Saint Julian of Norwich

Bio:

Julian of Norwich is the author of Revelations of Divine Love, which is the earliest-known book in the English language that was written by a woman.

Julian left almost no details about her life beyond what can be gleaned from her writings and her social context. When she was about six years old, the Black Death tore through England. Julian survived, but we do not know how the plague might have affected her or her family. When she was thirty, she prayed to receive a physical illness so that she could share in the suffering of Christ. She received her illness, and with it, a series of visions. These visions were radical and potentially dangerous. English society was wracked with plague outbreaks, economic upheaval, popular revolts, and heresy trials. In her vision accounts, Julian is careful to say that she obeys the Church and does not understand everything she is seeing--especially the divine reassurance that all would eventually work out, and no one would be permanently condemned to Hell.

After her visions, Julian became an anchoress. An anchoress was a special kind of solitary nun who was permanently walled up in a small cell attached to a parish church. The enclosure ritual was basically a funeral, and once she was enclosed, the anchoress became "dead to the world" but alive in Christ. She would spend her days digging her own grave into the floor of her cell, and she would eventually be buried there.

Anchoresses were, however, beloved and active members of their communities. They had windows through which they could speak to visitors and participate in church life. Some anchorites were men, but the majority were women. They served as spiritual advisors and heard many secrets. Julian wrote (or dictated) in Middle English, not Latin. Her writings were eventually smuggled out of England to the Low Countries, where they survived the Reformation and were preserved by other communities of religious women. They fell into obscurity until they were rediscovered in the 1930s, and since then, Julian has exploded in popularity as a patron saint of "interesting times." During COVID lockdowns, many people turned to her revelations for reassurance that "alle shalle be wele."

Julian has a little bit of a "cottagecore" image among her devotees, but like a lot of Christian saints, her story is a lot darker and more radical than people tend to realize, which also makes it more interesting and beautiful.