Happy Saturday, six hundred and fifty years ago today or possibly six hundred and fifty years ago this past Monday. Julian of Norwich had a series of religious visions that she would go on to document in her book that's now known as Revelations of Divine Love. So we are bringing our episode on her out as Today's Saturday Classic. This originally came out on May fifteenth, twenty nineteen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We are going to talk about a medieval mystic today, which is a topic we seem to roll around to about once every three years or so. They're usually topics that you have selected, Mike. I feel like it's one of those things that your brain just is like, I need a little mysticism now. Sometimes I do. It's also I took a class in college. I studied literature in college, and I took a class that was all about medieval women writers and it was about women writing in medieval Europe and then also women writing in hay On, Japan, which was happening at the same time, and a lot of the women who were writing in medieval Europe we were mystics in one way, so like, that's part of it. I really loved that class and I loved so many of the women writers that I learned about in it, even though at this point starting it's starting from scratch with research, Like I don't remember any of the details from class from oh, yeah, twenty years ago. That's yeah, my brain can't retain it in any sort of clarity for that long. Yeah, this time we are talking about Julian of Norwich. And we've talked about other mystics before, like I just said, there was Marjorie Kemp and Hildegard of Bingen. We haven't really talked about mysticism in general or how that fits into the context of medieval European history and specifically Christianity in medieval Europe. So we are going to cover that context today in addition to talking about Julian. And mysticism is not unique to Christianity, or to Europe or to the medieval period. It's been part of religions around the world for most of human history, and secular mysticism exists as well, but when it comes to Christian mysticism in Europe, things really started flourishing in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. These centuries were dangerous and chaotic, and we are really going to only scratch the surface in this recap. In thirteen oh nine, Pope Clement the fifth moved the papal capital from Rome to Avignol in France. He was escaping political pressures in Rome, and then also did this to appease King Philip the Fourth of France. Over the next seven decades, the papacy became increasingly French, rather than being more Italian as it had been before. Then. In thirteen seventy seven, Pope Gregory the eleventh moved the seat of the papacy back to Rome, but his successor, Urban the sixth, was difficult to work with and butt heads with the cardinals. So the cardinals elected their own Pope, Clement the seventh, who returned to Avignon, and this set off a series of rival popes and anti popes in what became known as the Great Schism or Western Schism, which lasted until fourteen seventeen. The Catholic Church was immensely powerful and religion touched virtually every facet of people's lives. So all of this upheaval damaged the Church's reputation and spawned all kinds of chaos and uncertainty. Yeah, we talked about it a little bit more in the episodes about the defenestrations of Prague, which involved throwing people out of windows. In thirteen thirty seven, So to rewind a little bit, ongoing conflicts between England and France evolved into the One Hundred Years War and that continued off and on until fourteen fifty three. So the one Hundred Years War was in a lot of places, overlapping all of this chaos in the Catholic Church. The war was connected to disputes over territory into the line of succession of King Charles the Fourth of France. He died without an heir, and then England tried to take control of the French throne. This war was marked by active battles as well as lengthy sieges, and it's the war where jodov Arc, who was a French mystic in her own right, came into prominence. In addition to war and religious upheaval, there was the Great European Famine, which lasted from thirteen fifteen to thirteen twenty two, followed by the Black Death, which peaked in thirteen forty seven. It is impossible to calculate exactly how many people died as a result of either of these, but the most common estimates are that the famine killed about five percent of the population, while the Black Death killed as much as one third. That is a widely but it's also extrapolated from a few specific cities. Records and members of the clergy were disproportionately affected by the Black Deaths since their religious work involved caring for the sick and the dying, and England specifically experienced its own problems in addition to all of this, including massive flooding and thirteen fourteen that helped set off that famine, and the peasant uprising of thirteen eighty one, which is also called Watt Tyler's Rebellion. This rebellion started in East Anglia, which is where Juline of Norwich lived, and it started as a response to some unpopular laws that had been passed that year. These included a poll tax and the Statute of Laborers. That second statute set a cap on workers' wages because of a labor shortage that followed the Black Death. Of course, there were plenty of other things going on as well. In the face of all this chaos and war and death, many people in Europe felt like the world was corrupt and out of control, and that God turned his back on mankind. Religious thought and writing were often cynical and focused on the fear of hell and damnation, and the Church also started cracking down on heresy. We should also note that there were definitely people of other religions besides Catholicism in Europe at this time, but Catholicism was the overwhelming dominating force in the places that we're talking about. Mysticism was a response to all of this, and it was essentially the opposite of that trend toward fear and damnation. It can be tricky to pin down an exact definition of what is and isn't mysticism, though in the medieval era, Christian mystics were all over the place in terms of their backgrounds and life experiences. They included members of the clergy and the laity. Some were wealthy and others were poor. Some were highly educated, and others couldn't read or write. So each individual mystic might not embody every single hallmark of mysticism, but they still all fit under that overall umbrella. As a general rule, Europe's Christian mystics approached God and religion through love instead of fear. They were devoted to the humanity of Jesus Christ and to having a personal relationship with him. They often described some kind of intense, transformative experience in which they were awakened to a sense of the awe inspiring love of God and Jesus. Many had visions or revelations in which they viscerally experienced God's presence and felt personally connected to the Deity. Many of them wrote about or dictated those experiences in the vernacular rather than informal Latin, even if they had formal training in Latin. Even though mystics tended to approach religion through love, it wasn't necessarily a cozy hugfest. Mystics tended to be outsiders, and they often lived very solitary lives. Mystics also tended to live in really restrictive ways. The life of a mystic tended to be filled with penitence and abstinence and a sense of purification. As examples, In previous episodes, we talked about Marjorie Kemp wearing a hair shirt as a form of penance, and Hildegarde of Bingen interpreting serious illnesses as punishment from God for failing to do what he had