Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-v5vhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-07T04:30:06.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Discretio spirituum in Time: The Impact of Julian of Norwich's Counsel in the Book of Margery Kempe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2013

Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa
Affiliation:
Shizuoka University, Japan
E. A. Jones
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
Get access

Summary

BELIEF IN THE TRINITY, which is manifested as an interplay of the Father as power, the Son as wisdom and the Holy Spirit as the bond of love between the Father and the Son, was a fundamental aspect of the Christian faith in the late Middle Ages, as it is today. Christians understand that God loved them in creating them in his likeness; he loved them more in the costliness of their redemption; but his greatest act of love is the gift of the Holy Spirit, by which they know and love him, and are assured that they are his children chosen for salvation. The love of the Holy Spirit is believed to be manifested in the gifts of the Holy Spirit – wisdom, understanding, knowledge, piety, fortitude, counsel, and fear of the Lord – through which the Holy Spirit can direct the supernatural life of the soul.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are a key for exploring Margery Kempe's experiential awareness of the life of grace. The process is initiated after her mystical marriage to the Godhead in Rome on her way back from Jerusalem (ch. 35) – marking a threshold in her relationship with the Trinity. From then on the law of charity and obedience orders her life, as the presence of the Holy Spirit in her soul is signalled by the ongoing activity and effects realised through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But Margery undergoes a series of ordeals in the period following her return to England after her Jerusalem pilgrimage.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England
Papers Read at Charney Manor, July 2004 [Exeter Symposium VII]
, pp. 119 - 132
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×