SYMHC Classics: Julian of Norwich

This 2019 episode covers Julian of Norwich, a medieval mystic who wrote down her visions, which she called showings. In this episode, we talk about her life in context of mysticism and how it fit into the context of Christianity in medieval Europe.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
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.

(00:24):
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.

(00:45):
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.

(01:09):
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,

(01:29):
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

(01:51):
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

(02:14):
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.

(02:36):
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

(02:59):
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,

(03:22):
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

(03:45):
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

(04:06):
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

(04:29):
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

(04:49):
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,

(05:13):
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

(05:34):
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,

(05:55):
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

(06:19):
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

(06:41):
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

(07:04):
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

(07:28):
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,

(07:49):
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

(08:11):
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,

(08:31):
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,

(08:51):
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

(09:12):
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.

(09:36):
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

(09:58):
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

(10:18):
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

(10:42):
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

(11:04):
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

(11:25):
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

(11:46):
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

(12:07):
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

(12:28):
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

(12:52):
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

(13:15):
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

(13:37):
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

(13:58):
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

(14:20):
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

(14:41):
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

(15:03):
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

(15:23):
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,

(15:45):
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

(16:08):
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

(16:28):
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

(16:49):
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

(17:10):
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

(17:30):
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

(17:52):
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

(18:13):
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,

(18:35):
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

(18:57):
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

(19:20):
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

(19:42):
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

(20:02):
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

(20:23):
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

(20:44):
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

(21:05):
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,

(21:26):
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

(21:46):
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

(22:08):
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

(22:30):
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

(22:51):
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,

(23:12):
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.

(23:34):
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,

(23:56):
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,

(24:17):
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,

(24:38):
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

(25:01):
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

(25:22):
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.

(25:43):
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

(26:04):
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

(26:25):
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

(26:48):
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,

(27:08):
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,

(27:31):
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.

(27:54):
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,

(28:15):
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

(28:37):
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

(28:57):
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,

(29:19):
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

(29:40):
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

(30:01):
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

(30:25):
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

(30:45):
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

(31:06):
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

(31:28):
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,

(31:51):
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

(32:12):
to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app,
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