Julian of Norwich

[Bauerschmidt] presents an intriguing and inspiring interpretation of Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Love that bridges the gap between the medieval text and its implications for present-day communities of faith, between academic analysis and committed action. --Church History, Studies in Christianity & Culture Bauerschmidt adds a creative and challenging dimension to the current lively discussion of the theology of fourteenth-century British anchorite Julian of Norwich. His reading of Julian's text is complex and challenging and makes a provocative contribution to both the hermeneutics of medieval texts and to contemporary political discussions. In this very important book, Frederick Bauerschmidt provides us with a more adequate account than any hitherto of Julian of Norwich specifically as a theologian, rather than as a mere spiritual writer or else as a feminist avant la lettre. This is the best study on Julian since Colledge and Walsh's 1978 critical edition of Showings. Bauerschmidt's treatment of Julian's bodily sight of the Crucified is a stunning tour de force of imaginative scholarship. I have nothing but praise for this uniformly excellent book. This book is to be commended for its bold attempt to provide a new vocabulary with which to discuss aspects of the Revelation of Divine Love, a text which repeatedly resists scholarly explication. Julian gives no sources for her thought, and this book eschews the search for them. It offers a reading of Julian's text, not a hypothesis as to its author's intentions, although its argument is occasionally rendered vulnerable by an over-close identification of author with text. Bauderschmidt wisely disclaims that he has unlocked the text's 'real' significance, and acknowledges that his treatment of it is guided by a particular interest in human community. The result is an honest and searching contribution to Julian scholarship.