Revelations of Divine Love — Julian of Norwich

in the beginning while the flesh was fresh and bleeding, the continual setting of the thorns made the wounds wide And furthermore, I saw, that the sweet skin, and the tender flesh, with the hair, and with the blood, was all raced and loosed about with the thorns, and broken in many pieces, and were hanging as they would hastily have fallen down while it had kind moisture ; how it was down I saw not, but I understood that it was with the sharp thorns, and the boystrous grievous sitting on of the garland, not sparing, and without pity, that altho [altogether] brake the sweet skin with the flesh, and the hair loosed it from the bone; where-through it was broken in pieces as a cloath, and sagging downward, as it would hastily have fallen for heaviness and for loosness. And that was great sorrow and dread to me, for methought that I would not for my life have seen it fall. This continued a while, and after it began to change ; and | beheld and marvelled how it might be, and then I saw it was for it began to dry, and stint a part of the weight that was round about the garland. And so it was invironed all about, as it were garland upon garland; the garland of thornes was dyed with the garland of blood, and that other garland and the head all was one colour as clottered blood when it was dried. The 48

THE SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER

| skin and the flesh that seemed [showed] of the face i and of the body, was small rimpild with a tawny colour, like a dry board when it is aged, and the face more brown than the body. I saw four manner of drying: the first was bloodless ; the second, pain following after; the third is, that he was hanging up in the aire, as men hang a cloath for to dry; the fourth, that the bodily kind asked liquor, and there was no manner of comfort ministred to him.

Ah, hard and grievous was that pain, but much more hard and grievous it was when the moisture failed, and all began to dry thus clinging. These were two pains that shewed in the blessed head: the first wrought to the drying while it was moist, and that other slow, with clinging and drying, with blowing of wind from without that dryed him more, and pained with cold, than my heart | can think, and all other pains, for which pains I || saw, that all is too litle that I can say, for it l may not be told. The shewing of Christs pains , : filled me full of pains, for I wist well that he | suffered but once; but as he would shew it me, | | and fill me with mind, as I had before desired. | And in all this time of Christs presence, I felt no | | pain but for Christs pains. | Then thought me, I knew full litle what pain | it was that I asked, and as a wretch I repented tu 1»

THE NINTH REVELATION.

me, thinking if I had wist what it had been, loath had me been to have prayed it, for methought my pains passed any bodily death. I thought, ‘Is any pain in hell like this?’ and I was answered in my reason, ‘Hell is an other pain, for there is despair ; but of all pains that lead to salvation, this is the most, to see the Lover to sufer? How might any pain be more than to see him that is all my life, all my bliss, and all my joy, suffer? Here [felt] I stedfastly, that I loved Christ so much above my self, that there was no pain that might be suffered, like to that sorrow that I had to see him in pain.

The Eighteenth Chapter

Here Í saw in part the compassion of our blessed lady Saint Mary, for Christ. And she was so onyd [united] in love, that the greatness of her love was cause of the greatness of her pain; for in this I saw a substance of kind love continued by grace, that his creatures have to him; which kind love was most fulsomelie shewed in his sweet mother, and overpassing: for so much as she loved him more than all other, her pain passed all other; for ever | the higher, the mightier, the swecter that the | love is. the more «sorrow it i» to the Lover to see fi ent

THE EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER,

that body in pain that he loved. And so all his | disciples, and all his true lovers suffered more pain | than their own bodily dying: for I am sure by my | own feeling, that the least of them loved him so far | above himself, that it passeth all that I can say. | Here saw I a great oning [one-ing] between Christ and us, to my understanding ; for when he was in | pain we were in pain, and all creatures that might l suffer pain, suffered with him; that is to say, all creatures that God hath made to our service. The

| firmament and earth failed for sorrow in their kind, in the time of Christs dying; for it longeth kindly

| to their property to know him for their Lord, in | whom all their vertue standeth. And when he | feeled, then behoved needs to them for kindness | to feel with him, in as much as they might, for | sorrow of his pains. And thus they that were his ‘friends suffered pain for love. And generally, | all, that is to say, they that knew him not, suffered