Julian lived an unusual life: at St Julian’s Church she was an anchorite, never leaving her rooms adjoining the church and she was so famous in her own time that people left money to sustain her and her servants. in Norwich, is visited by pilgrims from all over the world Eliot, Denise Levertov, and Iris Murdoch reference Julian in their writing Modern poets and writers as diverse as T.S. Her work is well-respected by theologians, historians and literary scholars, and there are now dozens of translations of her Revelations, together with countless commentaries. Her lyrical language and positive image of God speak to the modern reader. Interest in Julian’s writings has grown over recent decades This has been as more and more people have discovered the significance of her book. However, reading Revelations of Divine Love, reveals an intelligent, sensitive and very down-to-earth woman who maintains her trust in God's goodness whilst addressing doubt, fear and deep theological questions. Apart from that, we know nothing else about Julian's life. There is further evidence to be found in a contemporary will that she was alive in 1416, and that she had a maid who lived in a room next to the cell. (A scribe editor to one of the surviving manuscripts speaks of her as a 'devout woman, who is a recluse at Norwich, and still alive, A.D. Julian recounts that she was thirty and a half years old when she received her visions and this is how we know that she was born in 1342. Today, only seventeenth century copies of earlier manuscripts of the long text, and fragments from the fifteenth century survive. The long text is greatly expanded to include her meditations on what she had been shown. The Revelations of Divine Love comes to us in two versions the first (the short text) written shortly after the revelation given to Julian, the second (the long text) written twenty years later.

Sixteen revelations of divine love