marie et virtuosi actus eius corporales”), an objection seconded by Chancellor Jean Gerson of the University of Paris.17 Julian, or her Amherst scribe, appear to remember that controversy that swirled about Birgitta of Sweden and for which Birgitta had been ably defended by Cardinal Adam Easton of Norwich. Julian’s Showing of Love, Birgitta’s Quattuor Orationes and the English XV “O” s seem formed in a matrix, appearing to allude to each other. The matrix is largely Brigittine. New material in the Amherst “Short” Text version of the Showing of Love, added to its ending, and not in the Westminster or Paris texts, is from Alfonso of Jaén, Epistola Solitarii ad reges (1373), discussing the Discernment of Spirits and written in defense of Birgitta of Sweden’s visionary Revelationes,19 and which was also used in Adam Easton’s Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae (1391), in the Cloud Author’s Epistles and Treatises (of unknown date and authorship), which, like Cardinal Adam Easton’s Latin writings, are deeply influenced by Pseudo-Dionysius and the Victorines, in the anonymous Chastising of God’s Children, Chapters XIX-XX (written between 1382-1408), and in Dame Julian’s conversations with Margery Kempe, circa 1413, when this manuscript may have been being written for Julian. The Epistola Solitarii exists in English translation in a fifteenthcentury Norfolk manuscript of Birgitta’s Revelationes, British Library, Cotton Julius F II, which uses “Brigid”, from the Italian form of her name

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“Brigida”, rather than “Birgitt”, derived from the Swedish form, “Birgitta”. Cardinal Adam Easton’s Latin copy of the Revelationes brought to Norwich would have been similar to those today in Palermo, Biblioteca Nazionale, IV.G.2, and New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M498, which were produced directly under the aegis and editorship of Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén for the purpose of the canonisation procedure, the Mediterranean versions of the Revelationes using her Italianised name, “Brigida”, the Scandinavian versions her original Swedish name, “Birgitta”. Cotton Julius F II likely was produced in that Norwich setting of support for Birgitta newly come from Italy. The text is also to be found in Cambridge University Library, Ff.VI.33, fols. 38v-39, clustered with manuscripts which came there from Adam Easton’s library at Norwich Cathedral Priory and from Syon Abbey. In this case it translates from a Latin Revelationes from Vadstena in Sweden. Howe the spowse of cryst seynt Byrgitte hadde heuenly reuelations In the lordshype of the kyng of Norweye which ys northward last and uttyrineste of alle kynges so that be‫܌‬onde the londys for men dwell yn. Ther was an holy lady Seynt Byrgytte. which whan she entended ynwardly to prayer. the bodye was pryuyd of alle strengthes and the soule in alle hir strengthes began to be most parfytly vygorous and stronge for to see. hyre. speke and fele gostly thynges. In so moche that she was ofte tyme rauysshed and herde many thynges spiritually tolde vnto hir in spyryt. or spirituall and intellectual visionù which thynges the same persone dredynge to be illudyd of that scorner the angell of derknes, undyr the lyknes of an angell of ly‫܌‬t. aftirward wt grete reuerence and drede of god. mekely openyd and shewyd un to an archbysshope wyth other thre bysshopes and to a deuoute maystyr in diuinite. and to an abbot a ful deuoute and religiouse man. And they all and many other frendys of god heryng these thynges. and sadly and spiritual by comenyng togedyr therof preuyd that all these thynges were reuelyd to the same persone frome god. Of the good spirit of truth and of ly‫܌‬t. and of special grace of the holy goost.

We also find this text but in relation to Catherine of Siena, clustered in manuscripts that come from Norfolk, of the Cloud Author’s texts. And we find these same words about an angel of darkness, seeming to be an angel of light at the Amherst’s Showing of Love conclusion. It is the topic of conversation, again, that Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich share with each other in Margery’s Book. This is, as Rosalynn Voaden has shown, a burning issue during this period in connection with women’s books of revelations.20 There was already anxiety, as well as support, on the Continent for women’s visionary writing. It was particularly to be seen in the later condemnation by Jean Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris, of

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Marguerite Porete, Birgitta of Sweden and Jan van Ruusbroec. Though he was to amicably resolve his debate with Christine de Pizan, both agreeing to loathe the lecherous, sexist Roman de la Rose. The Amherst Manuscript is also filled with material related to the “Friends of God” movement in Flanders and on the Rhine, its compilation containing Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, Jan van Ruusbroec’s Sparkling Stone, and a part of Henry Suso’s Horologium Sapientiae. But already in the Westminster and Long Text Manuscripts Julian had been using the very Taulerian and Meister Eckhartian concept of ‘ground’: 9 times in Westminster (W73, 90v, 92, 93, 93v, 100v, 101, 103, 104); 32 times in Paris (P1, 2v, 14, 16, 52v, 61v, 62v, 69v,72v-73, 73v, 74, 76, 77, 78v, 81, 84, 87v, 89v, 99v, 101, 112, 116v, 117v, 119v, 120, 121, 121v, 126v, 134, 136, 162v,173, this last rubricated, ‘I am Grownd of thy beschyng’); 4 times in Amherst (A107v, 108v, 109, 109v, ‘I Am grownde of thy besekynge’ ). Thus we see the Continental influences on her as coming from Sweden, Flanders, Italy (particularly Siena), and the Rhine, with France politically and theologically resisting such contemplative and democratic theology, opting instead for the Gothicising hierarchies of PseudoDionysius and Thomas Aquinas. B. England In England the anxiety and debate concerning women’s contemplative texts was further complicated by the political situation where John Wyclif’s Lollardy was seen as instigating the Peasants’ Revolt and the Oldcastle Uprising. The traumatic clampdown by Bishop Despenser of Norwich and Archbishop and Chancellor Arundel of Canterbury over Lollardy, originally fuelled by Adam Easton’s jealousy and opposition to his colleague, John Wyclif, is exemplified in the case of Margery Kempe’s curate, William Sawtre, whose initial condemnation by Bishop Despenser in Lynn, 1399, then his death by being burned in chains as both heretic and traitor in London, was next followed by the promulgation of De heretico comburendo, in 1401.21 Lollardy became punishable as both treason and heresy. Particularly singled out were lay persons, above all women, daring to teach the catechism, to write books and to translate the Bible into the vernacular. Thomas Arundel’s 1408 Constitutions in response promulgated the following: I. That no one can preach without a licence. II. On the punishment for those preaching without a licence in a church or cemetery or other place. III. That the preacher must conform or be punished. IV. Of the penalties for preaching on

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the sacraments of the altar and other sacraments against the Church’s teaching. V. That no teacher with only an MA or BA instruct children about the sacraments. VI. That no book or treatise of John Wyclif may be read, before it is examined. VII. That no text of Holy Scripture may be translated into English. VIII. That no one join those opposed to these conclusions, propositions and good customs. IX. That no one may question the Articles Holy Church determines. X. That no chaplain may celebrate in the Canterbury Archdiocese without testimonial letters. XI. That at the University of Oxford an inquisition should be held each month concerning these principles. XII. Of the penalties for countering these. XIII. Of the procedures to be followed in such cases.22

These XIII Articles are similar to the XV levied against Marguerite Porete by the theologians of the University of Paris, to the XLI levied against Birgitta of Sweden by the Perugian Devil’s Advocate, to those against Margery Kempe and to those that will be levied in Tudor times against Elizabeth Barton. Women are disadvantaged in a world of PseudoDionysian hierarchies. However, these contemplative books for and by women circulated clandestinely in which their ‘Holy Conversations’, mirroring those of the Gospels, could continue in the privacy of their cells, in a vast network that stretched from Scholastica’s Dialogue with Benedict in Subiaco, then with Marguerite Porete and the “Friends of God” from Flanders and Germany, then with Birgitta’s Revelationes from Sweden and Italy throughout Europe, again to Italy with Catherine of Siena’s Dialogo, its ebbs and flows across the Continent nourishing also English spirituality as with the “M.N.” glosses to Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, mirrored in the Preface to the Cloud of Unknowing and in the colophon to Julian’s Showing of Love. The Amherst Manuscript is a witness to this richness. It is generally held that the greater simplicity, childishness and recall of the Amherst Julian “Short” Text indicates that it was written earlier, immediately after the 1373 “death-bed” vision it describes. While the “Long” Text’s self-proclaimed dating of 1387-1393 is accepted at face value, scholars have paid little heed to the Amherst date, 1413. Yet a study of the 1413 context shows tremendous anxiety, and indeed one medievalist, Rita Copeland, speaks of the deliberately instilled “infantilism” of this period.23 The drastic changes between the “Long” Text and the “Short” Text are that the “Long” Text gave vast swathes from the Bible in the most exquisite English, while the “Short” Text excises most of these—as was required by Arundel’s 1408 Constitutions and for which transgression had been punishable since 1401 with De heretico comburendo, as was indeed done to William Sawtre, Margery Kempe’s curate. William Sawtre was connected to Adam Easton’s Benedictine

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Priory in Norwich, which had oversight over Carrow Priory, St Julian’s Church, Norwich, and St Margaret’s Church, Lynn. Julian likely knew of both Marguerite Porete and of William Sawtre’s grim fates. However, while there was danger, even for anchoresses, for recluses, such as Julian, there was also respect. Beachamp’s Pageants, written considerably later, in text and image chronicles the Earl of Warwick’s participation in military and political events, and includes amongst these the prophecy of the Recluse at York, Emma Raughton, Beauchamp’s Pageants, British Library, Cotton Julius E IV, folio 23v, that King Henry VI should be crowned both in England and in France, the drawing showing King Henry VI crowned king in Paris by his great-uncle, Cardinal Beaufort, 16 December 1430, and that the Earl should found a chantry at the hermitage at Guy’s Cliff. The text names her ‘Dame Emma Rawhton Recluse at alle hallowes in Northgate strete of York’ on its fifth line. Another illumination in Beauchamps’ Pageants, folio 4v, shows the Earl being made a Knight of the Garter in 1414 after he has been successful in putting down the Lollard uprising, contemporary with the dating of the Amherst manuscript’s version of the Showing of Love. While yet another shows his death scene, where he gazes upon the Crucifix, folio 26v, these images retrievable at the British Library website. VI. The Amherst Annotator The Amherst Manuscript was later annotated untidily by the Carthusian James Grenehalgh for the Brigittine Joanna Sewell of Syon Abbey.23

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Figure 51. ©The British Library Board. Amherst Manuscript, fol. 108v.

Here we see how the tortured and sinning James Grenehalgh, who marred many contemplative books in this way (he was eventually literally sent to Coventry by his brethren), responds to Julian’s text, a text written out collaboratively between two scribes, one correcting the other and of whom the second may have been Julian herself at 70. Here, Grenehalgh writes untidily in the margin, as well as underlining these words in the text, “contrition”, “confession”, “penaunce”, and for “domesmann”, “gostly father”. Julian’s discussion of the sacrament of penance looks back to the beginning of her text concerning her desire to know Christ’s wounds, and those of St Cecilia, defouling “the fayre ymage of god” which the original rubricator to the text underlines in red. We can recall Julian’s anguish about not confessing her vision when a “relygyous person” (P141v, A 111v), “growndyd in halykyrke” (A108v.32, P69v) suddenly became interested in it, back in May, 1373, now fifty years earlier than this manuscript version’s stated date of 1413, prompting her horrific vision of the Fiend. VI. The Manuscript’s Subsequent History This collection of texts in the Amherst, which could represent Julian’s own contemplative library with later additions, here copied for female contemplative readership, may initially have reached Lincoln through

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Bishop William Alnwick’s calling in of theological texts written in English when he was Bishop of Norwich, in compliance with Arundel’s Constitutions. Bishop Alnwick, after first placing Margery Baxter and Alis Moon on trial for daring as women to propagate theology, 1428, was translated to Lincoln. He could well have seized this manuscript or its exemplar. Furthermore, Carmelite Richard Misyn who had already translated two of Rolle’s works in 1434-35 for Margaret Heslyngton of York when Prior of Lincoln’s Carmelites, frequently went from Lincoln to York, in 1458, becoming the Archbishop of York’s Suffragan.24 Besides Carmelites, present in the East Anglia, Lincoln, York were Swedish Brigittine monks, seeking to establish a foundation in England. The Lincolnshire Amherst scribe is responsible for two other manuscripts, one of them, Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Book of Ghostly Grace, for Richard III and Anne Neville of York. Mechthild’s text was also present in the Vadstena library, Sweden, in numerous copies, its earliest one bound together, like Amherst, with Richard Rolle, Uppsala University Library, C17, being transcribed by Brother Katillus Thorberni, who was at York, East Anglia, and Syon, 1408-1421. This same Brother Katillus is the scribe of Uppsala University Library, C193, which gives Cardinal Adam Easton and Hildegard of Bingen.24 Most Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love, manuscripts which survive demonstrate connections with the contemplative Brigittine Syon Abbey, where they were clearly read, annotated and treasured by the Sisters. James Grenehalgh’s annotations for Joanna Sewell connect it with Carthusian Shene Charterhouse and Brigittine Syon Abbey. Syon’s downfall was to come about through the Benedictine nun from Canterbury, Elizabeth Barton, being encouraged by Dr Edward Bocking, OSB, likewise of Canterbury, to come to Syon Abbey and to write there a massive book, her Revelations, modeled on St Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes, St Catherine of Siena’s Dialogo, and other women’s books made available to her there in English. In her text she dared to prophesy against Henry VIII’s impending marriage to Anne Boleyn. Every copy of her printed book was destroyed by Act of Attainder (25 Henry VIIII c.12), and she and her editor, along with others, were executed for treason, being drawn, and hanged, their cut-off heads exhibited on London Bridge.26 Following those executions would be that of St Thomas More who also frequented the theological and Humanist library of Syon Abbey. He would be reading William Flete’s Remedies against Temptations while awaiting death in the Tower of London. The Westminster Cathedral Manuscript florilegium including Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love came into the recusant Lowe family, which

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continued their strong association with Syon Abbey, despite the drawing, hanging and quartering or imprisonment of several of its members, finding its way to Syon Abbey in Lisbon, then back to England. The Paris Manuscript of the Showing of Love was written out by the Brigittine Sisters in exile in Flanders, then left behind by them in Rouen when they had to flee precipitously to Lisbon in 1594. The Norwich Castle Manuscript has remained in Norfolk since its origins. The Amherst Manuscript, the only one by a male scribe, was also the only Showing of Love Manuscript that survives that has remained continuously in England. Francis Blomefield, closer to Julian’s time, spoke of Carrow Priory as having been a school for young women.29 Then Julian had likely earned her keep, Dom Jean Leclercq reminds us, and as we see in the Promptorium Parvulorum, composed by a recluse in Lynne, as a grammar teacher of small boys and as a catechism teacher,30 until Archbishop Arundel’s stern prohibition was promulgated against women teaching theology, even the Catechism, the alphabet. At which point the broad-minded originality of Pore Caitif becomes instead the carefully authorised text of Carthusian Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, translating the Franciscan Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi. At which point Julian’s name appears in Wills, for she has lost her livelihood and means of support, given the draconian measures against Lollards. We see in the eyeskip corrections to the text a hand that is like a woman’s, squarish, a bit amateur, but proficient in Latin abbreviations, nevertheless. We also see in these excerpts from this manuscript that Julian and her text function somewhat like a confession manual, the Middle Ages’ psychiatry, probing and healing the wounds of the soul, giving “comfortable words to Christ’s lovers”, both women and men, as the male scribe observes above in the introductory preface to her text. In doing so he authorises her. Indeed, we see in this collection of texts associated with her echoes of such Church Fathers as Dionysius, Augustine and Jerome/Pelagius, and more contemporary theologians such as William Flete, Richard Lavenham and the “Friends of God”. Women were not permitted to teach theology (though in the Early Church women were catechists to women) or to administer the sacraments (and especially not confession), with the exception of baptism, or to translate the Bible into the vernacular (though Paula and Eustochium collaborated with Jerome, with the Vulgate from Hebrew and Greek into Latin, and funded the project).31 Women were, however, honoured for their visions, revelations, showings, their ‘Holy Conversations’, with God. Jerome praised those of Paula at Calvary and in Bethlehem. Cardinal Jacques de Vitry supported those of Marie d’Oignies, this being used as their model by both Birgitta of Sweden and Margery

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Kempe’s spiritual directors.32 Mary and John were equally shown beneath the now mandatory medieval Roods, or “Payntynges of crucefexes”, presenting our stance as women and men who are “Christ’s lovers”. In the “Long” Text Julian has her work cast in the form of the Revelation, the Showing of Love, that she receives in illness from seeing the bleeding Crucifix, but this is frame to her excellent teaching of the catechism concerning the sacraments, and especially, in the “Short” Text, that of penance. The Anchoress in her Norwich anchorhold is a doctor of the soul to such as Margery Kempe. Even this manuscript’s use of a male and clerical scribe may be in response to her need for authorisation, given Arundel’s 1408 Constitutions. Similarly Margery will resort to male and clerical scribes to authorise her text. (Though I suspect her initial scribe, whom she gives as her son, was her daughter-in-law from Gdansk, where Birgitta’s Revelationes were especially cherished, both Margery and her daughter-in-law needing to conceal the gender of the Book’s writer, just as would later George Sand, George Eliot and Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.) We see Julian’s male scribe, who may be Carmelite, acknowledge her authoritatively vowed state, for that is the meaning of the word “devout”. We see a male reader, a Carthusian, likewise acknowledge her efficacy. Her Amherst text attests, like a legal document for a canonisation process, to her saintliness. It also functions like a priestly confession manual – even to the deranged obsessing James Grenehalgh. Francis Blomefield noted that in his day the manuscript was owned by Francis Peck, a Leicestershire antiquary. It was Francis Blomefield who first discovered the Paston Letters. He responded to Julian’s text with the greatest admiration, copying out its incipit, quite carefully, though erring as to its first letter and its date, while speaking of her great reputation for holiness: Here es a Vision schewed be the Goodenes of GOD, to a devoute Woman and hir Name is Julian that is Recluse atte Norwyche, and yitt ys on Life, Anno Domini M.CCCC.XLII. In the whilke Vision er fulle many comfortabyll Wordes & greatly styrrande to alle they that desyres to be CRYSTES LOOVERSE.27

Dom Gabriel Meunier noted that Francis Peck then gave it to Sir Thomas Cave whose library was sold in London, 1758.28 According to its bookplate, it came to be owned by William Constable, whose family had strong connections to both the Brigittines of Syon Abbey and the Benedictines of Cambrai, Dame Barbara Constable, OSB, being the copyist of the Upholland excerpts of Julian’s Showing of Love. It was purchased, 24-27 March 1910, by the British Library at Sotheby’s Lord

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Amherst Sale, Lot 813. The manuscript’s editions then became the following: Revd. Dundas Harford. Comfortable Words for Christ’s Lovers. Trans. Revd. Dundas Harford. 1911. “A Critical Edition of the Revelations of Julian of Norwich (1342c.1416), Prepared from All the Known Manuscripts with Introduction, Notes and Select Glossary”. Ed. Frances Reynolds (Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, CP), D.Phil., Leeds University, 1956. A Shewing of God’s Love: The Shorter Version of Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love. Trans. Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, CP London: Longmans Green, 1958. A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich. Ed. Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and James Walsh, S.J. Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1978. Vol. I. Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love: The Shorter Version Ed. from B.L. MS 37790. Ed. Frances Beer. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1978. Julian of Norwich. Showing of Love, Extant Texts and Translation. Ed. Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, CP and Julia Bolton Holloway. Firenze: SISMEL, 2001. Biblioteche & Archivi 8. Pp. 683-783. Diplomatic edition. The Writings of Julian of Norwich. A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love. Ed. Nicholas Watson & Jacqueline Jenkins. University Park: Pensylvania State University Press, 2006. Pp. 61-119. Normalised edition.

Notes 1

In 1998 I collaborated with the British Library with a website presenting some of the more interesting texts in the Amherst Manuscript: Thomas de Froidmont, Golden Epistle, http://www.umilta.net/epistle.html,written for Margaret of Jerusalem (these ascriptions are uncertain); Henry Suso, Horologium Sapientiae, http://www.umilta.net/suso.html; Jan van Ruusbroec, Sparkling Stone, http://www.umilta.net/sparklin.html. Also included in the manuscript are Richard Rolle and Richard Misyn writing for women anchoresses named ‘Margaret’ (for a modern transcription see http://www.ccel.org/ccel/rolle/fire.html), as well as Marguerite Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls. Archbishop Arundel, Constitution, may give its context. Likewise, Birgitta of Sweden/Alfonso of Jaen, Revelationes XIII/Epistola solitarii ad reges, http://www.umilta.net/bk13.html; Letter of Cardinal Adam Easton to the Abbess of Vadstena, http://www.umilta.net/abbess.html In relation to these see also Durham Manuscript B.IV.34, John Whiterig,’ Contemplating the Crucifixion‘,

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http://www.umilta.net/whiterig.html. Marleen Cré, Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse: A Study of London, British Library MS Additonal 37790, The Medieval Translator: Traduire au Moyen Age 9 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), investigates the entire compilation, as she had earlier done with the Westminster Manuscript, both containing versions of Julian’s Showing of Love amidst other works. 2 Margaret Laing, “Linguistic Profiles and Textual Criticism: The Translations by Richard Misyn of Rolle’s Incendium Amoris and Emendatio Vitae”, Middle English Dialectology: Essays on Some Principles and Problems, ed. Margaret Laing (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1989). pp. 188-223. For more information on the Carmelites Richard Misyn and Adam Hemlyngton as spiritual directors to Margaret Heslyngton and Emma Stapleton, see Johan BergströmAllen, “‘Heremitam et Ordinis Carmelitarum’: A Study of the Vernacular Theological Literature Produced by Medieval English White Friars, Particularly Richard Misyn”, O.Carm. M.Phil Thesis, University of Oxford, 2002, online at http://www.carmelite.org/jnbba/thesis.htm 3 A.I. Doyle, “Carthusian Participation in the Movement of Works of Richard Rolle Between England and Other Parts of Europe in the 14th and 15th Centuries”, Kartäusermystic und -Mystiker: Dritter Internationaler Kongress Über die Kartäusegeschichte und Spiritualitat, Analecta Cartusiana, 55, ed. James Hogg (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1981), Band 2, pp. 109-120, esp. 111. 4 Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England (Berkeley: University of Califonria Press, 1985), pp. 209, 211, 213-216, 219; CWI.14 notes Bodley 73, fol. 51v, “Domina Emma Carmelita reclusa et soror I religione obit anno domini 1422 2a decembris” and speak of another recluse, formerly a Cistercian nun, Katherine Samson, obit 18 July 1417 at Lynn. 5 Peter S. Joliffe, A Checklist of Middle English Prose Writings of Spiritual Guidance (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1974), p. 93. 6 Amusingly, Amherst’s T, with the smaller H nestling within, is unwittingly replicated on the present gate to THE BRITISH LIBRARY at St Pancras. Perhaps nothing but coincidences, but nevertheless Italians would call these, “elegant combinations”. 7 Vincent Gillespie, Syon Abbey, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 9 (London: The British Library, 2001). lxxiii + 819 pp; “Dial M for Mystic: Mystical Texts in the Library of Syon Abbey and the Spirituality of the Syon Brethren”, The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, VI, ed. M. Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1999), pp.241-68; “Syon and the English Market for Continental Printed Books: The Incunable Phase”, Syon Abbey and its Books, ed. E.A. Jones and Alexandra Walsham (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 104-28; “The Mole in the Vineyard: Wyclif at Syon in the Fifteenth Century”, Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale: Essays in Honour of Anne Hudson, ed. H. Barr and A. M. Hutchison, Medieval Church Studies 4 (Turnhout, 2005), pp. 131-162; “Hid Diuinite: The Spirituality of the English Syon Brethren”, The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, 7, ed. E. Jones (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 189-206; “Syon and the New Learning”, The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England, ed. James G. Clark, Studies in the

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History of Medieval Religion 18 (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 75-95; “Walter Hilton at Syon Abbey”, “Stand up to Godwards”: Essays in Mystical and Monastic Theology in Honour of the Reverend John Clark on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed James Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana 204 (Salzburg, 2002), pp. 9-61; “The Book and the Brotherhood: Reflections on the Lost Library of Syon Abbey”, The English Medieval Book: Essays in Memory of Jeremy Griffiths (London, 2000), pp. 185208. 8 For which see also http://www.umilta.net/egeria.html: “Margaret of Jerusalem/Beverley by Thomas of Beverley/ Froidmont, Her Brother, Her Biographer”, and http://www.umilta.net/relic.html “Saint Birgitta of Sweden: Her Relics”; “Elegie de Thomas de Froidmont”, Bibliothèque des Croisades, ed. Joseph F. Michaud (Paris: Ducollet, 1829), III.569-575, citing Annales de Citeux, ed. Manrique, III: for the year 1174, Chapter 3; 1187, Chapter 8; 1189, Chapter 5; 1192, Chapter 3; Aron Andersson and Anne Marie Franzén, Birgittareliker (Stockholm: Alqvist & Wiksells, 1975); I lack access to: Paul Gerhardt Schmidt, “Peregrinatio periculosa: Thomas von Froidmont über die Jerusalem-Fahrten seiner Schwester Margareta’, Kontinuität und Wandel: Lateinische Poesie von Naevius bis Baudelaire, Franco Munaro zum 65. Geburtstag (Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1986), pp. 461-85; William Paden, “De Monachis rithmos facientibus: Hélinant de Froidmont, Bertran de Born, and the Cistercian General Chapter of 1199”, Speculum 55 (1980): 669-85; Edmund Colledge, “Fifteenth- and SixteenthCentury English Versions of ‘The Golden Epistle of St Bernard’”, Mediaeval Studies 37 (1975), 122-129. Other related texts are the Life of Christina of Markyate and the Flemish account of the Life of Jan van Beverley, John of Beverley, whom Julian mentions in her “Long” Text. 9 Jan Ruysbroeck [Jan van Ruusbroec], The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, The Sparkling Stone, The Book of Supreme Truth, trans. C.A. Wynschenk Dom, from the Flemish, Introd. and Notes, Evelyn Underhill (London: Dent, 1916); The Book of the Twelve Beguines, trans. John Francis [Evelyn Underhill], from the Flemish (London: John M. Watkins, 1913); Flowers of a Mystic Garden, trans. C.E.S. from the French of Ernest Hello (London: John M. Watkins, 1912); The Kingdom of the Lovers of God, trans. T. Arnold Hyde, from the Latin of Laurence Surius (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1919); Reflections from the Mirror of a Mystic, trans. Earle Baillie, from the French of Ernest Hello (London: Thomas Baker, 1905); Jan van Ruusbroec, The Spiritual Espousals and Other Works, trans. James A. Wiseman, Preface, Louis Dupré. (New York: Paulist Press, 1985); Vanden Blinckenden Steen, ed. Lod Moereels, L. Reypens (Tielt en Bussum: Lannoo, 1981); Eric Colledge, “The Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God: A Fifteenth-Century English Ruysbroek Translation”, English Studies 33 (1952), 4966; Joyce Bazire and Eric Colledge, The Chastising of God’s Children and the Treatise of the Perfection of the Sons of God (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957). 10 Henry Suso, The Life of Blessed Henry Suso by Himself, trans. Thomas Francis Knox (London: Methuen, 1913); The Exemplar: With Two German Sermons, trans. and ed., Frank Tobin, Preface, Bernard McGinn (New York: Paulist Press, 1989); Jeanne Ancelet-Hustache, Master Eckhart and the Rhineland Mystics (London: Longmans, 1957), with Suso’s manuscript illuminations.

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Published as by a male Carthusian, and with the imprimatur, in the same series of Orchard Books, as which presented Julian’s Showing, being unaware that first the text and then its authoress had been burned at the stake in 1310 in Paris: [Margaret Porete], The Mirror of Simple Souls, ed. Clare Kirchberger (London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1927). editing Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 505, where the text occurs with Chastising of God’s Children; Paul Verdeyen, “Le procès d’inquisition contre Marguerite Porete et Guiard de Cressonessart”, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 81 (1986), 47-94; Margaretae Porete, Speculum simplicium animarum/ Marguerite Porete, Le mirouer des simples ames, ed. Paul Verdeyen and Romana Guarnieri (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis, 69; Le mirouer des simples ames, ed. Romana Guarnieri, Archivio Italiano per la storia de la Pietà 4 (Rome, 1965); Mirror of Simple Souls, ed. Marilyn Doiron, Archivio Italiano per la storia de la Pietà 5 (Rome, 1968), 241-355, eidting Cambridge, St John’s College 71 (C21); The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. Ellen L. Babinsky, Preface, Robert E. Lerner (New York: Paulist Press, 1993); Nicholas Watson, “Melting into God the English Way: Deification in the Middle English Version of Marguerite Porete’s Mirouer des simples ames enienties”, Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late-Medieval England, ed. Rosalynn Voaden (Cambridge: Brewer, 1997), pp. 19-49. 12 Marguerite Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls, ed. Clare Kirchberger (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1927), pp. xxxiv-xxxv; ed. Marilyn Doiron, Archivio italiano per la storia della Pietà 5 (Rome, 1968), 241-355. 13 The Orcherd of Syon (London: Wynken de Worde, 1519); The Orcherd of Syon, ed. Phyllis Hodgson and Gabriel M. Liegey (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), EETS 258.18:11. 14 Joan Greatrex, Biographical Register of the Priories of the Province of Canterbury circa 1066-1540, citing DCN 1/1/65; 1/6/23; 2/1/17/ for the shipping of his books to Norwich through Flanders, 1389-1390, Norwich Cathedral Priory Master paying 48s 7d, the Almoner 10s “pro cariagio librorum domini cardinalis”, the Benedictine Prior of Lynn contributing 20s “circa libros domini Ade de Eston”, a total of 78s 7d; Jonathan Draper, Norfolk Record Office, 3/3/2014, “According to our catalogue DCN 1/1/88 is dated circa 1390, DCN 1/6/23 is dated 1389-90, DCN 2/1/17 is also dated 1389-90”. Anne Lovejoy, NRO, adding “DCN 1/1/65 the sum of expenses ‘exceeds’ 4000 pounds, DCN 1/6/23 sum of expenses is £78 7s 5d, DCN 2/1/17 expenditure exceeds receipts by £49 8s 5½d”. Thus it is likely the Cardinal together with his books was in Norwich in 1390. 15 See Phyllis Hodgson, “The Orcherd of Syon and the English Mystical Tradition”, Proceedings of the British Academy 50 (1964), 229-249, for discussion of textual relations between Catherine of Siena’s Dialogo, Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love; William Flete, “Remedies against Temptations: The Third English Version of William Flete”, ed. Eric Colledge and Noel Chadwick, Archivio Italiano per la Storia della Pietà 5 (Rome, 1968). 16 Nicholas Rogers, “About the 15 ‘O’’s, the Brigittines and Syon Abbey”, St Ansgar’s Bulletin 80 (1984), 29-30.

