Julian of Norwich - Personal Life

Personal Life

Very little is known about Julian's personal life, including her birth name. From her texts, she was determined to probably have been born around 1342-43, and to have died at 1416, or sometime shortly thereafter. She may have been from a privileged family in or around Norwich, Norfolk. After London, Norwich was the largest city in East Anglia in the 11th century. Plague epidemics were rampant during her time, and according to some scholarly debate, Julian may have become an anchoress unmarried or, having lost her husband and children in the Plague, as a widow. Her becoming an anchoress could have also served as a way to quarantine her from the rest of the infected population.

At the age of 31, suffering from a severe illness and believing she was on her deathbed, Julian had a series of intense visions of Jesus Christ. They ended by the time she recovered from her illness on 13 May 1373. She was at home during her near death experience, and gives no mention of her personal life up until that point. Julian wrote down a narration of the visions immediately following them, which is known as The Short Text. Twenty to thirty years later she wrote a theological exploration of the meaning of the visions, known as The Long Text. These visions are the source of her major work, called Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love (ca. 1393). This is believed to be the first book written in the English language by a woman. Julian became well known throughout England as a spiritual authority: the English mystic (and author of the first known autobiography written in England) Margery Kempe mentions going to Norwich to speak with her.