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‘Have we any mother Juliana’s among us?’: The multiple identities of Julian of Norwich in Restoration England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2017

Liam Temple*
Affiliation:
14 Staindrop Crescent, Darlington, Co. Durham DL3 9AQ, UK. Email:liamtemple@hotmail.co.uk

Abstract

The true identity of the fourteenth-century anchoress Julian of Norwich has been lost to history. Yet in the seventeenth century Catholic and Protestant polemicists created different ‘Julians’ to construct and contrast their own confessional positions. This article traces the different identities prescribed to Julian and argues that they allow us fresh insight into some of the most prevalent religious and political issues of Restoration England. It begins by tracing the positive reception of Julian’s theology among the Benedictine nuns of Paris and Cambrai, including the role of Augustine Baker in editing Julian’s text. It then explores how the Benedictine Serenus Cressy and the Anglican Edward Stillingfleet created different identities for Julian in their ongoing polemical battles in the Restoration period. For Cressy, Julian was proof of the strength of Catholic devotional and spiritual traditions, while Stillingfleet believed she was evidence of the religious melancholy encouraged by monasticism. By exploring these identities, this article offers new perspective on issues of Catholic loyalty, enthusiasm, sectarianism and doctrinal authority.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© Trustees of the Catholic Record Society 2017. Published by Cambridge University Press 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Gaby Mahlberg and Neil Murphy for reading a draft version of this article. I am also indebted to Howard Wickes for introducing me to Julian of Norwich many moons ago when I was an eager undergraduate. My thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback and pertinent remarks.

References

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27 Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 4058, fols. 31v, 206v. The catalogue has been recently transcribed with useful background notes, see Rhodes, Jan, ‘The Library Catalogue of the English Benedictine Nuns of Our Lady of Good Hope in Paris’, The Downside Review 130 (2012): 5486 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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36 Baker’s MS works featured over one million words in total. Cressy digested this down to two hundred thousand. Clark, J.P.H, ‘Augustine Baker, O.S.B: Towards a Re-Assessment’, Studies in Spirituality 14 (2004): 209224 CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 211. For more on this process see Lunn, David, ‘Augustine Baker (1575–1641) and the English Mystical Tradition’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 26 (1975): 267277 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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55 Ibid.

56 Edward Stillingfleet, A discourse concerning the idolatry practised in the Church of Rome (London, 1671), 258. ‘H.N.’ is a reference to Hendrik Niclaes, the German founder of the Family of Love, while ‘Jacob Behmen’ is a reference to Jacob Boehme, the German alchemical mystic.

57 Ibid., 266.

58 Ibid., 261.

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64 Stillingfleet, A discourse concerning the idolatry practised in the Church of Rome, 257–8.

65 Stillingfleet, An answer to several late treatises, 11.

66 Ibid., 57–8.

67 Stillingfleet, A discourse concerning the idolatry practised in the Church of Rome, 244

68 Ibid., 248.

69 Ibid., 543.

70 Ibid., 324.

71 Ibid., 340.

72 Ibid., 260.

73 Edward Stillingfleet, A defence of the discourse concerning the idolatry practised in the Church of Rome in answer to a book entituled, Catholicks no idolators (London, 1676), sig. A4r.

74 Stillingfleet, A discourse concerning the idolatry practised in the Church of Rome, 258.