SOURCE: "'Cry out and write': Hysticism and the Struggle for Authority" in Power, Gender, and Christian Mysticism, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 157-92.

In the following excerpt, Jantzen charts the "reintegration" of body and spirit performed in Julian's revelations—a feature that Jantzen claims breaks with Christian tradition and arises from Julian's experiences as a woman.

… As the Middle Ages waned, increasing numbers of women learned to read and write, in the vernacular if not in Latin. How Julian of Norwich was educated it is impossible to say. She was born in 1342, probably somewhere in East Anglia or the Midlands. Virtually everything that is known about her comes from her writings. She wrote two accounts of the same set of visions, twenty years apart, the second being much longer than the first. By comparing the two texts, it is possible to see how Julian developed in theological understanding and...