Bathtub Bulletin Bathtub Bulletin Episode #5: Bathtub Bulletin editor Mike Zonta comments on politics, spirituality and the combination of the two. Go to: http://bathtubbulletin.com/ Go to: http://occupysf.net/ Go to: https://zontaphotos.com/ Music: “Overture to Candide” by Leonard Bernstein Mike Zonta is an ordained Mentor in The Prosperos and is editor of www.bathtubbulletin.com and www.zontaphotos.com and co-editor of www.occupysf.net.
Monthly Archives: November 2020
Police Violence: a Crisis of Masculinity?
NOVEMBER 5, 2020 (counterpunch.org)
BY DAVID ROSEN
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
The numbers tell the sad story.
As of September 2020, 721 people have been shot to death by the police and, of them, 96 percent (694) were male and 4 percent (27) were female. This was same percentage of police killings in 2019 when, out of a total of 1,004 people who were killed, 96 percent (961) were male and 4 percent (43) were female. A similar pattern is evident in the breakdowns of police killings for 2017 and 2018.
A similar pattern of police killings was evident during the period of 1980 thru 1998 when 98 percent of those killed were males. Of those killings, over half (56%) were White people while about two-fifths (42%) were Black people. During the period of 1976 to 1998, the FBI reports “8,578 felons were justifiably killed by police”; killings by police were referred to as “justifiable homicides” and the persons that police killed were referred to as “felons.”
A revealing study by two Columbia University law professors, Jeffrey Fagan and Alexis Campbell, examines the racial character of police killings. They found that between 2015 and 2018, there were 3,757 “police-involved fatalities.” They note that just over half (51.9%) of those killed were White and about one in four (25.2%) were Black. In addition, just under one in five (18.7%) were Latinx and the remaining 4 percent were Asians, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans and Others.
Killing of civilians is endemic to policing. But are police killings of males a social ritual or an expression of a deeper aspect of masculinity?
Aurelia Terese Alston points out, “Policing is a male dominated field with a culture of hyper-masculinity.” The FBI reports for 2017 there were a total of 956,941 “law enforcement employees” in the U.S and, of these, 73 percent were male and 27 percent were female. In 2013, 88 percent of full-time law enforcement employees were men.
More disturbing, as the American Psychology Association reports, “men commit 90 percent of homicides in the United States and represent 77 percent of homicide victims. They’re the demographic group most at risk of being victimized by violent crime.”
There is a tragic dialectic between masculinity and policing killings that has peculiar meaning today as the rate of police killings – especially of Black and Latino males — remain high. How this dialectic plays out may suggest the deeper changes now remaking American society.
***
Being a “man” today is a challenge. Once upon a time, American culture was grounded in a traditional notion of “hypermasculinity” that some have referred to as “hegemonic masculinity.” It has been defined as follows:
… a set of values, established by men in power that functions to include and exclude, and to organize society in gender unequal ways. It combines several features: a hierarchy of masculinities, differential access among men to power (over women and other men), and the interplay between men’s identity, men’s ideals, interactions, power, and patriarchy.
Some suggest that the concept derives from Antonio Gramsci and reflects “a position of dominance attained through relative consensus rather than regular force, even if underpinned by force.” It is a tension that is grounded in a belief that links masculinity to the traditional notion of the “breadwinning,” the family provider.
In the good-old days – which, of course, never truly existed – pure masculinity was grounded in patriarchy and the authoritarian power of the male, be he a god, king, warrior, boss, husband or simply the guy next door. In those days, the architype “man” was without question heterosexual, physically strong and muscular, sexually dominant, unemotional, stoic and non-communicative, and committed to the hierarchal power of the status quo.
However, the relentless, grinding commodification of daily life under capitalism has stripped most of traditional patriarchy of its power. The reducing of nearly all social relations to market-mediated exchanges contributed to the slow but determined rise female power that helped erode the once-mythologized and real power of the hyper-masculine male. One consequence is that the 21st century male is “sensitive,” emotional, multi-sexual and questioning of the status quo. However, males often earn less than females and women are earning more higher education degrees then males.
Sadly, the traditional link between patriarchy and hypermasculinity has come to be represented by blue-collar or working-class men, represented by construction and factory employees, fireman and policemen. Frank Rudy Cooper, a law professor at University of Las Vegas, points out, “Working class men who take orders or lack status in other ways often resort to hypermasculinity in an attempt to regain social status.”
Cooper links masculinity to policing: “Not surprisingly, given the working-class backgrounds of most policemen, there is a close association between hypermasculinity and police work.” He warns, the “association is seen in the qualifications for the job: the size requirements, upper body strength prerequisite, and the ability to beat someone into submission.” Susan Martin, an authority of women and policing, adds, “Since a key element of policing — gaining and maintaining control of situations — remains associated with manhood, male officers do gender along with doing dominance.”
