UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN BOOKSTACKS The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its return to the library from which it was withdrawn on or before the _ Latest Date stamped below. | Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. | To renew call Telephone Center, 333-8400 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN OCT 01 1855 os obgs Re — SEP 8 2009 “PER 4 4B OCT 22 2004 Frit 13 APR 20 188 APR 2 © 1988 Oct Q 1 j931 AY oct e Me JUNUL 711991095 L161—O-1096 7 REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE REVELATIONS f DIVINE LOVE Recorded by J ULIAN 9 Anchoress at NJORWICH ' ANNO DOMINI 1373 In Jumine tito videbiraus (uumen. A version fromthe MS. in the BRITISH MUSEUM edited dy GRACE WARRACK Methuen& Co.Ltd. 36Essex Street Strand ondaon 70H Edition Edition Fkait ‘ First Published Second Third Fourth DoMINE, REFUGIUM FACTUS ES NOBIS, A GENERATIONE IN GENERATIONEM. __ ResPIcE IN SERVOS TUOS, ET IN OPERA TUA: ET DIRIGE FILIOS EORUM. _ Er sir spcenpor Domint Dri NosTRI SUPER NOS, ET OPERA MANUUM ___ NOSTRARUM DIRIGE SUPER NOS: ET OPUS MANUUM NOSTRARUM DIRIGE. Truth seeth God, and Wisdom beholdeth God, and of these two cometh the third: that is a holy, marvelling delight in God; which is Love.” , CONTENTS PAGE I, Notes on Manuscripts AND EpiTions oF THIS Book ‘ xi II]. Note as to Two Juans , ‘ ; d , xv III. IntTRopucTion :— Part I, The Lady Julian. ‘ ; ‘ xvii Part II, The Manner of the Book . : : o! XXxill Part III]. The Theme of the Book , : * lv IV. “Reverations oF Divine Love” :— (editorial account) CHAPTER I. A List of Contents, called “*A Particular of the Chapters ” : ; : t : I II.-III, Autobiographical . ; A , ; 3 IV.-IX. The First Revelation: ‘The Trinity is shewn, through the Suffering of Christ, as Goopnerss, or Love all- working . : : ; ‘ . 8 X. The Second Revelation: Man’s Sight of God’s Love is but partial because of sin’s darkness . ; 21 XI. The Third Revelation: All Being is Being of God and is good: Sin is no Being : ' : 26 XII. The Fourth Revelation: The stain of sin through lack- ing of human love is cleared away by the Death of Christ in His Love. : : ° 29 XIN. The Fifth Revelation: By Love’s Sacrifice, in Christ, the evil suffered, for Love’s Increase, to rise, is overcome for ever : : ‘ 30 XIV. The Sixth Revelation: The travail of Man against evil on earth is a glory accepted by Love in Heaven . 33 v1 CONTENTS CHAPTER XV. The Seventh Revelation: It is of God’s Will, for our learning, that on earth we change be- tween joy of light and pain of darkness XVI.-XXI. The Eighth Revelation: Of the oneness of God and Man in the Passion of Christ, through Compassion of the Creature with Christ and of Christ with the Creature. All compassion in men is Christ in men XXII.-X XII. The Ninth Revelation: Of the worshipful enter- ing of Man’s soul into the Joy of Love Divine in the Passion XXIV. The Tenth Revelation: Of the thankful entering of the soul into the Peace of the Endless Love opened up for Man in the time of the Passion XXV. The Eleventh Revelation: Of Christ’s Raising, Fulfilling Love to the souls of men, as beheld in the love between Him and His Mother . XXVI. The Twelfth Revelation: All that the soul lives by and loves is God, through Christ XXVIL-XL. The Thirteenth Revelation: Man’s finite love was suffered by Infinite Love to fail, that falling thus through sin into pain and death of darkness, the creature therein might more deeply know his need and more highly know, in its succouring strength, the Creator’s Love, as the Saviour’s; that so being raised, and for ever held clinging to that through the grace of the Holy Ghost, he might rise to fuller and higher and end- less oneness with God XLL-XLIII. The Fourteenth Revelation; Beginning on earth, Prayer makes the soul one with God XLIV.-LXIII. Regarding these Revelations and the Christian Life of Love’s travail on earth against sin LXIV.-LXV. The Fifteenth Revelation (Closing) ; Of Love’s Fulfilment in Heaven ‘ . PAGE 34 36 46 51 §2 54 55 84 93 159 CHAPTER LXVI. LXVII.-LXVIII. LXIX. LXX.-LXXXV. LXXXVI. CONTENTS Autobiographical: The fall through frailty of nature, by self-regarding, into doubt of the Shewing of Love; the rescue by mercy ; the assaying of faith and the overcoming by grace ; ‘ . ; , The Sixteenth Revelation (Confirming): The In- dwelling of God in the Soul, ules and for ever. ‘* Thou shalt not be overcome’ Autobiographical: The second assaying of faith, through the horror of spiritual darkness; the overcoming by virtue of the Passion of Christ, with help from the Common Belief of the Christian Fellowship The Life of Faith is kept a Sate led-on by Hope The Meaning of the Whole. Of igdiaee more on earth and in Heaven of the One thing taught in the Revelation: the Endless Love; in Which Life is everlasting V. Postscript BY AN EARLY TRANSCRIBER OF THE MANUscRIPT . VI, GtLossaRY . The Title-page is from a design by Phoebe Anna Traquair. Vil PAGE 164 167 170 172 202 204 205 NOTE TO FOURTH EDITION WO additional Manuscripts of these Revelations have recently been brought to light. (1) Dom Gabriel Meunier, in the preface to his translation of MS. 2499, Sloane (Révélations de ? Amour de Dieu, Oudin, Paris, 1910), mentions his discovery of a Manuscript of the end of the Seventeenth or beginning of the Eighteenth Century, No. 3705, Sloane. It is considered probable that the writer of this Manuscript has copied it from No. 2499, rendering obsolete words in more modern English and explaining some obscure phrases. It contains, however, a few passages peculiar to itself, and although it has the same general postscript, the transcriber has added an ending of his own, written in an jnverted pyramid: ‘Here end the Sublime & wonderful Revelations of the unutterable Love of God in Jesus Xt, vouch- safed to a dear Lover of His, & in her to all His dear friends & Lovers, whose hearts, like hers, do flame in the Love of. our Dearest Jesu.”’ (z) The Rey. Dundas Harford, Vicar of Emmanuel Church, West Hampstead, has kindly sent me the following notes as to a Manuscript which he is copying for publication, No. 37,790, Addit. MSS. Brit. Mus.: “It was bought from Lord Amherst’s Library in 1909, and is described in the Catalogue of Addit. MSS., 1906-1909. Two lines of evidence make it probable that this is the Manuscript seen by Blomefield, and lost sight of since 1758 :— (a) The Revelations occupy exactly the ‘36 pages , men- 1x x NOTE TO FOURTH EDITION | tioned by Blomefield, i.e. 18 folios, from 97a to 1154. (b) The © title quoted by Blomefield agrees almost Jteratim with the — Manuscript, with the important exception that either the historian or his printer has mistaken one letter in the date, thus misleading all subsequent writers as to the age of the Lady Julian, who, at the time of the writing of this title, must have been not a hundred but seventy-one years old. The following is a transcript from the MS.:— *«¢ Flere es a vision schewed be the goodenes of God to a deuoute Woman and hir Name es Julyan that is recluse atte Norwyche and yitt ys on lyfe. Anno dni millmo CCCCxiii’. In the whilke Vision er fulle many comfortabylle wordes and gretly styrrande to alle thaye that desyres to be crystes looverse. “*¢] desyred thre graces be the gyfte of god... . «This Manuscript is certainly not the Lady Julian’s own writing. It occurs as one of a series of extracts from medieval works of devotion and piety, and is very much shorter than any of the other Manuscripts of the ‘ Revelations,’ parts in the beginning and the end of these, and all the section between the Fourteenth Revelation and the Fifteenth being omitted. The closing chapter is upon the distinction between ‘reverent dread ’ and ‘false dread.’ It corresponds generally with chapter Ixiv. in this edition, pages 180-182, but with many variations, as witness the closing words: ‘Therefore it is goddes will and oure spede that we knawe tham thus y sundured ffor god wille euer that we be sekered in luffe & peesabill & ristefull as he is to us ryght so of the same condicion as he is to us so will he that we be to our selfe. And to our Evencristen. Amen. “«¢ Explicit Juliane de Norwych.’ (Rubricated.) ”’ As an example of the dialect, this from Rev. xiv. may be added: ‘Prayer anes the saule” (No. 2499, xli., ‘ones the soule’’) “to god. . . . For what tyme that mannes saule es hamelye with god hym nedes nought to praye botte behalde reverentlye whatt he says.” NOTES ON MANUSCRIPTS AND EDITIONS THis English book exists in two Manuscripts: No. 40 of the Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris (Bibliotheca Bigotiana, 388), and No. 2499 Sloane, in the British Museum. The Paris Manuscript is of the Sixteenth Century, the Sloane is in a Seventeenth Century handwriting; the English of the Fourteenth Century seems to be on the whole well preserved in both, especially perhaps in the later Manuscript, which must have been copied from one of mixed East Anglian and northern dialects. This manuscript has no title-page, and nothing is known as to its history. Delisle’s catalogue of the Bibloth. Bigot. (1877) gives no particulars as to the acquisition of No. 388. The two versions may be compared in these sentences :— Chap. u., Paris MS.: “This revelation was made to a Symple creature unlettyrde leving in deadly flesh the yer of our lord a thousannde and thre hundered and |xxiij the xiij Daie of May.” Sloane: “These Revelations were shewed to a simple creature that cowde no letter the yeere of our Lord 1373 the viii day of may.”” Chap. u., Paris MS.: ‘The colour of his face was feyer brown whygt with full semely countenaunce. his eyen were blakke most feyer and semely shewyng full of lovely pytte and within hym an heyward long and brode all full of endlesse hevynlynes. And the lovely lokyng that he lokyd on his servant contynually. And namely in his fallyng + me thoughtit myght melt oure hartys for love. and brek them on twoo for Joy.”’ xi NOTES ON MANUSCRIPTS Sloane: **The color of his face was faire browne, with ful semely features, his eyen were blak most faire and semely shewand ful of lovely pety and within him an heyward long and brode all full of endles hevyns, and the lovely lokeing that he loked upon his servant continuly and namely in his fallyng me thowte it myte molten our herts for love & bresten hem on to for joy.” The Sloane MS. does not mention the writer of the book, but the copyist of the Paris version has, after the Deo Gratias with which it ends, added or transcribed these words: Explicit liber Revelationem Julyane anatorite [sic] Norwyche cujus anime propicietur Deus. Blomefield, in his History of Norfolk (iv. p. 81), speaks of “an old vellum Manuscript, 36 pages of which contained an account of the visions, etc.,”” of the Lady Julian, anchoress at St. Julian’s, Norwich, and quotes the title written by a contem- porary: ‘* Here es a Vision shewed by the godenes of God to a devoute Woman: and her name is Julian, that is recluse at Noryche, and yett is on life, Anno Domini meccexlii. In the whilke Vision er fulle many comfortabyll words, and greatly styrrande to alle they that desyres to be Crystes Looverse ’”?— greatly stirring to all that desire to be lovers of Christ. This Manuscript, possibly containing the writing of Julian herself, was in the possession of the Rey. Francis Peck (1692-1743). The original MSS. of that antiquarian writer went to Sir Thomas Cave, and ultimately to the British Museum, but his general library was sold in 1758 to Mr T. Payne (of Payne & Foss), bookseller, Strand, and this old Manuscript of the ‘‘ Revelations,” which has been sought for in vain in the cata- logues of public collections, may perhaps have been bought and sold by him.!_ It may be extant in some private library. Tersteegen, who, in his Auserlesene Beschreibungen Heiliger Seelen, gives a long extract from Julian’s book (vol. iii. p. 252, tv. Nichol’s Literary Anecdotes, vol. iii. p. 653. AND EDITIONS xiii grd ed. 1784), mentions in his preface that he had seen “in the Library of the late Poiret”’ an old Manuscript of these Revelations. Pierre Poiret, author of several works on mys- tical theology, died in 1719 near Leyden, but the Manuscript has not found its way to the University there. Poiret himself refers thus to Julian and her book in his Catalogus Auctorum Mysticorum, giving to her name the asterisk - _ denoting greatness: ‘¢ Julianae Matris Anachoretae, Revelationes de Amore Dei. Anglice. Theodidactae, profundae, ecstaticae.” (Theologiae Pacificae itemque Mysticae, p. 336. Amsterdam, 1702.) The earliest printed edition of Julian’s book was prepared by the Benedictine Serenus de Cressy, and published in 1670 by permission of his ecclesiastical Superior, the Abbot of Lamb- spring, under the title of Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love. It agrees with the Manuscript now in Paris, but the readings that differ from the Sloane Manuscript are very few and are quite unimportant. This version of de Cressy’s is in Seventeenth Century English with some archaic words, which are explained on the side margins; it was re-printed in 1843. A modernised version taken from the Sloane MS. was published, with a preface, by Henry Collins in 1877 (T. Richardson & Sons). These three, the only printed editions, are now all of great rarity. For the following version, the editor having transcribed the Sloane MS., divided its continuous lines into paragraphs, supplied to many words capital letters, and while following as far as possible the significance of the commas and occasional full stops of the original, endeavoured to make the meaning clearer by a more varied punctuation. As the book is designed for general use, modern spelling has been adopted, and most words entirely obsolete in speech have been rendered in modern English, though a few that seemed of special significance or xiv NOTES ON MANUSCRIPTS charm have been retained. Archaic forms of construction have been almost invariably left as they are, without regard to modern grammatical usage. Occasionally a word has been underlined for the sake of clearness or as a help in preserving the measure of the original language, which in a modern version must lose a _ little in rhythm, by altered pronunciation and by the dropping of the termination “en”’ from verbs in the infinitive. Here and there a clause has been put within parentheses. The very few changes made in words that might have any bearing on theo- logical or philosophical questions, any historical or personal significance in the presentment of Julian’s view, are noted on the margin and in the Glossary. Where prepositions are used in a sense now obscure they have generally been left as they are (e.g., of for by or with), or have been added to rather than altered (¢.g., for is rendered by the archaic but intelligible for that, rather than by because, and of is amplified by words in square brackets, as [dy virtue] of, [out] of rather than changed into through or from). ‘The editor has desired to follow the rule of never omitting a word from the Manuscript, and of — enclosing within square brackets the very few words added. It may be seen that these words do not alter the sense of the passage, but are interpolated with a view to bringing it out more clearly, in insignificant references (e.g. ‘in this [Shewing] ”’), and once or twice in a passage of special obscurity (see chap. xlv.). NOTE AS TO THE LADY JULIAN, ANCHORESS AT ST JULIAN’S, AND THE LADY JULIAN LAMPET, ANCHORESS AT CARROW aN Carrow Abbey, by Walter Rye (privately printed, 1889), is given a list of Wills, in which the name of the Lady Julian Lampet frequently occurs as a legatee between the years 1427 (Will of Sir John Erpingham) and 1478 (Will of William Hallys). Comparing the Will of Hallys with that of Margaret Purdance, which was made in 1471 but not proved till 1483, and from which the name of Lady Julian Lampet as a legatee is stroked out, no doubt because of her death, we find evidence that this anchoress died between 1478 and 1483. As even the earlier of these dates was a hundred and thirty-six years after the birth of the writer of the “Revelations,” who in May 1373 was over thirty years of age, the identity of the “ Lady Julian, recluse at Norwich,” with the Lady Julian Lampet, though it has naturally been suggested, is surely an impossibility. There were anchorages in the churchyards both of St Julian’s, Conisford (which belonged to the nuns of Carrow in the sense of its revenues having been made over to them by King Stephen for the support of that Priory or “‘ Abbey”), and of St Mary’s, the Convent Church of the nuns. See the Will of Robert Pert —proved 1445—which left ‘*to the anchoress of Carhowe Is., to ditto at St Julian’s 1s.,’”’ and that of the Lady Isobel Morley, who in 1466 left bequests to “ Dame Julian, anchoress at Car- row, and Dame Agnes, anchoress at St Julian’s in Cunisford ””— no doubt the same Dame Agnes that is mentioned by Blomefield as being at St Julian’s in 1472. xv xvi NOTE AS TO THE LADY JULIAN Perhaps the almost invariable use of the surname of the Car- | row Dame Julian (who was, no doubt, of the family of Sir Ralph Lampet—frequently mentioned by Blomefield and in the Pasion | Letters) may go to establish proof that there had been before’ her and in her earlier years of recluse life another anchoress | Julian, who most likely had been educated at Carrow, but who lived as an anchoress at St Julian’s, and was known simply as Dame or “the Lady”’ Julian. From Blomefield’s History of Norfolk, vol. iv. p. 524: «¢Carhoe or Carrow stands on a hill by the side of the river, about a furlong from Conisford or Southgates, and was always. in the liberty of the City [of Norwich]. . . . Here was an| ancient Hospital or Nunnery, dedicated to Saint Mary and Saint | John, to which King Stephen having given lands and meadows| without the South-gate, Seyna and Lescelina, two of the sisters, | in 1146 began the foundations of a new monastery called Kairo, | Carrow, Car-hou, and sometimes Car-Dieu, which was dedicated | to the Virgin Mary and Saint John, and consisted of a prioress and | nine (afterwards twelve ) Benedictine black nuns... . Their church was founded by King Stephen and was dedicated to the Blessed, Virgin, and had a chapel of St John Baptist joined to its south) side, and another of St Catherine to its north; there was also an) anchorage by it, and in 1428 Lady Julian Lampet was anchoress| there.” . . . “This nunnery for many years had been a school. or place of education for the young ladies of the chief families of| the diocese, who boarded with and were educated by the nuns.’ . From Dr Jessopp’s Visitations of the Diocese of Norwich, 1492-| 1532, Introduction, p. xliv.: “The priory of Carrow had always enjoyed a good reputation, and the house had for long been a favourite retreat for the daughters of the Norwich citizens who} desired to give themselves to a life of religious retirement.” INTRODUCTION PART I THE Lapy JuLIan Beati pauperes spiritu: quoniam ipsorum est regnum calorum S. Maitth. v. 3 ERY little is known of the outer life of the woman who nearly five hundred years ago left us this book. It is in connection with the old Church of St Julian in the parish of Conisford, outlying Norwich, that Julian is mentioned in Blomefield’s History of Norfolk (vol. iv. p. 81): ‘In the east part of the church- yard stood an anchorage in which an ankeress or recluse dwelt till the Dissolution, when the house was de- molished, though the foundations may still be seen (1768). In 1393 Lady Julian, the ankeress here was a strict recluse, and had two servants to attend her in her old age. This woman was in these days esteemed one of the greatest holiness. In 1472 Dame Agnes was recluse here; in 1481, Dame Elizabeth Scott; in 1510, Lady Elizabeth; in 1524, Dame Agnes Edrygge.” b xvii XViil INTRODUCTION The little Church of St Julian (in use at this day) still keeps from Norman times its dark round tower of flint rubble, and still there are traces about its founda- tion of the anchorage built against its south-eastern wall. ‘This Church was founded,” says the History of the County, ‘‘ before the Conquest, and was given to the nuns of Carhoe (Carrow) by King Stephen, their founder; it hath a round tower and but one bell; the north porch and nave are tiled, and the chancel is thatched. There was an image of St Julian in a niche of the wall of the Church, in the Churchyard.” Citing the record of a burial in ‘‘the churchyard of St Julian, the King and Confessor,” Blomefield observes: ‘‘ which shews that it was not dedicated to St Julian, the Bishop, nor St Julian, the Virgin.” The only knowledge that we have directly fom Julian as to any part of her history is given in her account of the time and manner in which the Revelation came, and of her condition before and during and after this special experience. She tells how on the 8th day of May, 1373,1 the Revelation of Love was shewed to her, ‘‘a simple creature, unlettered,” who had before this time made certain special prayers from out of her longing 1'The Sloane Manuscript gives clearly ‘the viij day”; the Parisian has ‘‘the xiij,” which in de Cressy’s version is printed as xiiij. The figures V and X were frequently confused in tran- scriptions. The Eighth of May must have been a Sunday, for Easter Sunday of 1373 was on the Seventeenth of April (Old Style). THE LADY JULIAN xix after more love to God and her trouble over the sight of man’s sin and sorrow. She had come now, she mentions, to the age of thirty, for which she had in one of these prayers, desired to receive a greater con- secration,—thinking, perhaps, of the year when the Carpenter’s workshop was left by the Lord for wider ministry,—she was ‘‘thirty years old and an half.” This would make her birth-date about the end of 1342, and the old Manuscript says that she ‘‘ was yet in life” in 1413. Julian relates that the Fifteen consecutive ‘‘Shewings” lasted from about four o’clock till after nine of that same morning, that they were followed by only one other Shewing (given on the night of the next day), but that through later years the teaching of these Sixteen Shewings had been renewed and explained and enlarged by the more ordinary enlightenment and in- fluences of ‘‘the same Spirit that shewed them.” In this connection she speaks, in different chapters, of ‘‘fifteen years after and more,” and of twenty years after, ‘‘ save three months”; thus her book cannot have been finished before 1393. Of the circumstances in which the Revelations came, and of all matters connected with them, Julian gives a careful account, suggestive of great calmness and power of observation and reflection at the time, as well as of discriminating judgment and certitude afterwards. She describes the preliminary seven days’ sickness, the cessation of all its pain during the earlier visions, in XX INTRODUCTION which she had spiritual sight of the Passion of Christ, and indeed during all the five hours’ ‘special Shew- ing”; the return of her physical pain and mental dis- tress and ‘‘ dryness” of feeling when the vision closed; her falling into doubt as to whether she had not simply been delirious, her terrifying dream on the Sunday night, —noting carefully that ‘‘this horrible Shewing” came in her sleep, ‘‘and so did none other”—none of the Sixteen Revelations of Love came thus. Then she tells how she was helped to overcome the dream-temptation to despair, and how on the following night another Revelation, conclusion and confirmation of all, was granted to strengthen her faith. Again her faith was assayed by a similar dream-appearance of fiends that seemed as it were to be mocking at all religion, and again she was delivered, overcoming by setting her eyes on the Cross and fastening her heart on God, and com- forting her soul with speech of Christ’s Passion (as she would have comforted another in like distress) and re- hearsing the Faith of all the Church. It may be noted here that Julian when telling how she was given grace to awaken from the former of these troubled dreams, says, ‘‘anon all vanished away and I was brought to great rest and peace, without sickness of body or dread of conscience,” and that nothing in the book gives any ground for supposing that she had less than ordinary health during the long and peaceful life wherein God ‘lengthened her patience.” Rather it would seem that THE LADY JULIAN xxl one so wholesome in mind, so happy in spirit, so wisely moderate, no doubt, in self-guidance, must have kept that general health that she could not despise who speaks of God having ‘‘no disdain” to serve the body, for love of the soul, of how we are ‘soul and body clad in the Goodness of God,” of how ‘‘ God hath made waters plenteous in earth to our service and to our bodily ease,”+ and of how Christ waiteth to minister to us His gifts of grace ‘‘ unto the time that we be waxen and grown, our soul with our body and our body with our soul, either of them taking help of other, till we be brought unto stature, as nature worketh.” ? Julian mentions neither her name not her state in life; she is ‘‘the soul,” the ‘‘ poor” or ‘‘ simple” soul that the Revelation was shewed to—‘‘a simple creature,” in herself, a mere ‘‘ wretch,” frail and of no account. Of her parentage and early home we know nothing: but perhaps her own exquisite picture of Motherhood —of its natural (its ‘‘ kind”) love and wisdom and know- ledge—is taken partly from memory, with that of the kindly nurse, and the child, which by nature loveth the 1 See the Ancren Riwle, Part viii. Of Domestic Matters, for counsels to anchoresses as to judicious care of the body: diet, washing, needful rest, avoidance of idleness and gloom, reading, sewing for Church and Poor, making and mending and washing of clothes by the anchoress or her servant. ‘* Ye may be well content with your clothes, be they white, be they black; only see that they be plain, and warm, and well made—skins well tanned; and haveas many as you need. ,.. Let your shoes be thick and warm.” 2 of. Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra, xii, XXil INTRODUCTION Mother and each of the other children, and of the training by Mother and Teacher until the child is brought up to ‘‘the Father’s bliss” (1xi.-lxiii.). | The title <‘ Lady,” ‘‘ Dame” or ‘‘ Madame ” was com- monly accorded to anchoresses, nuns, and others that had had education in a Convent.