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PORTAL From American Benedictine Review 55:1
(March 2004), 55-73, by kind permission of Hugh Feiss OSB and the ABR. Entered on Umilta at the Sacro
Eremo di Camaldoli, 9/2009.
DILATION: GOD AND THE WORLD IN THE
VISIONS
OF BENEDICT AND JULIAN OF NORWICH
HUGH FEISS,
O.S.B.
INTRODUCTION
Many of us are struck by both the beauty and goodness, and the
smallness and fragility of the world when we look at a picture taken
of the earth from the space shuttle.1
To
Gregory the Great's Benedict, to Julian of Norwich and to others who
have looked at the word (or the universe) from the perspective of God,
it also has seemed that the work is small and fragile, even though it
is God's handiwork.2 The
world appeared small to them because the capacity of their minds was
stretched or dilated when they caught a sight of God.
Gregory the Great recounted a vision in which St Benedict saw the world
from God's perspective.3
His desccription of Benedict's vision influenced Julian of
Norwich's description of her first vision,4
as it did Adomnán's description of Coliumba of Iona's prophetic
gift. Gregory's understanding of contemplative experience, which he
brought into play in describing Benedict's vision also influenced the
theories of Richard of St Victor about the modes of contemplation. I
would like to begin with Richard's theories in order to situate the
idea of 'enlargment of the mind' (dilatatio).
Gregory says at the end of his life of Benedict, that Benedict wrote a
Rule for monks which is remarkable for its discernment or discretion,
and elegant in its language. A study of Julian's vision of the world
will show how remarkable were Julian's discretion and language.
RICHARD OF ST VICTOR (†1173). THE THREE MODES OF CONTEMPLATION (DE CONTEMPLATIONE DE ARCA MYSTICA
OR BENJAMIN MAJOR BK 5)
In his treatise On Contemplation,
Richard of St Victor's
theory of contemplation is elaborated in the context of several
interlocking biblical allegories, but his study is also a brilliant
work of analysis and systematization. It is one of the first and most
influential studies of Christian contemplation. An Augustinian canon
and teacher at the Abbey of St Victor in Paris, Richard was steeped in
the monastic tradition and alert to new trends in the theology which
led
to the scholasticsm of the thirteenth century. He did not separate love
from knowledge, prayerful study from studious prayer, a quest for
deeper understanding from the quest for union with God, or human
questioning from revealed understanding and wordless ecstasy. His
treatise is especially useful because, like a dam which collects
sediment, it organizes the contemplative experiences and theories of
contemplation of centuries of earlier Chriistian writers. Most
important for this study is his treatment of the dilation or expansion
of the mind in contemplation.
The first four books of Richard's On
Contemplation discuss six kinds of
contemplation, distinguishing them by their objects and by the mental
activites which are involved in contemplating them. In the fifth and
final book of the treatise, Richard of St Victor speaks of three modes
of contemplation whereby the mind is greatly expanded and intensely
sharpened (dilatatio),
raised up (sublevatio)
or taken out of itself in ecstasy (alienatio).5
In the first mode, expansion or stretching, the reach of the mind or
soul does not exceed what human effort can achieve with the help of
ordinary grace. Such expansion of the mind is achieved by learning,
exercise and intense concentration. In the second mode, raising
up, the mind is raised by grace to see beyond what one knows, what one
could know, or even what anyone could know. However, in this second
mode the mind does not fall into ecstasy as it does in the third mode
where it forgets itself and all else. Ecstasy, the third mode, in which
one is led out of oneself into self-forgetful awareness of God, is
brought on by great devotion, love and desire, or by wonder, or by joy
and exultation (5.1-5, Aris 123-29). Grace is at work in all forms of
contemplation, sometimes with human cooperation, sometimes without it.
In the first form of contemplation, 'the mind is drawn toward higher
things through contempt [disdain] for lesser ones and desire for
heavenly ones'. When the mind eagerly longs for the things above, God's
revelation (showing) will sometimes bestow understanding (5.6-8, Aris
130-33). In the second form of contemplation, wonder at a totally
unexpected event or sight rivets attention and leads to understanding
(5.9-13, Aris 141-8). In ecstasy, the third form of
contemplation, the mind, like
an animal at play, leaps above itself out of sheer joy (5.14-18, Aris
141-48). In Richard's theory of contemplation, devotion,
wonder and joy are not limited to ecstasy, but can accomodate any mode
of contemplation; it is when they are extremely intense that they lead
to ecstasy. To summarize with a diagram, there are three modes of
contemplation:
expansion (dilatatio):
within the bounds of human possibility aided by grace
raising up (sublevatio):
possible only with special divine help
ecstasy (alienatio):
brought on by great
devotion (love,
desire)
wonder
joy
What is important here is not the exact way that Richard organizes his
theory about the modes of contemplation and the causes of ecstasy, but
the notion of the expanded or dilated mind, the particular concern of
this paper, set in a cluster of other experiences which he associates
with contemplation: joy, 'looking down' on the world, wonder, and
showing (revelation). Richard's understanding of contemplation does not
distinguish contemplative study from studious contemplation. In this,
he is in agreement with both Gregory the Great and Julian of Norwich.6
GREGORY THE GREAT (C.540-†604). DIALOGUES,
BOOK 2, CHAPTER 357
According to the Dialogues of
Gregory the Great, the deacon Servandus used to visit Benedict
regularly to talk so that they could at least taste together the
delicious bread of their heavenly homeland that they could not yet
perfectly enjoy.8 On this
occasion Benedict was praying in a tower while Servandus and the
monks were asleep. Benedict saw a light poured out from above. He
saw 'brought before his eyes the whole world, as though gathered
in one ray of the sun'. While he concentrated his gaze on this light,
he saw the soul of Bishop Germanus of Capua being taken to heaven by
angels in a fiery sphere. In response to a question from his
interlocutor, Peter, Gregory explains that
to
the soul beholding the creator, the whole of creation will seem small.
