Julian of Norwich s Showings: Earliest Manuscript Copies The Westminster Manuscript, which has nothing of the death-bed vision and which has the date '1368', could represent a first version written out when Julian was twenty-five. The Paris Manuscript Long Text tells us that its original version was being conceptualised and written fifteen and twenty years after the 1373 vision, that is, when Julian was between forty-five and fifty years of age. The Amherst Manuscript Short Text clearly tells us it was written out in 1413, when Julian was seventy. These manuscript versions could thus represent a lifetime of a woman's theological writings. The three earliest Showing manuscripts, Amherst, Westminster and Paris, were each associated with Syon Abbey, the Brigittine monastery founded in England by King Henry V to expiate his father's murders of Richard II and Archbishop Richard le Scrope of York. These and following excerpts taken from website associated with Julia Bolton Hollway s JULIAN'S SHOWING OF LOVE IN A NUTSHELL: HER MANUSCRIPTS AND THEIR CONTEXTS http://www.umilta.net/tablet.html#amherst
The Amherst Manuscript The earliest surviving Julian of Norwich manuscript may contain the latest version of her Showing of Love. It is the Short Text version, giving the date of its writing '1413', in its 97th folio, third and fourth lines as: 'Anno domini millesimo.cccc/xiij'. It was purchased at the Lord Amherst Sale in 1910, becoming British Library Additional 37,790. {There es Avisioun Schewed Be the goodenes of god to Ade=/uoute womann. and hir Name es Julyan that is recluse atte/ Norwyche and 3itt. ys ou n lyfe. Anno domini millesimo CCCC/ xiijo. In the whilk visyoun Er fulle many Comfortabylle wordes and/ gretly Styrrande to alle thaye that desyres to be crystes loovers. {SI Desyrede thre graces be the gyfte of god The ffyrst was/ to have mynde of Cryste es Passioun. The Secounde was/ bodelye syekenes And the thryd was to haue of goddys gyfte thre wo=/undys. ffor the fyrste come to my mynde with devocoun me thought/ I hadde grete felynge in the passyou n of cryste Botte 3itte I desyrede/ to haue mare be the grace of god. me thought I wolde haue bene British Library, Amherst Manuscript, Additional 37,790, fol. 97. By Permission of the British Library. Reproduction Prohibited.
The whole manuscript is a florilegium assembled by one scribe whose dialect is of Grantham, Lincolnshire, perhaps the Lincoln/York Carmelite Richard Misyn writing, as the manuscript states, circa 1435, for the anchoress Margaret Heslyngton. We know that the anchoress Emma Stapleton (whose father, Sir Miles Stapleton, fought, like Chaucer's Knight, at Alexandria, and who, as the executor of Isabelle, Countess of Suffolk, would have known Julian of Norwich), had for her spiritual director the Carmelite Adam Hemlyngton, D.D., when she was enclosed at the Norwich Carmelite Friary, 1421-1443, and that another woman member of her family, Agnes Stapleton, owned and willed a similar contemplative text, Chastising of God's Children. The Westminster Manuscript The second oldest surviving manuscript is in the Westminster Manuscript, owned by Westminster Cathedral and now on loan to Westminster Abbey. The florilegium, or gathering of texts, including Psalm commentaries, parts of Hilton's Ladder of Perfection, and Julian's Showing of Love, was likely written out about 1500, but bears the date on the first page of '1368', which is repeated on the spine and on the end papers. The section on the Showing of Love is quite different from the British Library's Short Text. It includes much of Julian's brilliant theology, of the entire cosmos as if it were but the size of a hazel nut in the palm of her hand, of God in a point, of Jesus as our Mother. It includes none of the death-bed vision that occurred in 1373 when Julian was thirty. This 1368?/1500 manuscript was discovered in 1955 but has been neglected by most Julian scholars.
The Paris Manuscript The third oldest surviving manuscript was written out about 1580 in the region near Antwerp, according to its watermarks, then was taken to Rouen and finally entered the Library of the King of France in 1706. It is now Bibliothèque Nationale, Anglais 40, and is called the Long Text. It likely copies out a Tudor 'fair copy' of Julian's text being readied for printing, then blocked by the Reformation. It includes all the material that is in the Westminster Manuscript, plus a frame of XV Showing, in which Julian in 1373, at the point of death, sees the Crucifix brought to her for the Last Rites where Christ's head bleeds, followed by a XVIth Showing that comes to her later and over which she ponders. This may be the Showing of the Parable of the Lord and the Servant. Here is given folios 8 verso and 9 recto of the Paris Manuscript of Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love, in which we are looking at an Elizabethan manuscript copy by a nun of a Tudor 'fair copy' Syon manuscript readied for printing, that was blocked by Henry VIII's Reformation:
And in þis he shewed me a lytil thyng þe quantite of a hasyl nott. lyeng in þe pawme of my hand as it had semed. and it was as rownde as eny ball. I loked þer upon wt þe eye of of my vnderstondyng. and I þought what may þis be. and it was answered generally thus. It is all þat is mad. I merueled howe it myght laste. for me þought it myght soden ly haue fall to nought for lytyllhed. & I was answered in my vnder= stondyng. It lastyth & euer shall for god louyth it. and so hath all thyng his begynning by þe loue of god. In this lytyll thyng I sawe thre propertees. The fyrst is. þt god made it. þe secunde is þet louyth it. & þe þrid is. þat god kepith it. But what is þis to me. sothly þe maker. þe keper & þe louer. for tyll I am substancially oned to hym. I may neuer haue full reste ne ve= rey blysse. that is to sey, þat I be so fastened to hym þat þer be no thynge þt is made be twene my god & me. This litil thynge þt is made. me thought it myght haue fall to nought. for lytillness. Of this nedith vs to haue knowynge þat it is lyke to nought all þyng þt is made. for to loue & haue god þat is vn= made. ffor þis is þe cause why þt we be not all in ese of harte & soule. for we seke here reste. In this thyng þt is so lytyll where no reste is in. and know not our god þat is allmyghty. all wise & all good. for he is verey reste. God wyll be knowen. & it likith hym þt we reste vs in hym. for all þat is beneth hym sufficith not to vs. And þis is þe cause why þat no soule is rested. tyll it be noughted of all þat is made. and when he is wylfully nou= ghted for loue. to haue hym þt is all. then is he able to resceue goostely reste. folios 74-75 from the Westminster Manuscript