Mysticism and Space: Space and Spatiality in the Works of Richard Rolle, The Cloud of Unknowing Author, and Julian of Norwich

Chapter Six: The Mystical Space of Julian of Norwich

Chapter Six The Mystical Space of Julian of Norwich One word frees us from the weight and pain of life; that word is love. (Sophocles) Defining Julian’s Mystical Space In terms of Henri Lefebvre’s formulation of space, the mystical space of Julian of Norwich would be best placed, though not exclusively , in the category designated representational space. That space, as explained in the Introduction, encompasses nonverbal signs and images . Lefebvre further defines it as space directly lived through its associated images and symbols ..... [which] is the dominated—and hence passively experienced—space which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate. It overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects. Thus representational physical space may be said ..... with certain exceptions, to tend towards more or less coherent systems of non-verbal symbols and signs. (1991/1974, 39) Julian, in her vivid descriptions of the “showings” that she received on May 8th, 1373, certainly reports an experience that both “overlays” and “appropriates” physical space and material objects. The difficulty in wholly designating Julian’s experience as representational space, however, lies particularly in the appending of the concept of “imagi213 nation” to the experience. That is, to Julian, and other mystics, there was nothing imaginary about the experience, despite its amenability to expression in images. Roland Maisonneuve refers to Julian’s space of mystical encounter as a very rich visionary universe, a mundus imaginalis, which is neither the physical world nor the intelligible world, but an intermediate world where the spiritual takes shape, and where the terrestrial, the physical, the visible are spiritual flashes. This is a median and mediating world, theomorphic, that of the divine intelligence which becomes apprehensible by the senses. (1980, 93) Maisonneuve’s summary is germane here because it both encompasses notions of the liminality of mystical space, which was elaborated in Chapter Two, and points to the role of the material sphere in the apprehension and interpretation of Julian’s mystical experience. In addition , such a representation is compatible with the suggested overarching paradigm of the mise en abîme as Julian’s texts disclose layers of experience that are representative of the physical and social world of the time and yet also indicate a new conception of space that is experienced deep within the soul and is conveyed back to the physical and social world via texts and language. In observing Julian through the filter of her text, we see that she, in turn, is observing herself within her own physical and social world and within a textual consciousness that facilitates the relating of her visionary experiences. Despite Julian’s “big picture” approach, however , she shows herself capable of distinguishing the multiple layers of her mystical space. The distinctions are both part of her own experience of the revelations in which she seems to have had access to multiple perspectives, and her stated desire to share her experience with all “evyn cristens.”1 The differentiation is established almost from the outset and is maintained throughout Julian’s text. Most obviously, 214 julian of norwich 1. “fellow Christians” Julian is spatially fixed and physically immobilized in the everyday material space, confined to bed because of her illness. Here she remains , immobile, for the entire duration of the revelations. In terms of the Foucauldian formulation of space, which I presented in Chapter Two, Julian’s bed (or pallet) can be considered to be a heterotopic site, the site of illness which no one else can enter but in which Julian can be easily observed by others. Her bed exemplifies Foucault’s “contested space” as in it life and death, health and sickness, spiritual and material, are juxtaposed and coexistent. It is here that Julian is liminally poised as she receives her last rites and her revelations.2 Her illness rapidly progresses to the point where she is virtually paralyzed , as she explains: “Thus I indured till day, and by then was my bodie dead from the miedes downward, as to my feeling” (LT. 3.290: 17–18).3 However, though Julian cannot move in the physical world, within her mystical space she is able to shift perspective frequently, moving about with great facility. In the beginning, though, an equally immobile object mirrors Julian’s situation across a small intimate space. That object is the crucifix. While Lefebvre might view this crucifix as an object put to symbolic use in representational space, for Julian it...