} ~ Julian, no doubt, was of gentle birth, and she would probably be sent to the Convent of Carrow for her education. There she would receive from the Bene- dictine nuns the usual instruction in reading, writing, Latin, French, and fine needlework, and especially in that Common Christian Belief to which she was always in her faithful heart and steadfast will so loyal,—*< the Common Teaching of Holy Church in which I was afore informed and grounded, and with all my will having in use and understanding ” (xlvi.). It is most likely that Julian received at Carrow the consecration of a Benedictine nun; for it was usual, though not necessary, for anchoresses to belong to one or other of the Religious Orders. The more or less solitary life of the anchorite or hermit, the anchoress or recluse, had at this time, as earlier, many followers in the country parts and large towns of England. Few of the “ reclusoria” or women’s 1S. de Cressy was probably the originator of the designation “Mother Juliana.” The old name was Julian. The Virgin-Martyr of the Legend entitled ‘¢ The Life of St Juliana” (Early English Text Society) is called in the Manuscripts, Iulane, Juliene, and Juliane and Julian, Soalso Lady Julian Berners is a name in the history of Fifteenth Century books, THE LADY JULIAN xxiii anchorholds were in the open country or forest-lands like those that we come upon in Medieval romances, but many churches of the villages and towns had attached to them a timber or stone ‘‘ cell”—a little house of two or three rooms inhabited by a recluse who never left it, and one servant, or two, for errands and protection. Occasionally a little group of recluses lived together like those three young sisters of the Thirteenth Century for whom the ducren Riwle, a Rule or Counsel for ‘‘ Ancres,” was at their own request composed. The recluse’s chamber seems to have gener- ally had three windows: one looking into the adjoining Church, so that she could take part in the Services there; another communicating with one of those rooms under the keeping of her ‘‘ maidens,” in which occasion- ally a guest might be entertained; and a third—the ‘¢ parlour”’ window—opening to the outside, to which all might come that desired to speak with her. Accord- ing to the Ancren Riwle the covering-screen for this audience-window was a curtain of double cloth, black with a cross of white through which the sunshine would penetrate—sign of the Dayspring from on high. This screen could of course be drawn back when the recluse ‘held a parliament’ with any that came to her.!} 1 «¢ So he kneeled at her window and anon the recluse opened it, and asked Sir Percival what he would. ‘ Madam,’ said he, ‘I ama knight of King Arthur’s Court and my name is Sir Percival de Galis,’ So when the recluse heard his name, she had passing great joy of him, for greatly she loved him before all other knights of the world; and so of right she ought to do, for she was his aunt.”—-Malory’s Morte d’ Arthur, xiv. i. XXIV INTRODUCTION Before Julian passed from the sunny lawns and meadows of Carrow, along the road by the river and up the lane to the left by the gardens and orchards of the Conisford of that day, to the little Churchyard house that would hide so much from her eyes of out- ward beauty, and yet leave so much in its changeful perpetual quietude around her (great skies overhead like the ample heavenly garments of her vision ‘< blue as azure most deep and fair” ; little Speedwell’s blue by the crannied wall of the Churchyard—Veronika, true Image, like the Saint’s ‘Holy Vernacle at Rome”) her vow! might be: ‘I offering yield myself to the divine Goodness? for service, in the order of anchorites: and I promise to continue in the service of God after the rule of that order, by divine grace and the counsel of the Church: and to shew canonical obedience to my ghostly fathers.” The only reference that Julian makes to the life dedicated more especially to Contemplation is where she is speaking, as if from experience, of the tempta- tion to despair because of falling oftentimes into the same sins, ‘‘ especially into sloth and losing of time. For that is the beginning of sin, as to my sight, —and especially to the creatures that have given themselves to serve our Lord with inward beholding of His blessed Goodness.” ® 1 Manuale ad usum insignis ecclesie Sarisburiensis (ed. of 1555), fo. lxix. Servitium includendorum. 2 “6 pietatis.” 3 The sins that Julian mentions, ‘‘ despair or doubtful dread,” * sloth and losing of time,” ‘‘ unskilful [unpractical, unreasoning] heaviness and vain sorrow,” seem to be all akin to that dreaded sin, besetting particularly the Contemplative life, Accidia. See Ancren Riwle p. 287. THE LADY JULIAN XXV “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seck after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in His temple”—His Sanctuary of the Church or of the soul. Zhat was her calling. She had heard the Voice that comes to the soul in Spring-time and calls to the Garden of lilies, and calls to the Garden of Olive-trees (where all the spices offered are in one Cup of Heavenly Wine): ‘‘ Surge, propera amica mea: jam enim Hyems transit, imber ambit et recessit. Surge, propera amica mea, speciosa mea, et veni.” ‘* Arise: let us go hence.” 1 ** For this is the natural yearnings of the soul by the touching of the Holy Ghost: God of Thy Goodness, give me Thyself, for Thou art enough to me; ... and if I ask anything that is less, ever me wanteth ; but only in Thee I have all” (v.). ‘‘A soul that only fasteneth itself on to God with very trust, either by seeking or in beholding, it is the most worship that it may do to Him, as to my sight” (x.). ‘*To enquire” and ‘‘to behold”—no doubt it 6 Accidies salue is gostlich gledshipe. ‘The remedy for indolence is spiritual joy, and the consolation of joyful hope from reading and from holy meditation, or when spoken by the mouth of man. Often, dear sisters, ye ought to pray less, that ye may read more. Read- ing is good prayer. Reading teacheth how, and for what ye ought to pray. In reading, when the heart feels delight, devotion ariseth, and that is worth many prayers. Everything, however, may be overdone. Moderation is always best.”—(Pub. by the Camden Society). 1 Canticles ii. 10. St John xiv, 31. XXVI INTRODUCTION was for these that Julian sought time and quiet. For she had urgent questionings and “stirrings” in her mind over ‘‘the great hurt that is come by sin to the creature ”—‘‘ afore this time often I wondered why by the great foreseeing wisdom of. God the beginning of sin was not letted ” (‘‘ mourning and sorrow I made over it without reason and discretion”); and also she was filled with desire for God: ‘‘ the longing that I had to Him afore” (xxvii. ). Moreover, this life to which Julian gave herself was to be a life of ‘*meek continuant prayers” ‘‘for en- abling” of herself in her weakness, and for help to others in all their needs. For thought and worship could only be held together by active prayer: the pitiful beholding of evil and pain and the joyful be- holding of Goodness and Love would be at war, as it were, with each other, unless they were set at peace for the time by the prayer of intercession. And that is the call of the loving soul, strong in its infant feebleness to wake the answering Revelation of Love ; to faith that ‘all shall be well,” and that “all is well” and that when all are come up above and the whole is known, all shall be seen to be well, and. to have been well through the time of tribulation and travail. | | «¢ At some time in the day or night,” says the Ancren : Riwle, which Julian perhaps may have read, though as_ to such prayers her compassionate heart was its own . | THE LADY JULIAN XXVil director—‘‘ At some time in the day or night think upon and call to mind all who are sick and sorrowful, who suffer affliction and poverty, the pain which prisoners endure who lie heavily fettered with iren; think especially of the Christians who are amongst the heathen, some in prison, some in so great thralldom as is aN OX Or an ass; compassionate those who are under strong temptations; take thought of all men’s sorrows, and sigh to our Lord that He may take care of them and have compassion and look upon them with a gracious eye; and if you have leisure, repeat this Psalm, I have lifted up mine eyes. Paternoster. Return, O Lord, how long, and be intreated in favour of Thy servants : Let us pray. ‘Stretch forth, O Lord, to thy servants and to thy handmaids the right hand of thy heavenly aid, that they may seek thee with all their heart, and obtain what they worthily ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ ” Julian tells how in her thinking of sin and its hurt there passed before her sight all that Christ bore for us, ‘‘and His dying; and all the pains and passions of all His creatures, ghostly and bodily; and the beholding of this— with all pains that ever were or ever shall be” (xxvii). From sin, except as a general conception, Julian’s natural instinct was to turn her eyes; but with this Christly compassion in her heart in looking on the sorrows of the world she could not but take account of its sin. As she came to be convinced that ‘‘ though we be highly lifted up into contemplation, it is needful for us to see our own XXVili INTRODUCTION sin,’—albeit we should not accuse ourselves *‘ overdone much” or ‘‘be heavy or sorrowful indiscreetly ”—so when sins of others were brought before her she would seek with compassion to take the sinner’s part of contri- tion and prayer. ‘‘ The beholding of other man’s sins, it maketh as it were a thick mist afore the eyes of the soul, and we cannot, for the time, see the fairness of God, but if we can behold them with contrition with him, with compassion on him, and with holy desire to God for him ” (Ixxvi.). And notwithstanding all the stir and eager revival of the Fourteenth Century in religion, politics, literature and general life, there was much both of sin and of sorrow then to exercise the pitiful soul — troubles enough in Norwich itself, of oppression and riot and desolating pestilence—troubles enough in Europe, West and East,—wars and enslaving and many cruelties in distant lands, and harried Armenian Christians coming | to the Court of Edward to plead for succour in their : long-enduring patience. There was trouble wherever : one looked; but to prayer, and to that compassion which is in itself a prayer, the answer came. Indeed the