OO 2 ‘The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England aarcatest exponents, Above all, it is the Misinesang which allows her to develop aan existential dimension to the wiio mystica through combining with an affective : union of wills the motif ofa life lived cut in service and self dedication to her divine lover. ‘We should note moreover that it is literary stratagem which conveys the fall ‘metaphysical dynamicisma of Mechihild's work, Its through her cateful use of the metaphor of ‘lowing’ in its diverse forms that she is abte to build up the ‘multidimensionality of her work as being simultaneously inspiration, union, _grace, creation and an outflow from the superabundance ofthe Trinity." Indeed, itis this same sense of flowing which is embodied inthe effusive charwcter of her style with its ecstatic dialogues and passages of rhyme as wel as in her imagery of love-making, movement and dance. And it is precisely because the work is itself a literary embodiment of flowing and fusion that it receives its divinely ondained tile: “Tt shall be called a tight of my Godhead which flows into all hearts which live without falsity’. And so the transformation which began as an interior movement in the soul of the mystic is itsel incarnated in literary form land becomes cornnmunicable to those of us who come after. ‘© This combination of divine inspiation, vate authority and poetic sensibility suggests that Mechihild staid at the beginning of the distinguished German tradtivith the {generative power of the poetic word and which include, amongst on of poet-prophes. “which is wo say those poets who are most concerned othees, Angelus Silesius, Novalis, Friederich Holderlin ane Goitéried Benn, 8 Bs sol heisien ein viiezsende lioht miner gorheit in alti di herzen, dé da lebent ane walschett (1, prol., W-10-1D).THE APOPHATIC IMAGE: THE POETICS OF EFFACEMENT IN JULIAN OF NORWICH VINCENT GILLESPIE AND MAGGIE ROSS AT THE HEART OF SCRIPTURE stand two empty spaces. The Mercy Seat inthe Temple at Jerusalem was a vacant space between the cherubim in the Holy of Holies, This ‘greet speaking absence between the images” signified both Israel's repudiation of earthly representations of the deity and the imageless space into which they sought (0 come by prayer and devotion.‘ In the New Testament, the empty tomb is similarly eloquent in its absence of presence, The angel’s question in St Luke, ‘Wihy seek you the living with tbe dead?" (24:5), ‘enals the necessity ofa passover into a new poreeption ofthe living Christ and fa putting away of the old certaimies. Chris's injunction to Mary Magdalene, [Noli me cangere Gli 20-17), reinforces the sense of his transfiguration beyond the realm of earthly signification ‘The play of absence and presence characterizes the human experieace of engagement with the ineffable? The search for the Transcendental Signified which is God requires not only a struggle with the fallen will but aiso the necessity of wrestling with a fallen language which resolutely anchors itsetf in the world of signifiers. As Rowan Williams hes writen, ‘any speech about God is a speech about un absence.” This absence, as Derrida has noted ‘extends the ‘domain and piay of signification infinitely.” The game of mystical hide anv seek acted out over the oenturies generates a longing for release from the play of language, In Derride’s view, this hermeneutic appetite “seeks 10 decipher. The phrase comes from an unpublished sermon of Rowan Williams; ef, Exodus 28:19-20, 2 Hugo Rahner, Man at Play, rans. B, Batierstew and B. Quinn, Leadon, 1965: Robert Nedle, in Praise of Play: Towards a Psychology of Religion, New York, 1969; Marion Giasscoc, "Means of Showing: An Approach to Resding Julian of Norwich’, in Spatmittelaterliche Geistliche Literatur’ in der Nationalsprache, 1, Analocia Carusiana, 106 (1983), pp. 155-77, esp. pp. 159-60, Vincent Gillespie, ‘Strange limages of Death: The Passion in Later Medieval English Devotional end Mystical Writing’, in Zeit, Tod und Ewigheit in der Renaissance Literanr, 3, Analesia Cactusiana, 117 (1987), pp. 111-59, esp. pp.[41-3; Rene Tixier, ' “Good gamesumli pley"" Te jeux de Lamour dans The Cloud of Unknosving’, Caliban, 24(1987), 5-25. ‘An English version appears in Downside Review, 108 (1990), 235-53, Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge: Christan Spirituality from the New Testament wo St John of the Cross, Londen, 1979, p-145; Jacques Derrida, Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’, in Writing and Difference, fans. A. Bass, London, 1978, pp.278-93, exp. pp.279 and 2924 ‘The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England dreams of deciphering 4 uth of an origin which escapes play and dhe order oF the sign, and which lives the necessity of interpretation as an exile,” Centuries earlier, the same fundamental yearning was expressed by Joha the Solitary How long shalt be in the world ofthe voice and not in che world ofthe Word? For everything that is seen is voice and is spokew with the vie, but inthe invisible ‘world thete is no voice, for not even voige eaa uller ily mystery. How long sal | be voice and not silence, when shall] depart frou: the voive, no longer remdiaing in things which the voice proclaims? When shell I become word in an avarcness of ‘hidden things, when shall he raised up w silence, to something which neuter voiee nor word can bring. ‘The desire 10 escape from the prison-house of language, and feom the fFiekering play of signification is fundamental to apophatic theology. Language bovomes a hindrance to our understanding For imaseimoche as we beholden te binges bat ben moos: hise, insonmoehe be wordes pat bes spokya of hem t oure boholdyages maken seeite oure vndersiondyng.* When we enter into the darkness that is above mind, we shall find not only ‘pe. schortyng of wordes, bot as it were a macines and a parfite vnresonabititee ofall pat we seyn’ (DHD, p.8.13-15). This is an unequivocal truth in affirmative and negative theology. In both traditions, God is ‘merked' by a language of gesture and denial, 2 recognition that language is ultimately self-referential and self- consuming. God escapes the play of meaning: His not-vnderstomdable ouerpassyng.is vnvnderstondabely abouen alle affermyny snd deniinge.* For us to affirm or deny God would be wo seek to fetter hit ‘human signification, In biblical faith, human beings discem that presence is a surging whieh soon vanishes and leaves in its disappearance an absence that has been overcome, It is neither absolute nor etecnsl, but elusive and fragile, even and especially when ‘burean beings scek to prolong it ia the fort of ct Presence dilucs itself into its own iusion whenever i is confused with a spaicl or temporal location, ‘When presence is “guaranteed” to human senses or reason, it i$ no longer real presence. The proptictary sight of the glory destroys the vision, whether in the {cmple of Zion or in the eucharistic boa. Hts when presence escapes man's grasp ‘Gut it surges, survives, oF returns,” 10 the chains of 4 Sebastian Brock, “John the Solitary, On Prayer’, Joumat of Theological Studs, New Series. 30 (1979), 84-101, p.87. From Deonise hid Diuinite (DHD), the Clous-auttor’s version of The Mystical Theology of Peencho-Denys, in Deonise hid Dixinie, ed, Phyllis Hodgson, EBTS, 0 S. 231 (London, 1955 for 1949), pp.8. 9-12. For a recent eocount of Denys see Andrew Louth, Denys the Areopagite, London, 1989. © DAD, p.10.22-3, > Samucl Terrien, The Rlusive Prevence, New York, 1978, p.476, who also writes Presence perceived in an epiptanic visitation, a theuphany, or the madee solitude of a prophetic vision was “swiftlived', yet the acceplance af the‘The Apopharic Image 58 “To seek to capture God in language is © seek to enmesh him in the nets of fallen meaning and understanding, Whereof we cannot speak thereof we must be silent, As Hebrew iradition emphasised, God cannot be spoken or written ‘Bat the word was made flesh, Christ's lapse into language inthe incamation is his own freely given sacrifice of his ineffable nature on the atar of human ‘mncaning,® The incarnation ofthe fogas allows him to speak to us and through us and to redeert our language throwgh his words, The Word becomes the bridge between voice and silence, the means of passing over from earthly signification to unmediated truth. The initiative rests exclusively with God. As Jobn the Solitary pats it God's silence spoke with our Voice so taat we might heat ‘The aspiration oF mystical longing is to become the word unered by God, the prayer prayed by God through us. The necessity of interpretation, which we tolerate as exiles from uamediated wisdom, becomes a struggle t0 escape the play of signification Fundamental to this steugele is the rejection of the desire to control and the recognition that God cannot be comprehended either by the human mind or by human language, He can only be loved, not thought. The individual soul longing for the incarnation of meaning must take as its paradigm the humble obedience ‘of Mary at the Anmunciation in yielding control and setf-will, in submitting to the imperatives of becoming Goxl’s meaning. In forgetting self, the soul must ‘cast off the restrictions of language and cross the Jordan from discursive ‘consciousness {0 apophatic consciousness in which will be found the promised land of truth. This is the passover experience of many mystical writers who struggle to record or recreate their encounters with the ineffable, Fundamental to their struggle is their attempt to articalate their sense