CREATIVE AND DARING SPACES IN SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY: LITERARY STRATEGIES FOR DOCTRINAL SELF-AUTHORIZATION IN JULIAN OF NORWICH‘S A REVELATION OF LOVE AND MARGUERITE PORETE‘S THE MIRROR OF SIMPLE SOULS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Jonathan Juilfs Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Director Graduate Program in Medieval Studies Notre Dame, Indiana December 2010 UMI Number: 3441734 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI 3441734 Copyright 2011 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 CREATIVE AND DARING SPACES IN SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY: LITERARY STRATEGIES FOR DOCTRINAL SELF-AUTHORIZATION IN JULIAN OF NORWICH‘S A REVELATION OF LOVE AND MARGUERITE PORETE‘S THE MIRROR OF SIMPLE SOULS Abstract by i i Jonathan Juilfs In the cases of the two remarkable late-medieval women who are the primary subjects of this dissertation, Julian of Norwich and Marguerite Porete, I have sought to understand more comprehensively both where the Bible appears in their texts, whether by direct citation or less overt allusion, and what larger impact biblical texts may have on the larger organization and structural features of their texts. Through detailed examination of the roles which biblical language plays in Julian‘s Revelation of Love and Marguerite‘s Mirror of Simple Souls, I argue that the culturally-assumed limitations of medieval women‘s capacities to understand the Bible were not only erroneous but also gave way to original and insightful interpretations of various scriptural passages that serve strategically well the broader theological and rhetorical aims of both writers. Biblical citations or allusions do not appear in A Revelation or in The Mirror simply as external defenses of doctrinal claims (i.e. a proof-texts); instead, they function organically in the Jonathan Juilfs bodies of the texts, offering conceptual ―seeds‖ that, when nurtured by divine insight (as transmitted through Julian‘s vision and Marguerite‘s mystical experience) and personal reflection, germinate into identifiable structures of thought. Both women thus cleverly mold scriptural and scripture-like narratives to fit the contours of their respective speculative theologies. These rhetorical acts of self-authorization, by reference to or engagement with the supreme authority of the Church, illuminate the adroitness of both to navigate the seemingly un-navigable paradoxes of their respective claims, as women, to visionary or mystical authority. Such textual and conceptual comparisons between Julian‘s Revelation and Marguerite‘s Mirror are instructive because they travel together (The Mirror in Middle English translation) in one surviving fifteenth-century manuscript, an historical curiosity that suggests that at least one Carthusian compiler read or heard thematic relationships between the two textual traveling companions. Such a rare opportunity for comparative investigation of two very sophisticated texts ultimately renders various insights into how two clever, female interpreters of Scripture in the later Middle Ages elaborated on and challenged popular orthodoxies currently circulating among both the laity and the clergy of the late-medieval Church. For Grandma Hank, whose presence lingers with me in all of my work and teaching. ii CONTENTS Acknowledgments................................................................................................................v Introduction: Late-Medieval Women Writers and the Bible ...............................................1 Chapter 1: Love‘s ‗Transcending‘ of the Scriptures in Marguerite‘s Mirror ....................17 1.1 The Manuscripts and Languages of The Mirror of Simple Souls ....................20 1.2 The Text of The Mirror of Simple Souls ..........................................................30 1.3 The Bible in The Mirror ..................................................................................33 1.4 Marguerite Porete‘s Debt to 1 Corinthians 13 in The Mirror of Simple Souls 35 Chapter 2: Appropriations of Biblical Authority in a Radical Mystical Text....................71 2.1 Marguerite on St. Paul‘s Vision of the Third Heaven .....................................72 2.2 Marguerite on the Transfiguration of Jesus .....................................................78 Chapter 3: The Julians of History: Biographers of Julian of Norwich and The Evidence of Her Manuscripts ...................................................................................................98 3.1 ―This boke is begonne...but it is nott yett performyd‖: Compilations of Julian of Norwich‘s A Revelation of Love, 1413-1670.......................................101 3.2 ―A devoute woman and hir name es Iulyan that is recluse atte Norwyche‖: Later-Medieval Models of Anchoritic Living and Their Implications for Julian‘s Career .........................................................................................134 Chapter 4: Biblical, Meditational, and Hagiographic Resources for Julian‘s A Revelation of Love ....................................................................................................................157 4.1 Colledge and Walsh‘s ―Index of Scriptural Citations‖ and a New ―Index Biblicus‖ ..................................................................................................164 4.1.1 Criteria Employed in the Making of the Index Biblicus .................166 4.2 Other Examples of Julian‘s Use of the Bible: A Select Survey .....................179 4.3 Historical and Cultural Sources of Julian‘s Biblicity ....................................189 4.4 Julian‘s Further Biblical and Hagiographical Debts in A Revelation ............204 4.5 The Scripturality of Julian‘s Text? ................................................................217 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................222 Appendix A: Marguerite‘s Seven Estats of the Soul‘s Journey to Union with God (based on outline in Chapter 118) ......................................................................................225 