Julian of Norwich’s Showings :
A Prescriptive and Persuasive Style Gives Her Agency
by Dena Claudon
Engl. 498
Prof. Sanok
March 2001
Senior Seminar Paper
Dena M. Claudon
Engl. 498
Prof. Sanok
14 March 2001
Julian of Norwich’s Showings: A Prescriptive and Persuasive Style Gives Her Agency
Julian of Norwich writes of herself as a “lewd” creature, protesting that she is
ignorant to the matters of which she speaks. She dispraises her abilities as an author
often, and one may be tempted to consider her an unworthy source for spiritual guidance.
However, as Edmund Colledge and James Walsh explain, Julian’s self-inferiorating
comments are no more than a “well-known, often-employed” rhetorical device that Julian
used to appeal to the reader for benevolence (19). Thus, Julian’s self-effacing claims
serve as a medieval disclaimer of sorts.
Disclaimer or not, Julian writes prescriptively as though she were a spiritual
doctor, dispensing healing medicines and salves to her readers. Julian’s authority likens
to a doctor’s, where a doctor may have a diploma or license framed on an office wall.
The license or diploma states that the doctor meets certain requirements set by a given
institution. This institution gives the doctor the authority to practice medicine and offers
him a paper to prove it. A patient goes to a doctor assuming that the doctor knows how
to help heal a given ailment.
The patient also assumes that he or she lacks the knowledge and ability to heal
his or her own body. The patient and doctor recognize this lack of knowledge and ability
as a need that only the doctor can meet. The patient puts such confidence in the doctor’s
ability to meet this need that he or she is willing to even strip naked and entrust his or her
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body to a doctor’s examination. In the end, the goal of the visit is physical healing, and
the doctor advises the patient on how to reach that goal. Perhaps the doctor writes a
prescription.
Like a doctor, Julian possesses certain knowledge on spiritual matters. The
Church, an institution, gives her authority to preach on such matters by giving her the
position of an anchoress. In her exposition, Julian assumes her readers lack knowledge
on spiritual matters; otherwise, she wouldn’t care to take such pains to record her
experiences for her readers. Julian advises her patients on how to obtain spiritual health
and expects them to comply with her advice. This assumptive and authoritative advice is
what I call prescriptive writing.
Julian makes prescriptive claims regarding sin and salvation in her Showings by
establishing her credibility and by soliciting a response from the readers. Her
prescriptive style gives Julian agency and authority to her audience, her readers and the
church. Julian writes prescriptively when she employs phrases like “God’s will” and “we
should pay heed to this,” and follows such phrases with explanations of her
contemplations, of Christ’s role in one’s salvation, and of the influence of sin.
So then it is our blessed Lord’s intention in this teaching that we should pay heed
to this: For since I have set right the greatest of harms, it is my will that you
should know through this that I shall set right everything which is less (Richard J.
Payne, Ed. 150).
In this passage, Julian addresses her question on why God allowed sin into the
picture if it causes such “great harm” to his creatures. She explains that God tells her his
setting right, or salvation, has far greater benefits than the harm caused by sin. This is an
important revelation to her, especially since she exhorts the reader to “pay heed” to this
revelation.
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She adds credibility to her exhortation by preceding it with “it is our blessed
Lord’s intention in this teaching.” “[T]his teaching” assumes that what she has learned is
worthy to dispel—to teach—to others. The “blessed Lord’s intention” suggests that
Julian considers “this teaching,” and her revelation, to be divinely inspired. Her belief of
divine inspiration upholds itself as a sort of authoritive canon that she hopes her readers
will consider credible enough to heed.
Furthering her argument, Julian tells how God gave her understanding of two
portions in relation to Jesus and salvation. One portion is that God counsels and teaches
the reader “inwardly and outwardly” through the Holy Spirit and the Church (150).
Julian, an anchoress, exists as a part of the Church, and it seems likely that she considers
herself to be that outward teacher and counselor. She takes her status one step further
when she says that readers will profit when they accept this inward and outward counsel
“with reverence and humility.”
“[W]ith reverence and humility” suggests that Julian is speaking of a subjegation
of her readers in relation to the counsel of the Church (Julian) and the Holy Spirit, where
she the readers are not in a position where they can discover salvation without those
inward and outward counsels. Furthermore, readers must accept those counsels with a
reverence for the counsel they have received, and possibly for the counselor.
