This earliest-known British autobiography is a remarkable and touching record of the author’s difficult pilgrimage from madness to Christian faith.

The first woman known to have written in English, the fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich has inspired generations of Christians with her reflections on the "motherhood" of Jesus, and her assurance that, despite evil, "all shall be well." In this book, Denise Baker reconsiders Julian not only as an eloquent and profound visionary but also as an evolving, sophisticated theologian of great originality. Focusing on Julian's "Book of Showings," in which the author records a series of revelations she received during a critical illness in May 1373, Baker provides the first historical assessment of Julian's significance as a writer and thinker.

Inscribing her visionary experience in the short version of her "Showings," Julian contemplated the revelations for two decades before she achieved the understanding that enabled her to complete the long text. Baker first traces the genesis of Julian's visionary experience to the practice of affective piety, such as meditations on the life of Christ and, in the arts, a depiction of a suffering rather than triumphant Christ on the cross. Julian's innovations become apparent in the long text. By combining late medieval theology of salvation with the mystics' teachings on the nature of humankind, she arrives at compassionate, optimistic, and liberating conclusions regarding the presence of evil in the world, God's attitude toward sinners, and the possibility of universal salvation. She concludes her theodicy by comparing the connections between the Trinity and humankind to familial relationships, emphasizing Jesus' role as mother. Julian's strategy of revisions and her artistry come under scrutiny in the final chapter of this book, as Baker demonstrates how this writer brings her readers to reenact her own struggle in understanding the revelations.

Originally published in 1997.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Mit dieser synoptischen Edition der lateinischen UEbersetzung des Fliessenden Lichts der Gottheit Mechthilds von Magdeburg und ihrer alemannischen Ruckubersetzung werden zwei Versionen eines der wichtigsten Texte der mittelalterlichen Mystik erstmals wissenschaftlich zuganglich. Mechthilds in der zweiten Halfte des 13. Jahrhunderts entstandenes Buch thematisiert in lyrischen, hymnischen und dramatischen Textpartien die Vereinigung der menschlichen Seele mit Gott, berichtet von Visionserlebnissen und enthalt Gebete sowie lehrhafte und reflektierende Abschnitte mit Bezug zur Zeitsituation. In der Forschung gilt das Werk als Beginn volkssprachlicher mystischer Literatur uberhaupt. Die lateinische UEbersetzung mit dem Titel Lux divinitatis entstand noch vor 1296/1298 und ordnet das Textmaterial ihrer Vorlage voellig neu. Die synoptisch abgedruckte alemannische Ruckubersetzung Das liecht der gotheit entstand Ende des 15., Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach in Basel. Eine detaillierte Einleitung, ein Parallelstellen-Apparat, Kapitelkonkordanzen sowie ausfuhrliche Register dienen der weiterfuhrenden Erschliessung. Zudem bietet die vorliegende Edition eine umfassende Dokumentation aller primaren und sekundaren Rezeptionszeugen der lateinischen UEbersetzung des Fliessenden Lichts.

This is the fourth in an influential series of volumes on mysticism edited by Steven T. Katz, presenting a basic revaluation of the nature of mysticism. Each presents a collection of solicited papers by noted experts in the study of religion. This new volume explores how the great mystics and mystical traditions use, interpret, and reconstruct the sacred scriptures of their traditions.

For the medieval mystical tradition, the Christian soul meets God in a "cloud of unknowing," a divine darkness of ignorance. This meeting with God is beyond all knowing and beyond all experiencing. Mysticisms of the modern period, on the contrary, place "mystical experience" at the center, and contemporary readers are inclined to misunderstand the medieval tradition in "experientialist" terms. Denys Turner argues that the distinctiveness and contemporary relevance of medieval mysticism lies precisely in its rejection of "mystical experience," and locates the mystical firmly within the grasp of the ordinary and the everyday. The argument covers some central authorities in the period from Augustine to John of the Cross.

One of the world's foremost spiritual guides responds to the modern hunger for self-awareness and holistic living with a series of spiritual exercises blending psychology, spiritual therapy, and practices drawn from both Eastern and Western traditions of meditation.

Laughing at the Devil is an invitation to see the world with a medieval visionary now known as Julian of Norwich, believed to be the first woman to have written a book in English. (We do not know her given name, because she became known by the name of a church that became her home.) Julian "saw our Lord scorn [the Devil's] wickedness" and noted that "he wants us to do the same." In this impassioned, analytic, and irreverent book, Amy Laura Hall emphasizes Julian's call to scorn the Devil. Julian of Norwich envisioned courage during a time of fear. Laughing at the Devil describes how a courageous woman transformed a setting of dread into hope, solidarity, and resistance.