asked of her. Anchorites and hermits took this life of restriction, abstinence and solitude to an extreme. Both chose to live in a solitary way, with their lives devoted to introspection, penitence, and spiritual purification. Hermits typically lived in remote, undeveloped areas, but had the freedom to move from one hermitage to another. Anchorites stayed in one place, enclosed in a small cell attached to a church or other religious site. There were two hundred fourteen documented anchorites and hermits in England in the fourteenth century. They were thought of as outsiders, but they could also be sources of counsel and guidance for the communities around them. They might act as teachers or just sort of spear virtual counselors, and some of those who had been ordained as priests might also act as confessors. Paul of Thebes is usually described as the first Christian hermit. He fled religious persecution in Egypt in about the year two fifty and lived in a cave in the wilderness. It's not clear who the first anchorite was, but the practice was being formalized by the twelfth century. The formal steps to becoming an anchorite included a religious service with mass and prayers to the dead, because after being enclosed, the anchorite was considered dead to the rest of the world. An anchorite's enclosure was called an anchor hold. The recommended size for an anchor hold was twelve feet or about three point six meters square, but they really ranged from small nooks that you could barely turn around into much more spacious accommodations that might even have multiple rooms or accommodate guests. Anchorites typically had at least one servant, and some anchor holds were large enough for the servant to live with the anchorite while still having the freedom to come and go. And this might sound like a luxury, but it was really a necessity. Since you couldn't leave the cell, you were dependent on someone else to do everything from emptying the chamber pot to procuring food to replenishing your supply of menstrual rags. The typical layout of an anchor hold usually had three windows. One of them faced into the sanctuary of that adjoining building that the anchor hold was built into, so the anchorite could observe religious services and receive communion and speak to a confessor. Another was used to deliver things like food and other supplies, and to allow the anchorite to act as a teacher or a confessor. A lot of anchorites also did some kind of work, like sewing or copying, and that work would be passed back and forth through the second window. The third window was for light, and it had a translucent covering over it, and sometimes this covering had two layers with it was basically a cutout with an opaque layer that created a shape of a cross in the light. Some anchorites had a little freedom of movement. The window into the sanctuary might be more like a door, allowing them to enter the church at night, and sometimes it was the anchorite's responsibility to keep the candles lit at night or to sound the alarm if something went wrong at the church. The second window might open out into a parlor or other area where the anchorite could sit and talk to members the religious or secular community, and some anchor holds had small garden plots attached which the anchorite tended. Apart from this, though, an anchorite who left their anchor hold was subject to arrest and potentially damnation. Being an anchorite was one of the few religious roles that was open to women. Female anchorites were often called anchorises, and more women than men she used to pursue this particular life. There were also women who were called vowises, who lived a very similar life, but did so in their own homes. A lot of them were widows. Although male anchorites tended to have been priests, female anchorites and vowises were often lay people. Being an anchorite was also one of the few ways that a person could pursue such a devotedly religious life without having money. Joining a convent or monastery typically required some kind of dowry, and in some places this was the case for anchorites as well, but some anchorites were supported by the church and the local community, including through the giving of alms and bequests in people's wills. Julian of Norwich was an anchorite, and we will talk about her after a sponsor break. The woman we know as Julian of Norwich was born in Norwich, East Anglia, England, in thirteen forty two. I recognize natives to that place pronounce it slightly differently, in a way I can't quite replicate, because it ends more like a jay. Norwich was the second largest city in medieval England after London, several schools, multiple monastic communities, and a cathedral that dated back at least to eleven oh three. This region prepared students for study at Oxford or Cambridge and for the priesthood. Norwich had at least fifty parish churches, four of them within half a mile of Saint Julian's Church, which is where Julian was enclosed. And because the Catholic Church had such a large presence in the city, Norwich also had a large community of artisans who worked on church commissions. These included architects, glass workers, stone workers, painters, sculptors and others. Norwich was also a trading hub with a thriving merchant and craft community. In other words, it was a prominent, bustling and culturally rich city. We don't know much at all about Julian's life, like literally almost nothing, but we can draw some conclusions about her growing up in Norwich. She might not have had a formal education, but she did grow up in a place that valued education, which probably influenced her understand standing of an approach to the world. And even if she didn't have much formal religious instruction, this thriving religious community in Norwich would have trickled into things like the sermons that she heard during regular church attendance. She really might have been hearing a wider variety of more complex and nuanced religious thought that she would have been if she had grown up in a more remote area with the same parish priest her whole life. We also know that Julian lived through all of that upheaval that we talked about before the break. The Black Death reached Norwich at the start of thirteen forty nine when Julian was seven, killing about a third of its population and half of its priests. Although the Black Death ended in thirteen fifty three, plague returned to Norwich twice more before Julian became an anchoress, first in thirteen sixty one and then in thirteen sixty nine. And we don't know whether Julian married or had children, but her religious writing includes themes of motherhood and mothering that we're going to talk about more in the wa little bit. And it's possible that if she did have children, that they may have died in one of these plagues or from some other cause. Julian wrote that in her girlhood she prayed for three things. One was that she wanted to understand the passion of Christ. Too. She wanted to experience a physical illness that was so serious that she and everyone in her life would think she was dying. This illness would let her suffer along with Christ, and the severity of this illness would let her be purged and then come back to God with a life of worship. The third thing that she prayed for was that she wanted what she described as three wounds to be made deeper in her life. In the words of Grace Warwick, who edited Julian's work in nineteen oh one, these wounds were quote, contrition inside of sin, compassion inside of sorrow, and longing after God. When she was, in her own words thirty and a half, Julian became very ill so sick that she and everyone around her did that that she was dying. This