Icon by Brother Robert Lentz, OFM (click on image to check out his other icons of righteous radicals, like Harvey Milk and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.)
The Harpy Hall of Fame is dedicated to those women who worked on behalf of advancing women’s rights, contributed to reshaping gender roles, or were just generally awesome and badass. These remarkable women left legacies that continue to resonate today.
Many of the details of Julian of Norwich’s life are uncertain, even including her name–sometimes given as Juliana–which comes from the church of St. Julian in Norwich, England, where she was an anchoress (a type of hermit who lives a life of prayer and contemplation, isolated but attached to a religious community). Just after her 30th birthday, she became gravely ill, and during her illness, she received a series of religious visions and revelations, which she called “the Shewings.” She recovered, and wrote down a narrative of the visions, which formed the basis for her theological masterpiece, Revelations of Divine Love, the first book by a woman written in the English language.
In stark contrast to Church teachings, Julian’s vision of religion was expansive, optimistic and woman-centric. The basis of Christianity, she argued, should be joy and compassion, not law and duty, and suffering was not a punishment inflicted by God for sins, an especially revolutionary idea in the years after the Black Death (1348-50), which killed 40% of Europe’s population and was seen by many–including the Church–as an act of Divine retribution against the wicked.
Even more revolutionary were Julian’s views on the female-ness of God. Besides describing God as compassionate and loving, Julian outright rejected the idea of God as Patriarch. She wrote of the Trinity in feminine, domestic terms, by giving Father, Son and Holy Ghost instead were given three female ideals: ”the foundation of our nature’s creation, “the taking of our nature, where the motherhood of grace begins” and “the motherhood at work.” She even invokes conception, nursing, labor and upbringing when speaking metaphorically about Christ’s ministry, and asserts God to have the attributes of Fatherhood, Motherhood and Lordship.
Despite such unorthodox teachings, Church hierarchy did not clamp down Julian’s theology or writing, most likely because her spiritual authority was so highly regarded in England (in fact, the later English female writer and mystic, Margery Kempe, writes of a trip to Norwich to seek Julian’s counsel).
During her many years as an anchorite, Julian lived in cell with three windows–one opened to the church, one to a garden, and one to the street. Visitors seeking her advice would stand in the street and speak with Julian through a curtained window. Her only companion was the cat who she was allowed to keep in order to control rats, and to whom she was devoted. The cat has become part of her legend, and she is often depicted with one. There is even a veterinary clinic in Michigan named “St. Julian’s Cat Care” in honor of the great mystic and her kitteh. (Did the companionship and comfort of a pet also inform her descriptions of God’s unconditional love? You decide.)
Julian’s most famous saying, “…All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well”, is still one of the most individually famous and oft-quoted lines in all of Christian theological writing. T.S. Eliot even co-opted it for the “Little Gidding” section of his religious poem “Four Quartets.” Although she was never formally beatified by the Catholic Church, Julian is still so beloved by Catholics and Anglicans that she is generally referred to as “Blessed Julian of Norwich” and pilgrims routinely visit the shrine on the site where her anchorage cell once stood.
Wow Becky those images by Brother Robert Lentz are beautiful.
@rodriguez: Aren’t they amazing? I own several of them, although not the Julian of Norwich one. He’s a wonderful artist and his icons manage to be classic and socially provocative.
Thanks for the awesome icon link, and for this bio. When I was an ardently religious child I used to read her writing a bunch but I either didn’t know or have forgotten all of these details of her life. Feminist hagiography FTW!
Actually looking at the site more I realize I already own a couple of his icons as well. I am holding myself back from buying all of them only because although my atheist life partner and housemate is extremely tolerant of my beliefs/tendency to hang religious iconography all over the house, 120 saint pictures might overwhelm even him.
I am particularly tickled by all the cat-saint connections though. Mohammad was supposed to love cats too! I like to think it is because they are idiosyncratic and unrepentant sinners like us.
@jdregent: Heh, come to my house sometime. I’m a fan of iconography too, both Christian and Santeria. And I’m Jewish, so I’ve got mezzuzot too!
I think pets in general teach us about God’s love and care. I had heard that about Muhammad and his cats, and, cats were very popular with monastic orders in the Middle Ages (allegedly for their mice-controlling, but I strongly suspect they were beloved companion animals too).
I’ve seen an icon of Mary Magdalene that looks a lot like Lentz’s work. Julian of Norwich is definitely awesome. Sometimes people forget that there are plenty of radical, badass women in the history of Christianity.
Santeria and related iconography at http://www.molinaartgallery.com/
Sunday at a yoga class, during meditation a cat wandered around and visited everybody in the room. Afterwards I said that it reminded me that a cat’s (and other animal’s) conciousness is just like ours. Someone else said it reminded them of the restless mind. Someone else said it was love, since it was an affectionate cat.
Woohoo, Julian! I wrote my senior thesis on Margery Kempe, so it is really neat to see you guys feature Julian (and mention Margery, yay!) like this. Very cool.
Margery’s Book was often dismissed as the ramblings of a hysterical woman; but, in my opinion, it was actually an amazingly well-constructed piece of slightly subversive devotional literature. Her close, personal relationship with God was doubly threatening to the Church – not only was it intercessor-free, but she was a woman. She did this really cool thing where she couched all that potential heresy in very familiar religious language and imagery, but still shared her mystical experiences.
Sigh. I miss school.
@rodriguez: Thanks for the link! That art is GORGEOUS. My Oshun altar is about to expand to a whole Oshun corner, so I may get one of the prints (I currently have an oil painting of Caridad del Cobre that I bought in Havana many years ago, but I’d like to have a more African iconographic one too).
This is so awesome. I knew absolutely NOTHING about her. Whenever I read books on Catholicism or took classes on it (both of which were fairly common a few years ago) I almost never heard of the women who dedicated their lives to God, either on a laywoman’s level or as nuns/missionaries.
Meg, isn’t that always the threat of the woman mystic? If we can connect with the divine without the intercession of a male priest, the whole house of cards threatens to tumble down.
Rodriguez, love the yoga cat! I’ve always heard about the “monkey mind” but it’s true that cats are as restless, neurotic and loving as any creature.
Reading Julian of Norwich or Hildegard in my midevial theology class in college always made me more upset that all the protestant ditched the convents. Damn you Luther.(I was raised Lutheran and i have issues with that.)
@Tersa: The Anglican church still has convents!
http://www.stmaryseast.org/nuns_episcopal.htm
Becky, Tersa, I always thought Henry VIII wrecked all the convents in the UK? Maybe that was my biased, anti-British, anti-protestant upbringing telling me lies again.
@JDRegent: Oh, he did. Henry VIII made a fortune off the dissolution of the monasteries. But the Episcopal Church–both in England and elsewhere–re-created religious communities in the 19th century (although not in a big way). They’re very High Church Episcopal, so they feel much more Catholic than Protestant. That link is to an Episcopal community in upstate NY.
I love this feature! It’s great to profile lesser-known (but should be) historical women. I have a similar feature on my blog called Famous Brown Girls – a little more tongue-in-cheek but I figure anything to raise awareness about awesome women is a good thing!
[...] This morning, gentle readers, I bring to you, without my usual caterwaul-y commentary, a recent essay by a woman named Rachel Denton entitled “I am a hermit.” Not in the colloquial “I stay in every night and knit” way, but an official Catholic religious woman who lives a life of contemplation and solitude, not unlike Harpy Hall of Famer Julian of Norwich. [...]