JULIAN AND JUDAISM - Norwich's Jewry

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

A very interesting account of Jewry in England's "Julian".  The concept of "Bankruptcy" was always alien to Northern Europeans until the Jews arrived... --CSR
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JULIAN AND JUDAISM

I was needing to study Hebrew. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whom I was editing for Penguin, had been proficient in Hebrew as a child. At the same time, I was editing the manuscripts of Julian of Norwich in my convent. And I suddenly became aware that often in her texts Julian showed direct knowledge of that language, for instance in not translating * shalom, 'peace, well-being, in all things', 'and all shall be well', as had Jerome, with Latin recte, or Wyclif, with Middle English ri3t, but with 'And all manner of thing shall be well'. I then found other instances, which I discuss later in this talk. I came to suspect that she was of Jewish ancestry but I could not go to Norwich for many years to investigate whether there were conversi to Christianity who remained in that city after King John had banished all Jews from England in 1290. In 2005, I was finally able to sit in Norwich's Library with their copy of V.D. Lipman's The Jews of Medieval Norwich (London: Jewish Historical Society, 1967), in front of me, taking copious notes, particularly on the conversi who remained in England and in Norwich following that expulsion.

I. Norwich's Jewry



*Michael Camille, in The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge: University Press, 1989), pp. 182-185, discusses the political and anti-Semitic cartoon drawn at the head of a 1233 tallage roll in the Public Record Office in London, E 401/1565. It 'playfully', cruelly, presents Isaac of Norwich drawn with three heads, Moses Mokke and the Jewess Arveghaye (Abigail) together with demons by Norwich Castle. Camille's discussion of the drawing is in the context of idolatry. Indeed, the Jews in the major English cities were required to keep the documentation concerning the loans they made, shetar, in archae, chests, punning on the Ark of the Law. Norwich's Cathedral was largely built from such loans. We shall find the same masons' marks on pillars of Isaac's House, the Cathedral Priory's Infirmary, and Carrow Priory.

Norwich, in Julian's day, was the second largest city in England. Its Jewish community was scholarly, prosperous and powerful, though suffering sporadic severe pogroms, especially in 1144 when William of Norwich was found murdered, in 1255 when Hugh of Lincoln was found similarly murdered (whose stories Chaucer has his Prioress retell), until King John in 1290 expulsed all Jews from England. But some converted to Christianity and remained, including a few in Norwich. There were 96 such converts, of whom 44 were men and 52 women. One of these, in 1308, too early for our Julian (1342-circa 1416), is even named 'Juliana of Norwich' (Lipman, p. 184).

V.D. Lipman, pp. 95-99, 109, 147, 157, 184, 224, tells us in particular of the Jurnet family, domiciled in Conisford. The founder, Jurnet, who loaned money to Norwich Cathedral Priory, had married a Christian heiress, Miryld or Muriel of Earlham, for which he was fined 6000 marks. Margaret, their daughter, though born of a Christian mother, was a Jewess and could write a shetar or receipt in Hebrew. Their son, Isaac, the wealthiest Jew of the thirteenth century, was caricatured in the tallage roll given above. While another Isaak, known as Hak, also of this family, in 1253, following his imprisonment in the Tower of London, converted to Christianity. This family was noted for its learning and generous patronage, and spoken of as Ha Nadib. Indeed, Norwich, in the thirteenth century, had five or six rabbinical scholars, addressed as 'Master', 'Magister'. Likewise, the women were noted for their literacy. Other Jews than the Jurnets in Norwich lived near the Castle and its market in the Westwick area, and would seek protection under the King in Norwich Castle in times of trouble. I might mention that Joanna Greenberg's first novel, The King's Persons, is a brilliantly researched study of the genocide of the Jews in York, their second largest community in England.

*Jonathan Plunkett has placed his father George Plunkett's photographs of Norwich on the web, http://www.the-plunketts.freeserve.co.uk§, many of these being taken before the war and the bombing that would destroy St Julian's Church. I give, with their consent, the photographs and manually typewritten comments on 'Isaac's Hall or the Music House on King Street', to be found below St Julian's Church and Alley:

    . . . At Bury St Edmunds is still to be found the strong Jew's House known as Moyse's Hall, and correspondingly the Jew's House in Norwich is still to be found although greatly disguised by reason of subsequent additions. It is in the parish of St Etheldred, and has been known both as "Paston House " and "The Music House". . . . a conjectural drawing of the original Jew's House . . . exhibits the usual method of entrance to a Norman building which was by a covered staircase leading to a door on the first floor. . . . the Norman groined cellaring (has) the only remaining portion of one side of the entrance door of the Isaac's Hall, all the rest of the door, porch and staircase having been destroyed when the Jacobean portion of the Music House was erected on the south side. The bases (of this entrance door) have vertical "nicks" about 1½ inches apart inside the concave moulding . . . similar to the three transitional pillars of the old Infirmary of the Norwich Priory . . . the date of these is believed to be between 1175 and 1190.


