Medieval Enigma

by

Lev Raphael

When you’re an English major, lines from books and poems you discovered in college can stay with you for decades. You were young, the world of books was all before you, the lines were brand new revelations. Sometimes, if you're lucky, even though you repeat those favorite lines often, they can keep the charge of discovery.

In Samuel Butler’s autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh, I found the stunningly quiet put-down, “if it were not such a terrible thing to say of anyone, I should say that she meant well.” I think of that whenever someone excuses ineptitude or worse by saying, “But he meant well!” In that same book, I relished the insult “Audacious reptile!” And what could describe sweet slow pleasure more subtly than “I was drowning in honey, stingless,” from Brideshead Revisited?

I was equally taken by “We make our meek adjustments,” from the opening of Hart Crane’s “Chaplinesque.” The line carries the sadness of Chaplin’s Tramp, and the tragedy of Crane’s suicide. I read books about Crane, read his letters and almost all of his poetry, and even wrote a poem about him later in graduate school. That line has become a personal marker for me on far too many occasions of lessened expectations, a memento from my travels with Crane.

On the opposite side was Sydney’s inspiring line from Astrophel and Stella, “Fool, said my Muse to me, look in thy heart and write.” And also Eliot’s rhythmic, haunting “All shall be well, and / All manner of thing shall be well.” I've often quoted those words in dark times, only they’re not Eliot’s, of course. The lines come from a vision by the English mystic Julian of Norwich.

Dame Julian was only a name to me until I recently read Amy Frykholm’s marvelous biography, Julian of Norwich, which the author subtitles as being “contemplative.” That’s an apt description since I was so taken by the story she tells and the way she tells it that I filled the book with marginalia in conversation with the author (and myself). And then I read it again. And not long afterward, I found a calligrapher online who had done a version of the famous quotation; it’s in a plexiglass frame by my keyboard.

Julian was Chaucer's contemporary and the first English woman to write a book in English, which the Church had banned for religious uses. Julian defied that ban by offering A Revelation of Love based on her visions of Jesus, and offering it not to monks or nuns or priests, but to all ordinary Christians. English was still not the official language of the King’s courts, but it was the language of the people:

. . . the language of gossip; it was the language of the mystery plays that taught the lives of the saints. In English, a mother scolded her child, a child tended sheep, tanners shouted to each other across an alley. In other words, English was the language of the ‘lowly and simple things’. For Julian, these limits became a gift; in English she found a language that could both exude intimacy and power, a language in which the rules were not so well established that they couldn’t be broken.

Frykholm warns us that there’s not much we can know specifically about Julian, including whether that was her actual name or not. We do know she lived in Norfolk, England’s second largest city, a trading town of ten thousand people. We know that that she fell ill around age thirty and became an anchoress, a woman sealed away from life and devoted to prayer. Anchorites lodged in very small structures near churches where they could hear the mass through one window, engage with a servant through another, and interact through a third with townspeople who wanted their prayers and who offered them food and clothing in return. Frykholm says that such religious figures were in effect accessible and un-threatening counselors.

It’s a concept and a set of images that are admittedly very alien, but fascinating. As is the author’s approach to writing about a woman Denise Levertov called “a medieval enigma.” The book offers us “windows” into Julian’s life, setting her into a beautifully-evoked period and city (based both on her own writing and those of medieval historians), gracefully and lyrically evoking daily life, daily prayer, the experience of being in church, the worldview of the era, and visitations of the Plague.

The horrific suffering and death that the Plague brought ripped apart Norwich’s society and apparently shook Julian’s faith—for what could have brought God’s wrath down so indiscriminately on them all? But she couldn’t give up religion: “this was her life’s most basic currency.” And she hungered for what she would later see as being both wounded by and gifted with “contrition, compassion, and the longing for God.” These desires would start to be fulfilled in a gory vision that came to her, when she almost died, of the crucified Christ. It was only the first.

As woven into the book, these visions or “showings” which “flowed like the Blood of Christ mysteriously, continuously,” are extraordinary, sometimes even bizarre, especially when contrasted with the quotidian reality Frykholm makes palpable. But the mix is essential to conveying how Julian moved beyond mere prayer to a new realm of spiritual engagement and dedication. One in which she could surpass the limits of ordinary women of her day and, learning from a friar how to meditate on scripture (lectio divina), and eventually become a groundbreaking author.

Writing created exile. However close Julian was physically to her fellow churchmen, however many times she encountered them at mass, in her home, on the street, she had begun to create a life apart. She was alone in a country where no English woman, certainly no woman that she knew, had ever been before. If it were not for the help of the friar with whom she discussed every detail of the writing, she would not have had the courage to continue.

This virtual life apart became the real thing, when she took up her role as an anchoress, forgoing a life of regular social interaction to retreat to a simple, two-room cottage at the church of St. Julian, her “enclosure.” In her decades there she prayed and wrote and developed a remarkable theological point of view vastly at odds with the church establishment. In the second, longer version of her book, written in a “strikingly personal, intimate, and womanly voice,” God appears as a mother, and Jesus’ death on the cross is interpreted as childbearing labor.” Julian saw God as all-loving and without wrath, and though Frykholm notes we have no idea if anyone in her time actually read Julian’s work, it is vastly popular and appears in many editions today.

You don’t have to be remotely religious, spiritual or mystically minded to be moved by this beautifully wrought story. Frykholm’s biography does exactly what it should: it makes you eager to read what its subject has written, it transports you to another age, and it leaves you both fascinated by its subject and inspired by its author.

Books mentioned in this column:
Astrophel and Stella by Philip Sidney (Dodo Press, 2010)
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (Back Bay Books, 1982)
Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography by Amy Frykholm, (Paraclete Press, 2010)
The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler (Penguin, 1966)

Lev Raphael grew up in New York but got over it and has lived half his life in Michigan where he found his partner of twenty-six years along with a certain small fame. He escaped academia in 1988 to write full-time and has never looked back. The author of twenty-one books in many genres, and hundreds of reviews, stories and articles, he's seen his work discussed in journals, books, conference papers, and assigned in college and university classrooms. Which means he’s become homework. Who knew? Lev’s books have been translated into close to a dozen languages, some of which he can't identify, and he's done hundreds of readings and talks across the U.S. and Canada, and in France, England, Scotland, Austria, Germany and Israel. His latest book Pride and Prejudice: The Jewess and the Gentile is his second e-book original. You can learn more about Lev and his work on his website. Lev has reviewed for the Washington Post, Boston Review, NPR, the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Jerusalem Report and the Detroit Free Press where he had a mystery column for almost a decade. He also hosted his own public radio book show where he interviewed Salman Rushdie, Erica Jong, and Julian Barnes among many other authors. Whatever the genre, he's always looked for books with a memorable voice and a compelling story to tell. Contact Lev.