I, Julian: The fictional autobiography of Julian of Norwich

by Claire Gilbert

Genres: Historical Christian; Medieval; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

'So I will write in English, pressing new words from this beautiful plain language spoken by all. Not courtly French to introduce God politely. Not church Latin to construct arguments. English to show it as it is. Even though it is not safe to do so.'

From the author of Miles to Go before I Sleep comes I, Julian, the account of a medieval woman who dares to tell her own story, battling grief, plague, the church and societal expectations to do so. Compelled by the powerful visions she had when close to death, Julian finds a way to live a life of freedom - as an anchoress, bricked up in a small room on the side of a church - and to write of what she has seen. The result, passed from hand to hand, is the first book to be written by a woman in English.

Tender, luminous, meditative and powerful, Julian writes of her love for God, and God's love for the whole of creation. 'All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.'

'Written with profound insight, spiritual and psychological, and a rare sensitivity to the everyday world of the fourteenth century, I, Julian is a brilliantly illuminating companion to one of the greatest works of spiritual writing in English.' Rowan Williams, Magdalene College, Cambridge University

Release date: April 13, 2023

Publisher: John Murray Press

Print pages: 336

Sample

Epilogue
By Hugh, Mother Julian’s confessor

Julian told her story to Thomas Emund in 1403 when he was staying for some weeks at the cathedral in Norwich. She did not see him again after he returned to his duties in Aylsham: he died the following year. Neither he nor Julian knew he was ailing when he was with her. But in those last months of his life he defied Julian’s wish and wrote down her words, and sent them to me. He swore me to secrecy, knowing I am her confessor and I am bound by that seal of trust. I remain bound, and I will ensure this manuscript passes into safe hands before I die.

 

So these few pen strokes to complete her story are made with no expectation that they will be read.

 

True to her word, Julian did not write again after she finished her text in 1401. She burned the earlier notebooks and sent the single book of her work to the sisters on Elm Hill and they have hidden it well.

 

Her tormentor Bishop Henry died in 1406. But holy church con-tinued uneasy and does so still: the Lollards are quelled but their protest rumbles on. The protest has too much merit to lose its strength and depart.

 

Her dear friend Isabel, whom Julian predicted would become Prioress, was so elected and remained until her death two years ago. She left Julian a healthy legacy to ensure comfort in old age, as did John, Julian’s former steward and suitor. He left money to Sarah and Alice too, delighting Julian with his consideration.

 

Alice still lives a hermit, but I do not think she will long outlast her former mistress.

 

Julian wrote no more but her discernment continued unabated as she listened a lot and spoke a little to the many, many people who sought her counsel, some travelling long distances to learn from her.

 

She listened. And the person speaking would after a time fall into silence, and she would hold their gaze with her loving look, and the love would reflect in their faces as sweet lightness. Words failed as Love itself was set free in the encounter, melted from the ice that kept it prisoner. Their questions were not answered, nothing was resolved, life flowed on with its doubts and distresses, but I never saw a visitor leave without a lighter step and a steadier gaze directed to God.

 

In her last years, Julian’s prayer became quieter and ever quieter. It is very simple, she said. So very simple.

 

She did not count the fruits of her work. And she never stopped asking questions.

 

*

On a clear crisp September day in 1418, we bury beloved Mother Julian. Her second and final grave, unmarked, is by the church to which she was anchored for so long, under the apple tree that Alice planted at the beginning of her sojourn.

 

The apples are ripe.

 

 

 

 

FINIS

II

I see again the child that I was, intense, active, impatiently pushing my fine, always-tangled, mousy-brown hair out of my eyes, full of questions, lonely. I was rarely with other children, for I was my parents’ only child and we lived quietly outside the city in a smallholding, with Marion our maid and my nurse in strict and stiff-boned attendance. Yes, I was intense, and sensitive. I felt everything too much, like a soft cobnut without its shell, easily startled into tears by a lonely, hungry tramp; the ewe-mother of a stillborn lamb; even a flower broken at its stem by a thoughtless human hand.

 

I saw these things, noticed them on my long solitary wandering through the woods and fields by our home, because my parents always asked me what I had seen that day, when dusk gathered us inside and around the hearth. I on my stool, speaking of my seeing, my mother spinning and smiling at my words, Marion mercifully elsewhere, my father massive in his chair in the flickering shadows, returned from his wool merchanting in the city, protection and his presence one and the same to me.

 

The best time is in the summer, for it is still light when I finish my reporting and my father stands up and says,

Time for our chores, daughter.

 

And I jump up from my stool and run after him as he strides to the door and outside, and there he takes my upstretched hands and swings me onto his shoulders, and together we inspect the smallholding, ensuring the fencing is secure and the three sheep and the two goats are safely within and have water, and the horse in his stall has water and hay, and we make sure the hens are all gathered in their run and that they have water, then we go to the fruit trees and see how the apples are ripening, and we walk up and down the rows of vegetables and comment on their growth, kneeling from time to time to remove a weed. I am in heights of happiness riding so tall on my father’s shoulders, queen of all I survey, holding tightly to his ears or if he complains at my pulling burying my hands in the thick thatch of his black hair, then clutching tightly around his neck as he bends and straightens at the fencing or the weeds, laughing with delight at the sudden swooping danger, knowing I am safe, that I will always be safe because my father is here.