                                      [ King Street: Isaac's Hall or the Music House Map ]
 


    *It appears then that the house was built by Isaac the Jew temp. Henry II. On his death it was escheated by King John and alienated in favour of Sir William de Valoines by Henry III. After passing through many hands it was in 1474 the city house of William Yelverton Esq who sold it to Sir John Paston Knt. In 1613 it was purchased by Sir Edward Coke, Recorder of Norwich and Lord Chief Justice. He it was who probably built the 17th century addition to the south, calling it Paston House in memory of his first wife. Finding the old porch in the way, he destroyed all except the fragment shown. The "Music House" was first mentioned in the "Norwich Gazette" of 19th January 1723, the City Waits being accustomed to meet and practice there." See Ernest A. Kent in "Norfolk Archaeology" Vol 28. 1945




II. Adam, Julian and Judaism

*Bishop Hemming and Birgitta



I came to Julian studies, as it were, through a back door, first working with Birgitta of Sweden whose initial spiritual directors and editors of her Revelationes had been Bishop Hemming of Åbo and Magister Mathias, who had studied Hebrew under the misogynist Jewish convert, Nicholas of Lyra, in Paris, and who translated the Bible for Birgitta from Hebrew into Swedish. Birgitta's canonization was effected by a document written by the Norwich Benedictine who became Cardinal, formerly known as 'Magister' or 'Master' Adam Easton, and who had taught Hebrew at Oxford, and it presents a strong defence of women as prophets, its examples drawn from both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Greek Testament, as well as giving early Christian saints. Paradoxically, for its dialectic, it drew upon the misogynist Nicholas of Lyra's attacks on women, in particular of Marguerite Porete, burned at the stake in 1310 in in the Place de Grève, Paris, for having written the Pseudo-Dionysan Mirror of Simple Souls, along with a relapsed Jewish convert.



*Adam Easton, a Benedictine at Norwich Cathedral Priory, first studied at Oxford, though was also needed to preach in Norwich. Information on Adam Easton is to be found in Leslie John MacFarlane, 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton, O.S.B.' (University of London Ph.D. Thesis, 1955), Joan Greatrex, Biographical Register of the English Cathedral Priories of the Province of Canterbury, circa 1066-1540 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), Margaret Harvey, The English in Rome 1362-1420: Portrait of an Expatriate Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), and the recent self-published book by Andrew Lee, The Most Ungrateful Englishman: The Life and Times of Adam Easton (2006). Easton was able to return to Oxford, after his stint of dutiful preaching, being Prior of Students there, 20 September 1366. We have a huge bill paid for the shipping by wagon of the manuscripts, 113 shillings and three pence. Julian's largest legacy, from Isabelle, Countess of Suffolk, was a mere 20 shillings.

*Among his manuscripts was Pseudo-Dionysius' collected writings copied out at St Victor in Paris, along with a manuscript by Rabbi David Kimhi on Hebrew philology, in Hebrew, the Sepher Miklol, or Book of Perfection, discussing God as Mother, formerly Norwich Cathedral Priory X.CLXXXXII/II, now Cambridge, St John's College, 216 (I.10), and also Easton's schoolboy manuscripts on time, originally written in Norwich. We learn elsewhere that he also owned Cohen's Hebrew Grammar. Already, at St Victor in Paris, intense study of both Greek and Hebrew texts had been taking place, noted in Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), and Adam Easton's writings are clearly influenced, as are Julian's, by such Victorine Greek and Hebrew exegesis early in his career.

Two recent writers on Adam Easton, Margaret Harvey and Andrew Lee, assume that Adam came to Hebrew studies late when serving in the Papal Curia in Avignon and they discuss his assiduous work in translating the whole Bible from Hebrew into Latin, correcting Jerome's version, meeting with four Jewish scholars and a Jewish interpreter for this work. But in his De ecclesiastice potestatis he tells Pope Urban VI that he has already been studying Hebrew for twenty years, dating these studies back to his Oxford days. I believe that they even date back to his childhood. And to Julian's. They were possibly brother and sister.

Adam Easton came back again to Norwich, in 1367-1368, and at the same time that Julian perhaps was writing the Westminster Cathedral Manuscript's original version at 25, Master Adam Easton returned again to England and Norwich that same year, with a letter from Pope Urban V to Edward III, dated, 3 May 1368. He was back in Avignon in 1369.


*Adam Easton, as with Jerome to Paula and Eustochium, likely shared with Julian his Hebrew lore. This is from an early manuscript from Jumièges showing Jerome and Eustochium working together at translating the Bible, which was to become the conscious and deliberate model for Magister Mathias and Birgitta of Sweden, then later her partnership with the Hieronomyte Hermit Bishop Alfonso of Jaén. Birgitta even travelled in her seventieth year to Jerusalem and to Bethlehem (House of Bread), seeing there her vision of the Nativity.

     

   

Julian begins her Westminster Manuscript Showing with the same reverencing of the about to be born and then just born Child as had had Birgitta in her vision.
 
