Julian of Norwich

1.1 Urban Topography and Religious Density

In the late fourteenth century, Norwich was England's second city in wealth and population, trailing only London. Situated at the confluence of the Rivers Wensum and Yare, it operated as a bustling commercial entrepôt with trading links to the Low Countries, the Rhineland, and the Baltic Hanseatic League. Capital accumulated through the worsted textile trade, wool export, tanning, and dyeing.

Norwich was an ecclesiastical powerhouse: fifty-six parish churches stood within its walls, alongside four major friaries (Dominican, Franciscan, Carmelite, Augustinian), a massive Benedictine cathedral priory, and numerous hospitals and leper houses. Yet this dense prosperity rested upon extreme demographic instability, religious anxiety, and civic violence.

       ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
       │              FOURTEENTH-CENTURY NORWICH CONTEXT             │
       ├──────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┤
       │     DEMOGRAPHIC CRISIS       │   SOCIO-POLITICAL TURMOIL    │
       │  • 1348–49: Black Death      │  • 1381: Peasants' Revolt    │
       │    (40–50% mortality)        │    (Geoffrey Litster routed  │
       │  • 1361–62: Pestis puerorum  │    by Bishop Despenser)      │
       │  • 1369, 1375: Recurring     │  • 1401: De Haeretico        │
       │    plague cycles             │    Comburendo (Lollard pyres │
       │  • Pervasive civic trauma    │    at Lollards Pit)          │
       ├──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┤
       │                  ANCHORITIC STABILITY NODE                  │
       │  • St. Julian's Church, Conisford (River Wensum margin)     │
       │  • Permanent immurement: Officium mortuorum (funeral rite)   │
       │  • The Anchorhold: Interior squint, street parlor, hatch    │
       │  • Civic function: Spiritual anchor, counselor, theologian  │
       └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

1.2 Demographic Collapse: The Plague Cycles

Julian was born in late 1342 (she records being thirty and a half years old during her illness in May 1373). Her childhood coincided with the arrival of the First Pandemic of the Black Death (Yersinia pestis) in East Anglia in 1348–1349. * Mortality Rate: Archival records for the Diocese of Norwich confirm that 40% to 50% of the population perished within eighteen months; over 800 parish priests died in 1349 alone. * Secondary Outbreaks: Rather than a solitary catastrophe, plague established an endemic cycle: * 1361–1362 (Pestis puerorum): Targeted children born since 1349 who lacked acquired immunity, gutting generational continuity. * 1369: Bad harvests combined with pestilence, triggering acute urban starvation. * 1375: Another virulent outbreak immediately following Julian's visionary experience.

The psychological consequence across Christendom was the entrenchment of retributive theodicy. Devotional works (The Prick of Conscience) and sermons treated pestilence as the judicial wrath of an angry God punishing human iniquity. Popular religion was dominated by penitential anxiety, flagellation, and macabre art (danse macabre).

1.3 Civil and Religious Violence: 1381 to 1401

Julian’s contemplation unfolded amidst sharp civic violence: * The Peasants’ Revolt (1381): Norfolk erupted under Geoffrey Litster, a dyer titled "The King of the Commons." Rebels seized Norwich and executed Sir Robert Salle, the city's military commander. The uprising was ruthlessly crushed by Henry Despenser, the warrior Bishop of Norwich, who led a cavalry counter-offensive, routed the insurgent camp at North Walsham, personally heard Litster's confession, and had him drawn, hanged, and quartered. * Lollardy and the Pyres of Lollards Pit: In the 1380s and 1390s, the teachings of John Wycliffe spread into Norfolk. Lollards rejected transubstantiation, clerical celibacy, and church wealth, advocating for vernacular scriptures. In response, Parliament passed De Haeretico Comburendo (1401). Across the River Wensum from Julian’s cell, at Lollards Pit, convicted heretics—beginning with the Norfolk priest William Sawtrey—were burned alive. In 1409, Archbishop Thomas Arundel issued the Oxford Constitutions, criminalizing unauthorized vernacular theology. Writing theological prose in Middle English between 1393 and 1416 was an enterprise of perilous boldness.

1.4 Anchoritic Enclosure at St. Julian's

The anchorite (reclusus) differed sharply from the cloistered nun or itinerant hermit: an anchorite was permanently immured in a cell (reclusorium) physically attached to a church.

