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1 IMAGINING THE POLITICAL A document is a witness; and like most witnesses, it does not say much except under cross-examination. The real dif­ ficulty lies in putting the right question. -Marc Bloch! Julian of Norwich's day was a long time in coming. The modern popu­ larity of the fourteenth-century anchoress and the author of A Reve­ lation ofLove2 follows upon several centuries of neglect, during which copies of her book were rare, and there was little scholarly or popular interest in it. When the first printed edition of her book was published in 1670 (just less than three hundred years after the visionary experi­ ence that occasioned the book), it was by no means greeted with universal accolades. The Anglican bishop Edward Stillingfleet saw it as an example of "the Fantastic Revelations of distempered brains"3 so highly regarded by the Roman Church-a church that forbade the reading of scripture, yet commended "the blasphemous and sense­ less tittle tattle of this Hystorical [sic] Gossip."4 Times certainly have changed. Since the turn of this century, there have been three editions of Julian in her original Middle English, at least eight modernizations, and countless collections of excerpts.5 The choice of Edmund Colledge and James Walsh's 1978 modernization, Julian ofNorwich: Showings, as the inaugural volume in the series Classics of Western Spirituality, indicates not only its current status as a "classic," but also its popu­ larity with a wide audience. Thomas Merton, one of this century's most famous contemplative writers, called her "the greatest of the En­ glish mystics" and, rather than seeing in her writings mere "senseless tittle tattle," describes her work as "a coherent and indeed systemati­ cally constructed corpus of doctrine."6 Even Stillingfleet's Anglican Church seems to have come around: a shrine to her has been built at St. Julian's Church in Norwich, where she was enclosed and from 1 2 / IMAGINING THE POLITICAL which she took her name, and recent years have seen the foundation of the Order of Julian of Norwich in the American Episcopal Church. Such interest should give one pause, particularly in its more "popu­ lar" manifestations. Though Julian's summary of the meaning of her revelation-"Wytt it wele, loue was his menyng" (86.16)-seems simple enough, her thought is in fact complex and, in a number of places, quite obscure. Apart from the probably unresolvable question of what written sources, if any, lie in the background of her text, she clearly draws upon a host of medieval theological conventions with which most of her modern readers are unfamiliar. In some ways her piety is typical of late medieval affective devotion, with its emphasis on the human sufferings of Christ and the royal majesty of God, themes that seem distinctly unfashionable today. The central image around which her visions cluster-the crucifix that is placed before her and that she sees bleed copious amounts of blood-seems excessively morbid when compared with the contemporary religious iconography of Western Europe and North America. Nor is the point of attraction the events of Julian's life. Whereas many who do not particularly care for or about Augustine's theology are still captivated by the life story of the sinner turned saint, Julian offers us no such narrative. We know virtually nothing about her except the meager information that she herself gives us: born prob­ ably in early 1343, she fell ill in May of 1373 and was the recipient of a series of sixteen visions, or "showings," upon which she meditated for at least the next twenty years of her life. We know from the texts that have been preserved that she wrote at least two accounts of the visions, the "short text," which was written at some point before 1388, and the greatly expanded and theologically more developed "long text," which was written at some point after 1393, and perhaps as late as the early fifteenth century. Apart from a few external witnesses who tell us that she had been enclosed as an anchoress by 1393, served at least on occasion as a spiritual guide to those who sought her out, and was still alive in 1416, this is about all we know.? The question of who Julian of Norwich was is a controversial one, but the related question of who she is is no less controversial. What I mean by this is that, in part, Julian's popularity is a result of...

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