There is a strong possibility that Julian had heard Adam Easton preach at a time when he was studying and translating Isaiah, and making use of Rabbi David Kimhi's brilliant commentaries on Isaiah and on the Psalms, for Julian not only uses the servant Messiah passages from Isaiah 52-53, she also incorporates into the Showing of Love the Isaiah 30.15 passage on restlessness and rest that Augustine before her and Herbert after her so treasured, the Isaiah 40.12 passage on God's holding the waters of his Creation in the hollow of his hand, the passages in Isaiah 49.15 and 66.13 where God compares himself to a mother who loves her child, as well as using Psalms 110.1 and 119.73, and perhaps the Isaiah 2.10 passage on being hidden in a ditch, in the Vulgate, 'abscondere in fossa humo'.

IIa. Sacred Alphabet

*Hebrew has the letter that begins God's name, and Jerusalem's and Judea's and Joshua's and Jesus's and Julian's, be the smallest one of all, and be the letter that means 'hand', yod. And another letter means the palm of one's hand, kaph. The first Jewish prayer that Mary would have taught Jesus was 'Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit',

and which he last utters on the Cross in Mary's hearing.

There are two kinds of mysticism, the Greek, derived in turn from the East, from India by way of Syria, which desires abstraction, imagelessness, which is called apophatic, and which is attained by kenosis, by emptying oneself, stripping away all to become detached from this world and time, and thus attain the 'Cloud of Unknowing', especially espoused by Pseudo-Dionysius. There is another, the Hebraic, which excessively overdoes itself when becoming the Kabbalah, but which naturally sees God as creating us marvellously by his Word, all that is created being so created by a sacred alphabet, the Atomic Chart of Elements, our genetic coding, the Fibonacci curves of natural forms, the functioning of the brain in tandem, in synapses, with the hand, the eye, which is tangible, concrete. Gershom Scholem notes that in the Kabbalah 'haskel' or 'heskel' (Jeremiah 9.23), is the infinitive form of 'sekhel' or nous, thinking with God alone, being noughted but for God, in relation to 'hokmah' (wisdom) and discusses this from John Scotus Erigena and Meister Eckhart (Origins of the Kabbalah, ed. R.J. Werblowsky, trans. Allan Arkush, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 269, 272-273).


Julian likely earned her keep when an anchoress teaching children their A.B.C., these children then being able to become literate nuns and monks. Julian speaks of her knowing of God, her approaching God, as being like learning her A.B.C. (Paris Manuscript, folios 103v-104, henceforth cited as P, followed by folio number),

                                            I haue
    techyng wt in me. as it were the be=
    gynnyng of an .A.B.C. wher
    by I may haue ∫ome vnder∫tondyng
    of oure lordys menyng. ffor the
    pryvytes of the reuelacion be hyd
    ther in.

    I have teaching within me, as it were the beginning of an alphabet, whereby I may have some understanding of our Lord's meaning, for the secrets of the revelation are concealed therein.

and (P166),

                                               Of whych
    gretne∫∫e he wylle we haue knowyng
    here as it were in an .A.B.C. That
    is to ∫ey. that we may haue a lytylle
    knowyng where of we ∫hulde haue
    fulhed in heuyn and that is for to
    ∫pede vs.

    Of which greatness he wants us to know here as if it were an alphabet. That is to say that we may have a little knowledge of what shall be fulfilled in heaven and that is to help us.


Our alphabet is Semitic, and of one family, of one technology, of one phonetic code, shared by Torah, Koran and Gospel, in which our Bible, God's Word is inscribed, whether the forms of these letters be aleph, beth, gimel, or alpha, beta, gamma, or A, B, C, in our Roman usage. The Hebrew alphabet has each letter be a thing and a number as well as a phonetic code, aleph=ox, 1 or 1000, beth=house (2,2000), gimel=camel (3,3000). This is where computers began. One calls such mysticism cataphatic, for it uses signs and symbols, icons and images, being concrete, not abstract, 'dabhar' being word and thing, 'amen', that which is said, which therefore is. Hebrew Law forbids the representation of God, except by a hand (yad, yod, hand, the smallest letter, the number 10) in the sky, but the Hebrew Bible very much shapes God in our image, with a face, with arms, with hands, with fingers, with human body parts. Hebrew mysticism is paradoxically rooted in the Incarnation, of the Word as flesh and blood, with simple things we see and taste, with mem (40,600), water, and nun (50,700), fish, that God's Word is in all Creation.

*And where lights, water, bread, wine and oil are blessed liturgically by women and men.

Baruch atha adonai elohinu melech ha olim. Blessed art thou Lord, King of the Universe, who has made us holy by Thy Commandments and bidst us light these Sabbath lights. "and who brings forth bread from the earth," and of the fruit of the vine.

St Francis of mercantile Assisi, himself with Jewish roots, saw God's Creation in such sacred and such material forms, treasuring each scrap of writing, reading in Humanity and Nature, the imaging of the Creator, the Word become flesh in our midst.

Adam Easton's knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, which he taught at Oxford, is found throughout his writings, including his certain authorship of the Defensorium Ecclesiastice Potestatis, 1379-80, which won for him his 1381 Cardinalate and his likely authoring of the Liber Regalis, compiled for the second Coronation of Richard II to Queen Anne of Bohemia, both clad in blue, which Easton arranged in 1383 for the Pope, stressing there Jerome's Epistle to Fabiola on the High Priest Aaron's garb, particularly its blue, to be echoed in Julian's Parable of the Lord and Servant where the Lord is garbed in Aaron's and Mary's blue, seated on the ground. Julian's use of the Hebrew Scriptures, and especially those parts of the Bible Adam loved, will be omnipresent throughout all versions of her Showing of Love.