Some analysts note the same link between patriarchy and hypermasculinity among poor and working-class men of color. Ann McGinley, a law professor at University. of Nevada, notes that “young black men from poor urban neighborhoods who adopt the ‘cool pose’” expresses a version of hypermasculinity that “emphasizes toughness and invincibility.”
The link between patriarchy, hypermasculinity and policing is grounded in what Cooper identifies as “command presence.” “An officer has command presence when he projects an aura of confidence. … He demonstrates it [hypermasculinity] by showing people that he is in charge [that is] antithetical to policing based on negotiation and problem-solving.” In this way, he decisively shows that he is not acting in a “feminine” manner.
Hypermasculinity in policing is most clearly expressed through the “punishment of disrespect.” Cooper claims such punishment “stems from the fact that police officers demand deference to the badge. In doing so, they often act more out of a desire to preserve their authority to enforce the law.” Harlan Hahn grounds a police officer’s “authority” in his ability “to enforce a law.” Cooper argues that such notes that the “political opportunity to control other men to be a major attraction of the job.” He adds, a “policeman’s fear that a challenge to his authority is a challenge to his manhood ….”
***
During the Cold War era of the 1950s, masculinity was in flux. The old model of post-Civil War era notion of masculinity was based in a man’s ability to produce and declined in the wake of WW-II. It was superseded by the new “white collar” model of masculinity based on managerial authority, service-based output and family-oriented lifestyle. in influence. As Thomas Andrew Joyce observed, “One’s manliness was communicated to other men through visible success in the marketplace.”
The postwar period saw a second challenge to traditional notions of masculinity. The sociologist Michael Kimmel, in “Masculinity as Homophobia,” identifies this challenge as “homophobia.” It was not a fear of homosexuality but “the fear that other men will unmask us, emasculate us, and reveal to us and the world that we do not measure up … the fear of being seen as a sissy dominates the cultural definitions of manhood.”
A half-century late, masculinity is being increasingly split between hypermasculinity and the more “sensitive” male. This tension seems to be reverberating within the law-enforcement establishment as reflected by the high level of police killings and the growing efforts to humanize policing. These efforts are being promoted by those championing such efforts as “community policing” and “defunding police.”
However, without humanize the “masculinity” associated with policing, with uphold “law and order,” police killing of other men will not fundamentally change.
David Rosen is the author of Sex, Sin & Subversion: The Transformation of 1950s New York’s Forbidden into America’s New Normal (Skyhorse, 2015). He can be reached at drosennyc@verizon.net; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com.
We are Living Inside the Book of Exodus
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | November 5, 2020 (tikkun.org)
Photo by Kristina Tamašauskaitė on Unsplash
Would-be Pharaoh Trump has reached the crucial point of his reign: Shall he mobilize the chariots and drown in the Reed Sea, or grumpily relinquish power?
Whether the biblical Book of Exodus is factually accurate history or a brilliant archetypal story of the exercise of power run amok, it has much to teach our own generation, our own America.
The story goes back to the end of Genesis. We find that a previous pharaoh has centralized all power in himself, following the advice of a clever power-climber who became the Pharaoh’s viceroy.
All over Egypt, free yeoman farmers have been reduced to sharecroppers on the Pharaoh’s land. They and their families have been forced to move from the lands of their ancestral clans to distant places; so their emotional, spiritual, and political connections as well as their economic base have been disrupted. Yet the Viceroy’s family has had a protected allotment of land and privileges in their own district, in recognition of his service to the crown.
It is easy to imagine that insurgent energy begins to bubble up among the Egyptians. Grandparent tales of a freer, more abundant, and culturally more resonant life may have started roiling the royal power.
And perhaps there was also growing resentment aimed at the protected minority of outsiders who had settled in the Goshen region, and were doing well. Even their language and religion were alien.We need your support to bring the kind of analyses and information Tikkun provides. Click Here to make a tax-deductible contribution.
In this stew of political and cultural trouble, a new Pharaoh comes to power. He needs to deflect the increasing hostility against his own authority.
Ahh! Best to respond not by restoring the local and decentralized yeomanry but to aim their anger against the foreigners. Portray them as a threat. Stigmatize them as Ivrim, a word of contempt for people who cross boundaries, the equivalent of “wetbacks” or “rootless cosmopolites” or “globalists” in the parlance of today. (The word “Ivrim” became “Hebrews” in Western languages.)
Egypt was already a great power, an empire. It had perhaps the strongest army in the region, focused on horse-drawn chariots that small tribal politicians could not afford. But empires never rest easy. They are always concerned about encroachments from other Imperial centers or defiance from small cantankerous communities.
