Julian of Norwich was born in 1342, likely in or near the city of Norwich, England. Beyond that bare fact, almost nothing is known of her early life — her name, which she took from the church of St. Julian where she later lived as an anchoress, may not have been her given name at all. She was enclosed in a small cell attached to that church, where she would have spent decades in prayer, reading, and spiritual counsel to those who came to her window seeking guidance. Margery Kempe, another notable figure of English piety, records visiting her there.
In May 1373, when Julian was thirty years old, she fell gravely ill and appeared near death. During this crisis she experienced sixteen visions, which she called "showings," centered on the Passion of Christ. She recovered and set down an account of these experiences — first in a shorter version written soon after, and then in a longer, more theologically developed text composed perhaps twenty years later. This extended work, the *Revelations of Divine Love*, represents her sustained effort to understand what had been given to her and to share it faithfully.
The theology of the *Revelations* is marked above all by its insistence on the love of God as the ground of all things. Julian wrestled honestly with the problem of sin and suffering, and arrived not at easy comfort but at a hard-won confidence: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." Her image of God as both Father and Mother, and her portrayal of Christ's suffering as an expression of inexhaustible tenderness, gave her writing a warmth that does not soften its intellectual seriousness.
Her work was little read for centuries after her death but found a wide and devoted audience in the twentieth century, and she remains one of the most searching theological voices of medieval Christianity.