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Birgitta of Sweden, Revelationes XII; Bodleian Library, Hamilton 7, fols. 231239; Chastising of God’s Children, p. 224; A89v. 18 Eric Colledge, “Epistola solitarii ad reges: Alphonse of Pecha as Organizer of Brigittine and Urbanist Propaganda”, Mediaeval Studies 18 (1956), 19-49; Arne Jösson, Alfonso of Jaén: His Life and Works with Critical Editions of the “Epistola Solitarii”, the “Informaciones” and the “Epistola Serui Christi” (Lund: Lund University Press, 1989); Hans Torben Gilkaer, The Political Ideas of St Birgitta and her Spanish Confessor, Alfonso Pecha: Liber Celestis Imperatoris ad Reges: A Mirror of Princes (Odense: Odense Universitet, 1993). 19 James Hogg, “Cardinal Easton’s Letter to the Abbess and Community of Vadstena”, Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, ed. James Hogg (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universitat Salzburg, 1993), II.20-26. 20 Rosalynn Voaden, God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (York: York Medieval Press, 1999), pp. 159-181; “The Middle English Epistola solitarii ad reges of Alfonso of Jaén: An Edition of the Text in British Library MS Cotton Julius F ii”, Studies in St. Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, ed. James Hogg (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1993), I.144. 21 David Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (London, 1737), III.252-260: William Sawtre first on trial before Bishop Henry Le Despenser of Norwich in Lynn, 1 May 1399, renouncing his errors, amongst them stating Christ in flesh and blood was more worthy of worship than the mere wood of a cross, 25 May 1399; two years later burned, 26 February 1401, as a relapsed heretic, Despenser bringing evidence to his London trial. Augustus Jessop, Diocesan Histories: Norwich (London: SPCK, 1884), pp. 137-138: 1389, Despenser only Bishop suppressing Lollardy; 1399, opposed Henry IV, arrested, imprisoned; 1401, reconciled. 22 Nicholas Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409”, Speculum 70 (1995), 822-864; “The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love”, Speculum 68 (1993), 637-683; Margaret Aston, Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London: Hambledon Press, 1984); Anne Hudson, Lollards and Their Books (London: Hambledon Press, 1985); Rita Copeland, “Childhood, Pedagogy and the Literal Sense”, New Medieval Literatures, ed. Wendy Scase, Rita Copeland and David Lawton (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997); Ralph Hanna, “Some Norfolk Women and Their Books”, The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. June Hall McCosh (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996); Claire Cross, “‘Great Reasoners in Scripture’: The Activity of Women Lollards 1380-1530’, Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978). 23 Rita Copeland, “Childhood, Pedagogy, and the Literal Sense”, p. 142. 24 Sargent, Michael G. James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic. Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1984. Analecta Cartusiana 85. 2 vols. Contains images of Amherst folios with annotations.

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VIII. The Amherst Manuscript

Monica Hedlund, “Katillus Thorberni, A Syon Pioneer and His Books”, Birgittiana 1 (1996), 67-87. 26 E.J. Devereux, “Elizabeth Barton and Tudor Censorship”, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 49 (1966), 91-106; L.E. Whatmore, “The Sermon against the Holy Maid of Kent and her Adherents, delivered at Paul’s Cross, November the 23rd, 1533, and at Canterbury, December the 7th”, English Historical Review 58 (1943), pp. 469-472; A. Denton Cheney, “The Holy Maid of Kent”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, n.s. 18 (1904), p. 199; John Rory Fletcher, The Story of the English Brigittines of Syon Abbey, pp. 32-33; F.R. Johnston, Saint Richard Reynolds: The Angel of Syon (Syon Abbey: 1971), p. 6; Hope Emily Allen, Book of Margery Kempe, EETS 212.lxvii-lxviii; Diane Watt, “The Prophet at Home: Elizabeth Barton and the Influence of Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena”, Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in LateMedieval England, ed. Rosalynn Voaden, pp. 161-176. 27 Francis Blomefield, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk . . . and Other Authentick Memorials (London: William Miller, 180510), 11 vols. Volume IV, 1806, 81-3, 524-30. The British Library Manuscript Room has these volumes rebound, filled with fine watercolour drawings of relevant monuments and artifacts, giving important additional information, in Additional 23016. 28 Julienne de Norwich, recluse du XIVe siècle, Révelations de l’Amour divin, trans. Dom Gabriel Meunier, OSB (Paris: Oudin, 1910; Tours: Mame, 1925), p. vii. 29 Francis Blomefield, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk. . . and Other Authentick Memorials, 11 vols, IV.81. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, “Editing Julian of Norwich’s Revelations: A Progress Report”, Mediaeval Studies 38 (1976), 405, note that Constable may have acquired Peck’s volume at auction, 1758. 30 Jean Leclercq, “Solitude and Solidarity: Medieval Women Recluses”, Peaceweavers: Medieval Religious Women, ed. John Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (Kalamazoo; Cistercian Publications, 1987), II.67-83. We see an example of a fifteenth-century East Anglian recluse, the Dominican anchorite Galfridus in Lynne, teaching school boys in the Promptorium Parvulorum: The First English Latin Dictionary (London: Early English Text Society, 1908), ES 102, whose work we found of great use with Julian’s Norwich dialect. 31 Julia Bolton Holloway, Anchoress and Cardinal: Julian of Norwich and Adam Easton, OSB (Salzburg: Analecta Cartusiana, 2008), pp. 1-24. 32 Magister Mathias, Copia exemplorum, ed. Lars Wålin, Margarete AnderssonSchmitt (Uppsala: Universität Uppsala, 1990), pp. 21-22; Book of Margery Kempe, EETS 212.153, 322-323.

IX JULIAN AND MARGERY: THE SOUL A CITY

and than owre lorde opene= dde my gastely eyenn & schewyd me my saule in myddys of my herte. I sawe my saule swa large as it ware a kyngdome And be the condicions that I sawe therin. me thought it was awir= schipfulle Cite. In myddys of this Cite Sittes oure lorde Jhesu verraye god & verray mann a fayre persoune and of large stature wyr= schipfulle. hiest lorde. ‘Holy wryt seyth þat þe sowle of a rytful man is the sete/seet of God. & so I trust, syster, þat ‫܌‬e ben’.

I Their Context

J

Ulian, enclosed in her anchorhold beside a small Norwich church with its Norman tower, then much taller before the bomb,1 perhaps encouraged the troubled and restless Margery to travel far afield, and to return and tell her of what she had seen, to be her surrogate self and her opposite. Margery certainly had “Seynt Brydis boke” read to her, and did all the pilgrimages that Birgitta of Sweden, likewise a mother of many children, had already done, to Compostela, to Cologne, to Gdansk, to Jerusalem, to Rome, where Margery would even stand in the room with its “tawny” board where Birgitta had written her Revelationes and where she had died, and the “Sacred Conversation” painting commissioned for it by Lapa Accaiauoli Buondelmonte, and then came home and wrote a similar work, The Book of Margery Kempe, about her “Holy Conversations”.2 Julian’s Showing and Margery’s Book are very different, one contemplative, the other active, one enclosed, the other far-flung, one silent, the other noisy, yet very much worth reading together. In Margery’s

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Book we find Julian’s theology crystallised, at work with her “even Christian”. Their texts need also to be seen against the backdrop not just of England but of all Europe, a Europe perhaps opened up to them by our Norwich Benedictine, Adam Easton, Cardinal of England, friend and associate of Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena, perhaps Julian’s fellow Benedictine, who together could have worked quietly at making the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew philology, the Greek Testament and Greek theology, present in our English language. As had Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena, Margery Kempe used others, generally male, to write down her words in fair copy. But almost no one has noticed that illiterate Margery’s first amanuensis is far more probably her daughter-in-law from Gdansk, where Birgitta was revered and her Revelationes studied, than it was Margery’s son from Lynn, who was at that time dying. We are clearly told by her second, male, and priestly scribe about Margery’s first try at authoring a book, that Þe booke was so euel wretyn þat he cowd lytyl skyll þeron, for it was neiþyr good Englysch ne Dewch, ne þe lettyr was not schapyn ne formyd as oþer letters ben.3

Those disparaging words would indicate that Margery’s original Book was likely written by her German daughter-in-law more than by her English son. They recall as well “M.N.”‘s comment about Marguerite Porete’s poor French: “The frenche boke that I schalle write after is yuel writen & in Sum. places for defaute of words and silables the reson is awaye” (A138). Of interest, too is that Margery Kempe’s second amanuensis initially rejects her, then comes to accept her, through reading in Cardinal Jacques Vitry’s book of Marie d’Oignies’ “wondirful compassyon that sche had in his Passyon thynkyng”, again making use of the Jerome/Paula, Monica/Augustine, Benedict/Scholastica “Holy Conversations”. Similarly had Birgitta’s director, Magister Mathias, doubted Birgitta, then noted the likeness to Marie d’Oignies and to Cardinal Jacques de Vitry’s important support of her.4 Moreover, in The Book of Margery Kempe, it is not without interest that Margery’s visit to Julian is immediately preceded by that to the saintly Carmelite, William Southfield of Norwich: “a Whyte Frer in the same cyte of Norwyce whech hyte Wyllyam Sowthfeld”, who died, 26 August 1414. Margery’s spiritual direction comes largely from Carmelites, such as “Maystyr Aleyn”, D.D., of Lynn, who compiled indices of St Birgitta’s Revelationes, and Dominicans, in the latter case, having close connections to Catherine of Siena through Raymond of

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Capua, Master General, 1380-1399, who profoundly shaped the Order of Preachers, in particular in relation to women. In that Book, finally written many years later in Lynn, Margery Kempe tells how, circa 1413, she had visited Julian in her Norwich anchorhold and she gives orally a remarkable account of their conversation together. The two texts, Julian’s and Margery’s, tally, and they especially tally for the 1413 “Short” Text, rather than for the more sophisticated Westminster and Paris/Sloane “Long” Text versions whose manuscripts give dates of “1368” and “1387-1393”. Under Archbishop Chancellor Arundel there was great danger where a woman anchoress was perceived as subtle and sophisticated in her reasoning. Julian, circa 1413, in response to such exigencies, would be forced to simplify and crystallise her teaching. But she does not fall silent. Comparing Julian’s Showing of Love to The Book of Margery Kempe, we especially see Margery’s account of her conversation with Julian to centre on the topic both the “Short” Text and this conversation share (A114v-115, M21), the burning topic of the day, the “Discerning of Spirits”, from William Flete’s Remedies Against Temptations and from Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes, in its Epistola Solitarii, written not by Birgitta of Sweden herself, but by her editor, Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén,5 and echoed in turn in the Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae, written by the Norwich Benedictine, Cardinal Adam Easton. Next we have Margery even bearding Archbishop Arundel himself at Lambeth Palace, these two talking theology in the Palace’s garden under the stars, theology which Margery perhaps learned from the hermit William Southfield and the anchoress Julian of Norwich.6 II Their Texts Margery Kempe’s visit to Julian of Norwich provides for us not only the early written texts we now have, the Amherst, Westminster, Paris Texts, but also an Oral Text, spoken just prior to the time that the 1413 exemplar to the Amherst Text was being written. Margery’s manuscript thus allows us to go back to fifteenth-century East Anglia with, as it were, a tape-recorder or an IPod. We need to envision this Visitation of the youthful Margery in her white pilgrim garb, aged Julian in her black Benedictine habit, Margery speaking at Julian’s cloth-covered window, and also listening to her and clearly remembering her words. Both the Amherst (Add. 37790) and the Butler-Bowden (Add. 61823) Manuscripts, of Julian’s Showing and Margery’s Book, are now in the British Library. This chapter transcribes directly from their manuscript

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IX. Julian and Margery: The Soul a City

texts. The letter þ ‘thorn’ is the Middle English form for th, the letter ‫܌‬, ‘yoch’, is g, y or gh, the median letter s, the scribal s. Contractions are spelled out in italics. The foliation of the manuscripts is cited, preceded by their sigla.7 Letters and words rubricated here are so rubricated in the manuscripts. Margery has her scribes tell us (M21) & þan sche was bodyn be owyr lord. for to gon to an ankres in þe same Cyte which hyte Dame Jelyan. & so sche dede & schewyd hir þe grace þat god put in hir sowle of compunccyon contricyon swetnesse & devocyon compassyon with holy meditacyon & hy contemplacyon. & ful many holy spechys & dalyawns. þat owyr Lord spak to hir sowle. and many wondirful reuelacyons whech sche schewyd to þe ankres to wetyn yf þer were any deceyte in hem, for þe ankres was expert in swech thynges & good cownsel cowd ‫܌‬euyn. [And then she was told by our Lord, to go to an anchoress in the same city called Dame Julian. And so she did and showed her the grace that God put in her soul of compunction, contrition, sweetness and devotion, compassion with holy meditation and high contemplation. And many holy speeches and daliance that our Lord spoke to her soul, and many wonderful revelations which she showed to the anchoress to know if there were any deceit in the, for the anchoress was expert in such things and could give good counsel.]

Julian’s 1413/1450 “Short” Text concludes with an essay on the “Discerning of Spirits”. Indeed, if Julian of Norwich had been counselled by Cardinal Adam Easton of Norwich Cathedral Priory, who knew Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén and his Epistola Solitarii, and who had together with him defended Birgitta of Sweden‘s canonisation, the Norwich anchoress certainly would have been “expert” in the discerning of such spiritual matters and such revelatory showings, about which both the Cardinal and the Hermit Bishop had written. This was a matter, at this time when the pros and cons were being debated concerning women’s visionary writings, of the greatest topical concern. Margery and Julian’s conversation continues, Þe ankres, heryng þe meruelyows goodnes of owyr lord, hyly thankyd god. with al hir hert. for þys visytacyon cownselyng þis creature to be obedyent. to þe wyl of owyr lord god & fulfyllyn with al hir myghtys.

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whateuer he put in hir sowle yf it wer not ageyn þe wor shep of god & profyte of hir euyne cristen, for yf it were þan it were nowt þe mevyng of a good spyryte but raþer of an euyl spyrit. [The anchoress, hearing of the marvellous goodness of our Lord, highly thanked God, with all her heart for this visit, counselling this creature to be obedient to the will of our Lord God and to fulfill with all her might whatever he put in her soul, if it were not against the worship of God and profit of her even Christian. For if it were then it were not the moving of a good spirit but rather of an evil spirit.]

Again, we hear in this counsel the precepts written by Adam Easton and by Alfonso of Jaén (also by the Cloud Author in his various Epistles), concerning the discerning of spirits in connection with the validation of the visionary writings of Birgitta of Sweden, whose 1391 Canonisation was to be confirmed at the 1419 Council of Constance despite the 1415 objections of Jean Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris, contained in his work, De probatione spirituum. That material had already been given in William Flete’s Remedies Against Temptations, who left England after writing that work to become an Augustine Hermit at Lecceto and associated with St Catherine of Siena. In the passage we also hear Julian’s own beloved phrase, “euyne christen”, “even Christian”, and we can clearly recognise the echoes to the concluding section concerning the “Discerning of Spirits” (A114v-115), and which may perhaps be her last, and authorising, words in the face of Archbishop Chancellor Arundel‘s censorship of Lollardy, particularly where women taught theology: Alle dredes othere thann reuerente dredes. that er proferde to vs. þow‫ ܌‬thay comm vndere the coloure of halynes thay ere not so trewe. and hereby may thaye be knawenn and discerned. whilke is whilke. for this reuerente dre= de the mare it is hadde. the mare it softes and comfortes & pleses and restes and the false drede it travayles and tempestes & trubles than is this the remedye to knawe thamm bath & refuse ‫܌‬e fals. righte as we walde do a wikkyd spiritte that schewed hym in liknes of a goode Angelle. for ryght as ane ille spyrit thow‫ ܌‬he comm vndere the coloure and the liknes of agoode angelle his daliaunce & his wir= kynge þow‫ ܌‬he schewe neuer so fayre fyrst he travayles & tempes & trubles the persoun that he spekes with and lettes hym and lefe‫܌‬ hym alle in unreste. And the mare that he commone‫ ܌‬with hym the mare he travayles hym. and the farthere is he fra pees. þerfore it is goddes wille. and oure spede that we knawe thamm thus y sundure ffor god wille euer that we be sekere in luffe & peessabille & ri‫܌‬tefulle as

234

IX. Julian and Margery: The Soul a City he is to vs and ryght so of the same condicioun as he is to us so wille he that we be to oure selfe. And to oure. Evencristenn. Amen. [All anxieties other than reverent dread that are proferred to us, though they come under the colour of holiness, are not so in truth, and hereby may they be known and discerned, which is which. For this reverent dread, the more it is had the more it softens and comforts and pleases and rests the soul; and the false dread travails and distresses and troubles it. Then this is the remedy; to know them both and reject the false dread, just as we would do with a wicked spirit that showed himself in the likeness of a good angel, though he show himself in his pleasing talk and working ever so fair at first, yet he travails and distresses and troubles the person that he speaks with, hinders him and leaves him altogether in unrest. And the more souls an evil spirit communes with the soul the more he travails him and the farther the soul is from peace. Therefore it is God’s will that we be secure in love and peaceful and restful, as He is to us. Just as he is to us, so wills He that we be to ourselves, and to our even Christian. Amen.]

Julian continues in her conversation with Margery, and is now reported in direct speech: Þe holy gost meuyth neuyer a þing a-geyn charite &, yf he dede he were contraryows to hys owyn self for he is al charite. Also he meuyth a sowle to al chastenesse. for chast leuars be clepyd þe temple of þe holy gost . & þe holy gost makyth a sowle stabyl & stedfast in þe rygth feyth & þe rygth beleue. And a dubbyl man in sowle is euer vnstabyl. & vnstedfast in al hys weys. He þat is euermor dowtyng. is lyke to þe flood of þe see. þe wheche is mevyd & born a-bowte with þe wynd, & þat man is not lyche to receyuen þe ‫܌‬yftys of god. What creature þat hath þes tokenys he muste stedfastlych belevyn þat þe holy gost dwellyth in hys sowle. And mech more whan God visyteth a creature wyth terys of contrisyon deuosyon er compassyon. he may & owyth to leuyn þat þe holy gost is in hys sowle. [The Holy Ghost never impels a thing against charity. And if he did he were against himself, for he is all charity. Also he moves a soul to all chastity, for chaste lovers are called the temple of the Holy Ghost [1 Cor. 6.19]. And the Holy Ghost makes a soul stable and steadfast in the true faith and right belief. And a man who is double in soul is always unstable and unsteadfast in his ways. He who is always doubting is like the flood of the sea, which is moved and born about by the wind, and that man is not likely to receive the gifts of God. Who has these tokens must [M21v] steadfastly believe that the Holy Ghost dwells in his soul. And much more when God visits a creature with tears

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of contrition, devotion or compassion, he may and ought to believe that the Holy Ghost is in his soul.]

That image of the storm-tossed sea reflects that in the Cloud Author‘s A Pistle of Discretion of Stirings (EETS 231.64:7-23). Julian next is reported as citing her authorities, Paul and Jerome, to Margery, who perhaps misremembers one of them: Seynt Powyl seyth þat þe Holy Gosst Askyth for vs with morningges & wepynges vnspekable. þat is to seyn he makyth vs to askyn & preyn with mornyngges & wepynges so plentyvowsly. þat þe terys may not be nowmeryd. Ther may non euyl spyrit ‫܌‬euyn þes tokenys, for Sanctum Jerom seyth þat terys turmentyn more the Debylle þan don the peynes of Helle. [St Paul says that the Holy Ghost implores us with unspeakable mourning and weeping. That is to say he makes us to ask and pray with such plenteous mourning and weeping that the tears may not be counted [Romans 8.26]. There may be no evil spirit given these tokens, for St Jerome says that tears torment the devil more than do the pains of hell.]

The only possible corresponding passage in Jerome’s writings occurs in the heavily philosophical and theological Epistula 84, “Ad Pammachium et Oceanum”, Iungamus gemitus, lacrimas copulemus, ploremus et conuertamur ad dominum, qui fecit nos; non expectemus diaboli paenitentiam. Vana est illa praesumptio et in profundum gehennae trahens; hic aut quaritur uita aut amittitur.8

Perhaps Margery here misremembers and Julian was rather speaking of Augustine’s account of Monica’s tears, Confessions 3.12, recalled also by Birgitta’s vision in the Holy Sepulchre concerning the fate of her son, Charles.2 Julian next discusses evil: god & þe deuyl ben euermor contraryows & thei xal neuer dwellyn togedyr in on place. & þe devyl hath no powyr in a mannys sowle. [God and the devil are always contrary and they shall never dwell together in one place. And the devil has no power in a man’s soul.

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And here we can gather together all these strands, the 1233 Tallage Roll caricature of the Jurnet family with devils about them, National Archives PRO E 401/1565, the manuscript account of the 1350 Norwich miracle of the devil at the throat, Lambeth 432, fols. 87-87v, William Flete’s Remedies Against Temptations, Adam Easton’s manuscript illuminated with devils at the throat of a Franciscan (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 180, fol. 1, Figure 17), and Julian’s terrifying and diabolical vision of the devil at her throat (P60, 142v-143, 146v-147, S190). Holy wryt seyth þat þe sowle of a rytful man is the sete/seet of God. & so I trust, syster, þat ‫܌‬e ben. [Holy Scriptures say that the soul of a rightful man is the seat of God. And so I trust, sister, that you are.]

There is a parallel in Julian/Margery’s wording here to the commentaries upon the Psalms Qui habitat and Bonum est, attributed to Walter Hilton and both present in the Westminster Cathedral Julian Manuscript. Has Julian intended not “city” but “seat” in W101v, P116 and 144-145, A112, or has Margery misheard the word? But perhaps Julian deliberately plays upon the likeness of the two words, echoing that of the episcopal seat/city. She may also be using the concept expressed throughout Luke 14 where guests need to exercise humility to enter the Kingdom of God, a kingdom within us. Apart from the Hilton and Julian texts in the Westminster Manuscript, are other texts associated with Julian making this same point: Norwich Castle Manuscript, fol. 78v: “Anima iusti sedes est sapiencie. ffor as seith holy write the soule of the ry‫܌‬tful man or womman is the see & dwelling of endeles wisdom that is goddis sone swete ihe If we been besy & doon our deuer to fulfille the wil of god & his pleasaunce thanne loue we hym wit al our my‫܌‬te”; likewise, John Whiterig, Contemplating the Crucifixion, “Anima iusti sedes est sapiencie” (KJV, “but the righteous is an everlasting foundation”, Proverbs 10.25b). In these phrases we can glimpse at “city”, “seat”, as of an enthroned bishop in his cathedral, Mary as the “Throne of Wisdom” with Christ in her lap in the Byzantine iconography, “foundation”, “ground”, all in relation to Wisdom in one’s soul, to God’s presence as Justice and Mercy. With that last comment, “& so I trust, syster, þat ‫܌‬e ben”, we realise that we certainly are listening to reported speech and that Dame Julian addressed Margery, her “evyn christen”, even as “Sister”. The discussion of evil reminds one more of William Flete’s Remedies Against

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Temptations than it does of Julian’s “sin as nought”. Interestingly, this phrasing concerning the soul as a city is closer to that of the Sixteenth Showing in the 1393/1580 Paris Manuscript, P143v-145v, and the 1413/1450s Amherst Manuscript, A112, which both give vestiges of the Lord and the Servant Parable, with their echoes from Angela of Foligno and Catherine of Siena, than it is to the earlier version, the Fourteenth Showing, present in the Westminster, W101-102v, and Paris, P116-119, Manuscripts.

B

ot than lefte I Stylle wakande and than owre lorde opene= dde my gastely eyenn & schewyd me my saule in myddys of my herte. I sawe my saule swa large as it ware a kyngdome And be the condicions that I sawe therin. me thought it was awir= schipfulle Cite. In myddys of this Cite Sittes oure lorde Jhesu verraye god & verray mann a fayre persoune and of large stature wyr= schipfulle. hiest lorde. And I sawe hym cledde Solemplye in wyr= schippes. he sittes in the saule euenn ryght in pees & reste. And he rewles & ‫܌‬eme‫ ܌‬heuenn & erthe. and alle that is. the manhede with the godhede sittis in reste. And the godhede rewles & ‫܌‬emes with owtynn any instrumente or besynes. And my saule blisfullye occu= pyed with the godhede. that is Sufferaynn myght. Sufferayne. Wisdomme Sufferayne goodnesse. The place that Jhesu takes in oure saule. he sschalle neuer remove it with owtynn ende. for in vs is his haymelyeste hame. & maste lykynge to hym to dwelle in this was adelectabille syght. & a restefulle. for it is so in trowth with owtenn ende. And the behaldynge of this whiles we ere here es fulle plesaunde to god and fulle grete spede to vs. And the saule that thus behaldys it: makys it lyke to hym that is behaldene and anes in reste & in pees and this was asingulere ioye & Ablis to me. that I sawe hym sitte for the behaldynge of this sittynge. schewed to me sikernes of his endelesse dwelly= nge. [But then I remained still, awake; and then our Lord opened my ghostly eyes and showed me my soul in the midst of my heart. I saw my soul as large as if it were a kingdom, and from what I saw therein, methought it was a worshipful City. In the midst of this City is seated our Lord, true God and true man— beautiful in person and tall of stature—the worshipful highest Lord; and I saw him in majesty covered with glory. He sits in the very centre of the soul, in peace and rest, and rules and cares for heaven and earth and all that is. The Manhood, with the Godhead, sits in rest, and the Godhead rules and directs without any instrument or busyness; and my soul is blessedfully possessed by the Godhead that is Sovereign Might, Sovereign Wisdom, Sovereign Goodness. The place that Jesus takes in our soul he shall never leave, without end; for in us is his lomeliest home and most pleasing to him to dwell in. This

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IX. Julian and Margery: The Soul a City was a delectable sight, and a restul one, since it is so in truth without end. And the beholding of this while we are here is full pleasing to God and full great profit to us: the soul that thus beholds, this sight makes like to him who is beheld and ones it in rest and in peace. And this was a singular joy and a bliss to me, that I saw him sit, for the beholding of this sitting showed to me sureness of his endless dwelling.]

Julian’s “Sovereign Might, Sovereign Wisdom, Sovereign Goodness” as the Trinity is discussed in ‘Julian’s Judaism‘. This can be compared to the “1368”/1500s Westminster Manuscript‘s more subtle account concerning Julian’s vision of the Kingdom of Heaven, the City of God, within one’s own soul, W101-102v: God is nerer to vs. þan owre owne soule. for he is grounde in whom oure soule stondyth. and he is mene þat kepith þe substance & the sensualyte toge= der, so that it shall neuer depart. for oure soule syttith in god. in verey reste. and oure soule stan= dith in god in sure strength. & oure soule is kyndely rooted in god. in endelesse loue. & þerfore yf we wyll haue knowynge of oure soule. & communynge & da= [God is nearer to us than our own soul, for he is the ground in whom our soul stands, and he is the means that keeps the substance and the sensuality together so that it shall never depart. For our soul sits in God, in true rest, and our soul stands in God in sure strength, and our soul is naturally rooted in God in endless love. And therefore if we will have knowing of our soul, and communing and dalliance] liance þer with: It behouyth to seke into oure lord god in whom it is enclosyd. And an= nentis oure substance it may ryghtfully be called our soule. and anentis our sensualite it may ryghtfull be called our soule. and þat is by þe onyng þat it hath in god. That wur= shypfull cite þat our lord ihesu syttith in. it is our sensualite.

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in whiche he is enclosed. and our kyndely substance is beclo= syd in ihesu criste. with þe blessed soule of criste syttyng in reste in þe godhed. And I sawe ful surely þat it behouyth nedis [dalliance therewith, it is right to seek into our lord God in whom it is enclosed. And then our substance may rightfully be called our soul, and then our sensuality may rightfully be called our soul, and that is by the oneing that is in God. This worshipful city that our Lord Jesus sits in, it is our sensuality, in which he is enclosed, and our natural substance is beclosed in Jesus Christ, with the blessed soul of Christ, sitting in rest in the Godhead. And I saw full surely that it is needful] þat we shall be in longynge and in penance. into þe tyme þat we be led so depe in to god þat we may verely & truely know oure owne soule. And sothly I saw þat in to thys high depenes oure lorde hym selfe ledith vs in þe same loue þat he made vs. and in þe same loue þat he bought vs. bi his mercy & grace þrough vertue of his blessed passion. And not withstondyng all þis we may neuer comme to the full knowyng of god. tyll we first know clerely oure owne soule. ffor into þe tyme þat it be in the [that we shall be in longing and in penance, until the time that we be led so deep in to God that we may verily and truly know our own soul. And truly I saw that into the great deepeness our Lord himself leads us in the same love that he made us, and in the same love that he bought us, by his mercy and grace through virtue of his blessed Passion. And notwithstanding all this we may never come to the full knowing of God, until we first know clearly our own soul. For until the time that it be in the] ffull myghtis we may not be all full holy. and þat is þat oure sensualite. by þe vertue of cristis passion be brought up into þe

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IX. Julian and Margery: The Soul a City substance with all the profitis of oure tribulacion þat oure lorde shall make vs to gete by mercy & grace. [full strength we may not be all fully holy. And that is that our sensuality by the virtue of Christ’s Passion be brought up into the substance with all the profits of our tribulation that our Lord shall make us to get by mercy and grace.]

The Paris Manuscript gives first the Westminster Manuscript version as part of the Fourteenth Showing, greatly expanding it, while noting that it is to be spoken of again later in the Sixteenth Showing, P116-119. In that Sixteenth Showing it is given just as in the Amherst Manuscript, where it appears to be in the form of Julian’s consolatory sermon for those who would have felt lost and bewildered by the subtlety of the earlier, far more precocious account, P144-145. W101v-102v and P116-119 being now excised from the text. But elements of it can be traced elsewhere in Julian’s words to Margery, especially where they all speak of “communynge & da=liance therwith”, W101-101v, “comenyng and dalyance ther with”, P118v.5-6, (though in Amherst these words, “daliaunce”, “commones”, sadly occur only in connection with the evil spirit and the soul, A114v.31-115.1), and Margery’s use of these same words for her soul talk with Julian: “the holy dalyawns that the ankres & this creature haddyn be comownyng in the lofe of owyr lord Jhesu crist”. Of interest, too, is that the Amherst Manuscript contains not only Julian’s Showing of Love but also Jan van Ruusbroec‘s Sparkling Stone, translated into Middle English. Both Julian’s Sixteenth Showing (P146), and the Sparkling Stone make use of Revelation 2.17. The Amherst Manuscript (A118), gives the text from Ruusbroec’s Sparkling Stone discussing the Apocalypse of St John as the “Book of the Secrets of God” addressed “To him that overcometh”, in which “the spirit says in the Apocalyps vincenti says he schalle gyffe hym a lytil white stone and in it a newe name the whiche no man knowes but he that takys it”. This is material Julian could well have shared with Margery. Julian continues: I prey god grawnt ‫܌‬ow perseuerawns. Settyth al ‫܌‬ore trust in god. & feryth not þe langage of þe world. for þe more despyte schame & repref þat ‫܌‬e haue in þe world þe more is ‫܌‬owr meryte in þe sygth of god. Pacyens is necessary vn to ‫܌‬ow. for in þat schal ‫܌‬e kepyn yore sowle’.

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[I pray that God give you perseverance. Set all your trust in God and do not fear the language of the world. For the more despite, shame and reproach that you have in the world, the more is your merit in the sight of God. Patience is necessary for you, for in that you shall keep your soul.]