And in the unfolding royal tale of defining the Ivrim as a foreign force, it made sense for the Pharaoh to warn the Egyptian public that the Ivrim might side with Egypt’s foreign enemies, perhaps become terrorists attacking the old-stock Egyptians whose language and religion they didn’t share.
So they must be put under tight control by the state, made to work for the royal family as builders of the warehouses for storing the national food supply, kept in line by overseers who doubled as police. And all of this could be carried out only by making them pariahs in the national culture. separating them from Egyptian share-cropping farmers.
In the old Egyptian culture, Pharaoh was already seen as a god. Now his political and economic power grew even greater. His power went to his head. It began to infect his own outlook on the world. He began to believe his own propaganda about the dangerous Israelites, the Ivrim.
He decided they needed to be erased as a separate community. He issued the order to murder new-born boy babies of the Ivrim. Best to start there. Soon he can kill the grown-ups too.
But some people are horrified. The first cracks appear in Pharaoh’s authority. Women — two midwives and then his own daughter – begin creating a Resistance movement.. They start saving children’s lives, including one Moses. He mixes knowledge of his real origins with “white privilege” from his place at court to become a troublemaker. Fearing the police, he disappears.
Years later he reappears, possessed of a burning new vision, announcing that the very Name of God had changed. Everyone must understand the world in a new way, and then change the world to embody the new vision. The Ivrim must be free to leave their forced labor, to withdraw from Egypt, and to explore how as a free people they can serve their new sense of God, create a new kind of society that would fulfill the vision.
And here we see a remarkable unfolding of pharaonic psychology. Moses begins with a seemingly innocuous request: three days of Time Off to focus on religious practices to connect with God. Pharaoh responds not with any effort at accommodation but with more draconic rules of forced labor. The fragile unity of the Ivrim totally dissolves..
Meanwhile, Pharaoh, determined to please his supporters in the Water Production Corporation, stops regulating water purity. The Nile and all of Egypt’s water becomes undrinkable. In the palace, drinkable bottled water, though expensive, is available. Moses and Aaron and their prophetic sister Miriam warn Pharaoh that his own behavior is corrupting the national water supply. They warn him that this is because Humanity and Earth are interconnected by a sacred process they call YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh, the Interbreathing Spirit of all life.
Frightened, he tells his courtiers to restore the regulations. The plague of undrinkable water recedes. The Water Production Corporation nabobs complain, and he recovers from his fear. Pharaoh hardens his own heart against his wounded people, acts so exploitive toward the Earth for his own wealth’s sake that swarms of locusts, frogs, mad cow disease, climate crises in the form of unprecedented hailstorms, lightning bolts, and wildfire, all descend upon his people. Some of his advisers urge him to ease up and meet the Ivri demands.
But by this time he has become addicted to his own power; he fires the advisers and hires sycophants. At each disaster, Moses, Aaron, Miriam, and a growing number of critics warm him that he is fighting against the whole process of universal Consequence. At each disaster he first recoils and then returns to his own hubris: The disaster? “Stuff happens!”
But then his arrogant treatment of Earth brings a devastating disease to afflict his own citizens, his wife, himself. At first, he tries to dismiss it. But it grows so terrible that his own Egyptian supporters start denouncing him. He tells the “wetback” foreigners not only that they are free to Go, but they Must Depart. He tells his people to offer them gifts of gold and silver as reparations for hundreds of years of subjugation.
They smear blood on their doorways as a symbol of going forth from wombs of rebirth, and leave. Many Egyptians sign petitions that he resign and allow his compassionate daughter to become Pharaoh.
And now comes the moment of fateful decision. Pharaoh wakes up the next morning. Should he accept his fall from power, or mobilize his imperial Army, catch the Israelites at the edge of the Reed Sea, and force them back into slavery? Remind them that back in Egypt forced labor always came with the onions and garlic that they loved, whilst they will have only “God-knows-what?” to eat if they cross the Sea into a wilderness?
And if he sends the Army or orders relief from his pet High Court, what will the people do? Choose normalcy, or make themselves a civil-disobedience Sea of Reeds, seeming to bend and sway but always returning thick and bristly to block the path of Subjugation? Choosing to hear their own internal Voice, pointing their way toward a Loving and Beloved Community?We need your support to bring the kind of analyses and information Tikkun provides. Click Here to make a tax-deductible contribution.