 

And suddenly, he is not here.

III

It is the first pestilence. We do not know what is happening to us, nothing like this has been seen before. There is always sickness and death but now a new, ugly, pitiless, mortal sickness moves among us more swiftly than thought or prayer. We do not know where it comes from; we walk in fear of an enemy we cannot see but know is all around, that will strike silently from any side including from within. You fear your neighbour, even your own kin, you fear the food set before you to eat, the ale that you drink, the water in which you bathe, the air you breathe, the very clothes on your back.

 

I am only seven and I feel the fear not in these details but in those who protect me, my mother and my father. If they are afraid then I am not safe.

 

They are afraid.

 

And today as I stand at the gate of our cottage to greet my father riding back from the city, even from a distance I can see he is not well. He draws near, his whole body is gathered to itself in pain, and moans spill from his lips at every movement of his horse. He does not see me and nor does my mother as she comes running from the cottage to help him dismount and stumble inside. His smell as they pass makes me want to be sick. Rotting flesh.

 

He is brought to his bedchamber, and our home in the days that follow is like a body clenched, locked in tension, holding its breath. I escape as much as I can, out into the woods that surround our cottage, down to the river where it flows beyond the city. I am not heeded; I stay away for hours each day, trying to pretend to myself that all is well at home, trying to lose myself in the detail of my lonely walks as I always did before. I look at a sycamore leaf brown and curled on the path, placed so delicately, its edge hardly touching the earth, prey to the wind and to the crushing footfall of men. I look at a bright-eyed sparrow on a tree-twig twitch its tail before flying away from me, dipping between branches. I look at the scales of a fish dead on the jetty catch the sun and flash rainbow colours, each scale distinct and shining. And all the time I remember that I cannot return and tell my father what I have seen, because he is abed and dying.

 

The sun is warm and I go to the river where they say the pestilence does not linger. I lie on my front on the bank and watch plop-ripples make circles on the surface of the water, like rain but they come from underneath, from water boatmen as they reach up to catch their insect prey and then retreat. I make a palm-sized world with my hands cupped either side of my eyes, a world with no dying father, no distracted, white-faced mother, no waspish Marion. Into my private world, my safe world which I make with my cupped hands, floats my very own water boatman, hanging just below the surface of the water, his wing-oars outstretched and gently moving to keep him still and buoyant, like men would in a boat, but he is breathing underwater as they could not. I see my palm-sized world through his eyes: full of dark green and light green fronds of waterweed, huge to him. He has a scaly body, his antennae twitch, he is a fish-insect, and suddenly he shoots faster than my sluggish human eyes can follow, out of my palm-sized world, to his prey I think: it is not a safe world for them. The longer I am still the more I see, more and more movement of creatures from dots and specks of flies to stately fish, moving through my palm-sized world. I gently dip my finger into the water, slowly so that it does not disturb, and watch the creatures as their fear abates and they approach and nuzzle or swim around this great clumsy pacific intruder.

 

When reluctantly I return, Marion is standing in the doorway. She looks thunderous.

 

You neglect your father, she says. You should be near him and pray for him. Do you not love him? That is what he thinks. He thinks that you do not care.

 

I draw in my breath, wincing at Marion’s accusing finger and her admonition. Guilt breaks open in me and floods my heart. My father thinks I do not love him? Squirming away from Marion’s hand as it pushes me unkindly through the cottage to his bedchamber, scared of what I will see but driven by Marion and my guilt, I go to the stinking place where he has lain for days. I land splat, hard on my knees, outside the door, pushed by Marion.

 

It is not safe to enter, she hisses, but you can stay here and pray – pray loudly so he can hear you.

 

I am terrified.

 

Where is my mother?

 

Not here.

 

With no further explanation, Marion opens the chamber door wide, looking at my face with vindictive satisfaction as she passes by me and away.

 

I can see him.

 

This is not my father.

 

Pater noster,

Our Father, I cry out in the Latin I have learned, qui es in caelis, who art in heaven

Hallowed be thy name

 

A shrunken distorted frame lies abed, stick-like arms and legs held stiffly akimbo, claw hands curled over a belly as round and distended as though it were bearing a child.

 

Thy kingdom come

 

I can see stains on the bedclothes draped over lumpen swellings where the arms and legs begin, and above the blankets the neck bulges with bulbous egg-shaped lumps, some oozing foul-smelling muck, holding the head in stiff stillness.

 

Thy will be done

 

The face has paper-thin skin patched purple, drawn over jutting cheekbones, teeth bared, moaning breaths, eyes staring upwards.

In earth as it is in heaven

 

It is my father’s face.