Whatever small part of the light of the creator she beholds, all that
is created will become small to her, because by that light the mind's
interior vision is stretched, and so expanded in God, that
she stands above herself in the world and indeed above herself. When
she is rapt above herself in the light of God, she is inwardly
expanded. When she looks down below herself, from her exalted
position she grasps how limited is that which she could not comprehend
when she was in a more humble state . . .
What wonder if he saw the world gathered before him, when he was
raised up beyond the world in the light of his mind. Just because the
world is said to have been gathered before his eyes, that does not mean
that the earth was contracted. Rather, the expanded soul of the seer,
rapt into God, could see without difficulty whatever was beneath God.9
There are noteworthy features in this account. Gregory uses the word
grace twice in the first paragraph of this chapter where he also speaks
of tasting what cannot be perfectly enjoyed yet. Benedict was praying
in his tower, in speculatione
(which has connotations both of gazing contemplatively and occupying a
guard tower) when he saw the vision. The world was gathered in one ray
of the sun, in one glance. Gregory's description of how this occurred
is very complex. Benedict saw the Creator or glimpsed the light of the
Creator, and so all creation seemed very limited. His soul/mind was
stretched (laxatur sinus; dilatatus),
expanded (expanditur), and
amplified (ampliatur); it was
raised up (rapitur, raptus, sublevatus)
not just above the world, but above itself. He saw how small (breve)
and limited (angusta) was
everything collected together below. Thus, Benedict's
mind was
expanded by grace so that he understood something of the greatness of
God, and it was lifted up and so able to look upon all created things
simultaneously from the perspective of God10 and see them in comparison to
God. To his expanded mind they looked small and limited.
Similar ideas occur both in Benedict's own Rule, which was written over
fifty years before Gregory wrote the Dialogues, and in other writings
of Gregory the Great. In the Prologue 49 of the Rule, Benedict says
that 'as one progresses in this way of life and in faith, one runs
along the way of God's commandments with a heart expanded (dilatato)
with the ineffable sweetness of love . . .' Benedict here seems to be
echoing Ps 119.32: 'I have run the way of your commands, since you have
enlarged my heart [Viam mandatorum
cucurri, cum dilatasti cor meum]'. The word heart
in both the psalm and in Benedict's prologue connotes mind as well as
affectivity. Benedict's phrase, 'with the ineffable sweetness of love'
(i.e., with love which is pure delight'), indicates that one can have a
foretaste of heaven on earth. In this Benedict was following Cassian
rather than the Rule of the Master.11
In a passage in his Homilies on Ezekiel Gregory writes:
In the splayed windows the part
through which the light enters is a
narrow opening, but the interior part which receives the light is
spacious; for the minds off those who are contemplating, though they
only have a feeble sight of the true light, are in themselves greatly
enlarged . . . . What they see of eternity when they contemplate
is very limited, but that limited amount expands the capacity of their
minds in an increase of warmth and love, and so they are expanded in
themselves because they let into themselves the light of truth as
though through a narrow opening.
In the Dialogues, Gregory's
vision is followed immediately by the story of his death (ch. 37). By
contrast, Julian's discussion of the smallness of the world is situated
in her first revelation, at the beginning of her Showings.
THE EMBRACING VISION OF ST COLUMBA OF IONA (†597)
In the Irish epic, Táin
Bó Cúailnge, Queen Maeve meets a woman seer named
Fedelm. In the course of their conversation, Maeve asks the seer, 'Do
you have the embracing vision that illuminates [imbas for-osna]?
The passage is strikingly similar to a passage in Adomnán's Life
of St Columba, where Columba answers a monk who asked of him, 'Tell me,
I beg you, about your prophetic revelations . . . How are they revealed
to you?' St Columba replied:
You are asking me now about a very
delicate subject. There are some people - few indeed - to whom the
grace of God has given the power to see brightly and most clearly, with
a mental grasp miraculously enlarged, at one and the same time as if
lit by a single sunbeam, even the entire orbit of the whole earth and
the sea and sky around it.
Adomnán is borrowing from Gregory's account of
Benedict's vision, which enables him to give a thoroughly Christian
account of Columba's 'embracing vision'.13 By basing his account on
Gregory the Great's Life of Benedict,
he places St Columba in an honored contemplative tradition.14 Julian of Norwich stands in
that same tradition.
JULIAN OF NORWICH (C. 1342-†AFTER 1416). REVELATIONS, LONG TEXT, CHAPTERS 1-9
Not much is known about Julian. She was a recluse at St Julian's church
in Norwich that had connections with the Benedictine monastery of
Carrow.16 When she was
thirty years old, she had a mystical vision which she pondered
afterwards and wrote about in a book known as her Showings or
Revelations. One clear
connection with St Benedict is her citation of
the line in bold print in the passage cited above from his life in the
Dialogues.
Julian tells her readers that she had hoped, if it was God's will to
share in the compassion which Mary his mother and Mary Magdalene had
for
Christ when they saw him suffering, and to suffer a serious bodily
illness when she was 30 years old (2). These wishes were granted. In
the midst of the illness she had a series of visions,17 in the first of
which she saw Christ crowned with thorns. Like Mary, who knowing the
greatness of God recognized her own littleness, Julian recognized that
'all things that is made in regard to almighty God it is nothing' (5,
chapter heading18).
Julian's discussion of the littleness of the world is inseparable from
the 'homely loving' of Christ manifest in his coming to earth19 and in
his suffering for humanity. In her meditation on the suffering Christ,
the revealer of God's love, Julian understands both the goodness and
littleness of all that God has created. This connection between her
vision of Christ and her understanding of the goondess and littleness
of the world is evident in her summary (8) of this first revelation in
which the quotation from Gregory the Great occurs. Julian says she
understood six things.