IIb. Shema

*In particular, there are echoes of the Hebrew Shema, 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One; And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind, and with all your strength; and your neighbour as yourself', from Deuteronomy 6.4, Leviticus 19.18, Mark 12.30-31, Luke 10.27, and which are written on scrolls blessed and placed in mezuzahs on the doorposts of observant Jewish houses. Isaac's House would have had them.  


Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.
Blessed be His name, whose glorious kingdom is for ever
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thing heart, and with all thine soul, and with all thy might.

to be found in Julian's Showing.

    And in thys
    knowyng he wyll þt our vndir=
    ∫tondyng be grounded wt all our
    myghtis, all our entent. & all
    oure meanyng. (W93v, P77)

    And in this knowing he wills that our understanding be grounded with all our strength, all our intent and all our meaning.

                                for he wolde
    haue all oure loue fa∫tened to
    hym. (W107-107v)

    For he would have all our love fastened to him.

    when we fele hym truly. wyllyng to
    be wt hym. wt all oure herte. wt all
    oure soule. and wt all oure myghte. (P107v)

    And when we feel him truly, wanting to be with him with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our might.

    . . . and my harte to fa∫ten
    on god wt alle the tru∫te and the myghte. (P147)

    And my heart to fasten to God with all my trust and with all my strength.


IIc. God as Power, Wisdom and Love

Julian descants upon God as Power, Wisdom and Love. So also had Dante had his Hell Gate be created by God as Power, Wisdom and Love. But when I sought this phrase in Latin amongst the Church Fathers I found it only in the circle associated with the influence of Pseudo-Dionysius, mainly the Victorines and Marguerite Porete. The similar phrase Julian also uses, of God as Power, Wisdom and Goodness, is likewise rare. But in Julian these terms for God invoked as Power, Wisdom and Love are everwhere (W83, P25, 58, 63v, 84v, 124v, 132, 133v, 154-154v, 161, A100, 114). Similarly for God as Might, Wisdom and Goodness (P10, 63, 84v, 87v, 90 (twice), 114-114v, 125v, 136, 144, 161, A112). And for the Trinity as Truth, Wisdom and Love, (W97, P81 [twice], 81v, 84v, 168v). While the form, Truth, Wisdom and Goodness, is likewise found (W99v, P114).

For example:

                                   ∫ee I
led all thyng to þe end. that I
ordeyned it to . fro wtoute begyn=
nynge. by þe ∫ame myght wi∫e=
dome & loue. that I made it with (W83)

See I lead all things to the end that I ordained them to, from without beginning, by the same might, wisdom and love that I made them with.

It was not until I was asked to review a book by Deeana Copeland Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers: Nicholas of Lyra and Christian Reading of Jewish Text in the Later Middle Ages, p. 93, that I found what I had sought. Jewish/Christian polemics hinged upon God as Unity/Trinity. Hebrew has plural forms for God's name, for example, Elohim. These plural forms came to be seen in rabbinical teachings as Power, Wisdom and Love, or Power, Wisdom and Goodness. However, Nicholas of Lyra and other Christian exegetes, for instance, Thomas Aquinas, who attacked Augustine on this score, paradoxically claimed this was heresy, that God could not be divided, and that these qualities belonged to the act of creation, not to God per se.


IId. Restlessness and Rest

Julian also incorporates into the Showing of Love the Isaiah 30.15 passage on restlessness and rest (P10):

                                                  ¶ And this
    is the cau∫e why that no ∫owle is in
    re∫te till it is noughted of all thinges
    that is made: for when ∫he is wilfully nough=
    ted for loue, to haue him that is all,
    then is ∫he able to receive gho∫tly reste,

    And this is the cause why no soul is at rest until it is noughted of all things that are made: for when she is wilfully noughted for love, to have him that is all, then she is able to receive ghostly rest,

which recurs in the Norwich Castle Manuscript at folio 59v (N59v),

       ¶ Lord seith he I schal be fulfeld and fed when thi blisse schal apere whan I schal se that blisful face there as the prophete seith. ysaie lxvij. Schal be sabat of sabaat for aftyr the dai of grace and of reste fro synne schal come the dai of blisse and endeles reste fro woo and trauaile.

    'Lord', he said, 'I shall be fulfilled and fed when your bliss shall appear when I shall see that blissful face there' as the prophet says, Isaiah 67, on the Sabbath of Sabbaths. For after the day of grace and of rest from sin shall come the day of bliss and endless reste from woe and travail.

and in the Amherst Manuscript's passage from Heinrich Suso, Horologium Sapientiae, fol. 136 (A136), from Isaiah 66.23, 'et sabbatum ex sabbato.'