The Liturgical Rite (Ordo Includendi)

The rite was structured as an officium mortuorum—a living funeral: 1. The candidate lay prostrate in the church while the choir chanted the Office of the Dead. 2. The bishop administered extreme unction, blessed the cell with holy water, and led the recluse across the threshold. 3. Earth was cast into the cell ("Dust to dust"), and the entrance was bricked shut with mortar and sealed. Legally and civilly, the anchorite was dead; their will was executed and estate dispersed.

The Layout of the Anchorhold

St. Julian’s was a flint-and-mortar church in the riverfront ward of Conisford. The cell (approx. 12 by 15 feet) was built against the chancel wall and operated through three apertures: 1. The Church Squint (Hagioscope): Angled toward the altar, enabling Julian to attend Mass and receive communion. 2. The Street-Facing Parlor Window: Covered with a black curtain bearing a white cross, through which she gave counsel to pilgrims and townspeople. 3. The Domestic Squint: Opening to a lean-to where her servants—named in Norwich wills as Alice and Sara—prepared food, tended a small plot, and removed waste.

                            ST. JULIAN'S CHURCH (CHANCEL)
                        ┌───────────────────────────────────┐
                        │            High Altar             │
                        └───────────────┬───────────────────┘
                                        │  Squint (Hagioscope)
                                        ▼
    ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
    │                      THE ANCHORHOLD                           │
    │    Julian's Table, Bench, Crucifix, and Contemplative Space   │
    └───────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────┘
            │ Shuttered/Curtained Window                    │ Domestic Hatch
            ▼                                               ▼
     Conisford Street                             Maidservant's Quarters
  (Pilgrims, Urban Counseling,                     (Alice & Sara: Food,
    Margery Kempe c. 1413)                           Waste, Sustenance)

Around 1413, the mystic Margery Kempe traveled from Bishop's Lynn to Norwich to seek Julian's counsel. Kempe recorded in Chapter 18 of her Book:

"And then she was bidden by our Lord to go to an anchoress in the same city, who was called Dame Julian... for the anchoress was an expert in such things and could give good counsel."

Julian’s writings survive in two versions marking a major intellectual evolution: 1. The Short Text: A Vision Showed to the Devout Woman (~11,000 words; 25 chapters). 2. The Long Text: A Revelation of Love (~63,500 words; 86 chapters).

2.1 Manuscript Transmission

2.2 The Epistemological Transition

The shift from Short to Long Text is an epistemological migration from immediate visionary reportage to systematic vernacular theology.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐       Twenty-Year       ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│               SHORT TEXT                │       Contemplative     │                LONG TEXT                │
│    "A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman"  │         Gestation       │         "A Revelation of Love"          │
│             (c. 1373–1380)              │                         │             (c. 1393–1416)              │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤       1373 to 1393      ├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ • 11,000 words; 25 chapters             │ ──────────────────────> │ • 63,500 words; 86 chapters             │
│ • Immediate visionary reportage         │                         │ • Systematic vernacular metaphysics     │
│ • Defensive gender disclaimer           │   "Fifteen years after  │ • Gender disclaimer expunged            │
│   ("Botte God forbede that I... teach") │    and more, I was      │ • Full theological parity achieved     │
│ • Parable of Lord & Servant absent      │    answered in inward   │ • Parable of Lord & Servant (Ch. 51)    │
│ • Motherhood of God unelaborated        │    understanding..."    │ • Systematic Trinity of Motherhood      │
│ • Focus: Christ's bodily Passion        │                         │ • Focus: Ontological cosmic safety      │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘                         └─────────────────────────────────────────┘

The Deletion of the Gender Apology

In Chapter 6 of the Short Text, Julian wrote defensively, mindful of 1 Timothy 2:12:

"Botte God forbede that ye schulde saye or take it so that I am a techere, for I meene nought soo, no I saide nevere so; for I am a womman, leued, febille and freylle."

In the Long Text, composed twenty years later from the established authority of her cell, she deleted this entire disclaimer. She no longer apologizes for her sex or claims ignorance; she writes with masterly theological authority.

The Hermeneutical Struggle

Julian explicitly states in Chapter 51 that the Parable of the Lord and the Servant remained completely opaque to her for nearly twenty years:

"And fro that time that it was schewid, I desired oftensithes to witte what was the mening thereof... and yet in this twenty yere after the time of the schewing, save three moneths, I had teching inwardly..."

