Who was Julian?
First of all, her name wasn’t Julian. We don’t know what her name was. In fact, the things we know for sure about her can be told in a few short paragraphs. The person we call Julian of Norwich was born in 1342, the same year as Geoffrey Chaucer. When she was 30 years old, she had a very serious illness during which she experienced a series of visions. She wrote two accounts of that experience. The first one, known as the Short Text, was probably written soon after her visions, and the second one, which we call the Long Text, was written some 20 years later. At some point Julian became an anchorite attached to the church of Saint Julian of Norwich, from which she took her name. We think she was still alive in 1414 because her name is mentioned in a will. She would have been in her early 70s, very old for the 14th century. An anchorite was permanently enclosed in a room, usually attached to a church. She (or he) took a vow to remain in that anchorhold (or cell) until death. The ceremony