of this key movement from he world of signs to the world of the apoplatic.” promise W cartied transformed those who received and abeyed the command Faded presence became a metory and a hope, but it bucot iat anally of inward certitude, which was emunah, “faith’. When Ged no longer overwhelmed the sense of perception and concealed himself behind the adversity of historical existence, chase who accepted the promise were still aware of God’s nearness in the very vel of bis seeming absence. For them, the centre of life was a Deus cabsconditus argue praesens (@.4%) » Textual meaning at best a gesture towards what we may become by God's gift of he divine being, whichis our éefication. For Julian, for example, meaning is process dy which humanity comes to the fullness of the complex mystery of God's gilt of being, incarnated in human life. © Te should be noted thet chese are not two different worlds: consciousness isa continuum usually dominated by te discursive mode of awarenesss. The world of signs belongs to seli-consciousness ana tie apopiatic tothe progressive loss of sef-consciousness, te noughting of the self so often described in mysticel writing. These two aspects of tte continuum are integrated, depeadant on, zud enriching to, cack other. For moder. accounts of noughting, see John Main, Word fn Sitence, London, 1980; Maggie Ross, Maiicism: Assent to the Death of Seif Consciousness (forthcoming).56 The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England ‘To enter apophatic consciousness, the seeker must simultaneously desire it intensely and give up all desire." This paradox is deliberately subversive. It threatens the logical, hicrarchical command and control structures that motivate the human need to resolve, categorise and classify. It challenges our sense of the ordinary, threatens our usuel interpretative patterns and displaces our dominant modes of perception. Like the se-emptying humility of Christ on the crass, i defies reconciliation to the logic of the world. It is a sign of contradiction, allowing the creative tension between its conflicting sigifications to genccate & precious stillness, a chink in the defeasive wall of reason that allows slippage into apophatic consciousness ~ a jouissance of unmediated wisdom, 4 new Virginity of mind that js ikened by many mystical writers to sexual flfilment To achieve this toss of self-consciousness implies the abandonment of control Its necessary to jonison the techniques of analysis which classify experiences, sights, words and sense impressions by defining them against and incorporating them into repertoires of signification. Discursive consciousness makes sense of its experiences by activating its mental archive which serves to delimit the play cof any signifier by giving it contextual meaning, by fetering it into a system of likeness and difference. By contrast, the stilling and lewing go characteristic of contemplative experience facilitates the liberation into and assumption of the different perspectives of the apophatic consciousness. by yielding the herme- neutic initiative. In allowing itself 0 be read by the Transcendental Signified, the soul fearns & new way of reading —lecifo Domini - that allows it to escape, albeit feetingly, from the play of absence and presence.‘ The problem facing the mystical writer is how to generate in his own engagement with language a sense of suck an experience. He must seek to create what Barthes has called an “orgasmic text” whick: disloctes the reader's histories), cultural and psychological assumptions, the consistency of his testes, values si memories, ad brings toa eis hs relation ‘with langage. 2 Apophatic images and apophatic surfaces contribute to this process by the effects they have on the ratiocinative and interpretative processes of the discursive mind, Like language, imagery exists in syntactical and grammatical patterns and acquires meaning through its position in the iconic repertoire. It operates a lexis of likeness and difference within a system of conventional signs. "© On this paradox, see Marvin Shaw, The Paradox of Inzetion, American Academy of Religion Studies in Religion, 48. Adnta, 1988. © On Lectio Domini seo Vincent Gitespie, “Zulyge om haly bukes: Lecto in some Late ‘Medieval Spiritual Miscellanics’, in Spucmiitelateriche Geisliche Literarur in der Nationalsprache, 2, Amalecta Cartusiana, 106 (1984), pp.1-27, Gillespie, “Strange Iages’, op. cit. passim, esp. pp. 122-30 "= Roland Burthes, The Pleasure of the Tert. trans. Richard Miller, New York, 1975, pila,‘The Apophatic Image 7 By denying the imagination the raw material for the kind of imagistic chain reactions so effectively described by the Cloud-author, an apophatic image or suface can allow the eyes of the soul to be focussed without interference froma the fallen poviers of the mind. They pesture towards the apophatic like the angels gesturing towards the imageless heart of the Holy of Holics. ‘Such images and surfaces tend to the paradoxical. Water, wine, pearls, the ‘moon, clouds, a flame, all partake of w play of light and darkness and offer ncural surfaces on which images can resolve and dissolve themselves. The co- inherence of meanings ot layers of meaning ina single image is a hallmark of che timinal signifier of ths apophatic. They defy or defer che Lapse into linearity and rionovalency that characterises most conventional interpretation and allow for the generation of productive paradoxes within the same signifier. The Middie English Pear! becomes an apophatic image for a range of spiritual truths that resonate together with inerementally synergistic force even though their host image has no necessary figural relationship to them. The peat! of Ephrem the Syrian, with its rapslucent opacity. becomes the gateway to new perception { saw in the pearl hidden placss, that had no shadows, for itis the Luminary's daughter anit types are etoquent, sldnogh they have na tongoe: symbols ate ultered, ‘but without the hele of lips the silent Iyee ‘hough it has no sound, gives forth its song." Freed from earthly sytems and signs, symbois are uttered without the help of 4ips. This is a communication that is above the mediation of language. ‘Apophatic images and surfaces are themselves non-figural but allow projection from within the viewer or perception derived from incffable knowing. Moses" encounter with the burning bush is a classic apophatic image which ailows the focussing of the imagination om a single image but which eschews representation of what it communicates. Similarly a candle flame offers non figural, noa-linear and non-representational surface over which the mind can play and by which it may come to stillness. But even representational images can become springboards into the apophatic. Intense, unwavering attention to an image can cause it to lose its primary figural significance and to dissolve into ‘constituent shapes, colours, patterns or textures. This commonplace deconstruc- tion of the figural Mustrates the metamorphosis ofthe figuratively alusive into the figurally clusive when the ustial intespretative strategics are temporarily suspended. Hymns oa Faith no.81: °On the Peasl and its Symbols’, edited and translated by Sebastian Brock in a Garland of Hams from tke Early Church, McLean, Virginia, 1989, pp.80—4, p. 81, See the discussion by Sebastian Brock, The Luminous Eye: The Splrtiaal World Vision of St Ephrem, Rome, 1985,58 ‘The Medieval Mystiea! Tradition in England Such strategies of imagistic effacement offer inystical writers a means of counteracting the pull of referentiality in their handling of language. But to succeed it requires a recognition of and openness to those strategies on the part of readers of mystical texts. In the case of Julian of Norwich, the Long Text ‘account of her carly showings is an attempt to map out with ummasual fidelity the Jandscape and contours of het snystical aewfoundland through leading us calmly into the jaws of apophatic paradox. '* Julian's presentation of the fruits of ber long ruminatio on the showings has sometimes been likened te the exegetical techniques developed out of monastic and scholatie leer. * Even if we recognise that she is meditating on pictures and ‘words formed in her understandiog rather than written texts, the danget remains that we will seck to assimilate her text to the layered schematics of academic analysis, To replace she traditional fourfold categories of scriptural exegesis with new categories reflecting apparently major strands in her text (for example: narrative, biblical, theological and upophatic would be to reduce into strata a text that deliberately aspires towards the complexity of the molecular. Her text invites us to enter a relational universe. She wishes to present the showings siobally, not iocally.\© Like modeen chaos mathematicians, she refuses “to accept any reality that could be frozen motienless.""’ Her wext seeks to enact a nonlinear dymumic that is the world suffused, cnfolded ang sustained by the God imaged in the crucifix of her carly showings, Por chaos nalhematicians, “nonlinearity means thatthe act of playing the game has & way of changing the rules."