The second portion is that knowledge that is “additional” to salvation is hidden
from people. Julian essentially says that we can’t know everything that God knows, and,
out of obedience, we shouldn’t demand to know.
Julian heightens her prescriptive language a notch in the following passage,
… I am certain that if we know how much we should please him and solace
ourselves by leaving it alone, we should do so. The saints in heaven wish to know
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nothing but what our Lord wishes to show them, and furthermore their love and
their desire is governed according to our Lord’s will; and so we ought to wish to
be like him. And then we shall not wish or desire anything but the will of our
Lord, for we are all one in God’s intention (150-151).
It will be helpful to break down this passage a bit to examine some of the claims
and assumptions Julian makes. “We should please him” assumes that her readers’ role is
to live such a life that would please God, and that God wants to be pleased. She also
assumes to know what the heavenly saints’ wishes and desires are, and that their wishes
align with Julian’s advice that we should not wish to know that which is hidden. “[T]heir
love and desire is governed according to our Lord’s will” assumes that God’s will
governs his people, and claims that God’s will aligns with Julian’s advice that we should
not wish to know that which is hidden.
She prefaces this passage with suggesting that if we know how to please God,
then “we should do so.” She follows this preface with her assumptions and claims that it
is God’s will that we not wish or ask to know that which is hidden. Overall, Julian
qualifies her counsel by attributing it to God’s will, and by claiming that it is in
agreement with the saints, while she prescribes her beliefs to her readers by using words
such as “should” and “ought.”
Julian concludes that her prescription will produce positive results, as in, “and so
we ought to wish to be like him. And then we shall not wish or desire anything but the
will of our Lord, for we are all one in God’s intention.” In essence, the reader will be
free from the preoccupation of trying to uncover that which is hidden, and so will be
desiring and living only in God’s will along with all other believers who are doing the
same.
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Prescriptively, Julian builds her argument (I will call her narrative an argument
because of her prescriptive language) on how readers should respond to the known and
unknown in relation to salvation. She formats this argument by establishing credibility,
whether by attributing such credibility to her own experience (i.e., visions/revelations)
with God, by her assumptions of views of other Christians who would be upheld in her
readers’ eyes (i.e., the saints), and by her claimed knowledge of God’s character and will.
She disperses these credibility claims throughout her argument, as described in the above
passages, and exhorts her readers to adhere to her argument.
This prescriptive format is used throughout in Julian’s discussions of other
revelations throughout Showings. One key revelation discusses sin and salvation.
Prefacing her argument once again, Julian says,
I understood Christ’s Passion for the greatest and surpassing pain… I did not see
sin, for I believe that it has no kind of substance, no share in being, nor can it be
recognized except by the pain caused by it. And it seems to me that this pain is
something for a time, for it purges and makes us know ourselves and ask for
mercy; for the Passion of our Lord is comfort to us against all this, and that is his
blessed will (225).
Her prescriptive language is lighter in this passage since she does not use the
terms “should” or “ought,” and instead uses the phrases “I understand,” “I believe,” and
“it seems to me.” “It seems to me” seems to make a less direct claim on the validity of
her opinion. Her style is more reflective here, where she spends more space describing
her understanding of sin.
Still, she aligns the conclusion of her understanding of sin and pain to being
God’s will, as in “that is his blessed will.” One can conclude what Julian would prescribe
her readers here by referring to her prior suggestion that if we know how to please God,
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then “we should do so.” Thus, her readers should acknowledge that God’s will is to
comfort his people when they suffer from the pain caused by sin.
Colledge and Walsh expand on Julian’s notions of sin and suffering. They say
that she believes that suffering from sin, and through suffering like Christ (i.e., not from
sin but as in the oneness of herself with Christ), purifies (as in “purges” above) and
redeems her because such suffering turns her to love Christ (44). It is profound that
Julian ties in sin and suffering to salvation, especially noted by terms such as purify,
redeem, and purge, because she was employing a formula of sorts for her reader to
achieve salvation—the end goal of a God-seeking Christian.
One can speculate why Julian writes with a prescriptive edge in Showings. The
main reason Julian writes prescriptively is due to the nature of Christianity and Biblical
writings. The gospel as, Scripture describes, is a message about a Savior who came to
earth in the form of a man, who was sinless, who died and then rose from the dead to
save the human race from its sin. For instance, “For God so loved the world that he gave
his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world
through him” (John 3.16-17).
