Abstract
In a letter to Sr. M. Madeleva, Thomas Merton, the famous Trappist contemplative, wrote: “Julian is without doubt one of the most wonderful of all Christian voices. She gets greater and greater in my eyes as I grow older and whereas in the old days I used to be crazy about St. John of the Cross, I would not exchange him now for Julian if you gave me the world and the Indies and all the Spanish mystics rolled up in one bundle.”1 Merton was not alone in his enthusiasm for Julian. Over the past forty years, a record number of books have anthologized her “sayings” and framed devotional responses to her. A religious order of Julian of Norwich has been founded in the United States. A church dedicated to her name is being built in Australia.2 Over 300 “Julian Meeting” groups gather regularly for contemplative prayer in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, and the United States. Extracts of her Revelation have been turned into sacred choral music.3 She has been depicted, several times over, by contemporary icon painters.
This essay assesses the ways in which Julian has been constructed in Anglican, American Episcopalian, and Roman Catholic spirituality from the 1960s until the present.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Thomas Merton, Seeds of Destruction (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968), pp. 274–75.
See Betty Roe, Make All Things Well: SSAA Unaccompanied (London: Thames, 1992).
Gayle Margherita, The Romance of Origins: Language and Sexual Difference in Middle English Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), p. 6.
VE Day took place on May 7 and 8, 1945. Robert Llewelyn, “Woman of Consolation and Strength,” in Julian: Woman of Our Day, ed. Robert Llewelyn (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985), p. 130
Robert Llewelyn, With Pity Not with Blame: Reflections on the Writings of Julian of Norwich and on the Cloud of Unknowing (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1982), p. 1.
Frank Dale Sayer, “Who Was Mother Julian?” in Julian and Her Norwich: Commemorative Essays and Handbook to the Exhibition “Revelations of divine love,” ed. Frank Dale Sayer (Norwich: Julian of Norwich Celebration Committee, 1973), p. 9
A.M. Allchin, “Julian of Norwich and the Continuity of Tradition,” in Julian: Woman of Our Day, ed. Robert Llewelyn (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985), p. 28
Kenneth Leech, “Contemplative and Radical: Julian Meets John Ball,” in Julian: Woman of Our Day, ed. Robert Llewelyn (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985), pp. 92–96
Llewelyn, With Pity Not with Blame (1982), pp. 117–23. Additionally, several essays in the two volumes of reflections published by the Julian Meetings, Circles of Stillness, ed. Wakeman and Circles of Silence: Explorations in Prayer with Julian Meetings, ed. Robert Llewelyn (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1994)
Hilary Wakeman, “Beginnings...,” in Circles of Silence: Explorations in Prayer with Julian Meetings, ed. Robert Llewelyn (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1994), pp. 4–6
Hebe Welbourn writes at some length on this in “The Spirituality of Julian Meetings and Other Contemplative Networks,” in Circles of Stillness: Thoughts on Contemplative Prayer from the Julian Meetings, ed. Hilary Wakeman (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2002), pp. 136–41.
Liz Tyndall, “JM Spirituality,” in Circles of Stillness: Thoughts on Contemplative Prayer from the Julian Meetings, ed. Hilary Wakeman (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2002), pp. 131–32
John Richards, “Christian and Buddhist,” in Circles of Silence: Explorations in Prayer with Julian Meetings, ed. Robert Llewelyn (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1994), pp. 136–38.
Gillean Russell, “Christian Zen,” in Circles of Stillness: Thoughts on Contemplative Prayer from the Julian Meetings, ed. Hilary Wakeman (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2002), pp. 30–31.
Hebe Welbourn, “Prayer in the Body,” in Circles of Stillness: Thoughts on Contemplative Prayer from the Julian Meetings, ed. Hilary Wakeman (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2002), pp. 34–35.
