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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
This article attempts to reveal how Julian uses imagery to make real and concrete for her readers the experience of affective union with God through contemplative prayer. Part of Julian's strategy involves an identification of herself with the figure of Mary Magdalene, in medieval times the seeker of Christ par excellence. I highlight imagery in the Book of Showings that Julian and her readers probably would have associated with the Magdalene. But the more important insight is that, through her use of Magdalene imagery, Julian emphasizes the dramatic elements in the soul's quest for God. In this, she is following the example of many medieval authors, including William of St. Thierry, her major influence, who stressed that the Song of Songs was, not allegory, but essentially a drama between the soul and God. In this study I try to uncover precisely what this drama is like through a word-study of Julian's term for her visions, schewynges, or showings. I also note striking similarities between Julian's individual showings and the actual drama performed in her time, with specific attention to the figure of the Magdalene.
1 Mycoff, David A., A Critical Edition of the Legend of Mary Magdalena from Caxton's Golden Legende of 1483 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1985), 117–18.Google Scholar Although Caxton's version of this Magdalene material appeared after Julian's death, it was based on texts that had circulated in England and on the continent for centuries. See Mycoff's Introduction.
2 “Oneing” is Julian's term for the experience of affective and moral union with God. For excellent discussions of the development of the concept of union with God in the West see Louis Dupré, “Unio mystica: The State and the Experience”; and Bernard McGinn, “Love, Knowledge and Unio mystica in the Western Christian Tradition”; both in Idel, Moshe and McGinn, Bernard, eds., Mystical Union and Monotheistic Faith (New York: Macmillan, 1989).Google Scholar
Riehle, Wolfgang in his The Middle English Mystics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981)Google Scholar focuses on words used to express union with God in Julian's own time. His discussions of “onyng” and related terms are particularly suggestive. See his chap. 7, “Technical Terms for the Mystical Union and for Ecstasy.”
3 The Book of Margery Kempe (London: Penguin, 1985), 238.Google Scholar A wonderful introduction to Kempe, Margery is Atkinson's, Clarissa W.Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983).Google Scholar
Eberly's, Susan “Margery Kempe, St. Mary Magdalene, and Patterns of Contemplation,” Downside Review (1989): 209–23Google Scholar, shows how Margery's own lifestyle may have been shaped by her appropriation of the Magdalene legends.
And Gail McMurray Gibson gives convincing evidence that Margery had been trained to use the English form of the Meditationes vitae Christi, The Mirrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesus Christ, as the basis for her spiritual experience. See Gibson, , The Theater of Devotion: East Anglican Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), chap. 3.Google Scholar
4 All references to Julian are from Colledge, Edmund O.S.A., and Walsh, James S.J., trans., Showings (New York: Paulist, 1978).Google Scholar The critical edition of her text is also their work (Colledge, Edmund O.S.A., and Walsh, James S.J., A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, 2 vols. [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978]Google Scholar).
5 From the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries, piety focused more and more on the emotional richness of Jesus' earthly humanity. Even learned people believed that they could be educated theologically through feeling. Julian's writing is within this tradition, for she states quite clearly at the beginning of her Book that her understanding of God's love will come through feeling what Christ felt during his passion (page 286, lines 12-20).
For elucidation of this affective trend in theology see Bynum, Caroline Walker, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 129f.Google Scholar See also Kolve, V. A., The Play Called Corpus Christi (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1966), 4;Google Scholar and Despres, Denise, Ghostly Sights: Visual Mediation in Late-Medieval Literature (Norman, OK: Pilgrim, 1989).Google Scholar
Another altogether fascinating work which treats this development in piety within the context of drama is Gibson's The Theater of Devotion, listed above.
6 Mycoff develops a typology for the Magdalene figure in the Introduction to his Critical Edition.
7 The most obvious example is Julian's parable, where her descriptions of the lord and his servant have much in common with stage and costume directions found in contemporary plays (see chap. 51 of Showings). It is useful to consider Julian's extensive descriptions of what the lord and his servant wore in the light of Glynne Wickham's discussions regarding conventions of costuming liturgical plays. The author argues for a sense of period in stage costume during the Middle Ages: “Some sort of visual realism was demanded by audiences and granted by designers” (Early English Stages 1300 to 1660 [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963], 1:109Google Scholar).
