Thursday after the Sunday after Ascension

Almost nothing is known of Julian's life beyond what her own writings reveal and a handful of documentary references confirming her existence as an anchoress at St Julian's Church, Norwich. Her real name is unknown; 'Julian' derives from her church. On May 8, 1373, at approximately age thirty and during a severe illness she believed to be terminal, she experienced sixteen visions (“showings” in her terminology) centered around Christ's passion and God's love.

She produced two accounts: the Short Text, written shortly after the experience, and the Long Text (c. 1393), a sustained theological meditation composed over twenty years of contemplation. The Long Text is the first extended prose work known to have been written by a woman in English and represents a remarkable theological achievement. She [originally wrote in Middle English](https://amzn.to/4nfLPWG) that you may be familiar with from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, readable and beautiful, different, but typically understandable to a modern English reader with a bit of effort and a good edition with a few notes. Julian grappled with the problem of evil, the nature of sin, and the relationship between God's love and human suffering, arriving at her famous assurance that 'all shall be well.'

Margery Kempe, the English mystic, visited Julian around 1413 and recorded their conversation in [The Book of Margery Kempe](https://amzn.to/4wj2Jrz), providing external confirmation of Julian's reputation as a spiritual counselor. Norwich parish records and wills mentioning bequests to an anchoress at St Julian's confirm her historical existence. Julian's work was largely lost during the Reformation and was not widely available until the twentieth century, when it was recognized as one of the great classics of Christian mystical literature.

The church did not recognize Julian as a saint near the time of her death; it took over five hundred years for her contributions to the English church to be recognized. Her memory was preserved almost entirely through manuscript transmission of her work [*Revelations*](https://amzn.to/4cVZWx2)*,* which survived in a small number of copies through a Parisian monastery. She was virtually forgotten from the Reformation until the early 20th century, when scholarly interest revived her work. Her inclusion in Anglican calendars is a modern recovery rather than a continuous tradition. The cell at St Julian's Church, Norwich, destroyed in WWII bombing and rebuilt in 1953, has became a minor pilgrimage site in the modern period, in recognition of her historical place as the first woman to author English devotional literature and the theological value of her writings.