The first is the signs of Christ's
blessed Passion and the plentiful shedding of his precious blood; the
second is the Maiden who is his beloved mother; the third is the
blessed Godhead that ever was, is and ever shall be, almighty, all
wisdom, all love. The fourth is all that he has made, for I know well
that heaven and earth and all that is made is vast and wide, fair and
good, but it looked so small to me because I saw it in the presence of
him that is Maker of all things; to a
soul that sees the Maker of all,
all that is made seems very small. The fifth thing that I
understood is
that he made everything for love; the same love sustains everything,
and shall do so for ever; the sixth is that God is everything that is
good, it seems to me, and the goodness that is in everything is God.20
The fourth of these points summarizes chapter 5 of the Revelations, 'a
Ghostly sight of his homely loveing'. God clothes us in tender joy; he
'is to us althing that is gode'.
In this vision he also showed me a
little thing, the size of a hazelnut
in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it
with my mind's eye and thought, 'What can this be?' and the answer came
to me, 'It is all that is made'. I wondered how it could last, for it
was so small I thought it might suddenly have disappeared. And the
answer in my mind was, 'It lasts and will last for ever because God
loves it, and everything exists in the same way by the love of God'. In
this little thing I saw three properties: the first is that God made
it, the second is that God loves it, the third that God cares for it. .
. . We need to know the littleness of all created beings and to set at
nothing everything that is made in order to love and possess God who is
unmade . . . for all that is below him does nothing to satisfy us.21
Julian thus is able to affirm both the utter goodness of the world,
made and loved by God, and its insufficiency to satisfy the human
heart. The world placed in her hand like a hazelnut suggests both the
divine gift of a good world that is also a nought, and human
responsibility for that world which God loves. The paradox is that
compared to God, all is nought, yet God, as she says in chapter 6,
'ffor he hath no dispite of that he hath made ne he hath no disdyne to
serve us at
the simplest office that do our body longyth in kinde [belongs in
nature] .. . ' Similarly, though Julian knows she, too, does not
despise or disdain them, even while regarding them as nought in
relation to God and to her love for God.22
In addition to an understanding of human restlessness apart from full
oneness with God, Julian develops several other corollaries of her
conviction about the goodness of God and of God's creation: wonder,
humility and love of others. In chapter 6 she explains:
there is no being made that can
know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly our Maker loves us. And
terefore with his grace and his help we may stand and gaze at him in
the spirit, with unending amazement at this high, surpassing,
inestimable love. . . . For of all else, beholding and loving our
Maker makes the soul see itself as most puny, and most fills it with
reverent awe and true meekness, with abundance of love for its fellow
Christians.23
Mary experienced this reverent dread and recognized her own littleness
(7).
Before the recapitulation in chapter 8 cited above, Julian returns to
the sight of Christ's bleeding head, the sign that the Lord 'so
reverent & dredeful is so homley and Curtes . . .' [so holy and
awe-inspiring, is also so familiar and courteous. . . (7)]'24 The world
and life and Christ are all grace. Hence, God's love toward the world
is courteous, treating respectfully something which is insignificant as
a ball. God's love is also intimate and familiar, for Christ entered
that world.25 As an example
of Jesus who was publicly and privately
friendly toward his peer servant. 'This bodely example was shewid so
hey that manys herete might be ravishid and almost forgettyng him selfe
for joy of this grete homlyhede [This human example was so powerfully
shown that a man's heart could be ravished and he could be beside
himself with joy at this great friendliness](7).26
Julian declares that what she has been shown is no more nor less than
what faith believes. She concludes that when the bodily sight ended,
'the gostly sight dwellid in myne understondyng & I abode with
reverent drede joyand27 in
that I saw'. She was 'mekil sterid in
charite to mine even Cristen, that thei might seen and knowyn the same
that I sawe . . . for al this sight was shewid general [the
spiritual vision remained in my understanding. And I waited with
reverent fear, rejoicing in what I saw . . . much moved with love for
my fellow Christian, wishing that they might see and know what I was
seeing . . . for the vision was shown for everyone]' (6).28
Julian's experiences, her reflection on them, and the insights she
gained in writing all served to help her understand the largeness of
her own soul. She says one comes to know one's soul only by knowing
God, the Maker, to whom the soul is oned and by whom it is enclosed;
but one comes to know God only by knowing one's soul.29
And then our
Lord opened my spiritual eyes and showed me my soul in the middle of my
heart. I saw the soul as it were an endless world30 and as if it were a
blessed kingdom, and from the properties I saw it in, I understood that
it is a glorious city. In the centre of that city sits our Lord Jesus,
God and man.31
Gregory's vocabulary, images and theories regarding contemplation were
one of the main tributaries in the great stream of tradition which
medieval people used to guide, understand and describe their mystical
experience. His notions of the expansion of the mind or soul in
contemplation, and his description of Benedict's vision influenced
Adomnán's report of Columba's explanation of his prophetic
power. Gregory's account of Benedict's vision influenced Julian of
Norwich's account of her first showing. It is very likely that Richard
of St Victor's thought reached her in some form also.32 However, what
strikes one immediately about Julian's first vision is how original it
is.
In Julian's vision the world placed in her hand seems like a hazelnut
or a ball. Her vision thus conflates Benedict's vision of the soul of
Germanus in a ball of fire and his vision of the world as small. In
Julian's text there is no elaborate hierarchy of created being; there
is only the Maker and all that is made. Both God and Julian are
immanent in that sphere.33
Although compared to God all that God has
made is nought, God made and loves that nought. God has no contempt for
this little world nor disdain for human beings. In this vision of the
world like a hazelnut, contemptus
mundi gives way to another form of
looking down on the world. It is seen as God's beloved creation, frail
and limited, but fair and varied. As God's presence and love clothe the
Christian, the Christian's gaze and hand enfold the world, and she
looks on the world with the same love with which God loves it.