She did not rush into print; she interrogated the showings for two decades against Scripture, liturgy, and contemplative reason before establishing her synthesis.

In her first showing, Julian encounters a radical scaling of reality:

                          ┌───────────────────────────┐
                          │   THE HAZELNUT PARADOX    │
                          └─────────────┬─────────────┘
                                        │
                         "It is all that is made..."
                                        │
           ┌────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────┐
           ▼                                                         ▼
 ┌──────────────────────────┐                              ┌──────────────────────────┐
 │   ONTOLOGICAL FRAGILITY  │                              │    BENEVOLENT GROUND     │
 │ "It might fall to naught │      SUSTAINED BY LOVE       │     THE TRIAD (Ch. 5)    │
 │    for littlehead"       │ <──────────────────────────> │   1. God made it (Maker) │
 │ Total radical contingent │                              │   2. God loves it (Lover)│
 │ nothingness of creation  │                              │   3. God keeps it(Keeper)│
 └──────────────────────────┘                              └──────────────────────────┘

3.1 The Text (Long Text, Chapter 5)

"Also in this he showed a littil thyng, the quantite of an haselnott, liggande in the pawme of my hand, and it was as rounde as any balle. I lokande therupon with the eye of my understondyng, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made.

I marveylede how it might laste, for methought it myght sodenly have fallen to nowght for lyttilnes. And I was answered in my understondyng: It lastyth and ever shall, for God loveth it; and so hath all thyng being by the love of God.

In this littil thyng I saw three propretees: the fyrst is that God made it, the secunde is that God loveth it, the thyrde is that God kepyth it."

3.2 Phenomenological Analysis

1. Cosmic Scaling and Reduction: Condensing the created universe ("all that is made") into an object in her palm strips the world of intimidating self-sufficiency. Relative to the infinite Creator, creation is minuscule and contingent.
2. The Danger of Annihilation (Littlehead): In Middle English, littlehead (lyttilnes) denotes absolute fragility. Unlike Aristotelian substance ontology, which presumes that matter naturally persists unless destroyed, Julian perceives that creaturely existence has zero autonomous momentum. Left to itself, it must immediately dissolve into nothingness (creatio ex nihilo requires continuous preservation).
3. Continuous Preservation as Love (Creatio Continua): $$\text{Being} = \text{Regardedness by Love}$$ The universe endures solely because God continuously regards it with affection. Julian parses this into a tripartite sequence: * Maker (God made it): Origin of physical existence; * Lover (God loveth it): Continual affective valuing; * Keeper (God kepyth it): Active preservation through time against entropy.
4. Ascetical Detachment ("Naughting"): Julian concludes that until the soul realizes that all created things are as tiny as a hazelnut compared to God, it can never find rest:

   "This is the cause why we be not all in ease of hart and soule: for we seke heere rest in this thing that is so littil, wher no rest is in..."

Chapter 51 contains the visionary pivot of the Long Text, resolving her struggle over divine justice and human suffering.

       ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
       │         THE PARABLE OF THE LORD AND THE SERVANT             │
       ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
       │  THE ACTION:                                                │
       │  • The Lord sits in majestic, quiet love.                   │
       │  • The Servant stands eager, receives an errand, leaps.     │
       │  • The Servant falls into a deep, steep ditch/ravine.       │
       │  • Bruised, paralyzed, groaning, unable to look back.       │
       ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
       │  MEDIEVAL JUDICIAL THEODICY  │    JULIAN'S DISCOVERY        │
       │  • Anselmian Satisfaction    │  • "I saw NO manner of wrath │
       │  • Sin as treason / felony   │    in God... neither by short│
       │  • Lord burns with fury      │    time nor by long."        │
       │  • Infinite retribution      │  • Pity, compassion, solace  │
       ├──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┤
       │                 THE DUAL TYPOLOGY (DOUBLE VISION)           │
       │                                                             │
       │   ADAM (Humanity)            CHRIST (The Incarnation)       │
       │   • Falls through frailty    • Leaps into Mary's womb       │
       │   • Bruised in the ditch     • Plunges into the grave       │
       │   • Suffers blindness        • Donns Servant's torn tunic   │
       │                              • Raises Adam out of the pit   │
       └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

4.1 Narrative Tableau

• The Lord: Sits peacefully on barren ground, clad in a flowing blue garment symbolizing celestial steadfastness. His expression is serene and compassionate.
• The Servant: Stands on the Lord's left in a short, ragged white tunic, eager to do his bidding. Sent on an errand, he leaps forward, trips, and falls into a deep, jagged ditch.
• The Sevenfold Affliction: Paralyzed, heavily bruised, isolated, blind, unable to turn his head back to the Lord, the Servant groans in subjective agony, believing himself utterly abandoned.