Margery then ends her account by saying: Mych was þe holy dalyawns þat the ankres & þis creature haddyn be comownyng in þe lofe of owyr lord Jhesu crist many days þat þei were togedyr. [Much was the holy dalliance that the anchoress and this creature had in sharing the love of our Lord Jesus Christ the many days that they were together.]

Julian as anchoress carried out her “Holy Conversation” with Jesus and with Mary, echoing Birgitta’s Revelations and Catherine’s Dialogo. Margery, likewise influenced by Birgitta of Sweden’s “Holy Conversations” was fertile ground for Julian’s consoling teaching and sharing, Dame Julian now repeating that healing she had herself gained through the knowledge of herself and of God in her anchorhold cell with her troubled and difficult “Even Christian”. Julian writes—and performs in a speech act—medieval psychiatry, much as we see Philosophia do with the desperate Boethius, Scholastica with stubborn Benedict, Monica with profligate Augustine. She and Margery write the first two overt women’s books in English literature. They teach readers and hearers that we, too, are God’s daughters, gifted with Wisdom, Truth and Love. John Milton has spoken of books as souls and George Eliot has spoken of cities as souls, Middlemarch IX giving us: 1st Gent. An ancient land in ancient oracles Is called “law-thirsty”: all the struggle there Was after order and a perfect rule. Pray, where lie such lands now? . . 2nd Gent. Why, where they lay of old—in human souls.

Julian and Margery inscribe within the pages of their books their souls and their cities, black-clad Julian in her anchorhold in Norwich holding within that small space all the cosmos and its Creator while Margery in her white pilgrim robes trudges to Jerusalem and back.

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III In Print Julian was readied for printing by Brigittine nuns but it was too dangerous to publish her under Henry VIII or Elizabeth I. (Her text was finally printed by Serenus Cressy in 1670, having been readied for printing next by English Benedictine nuns in exile). Margery Kempe, however, was published by Wynken de Worde in 1501, then in The Cell of Self Knowledge, printed by Henry Pepwell in 1521, which was re-published in 1910 by Edmund G. Gardner, who noted that: 9 She has come down to us only in a tiny quarto of eight pages printed by Wynkyn de Worde: “Here begynneth a shorte treatyse of contemplacyon taught by our lorde Jhesu cryste, or taken out of the boke of Margerie kempe of Lynn”. And at the end: “Here endeth a shorte treatyse called Margerie kempe de Lynn. Enprynted in Fletestrete by Wynkyn de worde”. . . The only known copy is preserved in the University of Cambridge. It is undated, but appears to have been printed in 1501. With a few insignificant variations, it is the same as was printed twenty years later by Pepwell, who merely inserts a few words like ‘Our Lord Jesus said unto her,’ or ‘she said,’ and adds that she was a devout ancress. Tanner, not very accurately, writes: ‘This book contains various discourses of Christ (as it is pretended) to certain holy women; and, written in the style of modern Quietists and Quakers, speaks of the inner love of God, of perfection, et cetera.’ No manuscript of the work is known to exist, and absolutely no traces can be discovered of the ‘Book of Margery Kempe,’ out of which it is implied by the Printer that these beautiful thoughts and sayings are taken. There is nothing in the treatise itself to enable us to fix its date. It is, perhaps, possible that the writer or recipient of these revelations is the “Margeria filia Johannis Kempe”, who, between 1284 and 1298, gave up to the prior and convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, all her rights in a piece of land with buildings and appurtenances, “which falls to me after the decease of my brother John, and lies in the parish of Blessed Mary of Northgate outside the walls of the city of Canterbury”. The revelations show that she was (or had been) a woman of some wealth and social position, who had abandoned the world to become an ancress, following the life prescribed in that gem of early English devotional literature, the Ancren Riwle. It is clearly only a fragment of her complete book (whatever that may have been); but it is enough to show that she was a worthy precursor of that other great woman mystic of East Anglia: Juliana of Norwich. For Margery, as for Juliana, Love is the interpretation of revelation, and the key to the universal mystery: “Daughter, thou mayst no better please God, than to think continually in His love”. ‘If thou wear the habergeon or the hair, fasting bread and water, and if thou saidest every day a thousand Pater Nosters, thou shalt not please Me

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so well as thou dost when thou art in silence, and suffrest Me to speak in thy soul.’ ‘Daughter, if thou knew how sweet thy love is to Me, thou wouldest never do other thing but love Me with all thine heart.’ ‘In nothing that thou dost or sayest, daughter, thou mayst no better please God than believe that He loveth thee. For, if it were possible that I might weep with thee, I would weep with thee for the compassion that I have of thee.’ And, from the midst of her celestial contemplations, rises up the simple, poignant cry of human suffering: ‘Lord, for Thy great pain have mercy on my little pain.’

Until Hope Emily Allen identifed the Butler-Bowden manuscript in 1934 this was all that was known of The Book of Margery Kempe. She next edited it for the Early English Text Society—which has yet to edit the text of Julian of Norwich.

Notes This chapter transcribes the actual manuscripts of Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, rather than the editions made from these. 1 Anon., An Introduction to the Study of Gothic Architecture (Oxford: Parker, 1849), Round Tower, St Julian’s, Norwich, engraving, p. 81; Julian and her Norwich: Commemorative Essays and Handbook to the Exhibition ‘Revelations of Divine Love’, ed. Frank Dale Sayer (Norwich: Julian of Norwich 1973 Celebration Committee, 1973).

Figure 52. St Julian’s Church with Round Tower, before WWII

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2

Sir John Hawkwood and Thomas Brinton, OSB, Adam Easton’s fellow monk at Norwich, Oxford and Avignon, founded the English College in Rome as a hospice for pilgrims next door to Birgitta’s house, and Margery Kempe stayed under its begrudging roof: Sermons of Thomas Brinton, ed. Devlin, I.xiii. Gunnel Cleve, ‘Margery Kempe: A Scandinavian Influence on Medieval England’, The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Exeter Symposium V, ed. Marion Glasscoe, V.163178; Roger Ellis, “Margery Kempe’s Scribes and the Miraculous Books”, Langland, the Mystics and the Medieval Mystical Religious Tradition: Essays in Honour of S.S. Hussey, ed. Helen Philips (Cambridge: Brewer, 1990), pp. 161-175; Julia Bolton Holloway, “Saint Bride’s Books”, Jerusalem: Essays on Pilgrimage and Literature (New York: AMS Press, 1998), pp. 142-172; “Bride, Margery, Julian and Alice: Bridget of Sweden’s Textual Community in Medieval England”, Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays, ed. Sandra McEntire (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 203-222; David Wallace, “Mystics and Followers in Siena and East Anglia: A Study in Taxonomy, Class and Cultural Mediation”, Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Papers Read at Dartington Hall, July, 1984, ed. Marion Glasscoe, 3.169-91; David Wallace, Strong Women: Life, Text and Territory 13471645, Clarendon Lectures in English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 3 The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen (Oxford: Early English Text Society, 1940), EETS 212. 4:15-17. Sebastian Sobecki, “‘The writing of this tretys’: Margery Kempe’s Son and the Authorship of Her Book”, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 37 (2015), 257-283, find documentary evidence in Gdansk of her son, John Kempe, and that the handwriting of Hanseatic documents was current coin in Gdansk and Lynne, but accepts the status quo that though the son was dying, he wrote the first version of Margery’s Book. It does not occur to him that the first version could have been written by her robust daughter-in-law who, as a woman, would have exhibited less schooled handwriting, much as we also see in the Stockholm fragments in Birgitta’s hand:

Figure 53. Stockholm, Kungliga Bibliotek A65 4

Book of Margery Kempe, EETS 212.152-153. Eric Colledge, “Epistola solitarii ad reges: Alphonse of Pecha as Organizer of Birgittine and Urbanist Propaganda’, Mediaeval Studies 18 (1975), 19-49; Arne Jönsson, Alfonso of Jaén: His Life and Works with Critical Editions of the “Epistola Solitarii”, the “Informaciones” and the “Epistola Serui Christ” (Lund: Lund University Press, 1989); St Bridget’s Revelationes to the Popes: An edition of the so-called Tractatus de summis pontificibus (Lund: University Press, 1997); Hans Torben Gilkaer, The Political Ideas of St Birgitta and her Spanish Confessor,

5

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Alfonso Pecha: Liber Celestis Imperatoris ad Reges, A Mirror of Princes, Odense University Studies of History and Social Sciences 163; Hope Emily Allen, Book of Margery Kempe, EETS 212.lviii-lix, noting connections between Adam Easton, Alfonso of Jaén and Margery Kempe; Rosalynn Voaden, “The Middle English Epistola solitarii ad reges of Alfonso of Jaén: An Edition of the Text in British Library MS Cotton Julius F ii”, Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, ed. James Hogg (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1993), I.142-179. 6 The Book of Margery Kempe, EETS 212.42-43, 36-37. She is threatened by another woman at Lambeth with being burned at Smithfield. For evidence of the difficulties for women studying theology, see Ralph Hanna III, “Some Norfolk Women and Their Books, ca 1390-1440”, The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. June Hall McCosh (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), pp. 288-305, where he discusses Margery Baxter and Avis Mone on trial, their leader William White burned, under Bishop Alnwick of Norwich, 1428-31. 7 A for Amherst (the Julian Showing Manuscript in the British Library, Additional 37790), W for Westminster (the Julian Showing Manuscript owned by Westminster Cathedral and on loan to Westminster Abbey), P for Paris (the Julian Showing Manuscript in the Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Anglais 40) which can all be retrieved from the edition by Sister Anna Maria Reynolds, CP and Julia Bolton Holloway, published by SISMEL, Florence, 2001), and M for The Book of Margery Kempe (the Butler-Bowden Manuscript, now British Library, Additional 61823, discovered in 1934, and retrieved from the manuscript rather than from the edition by Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen, Oxford: Early English Text Society, 212, 1940, 1961). 8 CETEDOC CLCLT, Université de Louvain, CD computer search. 9 The.Cell.of/Self.Knowledge/seven/Early English/Mystical/Treatises/printed.by/ Henry.Pepwell/MDXXI/Edited.with.an.Introduction/and.Notes.by/Edmund.G. Gardner.M.A.(1910). 10 The manuscript came from Mount Grace’s Carthusian Priory to the ButlerBowdon recusant family by way of a former Carthusian monk of the London Charterhouse, Everard Digby, whose recusant descendant Sir Everard Digby was hung, drawn and quartered, 30 January 1606, being a participant in the Gunpower Plot: Julia A. Chappell, Perilous Passages: The Book of Margery Kempe, 15341934 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 49-67; Wikipedia, “Sir Everard Digby”, engraving of execution by Claes Jansz Visscher, London, National Portrait Gallery.

X BRIGITTINES AND BENEDICTINES

I. Daughters of Syon: Brigittines in England and in Exile Nay, it was not so, but One was before Any Other, and One in Neither Sr Elizabeth Barton, OSB O inoughe sweete Lorde . . . ynoughe in earthe & more than I oughte to desire for myself Sr Mary Champney, OSS

S

Yon Abbey was founded by King Henry V, 22 February 1415, from the Brigittine Abbey at Vadstena in Sweden, in expiation for his father King Henry IV’s executions of King Richard II (1400) and Archbishop of York, Richard le Scrope (1405, alluded to in the Amherst Manuscript Showing of Love, A97v.17-19). Henry V also established the adjacent foundation of the Carthusian Sheen Monastery, a royal palace Richard II had had torn down when his Queen Anne of Bohemia died there of the plague.1 And I have built Two chauntries, where the sad and solemn priests Still sing for Richard’s soul,2

Shakespeare has King Henry V say before Agincourt. Henry IV had married his daughter Philippa to King Eric XIII of Sweden and VII of Denmark in 1406, Baron Fitzhugh of Ravensworth accompanying them, and the King, who was dying of leprosy contracted on his crusades and pilgrimages abroad in exile, had desired to found a Brigittine monastery in England. Similarly, Birgitta’s monastery by the lake at Vadstena had formerly been King Magnus’ castle and the scenes of depravity, which he gave to Birgitta in 1346, provided he and his wife would be buried there, but which he next tore down, perhaps because of her prophecy of Christ as Ploughman coming to plough under Sweden with the Black Death to

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punish her king for his evil and about which he then repented, requiring pilgrimages of all.3 In 1408 the Brigittine Brothers John Patri and Katillus Thorberni came to England from Sweden accepting Fitzhugh’s hospitality, being in Cherry Hinton, Cambridgeshire, and in York, Yorkshire, and working towards an English Foundation.4 Fitzhugh, familiar with the Holy Land, may have suggested “Bethlehem” (for Shene) and “Syon”. At Syon Abbey, dedicated to St Saviour and St Bridget, as at Vadstena, were to be sixty sisters and twenty-five brothers in continuous prayer, four consecrated sisters, three novices and two brothers being sent by the King and Queen of Sweden for this purpose in 1415. The sisters were Christina Finwids, Ragnildis Tideka, Anna and Christina Esböurna, the brothers, Johannes Kalmarnensis and Magnus Hemmingi. Their journey to Syon took them through Margery Kempe’s Lynn. The first, titular, Abbess was Matilda Newton and the first Confessor General, William Alnwick, the Hermit of Westminster who spoke with Henry V the night of his father’s death. These were officially replaced by Joan North and Thomas Fishbourne in 1421.5 Interestingly, Joan North, had been ‘reclusionem moniales de Markyate’, whose Mother Foundress was Christina of Markyate,6 while William Alnwick went on to be first Bishop of Norwich, strongly persecuting Lollards there and calling in their books, then Bishop of Lincoln. The sixty nuns were enclosed, the monks were preachers, of whom thirteen were priests, four, deacons and eight, lay brothers, their two libraries reflecting these differing needs. The men’s library was catalogued and, containing Humanist texts, was in its day England’s finest.7 Thomas Gascoigne, Chancellor of Oxford, procured books and documents and relics for Syon, while Thomas More quarried its collection, having, for instance, with him in the Tower, William Flete’s Remedies Against Temptations. It appears that the uncatalogued women’s library contained many of the contemplative works this book has discussed, Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Book of Gostlye Grace, Marguerite Porete’s Mirror for Simple Souls, Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes, Catherine of Siena’s Dialogo, Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love, the Ancrene Wisse, and the Cloud of Unknowing cluster of texts among them. It was made available to Sr Elizabeth Barton, OSB, of Canterbury, as well as the cloistered nuns of Syon. The Amherst Manuscript (British Library, Add. 37790) florilegium, containing our earliest surviving manuscript of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love, (A, from exemplar Į), first written likely by a Carmelite, along the axis of Norwich, Lincoln, York, came to be at Carthusian Sheen and in the hands of James Grenehalgh who wrote in it Syon Abbey’s Sister

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Joanna Sewell’s name.8 The Westminster Manuscript of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love was written out, together with extracts from Walter Hilton, including the Scala Perfectionis, into a contemplative florilegium at Syon Abbey, likely by a Brigittine sister, around 1500 (W), copying one written there around 1450 (exemplar Ȧ). It appears to attempt to present a version dating back to ‘1368’, lacking the 1373 vision, lacking the “All Shall Be Well” passages, and lacking the Lord and the Servant Parable. The Paris Manuscript (P), written by a Syon nun in exile, likely copies one written out as ‘fair copy’ at Syon Abbey and readied for printing around 1534 (exemplar ʌ). We can trace the history of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love through these manuscripts. We can also trace the history of Syon Abbey through Julian’s manuscripts. A. The Amherst ‘Short’ Text Manuscript (A) It is possible that Julian’s ‘Short’ Text Showing of Love exemplar reached Lincoln from Norwich by way of Bishop William Alnwick, who was Bishop of Norwich, 1426, and actively campaigning against women studying theology in English in 1428, calling in vernacular theological texts.9 He was translated from Norwich to Lincoln as its Bishop, 1436.9 The Carmelite Prior of Lincoln, Richard Misyn, could have been entrusted with these texts which may have represented Julian’s contemplative library, making them available in turn to another women contemplative, Margaret Heslyngton of near York, whom he trusted to be orthodox and not heretical. Whoever corrected the manuscript had access to exemplar Į to do so, if not Julian herself. The scribe of Amherst also copies out Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Book of Gostlye Grace in a separate manuscript which comes into the possession of Richard III, when Duke of York, and Anne Neville, his wife, perhaps from Richard’s mother Cecily Neville who particularly collected such books and in connection with Syon Abbey. As well multiple copies of Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Book of Gostlye Grace were copied out at Vadstena, its earliest by Brigittine Brother Katillus Thorberni, OSS, in England before Syon Abbey’s foundation, 1408-1421, who, in two other manuscripts now in Sweden, also gives material by Cardinal Adam Easton.10 Both scribes, the English one and the Swedish one, use the same repertoire and in a Brigittine context. Amherst contains an extract from Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris, on Friendship, fols. 85-97, a text Katillus copies out twice in Vadstena manuscripts.11 Brother Katillus was to die at Vadstena in 1442. Then the manuscript, fifty years or more following its writing, was untidily annotated throughout by James Grenehalgh, a renegade Carthusian, sent from Sheen to Coventry and other houses, and who had

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annotated other manuscripts as well with an eye to Joanna Sewell, Brigittine nun at Syon Abbey, seeming a version of stalking. In historical pairing of contemplative men and women it is rare to find a negative example of such a relation. But this does mar a splendid history, just as much as do Grenehalgh’s agitated marginalia and underlinings mar otherwise fine manuscripts. It was conjectured by Eric Colledge at first that Amherst’s scribe was Joanna Sewell (from the “SI” monograms as well as the “JS”, “JG” ones) who Professed Vows at Syon 1500, but her dates are too late to have been its scribe or rubricator.12 Amherst’s first folio gives “Vincit Winge his Booke” in red, a PostReformation recusant owner.13 We learn of a subsequent owner where Francis Blomefield discussed the remains of Julian’s anchorhold, noting that “This Woman in those Days, was esteemed one of the greatest Holynesse”, and who described this manuscript, quoting carefully from the Showing of Love(though erring as to its incipit initial and date), Here es a Vision schewed be the Goodenes of GOD, to a devoute Woman, and hir Name is Julian that is Recluse atte Norwyche, and yitt ys on Life, Anno Domini M.CCCC.XLII. In the whilke Vision er fulle many comfortabyll Wordes & gretly styrrande to alle they that desyres to be CRYSTES LOOVERSE

stating that this manuscript was then owned by Francis Peck, an antiquarian rector in Leicestershire.14 Dom Gabriel Meunier, a Farnborough Benedictine, noted that Peck gave it next to Sir Thomas Cave whose library was afterwards sold in London, 1758.15 According to the bookplate, it then came to be owned by William Constable, (“Wm Constable Esqr, F.R.S. & F.A.S.”), perhaps of the recusant manuscriptcollecting family, the Constables of Burton Constable in Yorkshire (who intermarried with the Heanneages, likewise collectors of medieval contemplative manuscripts,16 with whom the Brigittine Sr Mary Champney, connected with the Paris Manuscript, was associated, and from whom Dame Barbara Constable, OSB, scribe of the Upholland Manuscript Julian fragment, descended. It was purchased for the British Library at Sotheby’s Amherst Sale, 24-27 March 1910, Lot 813. Hence folios 104, 112, of Julian’s Amherst Showing of Love came to be stamped with the Royal English Crown, surrounded by the encircling letters, “BRITISH MUSEUM”.

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B. The Paris ‘Long’ Text Manuscript’s Tudor Exemplar ʌ Though the Westminster Manuscript was originally copied out, likely by a Syon nun, in the peace of the cloister, its “Wanderings of Syon” story will be given later in this chapter. For now we can learn more of Syon’s stormy history through examining the history of the later Paris Manuscript and of its likely exemplar. Syon Abbey fostered the writing and printing, owning and reading, of contemplative treatises by lay and monastic, by women and men. The florilegia of the Amherst and the Westminster Manuscripts would be the nuns’ typical contemplative reading. Wynken de Worde printed Walter Hilton’s Scala Perfectionis in 1494, and this text, also, was one treasured first by Syon nuns, then by Benedictine ones. Syon’s entry into print culture began in earnest with first the 1516 Richard Pynson printing of Thomas Gascoigne’s Life of St Birgitta,17 followed by the exquisite 1519 Wynken de Worde, Orcherde of Syon; 1525, Wynken de Worde printing Image of Love; 1527, Lawrence Andrew, The Directory of Conscience; 1530, Richard Fawkes, Myroure of Oure Ladye, and Wynken de Worde, Richard Whytford’s A Werke for Housholders; 1532, Robert Redman, The Pype or Tonne of the Lyfe of Perfection, and 1534, Robert Redman, Myrrour or Glasse of Christes Passion, amongst other books. The woodcut of Syon Abbey’s Foundress, St Birgitta of Sweden, appears in eighteen such books printed by Wynken de Worde, Richard Pynson, Robert Redman, Richard Fawkes, and others, between 1519-1534.18 There is a further text, preserved in The Book of Margery Kempe British Library Add. 61823 Manuscript (M21), which gives a scribal rendition of an oral conversation between Dame Julian of Norwich of Benedictine St Julian’s Church and Anchorhold and Margery Kempe of Lynn, who was generally under the spiritual direction of Carmelites and Dominicans. This manuscript in its entirety was copied out at the Carthusian Mount Grace Priory in Yorkshire by a scribe named Salthows on paper from Holland with watermarks dated circa 1440-1450 from an exemplar manuscript. It was printed in part by Wynkyn de Worde circa 1501, and reissued by Henry Pepwell in 1521, then edited by Edmund Gardner. Interestingly, Edmund G. Gardner considered the recipient of the “Epistle of Discretion in Stirryng of Spirits” by the Cloud author to be addressed to a woman about to become an anchoress.19 Margery’s Book gives voice to many concepts found in Julian’s Showing and Margery assiduously sought out all places and people associated with Birgitta of Sweden, replicating wherever possible, her “Holy Conversations”, and visited Sheen and Syon in quest of the Syon Pardon.

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It is not improbable that this printing programme, already including Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena and Margery Kempe, should have been intended also to include Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love. Clearly Westminster (W), written out at Syon Abbey, and Paris (P), being written out in the Antwerp region, copying a Tudor exemplar ʌ from Syon Abbey, were carefully written out as such “fair copy” within rules and with running headers, both versions readied for printing. Had these appeared they would have likely had the woodblock of St. Birgitta of Sweden, Syon Abbey’s hallmark. Meanwhile, amongst laity and clergy the Revelationes of St Birgitta of Sweden continued to be beloved and bequeathed. English translations are noted to have been so willed: Elizabeth Sywardby in a Will proved 1468, “De libro compilato in lingua Anglica de Revelationibus Sanctae Brigidae”; Margaret Purdawnce of Norwich leaving “to the Nunnery of Thetford, an English book of St Bridget”; and Cecily, Duchess of York, to her daughter, Anne de la Pole, Prioress of Syon Abbey, in 1495.20 But in 1534 storm clouds were gathering, due to a Benedictine nun from Kent who was writing a “greate boke” of Revelations modeled on those of St Birgitta of Sweden and St Catherine of Siena, made available to her at Syon Abbey. Her spiritual director was Dr Edward Bocking, OSB, a Canterbury Benedictine. Already Robert Redman had printed a pamphlet on Elizabeth Barton’s miraculous cure from an illness in Kent. (Julian’s Showing is about her own miraculous cure.) Then “Thomas Laurence of Canturbury being regester to the Archidecon of Canturbury, at the instance and desyre of the seid Edwarde Bockyng wrott a greate boke of the seid falce and feyned myracles and revelations of the seid Elizabeth in a fayre hande redy to be a copye to the prynter when the seid booke shulde be put to stampe”, and that book was printed in seven hundred copies by John Skot in 1530, one copy even reaching William Tyndale in exile in Antwerp.21 The Holy Maid of Kent, Elizabeth Barton, had fearlessly spoken out against Henry VIII’s divorcing Katharine of Aragon and his marriage to Anne Boleyn, Bishop John Fisher and Cardinal Wolsey being swayed by her, while Thomas More, who spoke with her at Syon Abbey, expressed scepticism. Though not a scrap of the hundreds of printed versions of Elizabeth Barton’s text survive there is a discussion of what her book had contained. One such fragment reminds us of Julian’s discussion of the physical placement of the Son by the Father’s right hand, Julian, through Adam Easton and his knowledge of Rabbi David Kimhi, suggesting that the scriptural passage, repeated in the Creed, not be understood literally but spiritually (P106.10-22).

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X. Brigittines and Benedictines ¶ Now stondyth not the sonne be= fore the fader on the lyfte syde as a laborer but he syttyth on the fa= ders ryght hand in endlesse rest an pees, ¶ But it is nott ment that the sonne syttyth on the ryght hand bysyde as one man syttyth by an other in this lyfe . for ther is no such syttyng as to my syght in the trynyte. but he syttyth on his faders ryght honde . that is to sey . right in the hyest noblyte of the faders Joy. (P106) [Now stands not the Son before the Father on the left side as a labourer but he sits on the Father’s right hand in endless rest and peace. But it is not meant that the Son sits at the right hand beside him as one man sits by another in this life. For there is no such sitting as to my sight in the Trinity. But he sits on his Father’s right hand, that is to say, right in the highest nobility of the Father’s joy.]

We suddenly glimpse another woman’s contemplation, for she repeats Julian, as well as the Cloud author and Rabbi David Kimhi, on the Son sitting at the right hand of the Father as not literally so, the choreography Julian gives her Lord and Servant. Strangely, the statement appears to echo The Gospel of Thomas, Logia 20, “When you make the two One, and you make the inner even as the outer, and the outer even as the inner, and the above even as the below, so that you will make the male and the female into a single One, in order that the male is not made male nor the female made female: when you make the eye in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and an image in place of an image, then shall you enter the Kingdom”.22 Nay, it was not so, but One was before Any Other, and One in Neither.

The sermon condemning the Holy Maid of Kent implies that this statement written in her great book is heresy. Yet Flemish paintings of the period between Julian of Norwich and Elizabeth Barton of Kent magnificently show this theological mystery of the Trinity.23 Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer on behalf of the King had all copies of her book as both heresy and treason seized and destroyed and, on the 20th of April, 1534, Elizabeth Barton, Benedictine nun of St Sepulchre’s

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Canterbury and Dr Edward Bocking, Benedictine monk of Canterbury Cathedral, were drawn from the Tower to Tyburn, hanged and quartered. Julian may herself have earlier witnessed such a drawing, hanging and quartering in Norwich, when John Litester, the “King of the Commons”, at the time of the Peasants’ Revolt, had been captured and executed by the Bishop of Norwich, 1381. She invests her vision of Christ’s face with comments that sound much like the terrible wounds such a victim’s face would receive from being dragged amongst the cobbles and flints of a Norfolk street (P34.6-34v.3).24 And ferthermore I saw that the swet skynne and the terdyr flessch wt the here and wt the blode was alle rasd and losde aboue wt the thornes and brokyn in many pecis . and were hangyng as aboue wt the thornes and brokyn in many pecis . And were hangyng as they wolde it had kynde moster . how it was doone I saw not . But I vnde= rstode that it was wt the sharpe thor= nes . and the boystours grevous sytt= yng on . of the garlonde not sparyng and wt out pytte . that alle tho brake the swet skynne wt the flessche . and þe here losyd it from the boone wher tho= row it was broken on pecys as a cloth and saggyng downwarde semyng as it wolde hastyly have fallen. for he= uynes and for lowsenes. [And furthermore I saw that the sweet skin and the tender flesh with the hair and the blood was all raised and loosed in many pieces. And were hanging as they would hastily have fallen down while it had natural moisture. How it was done I saw not. But I understood that it was with the sharp thorns. And the boisterous, grievous setting on of the garland not sparing and without pity, that all though broke the sweet skin with the flesh, and the hair loosed it from the bone, where through it was broken in pieces as a cloth and sagging downards, seeming that it would hastily have fallen for heaviness and lowness.]