com- passion was its own first immediate answer: for ‘then | I saw that each kind compassion that man hath on his | even-Cristen (his fellow-Christians) with charity, it zs Christ in him.” This is the comfort that both com- forts in waiting and calls to deeds of help. And such ‘‘charity” of social service was not beyond the scope THE LADY JULIAN XXX of the life ‘‘ enclosed,”—-whether it might be by deed or, as more often, by speech.! It is in her seeking for truth and her beholding of Love that we best know Julian. Of the opening of the Revelation she says: ‘‘In all this I was greatly stirred in charity to mine even-Christians, that they might see and know the same that I saw: for I would it were comfort to them,” and again and again throughout the book she declares that the ‘‘ special Shewing ” is given not for her in special, but for all—for all are meant to be one in comfort as all are one in need. ‘‘ Because of the 1 See the chapter ‘‘ How an Anchoress shall behave herself to them that come to her,” in ‘‘ The Scale of Perfection,” by Walter Hilton (died 1396), edition of 1659, p. 106. ‘Since it is so that thou oughtest not to goe out of thy house to seek occasion how thou mightest profit thy Neighbour by deeds of Charity, because thou art enclosed; . . . therefore who so will speake with thee. . . be thou soon ready with a good will to aske what his will is... for thou knowest not what he is, nor why he cometh, nor what need he hath of thee, or thou of him, till thou hast tryed. And though thou be at prayer, or at thy devotions, that thou thinkest loth to break off, for that thou thinkest that thou oughtest not leave God for to speake with any one, I think not so in this case, for if thou be wise, thou shalt not leave Gud, but thou shalt find him, and have him, and see him in thy Neighbour as well as in prayer, onely in another manner. If thou canst love thy Neighbour well, to speake with thy Neighbour with discretion shall be no hindrance to thee. . . . If he come to tell thee his disease [distress] or trouble, and to be comforted by thy speech, heare him gladly, and suffer him to say what he will for ease of his own heart; And when he hath done, comfort him if thou canst, gladly, gently, and charitably, and soon break off. And then, after that, if he will fall into idle tales, or vanities of the World, or of other men’s actions, answer him but little, and feed not his speech, and he will soon be weary, and quickly take his leave,” etc. XXX INTRODUCTION Shewing I am not good, but if I love God the better: and in as much as ye love God the better it is more to you than to me. . . . For we are all one in comfort. For truly it was not shewed me that God loved me better than the least soul that is in grace; for I am certain that there be many that never had any Shewing nor sight but of the common teaching of Holy Church that love God better than I. For if I look singularly to myself I am right nought; but in general [manner of regarding] I am, I hope, in oneness of charity with all mine even-Christians. For in this oneness standeth the life of all mankind that shall be saved, and that which I say of me, I say in the person of all mine even- Christians: for I am taught in the Spiritual Shewing of our Lord God that He meaneth it so. And there-' fore I pray you for God’s sake, and counsel you for your own profit that ye leave the beholding of a worth- less creature [a ‘‘ wretch”’] it was shewed to and mightily, wisely and meekly behold God that of His special good- ness would shew it generally, in comfort of us all” (ix.). Thus Julian turns our eyes from looking om her to looking with her on the Revelation of Divine Love. Yet surely in her we have also ‘“‘a shewing”—a shewing of the same. She tells us little of her own story, and little is told us of her by any one else, but all through her recording of the Revelation the simple creature to whom it was made unconsciously shews herself, so that soon we come to know her with a THE LADY JULIAN XXxI pleasure that surely she would not think too ‘‘ special” in its regard. (For she herself in speaking of Love makes note that the general does not exclude the special). Perhaps we are helped in this friendly ac- quaintanceship by those endearingly characteristic little formulas of speech disavowing any claim to dogmatic authority in the statements of her views of truth: those modest parentheses ‘‘ as to my sight,” ‘‘ as to mine under- standing.” ‘‘ Wisdom and truth and love,” the dower that she saw in the Gracious soul, were surely in the soul of this meek woman; but enclosing these gifts of nature and grace are qualities special to Julian: depth of passion, with quietness, order, and moderation; loyalty in faith, with clearest candour—‘‘I believe . . . but this was not shewed me ”—(xxxiii., Ixxvii., xxx.) pitifulness and sympathy, with hope and a blithe serenity; sound good sense with a little sparkle upon it—as of delicate humour (that crowning virtue of saints); and beneath all, above all, an exquisite tenderness that turns her speech to music. ‘‘ I will lay thy Stones with fair Colours.” «Thou hast the dews of thy youth.” Hundreds of years have gone since that early morning in May when Julian thought she was dying and was << partly troubled” for she felt she was yet in youth and would gladly have served God more on earth with the gift of her days— hundreds of years since the time that her heart would fain have been told by special Shewing that ‘a certain creature I loved should continue in good living ”—but XXxil INTRODUCTION still we have ‘‘ mind” of her as ‘‘a gentle neighbour and of our knowing.” For those that love in simplicity are always young; and those that have had with the larger Vision of Love the gift of love’s passionate speech, to God or man, in word or form or deed, as treasure held —live yet on the earth, untouched by time, though their light is shining elsewhere for other sight. ‘From that time that the Revelation was shewed I desired oftentimes to learn what was our Lord’s mean- ing. And fifteen years afterwards and more, I was answered in ghostly understanding, saying thus : Wouldst thou learn thy Lord’s meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn other thing without end.” And if we, with no special shewing, might ask and, in trust of ‘‘ spiritual understanding,” might answer more—asking to whom, and _for whom was the Revelation shewed, we might answer: To one that loved; for all that would learn in love. ; ‘“‘ Ecco chi crescera i nostri amori”’! 1 «¢ Here is one who shall increase our love.”’ Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. 1 Dante, Paradiso, v. 105. THE MANNER OF THE BOOK xxx PART II THe MANNER OF THE Book As an hert desirith to the wellis of watris : so thou God, my soule desirith to thee.... The Lord sent his merci in the day : and his song in the nyght. Ps. ‘ Quemadmodum’ ; from the Prymer. ITHOUT any special study of the literature of Mysti- cism for purposes of comparison, in reading Julian’s book one is struck by a few characteristics wherein it differs from many other Mystical writings, as well as by qualities that belong to most or all of that general designation. The silence of this book both as to preliminary ascetic exercises and as to ultimate visions of the Absolute, might be attributed to Julian’s being wholly concerned with giving, for comfort to all, that special sight of truth that came to her as the answer to her own need. She sets out not to teach methods of any kind for the gradual drawing near of man to God, but to record and shew forth a Revelation, granted once, of God’s actual nearness to the soul, and for this Revelation she herself had been prepared by the “stirring ” of her conscience, her love and her understanding, in a word of her faith, even as she was in short time to be left ‘neither sign nor token,” but only the Revelation to hold ‘in faith.” Moreover, the means that in general she looks to for c XXXIV INTRODUCTION realising God’s nearness, in whatever measure or manner the revelation of it may come to any soul, is the im- mediate one of faith as a gift of nature and a grace from the Holy Ghost: faith leading by prayer, and effort of obedience, and teachableness of spirit, into actual experience of oneness with God. ‘The natural and common heritage of love and faith is a theme that is dear to Julian: in her view, longing toward God is grounded in the love to Him that is native to the human heart, and this longing (painful through sin) as it is stirred by the Holy Spirit, who comes with Christ, is, in each naturally developed Christian, spontaneous and increasing ;—‘‘ for the nearer we be to our bliss, the more we long after it” (xlvi., lxxii., Ixxxi.). ‘ This is the kinde [the natural] yernings of the soule by the touching of the Holy Ghost: God of Thy goodness give me Thyself: for Thou art enow to me, and I may nothing ask that is less that may be full worshippe to Thee.” God is the first as well as the last: the soul begins as well as ends with God: begins by Nature, begins again by Mercy, and ends—yet ‘‘ without end”—by Grace. Certainly . on the way—the way of these three, by falling, by | succour, by upraising—to the more perfect knowing of | God that is