ABOUT RABBI ARTHUR WASKOW
Rabbi Arthur Waskow directs The Shalom Center and has written more than twenty books on US public policy and on religious life, including the original Freedom Seder and, most recently, Dancing in God’s Earthquake: The Coming Transformation of Religion (Orbis)
Lessons on leaving the world better than you found it
Sophie Howe|Countdown (ted.com)
Sophie Howe is the world’s only future generations commissioner, a new kind of government official tasked with advocating for the interests of generations to come and holding public institutions accountable for delivering long-term change. She describes some of the people-focused policies she’s helped implement in Wales, aimed at cutting carbon emissions, increasing sustainability and promoting well-being as a national goal.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
“Hallelujah” chorus, from Händel’s Messiah – Mormon Tabernacle Choir
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Fallacious Arguments of Materialists
Who really understands Wittgenstein’s ‘bible’ of modern philosophy?
Jupiter Conjunct Pluto – Room 101
| by Astro Butterfly (astrobutterfly.com) |
Reflecting on the upcoming Jupiter-Pluto conjunction on November 12th, 2020, the novel “1984” came to mind.
1984 is a dystopian fiction about totalitarianism and mass surveillance. In the novel, the one-party government led by Big Brother had 4 ministries:
The Ministry of Truth (in charge of re-writing history), the Ministry of Love (in charge of enforcing the love for Big Brother through fear), the Ministry of Peace (in charge of war), and the Ministry of Plenty (in charge of deliberately keeping people poor and easy to control).
“Room 101” is a re-education basement torture chamber in the Ministry of Love. In Room 101, people who protest the Party are subjected to their own worst nightmare, fear, or phobia, with the objective of breaking their spirit.
In the novel, the main character’s – Winston Smith’s – greatest fear was rats.
Threatened to place his head into a small cage full of rats, the protagonist finally breaks down and asks to be saved, begging the authorities to let his lover suffer the torture instead of him. In this way, he betrays the one person he loves the most.
The authorities were not interested in killing, or even torturing Winston – all they wanted to do, was to break his spirit and make him surrender to Big Brother.
And surrender, he did. By the end of the novel, Winston, who initially hated Big Brother, ended up loving him.
Jupiter Conjunct Pluto – Room 101
The Jupiter conjunct Pluto parallel with Room 101 sounds apocalyptic, because to an extent, Pluto transits really do have an extreme quality. There is something inescapable about these Pluto transits – they always ask us to surrender and to let go of what we hold most dear.
But like with every transit, there’s always something positive behind all of the initial darkness.
The 3rd and final Jupiter Pluto conjunction on November 12th, 2020 will bring the culmination and the outcome of a difficult, fear-mongering year-long transit.
We had the 1st Jupiter-Pluto conjunction on April 4th and the 2nd transit on June 30th. The 3rd and final Jupiter-Pluto conjunction occurs at 22° Capricorn, the same degree we had the restrictive Saturn-Pluto conjunction on January 12th, 2020.
But once Jupiter meets Pluto for the last time on November 12th, 2020 he’s not coming back. As intense as things are right now, rest assured that after they reach a plateau mid-November the tension will slowly subside.
If you’ve read my previous write-ups, you know that from the very beginning I associated the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction with the pandemic.
Jupiter conjunct Pluto has not only brought us the pandemic but also, the social and political unrest, the thirst for political power, the government bail-outs, the ideological conflict in Europe – all of which speak volumes about the magnified power of Jupiter and Pluto.
Pluto is the planet of power and transformation. Pluto rules the inescapable cycles of life and death, with all the fear, trauma, ecstasy, and bliss they bring. Pluto is fate itself.
Jupiter magnifies everything it touches… and in our case, it magnifies Pluto. Hence the fear, the hype, and the all-or-nothing approach to life that have been the signatures of 2020.
It’s not that Jupiter-Pluto conjunctions always bring tension and fear. But this particular Jupiter-Pluto cycle occurred just after the Saturn-Pluto cycle, on January 12th, 2020, so it had to fit into the wider agenda of the Saturn-Pluto conjunction.
Does this mean the upcoming and much anticipated Jupiter-Saturn conjunction on December 21st will also follow this rather grim suite?
No. The Jupiter-Saturn conjunction occurs in Aquarius, NOT in Capricorn. This difference is significant – Jupiter conjunct Pluto on December 21st, 2020 going to be very different.
Jupiter Conjunct Pluto – Exposing Dirty Secrets
But let’s come back to Jupiter conjunct Pluto, and try to reflect on what the higher purpose of this transit is.
Let’s face it. We all want the good things in life. We are wired to seek pleasure. We want things to be easy. We want to “focus on the positive”. To pretend life is good and brush everything we don’t like under the carpet.
“I’ll deal with that later… hopefully never”. But life is both light and darkness, expansion and contraction, growth, and decay. To focus on the 50% (what we like) means that we only live in a 50% reality, and that is a recipe for failure.
Jupiter has the quality of exposing the themes of the planet it touches, so in 2020 Jupiter exposed Pluto’s dirty secrets.
Of course, we may not like to hear what Jupiter has been exposing since April 2020. We may call it fake news or manipulation.