Another example would be Julian's description of the devil (“His hair was red as rust, not cut short in front, with side-locks hanging at his temples. He grinned at me with a vicious look, showing me white teeth” [311-12]) who is also made to act like a character frequently appearing in the medieval drama. See “The Fall of Lucifer” and “The Fall of Man” in Lucius Coventriae or The Plaie called Corpus Christi, ed. Block, K. S. (London: Oxford University Press, 1974).Google Scholar We may also consider her description of Jesus sitting in the soul as though it were a “fine city” (chap. 68) which shares elements in common with dramatic scenes of the Last Judgment.
Furthermore, a change of costume was frequently the device used to depict a spiritual change on the stage. For instance, Mary Magdalene herself changes clothing from “vestimenta secularia” to “nigrum pallium” (a black mantle) upon her conversion. See “The Passion Play” (Benediktbeuern) in Bevington, David, Medieval Drama (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975), 209.Google Scholar Similarly, Julian's servant, at first dressed in a short tunic that becomes filthy and tattered through his labor in the earth, later wears clothing that is “new, white and bright and forever clean, wide and ample, fairer and richer than the clothing which I saw on the Father” (278).
8 For elucidation of these influences see the Introduction to Colledge and Walsh's critical edition of Julian's Book, esp. chaps. 8 and 9. Petroff's, ElizabethMedieval Women's Visionary Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976)Google Scholar is also helpful. Petroff is aware of the dramatic elements in Julian's text, for she says each of Julian's visions is “a kind of allegorical drama” and many of them are “visualized as scenes dramatizing parables original with her” (300).
9 My method has been developed in dialogue with the ideas of V. A. Kolve. In his work on the medieval drama he notes that because so much material from the Middle Ages has been lost, we have to work with what we have. Although we may not be able to argue for specific influences or from strict chronology, we can get a lively sense of what the era was like, and what probable generic influences were in play. See his The Play Called Corpus Christi, chap. 1. Also very rich and suggestive is his Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, Introduction and chap. 1.
10 Colledge and Walsh believe that Julian became an anchoress sometime after the completion of the long text, which means that she was at least fifty years old before her immurement.
11 An excellent discussion of the pastoral motivation behind Julian's theology is Gatta's, Julia “Julian of Norwich: Theodicy as Pastoral Art,” Anglican Theological Review 63/2 (1981): 173–81.Google Scholar See also Gatta's, very powerful Three Spiritual Directors for Our Times: Julian of Norwich, the Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton (Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1986).Google Scholar
12 Tuma, George Wood, The Fourteenth Century English Mystics: A Comparative Analysis (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1977), 38.Google Scholar
13 I learned this term to characterize Julian from someone else, but I cannot recall the source.
14 The Golden Legend. Also known as the “Lombardica Historia,” and put together by Jacob of Voragine between 1255 and 1266, this work is comprised of saints' lives and short treatises about the Christian festivals. Its purpose was to encourage piety.
15 Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated MS of the Fourteenth Century, Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms. Ital. 115, trans. Ragusa, Isa and ed. Green, Rosalie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961).Google Scholar This is a copiously illustrated ms. of Franciscan influence, at one time attributed to S. Bonaventura. It was rapidly and widely diffused throughout Europe in many languages and versions.