At this time the Peasants’ Revolt and John Wyclif’s Lollardism were a clear threat to those in power. A succession of Norwich Bishops would seek out Lollard heretics and commit them to burning at the stake, following the first execution of a Lollard, Margery Kempe’s Lynn curate, Thomas Sawtre, who was burned in chains at Smithfield, 1401, after

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having been tried in Lynn by Bishop William le Despenser, who showed up in London with the previous documentation at Sawtre’s second trial.25 This became the Catholic punishment of Lollards and Protestants, categorising them as heretics. While Protestants returned to that form practiced against the “King of the Commons”, by drawing, hanging and quartering Catholics at Tyburn, categorising them as traitors. Protestantism even burned Our Lady of Walsingham at Smithfield, secularising “Our Lady” to become the “Virgin Queen”, Elizabeth, rather than Mary. It was thought, by both sides, before Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794), that such public and violent executions would serve as deterrent.26 Following the drawing, hanging and quartering of the Benedictines, Elizabeth Barton and Edward Bocking, the Brigittine Richard Reynolds, the “Angel of Syon”, and three Carthusians were likewise drawn, hung and quartered, 4 May 1535. Part of St Richard Reynolds’ dismembered body was ironically placed on Syon Abbey’s marble gatepost sculpted with angels holding the Instruments of Christ’s Passion. Truly the grieving Syon nuns now enacted the role of the Gospel “Daughters of Jerusalem” (Luke 23.27-31). Perhaps Julian knew also of the 1310 burning of Marguerite Porete for a mystical statement similarly considered to be heresy, and similar to that written by Elizabeth Barton, OSB. For Marguerite Porete, in 1310, and Elizabeth Barton, in 1534, were both executed for their theological books: the first perhaps influencing Julian, and being placed with her text in the earliest extant manuscript, the Amherst, with ties to Syon Abbey; the second woman certainly influenced by Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes, Catherine of Siena’s Orcherd of Syon and likely also by Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love, for these books and manuscripts were present at Syon Abbey in English versions where she worked on her “greate boke” of Revelations consulting them. To glimpse the Gothic architecture of Vadstena one can turn to the Lübeck: Ghotan, 1492, woodcut frontispiece to Birgitta’s RevelationesV. To glimpse the Gothic architecture of Syon Abbey one can turn to The Orcherd of Syon’s woodcut frontispiece, Westminster: Wynken de Worde, 1519, showing Catherine of Siena at prayer not in San Domenico, Siena, nor in Santa Cristina, Pisa, but at Syon Abbey, London (Figure 50). The marble gatepost epitomises the style. The Brigittine monks and nuns of Syon went into exile twice, taking with them some of their books, perhaps including the Tudor “fair copy” exemplar ʌ of the Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love, manuscript and certainly the marble gate post of St Richard Reynolds’ martyrdom. They were to lose the copies of the Julian Manuscript (P and perhaps another) they had made, but the gatepost they took to Antwerp, to Rouen, to

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Lisbon, to Devon, on all their “Wanderings of Syon”. They had it still until very recently, in their chapel at Totnes, along with portraits of St Richard Reynolds, the three Carthusians, John Houghton, Robert Lawrence, Augustine Webster, and those of St John Fisher and St Thomas More, who were executed in that same year, 22 June and 6 July, 1535.27 Indeed we need to look at a series of books, all of which are couched about with prefaces and/or colophons, with editorial voices as well as authorial ones: Jerome addressing Paula and Eustochium in their Bethelehem cave with prefaces and epistles; Gregory writing the Dialogus in which we hear the voices of Scholastica and Benedict dialogue; the Benedictine hagiographer of the Vita of Christina of Markyate; Cardinal Jacques de Vitry’s Vita of the Beguine Marie d’Oignies; Fra Arnaldo’s Memorials of the Book of Angela of Foligno; Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls in Middle English with its commentary by one “M.N.”; The Cloud of Unknowing’s colophon likely to a contemplative woman of 24, without Latin; Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes and its Epistola Solitarii penned by Alfonso of Jaén; Catherine of Siena’s Dialogo, dictated to her male disciples, then translated as the Orcherd of Syon; Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love in the Sloane Manuscripts (SS)with chapter headings and colophon likely penned by Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén’s colleague, Cardinal Adam Easton, OSB; the Book of Margery Kempe, whose second scribe is Alan of Lynn, O.Carm., indexer of Birgitta’s Revelationes; and the lost Revelations of Elizabeth Barton, organised by Dr Edward Bocking, OSB. Women become authors in their enclosed lives through further enclosure within men’s prefaces, epistles, and colophons. Men and women together build cells of self-knowledge, within both silence and in dialogue. The encouragement by the Canterbury Benedictine, Dr Edward Bocking, of the Maid of Kent, Elizabeth Barton, was clearly modelled on that of Magister Mathias and Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaén collaborating with Birgitta of Sweden on her Revelationes, and could have also been drawn from the Norwich Benedictine, Cardinal Adam Easton, collaborating with the Anchoress, Dame Julian of Norwich, on her Showing of Love, and from the learned Carmelite Doctor of Theology, Adam Hemlyngton, and the Anchoress, Dame Emma Stapleton of Norwich,28 of Margaret Heslyngton by Bishop Misyn, who copied in turn, that of Margaret Kirkby by Richard Rolle, even as is shown in the more homely version of the various scribes assisting in the writing of The Book of Margery Kempe. We need, too, to question whether the “Long” Text is entirely Julian’s, or whether it might not represent a patchwork quilt, a boiler-plating, upon her work. A noteworthy instance is the John of Beverley interpolation,

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which occurs only in the “Long” Text versions and which does not fit their dates, his cult flowering at Henry V’s foundation of Syon Abbey following the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Some of the “Long” Text could even be of the lost “greate boke” assembled by Elizabeth Barton, OSB, and Dr Edward Bocking, OSB, much in the way that A Mirror of Simple Souls was preserved, despite its initially uncited authoress’s execution. C. The Lambeth Manuscript (L) Syon Abbey was able to return to its home under Queen Mary. Seven of its Sisters had remained in England, quietly at the family of one of them at Lyford Grange, Buckland, Berkshire. Others had gone to Flanders. One manuscript now in Lambeth Palace Library 3600 with English rubrics and Latin and English contemplative prayers, folios 59v-66v, is a part of that history, for it was taken by Syon Abbey to Dendremonde, 1539-1557.29 Its English contemplative prayers echo Julian’s own contemplative theology, showing us that Julian’s teaching continued amongst the Swedish and English nuns of Brigittine Syon Abbey: [L59v]Haue euer thyn yei upon the person of criste beholdyng hym as god and man. And festenn thy spyrituall syght [hand in margin] more upon hys godhed than upon hys manhed consyderyng [L60] how by hys mageste and allmyghty power all thyng ys browght forthe and hath beyng as of a fatherly begynnyng. By his endles wysdom all thyngys are gouerned. by hys ynfynyte gudnes all thyngys ys kepte and after hys godly ordy=nance Behold also how by hys wysdom yn the crosse he hath distroyed deth and all þe Power of the devyll. And geuyn us power by the vertue of hys Passyon. yn the same crosse yf we wyll abyll oure selfe thertoo. for to ouercome all our gostly enemyes. Say them as present yn hys syght. in the worshyp of hys fiue wounds: [L60] Good Lord I apeer/ here afore the as a poore wrechyd beg=ger. Afore on of grett ryches and superabu=dant tresure. besechyng the to make me pertey=ner of the most pre=cyous tresure and ryches of thy marcy & grace. [L62] O gud lord I am here afore the as a servant afore hys Lorde desyryng to be fedde wyth the most holsome fode [L62v] of thy precious body of flessche. blode and bone. That is to say swete iesu for thy grett gud=nes mercy and grace make me perteyner spyrytually of the pro=fytabull and frutfull effectys and gracys of that most honorabul Sacrament of thy moste precyous body and blode. whych is dayly offeryd yn thy [L63] chyrche. In the honore of thee. and thy blessyd moder & virgine. with all thy holly seyntys. for the syn=nys and offensys of all synners that be alyue yn this worlde and for the dilyuerance quyetude. and reste of all feythfull sow=lys that ly yn the pry=son of paynfull pur=gatory. And also gyue [L63v] me gode lorde the profytable garment of charyte. that hy=dyth and coueruth þe multitude of synnys.

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[L64] Mercyfull iesu I knele here afore the as a gylty thefe afore hys ferfull iuge mekely prayyng the to be a mylde and mer=[L64v] cyfull Iuge unto me yn the moste ferfull howre of deth. When my wret=chyd sowle schall depart. [L65] Lo I am here afore the my lord god as on frend to mynpower afore a nother desyring that thy ynfynyte charite may drawe me on to the. And so to one and knytte me to thy loue that I neuer be departyd no separat fro þe. [L66] O my Lord god. I am here a fore the as a chyld a chyld afore hys father. be=sechyng the of thy fa=therly grett gudnes marcy and grace to make me partyner of thy fatherly ynhe=rytance yn the heuen=ly ioy and blysse that neuer shall haue end. Amen. [L66v] Behold then oure lady as present and gloryfied in the sight of hyr sonne make hyr mediatryce and meane for the all mankynde.

D. The Myroure of Oure Lady Next, the manuscript of The Myroure of Oure Lady was to go into exile with Syon Abbey, to Flanders, to Rouen, to Lisbon, there perhaps to be stolen by the licensed pirate, Thomas Robinson of King’s Lynn, who temporarily, he says, became a brother priest of Syon Abbey in Lisbon, then returned to his trade, the book finally being given to Aberdeen University by way of the Cape of Good Hope, 1828.30 The manuscript from which the Early English Text Society printed The Myroure of Oure Lady has written in it “This booke belongyth to Syster Elysabeth Mounton”.31 John Rory Fletcher noted of Sr Elizabeth Mounton, that her pension at the Suppression of Sion was £6 a year, but that she was dropped from the pension payments in 1545. She had gone with six other Syon Sisters to the family of one of them, the Yates at Lyford Grange, Buckland, Berkshire. Professed before 1518, Elizabeth Mounton is likely too old to have married and had probably died, but such a cessation in pension payments also occurred where a nun married, the records becoming silent concerning her former presence. That would have been so with a Sister named Mownse or Lowe were she to have married and borne a child and who may have been the owner of the Westminster Manuscript (W). Besides Sr Elizabeth Mounton, Sisters Elizabeth Yate and Eleanor Fettiplace also lived at Lyford Grange following the Dissolution until Queen Mary ascended the throne and Syon Abbey was briefly restored. They there continued the Offices, jointly owning Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. D.4.7, with the Brigittine Offices, Psalter and Breviary, and Elizabeth Yate owning University College 25, a Psalter and Book of Hours, part manuscript, part print, inscribed “This booke perteynethe to me Elizabeth yate”.32 Revd John Rory Fletcher’s Notebook 12 tells of seven Syon Sisters all told who settled there, of whom Sr Eleanor

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Fettiplace gave a Sarum Missal to Buckland’s parish church and inscribed in it “Of your charyte pray for the soule of Dame Elyzabeth Fetyplace sometyme relygious of Annesburye and also for me Elynor Fetyplace her suster relygious in Syon at whose charges thys boke was bought and given to thys church at Bokeland anno Domini 1556”. Later Sr Elinor rescued the Missal when Queen Elizabeth came to the throne, when all the Brigittines had to leave England, and it accompanied Syon in its exilic wanderings, from Dendremond to Zurich Zee to Meshagen to Mechlin to Rouen to Lisbon. In 1576 the Office in Choir at Syon Abbey in exile at Mechlin (Malines) was given up for want of Office books. At the time of the Paris Manuscript (P) of Julian of Norwich Showing of Love being copied out on Flemish paper with Antwerp watermarks of around 1580, strictly enclosed Syon Abbey was so poor that it could not support itself, the Sisters showing serious symptoms of starvation, including œdema, and so it was decided to send back the younger Sisters, as not being safe amongst the riotous soldiers on the Continent, in order to solicit alms for Syon Abbey in exile, to arrange for the printing of books and, supposedly, to remove them from danger. Five were arrested on landing at Dover and three more at Colchester.33 Sr Anne Stapleton died in Fulham on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1578, at the age of 23, Sr Elizabeth Saunders having been with her from October 28-December 21.33 Sr Anne Stapleton could well be related to the Anchoress Emma Stapleton housed with the Norwich Carmelites, 1421-1442, daughter of the Sir Miles Stapleton, executor of the bequest to Dame Julian the Anchoress in Norwich, and likwise with Agnes Stapleton who had owned the Chastising of God’s Children and many other devotional books.34 We also know of this family that it intermarried with the similarly recusant Gascoignes, both families sending members abroad as Benedictine monks and nuns. Syon Abbey, itself, meanwhile moved from Mechlin to Rouen in 1580. Another young Syon Abbey Sister, dying of tuberculosis, was taken from damp, moated, Lyford Grange to London, the “Life and Good End of Sister Marie” [Champney] being carefully preserved in British Library Add. 18,650. Interestingly, her father was steward to Sir Marmaduke Constable of Burton Constable, and thus she is linked to two further Julian manuscripts (Amherst Manuscript, A, having the bookplate of that family; Upholland Manuscript, U, having Dame Barbara Constable, OSB, as scribe). Even more interestingly, Sr Mary in her dying modelled herself upon Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love, as later Dame Margaret Gascoigne, OSB, would do at Cambrai. The manuscript cites Sr Mary Champney as saying “O inoughe sweete Lorde (quoth she) ynoughe in

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earthe & more than I oughte to desire for myself”, and gives many more echoes of Julian’s text.35 Upon having received the Last Rites, she is carefully arranging with George Gilbert for the printing of Syon Abbey Office books, which they say have never been published, forgetting The Mirroure of Oure Ladye, and to reprint the Walter Hilton, Scale of Perfection, “wch is another of their bookes, needful to be renewed, for the mending of the olde print”, immediately before her “Holy Dying”, 27 April 1580.36 The writer of this text states: “But that love of vertue & virginyte shall florishe and renewe againe in gode little flocke like an eagle newe mewed with golden eyes, and that not least in Englande for all this, where Syon yet I hope shall be builded up agayn more bewtifully, accordinge to ffather Reynoldes hope and prayer than ever it was in our Tyme, GOD graunte it”, p. 23. He is also offered a pair of black beads owned once by Sr Anne Stapleton, perhaps related to the earlier Emma and Agnes Stapleton, as a remembrance of Sr Mary Champney. It was thought Syon Abbey had owned Hilton’s Scala Perfectionis, printed at Westminster by Wynken de Worde, 1494, with annotations made 1500 by the Carthusian James Grenehalgh of Sheen for Sr Joanna Sewell of Syon, Philadelphia, Rosenbach Museum and Library, Incun 494h (cited as H491 by Neil Ker and Michael G. Sargent), but this is unlikely the edition in question. “Another of their books” could also have been by the Cloud Author’s Book of Privy Counsell. We learn of this from Stanbrook 3, originally written out in 1648, and which was small enough to be placed in a pocket of a guillotined Carmelite nun’s garb, by an English Benedictine nun wearing that clothing and imprisoned at the French Revolution awaiting a similar fate.37 Because another manuscript of the complete Cloud of Unknowing and Privy Counselling, Ampleforth 42, mentions that it was “Transcribed 1677 ad laudem Dei; out þe Cambray copy of 1648, which was taken out of the old copy that was transcribed, 1582”.38 That 1582 manuscript is now lost. However, the date, 1582, rather than 1580, for the Cloud of Unknowing and Privy Counselling manuscript would indicate that Syon’s neighbouring monastic establishment in exile, Shene Anglorum, is their provenance, rather than Syon Abbey. E. The Paris Manuscript (P) Cambrai’s Benedictine Abbey, at that date,1582, was not yet founded, but Syon Abbey, in the midst of starvation and upheaval, was sending young Sisters to England from its exile in Flanders, this Sister on her deathbed in London asking that books be printed, another Sister being imprisoned for the possession of such forbidden books. But there is the

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strong possibility that one of the books Mary Champney is asking to have printed is either the Tudor “fair copy” exemplar (ʌ) to the Paris Manuscript (P), or its other and Elizabethan descendant, of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love, written out at Mechlin on Flemish paper at this period, in the midst of poverty and desperation. Thus we can glimpse, even in the Elizabethan period where we would least expect it, a continuum of Julian’s contemplative library being cherished by similar contemplatives, now themselves on active mission in life-threatening surroundings, rather than in tranquil cloisters. Sr Elizabeth Saunders meanwhile had been arrested at Alton and committed by the Bishop of Winchester John Watson to Winchester Castle, 18 November 1580, for the possession of “certaiyne lewde and forbydden bokes”, as well as ‘Campion’s Brag’.39 From the Bishops of Winchester and others with the examination and other things taken of Dr Sanders’ sister apprehended at Alton and committed at Winchester. Or dueties to yor Honourable Lordship humblie rem[embered.] For that of late in hampshier there happened to be apprehended by Sr Richard Norton Knight on Eliz[abeth] Saunders the sister of Doctor Saunders and a pro[fessed] Nunn beiyond the seas as she saieth, w[ith] whom we [took] certaiyne lewde and forbydden bokes and the cop[ie] of a supplicaco[n] p[ro]testaco[n] or challendge. the w[hi]che cop[ie] together with her examinacons we have thought [good] herewith to sende vnto yor Honours: And for tha[t we] finde by her sayde examinacon grete dissimula[con and] varietie in her and also grete obstinacie in the p[er]severance of her profession: we have tho[ught good] hereupo[n], presentlie to com[m]itt her to safe a[and sure?] keeping in the howse of correcon within the cast[le of] Winchester, where she is to remaine, vntill s[uch] further order shalbe taken for her, as by yo[ur] Lordships shalbe thought mete’.

We hear echoes of the earlier condemnations of the Beguine Marguerite Porete for her “incredibly subtle book”, the Mirror of Simple Souls, by Jean Gerson, in 1408, mistakingly calling her “Marie of Valenciennes”.40 We recall her book was earlier burned before her in the square in Valenciennes by Guy de Colmier, Bishop of Cambrai, then she was herself condemned to be burned by 31 Doctors of the University in the square in Paris in 1310.41 We also hear echoes of the examination for Lollardy of the anchoress Matilda, at St Peter’s, Leicester, by William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1n 1388, who found her “not to answer plainly and directly, but sophistically and subtilely”, therefore he had her placed in custody until she answered his questions humbly and retracted. Whereupon he had her returned to her reclusorum, issuing a

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mandate “pro anachorita reducta ad viam veritatis”, and even granting forty days’ indulgence to those who aided her. He would later leave her money in his will.42 In 1655, in a further echoing, Dom Claude White, OSB, would speak of books which “contained poysonous, pernicious and diabolicall doctrine” being at Cambrai, among them Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love. These “lewde and forbydden bokes” destroyed by order of the Anglican Bishop of Winchester may have included the now lost Tudor exemplar to the Paris Manuscript or its Elizabethan twin. The evidence is that the exemplar was likely carefully written out as a “fair copy” for intended printing around 1534, from which the Paris Manuscript was then copied out on paper made in the Antwerp region around 1580, along with another Elizabethan copy, where their nun scribe carefully replicated the exemplar’s original Tudor script, leaving one or both exemplar or copies behind with the older Syon Sisters as insurance, but taking one or two manuscripts, perhaps one of these the exemplar, the other a copy, home to England. It is also possible that the scribe of the Paris Manuscript P and of its twin is Sr Elizabeth Saunders, sister to Dr Nicholas Saunders. Sr Elizabeth was eventually able to return to Syon Abbey, which had moved to Rouen in 1580, following her imprisonments, in 1587, to tell the tale. Some of the young Syon Sisters in England came back to Lyford Grange, Buckland, where earlier the seven Syon Sisters had lived between the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Marian Revival, and to which place eight young Syon Sisters now returned, in Elizabeth I’s reign, from Flanders, at the time and from the place that the Paris Manuscript of Julian’s Showing of Love was being inscribed. Among these Sisters had been Elizabeth Saunders and Mary Champney. Two of the Syon nuns, Sisters Catherine Kingsmill and Juliana Harmon, were arrested, 17 July 1581, with Fr Edmund Campion, SJ, and Philip Lowe, while visiting Mrs Yate (her husband Francis Yate already in prison for his religion in London). The two Syon Sisters were imprisoned in Reading Goal, following their arrest at Lyford Grange, and likely died there. Father Edmund Campion, SJ, was drawn to Tyburn, hanged and quartered, 1 December 1581. Philip Lowe’s wife was condemned as a felon for receiving priests, 1585, dying in the White Lion Prison, April 1588, at the age of 50.43 Likewise, John Lowe, priest, returned to England in 1583, having finished his studies at the English College in Rome, and caused 500 conversions to Catholicism. He was caught, imprisoned, and drawn to Tyburn, hung and quartered, 8 October 1586. We recall that members of the Lowe family owned the Syon/Westminster (W) Julian of Norwich Showing of Love Manuscript.

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The Paris Manuscript (P) of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love was left behind by the Brigittine Sisters in Rouen, having been brought there, likely in 1580, when the nuns of Syon Abbey had to leave hurriedly, reaching Lisbon, 2 May 1594, with just what they could take in five crates and a cask,44 but not forgetting the heavy marble gatepost. These events took place during the reign of Elizabeth I and before Shakespeare had written his greatest plays. Syon Abbey met again with disaster when Thomas Robinson, a licensed pirate from King’s Lynn, pretending to conversion, became a Syon Brother in Lisbon, even being ordained priest, then fled with treasures and manuscripts, publishing in 1622 a libel in London against Syon Abbey in Lisbon. Therefore the great Catholic and Syon-related families, like the Mores, Gascoignes and Stapletons, now sought to found a Benedictine house on the Continent to replace it in 1623, to be discussed in our next section. For the Julian of Norwich Showing of Love we today call the Paris Manuscript, came into the collection of the Bigot family of the city of Rouen, when Syon had left that city for Lisbon in 1594, and it remained there until it was sold to the King of France’s Royal Library in Paris in 1706.45 It was not yet present in either Cambrai or Paris at the time that the English Benedictines were readying Julian’s text from an exemplar or twin manuscript, ʌ, finally, for publication in 1670. Therefore we have to postulate two almost identical manuscripts, either a Tudor exemplar or its Elizabethan copy in order to explain the Benedictine 1670 Serenus Cressy edition and the Elizabethan Syon Abbey Paris Manuscript. Could George Gilbert or another friend of the dying Syon Sr Mary Champney have then seen that that manuscript came into the hands of one of the founding families of the 1623 Benedictine foundation at Cambrai, most likely of Margaret Gascoigne? For Dame Margaret Gascoigne, OSB, in the copy made by Dame Bridget More, OSB, seems to conflate Mary Champney’s dying with that of Julian of Norwich in her text copied out by Dame Bridget More. Then, in Father Augustine Baker’s Life of Margaret Gascoigne we are told she had her favourite passage from the “Old Manuscript” of Julian’s Revelation placed beneath the Crucifix at her own dying.46 The editio princeps of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love would be published in 1670 using as base text the later Tudor or Elizabeth “fair copy” ʌ of this “Old Manuscript”, while making use of shoulder notes derived from the Sloane Manuscripts’ readings that had likely originally been written in Norwich in the fourteenth century, an even older manuscript, ȡ, that seems also to have been in their possession. Dom

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Serenus Cressy, OSB, would obtain the funds for printing the work from yet another member of the Gascoigne family, “Jo. Guscoyn”, John Placid Gascoigne, Abbot of Lambspring. We recall as well that at that time Lambspring Abbey owned the anchoress Christina of Markyate’s splendid St Albans’ Psalter. In the nineteenth century the Sarum Missal that Sr Eleanor Fettiplace had given to Buckland’s parish church, inscribed “Of your charyte pray for the soule of Dame Elyzabeth Fetyplace sometyme relygious of Annesburye and also for me Elynor Fetyplace her suster relygious in Syon at whose charges thys boke was bought and given to thys church at Bokeland anno Domini 1556”, was given to Dr Isley, the Vice President of the English College, Lisbon (where Bishop James Bramston studied for priestly ordination), who in 1840 gave it to Dr Daniel Rock, chaplain at Buckland to the Throckmortons. Thus it came back to Buckland after three hundred years, next coming into the possession of the Bishops of Southwark.47 A further story concerning Canon Isley of Lisbon’s English College tells of his taking on a lost Brigittine nun, Sr Bridget Ricketts, shipwrecked at sea, as his housekeeper, who was buried in the full Brigittine garb at Baddersley and entered in Syon’s necrology.48 E. The Westminster Cathedral Manuscript (W) These stories help illustrate the friendly relations between the English College and Syon Abbey, then in Lisbon, and could serve to explain the relationship, also, of a Lowe manuscript in the hands of a Bramston where both had clear connections to Syon and to Lisbon. Evidence of the later Syon Abbey-related ownership of the Westminster Manuscript of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love is clearly given in the signatures by members of the Lowe family, “Thomas Lowe”, “ffrauncis Lowe”, in brown ink and in Elizabethan hands, at the conclusion of the manuscript, while a child’s Secretary-style letters in sanguine ruddle are found at folios 96v and 112v. The Lowe family is also associated with a Psalter from the Brigittine Syon Abbey, now Edinburgh University Library 59, acquired by them in 1636, with the feastdays of St John of Beverley and St Birgitta in its Calendar, and recording the birth of a daughter, with the inscription, “Elynor Mownse lowe was borne into þis world upon þe innocenttys day in þe mornyng betweyne xii and on of þe cloke þe yere of our Lord 1543. God make her a good woman . . . .” Christopher De Hamel conjectures that the mother recording her daughter’s birth was a Brigittine nun at the Dissolution of the Monasteries.49 It is just possible that the child’s scribbles are made by Elynor Mownse Lowe upon her mother’s copy of Julian of Norwich’s

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Showing of Love, and that centuries later a descendant of her family will again become a Syon Sister, Rose Lowe, perhaps bringing this book with her to Lisbon as part of her dowry. Rose Lowe went out from England in 1809 to Syon Abbey, in exile in Lisbon, and it was she saved the English Brigittines from extinction.50 Sir Arthur Wellesley requisitioned Syon Abbey for nursing England soldiers, the Brigittines staying with Lisbon’s Dominican Sisters, until 1812, when Sr Rose Lowe won back their property. She was elected Prioress, 1816. Could she have given the manuscript to Bramston in 1821? She was born, 3 May, 1774, dying, 10 January 1822.51 The bookplate of James Yorke Bramston, who was Vicar Apostolate and Bishop in London, 1827-1836, is pasted on the marbled front endpaper of the binding, with the shelf mark, G-3 over 11. The endpapers are stamped “THE ARCHIVES, ARCHBISHOP’S HOUSE, WESTMINSTER, S.W.1,” of the Westminster Manuscript of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love. Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, CP, notes in her University of Leeds Thesis, that the Librarian at Westminster Cathedral believed that the manuscript returned to England from Flanders as part of the English Benedictines’ Douai College Library.52 Inquiries were made of the archivists connected with Douai and these are negative concerning Lowes or Bramstons in their records. But the Lowe family was constantly, down the centuries, associated with Syon Abbey or with the Westminster Manuscript (W), first in England, then in exile in Lisbon, among them, Elinor Mownse-Lowe, Thomas Lowe, Francis Lowe, Mr and Mrs Philip Lowe, Fr John Lowe, and Sr Rose Lowe. Nor were only Lowes associated with Syon Abbey down the centuries, but so also were Bramstons. John Bramston was a Syon Abbey priest brother and the last to be buried within its walls, 28 June 1539, before the Suppression of the Monasteries and the exile of the Abbey.53 A later Sir John Bramston was accused in 1672 by a Portuguese spy, Ferdinand de Macedo, of being secretly a Catholic.54 Finally, James Yorke Bramston openly converted back to his family’s faith, studying for the priesthood at the English College in Lisbon, 1793-1801, and he continued to have ties with Lisbon until his death in London in 1836.55 It is possible that Julian’s Westminster Showing of Love was given to Dr James Yorke Bramston by Sr Rose Lowe, circa 1821, either of them in that year having it rebound, taking the greatest care to repeat the manuscript’s “1368” twice again, on the endpapers and stamped on the spine, perhaps from knowing its story, perhaps from some further but now lost notation on the former endpapers and binding.

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Thus it is far more likely that the Westminster Manuscript (W), like the Amherst (A) and Paris (P) Manuscripts, has Brigittine, rather than Benedictine, associations throughout its history, and it is even likely that its history continued to be known to its Brigittine Syon-associated owners, while the Gascoigne, Upholland, and both Sloane Manuscripts (G,U,SS) are products of English Benedictines in exile in France, the British Library Stowe 42 Manuscript written out on their return. Indeed, when Julian said her Showing of Love was done, but not yet performed, she was being prophetic, for her book of “Holy Conversations” consoled generations of women contemplatives, in exile, in want, in prison, awaiting execution, living out, during Christian centuries, persecutions and near-martyrdoms, even and especially for their copying and possessing such books of “Holy Conversation”. I stayed twice at Syon Abbey, returned peaceably to England, in the Devon countryside. The Sisters still wore the garb St Birgitta designed for them, Clarissan habits in grey, a palms’ length from the ground, white linen wimples, black veils, the white crown on it made of a cross and a circle, at each intersection a roundel of red cloth for each of Christ’s five wounds. The Abbess represents the Virgin. The nuns in the refectory in silence bowed to her place—and the Lady Abbess bowed to that same place upon entering and upon leaving. The Lessons written down by “Our Mother”, St Birgitta of Sweden, six centuries ago, at the dictation of an angel in Rome were being still read by the Sisters out loud daily in Chapel in England, their marble gatepost at their side, until their bishop recently ended their community. II. The English Benedictine Nuns in Exile and the Julian Manuscripts Go on courageously, you have chosen the best way. English Benedictine Congregation’s Chapter to Our Lady of Comfort, Cambrai, 1633

T

His final section of this last chapter traces the tapestry of textuality concerning Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love, now almost into our present day, with exiled English Benedictine nuns struggling to preserve, first from the Protestants in the face of the illegality of their books and their cloistered lives in their own land, then from their own Benedictine brethren in exile, finally in the face of brutally-enforced state atheism in Revolutionary France, their contemplative texts, their contemplative libraries, written originally by women such as Angela of Foligno, Birgitta

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of Sweden and Catherine of Siena, and also by the peaceable Friends of God, Henry Suso, John Tauler and Jan van Ruusbroec, on the Continent, and their counterparts, such as Richard Rolle, William Flete, Walter Hilton, the Cloud of Unknowing Author, and Julian of Norwich, in England, most of these writers being preserved from a long-past fourteenth century, a Golden Age in the Church. A. Our Lady of Comfort, Cambrai An earlier English Benedictine convent for women in Brussels had been founded by Lady Mary Percy in 1597, but it used Jesuit methods for its spiritual direction. It was the hope of English Benedictines that a second foundation could return to the earlier Benedictine contemplative practices of lectio divina. Consequently, Our Lady of Comfort, Cambrai (now Stanbrook Abbey), was founded in 1623 by descendants of Thomas More and Thomas Gascoigne (both closely associated with Brigittine Syon Abbey), following a libel against Syon Abbey, published in 1622 by the licensed pirate, Thomas Robinson, who had pretended conversion, been ordained priest, then fled with loot in the form of treasures and manuscripts, and had his book printed about his supposed experiences within the Syon Abbey cloister in Lisbon.56 Cambrai, near Valenciennes, Douai and Lille, now in France since 1659/1677, was then in the Spanish Netherlands, adjacent to Flanders, now Belgium. Helen More, before taking the name of “Gertrude” in religion from St Gertrude of Helfta, had been educated at home by her father, Cresacre More, Thomas More’s great grandson, and was under the spiritual direction of Dom Benet Jones, OSB. At seventeen, because of her great dowry, she was considered to be the foundress of Our Lady of Comfort, though Dame Catherine Gascoigne, because she was Gertrude’s senior by six years, was elected Prioress.57 Gertrude More seems to echo Julian’s prayer in the Confessiones Amantes, “Only Thyself knowest what is most to Thy honour and best for me, and therefore whatsoever Thou doest, shall be best welcome to me. I desire no liberty to choose anything besides Thee, because it sufficeth me if Thou wilt become all in all and above all to me”.58 At first the Cambrai nuns were under the formation of the Brussels nuns, and found the Counter-Reformation “Spiritual Exercises” unsuitable, appealing to Dom Rudisind Barlow, OSB, for help. He appointed Dom Augustine Baker, OSB, as their spiritual director from 1624-1633. Father Baker obtained fourteenth-century manuscripts from Sir Robert Cotton and others for use in the spiritual direction of these nuns.59 British Library Julius C.III, folio 12, gives the autograph letter Dom Augustine Baker

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wrote to Sir Robert Cotton (for whom he had worked when still Anglican), in which he says, I have lived in a cittie . . . called Cambrai assisting a convent of certain religious English women of the order of St Benet. . . They are inclosed and never seen by us . . . their lives being contemplative the comon bookes of the worlde are not for their purpose, and litle or nothing in these daies printed in English that is proper for them. There were manie good English bookes in olde tyme, whereof thoughe they have some, yet they want manie, . . . either Manuscript or printed being in English, concerning contemplation, Saints lives or other devotions. Hampoole’s workes are proper for them. I wishe I had Hiltons Scala perfectionis in Latin; it would help the vnderstanding of the English. Cambray þe 3rdJune 1629.