But since this is not a Neptune transit, chances are that these exposed dirty secrets are not fake news. Pluto is the real deal. What you see IS the truth – even if it’s gross and rotten.
Knowing what’s rotten is a good thing. If your tooth rots, you go to the dentist and fix the problem… and save your other teeth. If you want your tree to grow healthy, you trim the dead branches.
We only take action – go to the dentist, trim the tree – once we find out what’s rotten. Once we identify the root cause of the problem. And this is what Jupiter conjunct Pluto can help us with.
Is the world such a grim place as 2020 has been trying to paint it? Most likely not. But sometimes we need to “exaggerate” the problem, to paint it in darker tones, in order to see it.
The Jupiter-Pluto purging is a necessary process that will help us to let go of what cannot sustain life. Why? So that we can start anew when the Jupiter-Saturn cycle starts later this year.
Jupiter Conjunct Pluto – Your True Power
Finally, remember there is no right or wrong way of dealing with Jupiter conjunct Pluto. You may ask yourself “should I surrender to Big Brother, and accept my fate, OR should I stay true to myself and try harder, even if I lose everything?”.
While Pluto always asks us to let go of something that we find it incredibly difficult to live without, Pluto does not want to break our spirit. Pluto only wants to break our Ego.
There is a big difference between the two.
If what you hold on to is your Ego, then yes, it’s wiser to surrender.
But if you run away from life because you’re fragile and don’t put in the effort, then perhaps it’s wiser to try harder. Pluto will ‘force’ you to find the resources inside of yourself that you did not know you had.
Both Jupiter and Pluto are concerned with finding the truth. With Jupiter conjunct Pluto, you’ll have to look deep inside yourself and to face your inner truth – no matter how uncomfortable it may make you feel.
Ultimately, however, Jupiter conjunct Pluto wants to help you find your true personal power.
And we can only unleash our true personal power when we stop being afraid of who we are – with the good, the bad, AND the ugly.
One thing for sure. You’ll be a completely different person on the other side of Jupiter conjunct Pluto’s ‘torture chamber’.
By the end of the Jupiter conjunct Pluto transit, you’ll find your true power. Not a power that seeks to control, take advantage of, and win; but a power that seeks to express one’s truth in a way that serves the best interests of humanity at large.
Samuel Johnson on truth and lying
“It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.”
― Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson, often referred to as Dr Johnson (September 18, 1709 – December 13, 1784), was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. Religiously, he was a devout Anglican, and politically a committed Tory. Wikipedia
Bio: Julian of Norwich
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Julian of Norwich | |
|---|---|
| The statue of Julian of Norwich on the West Front of Norwich Cathedral, made by the sculptor David Holgate in 2014. | |
| Born | 1343 |
| Died | after 1416 (aged 73–74) Norwich |
| Occupation | theologian, anchoress, mystic |
| Notable work | Revelations of Divine Love |
| Theological work | |
| Language | Middle English |
| Part of a series on |
| Christian mysticism |
|---|
| Theology · Philosophy[show] |
| Practices[show] |
| People (by era or century)[show] |
| Literature · Media[show] |
| vte |
Julian (or Juliana) of Norwich (1343 – after 1416), also known as Dame Julian or Mother Julian, was an English anchorite of the Middle Ages. She wrote the best known surviving book in the English language written by a mystic, Revelations of Divine Love. The book is the first written in English by a woman.
She lived practically her whole life in the English city of Norwich, an important centre for commerce that also had a vibrant religious life. During her lifetime, the city suffered the devastating effects of the Black Death of 1348–50; the Peasants’ Revolt, which affected large parts of England in 1381; and the suppression of the Lollards. In 1373, aged thirty and so seriously ill she thought she was on her deathbed, Julian received a series of visions or “shewings” of the Passion of Christ. She recovered from her illness and wrote two versions of her experiences, the earlier one being completed soon after her recovery (however its manuscript clearly states it was written far later, in 1413, and when Julian was still alive), and a much longer version, today known as the Long Text, being written many years later.
For much of her life, Julian lived in permanent seclusion as an anchoress in her cell, which was attached to St Julian’s Church, Norwich. Four wills in which sums were bequeathed to her have survived, and an account by the celebrated mystic Margery Kempe exists, which provides details of the counsel she was given by the anchoress.
