Creative and daring spaces in speculative theology: Literary strategies for doctrinal self-authorization in Julian of Norwich’s “A Revelation of Love” and Marguerite Porete’s “The Mirror of Simple Souls”

313 Pages·2011·4.71 MB·English

by  Jonathan Juilfs

CREATIVE AND DARING SPACES IN SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY:
LITERARY STRATEGIES FOR DOCTRINAL SELF-AUTHORIZATION IN
JULIAN OF NORWICH‘S A REVELATION OF LOVE AND
MARGUERITE PORETE‘S THE MIRROR OF SIMPLE SOULS
A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate School
of the University of Notre Dame
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy
by
Jonathan Juilfs

Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Director
Graduate Program in Medieval Studies
Notre Dame, Indiana
December 2010
UMI Number: 3441734

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CREATIVE AND DARING SPACES IN SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY:
LITERARY STRATEGIES FOR DOCTRINAL SELF-AUTHORIZATION IN JULIAN
OF NORWICH‘S A REVELATION OF LOVE AND MARGUERITE PORETE‘S THE
MIRROR OF SIMPLE SOULS
Abstract
by
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Jonathan Juilfs

In the cases of the two remarkable late-medieval women who are the primary
subjects of this dissertation, Julian of Norwich and Marguerite Porete, I have sought to
understand more comprehensively both where the Bible appears in their texts, whether by
direct citation or less overt allusion, and what larger impact biblical texts may have on the
larger organization and structural features of their texts. Through detailed examination of
the roles which biblical language plays in Julian‘s Revelation of Love and Marguerite‘s
Mirror of Simple Souls, I argue that the culturally-assumed limitations of medieval
women‘s capacities to understand the Bible were not only erroneous but also gave way to
original and insightful interpretations of various scriptural passages that serve
strategically well the broader theological and rhetorical aims of both writers. Biblical
citations or allusions do not appear in A Revelation or in The Mirror simply as external
defenses of doctrinal claims (i.e. a proof-texts); instead, they function organically in the
Jonathan Juilfs
bodies of the texts, offering conceptual ―seeds‖ that, when nurtured by divine insight (as
transmitted through Julian‘s vision and Marguerite‘s mystical experience) and personal
reflection, germinate into identifiable structures of thought. Both women thus cleverly
mold scriptural and scripture-like narratives to fit the contours of their respective
speculative theologies. These rhetorical acts of self-authorization, by reference to or
engagement with the supreme authority of the Church, illuminate the adroitness of both
to navigate the seemingly un-navigable paradoxes of their respective claims, as women,
to visionary or mystical authority.
Such textual and conceptual comparisons between Julian‘s Revelation and
Marguerite‘s Mirror are instructive because they travel together (The Mirror in Middle
English translation) in one surviving fifteenth-century manuscript, an historical curiosity
that suggests that at least one Carthusian compiler read or heard thematic relationships
between the two textual traveling companions. Such a rare opportunity for comparative
investigation of two very sophisticated texts ultimately renders various insights into how
two clever, female interpreters of Scripture in the later Middle Ages elaborated on and
challenged popular orthodoxies currently circulating among both the laity and the clergy
of the late-medieval Church.
For Grandma Hank, whose presence lingers with me in all of my work and teaching.

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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments................................................................................................................v
Introduction: Late-Medieval Women Writers and the Bible ...............................................1
Chapter 1: Love‘s ‗Transcending‘ of the Scriptures in Marguerite‘s Mirror ....................17
1.1 The Manuscripts and Languages of The Mirror of Simple Souls ....................20
1.2 The Text of The Mirror of Simple Souls ..........................................................30
1.3 The Bible in The Mirror ..................................................................................33
1.4 Marguerite Porete‘s Debt to 1 Corinthians 13 in The Mirror of Simple Souls 35
Chapter 2: Appropriations of Biblical Authority in a Radical Mystical Text....................71
2.1 Marguerite on St. Paul‘s Vision of the Third Heaven .....................................72
2.2 Marguerite on the Transfiguration of Jesus .....................................................78
Chapter 3: The Julians of History: Biographers of Julian of Norwich and The Evidence
of Her Manuscripts ...................................................................................................98
3.1 ―This boke is begonne...but it is nott yett performyd‖: Compilations of Julian
of Norwich‘s A Revelation of Love, 1413-1670.......................................101
3.2 ―A devoute woman and hir name es Iulyan that is recluse atte Norwyche‖:
Later-Medieval Models of Anchoritic Living and Their Implications for
Julian‘s Career .........................................................................................134
Chapter 4: Biblical, Meditational, and Hagiographic Resources for Julian‘s A Revelation
of Love ....................................................................................................................157
4.1 Colledge and Walsh‘s ―Index of Scriptural Citations‖ and a New ―Index
Biblicus‖ ..................................................................................................164
4.1.1 Criteria Employed in the Making of the Index Biblicus .................166
4.2 Other Examples of Julian‘s Use of the Bible: A Select Survey .....................179
4.3 Historical and Cultural Sources of Julian‘s Biblicity ....................................189
4.4 Julian‘s Further Biblical and Hagiographical Debts in A Revelation ............204
4.5 The Scripturality of Julian‘s Text? ................................................................217
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................222
Appendix A: Marguerite‘s Seven Estats of the Soul‘s Journey to Union with God (based
on outline in Chapter 118) ......................................................................................225
Appendix B: A New Index Biblicus for Julian of Norwich‘s A Revelation of Love ........227
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Appendix C: ―The Charter of Christ‖ from Additional ms 37049...................................248
Appendix D: Timeline of Events in the Lives of Adam Easton and Julian of Norwich..249
Bibliography ....................................................................................................................254
Primary Texts—Editions .....................................................................................254
Primary Texts—Translations ...............................................................................262
Secondary Literature ............................................................................................264
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Professor Denise Despres at the University of Puget Sound
for introducing me, as an undergraduate, to the wonders of medieval literature broadly
and to the complex fascinations of medieval women‘s literature specifically. Julian of
Norwich and Marguerite Porete first entered my thought-world in one of her seminars,
and I have not stopped thinking about the two of them ever since. Most importantly, I
would like to thank my tireless, brilliant, and inspiring advisor, Professor Kathryn Kerby-
Fulton, without whom this dissertation would never have been brought to completion.
Like Denise, Kathryn‘s pervasive good cheer and scholarly excellence models for young
academics in training the best of intellectual investigation and teaching effectiveness. If I
do anything well as a young scholar and teacher, it is simply in imitation of the excellent
women who have taught, inspired, and trained me.
I would also like to thank my gracious readers for the dissertation—Professors
John Van Engen (History) and Maureen Boulton (French language and literature). In the
writing of such an ambitiously interdisciplinary dissertation such as this, it was crucial
that I have the expert assistance of a world-class historian and a medieval French
specialist. Their expertise and generously-offered assistance to me in my investigations
have been invaluable and saved me from countless errors and half-truths. Of course, all
errors that remain are my responsibility and mine alone.

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INTRODUCTION:
LATE-MEDIEVAL WOMEN WRITERS AND THE BIBLE
In the initial chapters of the Thirteenth Showing of Julian of Norwich‘s A
Revelation of Love, Julian begins to explore the seminal theological question that will
lead her to the heart of her most interesting and provocative theological propositions.
The question—―What is sin?‖—prompts a series of reflections on the ontology of sin and
on the status of human beings from the perspective of God, who assures Julian that ―alle
shalle be wele‖ (Long Text, chapter 27).1 Moving systematically through issues of
theodicy, soteriology, and ultimately of eschatology, Julian presents her conviction,
unveiled to her in her death-bed vision of the crucified Christ, that God will perform a
great and secret dede (LT 33) at the end of time. From the moment that she introduces
the notion of an eschatological previte (LT 27) or secret, a likely inference to a doctrine
of universal salvation,2 Julian begins to assert with observable regularity her continued

1 All citations from the Long Text (LT henceforth) in Middle English are taken from A Book of
Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, 2 vols., edited by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978).
2 Nicholas Watson galvanized the interest in the subject of universal salvation in Julian‘s
Revelation in two important essays in the 1990‘s; see ―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, and more specifically, ―Visions of Inclusion: Universal Salvation and
Vernacular Theology in Pre-Reformation England.‖ Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27.2
(1997): 145-187. Denise Nowakowski Baker‘s book Julian of Norwich‘s Showings: From Vision to Book
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), especially chapter 3 ―‘Alle Shalle Be Welle: The
Theodicy of Julian of Norwich, also examines alternative salvation ideas in A Revelation. Kathryn Kerby-
Fulton added additional important layers to Watson‘s thoughts in chapters 1 and 8-10 of Books Under
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alignment with the authoritative teaching of Holy Church. Julian‘s expressed submission
to Holy Church, occasionally referred to more obliquely as ―oure faith‖ (LT 32),
highlights her profound desire to be read as orthodox, even as her reflections begin to
approach potentially unorthodox conclusions. In chapter 32, as Julian begins to pursue
the universal-salvific possibilities indicated in her vision, Holy Church is further aligned
with a more specific notion of God‘s Word: ―And in this sight I marveyled gretly, and
beheld oure faith, mening thus: oure faith is grounded in Goddes worde, and it longeth to
oure faith that we beleve that Goddes worde shalle be saved in alle thing‖ (LT 32).
Goddes worde at least includes, if not refers principally, to the Bible, to Holy Scripture as
it would have been known in various guises to Julian and the whole of late-medieval
Christendom. As medievalists in many disciplines over the course of many decades of
scholarship have been aware, what exactly constitutes ―the word of God‖ in medieval
culture poses an imaginative problem for modern scholars who know of God‘s word
exclusively as the Bible. In addition to the fact that few persons, especially among the
laity, ever owned a Bible, except as mediated through more popular books like psalters
and books of hours, we also know that the words of Scripture were often transmitted
through secondary and tertiary sources, such as sermons, florilegia or commonplace
books, prayers, and devotions. In short, the points of access to the ―text‖ of the Bible
were many, and tracing such points in medieval texts proves to be a difficult task,
necessitating occasionally painstaking scholarly labor to retrieve.

Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England (Notre Dame,
2006).
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