Father Augustine Baker used the insights of the fourteenth-century contemplatives, naming them here Rolle and Hilton, and he advocated a state of Dionysian Quietism, of “Holy Conversations”, before that came to be considered heresy. He greatly encouraged the Cambrai Sisters both in their contemplation and in their writings about their contemplation. He described their “Cloud of Unknowing”, their “Night of the Soul”, as “Desolation”.60 Dame Catherine immediately understood these teachings, but Dame Gertrude greatly resisted and scoffed at these methods, until she came to Dom Augustine, seeking help. He understood, from his own experiences of spiritual desolation, and stated of her: “What she needed was to be brought into a simplicity of soul which is the immediate disposition to union with God, and that can be done only by the Divine working with the soul’s co-operation, aided by Divine grace”.61 His conferences, edited and published by Dom Serenus Cressy, OSB, as Sancta Sophia, Holy Wisdom, in 1657, have as theme the pilgrim’s prayer, “I have nought, I am nought, I seek nought but sweet Jesus in Jerusalem”, taken from Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection. His work also parallels that of Cardinal Adam Easton, if it was indeed he who wrote the Cloud of Unknowing and translated women’s theological writings into English as a contemplative library for Julian. Mother Christina Brent stated “The way which he taught was the mystic way, which desiring to establish more in the house, he procured very many of the books of mystic authors, and such as he found by chance here he recommended more to the reading and practice of the nuns”.62 We recall his earlier words to Sir Robert Cotton concerning their need for books and manuscripts by the English contemplatives, “whereof thoughe they have some, yet they want manie”. Margaret Gascoigne had spoken of

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Julian and of the “booke of her reuelations”. Was it not a book Father Augustine Baker had “found by chance here”, that they already had? The catalogue of the Sisters’ Library written up in Bibliothèque Mazarine 4058 emphatically notes that one of the Julian of Norwich Showing of Love manuscript they possess was not personally owned by Augustine Baker.63 That presence of her manuscript, likely the exemplar ʌ to P, may even have begun the Cambrai practice of collecting and preserving similar books for contemplative uses, may even have wrought the foundation of Cambrai itself. It is possible that Dame Margaret Gascoigne had acquired the exemplar manuscript ʌ through her Yorkshire family, its strong associations with Syon, its intermarriages with the Stapletons, and consequently with Julian, while its copy as P migrated with Syon to Rouen, being sold off there at the latter’s departure for Lisbon. It is possible that another exemplar manuscript ȡ from which SS would be copied at Cambrai had been retained in Flanders at Sheen Anglorum. Otherwise it seems too coincidental for two separate “Long” Text Julian manuscripts to have come at different times to the same Flanders region to engender G,U, Cressy, Stowe 42, on the one hand and SS on the other. Dame Margaret Gascoigne, who was to die in 1637, then herself wrote such a devotional treatise, using in part of it passages from Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love. Later, Dame Bridget More copied out that treatise, the Devotions, for her own use and in her own lovely hand.64 Another and longer fragment from “Julian the Ancress of Norwich’s Book of Revelations” was copied by Dame Barbara Constable into the Upholland Manuscript.65 These are both given diplomatically in Appendix I. In 1633, aroused by Chaplain Francis Hull’s jealousy, the Benedictine Congregation’s Chapter first questioned Augustine Baker’s spiritual direction of the nuns, based upon the reading of the medieval mystics, asking Dames Catherine and Gertrude to submit accounts of their prayer, then, reading these documents, granted this method approval. ‘Go on courageously, you have chosen the best way’. (These accounts are given in Appendices II.) But Congregation deemed it was also wise to remove both men from Cambrai.66 They checked and licensed what books the nuns could read.67 Augustine Baker returned to Douai in that year, going to England in 1638 and dying there in 1641. In 1653, Chapter again approved Serenus Cressy’s epitome of Augustine Baker’s methods, but in 1655, again disaster struck. Dom Claude White, President of the English Benedictine Congregation, demanded the recall of all Baker’s manuscripts in order to purge from

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them “poisonous doctrine”. Apparently this move was instigated by Dom Rudisind Barlow, the re-founder of the English Benedictine Congregation, who was now himself jealous of the veneration in which Augustine Baker’s memory was held. The Stanbrook Benedictines describe the scene, from a transcribed document found in the Bodleian Library, Rawlinson A.36, written by the Abbess, Dame Catherine Gascoigne, and intercepted by the spy John Thurloe. Father White had arrived in person on Saturday, February 27, 1655, determined to enforce his demand. Summoning the Abbess before Conventual Mass, he ordered her to hold a Council meeting and declare in writing, with a simple “I or No”, whether the Councillors would surrender the manuscripts. ‘Myself and all the Councill first prostrating before him’, writes Dame Catherine, the reply was presented. Again, by “uniforme concurrence”, they humbly petitioned to have the matter deferred. The document is a model of tact, deference and unshaken resolution. It closes: We humbly beseech your V.R. Paternity to pardon us that do not answer you in the simple word of I or No, we having given your Paternity many reasons why wee could not answer I, and as for No, without the necessary circumstances wee feared it might carry a show of disrespect to your V.R. Paternity to whom we owe and desire to perform all dutifull obedience and respect.

That 1655 response elicited further rage, the Abbess being told by the President that the books of the medieval mystics “contained poysonous, pernicious and diabolicall doctrine”. Among which were likely two entire manuscripts of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love (likely the exemplar to the Cressy editio princeps, ʌ, the other, perhaps, the autograph, ȡ, exemplar to SS), and certainly the Cambrai, Mediathèque Municipale 255, Henry Suso, Treatise on Seven Points of True Love and Everlasting Wisdom “scriptum finaliter in Monte gracie”, 30 May 1420, which is listed in 1004 Catalogue des livres provenant des religieuses angloises de Cambray at page 322 as item 173. (One hears the echo of “certaiyne lewde and forbydden bokes” seized by John Watson, Bishop of Winchester, when Sr Elizabeth Saunders of Syon Abbey was arrested at Alton with them in her possession in 1580.) The President next required each nun in turn to vote “I or No”, and almost all held out for the preservation of the books, the President shouting the while, the nuns’ soft voices gently refusing to acquiesce to the destruction of these profound writings. Dame Catherine, upon being forced again, replied that the Cambrai community was even willing to withdraw from the English Benedictine Congregation, placing itself under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Cambrai, if need be.68 President

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White made one last attempt at coercion, to which Dame Catherine replied “I answered I was ready to give his Paternity all the satisfaction I could in conscience”. She had many Masses said for him. He died in that year, Dom Rudisind Barlow the following one. Dame Catherine was to live many more years. Her last recorded act was an appeal to have “a new and very ample confirmation [of these writings] as being the greatest treasure that belongs to this poor community”.69 Dame Catherine Gascoigne’s greatest fear was to be realised in the disappearance of almost the entire Cambrai monastic library at the French Revolution. B. Our Lady of Good Hope, Paris However, insurance copies of all the precious manuscripts had already been copied out in a burst of activity, most texts transcribed by Dame Barbara Constable, OSB, such as the Upholland Fragment, around 1650, and these copies were then taken to Paris in 1651 where the daughter house to Our Lady of Comfort, Our Lady of Good Hope, was founded in that year.70 In preparation for the new foundation in Paris two complete Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love, manuscripts were copied out in Cambrai, the first, now British Library, Sloane 3705 (S2, Plate IIa), and the second, British Library, Sloane 2499 (S1, Plate IIb), copied out by Dame Clementia Cary, OSB, herself, and each copied from the same ȡ exemplar. S1’s scribe, Dame Clementia Cary, OSB, wrote out Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love in haste in a fluent seventeenth-century Secretary hand, just prior to the move to Paris in order to preserve their contemplative manuscripts from and for their fellow Benedictines, and in particular to preserve this text’s original medieval Norfolk dialect form for posterity.71 The daughter house, Our Lady of Good Hope (now St Mary’s Abbey, Colwich), was founded in Paris, 1651, from the Cambrai foundation, by Dame Clementia Cary, who had been Queen Henrietta Maria’s Maid-inWaiting,72 and whose first Prioress was Dame Bridget More, Dame Gertrude More’s biological sister, both descendants of the Saint. Serenus Cressy was part of the Cary household and upon his conversion, was aided by Queen Henrietta Maria in his studies at Douai. The nuns may partly have founded the Paris daughter house in order to protect Julian’s book. They also had the wisdom not to discuss this most important text before or even after its publication. Dom Serenus Cressy, OSB, upheld Dom Augustine Baker, OSB’s tradition for the Cambrai mother house for the Paris daughter house, that the nuns would study, copy and use medieval devotional treatises, including those written for or by women contemplatives. Indeed, that

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stipulation was carefully written twice over into the Constitutions of the new foundation, by Dame Clementia Cary in its English version,73 and by Dame Bridget More in its French one.74 The Paris daughter house under the direction of Dom Serenus Cressy, OSB, also saw to it that Dom Augustine Baker’s contemplative treatise, Sancta Sophia, Holy Wisdom, as well as Dame Gertrude More’s writings, were published in Paris in 1657 and 1658.75 Then, in 1670, again with Serenus Cressy given as editor, the editio princeps of Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love finally saw the light of day. It would have been printed, but clandestinely, in England, this being indicated by the printers’ “flower” ornaments in it, which are English, not French.76 Interestingly, Serenus Cressy’s own hand is to be found nowhere in these manuscripts, that work seemingly entirely carried out by the Cambrai and Paris nuns rather than by himself,—as if by an Earliest English Text Society. Of further interest is that “jo.guscoyn”, John Placid Gascoigne, Abbot of Lambspringe and Abbess Catherine Gascoigne’s brother, paid for its printing. The St Albans’ Psalter once so treasured, even commissioned by Christina of Markyate, came into the hands of the English Benedictines at Lambspring, for such books also had to go into exile from England for their preservation. We remember, too, that Brigittine Syon Abbey’s first true Abbess was Joan North, “moniales de Markyate reclusionem”, while its great benefactor was Thomas Gascoigne, Chancellor of Oxford. The strands of this tapestry keep being knotted together. C. The Cambrai English Benedictines and the French Revolution On 18 October 1793, the English Benedictines of Cambrai’s Our Lady of Comfort, twenty-one in total, were violently taken from their Abbey in open carts to Compiègne where they were imprisoned for eighteen months. They had to carry out their departure, without trunks or boxes, only bundles of necessaries being permitted, within half an hour and in the presence of ruffians with clubs. All their papers and books were sealed, becoming the property of the French Revolutionary Government. In one bundle or pocket one nun, despite all these prohibitions, was able to carry away for her consolation the Cloud Author’s Book of Privy Counsell, today Stanbrook 3, originally written out in 1648.77 Another manuscript of the complete Cloud of Unknowing and Privy Counselling, Ampleforth 42, mentions that it was “Transcribed 1677 ad laudem Dei; out the Cambray copy of 1648, which was taken out of the old copy that was transcribed, 1582”.78 (In 1582, Cambrai’s Benedictine Abbey was not yet born, but Syon Abbey, in the midst of starvation and upheaval, was in those years sending young Sisters to England from its

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exile in Flanders, one Sister on her deathbed in London asking that the Scale of Perfection be printed, and they were copying out Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love in the Paris Manuscript, P, possibly with the intent that it, too, be printed to assist the English Mission.) The Stanbrook 3 manuscript, small enough to be placed in a pocket of a guillotined Carmelite nun’s garb, has a compelling story, reaching back to the drawing, hanging and quartering of Syon recusants at Tyburn and forward to the imprisonment of English nuns awaiting the guillotine at the French Revolution.79 Dame Ann Teresa Partington, OSB, following their return to England, wrote a careful account of all that transpired.80 She tells how, 13 October 1793, four men at night came and fixed the public Seal upon the papers and effects belonging to the nuns. The chaplain and the abbess opened the door to them, the nuns being in their cells. All were assembled and the charges read out. The account of the sealing is repeated. They then proceeded to fix the seals on all the Books, papers, &c., belonging to the Lady Abbess and Dame Procuratrix Dame A.T. Partington, threatening them all the while how severely they should be punished in case they concealed the smallest article of their property. Having secured everything, they told the Nuns they were now prisoners, and then they wrote a long account of their proceeding, at the close of which they added, by the desire of the Community, that the religious wished to remain prisoners in their Convent under a Guard rather than be removed to any other place of confinement. This paper the Lady Abbess and Procuratrix signed. Their two chaplains were arrested and taken to prison, to prevent them from any communication with the nuns. In January prison fever took the lives of several, including that of the chaplain, who was also PresidentGeneral of the English Benedictine Congregation, and three of the women. In March the survivors began to recover from the fever, though there was one more death at that time. On 17 May, Robespierre’s men came with guards and drawn swords, threatening them with the guillotine, and demanding money and papers. The Nuns in general assured them that all their writings had been taken from them at Cambray. All the prisoners, except the nuns, were next searched bodily, the women’s caps pulled off, and gowns unpinned, and all crucifixes and reliquaries taken.

In June 1794, sixteen French Carmelite nuns from the convent of St Denis (Dionysius the Areopagite), Compiègne, which Madame Louise, the aunt of Louis XVI, had entered, joined them in the opposite room under

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heavy guard. The sixteen Carmelites six weeks later were taken to Paris where they were guillotined,81 one escaping to tell the English Benedictines the tale and giving the others’ names, and narrating of how they sang the Litany to the Virgin, 16 July being the Feast of their Patron, Our Lady of Carmel. 28 July was Robespierre’s own turn to be guillotined by the enraged populace. The English nuns were now told they must put aside their religious garb, in preparation for their journey to the guillotine in Paris, lest they enrage the populace, but they had no other. Whereupon the Mayor went to the room where the Carmelites had been lodged and brought out the poor clothes they had left behind, which the English Benedictines were still wearing when they returned to England, and which are treasured by them still. Finally, the English Benedictines were able to borrow sacred vessels from the gifted Carmelite scholar, Marie de l’Incarnation, who had escaped the guillotine and who continued the Compiègne Carmel. They celebrated their first Mass in eighteen months, then made their way to England. To do so they borrowed funds from Edward Constable of Burton, from whose family Dame Barbara Constable, OSB, the scribe of so many Cambrai manuscripts, had come, a family which may also have owned the Amherst (A) Julian Manuscript, its bookplate giving its ownership by Sir William Constable.82 They now numbered only sixteen from their original twenty-one and they arrived in Dover, 3 May 1795. In England they were helped by Mr Peter Coghlan, a Catholic bookseller, who introduced them to the Marchioness of Buckingham. She arranged for the English Benedictine nuns to have a house in London from 6th May, rather than their continuing to stay at the Golden Cross Inn in Charing Cross, where they had lodged 4th May. They stayed in London for twelve days, then went to take over an established school to support themselves, continuing to be helped by Edward Constable of Burton. They were experienced in running such a school, having already done so in Cambrai to support their community. The Cambrai Mediathèque 1004 manuscript “Catalogue des livres provenant de la maison des Benedictines anglaise de Cambrai”, in 519 pages described 3,845 books, carefully catalogued by the French schoolgirls the English Sisters taught, now working for the French revolutionary government.83 The girls adequately coped with titles in French and Latin and with describing their learned contents, but not the ones in Middle English, describing these manuscripts’ contents cursorily,84 while their teachers were imprisoned at Compiègne, awaiting the guillotine. Only a few of these precious books remain in Cambrai. In the Archives du Nord in Lille a further manuscript, L.4.870, gives the information on

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the formation of the resulting “Bibliothèque Cambray, Ans 3 à l’an 8”, with a note on its books being kept in the Chapel of the Virgin, Citizen Maher having its keys, and which are needed for the Bibliothèque Nationale.85 But after being catalogued these books disappeared across the border into Flanders and are therefore not listed in Livres et manuscripts qui se trouvent à la bibliothèque de Cambrai, Mars 1821.86 Among the lost manuscripts would have been one of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love, the ȡ exemplar to SS, while the ʌ exemplar to G, U, Serenus Cressy’s editio princeps, and Stowe 42, may have been preserved by them), the first perhaps Julian’s autograph text, the second the Syon Abbey modernisation of it into Tudor or Elizabethan English. D. The Paris English Benedictines and the French Revolution The Paris daughter house of Our Lady of Hope had 2,245 books and manuscripts. Most of these the Paris English Benedictines were able to have shipped back to England, and which are in their midst today, at St Mary’s Abbey, Colwich, Staffordshire. The story of the English Benedictines of the Paris daughter house is not quite so harrowing as that of the Cambrai mother house. In Paris these nuns were closer to the centre of power and patronage and the British Ambassador was able to protect them from the Mob, until he, too, had to flee. Early in 1793 “a band of Men with their Leader demanded entrance. We opened the Door to them; they asked for the Superior who Immediately presented herself”. They were searched for papers. On Maundy Thursday the convent on Rue des Anglaises was again searched. The Community consisted at this time of twelve choir nuns and three lay sisters. On 8 September 1793, the Terror began in earnest, the convent at night being thoroughly searched, the nuns roused from bed, “They went into the cells and satisfied their eyes with all they saw in them, and put the seal on whatever they thought proper, amusing themselves until five o’clock in the morning when they permitted the religious to leave them to go to the choir to say their Matins”, an hour late, on the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady. The nuns became prisoners in their own convent, 3 October 1793, other prisoners crowding in on their quarters, the nuns finally taking their office books from the chapel, which was turned over for dances, into their own cells. On 15 July 1794, the nuns were taken to the Chateau de Vincennes with just a bundle of necessaries each. The following day the sixteen Compiègne Carmelite nuns were guillotined. Because of Robespierre’s own execution nine days later the nuns were themselves spared that fate. They were next moved to the prison of the English Austin nuns in Paris. Finally, by February 1795 they were able to resume the celebration of the Mass, sell what was not needed

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from their former convent, pack up most of their precious books, and return home to England.87 The Revolutionaries did not destroy monastic libraries, partly because Hubert-Pascal Ameilhon argued that it was crucial for the State to seize these books in the name of the People. Ameilhon obsessively organised this task of preserving and cataloguing all these collections, insisting upon careful records being made, and thus the 3,845 books Cambrai had owned were meticulously catalogued by the English nuns’ former French schoolgirls, and likewise the 2,245 books the Paris daughter house treasured were now catalogued under the auspices of the Revolution. In the cataloguing of the latter it is clear the Revolutionaries consulted earlier catalogues. Concern is expressed about the manuscripts listed in the Bibliothèque Mazarine 4058 Catalogue having been lost.88 The French authorities believed that the Sisters had deliberately concealed the manuscripts listed in this Catalogue but which could not be found in Paris. They were instead all present in Cambrai, as can be seen in the Catalogues written out at the same time and under the same Revolutionary auspices at Cambrai (1004 “Catalogue des livres provenant da la maison des Benedictines anglaises de Cambrai”, made at the French Revolution, of 519 pages listing a total of 3,945 books and manuscripts as having belonged to the Cambrai English Benedictine Sisters, several of which could be describing Julian’s Showing of Love), and Lille, Archives du Nord L.4.87o, giving information on the French Revolution’s formation of the Bibliothèque Nationale and specifically on the ‘Bibliothèque Cambray, Ans 3 à l’an 8’, which was then largely lost.) However, the foundresses of the Paris daughter house had had duplicates copied of almost all Cambrai’s devotional books and they were able to bring many of these back to England, most of which are now at St Mary’s Abbey, Colwich. Bibliothèque Mazarine 4058 is a catalogue of manuscripts, not of books. It is seventeenth century and appears to be less the catalogue of the library in Paris, than it is of that in Cambrai, and which may have been compiled in Cambrai as a check list for the manuscripts to be copied and taken to Paris for safe-keeping there. Usually these are given as “A Catalogue of Such Bookes as the Verie Reverend and Venerable Father Augustin Baker hath either him=selfe originally penned or hath colected out of our authorus or hath himself translated out of Latin into English or else hath only Transcribed accordinge to the writing and penning of some other”; but under the letter R we find, under “The Manuscripts which belongs not to the venerable Father Augustine Bakers Workes”, an entry at folio 206v to “The Revelations of Sainte Julian”, following entries to “St Bridget’s

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Revelations begune to be Translated as a Preamble to which there are perfictly translated. The tokens for discretion of spirits written in Latin by Cardinall Turre Cremata”,89 folio 206 having given William Flete’s “A Book called Remedies in all Temptations” and other adjacent folios listing Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, Henry Suso’s Nine Rocks, and works of Jan van Ruusbroec. The title, ‘Revelations of Sainte Julian’, occurs also in the Upholland Manuscript in Dame Barbara Constable’s hand for extracts from Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love.90 There is a strong possibility that the Catalogue entry for Julian is either to a medieval Norwich exemplar ȡ to Clementia Cary’s Sloane 2499 Manuscript, or to ʌ, the Syon Tudor manuscript, or the Syon Elizabethan copy of it, now lost (but not the present Paris Manuscript, P, which was still in Rouen at that date), from which Serenus Cressy’s 1670 edition was transcribed, Cressy’s gloss to that text being compiled from the two British Library Sloane Manuscripts, 2499, 3705, brought to Paris by Dame Clementia Cary, its Foundress, and Dame Bridget More, its Prioress, which copied the same, now lost, medieval Norwich ȡ exemplar. Another entry in this same Bibliothèque Mazarine 4059 catalogue, at folio 31, gives “Colections outt of Holy Mo: Juilan”, spelled so, and followed by arabesque ornaments found also in a remaining manuscript at Cambrai.91 This is the first recorded evidence of Julian as called ‘Mother’, as if she has subsumed herself into her Jesus/Mary as Mother, in accord with the theology she presents, where we are the One Body of Christ, those hearing the Word and doing it being Christ’s brothers, sisters and mother. That title will be echoed in Serenus Cressy’s title he gives her in 1670. However, ‘Holy Mother’ is the title traditionally awarded St Birgitta by her nuns, where indeed she subsumes into herself the role of the Virgin as Queen. It is also the honorific title of their own youthful Benedictine Foundress. Indeed this entry follows upon a collection made from the writings of Dame Gertrude More, OSB, Cambrai’s Foundress, who chose in religion the name of the earlier mystic Gertrude the Great of Helfta. It was a common and excellent practice for the nuns to copy out extracts from contemplative writings into such “Colections”, and indeed we find the English nuns still doing so anonymously, their books to be found in their cells at their deaths, and further quarried by their Sisters, through the eighteenth century. A particularly fine example is Bibliothèque Mazarine 1202 “Colections of spiritual letters, and the book Conversio morum”, written in 1724, quoting from Angela of Foligno, John Tauler, Dame Gertrude More, Archbishop Fénelon of Cambrai, Dame Catherine Gascoigne, and Arsenius, among others.92 This is the first known translation into English of the writing of the Archbishop of

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Cambrai. It even appears that Fénelon himself was influenced by the English Benedictine nuns’ contemplative practices, teaching these in turn to others, such as to Madame de Guyon, who was imprisoned for them by Cardinal Richelieu. In so doing this pair reflects all those others, Paula and Jerome, Scholastica and Benedict, Marie d’Oignes and Cardinal Jacques de Vitry, Elsbeth Stagel and Henry Suso, Julian of Norwich and Adam Easton, amongst our cloud of witnesses. At the risk of their lives and at the cost of exile women preserved down the centuries a continuum of contemplative writings of the greatest value, among them, Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love. Dame Catherine Gascoigne, the Abbess of Cambrai for forty years, at her death had said that these writings were ‘the greatest treasure that belongs to this poor community’. 93 At the Revolution that treasure was lost for Cambrai’s Stanbrook Abbey, Worcestershire, though preserved for Paris’ St Mary’s Abbey, Colwich, Staffordshire. These English Benedictine nuns in exile finally succeeded where the Syon Abbey nuns had failed, for they readied for the press and published, in 1670, the editio princeps of Julian of Norwich’s complete Showing of Love, now sharing their treasure with the whole wide world. Even the reason why there were a mother and a daughter house for the English Benedictine nuns in exile is bound up with these books and the desire of contemplatives to both save and share their Showing of Love. British Library Stowe 42, though of no editorial interest, the manuscript being later than the editio princeps and probably written out to thank the Marchioness of Buckingham, is nevertheless a labour of love. It faithfully gives us the Preface Serenus Cressy wrote to the 1670 edition, which excellently conveys the reception of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love through time. XVI REVELATIONS OF Divine Love, Shewed to a Devout Servant of our Lord, called MOTHER JULIANA, AN Anchorite of NORWICH: Who lived in the days of KING EDWARD the third. ___________________________________

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Published by R.F.S. Cressy. ___________________________________ ___________________________________ 2 To his most HonouredLady, the LadyMary Blount, of Sodington. Madam, THe Just and grateful Resentment which I have of the unmerited kindness, and friendship of your Late most worthy and Noble Hus= band Sir George Blount,94 of your Ladyship, and your whole Family, oblidged me, impatiently to desire an Occasion, to make a publick Acknowledgment thereof. Permit me, therefore, here, to offer to your Lady= ship this small Present, in which notwithstanding, I can Challenge no Interest or Right, but only the. Care .of publishing it. The Author of it, is a Person of your own Sex, who lived about Three Hundred Years since, intended it for you, and for such Readers as your self, who will not be induced to the perusing of it by Curiosity, or a desire to Learn strange things, which afterward they will at best vainly admire, or perhaps out of incredulity Contemn. But your Ladyship Will, I ssure my self, afford Her a place in your Closet, where at your Devout Retire= ments, you will enjoy her Saint-like Conversation, attending to her, Whilst with Humility and Joy, She recounts to you the won= ders of our Lords Love to Her, and of his Grace in Her. And being thus employed, I make no doubt but you willbe sensible of many Beams of her Lights, and much warmth ofThe Epistle Dedicatory of her Charity, by reflection darted into your own Soul. Now that such may be the effects of this Book, is the desire of (Madam) Your Ladyships most Humble, and most obliged servant in our Lord, H. CREǏǏY

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Here we witness, though filtered in the stilted and formal hierarchical style of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the care by men for women contemplatives’ lives and writings in our journey with Julian through time. These men and women risked all they had, including their lives, to save this spirituality, being threatened with exile, prison, burning at the stake in chains, hanging, drawing and quartering, and the guillotine, to preserve these texts.95 Similarly, I, too, returned from exile to England, staying with the Brigittines in Syon Abbey, Devon, visiting the Benedictines at Stanbrook Abbey, Worcestershire, and St Mary’s Abbey, Staffordshire, in this last place entering a room filled with books, books brought home from Paris, books filled with the handwriting of English nuns of the seventeenth century copying out the writing of an anchoress of the fourteenth century, she in turn copying out God’s Word, from two thousand years ago, and now, and for ever, eternally, in our midst.

Notes 1

Julia Bolton Holloway, Saint Bride and her Book: Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelations (Cambridge: Brewer, 1997), Bibliography on Syon, Sheen and Mount Grace, pp. 142-144; Syon Abbey and its Books: Reading, Writing and Religion c.1400-1700, ed. E. A. Jones, Alexandra Walsham (Woodbridge, Boydell and Brewer, 2010). 2 Shakespeare, Henry V, IV.i.300-303. 3 Julia Bolton Holloway, Saint Bride and her Book, passim. 4 Monica Hedlund, “Katillus Thorberni: A Syon Pioneer and his Books”, Birgittiana 1 (1996), 67-87. 5 The Myroure of oure Ladye, ed. John Henry Blunt, EETS Extra Series 19.xixxiii; Neil Beckett, “St Bridget, Henry V and Syon Abbey”, Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, ed. James Hogg, 2:125-150. 6 Joan North replaced the first and titular Abbess, Matilda Newton, “monialis de Barking”, while the titular Confessor General, William Alnwick, Benedictine of St Albans and Recluse of Westminster, was replaced by Thomas Fishbourn, likewise a St Albans’ Benedictine, and indeed also one of its Recluses, its Hermits: Margaret Deanesly, The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole, p. 114. 7 Syon Abbey, ed. Vincent Gillespie, with The Libraries of the Carthusians, ed. A. Ian Doyle, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 9 (London: British Library, 2001), pp. 240-41, 676. 8 Michael G. Sargent, James Grenehalgh as a Textual Critic, Analecta Cartusiana 85, 2 vols. 9 Ralph Hanna III, “Some Norfolk Women and Their Books”, The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, pp. 288-305. Lincoln Cathedral Library, now housed at Nottingham University, also has MS 218, Richard Rolle, Carmelite provenance; MS 114, Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelationes with Adam Easton’s

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Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae and his Letter to the Abbess of Vadstena, the manuscript in question being from Sweden, written Tuesday after Easter, 1409, likely brought from Norwich by Bishop William Alnwick. 10 Uppsala University Library, C17, and C193, Katillus copies out Adam Easton and Hildegard of Bingen, while in York before Syon’s foundation in 1415. Vadstena also acquired texts by Hilton. See Monica Hedlund, “Katillus Thorberni: A Syon Pioneer and His Books”, Birgittiana 1 (1996), 67-87. His passport is extant in an English hand for his return to Sweden, “cum rebus et libris eius”. 11 Hedlund, “Katillus Thorberni”, Birgittiana 1 (1996), 78, 80. 12 Michael Sargent, James Grenehalgh as a Textual Critic, Analecta Cartusiana 85, 2 vols; Edmund Colledge, “The Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God: A Fifteenth-Century English Ruysbroek Translation”, English Studies 33 (1952), pp. 49-66. 13 The “flower” ornaments of the 1670 Serenus Cressy editio princeps of Julian’s Revelations are also used in a Vincent Wing book: CW I.6. 14 Francis Blomefield, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk. . . and Other Authentick Memorials, 11 vols., IV.81. It was Blomefield who discovered the Paston Letters, 1735. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, “Editing Julian of Norwich’s Revelations: A Progress Report”, Mediaeval Studies 38 (1976), 405, note that Constable may have acquired Peck’s volume at auction, 1758. 15 Julienne de Norwich, recluse du XIVe siècle, Révélations de l’Amour divin, trans. Dom Gabriel Meunier, OSB, p. vii. 16 Joseph Gillow, A Literary and Biobibliographic History of English Catholics from 1534, I:548. 17 Birger Gregersson and Thomas Gascoigne, The Life of Saint Birgitta, trans. Julia Bolton Holloway (Toronto: Peregrina, 1991). 18 Ann M. Hutchison, “Devotional Reading in the Monastery and in the Late Medieval Household”, pp. 215-227; Martha W. Driver, “Pictures in Print: Late Fifteenth- and Early Sixteenth-Century English Religious Books for Lay Readers”, p. 243, both in De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England, ed. Michael G. Sargent; Roger Ellis, “Further Thoughts on the Spirituality of Syon Abbey”, Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England, ed. William F. Pollard and Robert Boenig, pp. 219-243. 19 The Cell of Self-Knowledge: Seven Early English Mystical Writers printed by Henry Pepwell, MDXXI, ed. Edmund G. Gardner; The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen, EETS 212.xxxiv, xlvi-xlviii; George R. Keiser, “The Mystics and the Early English Printers: The Economics of Devotionalism”, The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Exeter Symposium IV: Dartington, 1987, ed. Marion Glasscoe, pp 9-26; Contents: 1. ‘Benjamin’, Richard of St Victor. 2. “Divers Doctrines & Fruitful taken out of the Life of that glorious Virgin Spouse of our Lord, Saint Katerine of Siene”. 3. Margery Kempe, Ankress of Lynn. 4. A Devout Treatise compiled by Walter Hylton of the “Song of Angels”. 5. A Devout Treatise called the “Epistle of Prayer”. 6. A very necessary “Epistle of Discretion in Stirryngs of the Soul”. 7. A Devout “Treatise of Discerning of Spirits” very necessary for Ghostly Livers. Interestingly, Edmund

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Gardner considers the recipient of “Epistle of Discretion in Stirryng of Spirits” to be a woman about to be an anchoress, pp. 95-110. 20 The Revelations of Saint Birgitta, ed. William Cummings, EETS 178.xxxviii. 21 E.J. Devereux, “Elizabeth Barton and Tudor Censorship”, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 49 (1966), 91-106; L.E. Whatmore, “The Sermon against the Holy Maid of Kent and her Adherents, delivered at Paul’s Cross, November the 23rd, 1533, and at Canterbury, December the 7th”, English Historical Review 58 (1943), pp. 469-472; A Denton Cheney, “The Holy Maid of Kent”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, n.s. 18 (1904), p. 199; John Rory Fletcher, The Story of the English Brigittines of Syon Abbey, pp. 32-33; F.R. Johnston, Saint Richard Reynolds: The Angel of Syon (Syon Abbey: 1971), p. 6; Hope Emily Allen, Book of Margery Kempe, EETS 212.lxvii-lxviii; Diane Watt, “The Prophet at Home: Elizabeth Barton and the Influence of Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena”, Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late-Medieval England, ed. Rosalynn Voaden, pp. 161-176. 22 The Gospel of Thomas, Logia 20, trans. Hugh McGregor Ross, Clement, 2 Corinthians (York: Sessions, 1987). 23 Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts, 1475-1550, ed. Maurits Smeyers and Jan Van der Stock, pp. 78-79, “Trinity” Ghent-Bruges, ca. 1510, Antwerp, Mayer van den Bergh Breviary, fol. 100. 24 Sheila Upjohn, In Search of Julian, makes this observation in discussing the Despenser triptych in Norwich Cathedral, whose central penal is the Crucifixion and which was painted in honour of Bishop Henry le Despenser’s suppression of the Peasants’ Revolt. However, the Bishop himself held up Litester’s head during his drawing to prevent such wounds and heard his confession. 25 David Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3:252-254. 26 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400-c.1580; H.F.M. Prescott, The Man on a Donkey, uses Julian’s text throughout her novel set in this period. 27 F.R. Johnston, Saint Richard Reynolds, Syon Abbey, 1961. 28 Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and Their Patrons in Medieval England, pp. 213214. 29 James Hogg, “An Early Sixteenth Century Book of Devotions from Syon Abbey”, Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, ed. James Hogg. 2:243253; James Hogg notes Christopher de Hamel believing that it was bound not in England but in Belgium during Syon’s exile there, 1539-1557, Sotheby’s Sale Catalogue, 17 December, 1991, p. 100. 30 Thomas Robinson, THE ANATOMY OF THE ENGLISH NVNNERY AT LISBON in PORTVGALL. DISSECTED AND laid open by one that was sometime a yonger Brother of the COVENT: Who (if the grace of God had not preuented him) might haue growne as old in a wicked life as the oldest amongst them (London, 1622); James Hogg, “Answer to an attack on the nuns of Syon contained in a book entitled ‘The Anatomy of the English Nunnery at Lisbon’ by Thomas Robinson, London, 1622 (signed 16 Dec 1622) from British Library Add. Mss 21203, Gf. 42b. Papers related to English Jesuits”, Analecta Cartusiana 244 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 2006), pp. 85-121.