Nothing is known for certain about Julian’s actual name, family, or education, or of her life prior to her becoming an anchoress. Preferring to write anonymously, and seeking isolation from the world, she was nevertheless influential in her own lifetime. Her manuscripts were carefully preserved by Brigittine and Benedictine nuns, all the scribes but one being women.[1] The Protestant Reformation prevented their publication in print for a very long time. The Long Text was first published in 1670 by the Benedictine Serenus de Cressy, under the title XVI Revelations of Divine Love, shewed to a devout servant of Our Lord, called Mother Juliana, an Anchorete of Norwich: Who lived in the Dayes of King Edward the Third. Cressey’s book was reissued by George Hargreaves Parker in 1843, and a modernised version of the text was published by J. T. Hecker in 1864. The work emerged from obscurity in 1901 when a manuscript in the British Museum was transcribed and published with notes by Grace Warrack. Since then many more translations of Revelations of Divine Love (also known under other titles) have been produced. Julian is today considered to be an important Christian mystic and theologian.
Background
Map of Norwich (c. 1300) by Samuel Woodward (1847). St. Julian’s Church, west of Anns Staithe (sic), is labelled with a ‘7’ on the map.
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The English city of Norwich, where Julian probably lived all her life, was second in importance to London during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and at the centre of the country’s primary region for agriculture and trade.[2][note 1] During her life Norwich suffered terribly when the Black Death reached the city. The disease may have killed over half the population and returned in subsequent outbreaks up to 1387.[2] Julian was alive during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, when the city was overwhelmed by rebel forces led by Geoffrey Litster, later executed by Henry le Despenser after his peasant army was overwhelmed at the Battle of North Walsham.[4] As Bishop of Norwich, Despenser zealously opposed Lollardy, which advocated reform of the Catholic Church, and a number of Lollards were burnt at the stake at Lollard’s Pit, just outside the city.[2]
Norwich may have been one of the most religious cities in Europe at that time, with its cathedral, friaries, churches and recluses’ cells dominating both the landscape and the lives of its citizens. On the eastern side of the city was the Norman Cathedral (founded in 1096), the Benedictine Hospital of St. Paul, the Carmelite friary, St. Giles’ Hospital, the Greyfriars monastery, and to the south the priory at Carrow, located just beyond the city walls.[5][6] The priory’s income was mainly generated from ‘livings‘ it acquired for renting its assets, which included the Norwich churches of St. Julian, All Saints Timberhill, St. Edward Conisford and St. Catherine Newgate, all now lost apart from St. Julian’s. Where these churches had an anchorite cell, they enhanced the reputation of the priory still further, as they attracted legacies and endowments from across society.[7][8]
St Julian’s Church
Julian is associated with St Julian’s Church, Norwich, located off King Street in the south of the city centre, and which still holds services on a regular basis.[9] St. Julian’s is an early round-tower church, one of the 31 surviving parish churches of a total of 58 that were built in Norwich after the Norman conquest of England.[10]
During the Middle Ages there were twenty-two religious houses in Norwich and sixty-three churches within the city walls, of which thirty-six had an anchorage.[11] No hermits or anchorites existed in Norwich from 1312 until the emergence of Julian in the 1370s.[12] It is not recorded when the anchorage at St. Julian’s was built, but it was used by a number of different anchorites up to the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s, some of whom were named Julian. After this time the cell was demolished and the church stripped of its rood screen and statues. No rector was then appointed until 1581.[13]
By 1845 St. Julian’s was in a very poor state of repair and that year the east wall collapsed. After an appeal for funds, the church underwent a ruthless restoration.[14][note 2] It was further restored in the 20th century,[16] but was destroyed during the Norwich Blitz of 1942, when in June that year the tower received a direct hit. After the war, funds were raised to rebuild the church. It now appears largely as it was before its destruction, although its tower is much-reduced in height and a chapel has been built in place of the long-lost anchorite cell.[17]
Life
Information available
The beginning of the 15th century Short Text. “Here es a vision schewed be the goodenes of god to a devoute woman and hir name es Julyan that is recluse atte Norwyche and zitt ys on lyfe anno domini millesimo ccccxiii” (BL, Add MS 37790).