illness lasted for seven days, and on the fourth day she was given last rites. The seventh day of this illness was either May eighth or thirteenth, thirteen seventy three. This date discrepancy is because in surviving copies of the manuscript there are two different sets of Roman numerals. One says that this happened on May the VIII, and the other says that it happened on May the XIII. Her curate had brought a crucifix for her to look at in her last hours. On the seventh day of her illness, at about four in the morning, Julian's mother, thinking that she had died, bent over to close her eyes, and in that moment Julian started experiencing a series of fifteen religious visions that went on until about nine am the following night, when it was clear that she was not dying. She had a sixteenth vision that confirmed what she had seen before. Not long afterward, Julian documented what she had seen, either by writing it down or by dictating it to an amanuensis. She described herself as quote a simple creature that could know no letter, which suggests that she dictated her account. But at the same time, her later writing reveals a complex understanding of various aspects of theology, something that it would have been really difficult for her to attain without knowing how to read. So it's possible that that quote no no letter meant that she didn't know Latin, not that she couldn't read or write English. Or it's possible that she didn't know how to read when she first experienced these visions, but that she learned how to read later. There's also a note at the end of one of the surviving manuscripts that references a scribe who had written it down, but that was probably a scribe who copied the manuscript, not like the scribe who was literally writing it with her at the time. At some points after she experienced these visions, Julian was enclosed as an anchor write at the church of Saint Julian and Connesbert in Rich. According to Bloomfield's History of Norfolk, which was written in the eighteenth century, quote in the east part of the churchyard stood an anchorage in which an anchors or recluse dwelt until the dissolution, when the house was demolished, though the foundations may still be seen. In thirteen ninety three, Lady Julian the anchors here, was a strict recluse and had two servants to attend her in her old age. This woman was in these days esteemed as one of the greatest holiness. The history goes on to name four other anchorsses who followed Julian at the church, with the first one starting in fourteen seventy two. The first contemporaneous reference we have to her as an anchorite dates back to thirteen ninety four, although she was probably enclosed well before that. Although Norwich had an extensive religious and spiritual community, there were no recorded anchorites in the city before Julian. Most sources conclude that she took the name Julian, naming herself after the church where she was enclosed. Although it was typical for people who became monks and nuns to leave their given name behind and take the name of a saint, which still happens today, there weren't many other documented cases of people doing the same thing when they were enclosed as an anchor wite, so Julian really may have been named Julian from birth. It was not an uncommon name for women at the time. It was essentially another spelling of Jillian. Or she might have become a nun at some point and taken the name of Saint Julian when she did that before she became an anchorite. That's really speculation, though there's not documentation that she had ever been a nun. About twenty years after writing this first account of her visions, Julian wrote a much longer one, about six times as long as that first document. She went into each vision in much more detail and into how she now understood them. After twenty years of inward reflection and study. She had finished this longer document by about thirteen ninety three. Beyond that, we just don't have a lot of mi documentation. Even in this account of her visions, she doesn't talk about herself much at all, so what we have to piece together comes from other people's accounts. Marjorie Kemp, who we talked about in a previous episode, visited Julian in about fourteen thirteen, and Marjorie referred to Julian as dame, which was a title that was commonly used for nuns. Some sources point to this as evidence that Julian did become a nun before she became an anchorite. But it does appear that Marjorie is the only person who refers to her this way. Most of the rest of the details we have about Julian come from other people's wills. People came to her throughout her time as an anchorite for help and guidance, and several of them remembered her in their will. We know she had at least two servants during her lifetime because someone left each of them money. Isabelle Uffered, who was the Countess of Suffolk, left Julian twenty shillings and her will in fourteen sixteen, along with making other bequests. This was the last person to specifically named Julian in their will, but some other people left bequests to an anchorus at Saint Julian's, not naming the name the anchors by name. Then that went on until fourteen twenty nine. Since Blumfield's History of Norfolk says that the next anchorus after Julian came in fourteen seventy two, it's possible that these unnamed anchorses were Julian and that she was still living as late as fourteen twenty nine, and after the break, we're gonna talk about all those visions that we've been referencing and their influence on Christianity. While Julian herself called her visions showings usually with an E instead of an O in show, her book is often published under the name Revelations of Divine Love because the overarching theme of these visions, it's all about the love of God and loving God. It begins quote, this is a revelation of love that Jesus Christ are endless bliss made in sixteen showings or revelations particular, in a simple conversational style, she walks through her series of visions. Along the way, she documents her understanding of God's love for mankind and various elements of theology. In her relating her first revelation, she writes, quote, I saw that He is unto us everything that is good and comfortable for us. He is our clothing that for love wrappeth us, claspeth us, and all encloses us for tender love, that he may never leave us, being to us all thing that is good as to mine understanding. Her tone is very comforting and reassuring and stresses over and over that God loves all of his creations. She frames this as a comfort that she needed to receive from God, and now that she has, she's sharing it with the rest of the world. The visions began with Julian looking at a crucifix on what she believed was her deathbed, and many of the earliest showings are related to the crucifixion of Jesus and specifically what was happening to him on the cross. The visions themselves are not necessarily comforting. Many of them are focused on wounds, suffering, and pain. Julian described an early showing of the blood coming out from under Jesus's crown of thorns as quote quick and lifelike and horrifying and dreadful, sweet and lovely. But no matter how graphic the descriptions are of Jesus on the cross, each one circles back to Julian gaining a deeper knowledge of the scope and breadth of divine love. Julian's accounts of the earliest showings mainly involve the vision itself and her understanding of what the vision means. Sometimes God or Jesus speaks to her or asks her a question, which she answers, and at first these are pretty straightforward. So Jesus asks, art thou well pleased that I suffered for thee, and Julian answers, yea good Lord, I thank