Julian of Norwich’s Mystic Vision as a Site for Rebuilding Societal Unity in the Aftermath of the Black Death

The woman known as Julian of Norwich, the first female author in the English language, survived a pandemic which tore English society apart. The first outbreak of the bubonic plague in Norwich was in 1349 when Julian was only six years old and continued for another twenty-one years of sporadic outbreaks in East Anglia. Despite this formative experience, scholarly treatments of the plague’s impact on Julian’s writing focus primarily on her use of maternal imagery as a pre-existing general trend in mystic texts which developed a new significance in post-plague religious writing. The divine mother figure was now not only a creator but a source of protection and comfort. While this is certainly true, this is also perhaps a bit myopic. A holistic view of her book of “Showings” reveals that the plague and its aftermath are actually central to her theosophical project. By evoking imagery of the Black Death in her explanation of the Passion and the existence of suffering, Julian of Norwich sought to restore unity to medieval English society through a re-envisioning of the Holy Trinity as Earthly authority figures: family/household, Holy Mother Church, and feudal lord.