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Uniquely for the mystics of the Middle Ages, Julian wrote about her visions.[18] She was an anchoress from at least the 1390s,[19] and was the greatest English mystic of her age, by virtue of the visions she experienced and her literary achievement, but almost nothing about her life is known.[18] What little is known about her comes from a handful of sources. She provides a few scant comments about the circumstances of her revelations in her book Revelations of Divine Love,[19] of which one fifteenth-century manuscript and a number of longer, post-Reformation manuscripts, have survived.[18] The earliest surviving copy of Julian’s Short Text, made by a scribe in the 1470s, acknowledges her as the author of the work.[19]
The earliest known reference to an anchorite living in Norwich with the name Julian comes from a will made in 1394.[19] There are four known wills which mention her, all of which were made by individuals living in Norfolk. Roger Reed, the rector of St Michael Coslany, Norwich, whose will of 20 March 1393/4 provides the earliest record of Julian’s existence, made a bequest of 12 shillings to be paid to “Julian anakorite”.[20] Thomas Edmund, a Chantry priest from the Norfolk town of Aylsham, stipulated in his will of 19 May 1404 that 12 pennies be given to “Julian, anchoress of the church of St. Julian, Conisford” and 8 pennies to “Sarah, living with her”.[20][note 3] A Norwich man, John Plumpton, gave 40 pennies to “the anchoress in the church of St. Julian’s, Conisford, and a shilling each to her maid and her former maid Alice”, in his will dated 24 November 1415.[20] The fourth person to mention Julian was Isabelle, Countess of Suffolk (the second wife of William de Ufford, 2nd Earl of Suffolk), who made a bequest of 20 shillings to “a Julian reclus a Norwich” in her will dated 26 September 1416.[20] A bequest to an unnamed anchorite at St. Julian’s was made in 1429, there is a possibility she was alive at this time.[12]Part of the manuscript (c. 1440) dictated by the mystic Margery Kempe to a scribe, in which she mentions visiting “dame jelyan” (British Library)
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Julian was known as a spiritual authority within her community, where she also served as a counsellor and adviser.[22] In around 1414, when she was in her seventies, she was visited by the celebrated English mystic Margery Kempe. In The Book of Margery Kempe, which has been claimed to be the first ever autobiography to be written in English,[23] she wrote about going to Norwich to obtain spiritual advice from Julian,[24] saying she was “bidden by Our Lord” to go to “Dame Jelyan … for the anchoress was expert in” divine revelations, “and good counsel could give”.[25] Margery Kempe never referred to Julian as an author, although she was familiar with the works of other spiritual writers, and mentioned them.[12]
Visions
According to Julian’s book Revelations of Divine Love, at the age of thirty, and when she was perhaps an anchoress already, Julian fell seriously ill. On 8 May 1373 a curate was administering the last rites of the Catholic Church to her, in anticipation of her death. As he held a crucifix above the foot of her bed, she began to lose her sight and feel physically numb, but gazing on the crucifix she saw the figure of Jesus begin to bleed. Over the next several hours, she had a series of fifteen visions of Jesus, and a sixteenth the following night.[26]
Julian completely recovered from her illness on 13 May. She wrote about her “shewings” shortly after she experienced them.[18] Her original manuscript no longer exists, but a copy survived, now referred to as her Short Text.[27] Twenty to thirty years later, perhaps in the early 1390s, she began a theological exploration of the meaning of her visions, now known as The Long Text. Consisting of eighty-six chapters and about 63,500 words,[28] this second work seems to have gone through many revisions before it was finished, perhaps in the 1410s or 1420s.[27]
Julian’s revelations, which appear to have been the first of their kind to occur in England for two centuries, mark her as unique amongst medieval mystics.[18] It is possible she was a lay person living at home when her visions occurred,[29] as she was visited by her mother and other people shortly before her visions, and the rules of enclosure for an anchoress would not normally have allowed outsiders such access.[30]
Personal life
The few autobiographical details Julian included in the Short Text, including her gender, were suppressed when she wrote her longer text later in life.[31] Historians are not even sure of her actual name. It is generally thought to be taken from St. Julian’s Church in Norwich, but it was also used in its own right as a girl’s name in the Middle Ages, and so could have been her actual Christian name.[32]
Julian’s writings indicate that she was born in 1343, and died after 1416.[33] She was six when the Black Death arrived in Norwich, which may have killed a third of the city’s population.[34] It has been speculated that she was educated as a young girl by the Benedictine nuns of Carrow Abbey, as it is known that a school for girls existed there during her childhood.[35][33] Anchoresses did not usually have to come from a religious community, and it is unlikely that Julian ever became a nun.[36] There is no written evidence that she was ever a nun at Carrow Abbey during her lifetime,[29] and as she referred in her writings to being visited by her mother at her bedside, commentators have suggested that she was living at home when her visions occurred.[33]
According to several commentators, including Santha Bhattacharji in her article in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Julian’s discussion of the maternal nature of God suggests that she knew of motherhood from her own experience of bringing up her own children.[29] As plague epidemics were rampant during the 14th century, it has been suggested that Julian may have lost her own family as a result of plague.[37][38] By then becoming an anchoress she would have been kept in quarantine away from the rest of the population of Norwich.[33] However, nothing in her writings provides any indication of the plagues, religious conflict, or civil insurrection that occurred in the city during her lifetime.[39] Kenneth Leach and Sister Benedicta Ward SLG, the joint authors of Julian Reconsidered (first published in 1988),[40] are of the opinion that she was a young widowed mother, and never a nun, based on a dearth of references about her occupation in life, and a lack of evidence to connect her with Carrow Priory, which would have honoured her, and buried her in the priory grounds.[41]
Life as an anchoress
A bishop blessing an anchoress, from MS 079: Pontifical, held at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (c.1400–10)
As an anchoress, Julian would have played an important part within her community, devoting herself to a life of prayer to complement the clergy in their primary function as protectors of people’s souls.[42] Her solitary life would have begun upon the completion of an elaborate selection process.[43] An important church ceremony would have taken place at St. Julian’s Church, in the presence of the Bishop of Norwich.[44] During the ceremony, psalms from the Office of the Dead would have been sung for her, as if it were her own funeral, and at some point Julian would have been led to her cell door and into the room beyond.[45] The door would afterwards have been sealed up, and she would have remained in her cell for the rest of her life.[46]St Julian’s Church (James Sillett (1828)). Julian’s cell, demolished centuries before, and since rebuilt as a chapel, was located around the other side of the church.