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Exeter University Library, Fletcher, Notebook 12, “Syon’s Who’s Who III: Community”, p. 130. He notes also that “Mountain” or “Mouton” is a Norfolk name. These notebooks were given by Syon Abbey, Totnes, Devon, to Exeter University Library. They are invaluable for research on the English Brigittines. 32 Exeter University Library, Fletcher, Notebook 33; Myroure of oure Ladye, ed. Blunt, EETS Extra Series 19.vii. 33 Exeter University Library, Canon John Rory Fletcher, “Syon’s Who’s Who, Community III”, Notebook 12, pp. 159-160; Ann Hutchison, “Beyond the Margins: The Recusant Bridgettines”, Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, 2:271-272. 34 Ann Warren, Anchorites and Patrons, pp. 213-216. 35 Exeter University Library, Fletcher, Notebook 32, p. 61. 36 University of Exeter Library, Fletcher, Syon Notebook 32, p. 49. 37 In a letter 22 April 1995 Dame Eanswythe Edwards, OSB, Archivist of Stanbrook Abbey, wrote that Stanbrook 3 is in the hand of Dom Leander Prichard, and that it is bound in old brown leather, measuring 3 1/2 x 5 1/2. 38 The Cloud of Unknowing and the Book of Privy Counselling, ed. Phyllis Hodgson, p. xix. 39 Exeter University Library, Fletcher, “History of Syon Abbey 1563-1580, Syon in Exile II”, Notebook 6, p. 232, copying State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. CXLIV.31, 18 November 1580. 40 Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972 ), p. 165. 41 Paul Verdeyen, “Le procès d’inquisition contre Marguerite Porete et Guiard de Cressonessart”, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 81 (1986), 47-94; Margaretae Porete Speculum simplicium animarum/Marguerite Porete, Le mirouer des simples ames, ed. Paul Verdeyen and Romana Guarnieri, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis 69; Le mirouer des simples ames, ed. Romana Guarnieri, Archivio Italiano per la storia de la Pietà 4 (Rome, 1965), Mirror of Simple Souls, ed. Marilyn Doiron, Archivio Italiano per la storia de la Pietà 5 (Rome, 1968) [base text, Cambridge, St John’s College, 71 (C21)], 241-355; The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. Ellen L. Babinsky, Preface, Robert E. Lerner. 42 Rotha M. Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England, p. 143; Anne K. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England, pp. 79-80. Matilda’s case is also given in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, 3:198-99). Interestingly, Margaret le Boteler of Kirkeby, nun of Hampole, had been enclosed at St Peter’s, Leicester, 1348. Matilda, succeeding her, would be aware of the intense spirituality of the Hampole circle about Richard Rolle. Matilda may be the Maude Wardesale who was granted a pension of six marks a year from the Duchy of Lancaster, that is, from Henry IV, in 1399-1400, Warren, p. 176. She was succeeded in turn in 1405 by Isolda N. 43 Gillow, Dictionary of English Catholics, I.379,382,387-388; Dictionary of National Biography. A major cause for these arrests was “Campion’s Brag”, a Letter to the Lords of the Council, 1580, clandestinely printed; other pamphlets and books also being so privately and illegally printed, as we hear being planned at

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Mary Champney’s death bed, among these the possibility of Julian’s Showing of Love being so published. 44 University of Exeter Library, Fletcher, Notebook 21, p. 58, noting they had only 400 crowns so did not even have carts to carry their sick and aged sisters and had to leave behind their church furniture; p. 181, “the next day being Wednesday we began to pack our goods and sell the rest”; Notebook 19, p. 125, “they weeping over us, and we packing to depart, and be separated one from another, to the great sorrow of both, for all the city seemed confused in our house and court; some, as aforesaid, others to look on and buy such poor movables as we could not carry, but were forced to leave behind”, Exeter University Library. 45 Bibliotheca Bigotiana seu Catalogus Librorum Bigotii Horum fiet Auctio. die .1. mensis Julii 17, 2 vols, listing, I.26, Julianae Anatorite Revelationes Anglice, amongst “codices MSS. in 8 in 12 etc.”; Léopold DeLisle, Bibliotheca Bigotiana Manuscripta: Catalogue des Manuscrits Rassemblés au XVIIe siècle par les Bigot, mis en vente au mois de Juillet 1706, aujourd’hui conservés à la Bibliothÿegque Nationale, p. 92, 388 Julianae Anatoritae Revelationes, Anglice. The manuscript next to it, Anglais 41, is of Pore Caitif, a text whose dialect, in Cambridge University Library, Hh.I.12, places it near Norwich, and which is also present in the Norwich Castle Manuscript, in that dialect, and possibly in Julian’s hand. With Pore Caitif is also Hilton’s translation of Lewis de Fontibus. This particular small manuscript was owned by King James of Scotland when imprisoned in England and is bound in red velvet. 46 Dame Margaret Truran has informed Dr John Clark of Father Augustine Baker’s “Life of Dame Margaret Gascoigne” as referring to Dame Julian, in the Downside Abbey, Baker MS 42, copied in Stanbrook Abbey MS 19: John P.H. Clark, “Father Augustine Baker’s Secretum: Sources and Affinities”, That Mysterious Man, ed. Michael Woodward (Abergavenny: Three Peaks Press, 2001), p. 133, n. 4a; The Life and Death of Dame Margaret Gascoigne, ed. J. Clark, AC 119:23, Salzburg, 2000. 47 Exeter University Library, Fletcher, Notebook 12, “Syon’s Who’s Who III: Community”, p. 239. 48 Exeter University Library, Fletcher, Notebook 12, “Syon’s Who’s Who III: Community”, pp. 132-133. 49 Christopher de Hamel, Syon Abbey, ed. John Martin Robinson, pp. 111-112, and in a letter, 4 July 1995; Exeter University Library, Fletcher, Notebook 18, p. 110, quotes Fuller, Church History, 1655, concerning Mary’s Catholic Succession to the throne of England: “It was some difficulty to stock [Syon Abbey] with such who had been veyled before (it being now thirty years since their dissolution), in which time most of the elder nuns were in their graves, and the younger in the arms of their husbands, as afterwards embracing a married life. However, with much adoe (joyning some new ones with the old), they made up a competent number”. 50 John Rory Fletcher, The Story of the English Brigittines of Syon Abbey, p. 148. 51 Exeter University Library, Fletcher, Notebook 12, “Syon’s Who’s Who III: Community”, p. 222. 52 Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, Thesis,1956, Appendix B, p. 7.

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53

Exeter University Library, Fletcher, Notebook 12, “Syon Who’s Who III: Community”, p. 100, also noted, Notebook 21. 54 The Autobiography of Sir John Bramston K.B. of Skreens, in the Hundred of Chelmsford, Now first printed from the original MS. in the possession of his lineal descendant Thomas William Bramston, Esq. 55 “Bramston, James Yorke, D.D.”, Gillow, Dictionary of English Catholics, I.28889; Laity’s Directory to the Church Service in the Year of Our Lord, 1837, pp. 1-7, with portrait. Lisbon’s English College was founded, 1626, Syon Abbey present in Lisbon since 1594. 56 Exeter University Library, Canon John Rory Fletcher, Syon Abbey: Notebook 33. Nancy Bradley Warren, The Embodied Word: Female Spiritualities, Contested Orthodoxies, and English Religious Cultures, 1350–1700 (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2010); Shelia Upjohn, Julian Lecture, Norwich, 2015, discuss Julian in the context of the exiled English Benedictines; Heather Wolfe of the Folger Library researches the Cary family, whose chaplain was Dom Serenus Cressy. 57 Dame Gertrude More, The Spiritual Exercises of the most Vertuous and Religious D. Gertrude More of the Holy Order of S. Bennet and English Congregation of Our Ladies of Comfort of Cambrai. She called them Amor ordinem nescit and Ideots Devotions, Her only Spiritual Father and Director the Ven. Fr. Baker stiled them Confesiones Amantis, A Lovers Confessions, ed. Augustine Baker, O.S.B [Serenus Cressy, OSB] (Paris: Lewis de la Fosse, 1658). Dedication to “The R. Mother Bridget More of Saint Peter and Saint Paul most worthy Prioress of the English Benedictin Nunns of our Lady of Hope in Paris”; The Inner Life of Dame Gertrude More, ed. Augustine Baker, OSB [Serenus Cressy, OSB], The Writings of Dame Gertrude More, ed. Augustine Baker, OSB, Dom Weld-Blundell, OSB 58 Writings of Gertrude More, ed. Weld-Blundell, pp. 37-38. Thomas More himself, in the Tower, had read William Flete’s Remedies Against Temptations, and, like Elizabeth Barton, had had access to Syon Abbey’s library. His daughter, Margaret Roper, purchased her father’s exposed head, being buried with it in Chelsea. 59 Augustine Baker [Serenus Cressy], The Holy Practices of a Devine Lover of the Sainctly Ideots Devotions (Paris: Lewis de la Fosse at the sign of the looking Glasse in the Carmes Street, 1657), discusses the library catalogue of books at Cambrai as listing works by Bernard, Bonaventure, John of Climacus, Catherine of Siena, Dionysius, Gerson, John of the Cross, Gertrude of Helfta, Birgitta of Sweden, Hilton, Suso, Tauler, St Teresa, Hugh and Richard of St Victor, and the Vitae Patrum, but not Julian of Norwich, pp. 35-36. This list tallies with the Catalogues in the Bibliothèque Mazarine and with that in Cambrai’s Mediathèque, though the books themselves are lost. 60 This is his description of such contemplation: In this state it is that soule is prepared for Divine Inaction, Passive Visions, and graces most admirable, and most efficacious to purify her as perfectly as in the condition of this life as she is capable. Now it is that God provides for

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soules dearly beloved by bringing Tryalls and Desolatum incomprehensibile to the unexperienced, leading them from Light to darkness and from thence to Light againe: In all which changes the Soule keeps herselfe in the same Equality and tranquillity, as knowing that by them all she approaches nearer and nearer to God, plunging herself more and more profoundly in him. A Soule that is come to this State is above all Instructors and Instructions: a Divine Light being her guide in all manner of things. In a word, it is not she that now lives, but Christ and his holy spirit that lives, reigns and operates in her. 61

Augustine Baker, Inner Life of Gertrude More, ed. Weld-Blundell, p. 18. See also his manuscript written out by Dame Bridget More, OSB, now Chetham’s Library, A.2.128. Marguerite Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls, describes the same. 62 Lille, Archives du Nord, 20 H 10; Bibliothèque Mazarine 1755, Quadrilogus; The Life of Father Augustine Baker, OSB (1575-1641), by Father Peter Salvin and Father Serenus Cressy, ed. Dom Justin McCann, OSB and Hugh Connolly, p. xxix. 63 Bibliothèque Mazarine 4058, “A Catalogue of Such Bookes as the verie Reverend and Venerable Father Augustin Baker hath either him-selfe originally penned or hath colected out of other Authours”: fol. 206v, “The Manuscripts which belong not to the Venerable Father Augustine Bakers Works. The Revelations of Sainte Julian”; it employs an idiosyncratic arabesque design throughout, particularly at the entry for the Julian manuscript, which can be seen also in Cambrai; CW, I.17 believed the reference was to P whichthey thought was with the nuns in Paris when it was not. 64 That it is her hand was verified for me by Dame Eanswythe Edwards, OSB, Archivist, Stanbrook Abbey, from a comparision with that in Stanbrook 2, known to be in Dame Bridget More’s hand. 65 Hywel Wyn Owen and Luke Bell, OSB, “The Upholland Anthology: An Augustine Baker Manuscript”, The Downside Review107:369 (1989), 274-292. 66 Dame Frideswide Sandeman, “Dame Gertrude More”, Benedict’s Disciples, ed. David Hugh Farmer, pp. 276-278. 67 British Library Printed Book IA 55141: The Book of Diverse Ghostly Matters, includes translation of Henry Suso, Horologium Sapientiae, The Seven Points of True Love and Everlasting Wisdom, also The Twelve Profits of Tribulate, The Rule of St Benet, Westminster: Caxton, 1491, annotated, James Grenehalgh, then belonging to Cambrai, where it was approved for reading by Fathers Leander Jones, Rudisind Barlow, 1633-1635, later at the Paris daughter house, “This Book belongs to þe English Benedictin Nuns of our Blessed Lady of good Hope in Paris”. 68 The English Benedictine Community of Cambrai would have the contemplative François de Selignac Fénelon as their Archbishop, 1695-1715, whom they even perhaps influenced with their contemplative devotional readings and practices, and who, as had Jerome, gave spiritual direction to women, such as Madame Guyon. Indeed, Jeanne-Marie Bouvier del La Motte Guyon was to spend the years 16951702 in the Bastille, imprisoned there by the Jesuit-trained Archbishop of Meaux,

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Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Fénelon’s arch-rival, for her Quietism. Her collected works were published in 40 volumes, 1767-1791. 69 The Benedictines of Stanbrook, ‘Dame Catherine Gascoigne 1600-1676’, In a Great Tradition: Tribute to Dame Laurentia McLachlan, Abbess of Stanbrook, p. 29. 70 In 1663, Dame Barbara Constable, OSB, of Cambrai, wrote a Spiritual Treatise to her brother, Sir Marmaduke Constable, quoting Ignatius, Polycarp and Dionysius (“St Denis his high and divine books”). Syon Abbey Sr Mary Champney’s father had been steward to the earlier Sir Marmaduke Constable of Burton Constable. 71 Hoyt Greeson’s Glossary is given in the SISMEL 2001 edition of Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love, pp. 627-682. His findings are that the dialect forms of this seventeenth-century manuscript clearly reflect those of fourteenth-century Norfolk, from the Norwich area. 72 Dame Bridget More’s autograph Profession document, “Ego Soror Brigitta More 1634”, is given opposite p. 43, Lady Cecilia Heywood, Abbess of Stanbrook, and Joseph Gillow, “Records of the Abbey of Our Lady of Consolation at Cambrai, 1620-1793”, Catholic Record Society13 (1913); Dame Bridget More is also the scribe of Chetham’s Library, A.2.128. 73 Still possessed by the Benedictines of St Mary’s Abbey, Colwich. 74 Bibliothèque Mazarine 3326: “Constitution des Benedictines Anglaises du titre de nostre Dame de bonne esperance, 1656”, folio [4], “Oservez bien le venerable Pere Augustin Baker . . . Il faut que l’esprit de votre vocation soit le vie de touttes vos actions interieures et exterieure”. 75 Benedictines of Stanbrook, “Dame Catherine Gascoigne”, Great Tradition, pp. 15-29. 76 These are used also in a Vincent Wing book: CW, I.6. 77 In a letter 22 April 1985 Dame Eanswithe Edwards, OSB, Archivist of Stanbrook Abbey, wrote that Stanbrook 3 is in the hand of Dom Leander Prichard, and that is bound on old brown leather, measuring 3 1/2x5 1/2. She gave a photocopy of its title page, reproduced in AMR/JBH, p. 509. 78 The Cloud of Unknowing and the Book of Privy Counselling, ed. Phyllis Hodgson, EETS 212.xix. 79 One recalls Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy, a concept he forged out at Auschwitz, concerning the importance to retain meaning to life through the writing out of books in the face of meaninglessness, in Doctor of the Soul; Brian Stock, Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, on textual communities in the face of persecution, especially those including women. 80 Heywood and Gillow, “Our Lady of Consolation, 1620-1793”, Catholic Record Society13 (1913), 13-38. Dame Eanswythe Edwards, OSB, Archivist for Stanbrook Abbey, in a letter 24 March 1995, wrote of these events, as if a participant in them, You see, we were driven out of our Convent in Cambrai in 1793 at only a quarter-of-an-hour’s notice, by ruffians with great clubs in their hands. We

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were not allowed to take any trunks or cases, only a small bundle of linen, and no books. 81

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross/Edith Stein wrote on the Compiègne Carmelites; Poulenc composed the opera, Dialogues des Carmèlites, upon this event; Terrye Newkirk, OCDS, “The Mantle of Elijah: The Martyrs of Compiègne as Prophets of Modern Age”, http://www.icspublications.org/archives/others/newkir.html, The Teresian CarmelICS Publications. 82 Following 1758, according to the bookplate, it came to be owned by William Constable, (“Wm Constable Esqr, F.R.S. & F.A.S.”). Joseph Gillow noted, I.548, that the Constables of Burton Constable collected manuscripts and intermarried with the Heneages, also owners of contemplative manuscripts. It was purchased for the British Library at Sotheby’s Amherst Sale, 24-27 March 1910, Lot 813. In the Fletcher Notebooks at Exeter University Library is also the information that Mary Champney’s father was steward to Sir Marmaduke Constable of Burton Constable. This gives evidence of the continuing links between recusant families, Syon Abbey, the English Benedictines, and the continuing treasuring of Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love. 83 Dom Placid Spearitt, “The Survival of Medieval Spirituality Among the Exiled English Black Monks”, The American Benedictine Review25 (1974), 307, believes that some of the manuscripts could have come to Cambrai from “Shene Anglorum”; Sheen had contacts with Syon even when in exile; many of the manuscripts clearly have Syon as their provenance. Examples: Cambrai 1155, “A tretisse of the vowes of Religion In answer to the Lutheran heretick very profitable to all Religious persons composed by a Brother of Syon”, a 1694 manuscript copy of a book printed 1532; Cambrai 2675 “Here begynnewth the Booke called the pype, or tonne, of the highe perfection”, p. 455; 3747, “The most devot prayer of Ste Birgitte printed at Cambray 1683 in 18”, p. 471, this last printed before the Cambrai Benedictine foundation. 84 Cambrai, Mediathèque 1004, “Catalogue de livres provenant de la maison des benedictines anglaise de Cambrai”, 519 pages, describing 3,945 books, “Ce volume ne contient que les livres Des Anglaises”. 85 Lille Archives du Nord, L.4.870, Catalogue: Bibliothèque Cambrai, Ans à l’an 8. 86 “Livres et manuscripts qui se trouvent à la bibliothèque de Cambrai, Mars 1821”, Bibliothèque Nationale, nouv. acquis. franç. 5299, fols. 523-556. 87 [Sr Benedict Rowell, OSB], “Our Return to England”, St Mary’s Abbey, Colwich, Stafford, 1995. 88 Hélène Dufresne, Erudition et esprit public au XVIIIe Siècle: Le Bibliothecaire Hubert-Pascal Ameilhon (1730-1811), p. 433, notes that the books of the ‘Benedictines anglaises’ went to Louis-la-Culture, 22 August 1794, after first being stored in the granary of the Marine, pp. 375-383, but that there were only four parchment manuscripts among them, p. 377. In 1790, it was noted that the nuns pretended not to have manuscripts, despite their catalogue of them, that they had ‘qu’une armoire garnie de rayons, sur lequel figuraient un millier de volumes; sans manuscrits’. The number of their books as 2,245 is given, p. 433.

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Again, this is evidence of the continuum of Syon Abbey’s material even amidst the English Benedictines; it is also evidence of the linking of Julian and Birgitta in that continuum. 90 Owen and Bell, “Upholland Anthology”, Downside Review107:369 (1989), 286; other texts include St Teresa of Avila and Henry Suso. Sr Benedicta Ward, S.L.G., states this manuscript is now lost. However its photocopied facsimile is carefully preserved at Stanbrook Abbey. 91 The same arabesque ornament, of the letter s on its side with dots in its circles, repeated in an ornamental line, is found in Cambrai 1154, ‘A Spiritual Ladder or Steps to Ascend up to Heaven Composed of St John Climacus Abbot of the Monastery of Mount Sinai and Father of the Greek Church’. 92 ‘Colections’ by an English Nun in Exile: Bibliothèque Mazarine 1202. Ed. Julia Bolton Holloway, Hermit of the Holy Family, Analecta Cartusiana 119:26. Eds. James Hogg, Alain Girard, Daniel Le Blévec (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 2006). Manuscript transcribed at: http://www.umilta.net/coll.html, http://www.umilta.net/cambrai.html, http://www.umilta.net/cath.html 93 Benedictines of Stanbrook, Great Tradition, p. 29. 94 Sir George Blount, Bart, of Sodington, had died in 1667. Two of Lady Mary Blount’s granddaughters, Ann and Elizabeth, their mother a Constantia Cary, were nuns at Cambrai. 95 Thus we have had Marguerite Porete in Paris executed, 1310, for writing her Mirror, Elizabeth Barton executed, 1534, in London for writing her Revelations, Margery Kempe at risk for writing her Book, Julian and her Showing of Love surely not being totally out of danger. Of these four authors, three books have now been recovered, thanks to the actions of women scribes and scholars, particularly Romana Guarnieri for Marguerite Porete, Hope Emily Allen for Margery Kempe, and Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, CP, for Julian of Norwich, in Julian’s case following also generations of Brigittine and Benedictine nuns, their meticulous work countering unreasoning, traumatic censorship.

APPENDICES I. THE BENEDICTINE FRAGMENTS OF JULIAN’S SHOWING A. DAMES MARGARET GASCOIGNE/BRIDGET MORE FRAGMENT, OSB (G), 1637-1651, ST MARY’S ABBEY, COLWICH, H18, FOLS. 155-61

Figure 54. Dame Bridget More, OSB Thou hast saide, O Lorde, to a deere child of thine, Lette me alone,

my deare worthy childe, intende (or attende) to me, I am inough to __________________________ thee; reioice in thy Sauiour and Saluation (this was spoken to Julian the Ankress or norwich as appeareth by the book of her reuelations); This o Lorde I reade and thinke on with great ioie, and cannot but take it as spoken allso to me; Thou therein biddest me lette thee alone; to which I can not but

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Appendices answere and readilie yealde & submitte my selfe, sayeng; O yes, my Lorde; for what doe I desire more then to Lett thee alone in all things which thou wouldest do or permitte in me, or concerning me, which I am most as= sured wholie to be intended by thee for the cleansing and saluation of my soule, as yet most vncleane & vn= worthy of thee; thou wouldest for that end purge me of all impedi= ments in my waie of sincere tend=

Figure 55. Colwich Abbey, H18, Dames Margaret Gascoigne, Bridget More dance towards thee and seruing of thee, whereby thou mightest allwaies finde me as pliable to thy Blessed will, as waxe before the fire in the hande of the artesman is pliable to the maner of his working. Intende to me, saiest thou, and thou knowest, that that is it which I aime at, and seeke to do at all times, both daie and night, and nothing ells, but that I maie continuallie attende to thee, And in her last sicknes, she caused these words to be placed

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library before her eyes at the crucifixe, which she regarded till her death); Thou saiest allso; I am inough to thee; and to this I would willinglie an= swere with the tongues & voices of all creatures, saieng; Yes, my deare Lorde, thou alone indeed art inough to me; for if all friends turne into _____________________________ foes, & all pleasures into paines, yet art thou inough to me,these other things being all as nothing in regarde of thee, who hast all good in thee, and art and euer shallt be all in all to me, And euen but to remember these thy most delicious wordes; I am inough to thee, is so great a ioie to my hart, that all the afflictions, that are, or (as I hope) euer shall fall upon me (at least which I can imagin) do and shall cause me to receaue from them somuch comforte, solace, and encouragement, as that I hope by thy grace, they shall be most dear= lie welcome vnto me. Thou there saiest farther, reioice in thy sa= uiour and in thy saluation; but though my loue be so colde, that I am farre from goeng this as I ___________________________ ought, yet I desire that with all the might, and powers of my soule, and with all the affection of my harte, I could reioice in thy infinite happines; and though my soule be neuer so poore and in neuer so great miseries, yet I desire according to such abilitie as is in me of thy gift, to ioy and reioy together with thee, for what thou art and doest

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Appendices possesse in thy immense riches, power and glorie, and in all that is pleasing to thee in all things, in thy selfe and in all thy creatures, in the riches of others, and my owne pouertie and miserie (for to them, whom thou art pleasing to, what thing of thine can be displeasing.) and what is wan= ting in me (through disabilitie) to performe in this matter, I will re= ioice and exullt in hart, that in all fullnes and perfection it is supplied ____________________________ and aboundeth in thee thy self, where I hope my selfe accordinglie in the time which thou hast from eternitie foreordained for it, to finde by ex= perience such supplie and amends for all mine and other creatures in= sufficiencies in the matter. I farther= more reioice in my Saluation which I confidentlie hope in vertue of thy most free and liberall goodnes, in the end to obtaine at the handes of thy mercie, and in no sorte as if I could expect anie such matter as due to me or merited by me, nor anie other waies to be attained to by me, then by thy free giuft and meere mercie (in vertue of the grace and deserts of my most deere Lorde and sauiour Jesu Christ thy onlie and most dearelie beloued sonne) ____________________________ which mercies and goodnesses of thine I haue allreadie in various maners euen in my owne most unworthie selfe so greatlie and so frequentlie experienced, that I can not, nor maie heerafter doubt there= of, but euer maie, must, and will to the

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end confidentlie hope in thesame, and thereon onlie and wholie relie.