The setting, and perhaps the cause, for this change in perspective is
her vision of the sufferings of Christ. It is in her first vision of
those sufferings that Julian affirms the love of God for God's good
creation. Since his Son died to save us, God must love us (and all
created things). Hence, the importance of Mary. She was there as an
eyewitness to Christ's sufferings. Julian's visions are an answer to
her prayer to see as Mary did. When the world is bathed in the blood fo
Christ, flowing like water from an eave onto the earth, it is revealed
as God's good creation.
Richard's treatise on contemplation is both summa and allegory: he was
both a traditional monastic biblical commentator and a pioneer
scholastic theologian. Julian is neither. She describes a series of
visions that detail the sufferings of Christ and also contain
theological rflection34 on
some of the most important truths of
Christian beleif: the Trinity,35
Incarnation and Redemption,36
and
above all the nature of sin and the possibility of danmnation in God's
good creation in which Christ suffered so much out of love for human
beings. Her language is for the most part nontechnical. To modern ears
at lest, her prose sounds straightforward and expressive. Nevertheless,
her description of her unusual religious experience draws on the same
tradiitons as Richard of St Victor. We have heard her speak, as he did,
of expressing the inexpressible, and she does so in terms of wonder and
joy, Whatever her reading or lack of it, she reminds one of St Teresa
of Avila, an original, sensible, strong person who absorbed the earlier
Western Christian mystical tradition and restated it in her own way and
in her own words with references to her own singular and
mind-stretching visionary experience pondered in her dilated heart.37
JULIAN'S READERS
Julian wote her works in the vernacular; she was in fact the first
woman we know of to write a book in English. In the long text, Julian
says she writes for her 'even Cristens'. The colophon to the MS Sloane
2499 says that she wrote a work of 'hey Divinitye and hey wisdam' for
'faithfull lovers' of 'Almyty god' for whom and to whom 'Crist Jhesu .
. . made these shewings and revelations . . . for thine and our save
guide and Conduct to everlasting bliss the which Jhesus mot Grant us.
Amen'. As far as we can tell, her works did not immediately reach very
many of her 'even Christens'. The manuscripts which survive hace
connections with English Brigittine and Benedictine nuns who, like
Julian, were probably influenced by both Gregory's Dialogues and the
writings of Richard of St Victor. For four centuries Julian's readers
were mostly women deeply interested in contemplative prayer. We owe
them
thanks for the wonder and joy of Julian's work that their diligence has
given us.38
Today, Julian's Revelations
are far more widely known and read than
they have ever been.39 In
the last decades they have been read
brilliantly in many different ways by people with many different
purposes: by scholars of langauge and literature, by historians of
religion, by feminists and by theologians. Perhaps, though, readers
with
the greatest chance of empathy for Julian's work are those like Denise
Levertov who share both Julian's feel for language and her devout
faith. Denise Levertov's poem, 'The Showings: Lady Julian of Norwich,
1342-1416', begins with a reference to a form of dilation of mind
particular to modernity:
Julian, there are vast gaps we
call black holes,
unable to picture what's both dense and vacant;
and there's the dizzying multiplication of all
language can name or fail to name, unutterable
swarming of molecules. All Pascal
imagined he could not stretch his mind to image
is known to exceed his dread.
This dreadful vastness is nevertheless a hazelnut resting on God's
blood-soaked hand:
You ask us to turn our gaze
inside out, and see
a little thing, the size of a nazelnut, and believe
it is our world? Ask us to see it lying
in God's pierced palm.
God placed in Julian's hand and places in ours, the
brown hazelnut of All that Is -
made, and belov'd and preserved.
As still, waking each day within
our microcsm, we find it, and ourselves.40
In another poem, 'On a Theme from Julian's Chapter XX', Levertov shows
how Julian knew that 'love was his meaning':
Within the mesh of the web, Himself
woven within, yet seeing it,
seeing it whole. Every sorrow and desolation
He saw, and sorrowed in kinship.41
CONCLUSION
There is much that we can learn from Julian's Revelations and her
relation to the tradition of mind- and heart-expanding contemplation in
which she stood. One lesson is certainly that we do not have to choose
between seeking understanding and seeking God. Both are contemplation.
However, just as Julian's vision was different from the visions of
Benedict, Gregory, Columba and Richard of St Victor, so our form of
vision can be different from all of theirs, hers included. What is
important is that our minds be explanded by the deifying light, and
that sight, word and spiritual insight interplay.
The light of God, when it illuminates and stretches our minds so that
we see the earth from the standpoint of God, does not diminish the
significance of the earth or the universe, but it does teach us that
the world is as nought compared to the infinity of God. That nought,
though, is beautiful and good, a thing of joy and wonder, which God
loves, which Christ died for, and which Christ entrusts into our hands.
All of which remains true, even if, like Denise Levertod, we see that
world through the expanded vision of modern science, Julian was able to
steer a sane path between contempt of the world and worship fo the
world because she saw it as the object of the divine love poured out on
the world in the blood of Christ. That perspective, uniting creation
and Christology, is one of her finest legacies to us.
Julian's vision of the world like a hazelnut, in the hand of Christ
our Mother, points in the direction of responsiiblity. The world is in
God's hands but in our hands as well, and, paradoxically, we are in
that world and God is here with us. The Wisdom of God, which played
before the Creator at the world's inception, has chosen to be with us
in the nought of the world, to save and to celebrate all that is.
Julian was one of the most brilliant theologians ever to write in
English. The only sentence she cites from an earlier author is the
statement from Gregory the Great: 'to the soul that sees the Maker of
all, all that is made seems very small'. We do not even know that she
could read. She lived as a solitary in an anchorhild which would be
given to someone else when she died. She had few external resources,
but her mind encompassed the world as she looked upon it from the
standpoint of its Maker. She is a reminder to us who live in the same
tradition in which she stood that the largeness of our minds is a gift
of grace and a matter of desire, not simply the result of external
factors over which we have no control.
