Fairacres Publications 106 Sometimes the message of optimism and hope of the fourteenth-century writer Julian of Norwich is understood rather superficially. Two lectures, given at her Shrine in Norwich, which can assist our understanding of her theology are reproduced here. Kenneth Leech shows how Julian can help us to recover a sense of the goodness of creation, and he challenges superficial interpretations of her saying that ‘all shall be well’. Sister Benedicta reconsiders Julian in the light of the solitary tradition and contemporary medieval documents, suggesting that Julian may have been a widow who had borne a child.

Julian of Norwich the best-known of the medieval mystics today. The text of her Revelation has circulated continually since the fifteenth century, but the twentieth century saw a massive expansion of her popularity. Theological or literary-historical studies of Julian may remark in passing on her popularity, but none have attempted a detailed study of her reception. This collection fills that gap: it outlines the full reception history from the extant manuscripts to the present day, looking at Julian in devotional cultures, in modernist poetry and present-day popular literature, and in her iconography in Norwich, both as a pilgrimage site and a tourist attraction.

Medieval Women's Writing is a major new contribution to our understanding of women's writing in England, 1100-1500. The most comprehensive account to date, it includes writings in Latin and French as well as English, and works for as well as by women. Marie de France, Clemence of Barking, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and the Paston women are discussed alongside the Old English lives of women saints, The Life of Christina of Markyate, the St Albans Psalter, and the legends of women saints by Osbern Bokenham. Medieval Women's Writing addresses these key questions: Who were the first women authors in the English canon? What do we mean by women's writing in the Middle Ages? What do we mean by authorship? How can studying medieval writing contribute to our understanding of women's literary history? Diane Watt argues that female patrons, audiences, readers, and even subjects contributed to the production of texts and their meanings, whether written by men or women. Only an understanding of textual production as collaborative enables us to grasp fully women's engagement with literary culture. This radical rethinking of early womens literary history has major implications for all scholars working on medieval literature, on ideas of authorship, and on women's writing in later periods. The book will become standard reading for all students of these debates.

This book is the product of both historical and personal interest in the grounds of religious conviction. It deals with the practice and development of the tradition of 'discernment of spirits' in the late fourteenth-century England and sixteenth-century Spain as reflected in the classical texts of the mystics of the periods; Julian of Norwich, the Cloud Author and Walter Hilton in England and Ignatius of Loyola and John of the Cross in Spain. The tradition of 'discernment' came into being at the very beginning of the Church's history and has been appropriated, adapted and developed throughout its history. The book explores how the tradition is expanded and maintains continuity with its origins and suggests that it reaches some apogee in sixteenth-century Spain for Christian lives of apostolic mission and contemplation. It illustrates how the cultural circumstances of the times moulded the manner in which the experiences of the mystics were perceived. 'Discernment of Spirits' is about how Christians reach some conviction that the stirrings within consciousness which seem to originate so strangely, and yet beckon so persistently, are 'real' in the sense of authentically divine. They are stirrings which call for a response in the lives of mystics. Rowan Williams at the beginning of his influential book, The Wound of Knowledge, refers to 'the intractable strangeness of the ground of belief that must constantly be allowed to challenge the fixed assumptions of religiosity; it is a given whose question to each age is fundamentally one and the same'. This book illustrates how the question is addressed in the texts of the mystics. In our own time the strange stirrings which intimate the question tend to be drowned by a multiplicity of competing voices. The suggestion is made that when we listen to the voices of the past we may be encouraged to wonder about the question posed by the stirrings within our own consciousness, hitherto unheard or dismissed as simply 'strange'.

Fairacres Publications 90 The short though profoundly mystical work, The Five Feasts of the Child Jesus, which is presented here in a new translation, came from the pen of St Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor of the Church, and one of the most renowned followers of St Francis of Assisi. We are given five meditations on scenes in the life of Christ. Contrary to what one might expect from the title, however, the theme of these meditations is spiritual motherhood, namely the doctrine concerning the mystical birth of God’s Word in the soul and the vocation of every Christian to become a mother of Christ. Men and women alike are invited to fashion their spiritual lives on Mary, the Mother of the Lord and the image of the Church, and to develop the maternal element in their nature. St Bonaventure brought the skills of a poet and a theologian to his task; his work belongs to the rich heritage of Franciscan spirituality, it is also a minor classic of the spiritual tradition of western Christianity and has a message pertinent to our times.

First collection of late medieval English mystical writing, which has been newly edited with notes and glossary.

Contrary to popular belief, the medieval religious imagination did not restrict itself to masculine images of God but envisaged the divine in multiple forms. In fact, the God of medieval Christendom was the Father of only one Son but many daughters—including Lady Philosophy, Lady Love, Dame Nature, and Eternal Wisdom. God and the Goddesses is a study in medieval imaginative theology, examining the numerous daughters of God who appear in allegorical poems, theological fictions, and the visions of holy women. We have tended to understand these deities as mere personifications and poetic figures, but that, Barbara Newman contends, is a mistake. These goddesses are neither pagan survivals nor versions of the Great Goddess constructed in archetypal psychology, but distinctive creations of the Christian imagination. As emanations of the Divine, mediators between God and the cosmos, embodied universals, and ravishing objects of identification and desire, medieval goddesses transformed and deepened Christendom's concept of God, introducing religious possibilities beyond the ambit of scholastic theology and bringing them to vibrant imaginative life. Building a bridge between secular and religious conceptions of allegorized female power, Newman advances such questions as whether medieval writers believed in their goddesses and, if so, in what manner. She investigates whether the personifications encountered in poetic fictions can be distinguished from those that appear in religious visions and questions how medieval writers reconcile their statements about the multiple daughters of God with orthodox devotion to the Son of God. Furthermore, she examines why forms of feminine God-talk that strike many Christians today as subversive or heretical did not threaten medieval churchmen. Weaving together such disparate texts as the writings of Latin and vernacular poets, medieval schoolmen, liturgists, and male and female mystics and visionaries, God and the Goddesses is a direct challenge to modern theologians to reconsider the role of goddesses in the Christian tradition.

Fairacres Publications 130 In these addresses, the expectations – true and false – of newly-ordained clergy are identified. Stressing the need for constant thanksgiving as the bedrock of a pastor’s life, the author examines the role of the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience, in providing practical and spiritual support to ministry.