# This is clase ro Julian's experience of her seeking into the behoiding of "5 Our reading of the exely showings of Julian ies to explore the textual dynamic that she creates. We have deliberately not referred to later developments of themes and ‘ideas or io changes in her handing of issues and perceptions in the fater tevelations, Rather than plot delailed theological echoes or influences in the text, we have paid ‘lose auention o the texture an¢ rhythm ofthe writing. By analysing her semiaatic end syntactical procedures, we hove tried to Plastrate some ofthe ays in which she seeks to involve her readers in the metaphoricat landscape of her text. Tes preliminary paper forms part ofa larger study of Julian and of oxhor medieval texts that seer tous tw exploit spopharic surfaces und images, ° Exg. by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, A Bock of Showings io the Anchoress ution of Norwich, Ponsifical Instiute of Mediaeval Suidies, Stdies and Texts, 35, “Toranio, 1978, pp.131-2. \© This point is well made by Brant Pelphrey, Love Was His Meaning: The Theology and Mysccism of Lulion of Norwich, Selzdurg Studies in English Litersture, 92-4, Salzburg, 1982, pp.84-5; Roland Maisunneuve, ‘The Visionery Universe of Fulian of Norwich’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, 1, x. Marion Glasscoe, Exeter, 1980, pp.k6-98; his L"unsers visionnaire de fulign of Norwich, Batis, 1987 clfers an inapertant acd valuable accouns of “ie langage visionneise” and “univers Visionnvire un ct muti" » James Gleick, Chaos, New York, 1987, p. 196, % Gleick, ep cit, pod.Phe Apophatie Image 8 Goa, and Bie strategy oF ber text i 60 make wall. The play of absence and prosence so fundamental to mystical experience fas its place in Julian’s visionary unnerse. ft has is own changing lextures, eseates its own tides of anxiety and secerity, offers a rhythmical contraction aud dilatation of perception, and socks to reflect and recreate the movement info and out of the apophatic that Hes ut the core of her early showings, Fundamental to Julian's verbal and visual strategies is the emblem of the crown of thorns at the moment of ils imposition on the head of Christ: che experience of her reauers as nd therewith was comprehended and speeifyed the Trinite with the incarnation and nite betwix God and man stule, with meny faire showings of endless ‘wicedome and teacheing of Tove, ia which all the sheweings thet follow be grounded and any. (6.4, p.1) ‘The description of this emblem, with its apophatic centre surcounded by the sigs of human suffering, characterizes the syothetic writing of so much of the text in the way i holds an tension conflicting penpsectives. It is the ground on which all the showings are founded, but it encompasses them and unifies ther, ‘The Trinity is both comprehended and specified by it, suggesting 4 broad perspective and 2 minutely particular analysis. It exists in historical, inear time, bot comprchends and circumseribes the whole of creation history. Tis paradowical resonance signifies the experience of humiliation for the sake of ‘ruth and love that lies at the heart of the trinity and of the incarnation. It places a model of self-emprying humility as the cornerstone of he textual edifice, invoking the Kenasis of Christ in his incarnation end passion described by St Paul: For let this mind be in you which wos also in Christ Jesus, who... emptied hime, taking the form of 2 servant, being sade in the likeness of men snd in 1» Al quotations fram the Long Text are taken feom London, British Library MS Sloane 2899 (SI): Julian of Norwich: A Revelacion of Love, ed. Marion Glusscoe, Exeter, 1976, References see 10 chapter aa page number of this edilion. Our preference or Sloane over Puis (used by Colledge ane Walsh is based in our sense of its greeter ‘theological subriety and complexity, and a feling that Paris consistently avoids the theological fectia diffciiar. preferring the orthodox 19 the audacious.Glasscoe's ‘citi is alive to the aanbighities and resraances of the text, thougi on aecasion We have modified or omtied her pucctuation. For an assessment ofthe textual probieans and a good acenunt of some aspects of $1” superorty, soe Mariun Glasseve, “Visions ‘and Revisions: A Further Look a the Manuscripts of Julian of Norwich’. Stadies in Bibliography, 42 (1989). 103-20. 1 See 2 Psdras 5:42 and 6:20 (4 izra in the Valgate of Juan's time): ‘He said, “shall Compare my judgement to a circle: the [sest will not be too late, aor the earliest too ceery’". and all will soe my judgerpent atthe sume unomens,”"This resonates with ‘one sense of her later showing of Gua in a poiat (see below note 46. 2 Wis only in St Tohn's Gospel thatthe crowning, with thorns acquires similar ironic prorainence through the revelation of Fesus as Truth Joh 18:33-19:5).Oy ‘The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England ‘abit found as @ an. He humbled himsel?, beeaming ovedieat unto death, oven to the death of the cross, Thstefore {for which cause) God aah enalted hin.” The paradox of the exalted kenosis of the cross becomes a paradigin for the procedures of the text, for Julian's approach to Gad and for het relationship t0 her audience.** To inhabit the text, the reader must be prepared (0 inhabit the ‘paradigm. Both Julian and her readers must put on the mind of Christ, Enclosure in the text will paradoxically deliver the reader into a limitless landscape. But the ‘necessary suspension of prevonceplions, hermeneutical models and etitical Faculties is to undergo a displacement from the ‘ordinary” and a loss of contral that is a form of death. It is significant, therefore, that Julian’s revelations and her passover into a profounder perception of them is played out against the background of her coming to terms with her own approuching death By the time her curate comes to assist her with the rites of passage, Julian's eyes are set upwards towards heaven, where ste hoped to come by the merey of Ged. Encouraged to Jook a crucifix, she agrees with reluctance, as if regretting the imerposition of the figural. In significant paradox of intention, her delivery into the first showing comes not from a vague imageless gazing in the direction of heaven, but by an intense focussing of her waning powers on an earthly image of the suffering Chris This movement, which she wil later be tempted to reverse ata key point in her spiritual development, allows her to concentrate her attention to the exclusion of other sights ‘Afice this my sight began to fatten anit was al derke about me inthe cbamaber as 4 had be aight, save in the image of the cross wherein T beheld ¢ comren Fight. G3, 93) Feeling herself to be on the point of death, Julian is sedenly relieved of her prin (the adverb is repeated three times in seven lines and is one of her most ‘common descriptors, signalling the suspension of “ordiaary’ time). Equally suddenly she decides to ask for ‘minde and felyng of his blissid passion’ (c.3, 1p). She specifies that she did not size a "bodily sight nor scheweing of God!” bur rather compassion ‘and afterward longeing to God’ (c.3, 4). Traditionaliy ® Philippians 2:5-7. We have used the Doway-Riheims translation, Julisn alludes 0 this passage in the Short ‘Text in one of er few direct citations of Scripture: “Swilke poses [sawe that alle esto litele bat y can colle or saye, for itt maye nous be tolde. bolle sk savle ater the sayinge of sayate Pewle schille feel in hyn pat in Crise These", ‘Colledge and Walsh. op. cit, p.234.; Bows Petphrey (Love Was His Meaning, p.262) and Colledge and Walsh (p.97} discuss the influence ofthis passage on Julian, but i connection with later showings. Neither secs it as fundarental to Julian's steategy, © On the importance of paradox. see Maisonneuve, Llunivers visionnatre, ap. ety pos % This point is well made by Simon Tugwell, Ways of Imperfection; An Exploration of Christian Spirtmatity, London, 1984, p.188: “the “upward” movement towatds Gos is redirected towerds the suffering humanity of Christ, That is where heaven aust be sought’. See Gillespie, "Strange Images", ap. cit. pp. 130-1‘The Apophatic Image 1 raind of the passion had been associated with strong emotional reactions and affective identification wih the sufferings of Christ, a8 the Iyric suggests ‘The mynde of thy swer passion, Jesu ~ ‘Tere ittoles, Eyene it bolls, My vesuge it wetes, ‘And my her it sweves But this form of compassion had become a dehased commodity in the late fourteenth century, often amounting in popular devotion to little more than the production of an extreme kinaesthetic response of the sort castigated by the Cloud-author for its wadue agitation of the imagination. ‘The compassion Julian receives takes her far beyond this tinkering with emotive pictures into something closer to the Patiline Kenotic mind of Christ. She thas aleeady said that she hoped to be ‘deliveryd of this world” (e.3, pA) and itis soon apparent that in the Labour pains of her illness she has also been detivered feom the weary conventions of contemporary passion poetry. “In this sodenly’ (¢:4, p, she perceives the bload trickling down from the freshly imposed crown of thorns. ‘The opening of the chapter typifies our experience of Julian's syntactical virwosity, for sodenly can be read here both 3s having a simple adverbial function (In this vision, suddenly 1 saw) and as functioning as the subject of the sentence (within this ‘suddenly’, I perceived the trickling blood). She signals the conflated time scale of her vision and its subsoquont process of revelation by creating a multilayered sequence of showings land perceptions all bappening in the apophatic landscape of her sudden insta. ‘Through her use of insistent present participles she sustains us in « timeless bbcholding of the mystical context in which the historical moment is suspended =" ‘Tulian’s focus on te iramediate physical consequences of the crowning alludes to conventional passion meditation, but only Jong enough to allow the reader to register her departures from the usual catalogue of Christ's wounds, Having heen delivered of the world, she inimediately conceives that Christ is showing her this image without any “mene” (¢.4, p.4). The spiritual pregnancy on which 2B Index of Middle English Verse, o, Carleton Borden and R, H. Robbins, New York, 1943, 3433, primad in A Selection of Religious Lyrics, ed. Douglas Giay, Oxford. 