4.2 Dissolution of Retributive Wrath (Ira Dei)

Under feudal law and Anselmian atonement theory (Cur Deus Homo), a servant failing his master committed treason (lèse-majesté), incurring wrath and retribution. Julian looked into the Lord's face and found that wrath was completely absent:

"The pitous loke that he had to his servant betokened compassyon and pyte of Adam's fallyng... For I saw no manner of wrath in God, neither by short time nor by long. For sothly, as to my syght, if God might be wroth a touch, we shuld never have lyfe, ne stede, ne beyng."

Julian deduces an immutable ontological principle: Wrath cannot exist in the divine essence. Wrath is an emotional disturbance arising from weakness, ignorance, or injured pride. Because God is infinite goodness, wrath is an ontological impossibility. "Divine anger" is purely a subjective human projection born of guilt and sensory blindness in the ditch.

4.3 The Dual Typology: Adam and Christ

Julian's twenty-year breakthrough was realizing that the Servant has a double identity: $$\text{The Servant} = \begin{cases} \text{Adam (Fallen Humanity)} \\ \text{Christ (The Incarnate Son)} \end{cases}$$ 1. Adam (Humanity): Falls into the ditch of mortality not out of malicious defiance, but through frailty, haste, and ignorance. In the ditch, he is blinded and mistakenly believes the Lord hates him. 2. Christ (The Word Incarnate): Leaps into that very ditch in the Incarnation. The ragged white tunic is human flesh woven in Mary's womb; the ditch is the Passion and the tomb. Christ enters Adam's suffering, takes the bruises upon Himself, and lifts Adam out.

Because the fall of Adam is enclosed within the saving plunge of Christ, God looks upon the fallen creature with unending compassion rather than blame.

4.4 The Ontological Privation of Sin

Drawing on the Augustinian-Dionysian tradition (privatio boni), Julian concludes that sin has no positive being:

"I saw not synne; for I beleve it hath no maner of substance ne party of being, ne it myght not be knowen but by the peyne it is cause of." (Chapter 27)

Sin is an absence, a blindness, a wound. It is known solely by the suffering it inflicts. Therefore, God does not punish sin externally; sin is its own self-inflicted scourge ("Synne is the sharpest scorge"), requiring healing rather than vengeance.

While maternal imagery existed in Scripture and monastic devotion (Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux), Julian was the first Christian thinker to integrate divine motherhood directly into Trinitarian ontology.

                         THE TRINITARIAN ARCHITECTURE
                        ┌────────────────────────────┐
                        │     THE TRIUNE GODHEAD     │
                        └─────────────┬──────────────┘
                                      │
         ┌────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┐
         ▼                            ▼                            ▼
 ┌──────────────────────┐   ┌──────────────────────┐   ┌──────────────────────┐
 │      FATHERHOOD      │   │      MOTHERHOOD      │   │       LORDSHIP       │
 │   Power & Creation   │   │    Wisdom & Mercy    │   │    Grace & Reward    │
 │ (Substantial Nature) │   │  (Sensual Humanity)  │   │   (Fulfillment)      │
 └──────────────────────┘   └──────────┬───────────┘   └──────────────────────┘
                                       │
                    ┌──────────────────┴──────────────────┐
                    ▼                                     ▼
        ┌───────────────────────┐             ┌───────────────────────┐
        │  MOTHER OF OUR NATURE │             │  MOTHER OF OUR GRACE  │
        │ Enclosing our human   │             │ Birthing on the Cross │
        │ substance in creation │             │ Feeding with the Body │
        └───────────────────────┘             └───────────────────────┘

5.1 The Trinitarian Allocation

In Chapters 58 and 59, Julian establishes: * The Father: The property of Mighty Fatherhood—our substantial creation; * The Son: The property of Wise Motherhood—our sensible, bodily redemption; * The Holy Spirit: The property of Good Lordship—grace, reward, and fulfillment.