Since editing the above I enquired of Dame Margaret Truran, OSB, Stanbrook Abbey, about their Augustine Baker manuscript on Dame Margaret Gascoigne, OSB’s “Holy Dying”, 9 August 1637, and she has kindly sent the following: The passage in Fr Baker’s Life and Death of Dame Margaret Gascoigne on Julian of Norwich runs as follows: ‘She upon Sunday at night, being the Vigil of St Laurence, in bed beginning to be distressed in body, and the next morning after being present at Mass she there fainted and was carried thence into the Infirmary where remaining to her expiration or last Agony in perfect use of her senses, she for that space spent her thoughts wholly towards God, and in preparation for death, if God should please to send it, and which she esteemed (considering how she found her state of body) would be her lot by means of the Extraordinary Indisposition & sickness she was now in. Towards the said good Preparation for Death, and to hold her the more continually and efficaciously therein, she caused one that was oft conversant & familiar with her to place (written at and underneath the Crucifix, that remained there before her, and which she regarded with her eyes during her sickness and till her death) the holy words that had sometime been spoken by God to the holy Virgin Juliana the Anchoress of Norwich, as appeareth by the Old Manuscript Book of her Revelations, and with the which words our Dame had ever formerly been much delighted: ‘Intend (or attend) to me. I am enough for thee: rejoice in me thy Saviour and in thy salvation.’ Those words, I say, remained before her eyes beneath the Crucifix till her death’. Stanbrook Baker MS 19 (copy of Downside Abbey Baker MS 42), pp 46-47. Sr Margaret OSB

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IB. DAME BARBARA CONSTABLE, OSB, AND THE UPHOLLAND (U) FRAGMENT

Figure 56. Dame Barbara Constable, OSB, Catholic Record Society 13 (1913)

The Upholland Manuscript is now lost but a photocopy of it is held at Stanbrook Abbey, in which the foliation is now back to front. St Iulian The 12 reuelation And after this our lord shewed himselfe more glorifyed, as to my sight then I had seene him before; wherin I was lear= ned to know þt our soule shall neuer haue rest till it come into him; know= ing that he is full of ioy, homely and curteous, and most blessed and true life. oftentimes our lord Iesu sayd. I it am, I it am I it am That is highest. I it am, that þ° louest. I it am that thou likest. I it þt þ° seruest. I it am that thou longest after. I it am that þ° desirest. I it am. that thou meanest. I it am, that is all. I it am that shewed myself to thee before. The number of the words passeth my witts and vnderstanding, and all my mights, for they were in the highest, as to my sight;

113

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library [113v] for therein is comprehended I am not able to tell what, so that it cannot be expres= sed. But the ioy that I saw in the shewing of them exceedingly surpasseth all that hart can thinke, or soule may desire. And therefore these words (the meaning of them) be not declared heere; but euery one accor= ding to the grace god hath giuen him in vnderstanding and louing, let them receaue them in our lords meaning. The 13 reuelation And after this our lord brought to my mind, þe longing desire I had to him before. And I saw that nothing letted or hindred vs but sinne. And me thought if sinne had not bin, we should all haue bin cleane and pure, and like to our lord as hee made and created vs. And thus in my folly before this time I often wondered why, by þe forsaid great wisedome of god the beginning of sinne was not hindred or preuented, for then me thought þt all should haue bin well. This stirring and [114] thought in my mind; I should haue forsaken and not haue yealded vnto it; Yet neuer thelesse it caused me to mourne and sorrow without discretion. buþt Jesu who in this vision enformed me of all thinges that were needfull, answered by this word and sayd: ‘Sinne is behouefull. But all shall be well.’ In this naked worde. Sinne. our lord brought to my mind generally all that is not good. The 28 chapter Thus I saw how Christ hath compassion on vs for þe cause of sinne, for full well our lord loveth People that shall bee

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saued. That is to say gods servants; Holy Church shall be shaked in sorrow and an guish, and tribulation in this world, as a man shaketh a cloath in þe wind. And as to this, our lord answered showing in this manner. Ah. A great thing shall I make hereof in heauen, of endles worship and of euerlasting ioy. Yea so far forth I saw that our lord reioyceth at þe tribu lation of his servants with pitty and [114v] compassion; That to each person þt he lo ueth and intendeth to bring to his bliss he layeth on him something, that is to say some affliction or tribulation, þt is no impe diment to þe soule in þe sight of God, therby they be humbled and despised in this world, scorned, mocked, and contemned by others And this he doth to hinder and preuent þe harme wch they are apt to fall into, and would incurre by þe pride þe pompe and þe vaine glory of this wretched life, and for to make their way the more readdy, and better prepare them to come to heauen, and enioy his blisse without end euerlasting for he sayth, I shall all to breake you from your vaine affections, and your vitius pride; and after þt I shall gather you and make you meeke and mild, cleane and holy by uniting you to mee. And then I saw that each kind compassion þt man hath one his euen Christian wth charity, it is christ in him, whose loue to man made him to esteeme little of all þe paines he suffered in his passion, wch loue againe was shewed heere in this compassion, wherin were two thinges to be understood in our lords meaning, þe on was þe blisse that we be [115] brought vnto, wherin his will is þt we reioyce þe other is, for our comfort in our paine and

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library tribulation: for he will that wee know þt all shall turne to his worship and to our profit by þe vertue of his holy passion: and that we know þt wee suffered right no thing alone, but with him, and þt we see him our ground. And that we see his paines and his tribulations so farre to ex ceed and surpasse all þt we can suffer, that it cannot be fully thought or imagined. And þe well beholding and considering of this will keepe vs from ouermuch trouble and despaire in þe feeling of our paines, and we see verely þt our sinnes deserue it, yet his loue excuseth vs, and of his great curtesy he doth away all our blames and beholdeth vs with ruth and merveilous pitty as children Innocents and vnspotted. The 30 chapter In this our Lords will is to haue us oc cupyed and exercise to ioy in him for he ioyeth in vs. And þe more plenteously þt we take of this (ioying in our salluation) wth reuerence and humility, þe more thankes [115v] we deserue of him, and þe more speedy and expedient it is to our selues. And thus we may see and enioy or reioyce in that our part is our Lord. The other part is hid and shutt up, or concealed from vs. þt is to say, all þt is besides our salluation for that is our lords priuy counsell and it belongeth to þe Royall Lordship of allmighty god to haue his priuy counsels in peace. And it belongeth to his seruants for obe dience and reuerence to him, not to haue or will or desire to know his counsels, Our lord hath pitty and compassion on vs, for that some creatures do busy themselues so much therein (seeking and desiring to know and vnderstand þe secrets of allmighty

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god.) And I am sure if we know how much we should please him and ease our selues to forbear it we would do it. The saints in heaven, thay haue a will to know nothing, but þt which our lord will shew them. And also their charity and desire is ruled according to þe will of our lord. And thus ought we to haue our will like to them; Then shall we nothing will nor desire, but þe will [116] of our lord like as they do. for we bee all one in gods meaning. And heer I was taught þt I should only enioy in our Blessed Sauiour Jesu, and trust in him for all thinges. The 32: Chapter One time our good lord sayde, all man ner of thing shall be well. And another time he sayd. Thou shalt see thyselfe that all manner of things shall be welle And these two sayings þe soule tooke and vnderstood in sundry manners. One was this, þt our lord will that wee know that he not only taketh care of and hath regard to noble thinges and to great, but also to little and to small, to lowe and to simple, to þe one and to þe other; And so meaneth he in þt he sayth all manner of thing shall be well. For he will that we know þt þe least thing shall not be forgotten. An other is this, þt there be many deeds euill donne in our sight and so great harmes comes, and are taken thereby þt it seemeth to us that it were

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Figure 57. Upholland Manuscript, Stanbrook Abbey [116v] impossible þt euer they should come to a good end. And vpon these wee looke sorrow full and mourne therfore, so þt it cannot rest in þe blessedfull holding of God as we should doe. And þe cause is this, that þe vse of our reason and vnderstanding is now so blind & Lowe that we cannot know nor vnderstand the high mervailous wisedome, and þe good nes of the most blessed Trinity. And thus meaneth he where he sayth Thou

shalt see thy selfe þt all manner of thing shall be well,’ as if he had sayd take or beleeue faithfully and trust fully and hearafter thou shalt see it verely and truely in fullnes of ioy. And thus in þe same fiue words before sayd: ‘I may make all thinges well I vnderstood a mighty comfort (þt wee owght to take) of all þe workes of our Lord god, that are to come

[The text following the excerpts from Julian of Norwich’s Showing of Love appears to be a contemplation by Dame Barbara Constable, OSB, or

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taken from another Benedictine, and then copied out by her, concerning the way of perfection as described in the conversions of the Friends of God, Henry Suso and John Tauler.] [117] O how exceedingly are we bound to god for discouering vnto vs this way so ne cessary, and whereof there is so few teachers, considering also how many soules he leaueth in want thereof, and who if they knew þe way, would ioyfully pro secute it: O swee Iesus. blessed for e uer be thy sweet mercyes; O how vn gratefull shall wee proue if wee doe not make good vse of this great blessing of thyne and why should we doubt of thy assistance in prosecution of our way since that our good god of his loue to us and out of his desire of our saluation and per fection hath extraordinarily made knowne vnto us þe way, so will he not be wanting in his grace that we may bring all to a per fect end which he intended in his discovuery vnto vs of the way we hauing þe way discouered vnto vs if we should neglect to tread and prosecute it with perseuerance it [117v] had bin far better for us that we had neuer knowne it for (sayth our sauiour) þe servant that know eth the will of his master and doth it not shall be beaten with many stripes. To come to know þe way how to serue god in þe way of perfection there is no meane but þt it must come from god, and þt by one of

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library these two meanes either immediately from god as was þe conuersion and in structions of Suso and many others or from him by þe meanes of some man as was þe conuersion of Thaulerus and þe like hath bin of many others. And here Theleurus though he had his conuersion and some instruction at þe first from þe Lay man, yet afterwards in his spirituall course he was doutles guided by þe spirit of god (þe lay man not liuing wth him

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II. DEFENSES OF FATHER AUGUSTINE BAKER’S “WAY OF PRAYER” Bibliothèque Mazarine 1202 is a manuscript written out at the Benedictine nuns’ Paris daughter house, July 1624, at the centennial anniversary of Dom Augustine Baker’s arrival at Cambrai, July 1624, and it includes the two defences of his “Way of Prayer”, which combine the Cloud of Unknowing with the Showing of Love. The library cataloguer believed it was written by a “superstitious monk”, sneering at it, not realising it was penned radically by several generations of women. It was confiscated at the French Revolution. A. DAME GERTRUDE MORE, OSB’S DEFENSE OF FATHER AUGUSTINE BAKER’S “WAY OF PRAYER”, 1633

Figure 58. Dame Gertrude More, OSB, Permission, Ampleforth Abbey Trustees ~ Nothing has my lord god left un -done which might win me wholy to himself, and make me to dispise my self, and all created things for his love. for when I sinned, he recal’d me and forsook me not in that my

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library Colections D.G.

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misery of offending such an infinit goodness so shamefully, & that alsoe after my entrance into religion,nay even after my proffesion in that blessed state, the hapiness, & worth wherof I did not yet know by which means I grew weary of tending bear-ing therin his sweet yoke and light burthen, the which is heavy only thro our fault, & not in it self through which default & ignorance of mine, it became so greivous, and intolerable to me, that I wish’d oft-en it might have bine shaken of from by me pretending it was soe incom-patible with my good, that I could 323

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scarcely work my salvation, in this my state & profesion, this my god you are wittness of was true, & soe it did continue with me about two years, after that I had in show forsaken the world, & the world, ind-eed forsaken me, but did my lord in these biter afflictions forsake me no, no, but he provided such a help for me, that quickly was my sorrow turn’d into joy, yea into such an unspeakable joy, that it has sweetned all the sorows which since that time has befalen me, for as soon as my soull was set into a way of tending to my god by prayer and abnegation, I found Colections D.G.

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all my miseries presently disperse themselves, & come to nothing; yea even in five weeks my soull became so enamour’d with the yoke of this my dear lord, þt if I must have ma

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de not only four, but even four thousand vows, to have become wholy dedicated to him, I should have em-braced this state with more joy, and content then ever I did find in obta-ining that which ever I most of all wish’d & desir’d; yea & thou knowest my god by my souls being put into a course of prayer, I seem’d to have now found a true means, wherby I might love without end, or measure. 325

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~Woe to that soull, who over-come by threats, or persuasions from without or by temptations within her, or other occasions wt soever gives over her mental pra yer by mean wherof only she is ca-pable of diserning & folowing the divine tract, inspiration, & will whnce her whole good is to proceed, & ther fore O you souls especialy that are the more capable of internall prayer doe you accordingly prosecute it, and be gratefull to god for the grace of it, for it causeth the greatest ha-piness that is to be goten in this life & an answerable hapiness, in the future. Colections D.G.

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by it in this life one paseth through all things how hard & painfull soever they be by it we come to be familiar even with god himself, & to have our conversation in heaven, by it all impediments will be removed between god and the soull, by it you will receive light & grace. for all that god would doe by you, by it you will come to reg-ard god in all things, & profitably neglect your selves. by it you shall

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library know how to converse one earth without preiudice to your selves souls, and infine by it you will praise god & become so united unto him, that nothing shall be able to seperate 327

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you for time or eternity from his sweet goodness.

Shortly following penning these words, Dame Gertrude More, OSB, descendant of St Thomas More, died of smallpox. B. DAME CATHERINE GASCOIGNE, OSB’S DEFENSE OF FATHER AUGUSTINE BAKER’S “WAY OF PRAYER”, 1633

Figure 59. Dame Catherine Gascoigne, OSB 382 Coll: Lad: Cath: G. Prayer My prayer I know not how to express, but it seems to me to be a longing and vehement desire of the soull thirsting after the presence of God, seeking and intending only and wholy his will and pleasure with as much purity of intention as my imperfection will permit. it is only exercised in the will, some times in one maner, & sometimes

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in another; according to the pres ent disposition of the soull. now humbling itself a 1000 times in þe presence of god, now praising, ble sing and adoring him, at other times confounded at my great ingratitude not daring as it were to appear in D. Cath: Gas: Prayer

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his presence, or to elevate myself towards him by love, wm I have soe much offended, sometimes I think it is those we call acts or aspirations, or rather an elevation of the will tow ards god; proceeding from an interiour motion, & enablement to continue þe same, yet not always with like ferv our, for many times I find a great & strong desire to please, and praise god and yet am not able in any sort to doe it, and that is my greif. but thus I see there is no way but patience & resignation, till it pleases him w° only can enable me, when he pleases G to doe better, for methinks the more I strive or force my self the further 384

D. Cath: Gas: Pr: I am from it. for everything meth -inks even thinking of good and holy things doe rather breed images and cause multiplicity in the soul, and are distractions & impediments to me in my prayer, and tendance to wards god, so I must keep myself in as much quietness as may be, wth out using violence or stress, for I find myself most drawn to that pray er which tends to an unity, without adhering to any perticular creature or image; but seeking only for that thing wch our lord said to be necesa ry, and wch contains all things in it

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library self, according to that saying, Unum

sit mihi totum, id est Omnia in Omnibus, hoc unum quaero, hoc D. Cath: G: Pr:

385

unum desidero, propter unum omnia, hoc si habuero contentus ero, et nisi potitus fuero. semper fluctus, quia multa me implere non posunt, Quid hoc unum nescio dicere, desiderare. me sentio, quo nihill melius, nec majus est, sed nec cogitare, potest, non enim hoc un um inter omnia, sed unum super omnia est. Deus meus est, cui adhaerere, et inhaerere bonum mihi est. This way of tending and aspiring towards god, by love and affection doth in no sort, hinder a soull, from the due performance of her other duties and Obligations, and externall 386

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Obediences, much less dos it cause her to neglect, misprise, or disesteem of her superiours, their ordinations and exactions, (as has bine feared) for it doth cause her to observe and perform them with more purity of intention and more readily and more chearfully, regarding God in the doing of them, rather then the works that she doth. and a soull that is caryed in this affectuous inclination towards god carefully observing the divine call and motions, and abstracting herself from impertinencies and all things wch doe not belong to her to doe or undergoo. she will be able to make use of all things, in there times [Stanbrook: their due time]

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D. Cath: Gas: pray: 387 times, to her advancement in spir it. for nothing is required of us in our state of life, but if we know how to make right use of it, it will further us in our way, and especially the divine office, and service of the Quire, as being an exercise more imediatly belon ging to the praise and worship of god. so doe I most comonly find it a great help and incitement therto, except when the body is too much wearied or otherwise indisposed and þs exercise of love seems to be the best means to purchase all vertues; for the soull þt doth faithfully persue it with perse verance, and faithfully coresponds in the divine Grace, dos in some sort

388

D. Cath: Gas: pr:

(according to her progress in this di vine love) exercise all vertues in these times, for it is the way of Humility, of abnegation, of sincere obedi -ence, of perfect submision, & subjec -tion to god, and to every creature for his love, and according to his good will and pleasure, it causeth and encreaseth in the soull, a holly and humble confidence in god, which does enoble her to pass thro all occuring difficulties wth chearfulness and ala crity, not that she shall not meett wth difficulties (for the way of love is the way of the cross and full of bitter mortifications) but because she de sires so much to please her beloved that all things wtsoever tho never D. Cath: Gas: Pr:

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so greivous to nature, become easy and tolerable to her, wch may draw

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library more near unto him, and wtsoever she finds to be a lett or hinderance in her way of tendance towards him, as fears, scruples, etc: she doth pass them over and transcend them by love, seeking and endeavouring always to unite herself to god, according to her maner, and to adher perseverantly unto him, and although it may per haps be esteemed a great presumption for a soull þt has made but litle prog ress in a spirituall course, & is full of deffects, and imperfections, to pret end so high an exercise, as is that of love and aspiring towards god; yet 390

D. Cath: Gas: Pr:

to me it seems to be the best way to get true humility, nay I canot see how tis posible for a soull by anny other means to avoid that most detes table sin of pride, wch so secretly creeps in, & intrudes itself into all our best actions, & Holiest exercises. but only by adhesion to god, which excludes all pride, and all maner of temptaion of what kind soever, for the soull þt seeks and pretends nothing but god, and tends towards him in the best maner she can by sim plicity, adhering to noe Image or created thing, but only to god him self there is no place for pride, & therfore noe exercise or maner of D: Cath Gas: Pr:

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prayer so secure for the soull, and þe less subject to the Ilusions & deceits of the †Divell, then this exercise of the will which is both plain & easie for those soulls that have an aptness and call unto it, is faithfully prosecuting, wth the grace of god concuring, it leads the soull through

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all things wtsoever, it is the way of humi lity, and confidence. for the soull having continuall recourse to god by prayer is therby enlightned to see her own nothing and poverty, and how that she is not able to effect any thing that is good, without the divine assistance, butt that she must wholly, & totally depend of God, and this dependance, wch the soull sees herself continually to have of god; methinks it is able to humble her even to dust, besides 392

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the sins and imperfections to which she is subject and often falls into. and indeed god has many secret ways to humble a soull, and out of his care doth soe provide that matter of humiliation shall never be wanting to her, if she will but accordingly endeavour to make use therof. and the wonderfull vouchsafe ment of God All: to is such to a soull þt seeks and aymes at nothing else but to be faithfull to him, þt it causes & increa -ses a great confidence in his goodness, and his continuall care and providence to wards her; so that for her part she seems to have nothing else in the world to doe, but only to endeavour to comply with his will, and pleasure. tending and aspiring towards him by prayer D. Cath: Gasc: Pr:

393

as he shall enable her for it by his grace, without taking care or solicitude for any thing that may concern her keep lea ving herself and all things wholly to his sweet disposition, so that her only care is to please him, and he will sufficiently provide for her, and for all things that may concern her good, to wm she hath totally left herself and all other things, after this maner to the Divine providence; she

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library doth not neglect that to wch she is obli-ged according to her dutty and charge for god himself takes care of all, & guides all, and nothing is lost, but much beter performed by leaving all to him, as thau lerus saith In deo nihill negligetur. and the soull proceeding in this maner with as much simplicity as she can, seeking 394

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after nothing but God, her confidence dailly increases as holly scripture says, Qui ambulat simpliciter, ambulat confidenter. and she walks one secure -ly & quietly under the divine protection, all things cooperating to her good, for wtsoever doth hapen to her by gods per -mision; dos serve to breed†still in her true and perfect resignation & conf ormity to the Divine will, wherby she comes to have & enjoy betwixt God and her soull, true internall, and solid peace, even amidst all crosses and opositions, & variations, that we are subject unto, in this changeable and miserable life of ours, which peace, & security noe creature can give unto a soull but only god himself and therefore happy are those soulls þt † & Cause vertically in margin; Stanbrook: more & more] D. Cath: Gas: Pr:

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that faithfully & perseverently adher to him, with an internall regard of his will in all things, and this plain & simple exercise of the will, taught us by father Anonimus tends to noe other thing, (soe, far |as I understand it) þn þs to bring the soull to a total subjection to god, and to others for god. Indeed I am not able to express wt I doe in part conceive of the excelency & worth-

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iness, of this most happy exercise, of tending aspiring towards god by love, how be it. I have here endeavoured as well as I could briefly and sincerely to let my superiours know by this, how I understand and desire to practis the same. humbly submiting myself, & all my ways and practises, in this or wt else soever to 396

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be corected by them, purposing & promi -sing by Gods Grace always to stand to their judgment and determination, in all things. and if your Paternities do think it good & please to aprove it, I do then most humbly beseech your leave and blesing, with the assistance of yr holly prayers, that I may prosecute it with new fervour & diligence, for noth-ing does so much trouble me as my slack -ness & negligence in it hitherto. ~ ~ ~

INDEX

Place names for Norwich are so indexed, other place names are to be found under the rubrics, Britain, Europe, or the Holy Land. Likewise references to the Bible are so clustered Aaron 67-68, 107, 118, 128 ABC 6, 52-56, 108, 130, 156 Abelard 100, 151, 154 Heloise 151 Acciaiuoli, Nicolò 105, 187, 188 Acciaiuoli OSS 188 Acta Sanctorum 98 Act of Attainder 220 Adam 28, 36, 65-66, 94, 97, 107, 110, 111, 112, 114, 120, 126, 128, 132, 154, 161, 165-166 Aelred of Rievaulx 151, 161 De Institutione Inclusorium 151, 161 Aers, David xvii Agatha, St 122, 123 Agincourt, Battle of 84, 256 Agnes, St 122 Alan of Lynn O.Carm 255 Alban, St 189 Alberti, Antonio 188 Alberti, Ginevra OSS 188 Albornoz, Gil, Cardinal 183 Alessia 184 Aleyn, Master, DD 230 Alexandria 202 Alfonso of Jaén xiv, 92, 106, 111, 115, 116, 121, 126, 130, 131, 132, 148, 163, 165, 167, 172, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190, 212, 214, 215, 231, 232, 233, 255

Epistola Solitarii 111, 116, 131, 165, 167, 189, 214, 214, 231, 255 Alice, “Alice Heremyte” 93, 114, 133 Alighieri, Dante xi, 3, 77-78, 99, 115, 126 Commedia 99, 126 Allen, Emily Hope xvi, 200, 243 Alnwick, William Bishop Hermit 23, 121, 200, 220, 247, 248 Amadeus III, Count 183, 185 Ameilhon, Hubert-Pascal 275 Amherst, Lord 223, 249 Anchoress xi, 5, 93, 108, 232-233, 241 Ancrene Riwle 152, 162, 242 Ancrene Wisse 152, 155,156, 161, 163, 247 Andrew, Lawrence Printer 250 The Directory of Conscience 250 Angela of Foligno 45, 237, 255, 265, 276 Fra Arnaldo, Memorials 255 Angelico, Fra 148 Angelogy 132 Anne of Bohemia 118, 128, 247 Anselm, St 162 Antenori OSS 188 Aquinas, Thomas 59, 216 Arabic mathematics 101 Arnolfo di Cambio 5

314 Articles XIII (Arundel) 167, 199, 217 XV (Porete) 121, 217 XLI (Birgitta) 121, 217 Arundel, Thomas xviii, xix, 22, 23, 24, 34, 37, 72, 85, 108, 130, 133, 205, 216, 217, 220, 221, 222, 231, 233 Constitutions xviii, 22, 23, 24, 34, 37, 72, 108, 130, 205, 216-217, 220, 222 Augustine xvii, 59, 76, 94, 103, 115, 221, 235, 241 Monica 76, 94, 235, 241 Confessions xvii, 59, 235 Augustinians 76, 98, 102, 106, 110, 149, 160, 198, 233 Arveghaye 51 “Babylonian Captivity” 183 Baker, Augustine OSB xv, 38, 45, 148, 262, 266, 267, 268, 271, 275, 293, 303-312 Life and Death of Margaret Gascoigne 293 Sancta Sophia/ Holy Wisdom 38, 267 “Way of Prayer” 303-312 Bakhtin, Mikhail 182 Bakthorpe, William OP 189 Baldinotti, Brigida 189, 190 Bale, John 61, 117 Bardi OSS 188 Barlow, Rudisind Dom OSB 266, 269, 270 Barsotti, Divo xiii Bartolomeo, Fra OP 184 Barton, Elizabeth OSB 3, 29, 217, 220, 246, 247, 251, 255, 264 Revelations 255 Baxter, Margery 220 Beauchamp, Anne Countess 200

Index Beauchamp, Richard Earl 93, 200 Beauchamp, Thomas Earl 93 Beauchamp’s Pageants 16, 200, 218 Beaufort, Pierre Roger de Cardinal 107 see Gregory XI Pope Beaufort, Henry Cardinal 218 Beccaria, Cesare 254 Bede 82 Beer, Frances 223 Beguine, see Porete Benci OSS 188 Bell, Currer, Ellis, Acton 222 Benedict, St xvii, xix, 4, 75, 120, 131, 217, 241, 255, 277 Regula 79, 86-92, 198 Benedictine vii, xvi, xix, xviii, 3747, 75-94, 108, 118, 132, 164, 198, 222, 230, 231 Benincasa, Giacomo 190 Bernard, St 77, 208, 209 Golden Epistle 209 Bhattacharji, Santha xviii Bible xvii, xix, 6, 86, 117-118, 198, 217 Acts 64 Apocalypse, Revelations xiv,20, 105, 240 David 68, 151, 155 Epistles 6 Exodus 6, 25, 61, 66-67, 128 Galatians 161 Genesis 6, 61, 126 Good Samaritan Parable 120 Gospel of Thomas 82, 252 Gethsemani 163 Gospels 126, 132, 156 Hebrews 61, 127 Isaiah 6, 59, 64, 103, 126 Job xvii John 20, 67, 105, 222, 240 John the Baptist 119 Jonah 6, 60-61 Joshua 107 Jude 68 Judea 107 I Kings 67 Lord’s Prayer 22, 34-36 Leviticus 103 Luke 2, 3, 54, 64 iusti sedes est sapiencie 37 Mark 64 Matthew 64, 82, 86 Magnificat 6,77, 89 Nathan 118 Paul, St 68, 99, 151, 162 Peter,

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library St 68, 122 Quo vadis 122, 150, 151, 154 Philip’s four daughters 122 Pilate, Pontius 101 Proverbs 3,5, 107 Psalms 6, 25, 29, 54, 59, 60-61, 64-65, 68, 76, 103, 127, 236 Romans 82 Song of Solomon 60, 65, 81 Ten Commandments 22, 79, 88 Wisdom of Solomon 3, 61, 107 women 121 Zadok 118 Hebrew Scriptures 129 King James Bible 29, 72, 129 Vulgate Bible 6, 85, 103, 128, 221 Wycliffite Bible 85, 129 Birgitta (Brigida/Bridget) of Sweden vii, xi, xii, xiv, xvi, xvii, xix, 3, 6, 29, 61, 94, 98, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 114, 116, 120, 122, 124, 126, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 147, 152, 163, 164, 165, 172, 182-190, 198, 199, 201, 204, 208, 209, 212, 214, 216, 217, 220, 221, 229, 230, 235, 241, 247, 250, 251, 254, 255, 265, 275 tawny board 114, 124 Birger 148 Israel 148 Secretariat 183, 185 Revelationes xiv, xvi, xvii, xix, 29, 104, 105, 106, 108, 110, 122, 126, 132, 147 , 152, 163, 165, 172, 204, 209, 212, 217, 220, 230, 241, 247, 254, 255, 261 “Book of Questions V” 104, 185 “Four Prayers” 3, 214 Liber Celestis 183 Regula/Rule 183, 186, 190 Sermo Angelicus 186 “St Brydis boke” Black Death 105, 246 Black Prince 133-134 Blackfriars Council 117 Blomefield, Francis xvi, 221, 222, 249 blue 28, 67-68, 118

315

Bocking, Edward Dr OSB 220, 251, 253, 254, 255 Boethius xvii, 1, 120, 172, 241 Philosophia 241 Consolation xvii, 1 Bohemians 128 Boleyn, Anne 220 Boniface St 151 Boniface IX Pope 121 Book of the Dead xiv Botticini, Francesco 129 Bradley, Ritamary xiv, 123, 162 Bramstons 5,25 Bramston, John OSS 25, 264 Bramston, John Sir 264 Bramston, James Bishop 5, 25, 263, 264 Brent, Christina OSB 267 Breughel, Pieter 15-16, 116 “Dormition of Virgin” 15-16, 116 Brigittine vii, xii, xvi, xviii, 16, 22, 24 , 25, 28, 41, 47, 82, 121, 148, 156, 198, 200, 204, 220, 221, 222, 242, 246-265, 279 Brinton, Thomas 99, 101 Britain England 183, 187, 210, 218, 221, 273 Berkshire 256, 257 Buckland 256, 257, 263 Lyford Grange 256, 257, 258, 261 Douai Abbey 264 Cambridgeshire 247 Cambridge University 149, 160, 242 Cherry Hinton 247 Devon 255, 265, 279 Totnes 255 East Anglia 231, 242 Norfolk 165, 215 Lynn (Bishop’s Lynn, King’s Lynn) 22, 104, 116, 121, 218, 221, 230, 231, 247, 250, 254, 257, 262 St Margaret’s Church 22, 114, 218, 220 Thetford 251 Suffolk Campsey Priory 93 Essex Colchester 258

316 Hampshire Alton 269 Winchester 261 Winchester Castle 260 Herefordshire Markyate 271 Kent 251 Canterbury 220, 251, 253 St Sepulchre’s 252 Dover 258 Leicestershire 222, 260 Leicester 260 St Peter’s 260 Lutterworth 117 Lincolnshire 23, 121, 200 Grantham 23, 200 Lincoln 23, 24, 121, 200, 220, 247, 248 London 254 Barking Abbey 163, 167 Charing Cross 273 Golden Cross Inn 273 Fulham 258 Lambeth Palace 231 London Bridge 220 Sheen 160, 188, 189, 200, 247, 250 Smithfield 22, 253, 254 Southwark 263 St Pauls 22 Tower 22, 52 Tyburn 5, 253, 271 Westminster 264 Westminster Abbey 1, 25, 79, 118, 121 Westminster Cathedral 1, 25 White Lion Prison 261 Northumberland Farne 80, 155, 162, 165, 172 Oxfordshire Oxford University 22, 97, 99, 103, 105, 107, 120, 164, 164, 172, 189, 190, 201 Carfax 22 St John’s College 163 Somerset Downside Abbey 39 Staffordshire 274, 275, 279 Colwich 274, 275, 279, 289-293 St Mary’s Abbey Colwich Abbey xix, 37, 39, 45-46, 274, 275, 277, 289-293 Sussex Ashburnham 42 Warwickshire Baddesley 263 Coventry 218, 248 Guy’s Cliff 218 Worcestershire Stanbrook Abbey xix, 39, 259, 277, 279, 293 Yorkshire 152, 268 Ampleforth Abbey 259 Burton Constable 239, 258, 273 Hampole 267 Mount Grace Priory 160, 250, 269 York 22, 23,

Index 24, 200, 201, 218, 220, 247, 248 Northgate 218 Scotland Aberdeen 257 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett xi, 5, 51 Aurora Leigh xi Brunham, John 116 Buckingham, Duke of 42 Buckingham, Marchioness of 43, 273 Buondelmonte, Lapa Acciaiuoli 105, 106, 183, 187, 229 Cafferini, Tommaso OP 184 Camille, Michael 51 Campion, Edmund SJ 260, 261 Campion’s Brag 260 Canigiani, Barduccio 184 Cardinal 64, 94, 103, 110, 111, 117, 125, 126, 148, 172, 189, 212, 221, 230 Carmelite xviii, 21, 23, 34, 76, 94, 98, 102, 107, 110, 117, 152, 198, 200, 204, 220, 222, 230, 247, 248, 250, 259, 271 Our Lady of Carmel 273 Carthusian xvi, 23, 152, 160, 163, 198, 200, 205, 209, 220, 222, 246, 247, 248, 250, 259, Sheen 23, 247, 248 Cary, Clementia OSB 37-42, 270, 271, 276 Constitution 38-39, 271 Catherine of Siena OP vii, xii, xvi, xvii, xix, 2, 16, 60, 94, 103, 106, 115, 116, 132, 148, 149, 160, 164, 165, 172, 182-190, 209, 211, 212, 216, 217, 220, 230, 233, 237, 241, 247, 249, 251, 254, 255, 266

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library Dialogo xvi, xvii, 60, 106, 115, 165, 172, 185, 186, 209, 213, 217, 220, 241, 247, 255 Orcherd of Syon 106, 115, 165, 186, 212-213, 250, 254, 255 Catherine of Sweden 105, 115, 129, 131, 168, 172, 185-187, 189, 190, 201, 211 Cave, Thomas Sir 222, 249 Cecilia St 37, 110, 122, 123, 124125, 131, 167, 210-211, 219 Champney, Mary OSS xvii, 17, 40, 246, 249, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262 Chance, Jane xi Charles IV, Emperor 106, 118, 183 Chastising of God’s Children 116, 148-149, 161, 162-164, 167, 168, 201, 214, 258 Chaucer, Geoffrey 3, 52, 90, 119, 167, 201 Knight 201 “Second Nun’s Prologue, Tale” 90, 167 “Prioress’ Tale” 62, 167 Troilus and Criseyde 119 Christina of Markyate 77, 92, 125, 247, 255, 263, 271 St Alban’s Psalter 271 Christine de Pizan xi Cistercians 77, 156, 198 Clark, John xviii Cleansing of Man’s Soul 163 Clement VI, Pope 182, 183, 184 Clement VII, Anti-Pope 183, 185 Cloud of Unknowing vii, xvi, xix, 54, 64-65, 119, 127, 130, 147-181, 198, 205, 209, 215, 217, 247, 250, 252, 255, 259, 266, 267, 271 Dionise Hid Divinite 151 Epistle of Prayer 151, 163, 166 Epistle of Discretion in Stirryngs of Spirits