More than describing salvation, Scripture requests a response on the part of the
reader and prescribes a result of that response. For example, Romans 10.9 reads, “That if
you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised
him from the dead, you will be saved.” This passage tells the reader to respond with
voice and belief to the gospel message, and says salvation is the result of a direct
response.
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It is possible that Julian placed the responsibility on herself of conveying this
message to her readers. She had access to Scripture, so it can be assumed that she
adopted the Biblical ideas on salvation. As Colledge and Walsh point out, she is
“especially aware” of the teachings of Paul and John, and her teachings are close to theirs
(78-79).
The similarities between Julian, Paul and John’s persuasive style are endless.
Like John, Julian prefaces her arguments with descriptions of her experiences. John says,
“What we have seen and heard we are telling you, that you may also have this union…
with the Father and with his son Jesus Christ… that your joy may be full” (1 John 1.3-4).
His statement here likens to Julian’s statement earlier, “I understood Christ’s Passion for
the greatest and surpassing pain… I did not see sin, for I believe that it has no kind of
substance, no share in being, nor can it be recognized except by the pain caused by it.”
Her reasons for conveying her revelations to her readers is also similar to the
reasons John gives for his followers, “that you may also have this union… that your joy
may be full.” Julian says, “And then we shall not wish or desire anything but the will of
our Lord, for we are all one in God’s intention.” In other areas, Julian emphasizes the
oneness or being united with Christ and God (285). Her prescriptions for unity liken to
John’s.
Julian’s similarly prescriptive style lend credence to the idea that she had access
to Scripture, and that she based her authority as a messenger on such Scripture. The
command to “…go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have
commanded you” (Matt. 28.19-20). She, convinced that God commanded her to write
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down her revelations, saw it her duty to describe her experience (19). It is equally
possible that she saw it her duty to dispel her teachings to her readers as part of a
Scriptual command such as the one above.
A main reason Julian writes prescriptively attributes to her notion that it was
God’s will for her to write and teach her visions to her readers, a notion supported by the
Church, Scripture, and her revelations. Overall, Julian’s prescriptive edge gives her
agency and authority as a woman writer.
As an anchoress, Julian already had a certain level of authority in the eyes of the
church and laypeople. By the Ancrene Wisse’s definition, an anchoress “is anchored
under a church like an anchor under the side of a ship, to hold that ship so that waves and
storms do not overturn it,” where the “ship” is the church. The author speaks of the
anchoress’ position as a spiritually motivated mercantile exchange where she has made
an “agreement” to keep the church from “falling” under the devil’s blasts of temptation
(101).
The author of the Ancrene Wisse put a lot of stock in his anchoresses by calling
them by name anchoress. An anchor is something of weight, something sailors and
merchants depend on for stability amidts the tumultous ocean and stormy weather.
Julian, then is the anchor that is “to hold that ship so that waves and storms do not
overturn it” for the Church and for the laypeople that depend on the Church for spiritual
guidance and stability. The Church gave this responsibility of spiritual guidance and
stability to its anchoresses, thus giving them authority in spiritual matters.
Julian may have mimicked Ancrene Wisse’s prescriptive style as she did the
Bible’s, since the Ancrene Wisse was her other guidebook, and since it laid down a
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prescriptive written code for its anchoresses. For example, it defines a “good anchoress”
is not a “ill-humored anchoress,” nor is she prone to anger, vengeance, grudges, lust, or
laziness (93-101). To Julian, the Ancrene Wisse gave her the authority to be a spiritual
guide to her readers and to solicit a response from them.
Julian acquired agency on her own by priming herself as an authority on spiritual
matters. We could say that she adopted this authoritive voice from the Ancrene Wisse
and from Scripture. We could also say that she only achieved authority and agency since
the Church and her male superiors gave such to her. However, Julian still obtained
authority and agency amidst the Church’s employment of her.
Returning to the doctor analogy, Julian expressed her own ideas and thoughts
founded on her own experiences with her visions of God. She developed understanding
of her relationship with God through her own experiences along with the guidance of the
Church. Moreover, some of her advice strays from the teachings of the Church. For
example, her idea of universal salvation differs from the Church’s teaching.