THEE, yea good Lord. Blessed? Mayst thou be? Or God asks wilt thou see her referring to the Virgin Mary before showing Julian a vision of the Virgin Mary. But in later visions, Julian becomes more active and starts asking direct questions about religious issues. The thirteenth Revelation begins quote after this, the Lord brought to my mind the longing that I had to him afore. And I saw that nothing letted me but sin. And so I looked generally upon us all, and we thought, if sin had not been we should all have been clean and like to our Lord as he made us. This is essentially asking why God didn't just use his power to prevent sin in the first place, leaving mankind pure rather than in a state of suffering, basically preventing all these problems. Jesus answers Julian with the most famous line from her showings, quote, it behooved that there should be sin but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. The thirteenth Revelation continue on from this, largely as a meditation on the idea of all shall be well. In her showings, Julian also writes about Jesus in a way that probably would have been considered heretical if it had gotten wider recognition while she was alive. That has happened in more recent years as well. While reflecting on her first fourteen visions, Julian meditates on the idea of God and Jesus as a mother. Quote the mother may give her child suck of her milk, But our precious Mother Jesus, he may feed us with himself, and doeth it full courteously and full tenderly, with the blessed sacrament that is precious food of my life, and with all the sweet sacraments He sustaineth us full, mercifully and graciously. She later goes on to say, quote this fair, lovely word mother, it is so sweet and so close in nature to itself, that it may not barely be said of none but Him and to her that is very mother, of him and of all to the property of motherhood belongeth natural love, wisdom, and knowing. And it is good for though it be so that our body forthbringing be but little, low and simple in regard of our spiritual forthbringing, yet it is he that doeth it in the creatures, by whom that is done. Julian's fifteenth revelation is one of closure. She writes about how the whole time she was receiving these visions, she hoped that she would quote be delivered of this world and of this life. But in this last revelation she is shown how being removed from pain and want is a reward for patience in abiding by God's will. She later says, quote, and in this he brought to mind the property of a glad giver. A glad giver taketh but little heed of the thing that he giveth, But all his desire and all his intent is to please him and solace him to whom he giveth it. And if the receiver take the gift highly and thankfully, then the courteous giver setteth at not all his cost and all his travail, for joy and delight, that he hath pleased and solaced him, that he loveth. And then After this, God leaves her with the thought quote, what should it then aggrieve THEE to suffer? A while sith that is my will and my worship. Julian had her sixteenth vision the following night, as she was beginning to recover and her life was no longer in danger. She writes of this one as gaining insight into her own soul, But in it she is also visited by Satan, who she calls the fiend. She thinks to herself, quote, thou hast now great busyness to keep THEE in the faith, for that thou shouldst not be taken of the enemy. Wouldst thou now from this time evermore be so busy to keep THEE from sin? This were a good and a sovereign occupation. Julian's book ends with several chapters of her personal understanding of all these visions, and by her book I mean the longer version of all of this. It wraps up with her overall sense of the whole of them being Quote what'st thou learned thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Learn it well? Love was his meaning? Who showed it THEE love? What showed he THEE love? Where four showed it he for love hold thee therein, and thou shalt learn and know more in the same, but thou shalt never know nor learn their other thing without end. Thus was I learned that love was our Lord's meaning. We know that Julian viewed this whole experience as a gift from God that she then went on to share with others, and unlike many of the other books written by Anchortes and hermits during this time, she seems to have meant her work for everyone, not just for other solitary religious people. And this was remarkable. Julian wrote surely confidently and authoritatively about religion when that really wasn't considered to be women's domain, and she did it for ordinary people, not only for her own religious circle. She also did not shy away from material that could have led to her being condemned for heresy. Yeah, there were other women Anchorites who were writing things that were sort of meant as guides for other people like themselves, so sort of a guide of how to be an Anchorite or theological questions for other Anchorites. But she really seemed to want this to be a work for everyone, And we know that people were talking to and learning from Julian while she lived, but it doesn't appear that many people were really reading her work until much later. Some of this is because of attitudes in England in the decades after her death. So in fourteen oh one, while she was still living, King Henry the fourth ordered for heretics to be burned, and that included anyone found with heretical books, which Julian's showings could have been. The oldest surviving copy of the short version of her account dates back to the fifteenth century. There are three handwritten manuscripts dating back to the seventeenth century. The first time it was printed was in sixteen seventy, almost three hundred years after that first religious Explosians, and it probably came from a sixteen fifty manuscript. The first people who wrote about reading Julian's work were three Benedictines from England who had been exiled to France. That happened in the seventeenth century. The Church of Saint Julian was largely destroyed on June twenty seventh, nineteen forty two, when it was bombed during World War two. By then it was affiliated with the Church of England rather than the Catholic Church. The structure was rebuilt in the nineteen fifties, and at that time the site of the former anchorites cell was turned into a shrine to Julian, although that shrine is probably larger than the actual anchor hold was. Had history played out differently, Julian of Norwich and several of her contemporary English mystics might have been canonized, but the Protestant Reformation began about one hundred years after her death and England split away from the Catholic Church. Today, she has an unofficial feast day in the Catholic calendar. It's on May thirteenth, while the Anglican, Episcopal and Lutheran churches listed as May eighth. She has become a symbol of comfort and hope in the century since she lived. The Order of Julian of Norwich was established within the Episcopalian Church in nineteen eighty five. That's Julian of Norwich. Her life was so strange, especially to a modern eye, because she was in this anchor hold for a lengthy amount of it as far as we know. And at the same time, like her writing is just so comforting, just over and over and over and it's like and but God loves all of his creatures, and it's great. It's sort of her whole underlying tone throughout all of it. