The pronunciation of English has also changed enormously in the past 650 years: Julian would have pronounced all as “ahl”, be was more like “bay” and answerid had three syllables. In medieval English, behovable meant ‘necessary’ or ‘useful’ all that me nedyth meant ‘everything that I need’, and the plural of thing was thing. The most famous passage in her Revelations runs: “But Jesus, that in this vision enformid me of all that me nedyth, answerid by this word, and seyd: ‘synne is behovabil, but al shal be wel, and al shal be wel, and al manner of thyng shal be wele’.” Later, while spending the rest of her days immured in her cell at St Julian’s, she produced a much longer account now known as her Long Text.Ī reading of Julian’s original 14th-century Middle English writings is very informative about the extent to which our language has changed over the centuries. On what she thought was her deathbed, she witnessed her “shewings” and, after returning to full health, she gratefully wrote an account of what she had seen, firstly as a manuscript which is now called her Short Text. Julian made the decision to become an anchoress following her experience of falling dreadfully ill when she was in her thirties. Her benign, consoling message also went very much against the stern, punitive religious orthodoxy of the time.
This makes it remarkable in two ways: not only had all books hitherto been written by men, but also religious works were also mostly written in Latin. History of the English language – it is thought to be the first book written inĮnglish by a woman. She is famous for having written the religious work now known as Revelations of Divine Love, which represents a very significant step in the Lady Julian was a mystic who chose to become an anchoress – a female anchorite, recluse or hermit – and she lived much of her life walled up in a cell attached to the church. Much of it was destroyed by bombing during World War II, then restored in the 1950s. Most of the church was built in the 11th and 12th centuries, although it contains some earlier Anglo-Saxon features.
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