1975, p.31, and see note, p-117. 2 Sce Middle English Dictionary. ed. Hans Kurath et al., Ann Azbor, 1954~ thereafter MED). av deliveren, v. The senses recorded inchude deliveraace from bondage, prison or eapuivtys giving up or relingushings and giving birth to. 27 Inde several fealores of her tex, including her later statement “It is today domysdey vwith me” (c.8, p.9) suggeus that Julian's text may have some of the generic charscterisics of apocalyptic writing 2 Tulian’s lexical exploration of the word mene, as noun, atjective and ver, is one of the ‘ost dazaling Wustzations of her vesbal dexterity in creating semantic clusters or ‘word Ivo. Here she seems 10 imply that the showing wes without specch and without intermediary. The nominal senies of mene include: sexuah imercourse; fellowship; & companion; & course of action, method oF way; an intermeatary or negotiator; an agent or0 ‘The Medieval Mystical Tradition m Bagland she embarks involves learning nevr way with the liminal imagery of hee showings which consistently teads hier int the timeless and imageloss world of the apophatic. ‘The stress on the tack of intermediaries between Christ and Julian emphasizes that Christ is not obeying the conventions of passion meditetion, nor is he ‘communicating through the codified decorams by which signification is usually controlled in hontan rhetoric. Her bleeding head image is uncoupled from its usual chains of signifiers and of significations, and she is forced to develup a new lexis to cope with the strands of meaning inherert in it and with the temporal and atemporal modes in which those strands ure revealed: ‘This showing was quick und lively, and hidouse and dredful, sae lovely (e.7, ps) and Julian makes ao attempt to resolve the paradoxes of this description, Instead she allows them to imply the different perspectives (visionary, historical and theological) which simultancously coinhere in the showing. These dislocations are the beginning of Julian's ‘orgasmic’ text Thc initial description of the head is immediately followed by a substantial ‘meditation on the Trinity signalting a shift of mond trom sorrow and pain to joy’ ‘sodenly the Trinise Wilfiled the herte most of oy” (c.4, p.4). Again this is not a process but an instantaneous perception; in elfect another moment of conception.” The lack of means. the suspension of the usual conventions of insane; an ifomedite aes someting ing snremes; mention oF lp. Seaman, sasouo acum. Aajetvalycamton parting the quale sharacteriaie of io extere'- Ava veri has te sens frend comtey something e signif: say a exes something. to vemeuersometing. Wo aiiac, ‘Minonish or urge Seneboly to do someting can alo have the “eae of complain; to cr out for hel ply. sypae wih or conde with somebeey. Farher adjectival see of senses clos afound notion of lewness, lenny and smallness which resonates wih T's seate of humble sel-emplsing (MED, e+ imene, none, 7.) Tus exploitation ofthe polysemousses of this ord mean. Shai hetomes he meting gle for many of be Key Mss, pec, respons td expressions. 2 Cr Pals words a Gains 4.19 My He chien, of whom ain abou wan, unl Chey be formed in a Ta ew ot hc Pauline sence respon tas her ‘everertscn Jl may" well se Bee puta. pregnancy po es trang’ inerseary Teton. This nso a pra ht swell ih She heme ofthe labour and mcerbood of Gol extensively explored later i the Showings, offering ane orm of conpasso with Chis. On tee motherhood hese, see Catline Walker Bynum, eras. ar Mother” Sues the Sra of he Hg ‘Middle es, Loo, 1982. with ography. 1. Clarks Nature, Gree the Try in Juin of Norwich’, Downside Resiew, xx (1982), 208-20, ppt Coltedpe ant Welt, pp. 181-02; Pephvey Love Was Hts Meaning p. 18449, a his recent Ohrst Our Mother, London, 1989 » This apparent ‘angen excursion fom he soemaltjectory of active response to passion mediation is not found in the Short Text, whichis generally more owenione ad cations in is stiulaon of wea, ou eas. Deca i thal Yeoee ‘The Apophatic Image 63 inverpretation, allows her uo impues the joy of the Trinity onto the geief anc humiliation ofthe crowning with thorns, This aliaws the physical paradox of the mocked kingship of Christ to zesouate with its full deotogical force in a manner unusual in Tate medieval Passion narratives. Jtian’s verbal reaction to the shewing ~ Benedicite domine ~ is said “for reverence in my mencing” because her rational powers are astonished for wonder and mervel .. that he dhat és so reverend and dredfull wil be so homely with a synfall ercure liveing in wretshed flesh. (€.4, p.4) Again, the syntactical looseness (which so annoyed Colledge and Walsh) is revealed as a functional part of Julian’s theology of immanence. Christ is reverend and dredfull (in both senses) bat also homely: the natare of the paradox is manifest in the final clause “liveing in wretched flesh’ (6.4, p.4), the antecedent for which can be both Julian and Christ. His homeliness with his creatures extends to occupying the sume syniacticel space ax them. Her conceiving of the significance of the shewing is acted out by the way the spirit of God fills her syntax and occupies her subelauses in a grammatical parody of the Incarnation. Her puzzlement is overcome by her tevereace as she is Jed into the annunciation of truths whose enunciation defies language, This conception of Christ's meaning without means, analogous co the Incarnation without physical intermediary, is only possible because she has moved to a position of true compassion with Christ: « genuine sharing with Ure will of God a inde Soule might have with ou lord lesus, that for ove would bone a dedly ‘man: ard therefore Tdasired (o suffer with him. (€:3, p.4} Christ's willingness for death becomes real for her at what she believes isthe ‘moment of her own death, the labour pains of which she reclaims as an act of willed self-emptying. Her commitment to Christ hinges on the sherefore in the ! last clause of chapter 3, which echoes the paradoxical causality of St Paul's “therefore God has exalted him.” Julia's sherefore is an act of kenosis, an imitation of Christ in her willingness to dic to the world, She is delivered of the world and of the World's images and in the act conceives again and is “fullfilled = most of joy’, a moment of jouissance ‘Although she has asked for mind of the Passion, what she has received is far removed Irom the usual images of torment and suffering. Palian’s showing tas made the bleeding head resonate as an image in wew and unusual ways: it means both the exaltation of the Trinity and the huralily ofthe incarnation, but it con Julian has yet 10 arsive at sense of the authority of her own text. In this respect, ‘chapter 9 of the Long Text is significant, a5 she there articulates bet almost Pauline sense of her role asa signifier or mean of God's message. 3 Galy SI and $2 have sherefore at this point; the Short Text and Paris agree in seading "With hire I desyred o sufer,liuyag it my deadly bodie, as god would give me grace’ (LT, Colledge and Walsh, op. cit, p.293, of ST, 9.210.)64 ‘The Medieval Mystical ‘Tradition in England ‘only do so because it is tiberated from the means or hermeneutic repertoires ‘which clogged the arteries ef contemporary devotional writing. ‘The virtuosity of this first chapter of the showing is completed by the way she felates all that has happened back to another cliche of popular meslitation ~ the image of Mary at the Annunciation, This allows ber t focus the lenguage and ‘concepts of the bleeding head and its associated sigifications, but tis done with such panache that a tired visual reference is reconstituted into something much ‘more theologically subtle. We sce Mary ‘wan she conceived with child’, echoing and reverberating against Julian’s own conceiving of her revelation. We see her wisdom and truth: ‘wherein } understood the reverend beholding thet she beheld hit God and maker, smervelyng with greate reverence that he would be bore of hit tet was a simple sreatute of his makeyag. (64, p.5) Julian's syntactical openness again allows theology to take place within the ‘gfammatical interstices of the sentence. When we ask who is ‘mervelyng with rate reverence” at this scone, we realise that it most be both Mary and Julian ‘Their responses are twinned just as their vocabulary of reverent dread at God's homeliness with creatures has also been subliminslly twinned, Mary's meckness Sn acquiescing (Lo me, God’s handmayd) is a scriptural analogue fand a post hoc validation) of Julian's earlier Benedicite domine, Moreover Mary's behoiding of God ushets in a major theme of later revelations; how God is o be perceived and hhow that perception is t0 be articulated, Rehotding is a key term in Julian's apopharic vocabulary, signalling not an analytical, critical or interpretative seeing, but rather a sill and mutual enjoyment of and exchange of being between God and the soul. Julian's use of the Annunciation could have been a crude claim for the conthodoxy and authority of her vision. Instead hee exploration of a traditional image allows, and indeed requires, the reader to make the connections