Appendix B: A New Index Biblicus for Julian of Norwich‘s A Revelation of Love ........227 iii Appendix C: ―The Charter of Christ‖ from Additional ms 37049...................................248 Appendix D: Timeline of Events in the Lives of Adam Easton and Julian of Norwich..249 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................254 Primary Texts—Editions .....................................................................................254 Primary Texts—Translations ...............................................................................262 Secondary Literature ............................................................................................264 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Professor Denise Despres at the University of Puget Sound for introducing me, as an undergraduate, to the wonders of medieval literature broadly and to the complex fascinations of medieval women‘s literature specifically. Julian of Norwich and Marguerite Porete first entered my thought-world in one of her seminars, and I have not stopped thinking about the two of them ever since. Most importantly, I would like to thank my tireless, brilliant, and inspiring advisor, Professor Kathryn Kerby- Fulton, without whom this dissertation would never have been brought to completion. Like Denise, Kathryn‘s pervasive good cheer and scholarly excellence models for young academics in training the best of intellectual investigation and teaching effectiveness. If I do anything well as a young scholar and teacher, it is simply in imitation of the excellent women who have taught, inspired, and trained me. I would also like to thank my gracious readers for the dissertation—Professors John Van Engen (History) and Maureen Boulton (French language and literature). In the writing of such an ambitiously interdisciplinary dissertation such as this, it was crucial that I have the expert assistance of a world-class historian and a medieval French specialist. Their expertise and generously-offered assistance to me in my investigations have been invaluable and saved me from countless errors and half-truths. Of course, all errors that remain are my responsibility and mine alone. v INTRODUCTION: LATE-MEDIEVAL WOMEN WRITERS AND THE BIBLE In the initial chapters of the Thirteenth Showing of Julian of Norwich‘s A Revelation of Love, Julian begins to explore the seminal theological question that will lead her to the heart of her most interesting and provocative theological propositions. The question—―What is sin?‖—prompts a series of reflections on the ontology of sin and on the status of human beings from the perspective of God, who assures Julian that ―alle shalle be wele‖ (Long Text, chapter 27).1 Moving systematically through issues of theodicy, soteriology, and ultimately of eschatology, Julian presents her conviction, unveiled to her in her death-bed vision of the crucified Christ, that God will perform a great and secret dede (LT 33) at the end of time. From the moment that she introduces the notion of an eschatological previte (LT 27) or secret, a likely inference to a doctrine of universal salvation,2 Julian begins to assert with observable regularity her continued 1 All citations from the Long Text (LT henceforth) in Middle English are taken from A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, 2 vols., edited by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978). 2 Nicholas Watson galvanized the interest in the subject of universal salvation in Julian‘s Revelation in two important essays in the 1990‘s; see ―Censorship and Cultural Change in Late Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel‘s Constitutions of 1409,‖ Speculum 70 (1995): 822-864, and more specifically, ―Visions of Inclusion: Universal Salvation and Vernacular Theology in Pre-Reformation England.‖ Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27.2 (1997): 145-187. Denise Nowakowski Baker‘s book Julian of Norwich‘s Showings: From Vision to Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), especially chapter 3 ―‘Alle Shalle Be Welle: The Theodicy of Julian of Norwich, also examines alternative salvation ideas in A Revelation. Kathryn Kerby- Fulton added additional important layers to Watson‘s thoughts in chapters 1 and 8-10 of Books Under 1 alignment with the authoritative teaching of Holy Church. Julian‘s expressed submission to Holy Church, occasionally referred to more obliquely as ―oure faith‖ (LT 32), highlights her profound desire to be read as orthodox, even as her reflections begin to approach potentially unorthodox conclusions. In chapter 32, as Julian begins to pursue the universal-salvific possibilities indicated in her vision, Holy Church is further aligned with a more specific notion of God‘s Word: ―And in this sight I marveyled gretly, and beheld oure faith, mening thus: oure faith is grounded in Goddes worde, and it longeth to oure faith that we beleve that Goddes worde shalle be saved in alle thing‖ (LT 32). Goddes worde at least includes, if not refers principally, to the Bible, to Holy Scripture as it would have been known in various guises to Julian and the whole of late-medieval Christendom. As medievalists in many disciplines over the course of many decades of scholarship have been aware, what exactly constitutes ―the word of God‖ in medieval culture poses an imaginative problem for modern scholars who know of God‘s word exclusively as the Bible. In addition to the fact that few persons, especially among the laity, ever owned a Bible, except as mediated through more popular books like psalters and books of hours, we also know that the words of Scripture were often transmitted through secondary and tertiary sources, such as sermons, florilegia or commonplace books, prayers, and devotions. In short, the points of access to the ―text‖ of the Bible were many, and tracing such points in medieval texts proves to be a difficult task, necessitating occasionally painstaking scholarly labor to retrieve. Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England (Notre Dame, 2006). 2