The ball is now in our court:
A lopside blue and white ball,
Familiar and vast
A plaything in the hand
Of all-pervading Wisdom.
When she handed it to us
We saw the nail mark
In her scarred hand,
Wounded for love.
It is our turn to hold the ball
In our dirty, washed hands,
To play with Wisdom
In the ball with us.
Notes
Fr. Hugh Feiss is a monk and
the oblate director at the Monastery of
the Ascension, Jerome, Idaho, where he also edits the newsletter, the Desert Chronicle. He is coordinator
of the Benedictine Consortium for Distance Learning.
1. A version of this paper
was delivered at the 37th International Congress of Medieval
Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 2 May 2002, in a session on
monasticism and Julian of Norwich sponsored by the American
Benedictine Academy. Two related papers from that session appeared in
Magistra 8/2 (2002); Anna
Minore, 'Seeking God: Julian of Norwich and
Saint Benedict'; Jennifer N. Brown, 'The Rule of St Benedict
and Envisioning Jesus', 62-76. My thanks to Ellen Martin, Rita Tybor,
Marilyn Hall and Vanessa Butterfield for their corrections and
suggestions.
2. In their edition, Julian
of Norwich, Showing of Love: Extant
Texts and Translation (Florence: SISMEL, Edizioni del Galluzzo,
2001), p. 40, n. 3, Sister Anna Maria Reynolds and Julia Bolton
Holloway give two related examples of visions of the world: Catherine
of Siena, Orcherd of Syon,
ed. Phyllis Hodgson and Gabriel M. Liegey, EETS 258 (London: Oxford UP
1966), 58.18-19: 'Sche thanne left up hir goostly i3e to obeye to the
fadir in hevene, and sey in his fist al the world encloside'=Catherine
of Siena, The Dialogue, 18,
trans. Suzanne Noffke (New York: Paulist P 1980), 56: 'So in obedience
to the most high Father, she raised her eyes, and she saw within his
closed fist the entire world'. The
Life of Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth Century Recluse, ed.
and trans. C.H. Talbot (Oxford: Clarendon P 1959) 110: 'Procidensque ad
terram deorsum [intui]tu vidit uno immensum mundum'. In La Chanson de Sainte Foi d'Agen,
ed. Antoine Thomas, Les Classiques Français du Moyen Age (Paris:
Honoré Champion 1974) 13, the Provençal author declares
that when some bailiffs were sent to take Sainte Foy into custody, 'she
did not value the fools more than she would have a nut' (Non prezallz folz totz una noz).
For another vision of the world as a small sphere, see Jorge Luis
Borges, 'The Aleph', in A Personal
Anthology, ed. Anthony Kerrigan (New York: Grove, 1967), 138-54.
Borges cites Shakespeare's Hamlet
II.2: 'O God, I could be myself bounded in a nutshell and count myself
a king of infinite space'. My thanks to Dan Terkla and Stacey Shimizu
for this last reference. That the solar system is an atom or that a
molecule is a universe are familiar themes in science fiction writing;
compare the film Men in Black.
3. Gregory the
Great's authorship of the Dialogues
has been contested. See, for example, Francis Clark, The
Pseudo-Gregorian Dialogues, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1981); Robert
Gedding, 'Le Dialogues de Grégoire le Grand: A propos d'un livre
récent', Analecta Bollandiana
106 (1988) 201-29; Marilyn Dunn, The
Emergence of Monasticism (Oxford: Blackwell 2000) 130-37; Claude
Peifer, 'The Origins of Benedictine Monasticism: State of the
Question', American Benedictine
Review 51 (2000) 311-15; Francis Clark, 'Saint Benedict's
Biography and the Turning Tide of Controversy', American Benedictine Review 53
(2002) 305-25.
4. Sr Anna Maria Reynolds, Leeds University Suties in Language and
Literature 8 (1952) 18-28 (note 26), available on the internet
at http://www.umilta.net/courtesy.html; Edmund Colledge and James
Walsh, eds. A Book of Showings to
the Anchoress Julian
of Norwich, 2 vols (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies 1978) 2.317-18.
5. Richard's discussion of the
modes of contemplation is a complex theoretical undertaking. Here I am
concerned with those aspects of it most relevant to the vision of the
world as small in relation to God, and with his vocabulary more than
his theory. The best edition of Richard's treatise is to be found in
Marc-Aeilke Aris, Contemplatio:
Philosophische Studien zum Traktat Benjamiin Maior des Richard von St
Victor (Frankfurt: Josef Knecht 1886) [3]-[148]. The
Latin text is found in J.P. Migne, Patrologia
Latina (Paris, 1853);
rprt. Turnhout: Brepols 1979) 196.63-202, and there is a translation in
Richard of St Victor, The Twelve
Patriarchs: The Mystical Ark; Book Three of the Trinity, trans.
Grover Zinn (New York: Paulist 1979), 148-343. For an overview of
Richard's life and works see Jean Châatillon, 'Richard de
Saint-Victor', Dictionnaire de
Spiritualité (Paris: Beauchesne 1988) 13.593-654.
6. These same experiences
are associated with contemplation by many authors. For example, St
Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle,
trans. and ed. E. Allison Peers
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1961): 'When the soul, as far as it can
understand, is right outside itself, great things are revealed to it;
and when it returns to itself, it finds that it has reaped very great
advantages and it has such contempt for earthly things that, in
comparison with those it has seen, they seem like dirt to it' (Book 6,
p. 161). ' . . . when the Lord begins to reveal the secret of this
[seventh] Mansion and brings souls into it, they lose the great
weakness which was such a trial to them and of which previously they
could not rid themselves. Perhaps the reason is that the Lord has so
greatly strengthened and dilated and equipped the soul . . . ' (p.