IIe. The 'Sign of Jonah'

In the Long Text, at P20-20v, but not in Westminster nor in Amherst, is a use of both Jonah 2.2-9, especially verse 5, and Psalms 18.16, 139.7-12 (for Jonah is quoting the Psalms, where Julian describes herself on the deep sea floor, wrapped in seaweed, in a 'sign of Jonah' episode (Matthew 12.39-41, Luke 11.29-32), again taking what is consonant from Hebraism with Christianity. I illustrate this vision with two scenes from the Guthlac Roll, showing the fish in the water, for Saints Guthlac and Pega are likewise from East Anglia. Remember that in Hebrew M, mem is water, N, nun is fish. Catherine of Siena said, 'God is in us as the fish is in the water, and we are in God as the water is in the fish'.

 

This is Julian's passage, Julian's vision:

    ¶ One tyme my vnder∫tandyng
    was lett Downe in to the ∫ea grounde .
    and ther ∫aw I hilles and dales grene
    ∫emyng as it were mo∫∫e begrowyng
    wt wrake and gravell. Then I vn
    der∫tode thus . that if a man or woman
    when there vnther the brode water
    and he myght haue ∫yght of god . ∫o
    as god is wt a man continually. he ∫=
    houlde be ∫afe in ∫owle and body and
    take no harme.

    One time my understanding was let down on to the sea bed and there I saw green hills and dales seeming as it were moss growing on the wrack and gravel. Then I understood that if a man or woman were there under the deep water he might yet have sight of God. For as God is with a man continually he should be safe in soul and body and take no harm.

Julian chiastically envelopes it with the Song of Solomon's love quest, and just so had Christ preceded and presented within it the Queen of Sheba coming to seek Solomon's wisdom (Matthew 12.42, Luke 11.31), when speaking of the 'sign of Jonah'. This particular passage seems to evoke as well intensely classical passages from Plato and from Plotinus, likely known to Master, then Cardinal, Adam Easton. Even the fine passage at the end of the Showing of Love (P171v),

                                            ¶ Thus
    I ∫awe and vnder∫tode that oure feyth
    is oure lyght in oure nyght . Whych
    lyght is god oure endle∫∫e day

    Thus I saw and understood that our faith is our light in our night. Which light is God, our endless day.

is quoting Psalm 138.11-12, the Psalm Jonah has sung in the belly of the whale. One therefore suspects this gathering of texts represents what Julian heard from a sermon Master Adam Easton had preached in Norwich to the laity, 1356-1363, 1367-1368. Just as one suspects another sermon Julian would have heard from Adam during those years to have been on St Dionysius the Areopagite.


IIf. And God Saw That It Was Good

*Soon after the 'Deep Sea Bed' section, is an enchanting part of Julian's Long Text that reminds one of one's first Hebrew lesson, describing God's Creation of the World and seeing that each in turn is good, tov, Genesis 1.4,10,18,25,31,

at P24 on the soul beholding God,

    And generally of all his workes . ffor
    they be fulle good.

    And generally of all his work. For they are very good.

That discussion of God's Creation of the World continues through a blending of Exodus 3.14, Psalm 119.73, Wisdom of Solomon 7, Hebrews 6.1 at P25, to be followed on Genesis 1.6-10 and Psalm 65.9 at P25v. Julian repeats Exodus 3.14, where God is 'I am', at P49 as 'I it am'. It is as if we are glimpsing the labours of Paula and Eustochium with Jerome. And those of Magister Mathias and Birgitta. For the biographies of Cardinal Adam Easton state he translated the entire Hebrew Bible: 'ac Biblia tota ab hebreo in latinum transtulisse', says John Bale, though it was later stolen except for the Psalter by a Carmelite, named Richard Collier.


IIg. The Mikveh

Other scholars have also responded to Julian's Judaism. Maria R. Lichtmann, '"I desyred a bodylye syght": Julian of Norwich and the Body', Mystics Quarterly 17 (1991), 12-19, cites Jacob Neuser, The Oral Torah: The Sacred Books of Judaism, An Introduction, pp. 16-21, on the Talmudic taboo of overflowing of boundaries of fluidity in relation to PIV.xii.25v.8-26.4 of the Long Text, where Julian speaks of God's Creation of the waters plenteously for our service, reminding one of the mikveh, the ritual bath (when Christ changes the water in the jars into wine at the wedding feast of Cana, these containers are the ones used to carry the water to the mikveh bath for the cleansing of a woman from menstrual blood), but then adding that Christ's blood is even more cleansing and more generous.

    the hote blode ranne out so plentu=
    ou∫ly that ther was neyther ∫een ∫kyn=
    ne ne wounde but as it were all blode.
    And when it cam where it shulde ha=
    ue falle Downe. there it vany∫∫ched.
    not wt standyng the bledyng conty=
    nued a whyle. tyll it myght be ∫een
    wt avy∫ement. ¶ And this was
    ∫o plentuous to my ∫yght that me
    thought. if it had ben ∫o in kynde
    and in ∫ubstance for that tyme. it
    ∫hulde haue made the bedde all on
    bloude. and haue pa∫∫yde over all about,
    ¶ Than came to my mynde. that
    god hath made watyrs plentuous
    in erth to our ∫ervys. And to our
    bodyly ee∫e for tendyr loue that he
    hath to vs. But yet lyketh hym better
    that we take full hol∫omly hys blessyd
    blode to wa∫∫ch vs of ∫ynne. ffor ther
    is no lycour that is made. that lykyth hym
    so wele to yeue vs. ffor it is mo∫t plen=
    tuous as it is most precious.