As Bernard Lord Manning says, the 14th Century Church “strove for order and
regulasion [sic], fighting chiefly against individual fancies and unprofessional rites. A
disturbing belief was opposed; an accommodating one was nourished…” (79). Julian, as
suggested by her vocabulary, advocated the notion that God had a “will,” a Divine
predestination perhaps, an “intention” that “governed” how people could be saved from
sin, blessed by suffering, or content with knowing just enough about himself. According
to Manning, this belief in Divine predestination could harm the influence of the Church,
since it “…made it impossible or unncessary that men should work out their own
salvation by the recognised [sic] ecclesiastical machinery” (87). It is quite possible that
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Julian’s teachings threw an indoctrinated monkey wrench into the ecclesiastical
machinery of her time since her ideas and advice competed with those of the Church, and
in so doing, competed with the Church’s authority.
This competitive and contrasting nature of some issues such as predestination
demonstrate Julian’s agency as a women writer, and that such agency can depart from the
Church ordained agency of an anchoress. And though the Church offered opportunities
for women to achieve authority as anchoresses, anchoresses still encountered obstacles
within the eremitical communities in which they lived. Historically, women’s followings
of the eremitical movement numbered in the thousands in part because gender bore “no
hindrance in the beginning of any community” (Henrietta Leyser 49). Women were
converted along with their families and husbands, and were able to bring their families
with them to eremitical communities (49).
However, there were “special problems” for hermits and anchoresses. It was
difficult for women to start a “foundation,” or establish authority and agency within their
community, because “they needed men to protect them, to build and do other heavy work
for them… and for the administration of the sacraments. They had to therefore find some
group of men who were willing—and not all of them were—to accept the responsibility
of their joining them” (Leyser 49). Some communities were more welcoming, especially
those that had the view, as did Gaucher of Aureil for example, that “’neither sex was
excluded from the kingdom of heaven’” (50). Still, the history of Julian’s profession was
born under the supervision and administration of male superiors, and this in itself,
whether she recognized it or not, provided an obstacle for Julian to overcome in order to
obtain agency, and that she did.
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The University of York Student Union website attributes Julian’s agency to the
prescriptive ideas she presents in her work, such as “Julian's utter and repetitive
subjection to God and Christocentrism” which “has the effect of undoing the patriarchal
figures that Julian is so desperate to obey.” In other words, Julian’s prescriptive advice to
obey God’s will gave her agency over men because she appealed to God for salvation.
Lucy Menzies put it best when she said, “… whatever her indebtedness to others, she is
refreshingly original. She has a homely way of looking at things, of stating the deepest
truths in the simplest way… we cannot read it [Showings] without being infected by its
brave and sunny way of facing life, above all by its conviction that our lives matter to
God” (100). Julian’s work, though based on beliefs and the prescriptive style of
Scripture, the Ancrene Wisse, and her contemporaries, was no doubt original in her down
to earth manner of speaking and advice.
In the end, for Julian, “mysticism… provided a mouthpiece for the female voice
to make itself heard” where her “revelations are instructional, she is teaching, and in
effect the female is empowered, possessing authority over the male” (University of York
Student Union website).
Today, Julian’s prescriptive style has influenced the style of modern writers who
write about her. Brant Pelphrey, in Love was His Meaning: The Theology and Mysticism
of Julian of Norwich, provides a case in point. He addresses his readers throughout his
text, using the pronouns “you,” “we,” and “our.” Pelphrey says, “Although we shall see
the experience of pain, which she identified… with the cross… we should bear in mind
that for Julian pain itself is never a reflection of God’s own being” (255). He uses the
same prescriptive verbs, “should,” as Julian. Now, he most likely did not approach her
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text and say, “I’m going to write in her style,” and there is presumably no evidence
linking his style to her’s. However, it is in the least amusing that modern writers still
write in that old persuasive, prescriptive style which Julian used.
Another impact of Julian’s prescriptive style and authoritative voice is that
modern writers, organizations, and readers adopt and circulate the ideas she espoused.
Roberta Bondi circulates Julian’s ideas in her article, Set Free. Bondi asks why the
teachings of Christian women in the past have been excluded from the teachings of the
modern day Church, and suggests that such an exclusion is harmful to modern day
women who seek to serve in the Christian community. She says, “The absence of their
stories is not only a travesty of the gospel, but also a terrible injustice,” and discusses this
injustice as a form of suffering for modern day women in Christian ministry.