"As verili as God is oure Fader, as verili God is oure Moder."

5.2 The Three Operations of Maternal Grace

1. Mother of Nature (Moder of kynde): In creation, Christ unites our human substance to the Word.
2. Mother of Mercy (Moder of mercy): In the Incarnation, Christ endures the labor pains of the Passion upon the Cross to birth humanity into eternal life.
3. Mother of Grace (Moder of grace): Ongoing parental care, cleansing, and spiritual feeding.

5.3 Eucharistic Lactation and Realism

In Chapter 60, Julian develops a striking somatic analogy:

"The moder may geve her childe sucke of her mylke, but oure pretious Moder Jhesu, he may fede us with himselfe, and doth full curtesly and full tenderly with the blissed sacrament that is pretious fode of very lif... The moder may leye the childe tenderly to hyr breste, but oure tender Moder Jhesu, he may kindly lede us into his blissid brest by his swete open syde."

A human mother feeds her infant with her milk; Christ feeds the soul with His own wounded flesh and blood in the Eucharist.

5.4 The Pedagogy of the Child

Julian replaces the punishing patriarch with a wise, patient mother:

"A moder may suffer hyr child to fall and be desesid in divers maners for its own profitt, but she will never suffer perill to come to the childe."

When a toddler stumbles in the dirt, the mother does not destroy it; she cleanses it and soothes its bruises. God allows the soul to fall so that it discovers its own weakness, eliminates pride, and learns absolute dependence on grace.

In Revelation 13 (Chapters 27 to 32), Julian confronts the antinomy between her vision of universal divine love and Catholic Church dogma.

                         THE THEOLOGICAL ANTINOMY
┌────────────────────────────────────────┐    ┌────────────────────────────────────────┐
│           THE TEACHING OF              │    │            THE SHOWING OF              │
│          HOLY CHURCH (DOGMA)           │    │          RADICAL LOVE (VISION)         │
├────────────────────────────────────────┤    ├────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ • Damnation is eternal.                │ VS │ • "All manner of thing shall be well." │
│ • Lucifer and the devils are damned.   │    │ • "I saw no manner of wrath in God."   │
│ • Unbaptized and heathens perish.      │    │ • Universal benevolence encompasses all│
│ • Sin requires retributive justice.    │    │   creatures.                           │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘    └────────────────────────────────────────┘
                                     │            │
                                     ▼            ▼
                         ┌────────────────────────────┐
                         │   THE "GREAT DEED" MYSTERY │
                         │     (Unum Factum Magnum)   │
                         ├────────────────────────────┤
                         │ An eschatological act      │
                         │ reserved for time's end;   │
                         │ unknown to men and angels; │
                         │ resolves all things in     │
                         │ love while upholding truth │
                         └────────────────────────────┘

6.1 "Sin is Behooveful" (Synne is Behovabil)

In Chapter 27, responding to Julian's grief over the existence of evil, God answers:

"Synne is behovabil, but al shal be wel, and al shal be wel, and al maner of thyng shal be wel."

Middle English Semantics of Behovabil

Derived from Old English bihōfian, behovabil signifies: * Necessary: Inevitable within a created order of free creatures; * Fitting / Purposeful: Operating constructively within divine pedagogy; * Profitable: Yielding a higher ultimate glory than unbroken innocence (O felix culpa).

6.2 The Antinomy of Damnation

In Chapter 32, Julian raises the central contradiction:

"One poynt of oure feyth is that many creatures shal be dampned: as the aungels that felle out of heven for pride... and many in erthe that dyeth out of the feyth of holy church... And all this standing, methought it was unpossible that all maner of thyng shuld be wele..."

Julian neither denounces Church dogma nor dilutes her vision of divine love.

6.3 The Resolution: The Eschatological "Great Deed"

Julian introduces the doctrine of the Great Deed (unum factum magnum):

"There is a dede the which the blissidful Trinitie shall do in the last day... and by this dede he shall make all well that is not well. And how it shall be don, there is no creature under Christ that wote it, ne shall wote it till it be don... This is the gret dede ordeyned of our Lord God fro without begynnyng, tresured and hid in his blissid brest..."