    The hot blood ran out so plenteously that neither the skin nor the wound could be seen for blood. And when it came to where it should have fallen, there it vanished. Notwithstanding the bleeding continued a while till it could be seen observantly. ¶ And this was so plenteous in my sight that I thought that if it been so in nature and in substance at that time it would have made the bed all bloody and have spilled over all about. ¶ Then came to my mind that God has created waters plenteously on earth for our service and for our bodily ease for the tender love that he has for us. But yet he likes better that we take full wholesomely his blessed blood to wash ourselves from sin. For there is no liquid that is made that he likes so well to give us. For it is as most plenteous as it is most precious.

In these lines in the Showing of Love one can sense Julian as Jewish, concerned about purity and pollution, and as Christian convert, understanding Jesus' radical strategy in breaking halach, the careful avoiding of blood, death, by taking his blood as Eucharist wine to save all, to be echoed again in Marlowe's lines he gives to Doctor Faustus (V.ii.91-92):

    See, see where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
    One drop would save my soul - half a drop! ah my Christ! -

Alfred Edersheim, a Jewish convert in the nineteenth century, wrote splendid books, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (London: Longmans, Green, 1897), The Temple and its Services (London: Religious Tract Society, 1874), and others, studying Jesus' Judaism, mixing it with proto-Marxism, observing that Rome co-opted and exempted Jerusalem's priests from taxes either to Temple or Caesar but that the laity were bled white paying both taxes to Temple and to Caesar. He noted how Jesus's ministry and martyrdom broke the financial stranglehold of the Romanised Judaic priesthood, based on the paid ritual observances of halach, by turning these inside out to where unclean women, lepers, madmen, Samaritans, Syro-Phoenicians could cease to be 'untouchable', and where the central liturgy itself now turned blood and death into life and salvatory wine gratis. Gandhi would repeat these strategies with the illegal making of salt, breaking the imperial Roman and British monopoly, and the accepting of Untouchables. Martin Buber in Ecstatic Confessions, in 1909, responded to Julian's Showing. While John Lounibos and his Jewish students at Dominican College have discussed Julian in terms of the Torah's Midrash. Sister Benedicta Ward has observed that Julian's precursor can be observed in St Anselm's Prayer on St Paul where Christ is Mother. While it is in Judaism that God is emphatically both Mother and Father, both feminine and masculine, as we shall see in the hands of Rembrandt's Prodigal Father, and in particular it is Rabbi David Kimhi, whose work Adam Easton possessed, who wrote of the Motherhood of God as in Psalm 110 and Isaiah.


IIh. 'Dextra Domini'

             

Julian's Parable of the Lord and the Servant owes much to Isaiah, particularly its 'Suffering Servant' section. In part it is a political allegory, perhaps, for in 1385 Adam Easton himself fell afoul of his beloved Pope Urban VI, was imprisoned in a dungeon, tortured and the other five Cardinals with him, were all murdered, he alone escaping to tell the tale. Of particular interest is Julian's discussion of the Servant, the Son. Julian does not place Christ seated at God's right hand, as one would expect from the Christian uses of Psalm 110-1 in Matthew 22.41-46, Mark 12.35-37, Luke 20.42-44, but first as standing directly before the Lord, the Father, and she uses 'right' as a qualifier. She takes pains to explain that 'right' is not literal,

    ¶ But it is nott ment
    that the ∫onne ∫yttyth on the ryght
    hand be∫yde as one man ∫yttyth
    by an other in this lyfe. for ther
    is no such ∫yttyng as to my ∫yght
    in the trynyte. but he ∫yttyth on
    his faders ryght honde. that is to
    ∫ey ryght in the hye∫t noblyte of
    the faders Joy (P106),

    But it is not meant that the Son sits on the right hand side as one man sits by another in this world. For there is no such sitting as to my understanding in the Trinity. But he sits on his Father's right hand, that is to say right in the highest nobility of the Father's joy,

conforming her perceptions to those in The Cloud of Unknowing (Early English Text Society 216:106-109.26, 114.3-10), discussing Stephen's martyrdom in Acts 7.55. Rabbi David Kimhi, whose work Adam Easton owned, had clearly stated, from his father Rabbi Joseph Kimhi, that Christians erred in their interpretation of the Psalm. Adam Easton, following their teaching as does Julian of Norwich, explained that in Hebrew 'dextra domini', is not be taken literally, but as 'honoured' (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hamilton 7, fol. CCXLI).

A similar instance occurs in Easton's Defensorium Ecclesiastice Potestatis where Easton has himself in dialogue as 'Episcopus' discuss with a Jew, Rabbi Samuel de Doma, the meaning of Psalm 72.2: Deus iudicium tuum regi da, et iustitiam tuam filio regis, as to whether it applies to King Solomon or God. Easton adds 'I reply to you as I did then to the Jew: Let the Psalm be read and if it can be verified  about Solomon purely as a man and a king I agree with you and am convinced. If it cannot be explained thus, hold what the Church teaches'.