and parallels between the acts of obedience and humility that bind together Christ, Mary and Julian in a trinity of homely reverence and sclf-eraptying humility. ‘The rejection of earthly means is already found in the description of Mary: for boven hir is nothing that is made bot the bliss finanhood] of Crise. fe.4, ps) In similar terms, Julian's delivery from the world brings her to the threshold of the apophati: til am substantisly ony to him 1 may never have fll rest ne weny blisse; that is to sey, that Ibe So festined to him chat there is righe nove tha made betvin my Gad aed me (eS. p.5) * For a more systematized account of beholding, see Pelphrey, Love Was His Meaning, op. cit. pp.229-47; Maisonneuve, L'univers visionnaire, op, it, pp. 125-53 5 The link between Mary snd Julian is Brought ont expLeidy later on, when she 1s taut about ‘her uth, her Wisdum, hircherite; wherby T may leryn to know myseife and‘The Apophatic Image 65 The soul's cestlessness sill continue until it is “nowted of all things that is made.” Willful noughting (@ typical paradox of intention) is « function of ovr love for God and God"s will to be known. The subliminal connections between the key words in this discussion crewe a panning word-knot (knowing, noughting, nothing, no thing) of overlapping and interpenetrating notions offering a powerfully incremental substructure of resonance and allusion which uses connotation to overpower simple denotation, Like the crown of thors, this semantic garland of near homonyms both comprehends and specities ideas fundamental to Julian's seeking in to the beholding of God. Jolian creates in her text dialogue with conventional images, But she is acutely aware of the dangers of those images fettering her showings into an earthly order of signifying. Later in he frst revelation, she returns with a fixity of focus to the drops of blood on Christ's face. Like the disruption and deconstruction of a picture consequent on fixed attention toa small part, she dismaniles the Bleeding into series of discrete images: pellets, rain end herringbones (¢.7, p.8), The images suggest an urge to “domesticate’ the horror of the passion, to defuse the challenge of its physicality by invoking homely means to interpret it, But God showed it without means and the effect of her gesture 10 conventional analogy is paradoxically to imbue the domestic and mundane with the force of the original image and with the substance of its subsequent significations. By making immanence more openly manifest, Julian also reclaims these homely images as gateways into the apophatie Similarly, Julian also embarks on a conventional simile o describe the appearance of Christ's head: ‘the fairhede and the livelyhede is like..." As if recognizing that the. simile creates a centrifugal force in the text, drawing attention away trom the core image and setting off a chain reaction of linked signifiers, in effect subordinating her showing to the very means from which Christ hes liberated it and her ~ she overthrows the analogy with an enigmatic assertion of irreduceability: “the fairehede and the livelyhede is like nothivg but the same” (€.7, p.8)." Like the experience of childbirth that seems (© inform so much of Julian's imagery in these early showings, her text has a rhythm, a pattern of movernent.’= Ik has moments of great dilliculty und density where meaning is intense and reverently drede my God" (6.25, p 27); see Glassooe, “Means of showing’. op. ci. pated 14 The epophatic force of this is entirely suppressed in the persistently puzzles Paris ‘Manuseript, which reads ‘Nevertheles the feyertede and the lyuelynede continued ia the same bewty and [yuelynes’ (Colledge snd Walsh, op. cl, p.342), Pace College and Walsh, this looks like ac attempt to make sense of something like Sloane's reading ® For some provocative speculations about Julian's life, see Sister Benedicta (Wad), SSLG, ‘Iullan the Solitary’, in Julian Recensidered, Oxford, 1988, pp.11-35.66 ‘The Medieval Mystical Tyedidon i England ‘contracted; and 1 has moments of easier comprehension, relaxation, reflection and consolidation. These textual and spiritual contractions are the means by ‘hich the spititual perception of Julian and her audience is dilated, making, us open to new understanding, moving us closer © the moment of spiritual delivery, which may be deferred beyond the confines of the written text. ‘The dramatized groping and uncertainties of these early chapters prepare us 0 welcome those passages of clarity and calm exposition that invariably follow Her enfolding texture comforts us in the way that the enfolding love of God ‘comforts her. The ‘ghostly sight of his homely loveing’ in chapter S (p.5) sees God as everything that is good and comforabte for us. Ths discomfort of our cariiet textual labours is rewarded with images of nurturing reassurance shat invoke the registers of maternal and sexual love He is our clotheing that for Jove wrappith us, [hase] us and all beclosyth us for tender love. (@3, p5)" We cannot rest until we are “beclosyd” in God, but this is only achieved by our approaching hint “nakidly and pleyaly and homely" (.5, p.6). We must divest ‘ourselves of things that aze made and aVoid sophistication and arcane complexity if we are ‘wisely to clevyn to the goodnes of God! (c.6, p.6), This passover, or death tothe world hberates us from the enclosuce of worldly thought and into the caclosing and clothing love of God. Her language here i Finessing the liturgy of monastic clothing ant of the enclosure of hermits and anchoresses 0 offer, in effect, @ theology of enclosure for all Christians.” ‘Bat with her characteristic suspicion of analogy, she moves quickly wo preempt crude schematization. Starting fiom the theoloyical principal of our fikeness to God, she expoits the enclasure imagery in a dazzling parabola of similitudes, only to efface them with a new assertion of the uniqueness of our transfigured relationship with God: for asthe boy is chudde inthe cloth, an the flesh in the skye, andthe bow in te flesh, and the hert in the bouk, so arn we, soule and body, cladde in the ‘goodies of God and inclagyd. (6, p-7) This sequence of physical analogies initiates a journey inward, pulling us from the external and visible into the internal and invisible: aur very physiology ‘becomes a pathway to the apophatic. But she immediately goes further: ‘ya, and roore homley, forall these may wasten and werea away’ the godenes of God is ever hole and tore nere ta us withoute any likenes. 4e.6, 9.7) 3 The Short ext and Paris a after ‘beclosyth’, “hangedh abut vs" (Colledge and ‘Walsh, p.298, ef. p.212.h On the change in istered audience from Short 19 Long Test, see Barry Windeat, Julien of Norwich and her Audience’, Review of English Suadies, New Series, 28 (1977), 1a175 Windeat, “The Art of Mystical Loving: Julian of Norwich , ia Medieval Mystical Tradition, W980), op. cit, 55-71; Glasseve, “Means af Showing’, ep. cit. ps7‘Pre Apophatic Image e Having used the suslogy of concesteic Havers wo empliasize she enfolding love of God, she inverss this initial pecspective of enclaswe, fidsrating, U9 sO the boundless wholeness of God by the peripetsia af ovr expecistions ane: the dential cof the simititude Cwithoute any likenes'.* “Apophatic effacement also governs the showing of ‘a tt hing, she quambtye ‘of ab hesil nuttin the palme of my hand; and st was as round ax x baie (¢.5, p.5). Our visusl porspective is wrenched ttom the centre of God's envaginaamg love for the world to looking at al that is made, as if from the perspective of the creator. Simultaacousiy we are being offered an image which does sot exist ‘What Julian sees is not a hazelnut but an unspecified thing, about the size of « hazelnut if it were in the pale of her hand (which it is not), and 48 round a5 2 ball. The ‘ltl thing” is described by gesture iowarcs material objects ou its te properties, as perceived by Jutian are nor its materiabty or referentiality but rather aspects of God's relationship te i the firs is that God mace i, the second i that Go lovell #, the iid, thar God epith a. 5, pS) 1 has being in our minds only as a function of God's creative and sustaining Jove, She even refuses to attribute these powers tothe particular persons oF the Trinity. So we are left with an efficod image of creation hek! in being by 3 power whose trinitarian fonctions are denied exact demarvation in terms of carly activity o theotogical convention, Jultan again balances her description Con the brink of the apophatie By emphasising that she first showing teaches the soul “wisely to clevya to the yoodnes of God’ (¢.6, p.6), Jutian has also taught us that the conventionably sanotioned means to God are, for the most part, inadequate. By encouraging us to cross the threshold of the apophatic she has created in these early chapters an appetite for security and a yearning for certainty that has been counterpoised against the enfolding maternal care of the Almighty. Het critique of human ‘means in devotion is hard hitting. Most ate "to ltl and not full worshippe to God? (6.6, 9.6). She includes many of the common objects of affective devotion and prayer: his holy flesh, pretious blood, passion, death and wounds, ‘mother, the cross and the saints. These human and earthbound devotions are all aspects and functions of the divine goodness. They are too often seen as ends in themselves not as proper mans o the apprehension of the deity. of cleaving to im with the love to which we rust aspire. “The ehiefe and principal mee is CI. MED se ikmes