Julian distinguishes two dimensions of divine truth: 1. The General Church Teaching (The Common Truth): Revealed doctrine governing moral conduct in mortal life. 2. The Private Secret Deed (The Great Deed): An unrevealed eschatological act reserved for the end of time, hidden even from angels, in which God reconciles all things in love while preserving the integrity of divine truth.

8.1 Attachment Theory (Bowlby & Ainsworth) $\longleftrightarrow$ The Motherhood of God

• The Secure Base Hypothesis: In developmental psychology, a child with an unconditionally secure attachment figure displays cognitive curiosity and distress tolerance. A punitive or unpredictable figure generates anxious or disorganized attachment.
• Julian's Metaphysical Secure Base: Medieval retributive theodicy generated severe disorganized attachment toward God. Julian’s formulation of Christ as Mother provides an absolute cosmic secure base: stumbling is developmental rather than criminal, enabling radical distress tolerance without psychological dissociation.

8.2 Terror Management Theory (TMT) $\longleftrightarrow$ The Hazelnut Meditation

• Mortality Salience and Scapegoating: TMT experiments confirm that pervasive mortality salience leads populations to cling to rigid in-group dogmas and violently scapegoat out-groups (manifested in heretic burnings and peasant massacres).
• Julian's Inversion: Surrounded by plague mortality, Julian processes terror through the hazelnut: recognizing total creaturely fragility held entirely within benevolent attention. This decouples mortality awareness from defensive tribal cruelty.

8.3 Non-Dualistic Theodicy $\longleftrightarrow$ Evil as Privation in Systems Theory

• Privation vs. Adversarial Substance: In information theory and complex systems, noise and failure are not autonomous entities; they are entropy, signal degradation, or transmission error.
• Julian's Systems Model: Insisting that "sin has no manner of substance nor no part of being," Julian anticipates non-dual systems analysis. Because evil is privation rather than a positive substance, system recovery requires illumination and realignment rather than retaliatory destruction.

8.4 Systems Resilience & Antifragility under Lockdown

• Voluntary Immurement as Leverage: Taleb defines antifragility as gaining strength from stressors and constraints.
• The Hermeneutic of Confinement: Julian's forty years in a stone tomb generated the most cosmic, intellectually open theological synthesis of her era. Total spatial constraint yielded extraordinary analytical concentration.

9.1 Primary Manuscript Witnesses

• London, British Library Add MS 37790 (The Amherst Manuscript). Unique copy of the Short Text (A Vision Showed to the Devout Woman), ff. 97r–115r. Copied c. 1435–1440.
• Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS f.fr. 1337 (The Paris Manuscript). Earliest complete witness of the Long Text (A Revelation of Love), ff. 1r–174v. Copied c. 1580.
• London, British Library Sloane MS 2499. Complete Long Text, copied by English Benedictine nuns c. 1650–1675.
• London, British Library Sloane MS 3160. Complete Long Text, late seventeenth/early eighteenth century.
• Westminster Cathedral MS 4. Extracts from the Long Text, c. 1500.
• London, British Library Add MS 61823. The Book of Margery Kempe, Chapter 18.

9.2 Critical Editions

• Colledge, Edmund, & Walsh, James, S.J. (Eds.). (1978). A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich (2 vols., Studies and Texts 35). Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.
• Watson, Nicholas, & Jenkins, Jacqueline. (Eds.). (2006). The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
• Spearing, A. C., & Spearing, Elizabeth. (Eds. & Trans.). (1998). Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love. London: Penguin Books.

9.3 Major Critical Scholarship

• Abbott, Christopher. (1999). Julian of Norwich: Education Which Way He Would. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Bynum, Caroline Walker. (1982). Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Jantzen, Grace M. (1987). Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian. London: SPCK.
• McAvoy, Liz Herbert. (2008). A Companion to Julian of Norwich. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
• Turner, Denys. (2011). Julian of Norwich, Theologian. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Watson, Nicholas. (1993). "The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love." Speculum, 68(3), 637–683.
• Watson, Nicholas. (1995). "Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Constitutions, and More." Speculum, 70(4), 822–864.
• Williams, Rowan. (2014). The Edge of Words: God and the Habits of Language. London: Bloomsbury.