317

151, 235, 250 Epistle of Privy Counsel 151, 154, 166, 159, 259, 271 Treatise of Discerning of Spirits 151 Coghlan, Peter Bookseller 273 Colledge, Edmund OSA xv, 3, 28, 160, 223, 249 Colmier, Guy de Bishop 260 Colophons 168-171 confession manual 221 Constable, Barbara OSB viii, 38, 45-46, 222, 249, 258, 270, 273, 294301 Constable, Edward 273 Constable, Marmaduke Sir 258 Constable, William 222, 249 Constantine, Emperor 75 Constantius, Emperor 75 Copeland, Rita 217 Copsey, Richard OCarm 204 Corsini OSS 188 Cotton, Robert Sir 266, 267 Council of Basle 123 Courteney, William Archbishop 260 Cranmer, Thomas 252 Cre, Marleen xviii Cressy, Serenus OSB 20, 38, 41-43, 148, 242, 263, 267, 268, 270 Cromwell, Thomas 252 Cross and Passion xviii Curtis, Antoinette xviii Cyril of Jerusalem 79 Catechetical Lectures 79 Datini, Francesco 188 Deanesly, Margaret 200 Deguileville, Guillaume de 201 De Hamel, Christopher xviii, 25, 263

318 De heretico camburendo 22, 216, 218 Del Lungo, Gabriella xviii Despenser, Henry le, Bishop 108, 116, 216, 254 Despenser Retable 117, 126 Devil, see Fiend Devil’s Advocate 121, 214, 217 Dialects 200 East Anglian 160, 168 Grantham 23 Middlesex 42, 168 Norwich 41, 42, 204, 270 Oxford 168 Dionysius, St, see Pseudo-Dionysius “Discerning of Spirits” xvii, 109, 116, 163, 167, 231, 232, 233 Dissolution of Monasteries 261, 263 Doma, Samuel de Rabbi 65 Dominicans xviii, 76, 98, 102, 107, 110, 115, 183, 198, 199, 208, 230, 250, 264 Doyle, A.I. 21, 200 Dresvina, Juliana xviii “Droste effect” xvii Early English Text Society xii, xv, 43, 243, 257, 270 Easton, Adam vii, xvi, xviii, xix, 6, 24, 59, 61, 64-65, 76, 80, 91, 92, 94, 97-134, 147, 164-172, 185, 189, 198, 206, 207, 209, 210, 211, 214, 216, 218, 220, 230, 231, 232, 233, 248, 251, 255, 267, 277 Defensorium ecclesiasticae potestatis 59, 64, 99, 115, 128 Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae 105, 116, 121, 122, 131, 154, 163, 165, 189, 211, 214, 231 Perfectio Vitae Spiritualis 164, 212 Eckhart, Meister 208, 216 “ground” 216

Index Edinburgh 25 Edmund Martyr 119 Edmund, Thomas 93, 133 Edward the Confessor 119 Edward III, King 104, 105, 107, 182 Eleanor, Queen of Cyprus 183 Eliot, George 222, 241 Middlemarch 241 Elizabeth I 25, 29, 107, 242, 258 Elizabethan xiii, xvi, 28, 29, 39, 260, 261, 262, 274 Eric XIII King 247 Philippa Queen 247 Esböurna, Anna OSS & Cristina OSS 247 Europe 210, 230 Bohemia 106 Prague 106 Cologne 229 Compostela 189, 229 Flanders (Belgium, Spanish Netherlands) 5, 43, 121, 209, 212, 216, 217, 221, 256, 257, 259, 268, 271 Antwerp 28, 41, 82, 251, 254, 258, 261, 266 Brussels 266 Dendremonde 256 Mechlin 258, 259 Meshagen 258 Sheen Anglorum 268 Zurich Zee 258 Finland 104, 182, 183 Åbo 103 Urdiala 182 France 104, 166, 182, 183, 218 Arras 104 Avignon 97, 99, 106, 128, 164, 165, 166, 172, 183, 184 Cambrai 37-39, 45, 171, 259, 261, 265-270, 271-275 Our Lady of Comfort 28, 39, 40, 41, 148, 258, 265-270, 271-274 Catalogue des livres 269, 275 Compiègne 271, 272, 273 St Denis 272, 273 Douai 39, 266, 268, 270 Paris 169, 208, 218 Rue des Anglaises 274 University 214 Lille 266, 275 Montmartre 100 Our Lady of Good Hope 28, 39, 41, 270-271, 274-279

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library Rouen 5, 28, 41, 82, 254, 257, 258, 262 St Denis 100 Valenciennes 171, 260, 266 Vincennes 274 Holland 43Amsterdam 39 Leiden 39 Germany 217 Gdansk (Danzig) xvi, 114, 189, 222, 229, 230 Hildesheim, Lampspringe Abbey 39, 262, 271 Lübeck 172, 254 Rhine 216 Italy 108, 132, 166, 216 Capua 76 Florence xiii, 105, 184, 187 Certosa 105, 187, 188 ‘English’ Cemetery xiii Nocera 119-120 Paradiso 148, 172, 188, 190 Rome 97, 114, 122, 133, 164, 165, 166, 183, 186, 189, 261 Casa di Santa Brigida 187 Santa Cecilia in Trastevere 110, 111, 117, 120, 123-124, 133, 134, 210-211 St Callixtus’ Catacombs 123 English College 261 San Damaso 133 St Paul’s Outside the Walls 109, 130, 214 Ostia 94 Tiber 94 Vatican St Peter’s 123, 124, 183 Veronica veil 122 San Marco 148 Santa Maria Novella, Spanish Chapel 105, 115, 183 Santa Maria Nuova 188 Genoa 120, 164, 188, 209 Lecceto 16, 106, 172, 233 Lucca 120, 184 Montefalco 186 Montefiascone 183 Naples 105, 187 Pisa 184 Santa Cristina 184, 254 Pistoia 189 Prato 188 Siena 106, 149, 165, 183, 216, 254 San Domenico 254Subiaco 217 Ospedale della Scala 186 Portugal Lisbon 5, 25, 28, 221, 255, 257, 258, 262, 263, 264, 266, 268 English College 263 Sweden 23, 104, 114, 186, 220, 246, 248 Stockholm 208 Uppsala 201 Vadstena 24, 105, 114, 115, 121,

319

132, 187, 188, 189, 190, 201, 216, 220, 246, 247, 248 Diarium Vadstenense 133 Fawkes, Richard Printer 250 Fénelon, François Archbishop 276277 Fettiplace, Eleanor OSS 257, 258, 263 Fettiplace, Elizabeth OSS 258, 263 Fibonacci 54 Fiend 33,102, 109, 111, 219, 235236 Fiesole, San Girolamo 129 Findwids, Cristina OSS 247 Fishbourne, Thomas OSS 247 Fisher, John Bishop 251, 255 Fitzhugh of Ravensworth Baron 246 Fletcher, John Rory 257 Flete, William 16, 107, 111, 116, 122, 131, 148-151, 153, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 167, 172, 186, 213, 220, 221, 231, 233, 236, 237, 247, 266, 276 Remedies Against Temptations 107, 111, 122, 148-149, 153, 161, 162, 163, 164, 167, 172, 220, 231, 233, 236, 237, 247, 276 Holkham misc. 41 Consolacio anime 148 Fonte, Tommaso della 184 Fontibus, Lewis de 160, 163 Francis 56 Franciscans 76, 98, 102, 110, 198, 236 Frankl, Viktor 112 French Revolution xix, 40, 42, 45, 265, 270-279 Frescobaldi OSS 188 “Friends of God” xix, 110, 198, 199, 200, 208, 216, 217, 221, 266, 271-

320 Froidmont, Thomas de 208, 209 Golden Epistle 209 Fry, Elizabeth Gurney 5 Gambacorta, Chiara 172, 188, 190 Gambacorta, Pietro 184 Gano, Cristofano di 106, 165, 184, 185, 186, 187 Gardner, Edmund G. 149, 242, 250 Cell of Self-Knowledge 149, 242 Gascoignes 258, 262 Gascoigne, Catherine OSB viii, xvii, 266, 267, 269, 270, 271, 277, 305312 Gascoigne, John Placid Abbot 263, 271 Gascoigne, Margaret OSB viii, xvii, 17, 37, 39-40, 45-46, 258, 262, 267, 268, 289-293 Gascoigne, Thomas Chancellor 189, 246, 250, 266, 271 Life of St Birgitta 250 Germanus 76 Gerson, Jean xvii, 3, 189, 214, 216, 233, 260 De probatione spirituum 233 Gertrude of Helfta 81, 276 Ghiberti OSS 188 Ghirlandaio 148 “Last Supper” 148 Gilbert, George 259, 262 Glasscoe, Marion 39 Good Friday 122, 124 Gothic 100, 254 Greatrex, Joan xviii, 121 Greeson, Hoyt xix Gregory I, Pope xvii, xix, 4, 75, 86, 94, 130, 131, 198, 255 Dialogus xvii, 4, 75, 130, 131, 198, 217, 255

Index Gregory XI, Pope 107, 108 , 115, 184, 185 Grenehalgh, James OCart 23, 160, 199, 218, 220, 247, 248, 259 Grosseteste, Robert 99 Guicciardini OSS 188 Guite, Malcolm xviii Guthlac and Pega 60 Guthlac Roll 60 Guyon, Madame de 277 Hackeborn, Mechthild von xvi, 23, 81, 120, 200, 208, 220, 247, 248 Book of Ghostly Grace xvi, 23, 120-121, 200, 220, 247, 248 Hamburger, Jeffrey 112 Hampole 156 Harford, Dundas Rev 223 Harmon, Juliana OSS 261 Harvey, Margaret 99 Hawking, Stephen 130 Hawkwood, John Sir 108, 115, 184 Heannages 249 Hebrew xii, 6, 29, 34, 51-72, 94, 99, 101, 102, 107, 111, 117, 126, 127, 129, 131, 165, 221 mazuzah 56mikveh 62-64 shalom 29, 51 shema 56-58, 68-69 Helena, Empress 75 Helton, Sibille de Abbess 163 Hemlyngton, Adam Dr OCarm 201, 255 Hemming of Åbo Bishop 104, 182, 183 Hemmingi, Magnus OSS 247 Henrietta Maria, Queen 270 Henry IV 22, 246 Henry V 121, 246, 247, 256 Henry VI 218 Henry VIII 29, 220, 242, 251

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library Herbert, George 103 Heredia, Juan de, Grand Master 183 Heslyngton, Margaret 21, 198, 200, 201, 220, 248 Hieronymite Order 190 Hildegard of Bingen 220 Hilton, Walter 1,3, 25, 38, 98, 100, 148-149, 152, 156, 160-162, 163, 164, 167, 168, 198, 236, 248, 249, 259, 266, 267, 276 Bonum Est 160, 168, 236 Conclusiones de Ymaginibus 162 Eight Chapters of Perfection 160, 163 Qui Habitat 160, 167, 168, 236 Scale of Perfection/ Scala Perfectionis 1,3, 25, 98, 148-149, 152, 156, 160-162, 163, 164, 198, 248, 250, 259, 267, 271, 276 Treatise on Mixed Life 160 Hogg, James xiii, xix Analecta Cartusiana “Holy Conversation” xii, xiv, xvi, xviii, xix, 5, 6, 17, 20, 44-45, 47, 75, 76, 94, 98, 104, 129, 148, 149, 162, 212, 217, 221, 229, 241, 265 “Holy Disobedience” xix “Holy Dying” xvii, 2, 15-17, 43, 116, 187, 188, 218, 259 Holy Land 247 Bethlehem 129, 189, 221, 247 Jerusalem 107, 114,184, 189, 229, 241 Calvary 221 Holy Sepulchre 235 Sinai 79 St Catherine’s 79 Holy Maid of Kent, see Barton, Elizabeth Holy Trinity 5, 58, 128, 252 Honorius, Pope 122 Horsley, Adam 160 Houghton, John OCart 255 Hugh of Lincoln 52, 167

321

Hull, Francis OSB 268 Hundred Years’ War 183 Innocent VI, Pope 184 Isley, Dr 263 James St 116 James of Milan 162 Stimulus Amoris 162 James I of Scotland 34 Kingis Quair 34 James, Dan OSS 186 Jantzen, Grace xvi Jenkins, Jacqueline 223 Jerome xvii, 6, 34, 61, 76, 120, 127, 129, 151, 154, 204, 221, 255, 277 Demetriade 34, 204 Fabiola 67, 128 Paula, Eustochium xvii, 6, 61, 76, 129, 221, 255, 277 Jesuits xviii, 266 Joan, Queen of Naples 105, 106, 183, 185, 186, 187 John of Beverley 68, 84, 255, 263 John of Climacus 79, 184 John of Salisbury 103, 131, 152 Policraticus 103 John of the Cross 167 Jones, Benet Dom OSB 266 Juana de la Cruz, Sr 190 Jubilee 183 Judaism vii, xiv, 51-72 Julian of Norwich Showing of Love “XVI Showings” 126, 130, 131 Adam 120, 132 “All shall be well” 28-29, 51, 248 “Benedicite Dominus” 82, 92, 111 blue 28, 6768, 118, 128 Crucifix 109 “even Christian” xiv, xvii, 6, 80, 100, 132, 162, 171, 233, 236, 241 Fiend 33 “First Showing” 107, 126, 128

322 “Four Prayers” 214 “ground” 216 hazel nut 8, 24, 25, 26-27, 30-32, 40-41, 43-45, 54, 79, 107 “I it am” 67, 77, 102 Jesus as Mother 13-14, 23, 102, 128, 131, 164, 210 oneing 100 Parable of Lord and Servant 29, 33, 120, 126, 131, 166, 237, 248, 251 tawny 128 Wisdom 8, 11, 12, 58, 85, 102,107, 112, 130 wounds 23, 124, 131, 211, 213-214, 219, 221, 253 Jurnets 51-52 Jurnet, Hak 52 Jurnet, Isaac 51, 52, 56, 110, 236 Jurnet, Miryld 52 Kalmarnensis, Johannes OSS 188, 189, 247 Katherine of Aragon, Queen 251 Kelliher, W.H. 39-40, 42 Kempe, Margery vii, xii, xvi, xvii, xix, 6, 22, 84, 102, 114, 115, 116, 121, 129, 132, 133, 149, 188, 189, 190, 215, 216, 217, 218, 221, 222, 229-243, 247, 250, 251, 253 Butler-Bowden MS 231, 243 Book of Margery Kempe xvi, xvii, 94, 160, 215, 229-243, 250, 255 Kempster, Hugh 3 Kilcullen, Kildare xii, xiv Kimhi, David Rabbi xvi, 7, 64, 103, 127, 128, 160, 164, 172, 251, 252 Kimhi, Joseph Rabbi 64 Kingsmill, Catherine OSS 261 Kirkeby, Margaret 152, 198, 255 Lambeth Diploma xii Landoccio Neri di 184 Langham, Simon Cardinal 103, 108 Langland, William 198

Index Piers Plowman 198 Christ the Ploughman 246 Latino, Brunetto xi Tesoretto xi Laurence, St 293 Laurence, Thomas 251 Lavenham, Richard O.Carm 34, 107, 152, 204, 221 Lawrence, Robert OCart 255 Leclercq, Jean Dom 221 lectio divina xvii, xix, 3, 82, 86, 91, 130, 266 Leonardi, Claudio xiii Il Cristo xiii Llewelyn, Robert xix Libraries/Archives: Archives du Nord 273, 275 Bibliothèque Mazarine 45, 267, 275, 276 Bibliothèque Nationale xi, xiii, 5, 27, 34, 43, 275 Bibliothèque Orléans 76 Bigot library 28, 41, 262 Bodleian Library 189, 213, 215, 257 British Archives 51 British Library xii, xiv,5, 16, 21, 39-40, 199, 200, 213, 218, 222, 249, 265, 266, 270, 277 British Museum 249 Cambrai, Mediathèque 269, 273, 275 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 102, 236 Cambridge, St John’s College 201 Cambridge University 99, 215 Colwich xv Edinburgh University Library 263 Florence, State Archives 188 Lambeth Palace Library 81, 129, 236, 256 Laurentian Library xi Lincoln Cathedral 200 National Archives 236 Norfolk Record Office 121, 212, 214 Oxford, University College 168, 257 Palermo, Biblioteca Nazionale 215 Pierpont Morgan

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library Library 188, 215 Riccardian Library 165, 189 Rosenbach Museum 159 Siena Biblioteca Comunale 186 Uppsala University Library 220 Vatican xi, 98 Westminster Cathedral xii Lee, Andrew 99 Liber Regalis 118, 128 Lichtmann, Maria R. 62 Lieberknecht, Otfried xiii Lipman, V.D. 51 Jews of Medieval Norwich 51 Lisbon 5, 25, 28 English College 25 Litester, John 116, 120, 253 Lollards xiv, 4, 22, 76, 85, 98, 114, 116, 132, 152, 162, 198, 216, 218, 233, 253, 254, 260 Loyola, Ignatius 6 Louis XVI King 272 Louise de France, Madame OCarm 272 Love, Nicholas 221 Mirror of Jesus Christ 221 Lowes 5, 25, 257, 263-264 Lowe, Elinor Mownse 257, 263 Lowe, ffrauncis 263 Lowe, John 25, 261 Lowe, Mrs 261 Lowe, Philip 25, 261 Lowe, Rose 5, 264 Lowe, Thomas 263 Luttrell Psalter 128 Lytlington, Nicholas OSB Abbot 117 “M.N.” see Porete, Marguerite Macchiavelli OSS 188 Macedo, Ferdinand de Spy 264 Maconii, Stefano 184, 186 Maderna, Stefano 123

323

Magdebourg, Mechthild von 3, 22, 132, 201 Flowing Light of the Godhead 22, 132 Magnus, King of Sweden 185, 246 Magnusdottir, Catherine OSS 186 Mayer, Citizen 274 Maimonides 127 Malavolta, Francesco 184 Malvern Priory 198 Manuscripts: Amherst (A) vii, xv, xvi, xix, 5, 20-24, 27, 33, 59, 72, 86, 93, 107, 114, 116, 120, 121, 122, 124-125, 128, 129, 131, 132, 148, 160, 167, 198-223, 231, 237, 240, 247-249, 273 corrections 33, 202204, 207, 221 annotations 218-219, 221 Gascoigne (G) 20, 45-46, 265, 268, 274, 289-293 Lambeth Palace (L) xv, 33-37, 111, 256-257 Margery’s Book (M) xv Norwich Castle xv, 27, 33-37, 42, 59, 88, 125, 151, 202, 204-208, 221, 236 Paris (P), anglais 40 xiii, xiv, xv, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 20, 27-34, 72, 93, 103, 107, 116, 128, 129, 130, 131, 156, 221, 237, 240, 248, 249, 250-256, 259-263 anglais 41 34 Sloane (SS) xiv, xv, 5, 20, 37-42, 111, 130, 131, 171, 262, 265, 268, 270, 274, 276 Stowe 20, 41-45, 46-47, 72, 130, 265, 268, 277 Upholland (U) xv, 20, 45-46, 222, 265, 268, 270, 274, 294301 Westminster (W) vii, xii, xiii, xv, xix, 1-19, 20, 25-27, 30-33, 72 , 91-2, 98, 103, 105, 107, 126, 129, 131, 162, 204, 236 “First” Text 120, 31-33, 72, 98, 105, 116, 129, 162 “Long” Text 3, 20, 27, 38-47, 82, 103, 105, 111, 125, 128, 130,

324 131, 156, 160, 164, 166, 167, 168, 172, 205, 209 “Short” Text 20-25, 86, 105,121, 160, 164, 166, 167, 168, 198-223, 231, 238, 248-249, 261, 263-265 “Oral Test” 231 Cressy editio princeps 40, 44-45, 130, 262, 269, 274, 277 Marian Revival 261 Marie de l’Incarnation OCarm 273 Margaret of Jerusalem 152, 208, 209 Martha 153 Martini, Simone 127-128 Mary St 2, 4, 6, 8,77-78, 116, 126, 128, 222, 241 Mary, Queen 256, 257 Mary Magdalen St 68, 114, 151, 153, 154 Mathias, Magister xiv, 61, 104, 129, 130, 132, 182, 208, 230, 255 Matilda Anchoress 260 Mazzei, Lapo 188 McCann, Dom Justin OSB 152 Medici OSS 188 Methley, Richard 160 Meunier, Gabriel Dom OSB 222, 249 Milton, John 241 mise en abyme xvi, xix, 47, 148 Misyn, Richard 23, 198, 200, 201, 220, 248 Mokke, Moses 51 Moon, Alis 220 Mores 262 More, Bridget OSB 37-38, 41, 42, 262, 270, 271, 276, 289-293 Constitution 38-39, 271 More, Cresacre 266

Index More, Gertrude (Helen) OSB viii, xv, xvii, 39, 190, 266, 267, 268, 276, 302-305 Confessio Amantes 266 More, Thomas St xii, 38, 82, 220, 247, 251, 255, 266 Morris, Teresa xiii Mounton, Elizabeth OSS 257 Neo-Platonism 100 Neri OSS 188 Neville, Anne Queen 93, 200, 220 Neville, Cecily, Duchess 251 Newton, Matilda OSS Abbess 247 Nicholas of Lyra 58-59, 121, 129, 198, 209 North, Joan OSS 247, 271 Northbrooke, Michael xvi Norwich 21, 24, 42, 102, 103, 105, 107, 110, 111, 121, 129, 164, 172, 199, 201, 204, 210, 211, 214, 215, 222, 230, 231, 241, 247, 248, 251, 155 Carmelite Friary 201 Carrow Priory xviii, 6, 16, 52, 93, 108, 116, 121, 130, 132 ,164, 167, 189, 218, 221 Castle 33, 52, 98 Cathedral Priory xiii, xviii, 52, 93, 98, 105, 108, 125, 132, 189, 209, 215, 218 Conisford 52, 93, 189 Isaac’s House 52-53, 56, 94 Jewry 98 Parmenter St 94 Shire Hall 34 St Julian’s Church 6, 53, 93, 108, 125, 189, 218, 229 Wensum 94 Westwick 52, 98 “O Sapientia” Antiphon 5, 6, 77 Oestrewyk, Mary 213 Oignes, Marie d’ 129, 221, 230, 255, 277 Olavsson, Petrus OCart 182, 184

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library Olavsson, Petrus OSA 182, 184, 189, 201 Oldcastle, Sir John 22, 162, 216 Origen xvi, 4, 103, 151, 152, 155, 164, 165, 172 On Prayer 155 Orléans MS 201 76 Orthodoxy xiv Ovid 151 Papazzuri, Francesca 187 Partington, Ann Teresa OSB 271 Pascal I, Pope 123-124 Paston Letters 222 Pati, John OSS 247 Peasants’ Revolt 116, 216, 253 Peck, Francis 222 Pelagius 34, 129, 151, 204, 221 Demetriade 34, 129, 151, 204 Pelphrey, Brendan xiii Pepwell, Henry Printer 149, 242 Percy, Lady Mary 266 Perugia 120, 121, 164, 217 Peter, King of Cyprus 183, 185 Petrus, Prior 105 Philip VI, King 104, 182 Pizan, Christine de 189, 216 Plumpton, John 93, 133 Plunkett, George 52 Plunkett, Jonathan 52 Pole, Anne de la, Prioress 251 Pore Caitif 34, 37, 204, 221 Porete, Marguerite xvi, xvii, xix, 3, 5, 23, 120, 121, 155, 160, 163, 164, 165, 171, 172, 198, 199, 200, 205, 208, 209, 212, 216, 217, 218, 247, 254, 255, 260 Mirror of Simple Souls xvi, xvii, xix, 5, 23, 120, 121, 130, 154, 160, 163, 165, 169-171, 205, 209, 247 ,

325

255 “M.N.” xvi, xix, 120, 171, 172, 209, 216, 217, 230, 255, 260 Preston, Jean 25 Promptorium Parvulorum 221 Protestants 254 Pseudo-Bonaventura 221 Meditationes Vitae Christi 221 Pseudo-Dionysius xiv, xix, 4,5, 61, 76, 98, 99-103, 115, 118, 128, 130, 131, 151, 152, 157-160, 162, 164, 166, 167, 168, 172, 198, 205, 216, 217, 221, 267 De Mystica 172 Opera 99, 103, 104, 108 Purdawnce, Margaret 251 Pynson, Richard Printer 249 Quakers 5, 242 Quietists 242, 267 Rabbi 124, 128 Raughton, Emma 218 Raymond of Capua OP 183, 189, 230-231 “Reader Response” xvii Redman, Robert Printer 250, 251 The Pype or Tonne of Life of Perfection 250 Mirror or Glasse of Christes Passion 250 Reed, Roger 93, 133 Reformation xix, 24, 29, 117, 162, 198 Renaissance 198 Resuscitatio Lazari 76 Reynolds, Anna Maria CP xii, xiv, xv, xviii, 28, 93, 223, 264 Reynolds, Richard OSS, “Angel of Syon” 254, 255, 259 Ricasoli OSS 188

326 Richard II 79, 107, 115, 118, 120, 128, 152, 189, 204, 246 Richard III 93, 200, 220 Richard of Armagh 102 De Pauperis Salvatoris 102 Richelieu, Cardinal 277 Ricketts, Bridget OSS 263 Robespierre, Maximilien 272, 273 Robinson, Thomas Pirate 257, 262, 266 Rock, Daniel Dr 263 Rolle, Richard of Hampole 23, 24, 105, 152, 198, 199, 200, 201, 220, 248, 255, 266, 267 Incendium Amoris 200, 248 The Form of Living 152 Roma xiv Roman de la Rose 216 Romana, Francesca St 190 Ruccellai OSS 188 Ruusbroec, Jan van xvi, 5, 23, 120,160, 163, 167, 172, 199, 208, 209, 212, 216, 240, 266, 276 Sparkling Stone xvi, 5, 23, 120, 172, 209, 216, 240 Spiritual Espousals 163, 167 “SI” 23, 249 “Sacred Conversation” xvi, 3, 6, 20, 128, 148, 149, 187, 229 Salthows 250 Sand, George 222 Saracens 184 Sargent, Michael 200 Saunders, Elizabeth OSS 260, 261, 269 Saunders, Nicholas Dr 260, 261 Savonarola Committee xiii Sawtre, William 22, 114, 216, 218, 253

Index Scandinavia 108 Scholastica xix, 75-76, 217, 241, 255, 277 Skot, John 251 Scrope, Richard le Archbishop 22, 201, 247 Sewell, Joanna OSS 160, 220, 248, 249 Shakespeare, William 262 Sigismund, Emperor 118 SISMEL xiii, 98 Sloane, Hans Sir 39-40 Smythe, Nathanael xix, 94 Soderini OSS 188 Sotheby’s 222, 249 Southfield, William OCarm 94, 230, 231 Speculum Inclusorum 163 “Spiritual Exercises” xvii, 266 St Quintin, Tony xiii Stagel, Elsbeth OP 277 Staley, Lynne xvii Stapletons 262 Stapleton, Agnes 201, 259 Stapleton, Anne OSS 258, 259 Stapleton, Emma Dame 21, 201, 206, 208, 255, 258, 259 Stapleton, Miles Sir 117, 201, 258 Stefaneschi, Giacomo Cardinal 128 Stephen, King 93 Stephen, Martyr 64 Stock, Brian xvii “Textual Community” Stubbs, Thomas 107 Stukley, John 101 Suger, Abbot 100 Suso, Henry xvi, 5, 23, 59, 167, 172, 199, 208, 212, 216, 266, 269, 276, 277, 300-301

Julian Among the Books: Julian of Norwich’s Theological Library Horologium Sapientiae xvi, 5, 23, 59, 167, 172, 216 Nine Rocks 276 Treatise on Seven Points of Love and Wisdom 269 Sutton, Rycharde 213 Syon Abbey xii, xix, 1, 5, 23, 25, 28, 37, 41, 42, 115, 116, 121, 128, 148, 163, 188, 189, 200, 201, 208, 215, 220, 221, 246-265 “Five Wounds” 22, 23, 81, 210, 214, 248249, 251, 254, 256-265, 269, 271, 279 Syon Pardon 250 “Wanderings of Syon” 249, 255 XV “O”‘s 28, 130, 131, 214 Myroure of Oure Lady 250, 257-259 Orysons 213 Sywardby, Elizabeth 251 Tanner, Norman SJ xviii Tauler, John 216, 266, 276, 300-301 Teresa of Avila 167 “Textual Community” xvii, 147, 148, 149, 164 Thérèse of Lisieux 2 Thomas, St 68, 122 Thorberni, Katillus OSS 24, 105, 220, 247, 248 Throckmortons 263 Throne of Wisdom 37, 76 Thurgarton 160, 162 Thurloe, John Spy 269 Tideka, Ragnildis OSS 247 Trinity 58-59, 112 Truran, Margaret OSB 293 Tudor xiii, 28, 29, 39, 251, 254, 261, 262, 274, 276 Turrecremata, Cardinal 123, 276 Tuscan League 184 Tyndale, William 251

327

Ufford, Isabella, Countess 93, 103, 133, 200, 202 Underhill, Evelyn 152 Upjohn, Sheila xix, 117 Urban V, Pope 106, 107, 183, 184 Urban VI, Pope xvi, 64, 99, 110, 115, 119-120, 126, 164, 185, 189, 212 Vanni, Andrea 186 Vauchez, André 183 Vernacular Theology xvi Victorines xvi, 118, 130, 164, 172, 199 Adam of St Victor 165 Andrew of St Victor 100, 165 Hugh of St Victor 100 Richard of St Victor 100, 151, 152 “Virgin in Humility” 128 Vitry, Jacques de Cardinal 120, 129, 221, 230, 255, 277 Voaden, Rosalynn xvii, 215 Walsh, James SJ xv, 3, 28, 160, 223 Walsingham, Thomas 116 Walsingham, Our Lady of 254 Warren, Nancy Bradley xviii Watson, John Bishop 260, 269 Watson, Nicholas 22, 72, 223 Webster, Augustine OCart 255 Wellesley, Arthur, Duke of Wellington 5, 264 White, Claude OSB 261, 268, 269, 270 Whiterig, John 80, 90, 101,119, 131, 148, 154, 162, 163, 164, 164, 172, 236 Meditations 80, 162, 163, 164 Whytford, Richard 250 A Werke for Householders 250 William of Norwich 52, 167

328 William of St Thierry 4,131, 208 Golden Epistle 4 Wilton Diptych 118, 128 Winge, Vincit 249 Wisdom 5 Worde, Wynken de Printer 115, 187, 212, 242, 249, 254, 259 Image of Love 250 Wounds 22, 23, 81, 120, 123, 124, 131, 210, 211, 213-214, 219, 221, 253, 256, 265

Index Wyclif, John 6, 22, 76, 85, 98, 103, 116, 117, 129, 132, 162, 216, 253 Yang, Jeongho xviii Yates 257 Yate, Elizabeth OSS 257 Yate, Francis 261 Yate, Mrs 261