Julian's text:

¶ But it is nott ment
that the ∫onne ∫yttyth on the ryght
hand be∫yde as one man ∫yttyth
by an other in this lyfe.

reflects Adam's text which reflects Rabbi Samuel's text, which reflects Rabbi David Kimhi's text, which reflects his father Rabbi Joseph Kimhi's text, all this reflected too in the Cloud's text, in a family of texts, passed down from father to son, and here also to a daughter or sister. Thus the line in the Creed is to be interpreted not literally as seated at the right hand but as greatly 'honoured', as the heir.

IIi. Shalom

Apart from Adam Easton's influence on Julian would have been that of the Carmelites. The White Friars as they were known, like William Southfield who knew both Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe of Lynn, traced their origins to the prophets Elijah and Elisha. At P50-59v, is a crescendoing of a passage drawn from 2 Kings 4.23,26, concerning the miracle by Elisha of the raising of the Shunamite woman's dead child, despite her sarcasm. She answers, when all is lost, her son dead, 'All is well, shalom'.  Julian's use, 'All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well', rubricated, in red, in the Paris manuscript, corresponds to the Hebrew text of the Scriptures where this phrase is shalom, rather than the translation of the Jerome Vulgate Latin, recte (Regum IV 4.26) and Wycliffite Middle English, ri3t, Bibles. Maria Boulding cites John MacQuarrie on Hebraic shalom as signifying completeness, fullness, unity, wholeness, similar to Russian mir and Sanskrit santi, while the Greek eirene means truce, a mere pause in man's normal state of hostility, similar to Latin pax, and that Biblical thinking has peace be more original than sin in The Coming of God (London: Collins, 1984), pp. 200-201, citing Macquarrie, The Concept of Peace (New York: Harper, 1973), p. 22. Julian in her thirty-first chapter says
   I may make alle
thyng wele. And I can make all thy=
ng welle. And I ∫halle make alle thyng
wele. And I wylle make all thyng
welle. And thou ∫halt se thy ∫elfe þt
alle maner of thyng shall be welle.

I may make all things well. And I can make all things well. And I shall make all things well. And I will make all things well. And you will see yourself that all manner of things shall be well. (P54v-55)

 

III. Julian on the Jews

Julian in her 32nd and 33rd Chapters to the Showing of Love struggles to reconcile damnation and salvation, Christ's teaching and that of the Church. She rubricates Christ's saving argument that she reveals in her prophetic writing, her Showing of his Love (P58v-59).

    ¶ And one poynt of oure feyth
    is. that many creatures shall be da=
    mpnyd as angelis that felle ou3t
    of hevyn for pride whych be now
    fendys. And meny in erth that
    dyeth out of the feyth of holy chych.
    that is to ∫ey. tho that be heythyn And
    also many that hath receyvyd cri∫ton=
    dom and lyvyth vncri∫ten lyfe. And
    dyeth ou3te of cheryte. All they∫e
    shall be dampnyd to helle wtou3t
    ande. as holy chirche techyth me to
    beleue. ¶ And ∫tondyng alle thys
    me thought it was vnpo∫∫ible that
    alle maner of thyng ∫huld be wele
    as oure lorde ∫hewde in thys tyme.
    ¶ And as to thys I had no other
    an∫were in ∫hewyng of our lorde
    but thys. that þt is vnpo∫∫ible to the
    is nott vnpo∫∫ible to me I ∫halle
    ∫ave my worde in alle thyng and
    I ∫halle make althyng wele.

    ¶ And one point of our faith is that many creatures shall be damned like the angels who fell from heaven because of pride and who are now fiends. And many on earth who die outside of the faith of Holy Church, that is to say those who are pagan. And also many who have received Christ but lived un-Christian lives and who die lacking charity. All these shall be damned to hell without end, as Holy Church teaches me to believe. ¶ Yet from all this I though it was impossible that all manner of thing shall be well as our Lord showed at this time. ¶ And to this I had no other answer the Lord showed but this: What is impossible to you is not impossible to me. I shall save my Word in all things and I shall make all things well.

      Antonello da Messina, Annunciation

Scripturally those words are said by the Angel to Mary concerning God conceiving Jesus within her virgin womb at the Annunciation, Luke 1.37, with which Julian's Westminster Showing of Love had so magnificently opened, joining these to shalom, all shall be well, that shall be wrought by that saving Word, the Saviour, salus noster, in all.

Then in the following Chapter 33 (P60):

    ¶ In whych ∫y3t I vnder∫tond
    tht alle the creatures tht be of the devylles
    condi∫cion in thys life. and ther in en=
    dyng ther is no more mencyon made
    of them before god and alle his holyn
    then of the devylle. ¶ Notwyth∫tondy=
    ng that they be of mankynde wheder they
    haue be cri∫tend or nought. ffor though
    the reuelation was ∫hewde of goodnes
    in whych was made lytylle mencion
    of evylle. 3ett I was nott drawen ther
    by from ony poynt of the feyth þt holy
    chyrch techyth me to beleue.