224).
See also Dante, Purgatorio
III.12-13, ed. and trans, Charles Singleton, The Divine Comedy: Purgatory
(Princeton UP 1982) 22: 'La mente mia, che prima era ristretta/
le'ntente rallargò, si come vaga . . . ' (my mind, which had
been constricted/ widened in scope as in eager search).
7. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, ed. Adalbert de
Voguë, trans. Paul Antin (Paris: Cerf 1979) 236-43. For an English
translation and commentary see Gregory the Great, The Life of St Benedict, trans.
Hilary Costello and Eoin de Bhaldraithe, commentary by Adalbert de
Voguë (Petersham, MA: St Bede's 1003). Translations from Latin are
my own.
8. Voguë, Life, 165-66, notes that the story
of Benedict's final vision has much in common with the account in
chapter 33 of his final meeting with his sister Scholastica: 'the visit
of a spiritual friend . . . a long discussion in the daytime on the
future life, a miracle in the evening or nighttime, a vision from the
distance of the soul of a dead person going up to heaven, the
conformation of the death by messengers'. He adds (168-72) that
Gregory's account of Benedict's vision was influenced by three sources:
Gregory's story of a miraculous ray of light which shone on the monk
Victorinus Aemilianus: the dream of Scipio; and the revelation to St
Antony about the soul of Amun.
9. Dialogues 2.35.6-7, ed. Voguë,
240: ' . . . animae videnti creatorem
angusta est omnis omnis creatura. Quamlibet etenim parum de luce
creatoris aspexerit, breve ei fit omne quod creatum est, quia ipsa luce
visionis intimae mentis laxatur sinus, tantumque expanditur in
Deo,
ut superior existat mundo. Fit vero ipsa videntis anima etiam super
semetipsum. Cumque in Dei lumine rapitur super se, in interioribus
ampliatur, et dum sub se conspicit, exaltata conprehendit quam breve
sit, quod conprehendere humiliata non poterat. Vir ergo qui [intueri]
globum igneum, angelos quoque ad caelum redeuntes videbat, haec procul
dubio cernere nonnisi in Dei lumine poterat. Quid itaque mirum, si
mundum
ante se collectum vidit, qui sublevatus in mentis lumine extra mundum
fuit? Quod autem collectus mundus ante eius oculos dicitur, non caelum
et terra contracta est, sed videntis animus dilatatus, qui, in Deo
raptus, videre sine difficultate potuit omne quod infra Deum est. In
illa ergo luce, quae exterioribus oculis fulsit, lux interior in mente
fuit, quae videntis animum quia ad superiora rapuit, ei quam angusta
essent omnia inferiora monstraverit'. Here and elsewhere I put in bold
the line which Julian cites from Gregory's Dialogues.
10. Gregory says that
Benedict 'dwelt alone within himself under the eyes of the Watcher on
high' (ut solus in superni spectatoris oculis habitavi secum') Dialogues 2.3.5, ed. Voguë,
142.
11. Terrence Kardong, Benedict's Rule: A Translation and
Commentary (Collegeville: Liturgical Press 1996) 3: 'Processu
vero conversationis et fidei, dilatato corde inenarrabili dilectionis
dulcedine curritur via mandatorum Dei . . . ' Many translators separate
'dilatato corde' from what follows: 'with dilated hert one runs the way
of the commandments with the ineffable sweetness of love . . . ' My
phrasing agrees with that in Kardong, Benedict's
Rule (p. 23) and RB 1980: The
Rule of St Benedict in Latin and English, ed. Timothy Fry
(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press 1981) 165. Cassian cites Ps 119.32
in Conferences 16.27.2,
trans. Boniface Ramsey (New York: Paulist, 1997) 574-575.16.27.2-5,
when he speaks of anger near the end of his conference on friendship:
'Your hearts should not be confined within the narrow limits [angustiis coarctata] of impatience
and faintheartedness so that they will be unable to endure a violent
and tempestuous disturbance when that occurs. Rather, you should be
enlarged in your heats
[dilatamini in cordibus vestris], receiving the adverse waves of
wrath in the broad harbour of love . . . Our heart, therefore, should
be enlarged and expanded [dilatanda
ergo atque amplianda], lest . . . it not be able to say with the
prophet: 'I have run the way of your commands, since you enlarged my
heart"'. For the Latin text, see Jean Cassien, Conférences, ed. E. Pichery,
Sources Chrétiennes 45 54, 64 (Paris: Cerf 1955-59) 2.245-47.
12. Homélies sur
Ezéchiel, 2.5.17, ed. and tr. Charles Morel, 2 vols,
Sources
Chrétiennes 327, 360 (Paris: Cerf 1986), 1990) 2.260-62: 'In
fenestris obliquis pars illa per quam lumen intrat angusta porta est,
sed pars interior que lumen suscipit lata, quia mentes contemplantium
quamvis aliquid tenuiter de vero lumine videant, in semetipsis tamen
magna amplitudine dilatantur . . . Exiguum valde est quod de
aeternitate contemplantes vident, et inde apud se amplae fiunt, unde ad
se veritatis lumen quasi per angustias admittunt'. Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western
Christian Mysticism, vol. 2: The
Growth of Mysticism (New York: Crossroad 1994) 34-79, especially
67; Cuthbert Butler, Western
Mysticism (New York: Dutton 1924), 89-133. Butler cites Homilies on Ezekiel 2.2.12-14, one
relevant passage of which is 'contemplativae enim vitae amabilis valde
dulcedo est, quae super semetipsam animam rapit, caelestia aperit,
terrena autem debere esse contemptui ostendi . . . ' (ed. Pichery
2.116). Butler notes Gregory's habit of describing contemplation as
catching a glimpse of the unbounded light through a chilk or crack.
