fastening her heart on God, and comforting her soul with speech of Christ’s Passion (as she would have comforted another in like distress) and rehearsing 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 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,”{3} 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.”{4}
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 knowledge—is taken partly from memory, with that of the kindly nurse, and the child, which by nature loveth the
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” (lxi.-lxiii.).
The title “Lady,” “Dame” or “Madame” was commonly accorded to anchoresses, nuns, and others that had had education in a Convent.{5}
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 Benedictine 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 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 Ancren Riwle, a Rule or Counsel for “Ancres,” was at their own request composed. The recluse’s chamber seems to have generally 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 occasionally 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. According 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.{6}
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 Coniston of that day, to the little Churchyard house that would hide so much from her eyes of outward 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{7} might be: “I offering yield myself to the divine Goodness{8} 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 temptation 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.”{9}
“One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek 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. That 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, proper a amica mea: jam enim Hyems transiit, imber ambiit et recessit. Surge, propera amica mea, speciosa mea, et veni.” “Arise: let us go hence”{10} “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 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 enabling” 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 beholding 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 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 iron ; 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