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook URL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Our old house stuffworks, email addrests no longer works. You can find us all over social media at mysst in History, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Happy Saturday, six hundred and fifty years ago today or possibly six hundred and fifty years ago this past Monday. Julian of Norwich had a series of religious visions that she would go on to document in her book that's now known as Revelations of Divine Love. So we are bringing our episode on her out as Today's Saturday Classic. This originally came out on May fifteenth, twenty nineteen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We are going to talk about a medieval mystic today, which is a topic we seem to roll around to about once every three years or so. They're usually topics that you have selected, Mike. I feel like it's one of those things that your brain just is like, I need a little mysticism now. Sometimes I do. It's also I took a class in college. I studied literature in college, and I took a class that was all about medieval women writers and it was about women writing in medieval Europe and then also women writing in hay On, Japan, which was happening at the same time, and a lot of the women who were writing in medieval Europe we were mystics in one way, so like, that's part of it. I really loved that class and I loved so many of the women writers that I learned about in it, even though at this point starting it's starting from scratch with research, Like I don't remember any of the details from class from oh, yeah, twenty years ago. That's yeah, my brain can't retain it in any sort of clarity for that long. Yeah, this time we are talking about Julian of Norwich. And we've talked about other mystics before, like I just said, there was Marjorie Kemp and Hildegard of Bingen. We haven't really talked about mysticism in general or how that fits into the context of medieval European history and specifically Christianity in medieval Europe. So we are going to cover that context today in addition to talking about Julian. And mysticism is not unique to Christianity, or to Europe or to the medieval period. It's been part of religions around the world for most of human history, and secular mysticism exists as well, but when it comes to Christian mysticism in Europe, things really started flourishing in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. These centuries were dangerous and chaotic, and we are really going to only scratch the surface in this recap. In thirteen oh nine, Pope Clement the fifth moved the papal capital from Rome to Avignol in France. He was escaping political pressures in Rome, and then also did this to appease King Philip the Fourth of France. Over the next seven decades, the papacy became increasingly French, rather than being more Italian as it had been before. Then. In thirteen seventy seven, Pope Gregory the eleventh moved the seat of the papacy back to Rome, but his successor, Urban the sixth, was difficult to work with and butt heads with the cardinals. So the cardinals elected their own Pope, Clement the seventh, who returned to Avignon, and this set off a series of rival popes and anti popes in what became known as the Great Schism or Western Schism, which lasted until fourteen seventeen. The Catholic Church was immensely powerful and religion touched virtually every facet of people's lives. So all of this upheaval damaged the Church's reputation and spawned all kinds of chaos and uncertainty. Yeah, we talked about it a little bit more in the episodes about the defenestrations of Prague, which involved throwing people out of windows. In thirteen thirty seven, So to rewind a little bit, ongoing conflicts between England and France evolved into the One Hundred Years War and that continued off and on until fourteen fifty three. So the one Hundred Years War was in a lot of places, overlapping all of this chaos in the Catholic Church. The war was connected to disputes over territory into the line of succession of King Charles the Fourth of France. He died without an heir, and then England tried to take control of the French throne. This war was marked by active battles as well as lengthy sieges, and it's the war where jodov Arc, who was a French mystic in her own right, came into prominence. In addition to war and religious upheaval, there was the Great European Famine, which lasted from thirteen fifteen to thirteen twenty two, followed by the Black Death, which peaked in thirteen forty seven. It is impossible to calculate exactly how many people died as a result of either of these, but the most common estimates are that the famine killed about five percent of the population, while the Black Death killed as much as one third. That is a widely but it's also extrapolated from a few specific cities. Records and members of the clergy were disproportionately affected by the Black Deaths since their religious work involved caring for the sick and the dying, and England specifically experienced its own problems in addition to all of this, including massive flooding and thirteen fourteen that helped set off that famine, and the peasant uprising of thirteen eighty one, which is also called Watt Tyler's Rebellion. This rebellion started in East Anglia, which is where Juline of Norwich lived, and it started as a response to some unpopular laws that had been passed that year. These included a poll tax and the Statute of Laborers. That second statute set a cap on workers' wages because of a labor shortage that followed the Black Death. Of course, there were plenty of other things going on as well. In the face of all this chaos and war and death, many people in Europe felt like the world was corrupt and out of control, and that God turned his back on mankind. Religious thought and writing were often cynical and focused on the fear of hell and damnation, and the Church also started cracking down on heresy. We should also note that there were definitely people of other religions besides Catholicism in Europe at this time, but Catholicism was the overwhelming dominating force in the places that we're talking about. Mysticism was a response to all of this, and it was essentially the opposite of that trend toward fear and damnation. It can be tricky to pin down an exact definition of what is and isn't mysticism, though in the medieval era, Christian mystics were all over the place in terms of their backgrounds and life experiences. They included members of the clergy and the laity. Some were wealthy and others were poor. Some were highly educated, and others couldn't read or write. So each individual mystic might not embody every single hallmark of mysticism, but they still all fit under that overall umbrella. As a general rule, Europe's Christian mystics approached God and religion through love instead of fear. They were devoted to the humanity of Jesus Christ and to having a personal relationship with him. They often described some kind of intense, transformative experience in which they were awakened to a sense of the awe inspiring love of God and Jesus. Many had visions or revelations in which they viscerally experienced God's presence and felt personally connected to the Deity. Many of them wrote about or dictated those experiences in the vernacular rather than informal Latin, even if they had formal training in Latin. Even though mystics tended to approach religion through love, it wasn't necessarily a cozy hugfest. Mystics tended to be outsiders, and they often lived very solitary lives. Mystics also tended to live in really restrictive ways. The life of a mystic tended to be filled with penitence and abstinence and a sense of purification. As examples, In previous episodes, we talked about Marjorie Kemp wearing a hair shirt as a form of penance, and Hildegarde of Bingen interpreting serious illnesses as punishment from God for failing to do what he had