And all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well...In 1373, when she was thirty years old, Julian of Norwich received a series of sixteen visions. Pondering in prayer their meaning for twenty years, she gradually came to realise their full significance.Written from the heart and borne from experience, Julian's REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE is inspiring reading for all who seek to live their lives in close union with God. Her reflections are steeped in the Bible, contain many profound insights into contemplative prayer and are as relevant today as when they were originally written. The greatest of the female mystics and a spiritual guide for today, Julian additionally holds the distinction of being the first woman to write a book in the English language.This new edition includes an introduction that sets Julian in the context of her time, and a foreword by Jeremy Begbie.

This is a fresh and contemporary rendering of one of the most loved and influential spiritual texts of all time. It brings alive the message and spirituality of this great 14th-century mystic to 21st century readers. At the age of 30, Julian of Norwich, a contemporary of Chaucer, was suffering a severe illness and believed she was on her deathbed. She had a series of intense visions of Jesus and recovered. Julian wrote down the narration of the visions shortly after they occurred and expanded on them 20 to 30 years later in what became the first book written in English by a woman. Her message remains strikingly relevant today: that failure is an opportunity to learn and grow that God's love has nothing to do with retribution and everything to do with compassion in spite of appearances, all is well.

This study reveals how women's visionary texts played a central role within medieval discourses of authorship, reading, and devotion. From the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, women across northern Europe began committing their visionary conversations with Christ to the written word. Translating Christ in this way required multiple transformations: divine speech into human language, aural event into textual artifact, visionary experience into linguistic record, and individual encounter into communal repetition. This ambitious study shows how women's visionary texts form an underexamined literary tradition within medieval religious culture. Barbara Zimbalist demonstrates how, within this tradition, female visionaries developed new forms of authorship, reading, and devotion. Through these transformations, the female visionary authorized herself and her text, and performed a rhetorical imitatio Christi that offered models of interpretive practice and spoken devotion to her readers. This literary-historical tradition has not yet been fully recognized on its own terms. By exploring its development in hagiography, visionary texts, and devotional literature, Zimbalist shows how this literary mode came to be not only possible but widespread and influential. She argues that women's visionary translation reconfigured traditional hierarchies and positions of spiritual power for female authors and readers in ways that reverberated throughout late-medieval literary and religious cultures. In translating their visionary conversations with Christ into vernacular text, medieval women turned themselves into authors and devotional guides, and formed their readers into textual communities shaped by gendered visionary experiences and spoken imitatio Christi. Comparing texts in Latin, Dutch, French, and English, Translating Christ in the Middle Ages explores how women's visionary translation of Christ's speech initiated larger transformations of gendered authorship and religious authority within medieval culture. The book will interest scholars in different linguistic and religious traditions in medieval studies, history, religious studies, and women's and gender studies.

David Mahlowe was an actor, writer, TV presenter and interviewer who, in the late 1960s was compared, for his skills in 'the delicate art of TV confrontation', with Malcolm Muggeridge and Bernard Levin. A fine Shakespearean actor, he worked in repertory, film, TV and radio before moving into TV presenting and interviewing. He and his wife Marah Stohl were lead actors for Manchester Library Theatre in the 1950s. In this book he shares the insights which he gained through a lifetime's study of Shakespeare, art, religion and philosophy, in a series of talks which he gave between 1995-1998. Literary executor of the artist Eugene Halliday, with whom he had written Shakespeare King Educator, he founded the Melchisedec Press to publish Halliday's writings. A short illness led to his early death in 1998.

The contemporaries of Hildegard of Bingen called her ""prophetissa teutonica"", honouring her philosophical writings and interpretation of the cosmos. Mediaevalists still consider her one of the leading mystics, and point to her active spiritual and artistic life in the 12th century as the finest example of what a woman can achieve. The abbess Hildegard of Bingen was the first composer to sign her musical works. As a playwright and author, she witnessed and shaped the time of the Crusades, the literary minnesang, and political and theological debate. The author of this text draws a complex picture of her life and work, as he ""translates"" Hildegard's ideas and her mysterious world of symbols from mediaeval Latin into contemporary concepts. Heinrich Schipperges delineates this remarkable thinker's view of the human being as a microcosm of the universe, intricately bound by the senses to the life of the soul, nature, and God.