the soul’s Fulfilment in Heaven, there is a less immediate knowledge to be gained through experi- ence: ‘‘ And if I aske anything that is lesse, ever me | wantith,” for ‘‘It needyth us to have knoweing of the littlehede of creatures and to nowtyn all thing that is) THE MANNER OF THE BOOK xxxv made, for to love and have God that is onmade.” But this knowing of the littleness of creatures comes to Julian first of all in a sight of the Goodness of God; ‘‘ For [to] a soule that seith the Maker of all, all that is made semith full litil.” By the further beholding, indeed, of God as Maker and Preserver, that which has been rightly “‘noughted ” as of no account, is seen to be also truly of much account. For that which was seen by the soul as so little that it seemed to be about to fall to nothing for littleness, is seen by the understanding to have “‘ three properties ” :—-God made it, God loveth it, God keepeth it. Thus it is known as ‘‘ great and large, fair and good”; ‘it lasteth, and ever shall, for God loveth it.” —Yet again the soul breaks away to its own, with the natural flight of a bird from its Autumn nest at the call of an unseen Spring to the far-off land that is nearer still than its nest, because it is in its heart. <‘‘ But what is to me sothly [if verity] the Maker, the Keper and the Lover, —I cannot tell, for till I am Substantially oned [deeply united | to Him, I may never have full rest ne very blisse; that is to sey, that I be so festined to Him, that there is right nowte that is made betwix my God and me” (v., viii.). This ‘‘ fastening ” is all that in Julian’s book repre- sents that needful process wherein the truth of asceticism has a part. It is not essentially a process of detaching the thought from created things of time—-still less one of detaching the heart from created beings of eternity— but a process of more and more allowing and presenting XXXVI INTRODUCTION the man to be fastened closely to God by means of the original longing of the soul, the influence of the Holy Ghost, and the discipline of life with its natural tribula- tions, which by their purifying serve to strengthen the affections that remaining pass through them. ‘‘ Bud only in Thee I have all.” On the way this discovery of the soul at peace must needs be sometimes a word for exclusion, in parting and pressing onward from things that are made: in the end it is the welcome, all-inclusive. And Julian, notwithstanding her enclosure as a recluse, is one of those that, happy in nature and not too much hindered by conditions of life, possess for large use dy _ the way the mystical peace of fulfilled possession through virtue of freedom from bondage to self. For it is by means of the tyranny of the “self,” regarding chiefly itself in its claims and enjoyments, that creature things can be intruded between the soul and God; and always, in some way, the meek inherit the earth. ‘ All things are yours; and ye are Christ’s.” The life of a recluse demanded, no doubt, as other lives do, a daily self-denial as well as an initiatory self- devotion, and from Julian’s silence as to ‘ bodily ex- ercises ” it cannot of course be assumed that she did not give them, even beyond the incumbent rule of the Church, though not in excess of her usual moderation, some part in her Christian striving for mastery over self, Nor could this silence in itself be taken as a proof that ascetic practices had not in her view a preparatory THE MANNER OF THE BOOK xxxvii function such as has by many of the Mystics been assigned to them during a process of self-training in the earlier stages of the soul’s ascent to aptitude for mystical vision. It is, however, to be noted that neither in regard to herself nor others do we hear from Julian anything about an undertaking of this kind. To her the ‘‘special Shewing ” came as a gift, unearned, and unexpected: it came in an abundant answer to a prayer for other things needed by every soul.1 Julian’s desires 9 for herself were for three ‘‘ wounds” to be made more deep in her life: contrition (in sight of sin), compassion (in sight of sorrow) and longing after God: she prayed and sought diligently for these graces, comprehensive as she felt they were of the Christian life and meant for all; and with them she sought to have for herself, in par- 1 The soon-forgotten petition of Julian’s youth for a ‘‘ bodily sickness ” does not seem to have had any connection in her mind with special Revelation: it was desired neither as in any way a sign of invisible things nor as a direct means of beholding them. And probably, as a matter of fact, the sickness that was granted helped her in the way that she had desired, helped her to the sight of the Revelation, not directly, but by drawing her spirit to that utter dependence on and trust in God that is death’s first lesson for all, that uttermost self-devotion to God that is life’s last exercise. This spiritual state, with all that through years had gone before of feeling and thought and life’s experience, made her ready to be shewn with special largeness and clearness God’s love: how it filled the empty place of sin and pain and sorrow with its divine fulness, As to the ‘‘ bodily sight” introducing the Revelation, a sight of ‘* parts of the Passion,” which may be compared with “ The XV. Oos ”—‘ Orationes ’’— Passion-prayers each beginning with ‘0’ (v. Hore of Sarum), it was recognised by Julian herself, even at the time of her seeing it, as being a sight of things ‘* not in substance or nature.” In this recognition it was proved to be neither mental delusion nor mere “ raving” delirium, But it XXXVili INTRODUCTION ticular regard to her own difficulties, a sight of such truth as it might ‘‘ behove” her to know for the glory of God and the comfort of men. According to Julian 9 the ‘‘ special Shewing ” is a gift of comfort for all, sent by God in a time to some soul that is chosen in order that it may have, and so may minister, the comfort needed by itself and by others (ix.). In her experience this Revela- tion, soon closed, is renewed by influence and enlighten- ment in the more ordinary grace of its giver, the Holy Ghost. But a still fuller sight of God shall be given, she rejoices to think, in Heaven, to a// that shall reach that Fulfilment of blessed life—the only mount of the soul set forth in this book. ‘Thither, by the high-road of Christ, all souls may go, making the steep ascent would, it seems, be natural that in her weakness of body and her exaltation of spirit (so tense that the strength of her self-surrender to death seemed to cast her back upon bodily life in the painless world between the two) some sort of physical illusion should be brought about by her prolonged gaze upon the Face of the Crucifix, and that in her desire to enter into the sufferings of the Passion as fully as those friends of her Lord’s that beheld it, Julian thus gazing in the midst of night’s shadows and the dim light of dawn should seem to herself to behold the sacred drops, depicted beneath the painted or sculptured Crown of Thorns, low down “right plenteously.” Julian gave thanks for this and all the ‘‘ bodily sight” as a gift from God. By Him sickness and illusion, as well as things evil, are “suffered? to come, and by Him Revelation is given according to sundry times in diverse manners. Gain of the spirit through failure of the body—and no less by illusions of fever than by trance-state visions their seers speak of, when Death passes the Spirit half through the gates —would indeed be accordant with the truth of the Shewing that came to Julian, how man is raised through shame and death into glory and life, since in the weakness of failing men the strength of Christ is made perfect. THE MANNER OF THE BOOK xxxix through “longing and desire,”—longing that embodies itself in desire towards God, that is, in Prayer. Nothing is said by Julian as to successive stages of Prayer, though she speaks of different kinds of prayer as the natural action of the soul under different experiences or in different states of feeling or ‘‘ dryness.” Prayer is asking (‘‘beseeching”), with submission and acqui- escence; or Jeholding, with the se/f forgotten, yet offered- up; it is a thanking and a praising in the heart that sometimes breaks forth into voice; or a silent joy in the sight of God as all-sufficient. And in all these ways ‘«Prayer oneth the soul to God.” To Julian’s understanding the only Shewing of God that could ever be, the highest and lowest, the first and the last, was the Vision of Him as Love. ‘‘ Hold thee therin and thou shalt witten and knowen more in the same. But thou shalt never knowen ne witten other thing without end. Thus was I lerid that Love was our Lord’s menyng” (lxxxvi.). Alien to the ‘simple creature” was that desert region where some of the lovers of God have endeavoured to find Him,—desiring an extreme penetration of thought (human thought, after all, since for men there is none beyond it) or an utmost reach of worship (worship from fire and ice) in proclaiming the Absolute One not only as All that zs, but as All that is mot. Julian’s desire was truly for God in Himself, through Christ by the Holy Spirit of Love: for God in ‘*‘ His homeliest home,” the soul, for God in xl INTRODUCTION His City. ‘Therefore she follows only the upward way — of the light attempered by grace, not turning back to ! the Via Negativa, that downward road that starting from a conception of the Infinite ‘‘as the antithesis of the finite,”1 rather than as including and transcending the © finite, leads man to deny to his words of God all qualities | known or had by human, finite beings. Julian keeps on © the way that is natural to her spirit and to all her habits of thought as these may have been directed by reading and conversation: it does not take her towards that Divine Darkness of which some seers have brought report. Hers was not one of those souls that would, and must, go silent and alone and strenuous through strange places: ‘‘ homely and courteous” she ever found Almighty God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Julian’s mystical sight was not a negation of human modes of thought: neither was it a torture to human powers of speech nor a death-sentence to human activi- ties of feeling. ‘‘ He hath no despite of that which He hath made” (vi.). This seer of the littleness of all that is made saw the Divine as containing, not as engulfing, all things that truly are, so that in some way ‘ learnt thus ‘more’ in the knowledge of love, ‘shall never know nor learn | other thing without end.”