Julian of Norwich - History of Revelations or Showing of Love

History of Revelations or Showing of Love

Revelations is such a celebrated work in Catholicism and Anglicanism because of the clarity and depth of Julian's visions of God.

The Short Text of the Revelation of Love was finished by 1413, as noted in its introduction in the fifteenth-century Amherst Manuscript, now in the British Library, which named Julian and referred to her as still alive. She is not named in the Tudor Westminster Manuscript. She is named in the colophon to the Elizabethan Brigittine Long Text manuscript produced in exile in the Antwerp region, now known as the Paris Manuscript. All three of these manuscripts have connections to the Brigittine Syon Abbey. In the seventeenth century, manuscripts which were written out and preserved in the Cambrai and Paris houses of the English Benedictine nuns in exile also cite her. Several of these contain her Long Text in full or in part; three complete texts being in the British Library Sloane Collection, etc. It is believed these nuns had an original, perhaps holograph, manuscript of the Revelations' Long Text, written in Julian's Norwich dialect. All the manuscripts were edited diplomatically by Sister Anna Maria Reynolds, C.P. and Julia Bolton Holloway in their 2001 edition (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo).

The first printed version of the Revelations was available to the public in 1670, and was edited by the Benedictine Serenus Cressy. It did not become well-known until the twentieth century. Cressy's edition was reprinted in 1843, 1864, and again in 1902. However, it was Grace Warrack's 1901 version of the book with its "sympathetic informed introduction" which introduced most early twentieth-century readers to Julian. After this, Julian's name spread rapidly as she became a topic in many lectures and writings. In 1979 an annotated edition of Julian's work was published, and after this her book was widely sold and discussed, at a time of renewed spiritual searching by many. Julian is now recognized as one of England's most important mystics.