 

Give us this day our daily bread

And forgive us our trespasses

 

It is my father and he is here, lost in this rotting, stiffly held frame; he is not elsewhere, ready to protect me, filling his chair by the fire and the whole room with his great black-haired black-eyed comforting healthy presence, laughing at my stories of what I have seen that day.

 

As we . . . my voice falters . . . as we forgive those

 

He is here, helpless. He is here and he does not know me. My strong father, helpless and in so much pain. And there is nothing I can do for him.

 

Except pray. I make myself stay kneeling repeating the Pater Noster over and over again, watching in fascinated horror the restless movements and moans until they become more pronounced, moans drowning my stumbling words, the head is moving from side to side on the pillow and now the lips smack horribly over the large yellowed teeth, and the tongue, a rasping dry thing, pokes out of the mouth, and he cries out words I cannot discern and I do not know what he means or what he needs. I only know he is in terrible pain and needs help and I do not know what to do and I am alone with him, where is Marion, where is my mother? I can bear it no longer and I start up from my knees just as my mother appears with a bowl and I push past her and run out of the cottage out into the woods down to the river and throw myself on the bank and weep more tears than all the deep flowing river can possibly hold, flowing past me, flowing onwards, onwards to the sea.

IV

The next day the moans from the bedchamber abate and the house is no longer so clenched in fear. Our curate appears and is taken to my father, the door of the bedchamber closed behind him. My mother bids me wait with her in the solar, and while we are there she says,

 

It will not be long before your father is taken from us. He is quiet now, and if you come to him you will see that he is at peace. Will you come? I will be with you and you need not be afraid.

 

I nod wordlessly. I do not want to return to that room, to that body, but I want to please my mother. And in the hall Marion looks up from her sweeping and her face accuses me and that stirs me too: she does not think I have done enough to prove my love. So I take my mother’s hand and return to the bedchamber, kneeling again at the open door while she enters and kneels near the bed.

 

That was a good thing to do, Thomas. For the body I see is still now, covered in fresh bedclothes, the smell is softened by lavender, his eyes are closed and he looks peaceful. I can see he is at peace and my own heart settles. I watch as he takes a great juddering breath, and lets it out, and then does not breathe in for so long that I think he has died, but then he takes another great breath, and lets it out, and for even longer does not breathe, and again I think he has died, and then another breath . . . The priest speaks prayers and anoints his closed eyes with oil, then his lips, murmuring more words of absolution, and then – and it looks so funny that despite everything laughter spurts up in me, which I hold in with all my might – his nose and his ears, and then his hands and his feet, and my mother turns to me and her eyes are full of tears but she nods and smiles a little and I know he is safe now, shriven and safe.

 

He dies later that day, just one week from when he fell ill, and his body is taken away by the authorities with the many, many other bodies that have fallen to the pestilence. We may not bury him and mourn him, it is not permitted to do so, says my mother. We must mourn him in our hearts.

 

But I do not know how to mourn him. I do not know what I should feel. I think I should be glad that his suffering has ended, and he must be in heaven for the priest shrived him. But I am not glad. I do not know what to do with the great empty space in my heart where his love used to be. It does not feel like anything.

 

I fret. Does that mean I didn’t love him? Is Marion right? Is there more I should have done for him? Am I – am I to blame for his death?

 

What if I don’t love my mother enough and she dies too?

 

My mother’s eyes are huge and lost, her hair whitened under her wimple, her once-soft body thin and hard from her own unhappiness, and she barely sees me, I think, when at mealtimes I steal glances at her face and her armpits for signs of illness.

 

Lost and unhappy though I am, I dare not go to my mother for comfort. It does not occur to me that I can or should. She is gathered to herself, with little enough strength for her own needs, and I believe I must support her by demanding nothing of her, only praying for her and finding my own solace somehow: among the trees, by the river, in myself.

 

Marion leaves our home as soon as my father dies, taking his horse as parting payment. I am relieved beyond anything. Now, Thomas, I can see that my mother must have been aware of Marion’s unkind bullying and sent her away for my sake; she must have been aware of me. But I do not feel it at the time. Silently I bear this emptiness and confusion and fear inside myself, a little child, Thomas, feeling so responsible and so burdened. Uncomforted.

IX

I stand resistant to my mother’s words.

 

You are nineteen years old, a woman now, and you must marry. I will look for a husband for you from your father’s guild.

 

Watching my face, which shows only too well what I think of this, she says,

 

You have a duty to bear children. Our people are stricken, we must have new life to bring us hope, and you are of age. And what else is there for you, if not marriage, than to enter a convent?

 

I see in my mind’s eye a recently married woman at mass one Sunday wearing her newly acquired, ill-fitting, heavy wimple on her head. She wanted to linger and converse with others after the service but her older husband did not, and he bade her come away. Now. She had to run after him, clutching her wimple, as he strode swiftly out of the church. She was no longer her own mistress.

 

I do not want to run a. . .