Theology 

Julian came to such a sense of the awfulness of sin that she reckoned the pains of hell are to be chosen in preference to it. “And to me was shown no harder hell than sin. For a kind soul has no hell but sin.”[22]Julian believed that sin was necessary because it brings people to self-knowledge, which leads to acceptance of the role of God in their life.[23] Julian describes how God suffers with his creation as it experiences great and multifaceted evil.[24]Julian lived in a time of turmoil, but her theology was optimistic and spoke of God's Omnibenevolence and love in terms of joy and compassion. Revelations of Divine Love "contains a message of optimism based on the certainty of being loved by God and of being protected by his Providence."[25]The

 

Legacy

Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes Julian of Norwich when it explains the Catholic viewpoint that in the mysterious designs of Providence, God can draw a greater good even from evil:[25] "Here I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly keep me in the faith... and that at the same time I should take my stand on and earnestly believe in what our Lord shewed in this time—that 'all manner [of] thing shall be well.'"[32]

Poet T. S. Eliot incorporated the saying that "…All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well", as well as Julian's "the ground of our beseeching" from the 14th Revelation, into Little Gidding, the fourth of his Four Quartets:[33]

Each year, beginning in 2013, there has been a week-long celebration of Julian of Norwich in her home city of Norwich, England. With concerts, lectures, workshops, and tours, the week aims to educate all interested people about Julian of Norwich, presenting her as a cultural, historical, literary, spiritual, and religious figure of international significance.

 

The Revelations of Divine Love

The Short Text survives in only one manuscript, the mid-15th century Amherst Manuscript, which was copied from an original written in 1413 in Julian’s lifetime.[13] The Short Text does not appear to have been widely read and was not edited until 1911.[14]

The Long Text appears to have been slightly better known, but still does not seem to have been widely circulated in late medieval England. The one surviving manuscript from this period is the mid- to late-15th century Westminster Manuscript, which contains a portion of the Long Text (not naming Julian as its author), refashioned as a didactic treatise on contemplation.[15] The surviving manuscripts of the whole Long Text fall into two groups, with slightly different readings. On the one hand, there exists the late 16th century Brigittine Long Textmanuscript, produced in exile in the Antwerp region and now known as the Paris Manuscript. The other set of readings may be found in two manuscripts, now in the British Library's Sloane Collection.[16] It is believed these nuns had an original, perhaps a holograph, manuscript of the Long Text written in Julian's Norwich dialect.[16] which were written out and preserved in the Cambrai and Paris houses of the English Benedictine nuns in exile in the mid-17th century.[17]

The first printed version of the Revelations was edited by a Benedictine, Serenus Cressy, in 1670. It was reprinted in 1843, 1864 and again in 1902. Modern interest in the text increased with the 1877 publication of a new edition of the Long Text by Henry Collins. An important moment was the publication of Grace Warrack's 1901 version of the book, with its "sympathetic informed introduction" and modernised language, which introduced most early 20th century readers to Julian's writings.[18] Following the publication of the Warrack edition, Julian's name spread rapidly and she became a topic in many lectures and writings. Many editions of the works have been published in the last forty years (see below for further details), with translations into French (five times), German (four times), Italian, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Catalan, Greek and Russian.[15]

Revelations is a celebrated work in Catholicism and Anglicanism because of the clarity and depth of Julian's visions of God.[19] Julian of Norwich is now recognised as one of England's most importantmystics.[20]

 

Julian’s manuscript was sort of lost. It wasn't completely lost--there were some who knew of it, and, as a matter of fact, one of the great things for which she's known in England is that she's the first woman who was published by the printing press, in the early 1500s, after she had died. The manuscript was rediscovered in the British Museum about 100 years ago. It was written in Middle English, around the same time and in the same language as The Cloud of Unknowing.

 

She ends her book Revelations of Divine Love with the fact that Christ dwells within. But she says that we are the city in which God dwells. Where Christ is, there is the Father and the Holy Spirit. At the same time, Christ is the word. So Christ brings me into the heart of the Trinity. The Trinity dwells in me, and I dwell in the Trinity. Everything is Trinitarian, all of life is.