Bondi refers to Julian’s ideas on suffering for solace. She says, “The world is
God's, Julian reminds us, and because God is good and loves us infinitely, God will not
leave broken what God has made.” Bondi then quotes Julian,
Saying most comfortingly: 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 every kind of thing will be well.
Bondi adopts Julian’s ideas on God’s return for our suffering by using the
inclusive pronouns “us” and “we” throughout her article. She ends her article by
exhorting her readers to faithfulness and love, as Julian did, by saying, “If we are faithful,
love will be the outcome. All will be well.” Interestingly, Bondi uses Julian’s
prescriptive advice as a spiritual salve on her wounds wrought by the dominance of male
leaders within the Church, and she appeals to Julian’s advice for spiritual healing. Truly,
Julian’s stylistic influence is a lasting one.
Works Cited
Anonymous, and Hugh White (translator). Ancrene Wisse: Guide for Anchoresses. New
York: Penguin, 1994 (10th ed.). Print.
Colledge, Edmund, and James Walsh. Julian of Norwich: Showings. Mahwah, NJ:
Paulist, 1977. Print.
Leyser, Henrietta . Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England 450-1500.
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson History, 2002. Print.
Payne, Richard J. Origen: An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer and Selected Works.
Print.
Appendix: Replicating Julian of Norwich’s Prescriptive Style
Dena M. Claudon
Engl. 498
Prof. Sanok
8 March 2001
I understood students’ passion for learning and great pains taken in this
class… I did not see mistakes, for I believe that mistakes have no kind of
substance, no share in being, nor can they be recognized except by the pain
caused by them. And it seems to me that this pain is something for a time, for it
purges and makes us know ourselves and ask for mercy, for the will of our
professor is comfort to us against all this, and that comfort is her good will.
I am certain that if we know how much we should please professor and
comfort ourselves by performing our duties in this class, then we should do so.
Other exceptional students in this university all wish to succeed in their classes
and meet their professors’ expectations. All good professors once did this. Their
love for learning and their desire for growth is governed according to the will of
their educational guides; and so we ought to wish to be like them. And then we
shall not wish or desire anything but education and advancement and the will of
our professor, for we are all one in our intentions.
So then, it is our good professor’s intention in this teaching that we should
pay heed to this: For since she has set right our learning because it is her will that
we should know through the experience of this class that our hard work is worth
any pain or mistakes or late nights we may have had to endure.
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Julian of
Norwich’s
Showings :
A Prescriptive
and Persuasive
Style Gives Her
Agency
j u l i a n by Dena Claudon n orwic h cath edra l
a Julian makes prescriptive claims in Showings by soliciting
a response from the readers. Julian writes prescriptively as
though she were a spiritual doctor, dispensing healing medicines
and salves to her readers.
b Julian builds her argument on how readers should respond
to the known and unknown in relation to salvation. She formats
this argument by establishing credibility, whether by attributing
such credibility to her own experience (i.e. visions/revelations)
with God, by her assumptions that other well-known Christians
s agreed with her (i.e. the saints), and by her claimed knowledge of
God’s character and will. She prescribes her beliefs to her readers
by using words such as “should” and “ought.”
One can speculate why Julian writes with a prescriptive
t edge in Showings. The main reason Julian writes prescriptively is
due to the nature of Christianity and Biblical writings, where such
requires a response of belief from a person. The similarities
between Julian, Paul and John’s persuasive style are endless.
r Also, Julian may have mimicked Ancrene Wisse’s prescriptive
style since it laid down a prescriptive code for anchoresses. To
Julian, the Ancrene Wisse and Bible gave her the authority to be a
spiritual guide to her readers and to solicit a response from them.
a A textual reason Julian writes prescriptively is found in her claims
that it was God’s will for her to write and teach her visions to her
readers.
Overall, Julian’s prescriptive edge gives her agency and
authority as a woman writer. Julian acquired agency by priming
c herself as an authority on spiritual matters. While she adopted
this authoritative voice from the Ancrene Wisse and from
Scripture, Julian’s prescriptive advice to obey God’s will gave her
agency over the Church and her male superiors because she
t credited God as her ultimate authority giver on the spiritual
matters she dispensed.
Prepared by Dena Claudon for Senior Seminar Presentation Univ. of Washington 8 Mar. 2001
Images compiled from http://www.umilta.net/web.html