Llewelyn, With Pity Not with Blame (1982), pp. 106–16, 123–26. There are also some essays within the academic tradition that pursue this alignment: for example, Katharine Watson, “The Cloud of Unknowing and Vedanta,” in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1982), pp. 76–101.
The international interfaith movement goes back to the 1890s, when the World Parliament of Religions was held for the first time in Chicago in 1893. Significant early twentieth-century initiatives include the establishment of the World Congress of Faiths in 1936. Interest in interfaith ideas grew in momentum through the 1960s, causing Pope Paul VI to instate a new Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue in 1964. Marcus Braybrooke provides a useful history of the movement in Pilgrimage of Hope: One Hundred Years of Global Interfaith Dialogue (London: SCM Press, 1992).
Philip Sheldrake, S.J., Spirituality and History (London: SPCK, 1991), pp. 90–93
Kenneth Leech, “Contemplation and Resistance,” in Circles of Silence: Explorations in Prayer with Julian Meetings, ed. Robert Llewelyn (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1994), pp. 100
Kenneth Leech, “Hazelnut Theology: Its Potential and Perils,” in Kenneth Leech and Sr. Benedicta Ward, S.L.G., Julian Reconsidered (Oxford: Sisters of the Love of God Press, 1988), pp. 6–7
Sheila Upjohn, Why Julian Now? A Voyage of Discovery (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1997), p. 132.
Shawn Madison Kahmer, “Redemptive Suffering: The Life of Alice of Schaerbeek,” in Maistresse of My Wit: Medieval Women, Modern Scholars, ed. Louise D’Arcens and Juanita Feros Ruys (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 267–94
Rev. Jack Robert Burton, “After the Festival,” in Julian and Her Norwich: Commemorative Essays and Handbook to the Exhibition “Revelations of divine love,” ed. Frank Dale Sayer (Norwich: Julian of Norwich Celebration Committee, 1973), pp. 36–38.
Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich, Mystic and Theologian, 2nd ed. (London: SPCK, 2000), pp. xxii–xxiii.
John Swanson, O.J.N., “Guide for the Inexpert Mystic,” in Julian: Woman of Our Day, ed. Robert Llewelyn (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985), pp. 77–78
Philip Gleason, Keeping the Faith: American Catholicism Past and Present (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), pp. 11–34.
Elizabeth Ruth Obbard, O.D.C., “God Alone Suffices,” in Julian: Woman of Our Day, ed. Robert Llewelyn (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985), pp. 102–20.
Brian Thorne, Infinitely Beloved: The Challenge of Divine Intimacy (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2003), pp. 7–21.
Similar psychotherapeutic readings include Jane F. Maynard, “The Contribution of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations to Finding Religious and Spiritual Meaning in AIDS-related Multiple Loss,” in Women Christian Mystics Speak to Our Times, ed. David B. Perrin, O.M.I. (Franklin, WI: Sheed & Ward, 2001), pp. 89–107.
Daniel J. Rogers, “Psychotechnical Approaches to the Teaching of the Cloud Author and to the Showings of Julian of Norwich,” in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Papers Read at Dartington Hall, July 1982, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1982), pp. 143–60
Martin Israel, The Revelations of Julian of Norwich: A Meditation (Louth, UK: The Churches’ Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies, 2000)
Philip Sheldrake, Images of Holiness (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1987), pp. 28–29
Ritamary Bradley’s Julian’s Way: A Practical Commentary on Julian of Norwich (London: Harper Collins, 1992)
T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” in Collected Poems 1909–1935 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1950), p. 145.
Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge, 2nd rev. ed. (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1990), pp. 142–43
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (London: Burns and Oates, 1968), pp. 191–92.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2009 Sarah Salih and Denise N. Baker
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Whitehead, C. (2009). “A Great Woman in Our Future”: Julian of Norwich’s Functions in Late Twentieth-Century Spirituality. In: Salih, S., Baker, D.N. (eds) Julian of Norwich’s Legacy. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101623_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101623_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-37403-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-10162-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)