ee), n.:2(8) similarity. resemblance, analogy; 3(a) pavable, simile, sinalogy; 4(a) the visible appearance of something, 5) a mental image retained inthe Taginatio’, 5) basic quality" substarsial form, % "Making means’ is an iGiom referring, to making a compiaine or a petition (MED, sv rene n-(2)} Thus Juban is criticizing the usually self'sh and acquisitive nature of petitionary prayer, as well as the Imadequacy (or meanness) of many of the intermediary and intercessory techaiques commonly employed68 ‘The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England the blissid kinde that he toke of the maya" (6.6, p-7)." To come to him nakedly. plainly and homely may require the shedding of artificial means and tectimiques By passing over from earthly means we are enabled io apprehend something of the Jove of God, which “overpassytit the knoweing of all creatures" (¢.6. p.7> But her carefui and circumspect criticism of ‘the custome of our praycing” (.6, .6) is not founded on a despairing silence. Her prayer atthe end of chapter 5 is based on her psychology of human need expressed in chapter 6. Our words “arn full lovesome to the soute’ (6.5, p.6) and offer verbal formulae that allow us to ‘enact a Kenotic gesture towards the ineffable will of God. Indeed they “full nee touchen the will of God and his goodness’ (¢.5, p.6). The groping into the unsayable, itself stimulated by the touching of the Holy Spirit, will be comprehended by the goodness of God. The gesture is of humility nat of contol God's comprehension of us encloses us as well as understands us. God is able «0 read us, no matier how flawed the text, and we seek to read God by allowing God to read us: this is the essence of lectie Domini. ‘Absence and lack, the sense of figural emptiness that Julian generates in these early chapters preduecs the attentive silence of beholding necessary for transfigured perception: te will that we be oceupyed in hnoweing and loveing tithe (yme that we shall be fulfilled in hewn. (©.6, 7) By putting away the artificial means that inhibit this focussed longing, we come to the prayer of self offering and self-opening: for of all ching, the beholding and she lovye of the maker makith the saule to seeme lest in his owne sight and cnost filth it with reverend drede and wen mekenes. (6.6, 9-7) This formulation is saved from abstraction by the fact that itis geounded and specified in the responses of Mary in the Annunciation and of Julian to her first showing: she is becoming a signifier, a means for the transmission of God's ‘message in the way she opens herself to be read by God and by her readers Signs are not rejected or despised; they arc exalted by being transfigured. The ‘emptiness of the ineffable and the apophatic becomes occupied, filled and fulfilled ‘in fullhede of joy’ (c.6, p.7) fanother word-knot) by the love of God. “Beholding and lovyng of the maker’ (©.6, p-7)is transactional: God and the soul ‘behold and Jove each other. It is this occupation and comprehension that allows Julian to expound the showing with confidence: {beheld the shewing with al my diligens; fr inal this lisid sheng Hbeheld it as ‘ne in Godys meaning, (6.9, p.1h}" “© Here she is punning on the rate of Christ as iatercesso, intermediary, and compenion, 45 wel as alluding 10th humanity of Christ ata mene state, both slowness and function ay a link Gam the way {or means) ) between humanity and God. 4 Paris reads “beheld i as in gods meng” (Colledge and Walsh, p.323)‘The Apophatic tage 6 Her beholding allows her to see from Gods perspective (a4 one who shared God's meaning); her bebolding allows her to sce the irreduceable unity of the sowing (beheld ital in one, by means af God's showing); und she behokls it a8 someone who has herself become a means of showing, a signifier for those ho, she expects, will survive her: ‘ad that I say of eT sey inthe pers ofa myo even ersten, for Iam erm in ‘he goally sewing of our lon God that he mansth se. (6-8. p10), Gov! means her 10 be the meens of communicating to all Christians. ‘This ts how Goel ‘mength” or speaks: she becomes the word spoken by God. Julian's second revelation is even more dramatic aid becomes even more abstract, Stil Behioldyng in the crucifix, she sees « part of the Passion narrative preceding the Crucifixion itself the insults and tortures heaped on Christ at his scourging and on the via dolorosa, Momentarily she contextualizes the abstracted image of the defiled Christ by reanimating the traditional tinear passion narrative from which it evolved. She puts the suffering. hack into its historical context. But having alluded to the familiar world of Bonaventuran meditation, she embarks on a tangential meditation on the changing colour of Christ's face, typically welding the static and the kinetic, the spatial and the linear. The blood closes over the face, veiling it from view behind an apophatic surface: ‘And one time I saw how half the face, begyning atthe ere, overrede with drie ‘ode ti heclosid tothe mid face, and after tha, she cuther hfe beclosyd on the same wise. (6.10, pti) At this early stage of the showing her perception is unable to penetrate beyond the apparent denial of this bodily sight: ‘This saw 1 bodily, swemely and devkely ard I desired more Body sight to have sene more clerely. (10, p.i1¥® ‘This isan iraportant moment of impasse for Juian’s perception of the imagery of her showings. She wishes to see more clearly with bet bodily sight, but the aye is ‘derke" - both in the sense of lacking illumination and in the cognate sense of enigmatic. She is unwilling to relinquish control of the signification of her vision. Her reliance on bodily sight is answered i het reason ~the scat of this controlling impulse 1 Gea wil shew thee more, he shal be thy ight. Tce nedich none but him. (.10, pAb God well be the means ofthe showing and will provide the means by which she should recsive and respond to it. God again has the initiative inthe hermeneutics of the text. She sees him but seeks him, recognising that we are now blind and 48 The Short Text and Pars both cead“badely light for S1's bodily sight; either way. she is Secking to use bodily mens for somthing that ean only be seea in 2 ghost light» ‘The Medieval Mystical Tsadition in England uowise. She has him, but wants him: the play of absence ane! presence flickers between her bodily sight and her sense of something more beyond for which she longs, bur which she is prevented from seeing by the veil of blood and by her ‘own blindness and lack of wisdom (a wisdom associated with the self-empty:ng ‘of Mary in the first showing). We never seek God unl he shows hintself through Grace ‘than ara we sterid by the sine grace to sekyn with pret desire to se him more blisfully’ (c.10, pel), This desice, this thirst for blissiul sight, is a function of the lack she fee in this second showing, Shc worries tat it isso “low and so ltl and so simp (10, p.2D. Indeed she is "mornand, dredfull and kongand’ (¢.19, p.11) Picking up the birthing imagery, her spirits are in sravel. This is clearly a crisis in interpretation for her. Having conccived God in the first chapters, she now Iubours to give birth to a more profound articulation of her understanding, at the same tine morniand the loss of old certainties and longing for new clacities and for illumination. She ‘describes this state oF labour, bereavement and quasi sexual longing asa ‘eomon wwerkcyng” (6.10, p.11). God's role inthis process is more clearly explored here: he will be seme and he wil be sowie: he wit be abedyn ad he will be luosted, (610, pl} Again her grammatical skills allow a density of raference. The tumure tenses imply an idealised future pericct; will as a modal auxiliary implies the termination of God to ceveal himself to his ctearures; and the mood allows a sense of God tolerating his crcatures feeble attempts to conform themselves to his wilt Her travel in the showing is rewarded with more sighs, Recognizing that the ‘opening image gestures rhetorically towards something deeper and darker, she says that it i8 a figure and likencs’ of the “dede-hame" (¢.10, p.£2) born by ‘Christ for our sins, The puzzling * garment” or ‘skin’ of deeds’ conceals. swe learn later, our fair bright blessed lord. Her darkness at the sight of the original image is because the brightness of the Lord is hid and only he can be her light. Its @ garment of deeds and 9 garment of death. Tae punning assonance on dede brings together the covering of the veil of blood and the clothing of sin which are a necessary consequence of the Fall and a function of the Incaruation ‘and Passion, Julian is doing hard theology through the association of her images. ‘Things seem: to get even harder when she introduces the vernile, the locus celassieus of meditation on the face of Christ and, like her other core images, locked into the conventions of affective devotion. Julian emphasizes the paradox of the vernicte, How could such a foul image, so discolooted, be deliberately portrayed (the verb is used twice) by so fair a face? At once the paradoxes line ‘up: blood covers the face; the garment or skin of deeds covers the bright beauty cof Christ; the vernice has « foul image of a fair visage. Julian's explanation of # MED sv hame 1.41): a skin, integument or membrane; n.2): each of two pieces of wood or metal forming part ofthe collar uf 2 draught horse. Paris omits the wocdThe Apophatic Loage . this imagistic conundrum Inighlights her labouring into 2 different resim of perception, for she sees the answer as lying in the necessary ussummpsion