Exhibition Review: Medieval Women In Their Own Words, by Anne Welsh
The British Library’s blockbuster exhibition, Medieval Women In Their Own Words, opened to great acclaim on 25 October and will run until 2 March 2025. It provides a wonderful opportunity to see the manuscripts of both the long and the short texts of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, beautifully displayed next to each other, and close to spiritual texts by other medieval women, including works by Margery Kempe, Hildegard von Bingen, Brigitte of Sweden and Christine de Pizan.
There’s also an order for enclosing an anchoress (British Library, Lansdowne MS 451) and the often-quoted Ancrene Wisse or Anchoresses’ Guide (British Library, Cotton MS Cleopatra C VI), which is the source of claims that Julian must have had a cat. The exhibition curators have displayed the manuscript open at the relevant page, which instructs the three anchoress sisters to whom it was written in the 1210s, “Ne schule ye habben nan beast bute cat ane” (“You should not have any animal except one cat”).
Julian’s Short Text (British Library, Add MS 37790) is displayed open at the passage in which she described being shown all of creation as a small ball the size of a hazelnut. The Long Text (British Library, Stowe MS 42) is open at the start of the first chapter, where the neat 17th century hand of its copyist seems quite startling after looking at example after example of manuscripts from the medieval period (1100-1500). It’s a stark reminder that the Long Text only survived thanks to nuns exiled from England to Paris and Cambrai.
There is also an interactive exhibit that contrasts Julian’s vision of the devil in her sixteenth showing with Margery Kempe’s description of the sweet smell that surrounded her in the presence of angels when she married Christ in one of her visions in Rome. Opening Julian’s door releases a scent of fire and brimstone, whilst Margery Kempe’s door emits a sweet, syrupy fragrance.
It's profoundly moving to see Julian’s texts in close proximity to works by other spiritual women from the same era. There are also exhibits covering work-life and home-life, and the exhibition as a whole writes women’s voices back into our understanding of the Middle Ages, using, as the exhibition title suggests, their own words.
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Medieval Women: In Their Own Words runs until 2 March 2025, at St Pancras in London.
You can find out more about the exhibition and its accompanying events on the British Library website. These include a fresh opportunity to see Cindy Oswin’s one woman play, Cell, which has previously been performed at the Dragon Hall in Norwich and Somerville College, Oxford.