Even this glimpse brings great joy.
13. T.M. Charles. Edwards, Early
Christian Ireland (New York: Cambridge U P 2000) 192.93. This
passage from Admonan's Life
occurs at 1.43. See Admonán of Iona, Life of St Columba, trans. Richard
Sharpe (New York: Penguin 1991) 146. Adomnan (d. 704) was a successor
of Columba as abbot of Iona.
14. Adomnán, Life 57.
15. Here I will use the
long text in London, British Library, MS Sloane
1499, edited by Anna Maria Reynolds, C.P., and Julia Bolton Holloway,
Julian of Norwich, Showing of Love:
Extant Texts and Translation
(Florence: SISMEL, Edizioni del Galluzzo 2001) 513-27. The same
manuscript has been edited a number of times (see Reynolds and Holloway
505-507). I have consulted other editions in Shewings of Julian of
Norwich, ed. Georgia Ronan Crampton (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval
Institute,
Western Michigan University/TEAMS 1994) 37-50, and Julian of Norwich, A
Revelation of Love, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter: U of Exeter
1993).
References to chapter divisions follow Crampton. I will use the modern
translation of Elizabeth Spearing, Julian of Norwich, Revelations of
Divine Love, introduction and notes by A.C. Spearing (New York:
Penguin 1998) which is based on Sloane 2499.
The translation of Colledge and Walsh, Julian of Norwich, Showings (New York: Paulist
1978) is from their critical edition, which is based on a manuscript in
the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, MS Fonds anglais 40: A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian
of Norwich, 2 vols., Texts and Studies 35 (Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Sudies 1978). Julian's Showings exist in three
principal forms: the long text containined in two related Sloane
manuscripts in the British Library and in the Paris manuscript; the
short text, which exists in a single manuscript (British Library, MS
Additional 37790); and a brief version in Westminster Cathedral
Treasury MS 4, which is usually thought to be a colleciton of
excerpts. Most scholars believe that the short text is the earliest,
the long text is a later expansion written by Julian after much
reflection, and the Westminster manuscript a still later abridgement.
Holloway (Reynolds and Holloway,
Showing 9-10) however, argues that the Westminster text is
actually Julian's first account of her experiences, and that the long
text preceded the short text. The short text is edited by Colledge and
Walsh, Book, 1201-78; the
Westminster text is edited in Hugh Kempster, 'Julian of Norwich: The
Westminster Text of a Revelation of
Love', Mystics Quarterly
23 (1997) 177-244, and edited and translated by Reynolds and Holloway,
Showing, 3-117. For further discussion of manuscripts and forms and
their interrelationships see Colledge and Walsh, Book 1:1-32; Marion
Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics
(New York: Longman 1993) 217-20; and
Glasscoe's edition, A Revelation of
Love, ed. viii.xi.
In the passages which are the concern of this paper, there
do not seem to be any significant differences in content between Sloane
2499 and the text of Colledge and Walsh, which is based on the Paris
manuscript.
16. Most books
about Julian discuss her life and setting. See, for example, Edmund
Colledge and James Walsh, Showings
to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich
1:33-59; Elizabeth Ruth Obbard, Introducing
Julian, Woman of Norwich
(New York: New York City 1996) 1-32; Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt,
Julian of Norwich and the Mystical
Body Politic of Christ (Notre Dame,
IN: U Notre Dame P 1999) 203-12; Grace Jantzen, Julian of Norwich (New
York: Paulist 1987) 3-50; Brant Pelphrey, Christ our Mother: Julian of
Norwich (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier 1989) 17-62.
17. Julian speaks of her
visionary experience as including sight, word and 'ghostly sight' (Long
text chs 9 and 73). 'Bodily sigt' and a 'word formyd in my
understonding' led to and intertwined with Julian's spiritual
understanding. For the way in which the visionary experience, theology
and spiritual insight interact in Julian's Showings, see Denise Nowakowski
Baker, Julian of Norwich's Showings:
From Vision to Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U P 1994) 15-61;
Bauerschmidt 3-63; Kerrie Hide, Gifted
Origins to Graced Fulfillment: The Soteriology of Julian of Norwich
(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical P 2001) 22-35; Jantzen 74-85.
18. The chapter headings
are not Julian's but are ancient. See Reynolds and Holloway 496-97.
References to chapter numbers are given here in parenthesis in te text.
19. See chapter 6, ed.
Reynolds and Holloway, 521: 'For God of his godenes hath ordeyned
meanys to to helpe us wole faire and fele [many], of which the cheife
& principal mene is the blissid kinde that he toke of the mayd . .
. '
20. Spearing 52. Reynolds
and Holloway 525: (i) 'the toknys of the blissid passion & the
plentious sheddyng of his pretious blode'; (ii) 'the Maiden that is
derworthy Moder'; (iii) 'the blessful Godhede that ever was, is &
ever shal bene, almighty, al wisdam al love'; (iv) 'althing that he
hath made . . . is mekil & large faire & gode by the cause why
it
is shewid so litil to my sight was for I saw it in the presence of him
that is the maker of all thing, for a
soule that seith the maker of all, all that is made semith full litil';
(v) 'He that made all things for love be the same love it is kept &
shall be withoute end'; (vi) 'God is althing that is gode as to my
sight, & the godeness that althing hath it is he . . . '
21. Spearing 47; Reynolds
and Holloway 519: 'Also in this he shewed a littil thing the quantitye
of an haesil Nutt in the palme of my hand & it was as round as a
Balle. I lokid thereupon with eye of my understondyng and thowte what
may this be; And it was generally Answered thus: It is all that is
made, I mervellid how it might lesten for me thowte it might suddenly
have fallen to nowte for littil: And I was answred in my Vnderstonding.