asked of her. Anchorites and hermits took this life of restriction, abstinence and solitude to an extreme. Both chose to live in a solitary way, with their lives devoted to introspection, penitence, and spiritual purification. Hermits typically lived in remote, undeveloped areas, but had the freedom to move from one hermitage to another. Anchorites stayed in one place, enclosed in a small cell attached to a church or other religious site. There were two hundred fourteen documented anchorites and hermits in England in the fourteenth century. They were thought of as outsiders, but they could also be sources of counsel and guidance for the communities around them. They might act as teachers or just sort of spear virtual counselors, and some of those who had been ordained as priests might also act as confessors. Paul of Thebes is usually described as the first Christian hermit. He fled religious persecution in Egypt in about the year two fifty and lived in a cave in the wilderness. It's not clear who the first anchorite was, but the practice was being formalized by the twelfth century. The formal steps to becoming an anchorite included a religious service with mass and prayers to the dead, because after being enclosed, the anchorite was considered dead to the rest of the world. An anchorite's enclosure was called an anchor hold. The recommended size for an anchor hold was twelve feet or about three point six meters square, but they really ranged from small nooks that you could barely turn around into much more spacious accommodations that might even have multiple rooms or accommodate guests. Anchorites typically had at least one servant, and some anchor holds were large enough for the servant to live with the anchorite while still having the freedom to come and go. And this might sound like a luxury, but it was really a necessity. Since you couldn't leave the cell, you were dependent on someone else to do everything from emptying the chamber pot to procuring food to replenishing your supply of menstrual rags. The typical layout of an anchor hold usually had three windows. One of them faced into the sanctuary of that adjoining building that the anchor hold was built into, so the anchorite could observe religious services and receive communion and speak to a confessor. Another was used to deliver things like food and other supplies, and to allow the anchorite to act as a teacher or a confessor. A lot of anchorites also did some kind of work, like sewing or copying, and that work would be passed back and forth through the second window. The third window was for light, and it had a translucent covering over it, and sometimes this covering had two layers with it was basically a cutout with an opaque layer that created a shape of a cross in the light. Some anchorites had a little freedom of movement. The window into the sanctuary might be more like a door, allowing them to enter the church at night, and sometimes it was the anchorite's responsibility to keep the candles lit at night or to sound the alarm if something went wrong at the church. The second window might open out into a parlor or other area where the anchorite could sit and talk to members the religious or secular community, and some anchor holds had small garden plots attached which the anchorite tended. Apart from this, though, an anchorite who left their anchor hold was subject to arrest and potentially damnation. Being an anchorite was one of the few religious roles that was open to women. Female anchorites were often called anchorises, and more women than men she used to pursue this particular life. There were also women who were called vowises, who lived a very similar life, but did so in their own homes. A lot of them were widows. Although male anchorites tended to have been priests, female anchorites and vowises were often lay people. Being an anchorite was also one of the few ways that a person could pursue such a devotedly religious life without having money. Joining a convent or monastery typically required some kind of dowry, and in some places this was the case for anchorites as well, but some anchorites were supported by the church and the local community, including through the giving of alms and bequests in people's wills. Julian of Norwich was an anchorite, and we will talk about her after a sponsor break. The woman we know as Julian of Norwich was born in Norwich, East Anglia, England, in thirteen forty two. I recognize natives to that place pronounce it slightly differently, in a way I can't quite replicate, because it ends more like a jay. Norwich was the second largest city in medieval England after London, several schools, multiple monastic communities, and a cathedral that dated back at least to eleven oh three. This region prepared students for study at Oxford or Cambridge and for the priesthood. Norwich had at least fifty parish churches, four of them within half a mile of Saint Julian's Church, which is where Julian was enclosed. And because the Catholic Church had such a large presence in the city, Norwich also had a large community of artisans who worked on church commissions. These included architects, glass workers, stone workers, painters, sculptors and others. Norwich was also a trading hub with a thriving merchant and craft community. In other words, it was a prominent, bustling and culturally rich city. We don't know much at all about Julian's life, like literally almost nothing, but we can draw some conclusions about her growing up in Norwich. She might not have had a formal education, but she did grow up in a place that valued education, which probably influenced her understand standing of an approach to the world. And even if she didn't have much formal religious instruction, this thriving religious community in Norwich would have trickled into things like the sermons that she heard during regular church attendance. She really might have been hearing a wider variety of more complex and nuanced religious thought that she would have been if she had grown up in a more remote area with the same parish priest her whole life. We also know that Julian lived through all of that upheaval that we talked about before the break. The Black Death reached Norwich at the start of thirteen forty nine when Julian was seven, killing about a third of its population and half of its priests. Although the Black Death ended in thirteen fifty three, plague returned to Norwich twice more before Julian became an anchoress, first in thirteen sixty one and then in thirteen sixty nine. And we don't know whether Julian married or had children, but her religious writing includes themes of motherhood and mothering that we're going to talk about more in the wa little bit. And it's possible that if she did have children, that they may have died in one of these plagues or from some other cause. Julian wrote that in her girlhood she prayed for three things. One was that she wanted to understand the passion of Christ. Too. She wanted to experience a physical illness that was so serious that she and everyone in her life would think she was dying. This illness would let her suffer along with Christ, and the severity of this illness would let her be purged and then come back to God with a life of worship. The third thing that she prayed for was that she wanted what she described as three wounds to be made deeper in her life. In the words of Grace Warwick, who edited Julian's work in nineteen oh one, these wounds were quote, contrition inside of sin, compassion inside of sorrow, and longing after God. When she was, in her own words thirty and a half, Julian became very ill so sick that she and everyone around her did that that she was dying. This