    ¶ In which sight I understand that of all the creatures who are of the devil's condition in this life and at their ending, there is no more mention made of them before God and his angels, than of the devil. ¶ Though they are of mankind, whether christened or not. For the Revelation was shown of goodness in which little mention was made of evil. Yet I was not drawn by it from any point of the faith that Holy Church teaches me to believe.

Finally, on the Crucifixion, she speaks of the Jews (P60-60v),

                                                   ffor I had
    ∫yght of the pa∫∫ion of cri∫st in dyuer∫e ∫hewy=
    ing. . . . as it is before ∫eyde wher in
    I had in part felyng of þe ∫orow of oure
    lady. And of hys tru frendys that ∫aw
    hys paynes. but I ∫aw nott ∫o properly
    ∫pecyfyed the Jewes that dyd hym to
    deth. But nott wt∫tondyng I knew in
    my feyth that they ware a cur∫yd and
    dampnyd wtoute ende. ∫avyng tho þt
    were convertyd by grace.

    For I saw Christ's Passion in several Showings. . . . As said earlier, where I shared the feeling of the sorrow of our Lady and of his true friends who saw his pains. But I did not see properly the Jews who put him to death. Though I knew in my faith they were cursed and damned eternally, except those who converted by grace.

Julian, as we have seen in the earlier examples, sees Judaism and Christianity as a seamless garment, the Shema being also in the Gospel. Similarly, Teresa de Avila and Edith Stein had been brilliant Jewish women converts to Christianity. Julian's Church, before Vatican II and before Auschwitz, taught as dogma the damnation of the Jews.

Julian, as Christian, must obey her Church. Yet she also obeys Christ, holding these contradictions in a complementarity. Julian's Church told her Jews, unless they converted, were damned. Julian's Showing from Christ does not show her this doctrine. Julian's Christ uses a most Jewish argument to save all and to have all manner of thing be well, noting that God's Word in all shall be saved, all of us having that creating Word within us, whether Jew or Greek or Christian or Muslim or pagan heathen.

IV. Julian's Extant Manuscripts

It is almost universally assumed by Julian scholars that the Amherst Manuscript (dated within itself '1413', and itself stating it is written during Julian's lifetime) is early, circa 1373, while the Westminster, Paris and Sloane Manuscripts are considered to be late, their exemplar circa 1383, these copies written out up through the seventeenth century, only Nicholas Watson in two articles questioning this assumption: 'The Composition of Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Love'. Speculum 68 (1993), 637-683; 'Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel's Constitutions of 1409'. Speculum 70 (1995), 822-864, then retracting to the safety of the status quo. But given Chancellor Archbishop Arundel's stringent prohibitions against the translation of the Bible into English and against the teaching by the laity, especially by women, of theology promulgated in his 1408 Constitutions, it is far more probable that the Amherst Manuscript was drafted in compliance with those strictures. It protests at length against Julian herself as a teacher and it rigorously cuts from its text almost all of Julian's translations from the Hebrew Bible. Its heavy reliance on detail in reporting her 'death-bed' vision can be attributed to the great danger to her life she faced under Arundel's enforced Constitutions, rather than to the nearness in time of that vision as justification for her writing. Prior to Arundel's restrictions Julian in Norwich had been quietly translating the Hebrew Scriptures into English - before the King James Bible would do so.

         

http://www.jafi.org.il/education/torani ... exgil.html

I should like to end with two images of women scholars at their Torah study. *The first is Nechama Leibovitz of Blessed Memory, the second is of St Birgitta of Sweden. I imagine Julian as being like them. When Alfonso of Jaén and Adam Easton defended Birgitta for her canonization they likened her to Huldah, the woman who told King Josiah that the Torah, which had been forgotten, then discovered in a cupboard in the Temple, must be read and studied by all, children, women and men. Later, Ezra and Nehemiah, following the return from the exile in Babylon, would copy her. Only David and Huldah are buried in Jerusalem, Huldah at Huldah's Gate. While Birgitta, through her spiritual director Magister Mathias, had access to the Bible in Hebrew and later travelled to Jerusalem on pilgrimage, becoming a model also to Julian's illiterate pilgrim surrogate from East Anglia, Margery Kempe.

See also The Joy of Hebrew, Contemplating on Hebrew, Martin Buber and Julian, John Lounibos, Julian and Medieval Midrash, Nicolas of Lyra, Karen Graffeo, Chuppa

Alan Webster delivered the 1981 St Paul's Lecture on 'Suffering, the Jews of Norwich and Julian of Norwich' at St Botolph's Church, Aldgate, based largely on his friendship and sharing with V.D. Lipman and his copious research on Norwich's medieval Jewry.

For Chaucer's Prioress, see http://www.umilta.net/Prioress.html and Michael Calabrese 'Performing the Prioress' at  http://www.geocities.com/salferrat/chauccal.htm

 

JULIAN OF NORWICH, HER SHOWING OF LOVE AND ITS CONTEXTS ©1997-2010 JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY  || JULIAN OF NORWICH  

http://www.umilta.net/judaism.html