—-“ I understood none higher stature in this life than childhood.” “It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make man better be. A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night, It was the plant and flower of Light,” For all of the Company of saints have the sight of One Vision, and be it | in the steadfast fulfilment of labour, or from out of the merriment of play,— | through the strong, bright peace of endurance, or the silent acquiescence | of the will, led along valleys of darkness,—or again in some swift rush | of prayer into the morning light,—z/ of the saints, the babe and the | ancient, beholding ‘the Blissful Countenance” say “with one voice”: | ‘¢Ig1s weLL.” ‘¢ Amen. Amen.”—(De la More Press: London, 1906.) | 1 ¢¢ Catholic Mystics of the Middle Ages.” Edinburgh Review, October | 1396. _ THE MANNER OF THE BOOK xvii ment recalls the rippling yet even flow of a brook, cheerfully, sweetly monotonous: “If any such lover ‘be in earth which is continually kept from falling, I know it not: for it was not shewed me. But this was shewed: that in falling and in rising we are ever preciously kept in one love” (lxxxii.). But now and again the listener seems to be caught up to Heaven with song, as in that time when her “ marvelling ” joy in beholding love ‘‘ breaks out with voice” :—‘* Behold and see! the precious plenty of His dearworthy blood descended down into Hell, and braste her bands, and delivered all that were there that belonged to the Court of Heaven. The precious plenty of His dearworthy blood overfloweth all Earth and is ready to wash all creatures of sin which be of goodwill, save been and shall be. ‘The precious plenty of His dearworthy blood ascended up into Heaven to the blessed body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and there is in Him, bleeding and praying for us to the Father, and is and shall be as long as it needeth; and ever shall be as long as it needeth; and evermore it floweth in all Heavens, en- joying the salvation of all mankind that are there, and shal] be—fulfilling the Number that faileth” (xii.). The Early English Mystics make good reading,— even as to the mere manner of their writings we might say, if it were possible to separate the style from the freshness of feeling and the pointedness of thought that inform it; and though we do not, of course, have from xlviii INTRODUCTION Julian,—a woman writing of the Revelations of Love,— the delightfully trenchant, easy address of Hilton in hi counsels as to how to scale the Ladder of Perfection— counsels both wise and witty—yet Julian, too, with al her sweetness, is full of this every day vigour and com mon sense. And sometimes she puts things in a naive engaging way of her own, grave and yet light—as i with a little understanding smile to those to whom sh is speaking :—‘‘ Then ween we, who Ze not all wise” ‘«<’That the outward part should draw the inward to assen was not shewed to me, but that the inward draweth th outward by grace and both shall be oned in bliss withou end by the virtue of Christ, his was shewed” (1xi., xix.) Rolle, Hilton, and more especially the Ancren Riwle give examples of that custom of allegorical interpretatio1 of Sacred Scriptures that has fascinated many mystica authors, but one can scarcely suppose that this metho would ever have been a favourite one with Julian eveni she had been in the way of dealing with literary parallel and references. For though she uses ‘‘ examples,” o illustrations (sometimes calling them ‘‘shewings,” o <‘ bodily examples”) and also metaphorically figurativ speech, she does not shew any interest in elaborate arbitrary symbolism. At any rate she is too directl simple, it seems, and too much in the centre of realities to be a writer that (without constraint of following th lines of others) would take as foundation for an argu i ment or an exposition outward resemblances or verb: THE MANNER OF THE BOOK xlix connections, fit perhaps to illustrate or enforce the truth in question, but lacking in relation to it that inward vital oneness whereby certain things that to man seem below him may become symbolic to him of others that he beholds as within or above him. Exposition by analysis has been reckoned to be charac- teristic of the Schoolmen rather than of the Mystics,? though surely a mystical sight may be served by an analytical process, and to see God in a part before or while He is seen in the whole is effected not without analysis of the subtlest kind. So we find analysis in Julian’s sight (Rev. ili.): “‘ I saw God in a point”; and in her conclusions from this: ‘‘ By which sight I saw that He is in all things” ; and in her immediate raising, from this conclusion, of the question: ‘* What is sin?” and throughout her treatment of the problem in the scheme of her book. Even for the merely formal task of distinguishing by number, Julian, we see, will set briskly forward (though we may not feel much inclined to follow) and often she begins her careful dissections with: ‘‘In this I see”—four, five, or six things, as the case may be. Her speech of spiritual Revelations is, however, helped out less by numbers than by living and homely things of sight: the mother and the children and the nurse; lords and servants, kings and their subjects (with echoes of the language of Court and 1 In reference to introspection M. Maeterlinck speaks of Ruysbroeck as “the one analytical mystic.” Ruysbroeck and the Mystics, p. 19. d lx INTRODUCTION the soul; always as sung by the chorus of human spirit: that live on the ‘‘ Righteousness, Peace, and Joy” of the Will of God, the New Song of Life through Death ha: in it a summons and receives from one and another here passing through much tribulation, its fuller concord o1 human achievement, or at least the desirous d4men. Sc whether the mystic dwell much or little with the sight and sounds of sense, those things that are seen and hearc by the sou/ bear to him the command of his home, anc the merest doorway glimpses, the echoes most distant making their proffer of more and more within anc beyond, say Come. ‘‘T give you the end of a golden string : Only wind it into a ball, ! It will lead you in at Heaven’s Gate, Built in Jerusalem wall.”’ 4 (Although this ‘< following on to know,” this winding o the truth caught hold of into a ‘‘ perfect round” o thought and will and life, is probably not more easy fo the mystics than for other people. ‘ “Amore, amor, tu sei cerchio rotondo ! 2) God is in all; but ‘‘our soul may never have rest i things that are beneath itself” (Ixvii.). ‘‘ Well I wot, says Julian, ‘‘ that heaven and earth and all that is mad is great and large, fair and good,” yet ‘all that is made | 1 Gilchrist’s Life and Works of William Blake, vol, ii. 2 Amor de Caritade, by Jacopone da Todi (formerly ascribed to Francis of Assisi). 