illness lasted for seven days, and on the fourth day she was given last rites. The seventh day of this illness was either May eighth or thirteenth, thirteen seventy three. This date discrepancy is because in surviving copies of the manuscript there are two different sets of Roman numerals. One says that this happened on May the VIII, and the other says that it happened on May the XIII. Her curate had brought a crucifix for her to look at in her last hours. On the seventh day of her illness, at about four in the morning, Julian's mother, thinking that she had died, bent over to close her eyes, and in that moment Julian started experiencing a series of fifteen religious visions that went on until about nine am the following night, when it was clear that she was not dying. She had a sixteenth vision that confirmed what she had seen before. Not long afterward, Julian documented what she had seen, either by writing it down or by dictating it to an amanuensis. She described herself as quote a simple creature that could know no letter, which suggests that she dictated her account. But at the same time, her later writing reveals a complex understanding of various aspects of theology, something that it would have been really difficult for her to attain without knowing how to read. So it's possible that that quote no no letter meant that she didn't know Latin, not that she couldn't read or write English. Or it's possible that she didn't know how to read when she first experienced these visions, but that she learned how to read later. There's also a note at the end of one of the surviving manuscripts that references a scribe who had written it down, but that was probably a scribe who copied the manuscript, not like the scribe who was literally writing it with her at the time. At some points after she experienced these visions, Julian was enclosed as an anchor write at the church of Saint Julian and Connesbert in Rich. According to Bloomfield's History of Norfolk, which was written in the eighteenth century, quote in the east part of the churchyard stood an anchorage in which an anchors or recluse dwelt until the dissolution, when the house was demolished, though the foundations may still be seen. In thirteen ninety three, Lady Julian the anchors here, was a strict recluse and had two servants to attend her in her old age. This woman was in these days esteemed as one of the greatest holiness. The history goes on to name four other anchorsses who followed Julian at the church, with the first one starting in fourteen seventy two. The first contemporaneous reference we have to her as an anchorite dates back to thirteen ninety four, although she was probably enclosed well before that. Although Norwich had an extensive religious and spiritual community, there were no recorded anchorites in the city before Julian. Most sources conclude that she took the name Julian, naming herself after the church where she was enclosed. Although it was typical for people who became monks and nuns to leave their given name behind and take the name of a saint, which still happens today, there weren't many other documented cases of people doing the same thing when they were enclosed as an anchor wite, so Julian really may have been named Julian from birth. It was not an uncommon name for women at the time. It was essentially another spelling of Jillian. Or she might have become a nun at some point and taken the name of Saint Julian when she did that before she became an anchorite. That's really speculation, though there's not documentation that she had ever been a nun. About twenty years after writing this first account of her visions, Julian wrote a much longer one, about six times as long as that first document. She went into each vision in much more detail and into how she now understood them. After twenty years of inward reflection and study. She had finished this longer document by about thirteen ninety three. Beyond that, we just don't have a lot of mi documentation. Even in this account of her visions, she doesn't talk about herself much at all, so what we have to piece together comes from other people's accounts. Marjorie Kemp, who we talked about in a previous episode, visited Julian in about fourteen thirteen, and Marjorie referred to Julian as dame, which was a title that was commonly used for nuns. Some sources point to this as evidence that Julian did become a nun before she became an anchorite. But it does appear that Marjorie is the only person who refers to her this way. Most of the rest of the details we have about Julian come from other people's wills. People came to her throughout her time as an anchorite for help and guidance, and several of them remembered her in their will. We know she had at least two servants during her lifetime because someone left each of them money. Isabelle Uffered, who was the Countess of Suffolk, left Julian twenty shillings and her will in fourteen sixteen, along with making other bequests. This was the last person to specifically named Julian in their will, but some other people left bequests to an anchorus at Saint Julian's, not naming the name the anchors by name. Then that went on until fourteen twenty nine. Since Blumfield's History of Norfolk says that the next anchorus after Julian came in fourteen seventy two, it's possible that these unnamed anchorses were Julian and that she was still living as late as fourteen twenty nine, and after the break, we're gonna talk about all those visions that we've been referencing and their influence on Christianity. While Julian herself called her visions showings usually with an E instead of an O in show, her book is often published under the name Revelations of Divine Love because the overarching theme of these visions, it's all about the love of God and loving God. It begins quote, this is a revelation of love that Jesus Christ are endless bliss made in sixteen showings or revelations particular, in a simple conversational style, she walks through her series of visions. Along the way, she documents her understanding of God's love for mankind and various elements of theology. In her relating her first revelation, she writes, quote, I saw that He is unto us everything that is good and comfortable for us. He is our clothing that for love wrappeth us, claspeth us, and all encloses us for tender love, that he may never leave us, being to us all thing that is good as to mine understanding. Her tone is very comforting and reassuring and stresses over and over that God loves all of his creations. She frames this as a comfort that she needed to receive from God, and now that she has, she's sharing it with the rest of the world. The visions began with Julian looking at a crucifix on what she believed was her deathbed, and many of the earliest showings are related to the crucifixion of Jesus and specifically what was happening to him on the cross. The visions themselves are not necessarily comforting. Many of them are focused on wounds, suffering, and pain. Julian described an early showing of the blood coming out from under Jesus's crown of thorns as quote quick and lifelike and horrifying and dreadful, sweet and lovely. But no matter how graphic the descriptions are of Jesus on the cross, each one circles back to Julian gaining a deeper knowledge of the scope and breadth of divine love. Julian's accounts of the earliest showings mainly involve the vision itself and her understanding of what the vision means. Sometimes God or Jesus speaks to her or asks her a question, which she answers, and at first these are pretty straightforward. So Jesus asks, art thou well pleased that I suffered for thee, and Julian answers, yea good Lord, I thank