Julian of Norwich is the first woman known to have written a book in English. Almost nothing is recorded of her outer life beyond the few facts she gives in her own text. She was born around 1342, lived through the Black Death, the Peasants’ Revolt, and the long instability of fourteenth-century England, and at the age of thirty fell into a serious illness during which she experienced sixteen visions of the suffering Christ and the love of God.
She survived the illness, was professed as an anchoress at the church of St Julian in Norwich (the source of the only name we have for her), and spent the rest of her life in a small cell attached to the church, available through a window for spiritual counsel to anyone who came. The book we have, Revelations of Divine Love, exists in two versions: a shorter text written soon after the visions, and a longer text she revised and expanded over the next twenty years.
Her central insight is that love is the meaning of everything. After two decades of pondering what was shown to her, she heard the answer in her interior: 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. Her famous formulation, all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well, is not optimism but a metaphysical claim: the ground of being is love and works only love, even where this is hidden from us.
Julian was unknown for centuries. Her book was preserved in a single manuscript, transcribed by Benedictine nuns in the seventeenth century, and finally published in modern English in 1670 and again in 1901. She is now read as one of the most important contemplatives in any Christian language.