7 i ‘ ‘ THE THEME OF THE BOOK J ixi 's seen as a little thing, the size of a hazel nut, held in the palm of her hand, when along with it her spiritual sight beholds the Maker. And though we may find the Maker in all things, we find Him, both as Maker and Restorer, first and best, First and Last, in the soul. There He is d/pha, there Omega. ‘‘It is readier to us to come to the knowing of God than to know our own Soul” (in its fullest powers). ‘For our soul is so jeep-grounded in God and so endlessly treasured, that we may not come to the knowing thereof till we have irst knowing of God, which is the Maker, to whom it soned.” And yet, ‘‘ we may never come to full know- ng of God till we know first clearly our own soul” lvi.). The knowledge begins with God, but it begins with Him in the lowest place of the soul rescued from sin by mercy and entered by grace. ‘‘ For Himself is aearest and meekest, highest and lowest, and doeth all” dxxx.). To the soul that looks on Christ a remem- drance rises of its own “ fair nature” made in His image; yet ‘‘our Lord of His mercy sheweth us our sin and our feebleness by the sweet gracious light of Himself” Ixxviii.). Thus in the working of grace the soul comes to the knowledge both of its higher and lower parts. For in finding in itself both a natural response to the working of grace by its love and its longing after God, and a contrariness to the goodness of grace by its often failing and falling, it experiences both the action of the “Godly Will” (which is within it as a part of, and a / li INTRODUCTION The work of grace by means of our natural Reason en- lightened by the Holy Ghost to see our sins, is Con- trition; by means of our naturally-feeling Mind, touched by the Holy Ghost to behold the pain of the world, is Compassion; by means of our nature- and grace-in- inspired Love, which loves our Maker and Saviour (still by the separation of sin partially, painfully, hid from our sight) is greater Longing toward God. ‘This longing must become an active “‘ desire”: for the chief work that we can do as fellow-workers with God in achieving full oneness with Him is Prayer; of which there are three things to understand: its Ground is God by whose Goodness it springeth in us; its wse is “‘to turn our will to the will of our Lord”; its end is ‘‘ that we. should be made one with and like to our Lord in all things.” And lastly we have for this life, both by nature and grace, the comprehensive virtue of Faith, ‘¢in which all our virtues come to us” and which has in its own nature three elements: understanding, belief, and trust. With Faith, which belongs perhaps chiefly to Reason,—“ Faith is” nought else but a right under- standing, with true belief and sure trust, of our Being: that we are in God, and God in us, Whom we see not,” «A light by nature coming from our endless Day, that is our Father, God” (liv., Ilxxxiil.)—is also Hope, which belongs to our feeling Mind (our Remembrance) and to the work of Mercy in this our fallen state : ‘¢ Hope that we shal] come to our Substance (our THE MANNER OF THE BOOK li high and heavenly nature) again.” Moreover, ‘‘ Charity keepeth us in Hope and Hope leadeth us in Charity ; and in the end all shall be Charity ” (1xxxiv.). With these trinities and groups of threes are others, belonging to God and man, mentioned successively in the closing chapters of the book: three manners of God’s Beholding (or Regard of Countenance): that of the Passion, that of Compassion, and that of Bliss; three kinds of longing in God: to teach us, to have us, to fulfil us; three things that man needs in this life from God: Love, Longing, and Pity—<‘ pity in love,” to keep him now, and “longing in the same love” to draw him to heaven; three things by which man standeth in this life and by which God is worshipped: ‘‘ use of man’s reason natural; common teaching of Holy Church; in- ward gracious working of the Holy Ghost” ;—and last of all, ‘‘three properties of God, in which the strength and effect of all the Revelation standeth,” ‘‘ Life, Love and Light.” Again, Julian speaks of things that are double, and this double state seems to be one of imperfection, though she does not explicitly say so. Man’s nature, she says, was created ‘‘ double”: ‘* Substance,” or Spirit essential from out of the Spirit Divine, and ‘ Sensuality” or spirit re- lated to human senses and making human faculties, in- tellectual and physical. These two, the Substance and Sense-soul, in their imperfection of union through the frailty of created love (which needs the divine in its liv INTRODUCTION might to support it), became partially sundered by the failing of love. <‘‘ For failing of love on our part, there- fore, is all our travail ””—from that comes the falling, the dying, and the painful travail between death from sin and life from God—both in the race and the individual. But Christ makes the double into trinity : for Christ is ‘‘the Mean [the medium] that keepeth the Substance and Sense-soul together” in his Eternal, Divine-Human Nature, because of His perfect love ; and Christ-Incarnate in His Mercy, by this same perfect love brings these two parts anew and more closely together; and Christ up- risen, indwelling in the soul thus united, will keep them forever together, in oneness growing with oneness to Him. Moreover, Man being double also as ‘soul and body,” needs to be ‘‘ saved from double death,” and this salvation, given, is Jesus-Christ, who joined Himself to us in the Incarnation and ‘‘ yielded us up from the Cross with His Soul and Body into His Father’s hands.” In a mere reading of the Book these repeated cor- respondences may be felt as wearisome, formal, fantastic, —or rather they may seem so when, as here, they are brought together and noted, for Julian herself simply speaks of these different groups as they come in her theme. But when one tries to follow the zhought of this book amongst the heights and depths of the things that are seen and temporal and the things unseen and eternal, these likenesses, found in all, seem to afford one guid~ ance and surety of footing, like steps cut out in a steep THE THEME OF THE BOOK _ lW and difficult path. And as one goes on, and the whole of the meaning takes form, these significations of some- thing all-prevailing give one a partial understanding such as Julian perhaps may have had: the feeling, the « Mind,” of a certain half-caught measure in ‘‘all things that are,” a proportion, a oneness. We are amongst free nature’s mountains, but they do not rise haphazard: they shew a strange, a balanced beauty of line and light and shade, as convincing, if not as clear in its intention as the sunrise-lines and colouring of the euphrasy flower at our feet. We hear as we walk the wandering sound of ‘the vagrant, casual wind,” but there is some- thing in its rise and fall, and rising again, that has kin- ship with the flow and ebb and onrush of the lingering, punctual waves on the shore. Sursum Corda. PART Il THe THEME OF THE Book “HE phase of thought or feeling which we call Mysticism has its origin in... that dim consciousness of the beyond which is part of our nature as human beings. . . . Mysticism arises when we try to bring this higher consciousness into relation with the other contents of our minds. Religious Mysticism may be defined as the attempt to realise the presence of the living God in the soul and in nature, or, more generally, as the attempt to lvi INTRODUCTION realise in thought and feeling, the immanence of the | temporal in the eternal, and of the eternal in the temporal.”"—-W. R. Inge, Christian Mysticism. The Bampton Lectures for 1900, p. 4. : ‘What is Paradise? All things that are; for all are goodly and pleasant and therefore may fitly be called a! Paradise. It is said also that Paradise is an outer Court. of Heaven. Even so this world is an outer court of the! eternal, or of Eternity, and especially whatever in time, or any temporal creature manifesteth or remindeth us of! God or Eternity; for the creature is a guide and a path| to God and Eternity.”1 ‘‘ God is althing that is gode, as to my sight,” says Julian, ‘‘and the godenes that) althing hath, it is He” (viii.). | “Truth seeth God,” and every man exercising the human gift of Reason may in the sight and in the seeing of truths, attain to some sight of God as Truth. But) “ Wisdom beboldeth God,? and although the enlightenment of the Spirit of Wisdom for the discernment of vital] truth is a grace that is granted in needful measure to. him that seeks to be guided by it, it is perhaps those receivers of grace that are mystics by nature and habit that are the most ready in reaching forward while still on earth to Wisdom’s fullest and most immediate rte | ing of God as Allin all. For theirs in the largest (and it may be the highest) efficiency, and in the fullest 1 Theologia Germanica, Chap. 1. THE THEME OF THE BOOK | Wi accordance with man’s first gift of ‘‘ Reason Natural,” is the further gift that Julian calls “‘ Mind”: the gift of acertain spiritual sensitiveness whereby they are quick to take impression of eternal things unseen (seeing them either within or beyond the things of time that are seen) with surrender of self to partake of their life. For in this Beholding of Wisdom, response of the heart in purity and insight of the imagination in faith enhance each other, while the vision of the soul through both takes clearness. The mystic, who sees the wide-ruling oneness of God with all that is good—and thus, as the Mystics say, with all that zs, —may begin at any point the beholding of Good- ness and therein the beholding of God. ‘‘ He is in the mydde poynt of all thyng, and all He doeth” (xi.). It is in the way of those thus fully endowed for the reaching to truth in its highest wisdom here, while they walk amongst the many manifestations of earth, to take them as delicate partial signs instinct with a single meaning. Here is mystical perception :— ‘‘ ‘T’o see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower ; Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour ”’; 1 by a blackbird’s sudden song to overhear, “ in woodlands within,” a joy out of the heart of the Life of life.2 Speak- 1 Blake’s Poems, 2 Memorabilia of Jesus, by W. Peyton, p. 33. viii INTRODUCTION ing of the spiritual sight Julian relates: ‘