THEE, yea good Lord. Blessed? Mayst thou be? Or God asks wilt thou see her referring to the Virgin Mary before showing Julian a vision of the Virgin Mary. But in later visions, Julian becomes more active and starts asking direct questions about religious issues. The thirteenth Revelation begins quote after this, the Lord brought to my mind the longing that I had to him afore. And I saw that nothing letted me but sin. And so I looked generally upon us all, and we thought, if sin had not been we should all have been clean and like to our Lord as he made us. This is essentially asking why God didn't just use his power to prevent sin in the first place, leaving mankind pure rather than in a state of suffering, basically preventing all these problems. Jesus answers Julian with the most famous line from her showings, quote, it behooved that there should be sin but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. The thirteenth Revelation continue on from this, largely as a meditation on the idea of all shall be well. In her showings, Julian also writes about Jesus in a way that probably would have been considered heretical if it had gotten wider recognition while she was alive. That has happened in more recent years as well. While reflecting on her first fourteen visions, Julian meditates on the idea of God and Jesus as a mother. Quote the mother may give her child suck of her milk, But our precious Mother Jesus, he may feed us with himself, and doeth it full courteously and full tenderly, with the blessed sacrament that is precious food of my life, and with all the sweet sacraments He sustaineth us full, mercifully and graciously. She later goes on to say, quote this fair, lovely word mother, it is so sweet and so close in nature to itself, that it may not barely be said of none but Him and to her that is very mother, of him and of all to the property of motherhood belongeth natural love, wisdom, and knowing. And it is good for though it be so that our body forthbringing be but little, low and simple in regard of our spiritual forthbringing, yet it is he that doeth it in the creatures, by whom that is done. Julian's fifteenth revelation is one of closure. She writes about how the whole time she was receiving these visions, she hoped that she would quote be delivered of this world and of this life. But in this last revelation she is shown how being removed from pain and want is a reward for patience in abiding by God's will. She later says, quote, and in this he brought to mind the property of a glad giver. A glad giver taketh but little heed of the thing that he giveth, But all his desire and all his intent is to please him and solace him to whom he giveth it. And if the receiver take the gift highly and thankfully, then the courteous giver setteth at not all his cost and all his travail, for joy and delight, that he hath pleased and solaced him, that he loveth. And then After this, God leaves her with the thought quote, what should it then aggrieve THEE to suffer? A while sith that is my will and my worship. Julian had her sixteenth vision the following night, as she was beginning to recover and her life was no longer in danger. She writes of this one as gaining insight into her own soul, But in it she is also visited by Satan, who she calls the fiend. She thinks to herself, quote, thou hast now great busyness to keep THEE in the faith, for that thou shouldst not be taken of the enemy. Wouldst thou now from this time evermore be so busy to keep THEE from sin? This were a good and a sovereign occupation. Julian's book ends with several chapters of her personal understanding of all these visions, and by her book I mean the longer version of all of this. It wraps up with her overall sense of the whole of them being Quote what'st thou learned thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Learn it well? Love was his meaning? Who showed it THEE love? What showed he THEE love? Where four showed it he for love hold thee therein, and thou shalt learn and know more in the same, but thou shalt never know nor learn their other thing without end. Thus was I learned that love was our Lord's meaning. We know that Julian viewed this whole experience as a gift from God that she then went on to share with others, and unlike many of the other books written by Anchortes and hermits during this time, she seems to have meant her work for everyone, not just for other solitary religious people. And this was remarkable. Julian wrote surely confidently and authoritatively about religion when that really wasn't considered to be women's domain, and she did it for ordinary people, not only for her own religious circle. She also did not shy away from material that could have led to her being condemned for heresy. Yeah, there were other women Anchorites who were writing things that were sort of meant as guides for other people like themselves, so sort of a guide of how to be an Anchorite or theological questions for other Anchorites. But she really seemed to want this to be a work for everyone, And we know that people were talking to and learning from Julian while she lived, but it doesn't appear that many people were really reading her work until much later. Some of this is because of attitudes in England in the decades after her death. So in fourteen oh one, while she was still living, King Henry the fourth ordered for heretics to be burned, and that included anyone found with heretical books, which Julian's showings could have been. The oldest surviving copy of the short version of her account dates back to the fifteenth century. There are three handwritten manuscripts dating back to the seventeenth century. The first time it was printed was in sixteen seventy, almost three hundred years after that first religious Explosians, and it probably came from a sixteen fifty manuscript. The first people who wrote about reading Julian's work were three Benedictines from England who had been exiled to France. That happened in the seventeenth century. The Church of Saint Julian was largely destroyed on June twenty seventh, nineteen forty two, when it was bombed during World War two. By then it was affiliated with the Church of England rather than the Catholic Church. The structure was rebuilt in the nineteen fifties, and at that time the site of the former anchorites cell was turned into a shrine to Julian, although that shrine is probably larger than the actual anchor hold was. Had history played out differently, Julian of Norwich and several of her contemporary English mystics might have been canonized, but the Protestant Reformation began about one hundred years after her death and England split away from the Catholic Church. Today, she has an unofficial feast day in the Catholic calendar. It's on May thirteenth, while the Anglican, Episcopal and Lutheran churches listed as May eighth. She has become a symbol of comfort and hope in the century since she lived. The Order of Julian of Norwich was established within the Episcopalian Church in nineteen eighty five. That's Julian of Norwich. Her life was so strange, especially to a modern eye, because she was in this anchor hold for a lengthy amount of it as far as we know. And at the same time, like her writing is just so comforting, just over and over and over and it's like and but God loves all of his creatures, and it's great. It's sort of her whole underlying tone throughout all of it. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook URL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Our old house stuffworks, email addrests no longer works. You can find us all over social media at mysst in History, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.