Julian's Audacious Reticence: Perichoresis and the Showings

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2006 by Pinti, Daniel

Julian of Norwich's "Showings" manifests a number of characteristics commonly held to be intrinsic to a distinctively Anglican spirituality, not least a long-recognized tendency toward reticence. Her profound Trinitarianism has also been accorded much scholarly attention. What scholarship on Julian has yet to appreciate fully is the close relationship between these two qualities. The intersection of the theological and the rhetorical in the "Showings" is itself perichoretic. Julian writes a theology that not only articulates a perichoretic understanding of God, but also enacts itself perichoretically, by means of the way Julian humbly gives herself and her text over to her reader, particularly through the reticence of her text. Julian thereby actively and intimately involves the reader in the very construction of her theology.

Offering a concise afterword to over seven hundred pages of selections from Anglican spiritual writings spanning five centuries. David Hope, former Archbishop of York, suggests three "aspects of Anglican life" to which those writings collectively testify.1 The first is a tendency toward self-criticism, which, among other things, develops "a style of theology which can be intellectually challenging as well as devotioiuillv nourishing." He next mentions a close connection between "worship and popular devotion" which "gives Anglicanism a literary focus, and rightly so." Finally, he comments on the third aspect, not without some unintended irony at the end of so large an anthology: "reticence," by which he means a certain acceptance of "paradox" and "(on occasion) the humility to suspend judgement."2 Archbishop Hope gives us a thought-provoking summary that nonetheless warrants an important added clarification. However acceptable as a generalization regarding Anglicanism and its continually negotiable and negotiated via media, this last quality of "reticence" should not be thought of as marking an end-stop in spiritual dialogue, some sort of apophatic impasse. Reticence is not a matter of timidity. It can be spiritually productive, indeed generative, as many of the volumes writings bear witness.3

For understandable chronological reasons, the medieval mystic and theologian Julian of Norwich (ca. 1342-after 1416) is not to be found in this anthology. Yet were the tradition of a distinctively Anglican spirituality to be traced back beyond the sixteenth century, Julian would have to figure prominently.4 In her book the Showings (sometimes also called the Revelation[s] of [Divine] Love), Julian exhibits each of the tendencies of Anglican spirituality noted by Archbishop Hope. Thus she can be approached and understood rightly (though surely not exclusively) through a specifically Anglican lens. Certainly the Showings may be described as "intellectually challenging as well as clevotionally nourishing." Just as certainly, it is a literary work with deep ties to the popular devotion of its time. This essay, however, will focus primarily on the role of reticence in Julian's book. Although this reticence manifests itself in different ways throughout Julian's text, it is ultimately what I am calling an "audacious" reticence; Julian's mystical theology is characterized by her daring use of a reservedness that permits a particularly open-ended mode of theological discourse, a kind of sharing of authority and authorship, a "giving over" to the reader that draws the reader in. making her or him an active participant in the construction of theology. Julian thereby writes a theology that does not merely articulate a perichoretic understanding of God (although it does that), hut enacts itself perichoretically.

I shall begin by recalling some fundamental background on Julian and her Showings and demonstrating how this background points the way toward this distinctively perichoretic dimension of reading Julian. I shall also endeavor to position Julian's text within a critical framework that brings together two scholarly disciplines perhaps rarely in dialogue with one another: medieval literary studies (in particular the important work of Nicholas Watson on Julian) and the contemporary theology of spirituality (especially that of Mark McIntosh). My argument will then use a phenomenology of reading to analyze key passages from the Showings, bringing to the fore Julian's "audacious reticence" and the strategic role it plays in her perichoretic theology.

Julian's book may be seen as the literary fruit of a mystical experience she had in 1373 as she lay dying (so she thought). We do not know for certain whether she was a layperson when she had this visionary experience, but at some point in her life, certainly by 1413, she became an anchoress, living in a cell attached to St. Julian's church in Norwich, England; hence the name by which this otherwise anonymous woman is still known. While staring at a crucifix held before her face by her priest, Julian received a series of revelations, sixteen in all, on which she seems to have reflected recurrently for most of the rest of her life. This reflection led to writing, and Julian, the first known woman author in the English language, composed two accounts of her visions and her meditations on them: the Short Text (seemingly composed between 1373 and 1388) and the Long Text (composed between 1393 and some time during the second decade of the fifteenth century).5 Comparatively "sketchy," the Short Text focuses primarily on the visionary experience itself-a reporting more than an analysis of an experience.6 The Long Text, however, represents a very different project. Julian's transition from "a visionary to a theologian" involves radically different modes of rhetorical construction of both author and audience.7 Lynn Staley neatly summarizes the difference in question: