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He wants us to have true knowledge in himself that he is being; and in this knowledge he wants our understanding to be founded, with all our powers and all our purpose and intention. And he wants us to take our dwelling in this foundation. (Julian of Norwich(1))
I used sometimes, as I have said, to experience in an elementary form, and very fleetingly, what I shall now describe when picturing Christ in the way I have mentioned, and sometimes even when reading, I used unexpectedly to experience a consiciousness of the presence of God of such a kind that I could not possibly doubt that he was within me or that I was wholly enguffed in him. This was in no sense a vision: I believe it is called mystical theology. (St Teresa of Avila(2))
Medieval medical and religious theories of gender defined and confined women as bodies ridden with biological weakness and post-lapsarian sin.(3) As a result, those studying the female piety of this period have taken a great interest in how female bodies were understood and the degree to which women internalized this patriarchal worldview. Elizabeth Petroff and Caroline Walker Bynum have done much influential and necessary work to determine how mystical practices reflect women's self-understandings and relationships to their bodies.
This has involved a close analysis of ascetic practice, leading many students of female mysticism to conceptualize and categorize female piety as predominately sensory. Though it is true that much of female piety has been characterized by affective practices and themes, such as the imitato Christi, the ecstatic (as can be seen in Brautmystic), and ascetic behavior (such as fasting and illness), the categorization of women's expression and experience in these terms does not always lead down the right path. This has been the case with Julian of Norwich.
While Julian's piety utilizes such mainstays of affective mysticism as sensory language and visionary experience, an analysis of Julian along these lines alone can obscure aspects of her thought that are unique and not readily explainable by affective experience or bodily imagery. In addition to engaging in the visionary, Julian enters into the realm of contemplation and negation. This provides material for much of the Long Text, in which Julian constructs...