of tnian’s fallen state by Christ ro effect the redemptivn of tne cfousied image of God like es we were like med to the Trnite in oor frst makyng, our mosker would that sve shovia be like Tess Criste ovr seviour in hevyo without ende, be te verte of ‘our geynmaking. (6.10, p.12) ‘Our porception of the head of Christ as damaged, discoloured and emaciated isa fanction of our bodily sight, which is a fenetion of the blindness and unwisdom of the fall. Only a ghostly or blissful way of seeing Christ can perceive the ‘ncauly that fies behind the vei under the clothing ur beyond the vernicle. Our geynmaking must be achieved by a renewal or uncovering ot the image and Dkeness of Gos in our soul ‘Christ is so determined that we should see hin that in the Incarnation and Passion he uses our sins (linked to the blood by the collocation om dede) as the ‘ieans of renewing that image. ‘The vernicle, which has been deliberately pottrayed by God for us, is thus an acutely imagistic formulation of Julian's tnderstanding of the theology of the {ncarnation, But it also simultaneously centives us to pass beyond it into the apophatic. ‘the blood is sin besmirching the face of Christ an iing it from our views it also becomies the means by which Christ con portray his image. Sin is turned 10 our advantage by the emptying humility of the passion. Like the blood, sin clouds the tue sight. In using it to impress his image on the vernicie, God redeems il and forces it to be a means af seeing God clearly. The blood is wiped from Christ's eyes and his true beauty shines out for us to contemplate in our ghostly sight, Christ has used the means of imagery to draw us into the apophatic Julian dramatizes the process of seeking ino the beholding of Christ “the principal mene” (€.6, p.7), which she asserts is God’s will for us. Sevking into the beholding is the work of life ~ the ‘travel’ of spiritual childbirth. Finding ‘plesyth the soule and fulfillith it with joy” (¢.10, p12}. Labouring to give birth to new understanding is also labouring to see God's image clearly in ourselves, tunclouded by sin, unmediated by the ‘means’ of earthly imagery. Beyond the sil of paradox, we behold God just as God eternally beholds ws. This mawwal beholding restores the image that gives us clearness of sight, effecting blissful contemplation, Faith seeking understanding manifests itself here by a secking into images to find 2 wey of beholding God; 2 new grammar of spiritual imagery. Only the ‘Transcendental Signified can reveal that grammar: ‘how a soule stall have him “Penis reads “It is gods will that we seke into che behokdyng of hym’ (Colledge and Welsh, ep. cig, p-322); SI has It is God will that ye seke him tothe beholdyng of hima’ (p[2). The sease of process is common 20 both72 ‘The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England in his beholdyng he shall teche kimselie” (c.10, p.12), The yearning of the soul for blissful sight always invites God with the wotds of Mary: Ecce ancilla diomini. Seeking isthe Ecce of the soul a slf-empyng in readiness for the Holy Spirit's annunciation of naw meaning: We knowen he shall appere sodenly and blisflly 0 al his lovers; for his werkyag is privy, and he wit be priced, and bs apering shat be swith deyn, and he i be wowld, for he is fll end and homley bliss mothe beu!(€-10.p.13) Apophatic consciousness exists in a cantinuuen with discursive consciousness, and there is constant exchange and interpenetration, Seeking into the beholding of God - the common working of this life - does not produce a onee for all ‘transition. Mystical tradition eloquently doxcribes the ebb and flow of spophatic consciousness. Julian responds to this in her third revelation (chapter 11) with a fastidious transcription of her own responses to the new showing: ‘And after this I say God in a poynts, that is #9 sey, in myn vaderstandyng. be ‘which sight 1 saw that he is in al things. (p.13) ‘The sense of this highly elliptical passage bas preoccupied commentators from the time of the Paris manuscript onwards. Syntacticaly and lexically she is going to considerable lengths to signal that the ground of this showing (I saw God in a point) defies simple categorisation. She gives no indication whether this is a bodily sight, word formed in ier understanding or ghostly sight (indeed she may ‘mean that all three modes are simultancously present in all the showings when they are fully perceived and realized). God in a point may be deliberately ccnignnatic: itis certainly non-figural and non-referential. It is apophatie in that fone can imagine what she means without being able to represent it in terms of imagery. Her qualification of the main clause - ‘that isto sey" — purports to offer clarification but ushers in further complexity. ‘fn myn vnderstondyng’ can relate adverbially to saw (I saw in my understanding). [can also stand in apposition to the object of the main clause: I saw God in a point, that is « say in my ‘understanding. This would reinforce her developing awareness of God's indwelling and immanence. if point also meaus an instant of time (like the ssodeniy of her first showing), then she is further effacing the referential cowards ‘4 moment of blissful sapiential jouissarce. Certainly ber attempt to capture her response to it reverberates with complexity and an unwillingness to affix simple psychological labels: ment. seing and kno fel, p13) og i sight with a soft drede, andl thought ‘There is a sttategic overloading and juxtaposing of terms of perception here which signposts her difficulty with denotative psychological vocabulary. She deliberately combines intellectual processes with intuitive responses ~ ‘knowing in sight witha soft dred’ in a manner reminiscent of other attempts to describe that sapiential knowing which is also a feeling and a tasting. By conflatingThe Apophetic Imege n affective and intellective motes of perception she ines to open up inthe readsr’s experience sorne seise of her own experience, This wse of apophatic paradox isa response co her avowed inability t represent the ghostly sieht ‘as hopinly ne as fully as T wokic’ (6.9, p11, Hier return to discursive processes fs almost immediate: ‘and thought: What is synne?" She has moved from apophatic bebolding to intellectual enalysis, exploring andl exploiting the language and procedures of philovophical debate in a Bosthian discussion of divine providence and foresight and oman ‘unwetyng’ and “onforesight” (¢.11, p.13).#5 The logie of her analysis forces a swit concessio: ‘Wherfore me behovitk nedes to grant that sithing thar #8 done, is wel dane, for ‘our lord God doth alle. 11. 9.13) But the pull of the opophatic begins to reassert itselt, signalled by Julian’s playfully strategic dalliance with the language of negative theology: {God} isn the mye povmt of althyng and el he doith, and L was see he dith na syne. And here I saw solhly Gat syrine is no dee. for a al this was not sane shewid. ¢p.13)"" Although she is still sesing rationally. or diseursively here, sin is denied materiality or representation. She does not see sia and she sees no-sin: both her perceptions ate, of couse, peteeptions of God. and profoundly apophatic answers to her discursive question ‘What is syne?” (¢.11, p-#3)* The slippage ‘of the prose away trom referentiality invites her to yield up ratiocinative curiosity and the hermeneutical initiative, and return 40 a state of beholding: And 1 wold no lenger mecvel in this, but belslé our lord, what be wold shewen. fet, p13) God's works are ‘easye and swete' for the soul that is ‘turnid iruly into the beholdyng of him’ {c.11, p.14). This turning cequires a shift from the false beholding of ‘the blind cemyng of man’ to the true benokting of “the faire swete demyng of God’ (c.11, p.14). The complacent beholding of her own logical processes is more difficult and less satisfying than the message of God's benevolent immanence: "How should anything be amysse!” (c.11, p.14). Indeed Julian recognises the felly of her earlier guesiio on sin and the subsequent one- skied disputasio when she concludes the showing with an amused parody of the language of the schools ‘Thus miguily, wisely and Iovinly was the soule exaray ny in tis ising, Then saw] sothly that’ me ehavyd neds fo assenten with geet reverens, enioyend in Goel, pid) 4 See Colledge and Walsh, p.226.7 note and 298.17 note As well as echoing the idea of Ged as an intelligible sphere whose cearre is everywhere, this image also calls (@ mn her foundational image of the crown of horas with its apophatic cent. 7 Ww her text Tulian shows us wo Sinus af emptiness, ‘There isthe empciness of sis, ‘whieh is malty and there isthe erpuiness of noughting which is the prerequisite for fonsing, a blessed fulness. She is deeply concerned with spicitual counterfeits" The Medicwal Mysticat ‘tradition fa England Recognizing that the ontological imperative of her need for God is stoeger than her rational processes, sive rest in stat of communion: her feverence here, reunited with incr soft dread at the beginning of the revelation, brackets het excursion into the world of pbifosophy and systematic theology with the hallmarks of her more usual state of longing and love Julian's dialogue with the conventions and techniques of affective pisty extends 4 a virwoste manipolation of linguistic register. The opening of the fourth sevelation (chapter 12) returns to the linear narrative of the Passion meditations, subjecting another episode to her intense and unwavering attention: ‘And after this 1 saw, hebolding, the body’ plentiously bleding in seming of the scorgyag. (p.l4y® ‘St in the non-tiscursive mode af bebolding, she sees the bleeding body ot in the context of the historical or temporal nariative of the Passion. ‘In seming* alludes to the context ofthe scoutrging. bul its refezentiality gestures elsewhere Julian recognizes this inthe way shi grounds her description inthe discourse of affective meditation, ut she signals that this groundieg is tactical rather than definitive by drawing attention to the consciously heightened language snd the provisionality of the register: 45 thas: the fate skyone was brokyn fil depe iow the tender fle ith sharpe smting al about the sweete body. .12, prldp ‘There is something anfully contrived here: the onometopocie rhythm: the alliteration on £ and s; the mechanically cegulay alternation of adjectives and adverbs; the conventionalized epithets. Most significant is the way the introductory ‘as thus" keeps the language at arms length, Julian is employing this emotionally coded discourse as « springboard, an affective arigger, and she ‘moves almost immediately to begin the process of effacing the materiality of the description and of ou response to it. Introducing the key concept of plenitude, she again uses the blood to create an apophatic surface: so plenteously he hote blode ran oute that there was nether sene skynine ne wound, bbutas t were al Blade. (0.12, p14) Denying us the affective means of a conventional response, she provides us with 2 gathering image on which to still the imagination. Only the detail of the hot blood is allowed to continue to resonate, emphazisiog the immediacy of the encounter and the eternal present tense in which her heholding unfolds, In other respects the blood denies its materiality: ‘And whan it come wher it should a fallen downe, than it vanyshid . And this Was so plenteous to my sgt that methawte if thud be so in kind and im sxbstance Colledge and Walsh, op. ci., 342, point out thatthe Short Test reading “in senies” might reer to long incised wounds, such as might be caused at the svourging. The ‘Long Tews “in semyng’,therelore, puns on the physicality of the suffering and its function here as « igure or likeness aF something else‘The Apophutic Tuage Jor shat tyne, shoud fave made the bed al om blade sad & passid over aboute, (6:12, pp.t8-!5) This frustration ofthe linear and she termporal draws us deeper ito the showing lay creating an appetite forthe apophatic from her (and out) curiosity about is fate, The bleeding continves wail, seeing ‘wit avisement® jef. chupicr 11], she is able to penetrate the surface ‘seerings’ of the image. Instead of the blood passing over the bed, Julian's perception passes over into 4 meditation oa the precious plenty of Gee's love, iransforming the image of physical excess iota 4 metaphor for overpassing generosity and self emptying: {cis cure kind ae ablssilly beflow hus be the venue of his prtious Tove ‘he pections plemy of his dereworhy blade averowith al erth end is redye to veash al creas of syane. ss (612, pS) In an inversion of human values, te abundance of the Jove/blood is the guarantee of its value “The derewerthy blade of our lord Jesus Crise, as very 48 it i most preious, as verily its most pleniwvous. ¢e.12, p.15) ‘The kenotic gesture of God's love links the hot blood of the Passion to the rioment of the showing and to the eternal generosity of Chris: ‘he pretous plenty vf his derewonthy biode ascend up into bevy to te bliss troy of our ford Tess Christ. aa there is in to bleding and paying fr ust the Father An! evermore i¢owith anal hevyns enioyng the salvation a smatiyae. fd, pls) ‘The theologicad foree of this fluid word-koot (fill, fulfil, flow, overflow, bellow, overpass, passover) derives from her carlier explorations of many of its termss, but its pictorial and imagistc potential are held at arms Jengeh. The text passes us over the Jondan into the apophatic AAs her contemplation of the Passion deepens and unfolds, Julian comes to understand that the contrition and compassion of her behoiding of Christ's herd peya’(€ 21, p.23) is only one mode of behoiding, ln the ninth revelation she wil ‘be shown two more perpseotives: thatthe love that male hira suffer surpasses all his pains; and the ‘ioy and the bis that make hym to fekyn it (¢.23, p.25). Infact all three perspectives ate immanent inthe earlier showings and gradually begin to emerge with increasing clarity as her ‘avisement’ develops. But the eighth showing is the last to be grounded on the suffering and dewh of Christ Lahouring through his grief and psin, she reinforces and deepens her understanding, of the munial self emptying involved in true compassion: “Thus vss our lord leas sawed for us, and ve Sond al in his manner now with hyn; ae bl done tl we come to his Blsse..- ¢€.38, p21) 9 Julian here emphasizes once again thr the say (but not the meuns) to apophatc union is shrough our bodies and created things, aot by rejecting or desttoying them6 The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England Ina further paradon, eoughting is the ronte to oncing. This gives her the strength to resis the temptation 0 Jock away from the Cross which comes as “profir in ‘ny reason as stbad be frendly .. "(€.19, 9.21}. This temptation, masquerading as a reascaable development of her spiritual sight, seeks 10 fure her into a false upophatic, Its appearance in her reason is significant as it secks to reintroduce tie analysis, temporatity and linearity thai Tulian has learned to suspend: Loke up to heey to his Fader. ¢€ 19, p.2l) Heaven is physically distant, materially visible and occupied by a Father who is hierarchically superior and distinct from the Son. This is contrary to the cenfolding and unitary dynamic of ber showings. Jutian recogaizes, however, that the image of the crucified Christ, resonant as a new Kind of signifier, offers. no hindrance te her apophatic beholding and is, indeed, tie guarantee of her spiritual well-being: And then saw 1 wele with the feyth tat [fete that ther vas natty Betws the cerosse and hevyan tat myghe nave ceseeyd me, (9.19, p21) ‘Scoring the premisses of the offer, she reasserss her earlier desire “that Ibe $0 festined to him that there is right nowte that is made beswix my God and me" (5, p-5). She prefers to cleave to Christ, refusing to reclaitn the initiative and happy to wait for him to unbind her into eternal bliss. Like Mary (as in chapter 38), she stands at the foot of the cross, manifesting her compassion, In chapter 21, her expectations of the imminent death of Christ are overthrow And | loked afte the deparsing wth at my myght and [wend] have seen the body al ded, butt saw him not so. And ryth in the same ryme that methoute, be semyng, the life myght ne denger lesten and the shewyng of the end hehovyd nedis to be. socesly, Teholdyng in the same ezosse, he chongye his blissful chere, ¢p.23) Physiological necessity and narrative logic have lead her 10 attempt 10 extrapolate the ‘shewying ofthe end’. But as so often before, the divine logic is unpredictable and unreadable. The sudden change of cheer changes hers, ‘and { ‘was as glad and as mery as it was possible” (¢.21, p.23). The question thet forms in her mind (°Wheze is now ony payat ofthe peyne or thin agreete?) tigeers a passover experience of overpassing understanding: UL unierstods that be now im our lords menyg in his eosse with hymn in ou peynys and eur passion, deyng. and we wilfully lydyng inthe sare cross with is felpe and his grace int she last poyate, soceny he shall chomge his chete tus, and we shal be wid bym in hevyn. (621, p23) She inhabits the bliss of his meaning here in a new and profound sense, Our pins, passion and deeth (10 ourselves, to the workd, 10 the flesh and to the devil) 59 This episcde needs to be read in conjunction with chapter 13, when she sees God Scorning tne malice of the devil, and learas tha this is the appropriate response“The Apophatic Image 7 Inelp us to share i his er9ss and to see from the divine perspective, ‘The uréoing ff tke word-knol around 2neuns is just the unbinding that Julian fas tenged for God's meaning possesses her, and she sees clearly her role as the means by ‘which the Kenotic paradigm can be displayed through the stansfigured means of carthly language. Julian draws together the aecumalated resonances and overtones of the preceding revelations and discharges them in a blaze of apophatie glory’ wwe wilfully abylyg in the sume cross with his helpe and his grace into the Last. Doymte, zodenly he shall chonge his chere to us, and we shal be with by in hevyo. 221, p29 ‘The extraordinary powsr ofthis passover derives pactly ftom the fact that almost every word has’ been explored, ruminated and potentiated in the preceding chapters. The ‘desese’ and ‘travel’ of our earthly labouring are 2 function of our “frelete* (9.23) and oar fettering into the “blind demyng” 46.11, p.14} of the human perspective. But Christ’s redemptive power ultimately iransfigures us into a ‘hey endies knowyng in God (e.21, p.23} by working through the linear ‘emporal world in showing us his ‘time Of passion’ (¢.21, p.23). His meaning (his sei-humbling, his passion, his love, his intention, his intercession, his incarnation) opens the door to the bliss of heaven. His meaning is eternal: his sineans ate temporal, ur wilful abiding, the paradox of inention and self ‘emptying, of noughting and knowing, will lead us finally te know and to become ‘what he means: Bevwix that one and that other shal be no tyme, and than shal al be biowte to joy. (0.21, p23)