16 See Revelation 14.
17 For a clarifying discussion of the similarities and differences between the terms “hermit” and “anchorite,” see Warren, Ann K., Anchorites and Their Patrons in Medieval England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 8.Google Scholar
18 We do not know much more about drama in Norwich than that it existed and was an important civic event. See Dutka, Joanna, “Mystery Plays at Norwich: Their Formation and Development,” Leeds Studies in English 10 (1978): 107–20;Google ScholarNelson, Alan, “On Recovering the Lost Norwich Corupus Christi Cycle,” Comparative Drama 4 (1970–1971): 241–52;Google Scholar and Kolve, , The Play Called Corpus Christi, 13.Google Scholar The earliest reference we have to drama in Norwich is 1389, sixteen years after Julian's near-death experience with its visions, but at least four years before the completion of her long text. It is also possible that plays of some sort had been performed in Norwich before 1389. If Julian lived until age fifty in Norwich before she was immured, as the critical editors argue, she certainly could have been exposed to the plays. Even if she were a nun in her early years, which is far from proven, she could have heard about them. We know that Julian was aware of other literature of her time. Given the vitality of the seaport of Norwich, which was receptive to religious and cultural influences from the Continent, and given Julian's lively mind it seems quite unlikely that she missed knowing anything about the drama at all.
19 See Kolve, , The Play Called Corpus Christi, 13.Google Scholar
20 The Chester Plays, ed. Deimling, Hermann and Matthews, J. (London: Early English Text Society e.s. 62, 115; 1892, 1916), 6, l.112.Google Scholar
21 Ibid., l.115.
22 Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1954–), Part S.6, 686f.Google Scholar
23 “This book is begun by God's gift and his grace, but it is not yet performed, as I see it” (342).
A fascinating account of Julian's concern for performance is Wright's, Robert E. “The ‘Boke Performyd’: Affective Technique and Reader Response in the Showings of Julian of Norwich,” Christianity & Literature 36/1 (1987): 13–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24 She herself puts it this way: “And the soul was led to this understanding by love, and drawn by power in every revelation” (259).
25 Maisonneuve, Roland, “The Visionary Universe of Julian of Norwich” in Glasscoe, Marion, ed., The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1980), 90.Google Scholar
26 Julian, like people in the Middle Ages and earlier, had a special interest in the relationship between inner and outer reality: “I hope that by his grace he lifts us and will draw our outer disposition to the inward, and will make us all at unity with him” (318-19). See also Medcalf, Stephen, “Medieval Psychology and Medieval Mystics” in Glasscoe, , ed., Medieval Mystical Tradition, 120–55.Google Scholar
27 de Saint-Thierry, Guillaume, Exposé sur le Cantique des Cantiques, introduction and notes by Déchanet, Jean-M. (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1962)Google Scholar, has William's Latin along with M. Dumontier's French translation, and the discussion of the Song of Songs as drama, p. 80. The English translation of William's work is from Mother Hart, Columba O.S.B., trans., Exposition on the Song of Songs (Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1970), 9.Google Scholar
28 Ibid., 13.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 “On Contemplating God,” “Prayer,” and “Meditations” in The Works of William of St. Thierry, (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977), 1:58–61.Google Scholar
32 From “[The Service] for Representing the Scene at the Lord's Sepulchre” (Ad Faciendam Similtudinem Dominici Sepulcri), from Fleury, in Bevington, , Medieval Drama, 42.Google Scholar
33 Ibid., 21-24.
34 Ibid., 43.
35 From notes taken in V. A. Kolve's seminar on medieval drama at the University of California at Los Angeles, Fall Quarter, 1990.
36 Ludus Coventriae or The Plaie called Corpus Christ, ed. Block, , page 207, lines 209-16.Google Scholar
37 Tydeman, William, The Theater in the Middle Ages: Western European State Conditions, c. 800-1576 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 191.Google Scholar
38 For a complete analysis of the implications for spiritual and psychological development of experiences of consolation and desolation, see Coehlo, Mary C., “Understanding Consolation and Desolation,” Review for Religious 44/1 (1985): 61–77.Google Scholar
39 Mycoff, , Critical Edition, 120.Google Scholar
40 Bevington, , Medieval Drama, 751.Google Scholar
41 Ibid.
42 Collect for the Feast of Mary Magdalene, in Morley, Janet, All Desires Known: Prayers Uniting Faith and Feminism (Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow, 1988), 26.Google Scholar