Once her life of seclusion had begun, Julian would have had to follow the strict rules for anchoresses. Two important sources of information about the life led by an anchoress have survived. De institutione inclusarum was written in Latin by Ælred of Rieveaulx in c. 1162, and the Ancrene Riwle was written in Middle English in c. 1200.[47][note 4] Although originally made for three religious sisters to follow, The Ancrene Riwle became in time a manual for all female recluses.[48] The work regained its former popularity during the mystical movement of the fourteenth century and may have been available to Julian in a version she could read and become familiar with.[49] It stipulated that anchoresses lived a life of confined isolation, poverty, and chastity.[50] However, some anchoresses are known to have lived comfortably, and there are instances in which they shared their accommodations with fellow recluses.[51]
The popular image of Julian living with her cat for company stems from the regulations set out in The Ancrene Riwle.[51]
As an anchoress living in the heart of an urban environment, Julian would not have led an entirely secluded life. She would have been permitted to make clothes for the poor, and she enjoyed the financial support of the more prosperous members of the local community, as well as the general affection of the population.[52] She would have in turn provided prayers, advice and counsel to the people, serving as an example of devout holiness.[52]
According to one edition of the Cambridge Medieval History, it is possible that she met the English mystic Walter Hilton, who died when she was in her fifties and who may have influenced her writings in a small way.[53]
Revelations of Divine Love
Main article: Revelations of Divine LoveXVI Revelations of Divine Love (title page, 1670 edition)
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Julian of Norwich was, according to the historian Henrietta Leyser, “beloved in the twentieth century by theologians and poets alike”.[54] Her writings are unique, as no other works by an English anchoress have survived, although it is possible that some anonymous works may have been written by women. In 14th century England, when women were generally barred from high status positions, their knowledge of Latin would have been limited, and it is more likely that they read and wrote in English.[48] The historian Janina Ramirez has suggested that by choosing to write in her vernacular language, a precedent set by other medieval writers, Julian was “attempting to express the inexpressible” in the best way possible.[55] Nothing written by Julian was ever mentioned in any bequests, nor written for a specific readership, or influenced other medieval authors,[56] and almost no references were made of her writings from the time they were written until the beginning of the 20th century.[57]
Julian was largely unknown until 1670, when her writings were published under the title XVI Revelations of Divine Love, shewed to a devout servant of Our Lord, called Mother Juliana, an Anchorete of Norwich: Who lived in the Dayes of King Edward the Third by Serenus de Cressy, a confessor for the English nuns at Cambrai.[58][12] Cressy, who knew nothing of Julian’s earlier Short Text, based his book on the Long Text,[59] developed by her over a number of years, of which three manuscript copies survive.[60]One copy of the complete Long Text, known as the Paris Manuscript, resides in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. Two other manuscripts are now in the British Library.[61] One of the manuscripts was perhaps copied out by Dame Clementina Cary, who founded the English Benedictine monastery in Paris.[57]
Cressy’s edition was reprinted in 1843, 1864 and again in 1902.[62]
Modern interest in Julian’s book increased when Henry Collins published a new version of the book in 1877.[63] It became known still further after the publication of Grace Warrack’s 1901 edition, which included modernised language, as well as, according to the author Georgia Ronan Crampton, a “sympathetic informed introduction”.[63] The book introduced most early 20th century readers to Julian’s writings.[63]
Julian’s shorter work, which may have been written not long after Julian’s visions in May 1373, is now known as her Short Text.[64] As with the Long Text, the original manuscript was lost, but not before at least one copy was made by a scribe, who named Julian as the author.[65] It was in the possession of an English Catholic family at one point.[57] The copy was seen by the antiquarian Francis Blomefield in 1745,[66][67] After disappearing from view for 150 years, it was found in 1910, in a collection of contemplative medieval texts bought by the British Museum.[68] It was published by Reverend Dundas Harford in 1911.[66] Now part of MS Additional 37790, the manuscripts are held in the British Library.[69]