It lesteth and ever shall for God loveth it. And so all thing hath the
being be the love of God: In this littil thing I saw iij properties:
the first is that God made it, the second is that God loveth it, the
iijd that God kepith it. . . . It needyth us to have knoweing of the
littlehed of creatures & to nowtyn all thing that is made for to
love and have God that is unmade . . . for all that is beneth him
sufficeth not us'.
22. Love is a pervasive
theme in Julian's work; see, for example, Patricia Mary Vinje, An Understanding of Love according to the
Anchoress Julian of Norwich (Salzburg: Institut für
Anglistik und Amerikanistic, 1983), 105-228; Hide 35-52. Julian's
chapter 5 and the image of the hazelnut are discussed in Ritamary
Bradley, Julian's Way
(London: HarperCollins 1992) 60-66; Jantzen
127-64.
23. Spearing 49-50;
Reynolds and Holloway 522: 'there is no creature that is made that may
wetyn [know] how mekyl & how swetely, & how tenderly our maker
loveth us, & therefore we may with his grace & his helpe stond
in ghostly beholding with everylestyng merveyling in this hey
overpassing onestimable love . . . ffor of all thing the beholding
& the lovyng of the maker makith the soule to seeme lest in his
owne
sight, & most fillith it with reverend drede and trew mekenes, with
plenty of charite to his even
christen' [underlining in MS].
24 Reynolds and Holloway
523; Spearing 51.
25. Bauerschmidt 96-99.
26. Reynolds and Holloway
524; Spearing 51.
27. Joy is an important
theme in Julian's showing; it is interwoven with an acute awareness of
human sufferings and Chrsit's sharing in them. See Domenico Pezzini,
'The Vocabulary of Joy in Julian of Norwich', Studies in Spirituality 4 (1994)
84-115. At the end of MS Sloane 2499 is the statement: 'Thus endith the
Revelation of love of the blissid trinite shewid by our savior Christ
Iesu for our Endless Comfort and solace & also to enjoyen in him in
this passand jorney of this life' (Reynolds and Holloway 626).
28. Reynolds
and Holloway 525; Spearing 53.
29. See, for example, the
long text of the Showings,
ch. 56; Christopher Abbot, Julian of
Norwich; Autbiography and Theology (Rochester, NY: D.S. Brewer
1999) 144-48.
30. Colledge and Walsh
adopte the reading 'warde' (='citadel'). In Book 534 n.126 and 639 n.3
they discuss the biblical background of the idea that the soul is a
citadel and provide some medieval evidence for te comparison. Both
Sloane manuscripts read 'world'.
31. Spearing 152; Reynolds
and Holloway 607-08: 'And than our Lord opened my Gostly eye, &
shewid me my soule in the midds of my herte, I saw the soule so large
as
it were an endless world & as it was a blisful kyngdom; & be
the
conditions I saw therein I understode that it is a worshipful syte. In
the midds of that syte sitts our Lord Jesus God and man'.
32. George Dufner, Die Dialoge Gregory des Grossen im Wandel
der Zeiten und Sprachen (Padova: Antenore 1966) 42-43 lists
Angier's Anglo-Norman translation of the Dialogues, but not a Middle English
one. Colledge and Walsh cite Hans Hecht, ed., Bishop Werferths von Worcester Ubersetzung
de Dialog Gregors des Grossen (Leipzig 1900; reprinted Darmstadt
1965). Some of Richard's work was available in Middle English
adaptations associated with The
Cloud of Unknowing, notbly the abbreviated version of Richard's
treatise, which was usually called Benjamin
minor. The Middle English
abbreviation is called 'A Tretyse of the Stodye of Wysdome that Men
Clepen Beniamyn', ed Phylllis Hodgson,
The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Treatises (Salzburg:
Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistic, 1982). It is translated
into modern English by James Walsh, The
Pursuit of Wisdom and Other Works by the Author of the Cloud of
Unknowing (New York: Paulist 1988) 11-47. See Anna Maria
Reynolds 'Some Literary Influences', at n.27.
33. See Joan M. Nuth, Wisdom's Daughter: The Theology of Julian
of Norwich (New York: Crossroad 1991) 101-04. Chapter 9
declares: 'God hat made al that is made & God lovith all that he
hath made; and he that generally loveith al his evyn Cristen for God,
he lovith al that is' (Reynolds and Holloway 526).
34. Julian says that by
three things God is worshipped and we 'be spedid kept and savid'; (i)
'use of Manys reason naturall'; (2) 'Common teching of holy Church';
(3) 'Inward gracious werking of the holy Gost'. All three are of God;
all three work in us together (ch. 80; Reynolds and Holloway 621).
35. Brant Pelphrey, Love was His Meaning: The Theology and
Mysticism of Julian of Norwich (Salzburg: Institut
für Anglistik und Amerikanistic, 1982) 102-25; Jantzen 108-26;
Hide 45ff; Nuth 73-96.
36. Abbot 47-140; Hide 91ff.
37. On the genre and
emergence of Julian's book, see Abbot 1-46.
38. The short text twice
says that it was intended for those who desired to live
contemplatively, but which Julian probably meant vowed religious. The
long text, however, seems to envisage as readers Julian's 'even
Cristens'. Compare short text, ch. 4 (Colledge and Walsh, Book,
1.215.42-47) with long text, ch. 5 (Reynolds and Hlloway 5:25-27) and
short text, chapter 13 (Colledge and Walsh, Book, 1.243.26-28) with
long text, chapter 26 (Reynolds and Holloway 548.13-15), In each case
where the short text refers to contemporaries, the long text refers
generally to 'we'. See Baker 33-34.
39. Sheila Upjohn, Why Julian Now? A Voyage of Discovery
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997).
40. Denise Levertov, The Stream & the Sapphire (New
York: New Directions 1997) 50-58.
41. Levertov Stream 76
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