Two Ways of Seeing: The Challenge of Julian of Norwich's Parable of a Lord and a Servant

In what is described conventionally as the Long Text of Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, or A Revelation of Love, Chapter 51 is the longest chapter. In important ways it is also the heart of the text and a key to Julian's major theological insights and teachings.¹ The chapter outlines a parable of a lord and a servant and then reflects upon this narrative in challenging ways. The parable is presented as God's answer to Julian's various anxieties about how to understand her own experience of daily sinfulness in the light of her growing sense of God's lack of blame.

In Chapter 45 of the Long Text, Julian outlines her background problem that is a result of her visionary experience. How is she to reconcile the "judgment of Holy Church" that "sinners sometimes deserve blame and wrath" with the fact that "I could not see these two in God"? However, "to all this I never had any other answer than a wonderful example of a lord and a servant, as I shall tell later, and that was very mysteriously revealed." By "example," Julian means an exemplum of the kind that medieval preachers used to illustrate their message.

THE EXEMPLUM AND LORDSHIP

The genre of exempla, or "examples", was a rhetorical device and a legacy of the classical world. There, the category of "examples" or illustrations, were originally used by political or legal orators and writers such as Suetonius and Plutarch. Up to the early thirteenth century, the use of an exemplum tended to be by Christian moralists and was an instrument of edification. This usually revolved around the imitation of an individual, such as Jesus Christ, whose life story was the quintessential "example" for Christians of virtue and religious practice. Thereafter, the genre became associated more with a new style of preaching that suited the needs of a society and culture increasingly dominated by the expanding urban classes. Collections of exempla were produced to assist preachers. An "example" might be an anecdote, whether brief or extensive like Chapter 51 of Julian's Long Text. It might sometimes be a real story or perhaps it was an allegorical fable or parable-again, as in Chapter 51. Either way, such rhetorical devices were used to inform, edify, persuade and motivate the listeners. "Examples" were instruments of recollection and memory aimed at helping those who listened to them or who read them, as was the case with the parable of the lord and the servant, to recall a nourishing lesson that pointed forwards towards salvation. In that sense, the ultimate horizon of such spiritual or moral "examples" was eschatological. Indeed, such a horizon of ultimacy characterises the conclusion to Julian's parable.²

A specific feature of Julian's exemplum or parable is the imagery of lordship and of service. This imagery is present only in the Long Text and is anticipated in earlier chapters. It also echoes important social values in Julian's changing times. As early as the First Revelation (Chapter 7), through the medium of her bodily vision of the "copious bleeding of the head" of Jesus on the cross, Julian found strength in her realisation that the Lord God, while rightly revered and feared, "is so familiar and so courteous." Julian goes on to reflect that the greatest gift a great lord can offer a servant is to be familiar. "See, what greater honour and joy could this noble lord give me than to demonstrate to me, who am so little, this wonderful familiarity?" The point is that this is a greater joy than being given "great gifts" in the sense of money or other material presents. This thought is echoed strongly in the parable. Again in Chapter 14, Julian's "understanding was lifted up into heaven." There she sees God as a lord "in his own house"–yet, a lord who despite his status appears to take no position of rank but hosts a splendid banquet for "all his friends", "very familiarly and courteously."

The themes...