She seems to achieved great renown in her day, but then, following her death, there were six centuries of silence.
Now I'm not one for conspiracy theories (I don't believe them without good reason at least) but this 600 year departure/absence of Julian from history seems to have had an uncanny coincidence with the time during which the late medieval and then the Reformation movement coupled with a Roman Catholic church in turmoil were struggling to keep their sheep under control and faithful to the cause.
What better way than to tell them that God was really, really angry with them - and even though Jesus had paid for their sins on the cross, there was still every chance that God might still be angry with them - either because no matter how good they were, they still weren't good enough, or even worse, God had had them marked out for damnation before they were even born and thus they might still be rewarded with an eternity in the blazing fires of Hell? However, if they kept coming to Church, buying Masses and Indulgences, paying tithes and remained obedient to the clergy, there might still be a chance to escape the flames.
Julian was a bit of a 'fly in the ointment' here, because she stated that God isn't actually angry - not with anyone, rather, the anger we imagine He has is only a projection of the anger we have within ourselves...
That is liberating stuff - all the faithful needed to to was stop being angry with themselves for their wrongdoings - to forgive themselves. Here's some of what she wrote:
"Suddenly is the soul oned to God when it is truly peaced in itself: for in Him is found no wrath. And thus I saw when we are all in peace and in love, we find no contrariness, nor no manner of letting through that contrariness which is now in us."
"There is no wrath in God….It is the most impossible thing that can be that God would be angry, for wrath and friendship are two opposites."
Liberating as it was for those who understood the implications, this would have been downright dangerous for the church of its assorted colours - because to keep power, they needed finance, and to generate finance they needed the people...
Then there was the age old problem of women! Dodgy characters (unless they went into a convent where they might perchance redeem themselves!), yep, it was all womens' fault, ever since Eve and the Garden of Eden incident! Ever since then, they'd been wicked temptresses waiting to lure poor, unsuspecting men into Hell. Women didn't have souls so they'd have a really hard time getting into Heaven... that's enough of that!
Julian dared to suggest that God - that great male figurehead and model of perfection we all aim for might have an element of the feminine - WHAT??!! I suspect that, had she not been an anchoress - effectively already dead and buried in this world - she might well have been burned at the stake for entertaining such thoughts.
"Thus in our creation, God All Power is our natural Father, and God All Wisdom is our natural Mother, with the Love and the Goodness of the Holy Spirit — who is all one God, one Lord."
"This fair lovely word 'mother' is so sweet and so kind in itself, that it can not truly be said of anyone nor to anyone except of Him and to Him who is true Mother of life and of all. To the quality of motherhood belongs natural love, wisdom, and knowledge — and this is God…"
For a patriarchal Church consisting of a male hierarchy fighting amongst themselves for power, suggesting that women might also have been created in God's image and therefore giving them equal status in God's eyes was truly dangerous territory. What if those pesky women started thinking they too could achieve high status in the world - and, horror - in the Church?! The women must be kept in their rightful place, at the bottom of the pile...
There followed 600 years of silence...
I wonder why?
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